Author: Drew Neisser

CMO Insights: Content Marketing for B2B Marketers

Posted on by Drew Neisser

No one is more delighted about all the new energy being put behind Content Marketing than yours truly.  After all, it is a quintessential example of “Marketing as Service,” the conceptual approach I’ve been preaching about on these pages for the last 7 years. Jay Baer’s excellent new book calls this approach, Youtility and a few years back Bob Gilbreath covered much the same territory in his book, Marketing with Meaning.  Regardless of what you call it (and yes I too should have written a book by now but we all have to make choices!), the point is that marketers can build profitable relationships with prospects and customers by doing something for them (in this case creating audio, video or written content) rather than just pushing ads at them.

Always in search of new examples, I was delighted to catch up with Judy Hackett, the CMO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation, a private spin-off of D&B that provides credit and credibility solutions primarily for small businesses.  As you will see below, Judy provides terrific insights into the breadth of content they are creating, how it is being integrated across multiple channels and why her company is increasing its investment in this area.  This is really a meaty interview especially for B2B marketers looking to grow their content programs.  (NOTE: Judy and I will be talking content marketing at The CMO Club Summit in LA on 10/10 along with Richard Marnell of Viking Cruises and Dominic Pontrelli of Ricoh.)

Drew: Is content marketing a new thing for Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp?  
As more of a conscious marketing strategy to drive sales, yes.  As an ongoing marketing tactic, no.  We have been producing content from the start and have a resource center filled with loads of evergreen content geared towards small businesses. Early on it was all about authoritative content to drive SEO but it evolved. We developed our blog. We launched a monthly one-hour live stream event called Credibility Live.  Our goal with content two years ago was to build our reputation as a small business advocate and influencer. The difference today is we are now carefully crafting a more integrated and meaningful content strategy to drive customer acquisition and upsell.

Drew: Do you approach “content” creation differently than say, ad creation?  
Yes and no.   For larger content projects, there is a creative brief drafted.  So of course all of the same considerations are made, target, language/voice, call to action, marketing objectives, etc.  Even the process is much like ad creation.  There are rounds of approvals and legal considerations.  Where it differs is in its ability to engage a prospect for longer and to tell a larger story. Infographics, videos, and links within an article can take a prospect deeper than an ad that is limited by time and/or space.  The reality is if you’re not creating content that fits your stated marketing objectives, then it’s not worth producing.

Drew: Is Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp increasing its investment in content?  If so, why?  
Absolutely. The need is increasing not necessarily for more content but for more quality content. This is where our money will go.  That and new technology to create, publish and syndicate content.  We are investing in more dynamic content to speak to prospects and customers on a one to one basis for the purpose of upselling and cross-selling.  Some of this is being created in house and some through new technologies.  As an example we are creating some pretty innovative one-to-one video content with multiple variables that will be delivered starting in September.  It’s highly customized to their businesses and what’s happening in their credit reports.

Drew: Do you have a specific content program that is really doing well right now? Tell me about it and, if possible, explain why you think it is working so well.
Access to Capital which is our thought leadership initiative for 2012-13.  Ours is a complex sale. It requires sometimes a 30 minute education to help a small business owner really understand why he/she needs to monitor/build good business credit.   Suppliers, manufacturers, certain business types know that building and maintaining good business credit can be critical to their growth. It’s the other half that doesn’t know anything about it, until they go to get a loan to grow their business and are denied.  We set out to own the Access to Capital conversation and we’re really starting to reap the rewards.  We partner on a quarterly Private Capital Access index with Pepperdine University. Politicians and others often cite the study when discussing the divide between the banks that say they’re lending; and businesses seeking funding but not succeeding.  We are helping to bridge that gap with an integrated content strategy that includes an accesstocapital.com website filled with informative content.  We’ve created our robust live events that in turn provide us with rich content on the topic of funding for future use.

Drew: Its interesting to me that you’ve taken your content program offline to events. What are the benefits of this approach?
The most obvious benefit is the content creation and marketing of that content that takes place prior to, at these events and following the events.  Panels of experts on traditional, alternative, crowdfunding and start-up capital share their words of wisdom as do the business owners share their funding stories.  All of these participants from businesses to banks and panelists to moderators become content generators for us. Attendees share their experience via social and I could go on and on. It’s probably the single best way to create content!

Drew: What kinds of content is Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp creating and are you finding some more effective than others? (If you can provide links to any of it that would be great) 
Video Content by far!

  • We launched the first-ever 529-education savings plan with employer-matched funds called EdAhead this year. It is designed to help our employees save money to send their loved ones or themselves to college.  In order to promote the program, we created a video in which our CEO explains the program to a boardroom full of children. It had over 200,000 views in just a few days.
  • With the help of Stargreetz technology, we launched our one-to-one video content campaign via email in September.
  • We’ll do the same with the launch of our Business Credit Member Alliance.   This program will utilize a network of strategic partners (e.g. micro and small business lenders) who are looking to help educate entrepreneurs on the importance of being creditworthy.  We have shot a series of educational videos as well as produced print collateral and training materials. We will provide this content to these organizations free of charge and we will give them a free business CreditSignal credit report for each business.  We already know how our free CreditSignal report performs and with these strategic partners we know we will be getting the warmest of leads. We’re helping provide them with quality educational content and they in turn are providing us with highly relevant leads.

Also, our active corporate blog has been able to engage hundreds of thousands of people on a range of topics including educational material for small business owners, relevant opportunities for small business owners, and informative posts that help tell our story.

Drew: What metrics do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your content and how do you rank them in terms of importance?  
The BCMA will be measured on CreditSignal registrations and upsells. Our dynamic personalized email video content campaign will be measured on the results of three calls to action we are testing.  Our Access to Capital initiative is measured on several metrics– event registrations, products sold, partner satisfaction, press coverage, attendee satisfaction.

Drew: With content, is it as simple as “build it and they will come?”  Or do you need to “market the marketing” either via media (paid, earned and/or owned) to generate significant readership/viewership?  And if so, can you talk about how you “market” your content? 

Definitely NOT the former.  Your social team is critical.  Content just can’t be addressed in silos organizationally; you need collaboration between social, marcom, online, sales, etc.  It takes a village.  Also, we push our content partners hard to socialize and our employees are absolutely critical to the success of the content strategy.  We do a great deal to provide our partners and employees with the material they need to market on our behalf.  We occasionally support with social ad campaigns and press releases but it is the viral that makes it work.

I would add that we do extensive outreach to our employees, as in we send out an email to all our corporate employees each week that includes relevant events, interesting articles, new employees, and, most importantly, one “ask” at the top of the email. Through this “ask”, we’ve been able to increase our employee engagement and generate substantial social interactions around targeted campaigns.

Drew: What recommendations do you have for other CMOs when approaching a content marketing program?
There has to be a content commitment across the organization and a great deal of cross functional support.  If you are thinking that this is the job of just your social marketing department or your communications department, it’s not.  The collaboration required to do it right –and by no means are we doing it right yet—is monstrous. 

Insights on Crisis Management

Posted on by Drew Neisser

DuvallDoug Headshot 02-2012Every experienced social media practitioner has “crisis planning” as one of the first steps in the on-boarding process with a new client.  So naturally when Nick Johnson of Useful Social Media asked me to moderate a panel called “On the Defensive: Tactics to Spot and Avert Corporate Crises” at last week’s Incite Marketing Summit, I said, “sure, no problem,” thinking I actually knew something about the topic.  Fortunately for me, a prep call with the panelists quickly revealed I was a babe in the woods compared to these genuine crises professionals.

Jan Jones, Vice-President, Government and Communication at Caesar’s Entertainment, Debbie Mitchell, Senior Vice-President, Public Affairs at Cardinal Healthcare and Doug Duvall, Vice-President, Corporate Communications at Sprint, have been confronted and dealt with crises of the highest order including murders and suicides, hurricanes and bombings and just about every other imaginable (and some well beyond my imagination) challenge a corporation might face. Needless to say, it was a great panel (or so they said on Twitter!) rich with real world examples of how and how not to deal with crises.  After the panel, Doug provided his insights in the interview below, which among other things confirmed to me that Crises Management is a distinct expertise all by itself and should never ever be left to amateurs.  That said, here are some great tips if you are looking to build up your expertise in this area.

Q: Can you give me a sense of your job responsibilities at Sprint? 
I’ve been at Sprint about a year now and I’m responsible for national and regional media relations; social media relations; financial communications; crisis planning; public affairs; customer experience communications and social responsibility positioning.

Q: What types of crises have you experienced at Sprint?
Most of the routine crises involve our network. Our nationwide network is the backbone of our company and it’s the infrastructure that enables our 56 million customers to call, text, check email or watch a video on their mobile device. Today we’re so reliant on smartphones, and when there’s a network outage it’s understandable that customers become frustrated. So we’re really conscious about threats to our network – whether it’s from a construction crew accidentally cutting a fiber line or from weather events like storms, hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes.

We also have office buildings and thousands of retail stores across the country, so of course we worry about store robberies and potential harm to our employees.

Q: What is the worst crisis or near crisis you’ve experienced?
Before joining Sprint I spent seven years at Freddie Mac, a mortgage finance company that was thrust into the national debate during the financial and housing crisis. I managed the public relations team and we had our fair share of crises – from the government suddenly taking over control the company, to foreclosures, to protests at company headquarters. But the one crisis that stands out to me, and probably to most employees at that time, was waking up to the news that our CFO had committed suicide. It was completely unexpected and yet another major emotional shock to employees, who had already been through a lot. And to make matters worse, our critics tried to make the incident more of a conspiracy about “what did he know, and what was he hiding?”

Q: What were the key steps you took to diffuse the situation?
My boss and I quickly drafted a public statement and he walked it down the hall to get approved by the CEO. We felt it was important not to use “corporate speak” and to express our sincere sorrow in plain English. That’s critical in any crisis, but particularly one that involves a human tragedy. We talked about what kind of man and leader he was and how he will be most remembered “his personal warmth, his sense of humor and his quick wit.” We posted the statement on our web site and quickly sent it to reporters who covered us regularly. But given this was in the midst of the financial crisis, we had calls from all over the world, and from nontraditional outlets like Entertainment Tonight. I even did a radio interview with BBC, talking about the kind of person he was and what a tragedy it was for the company and his family. We also developed an internal communications plan that included a memorial event, and to respect his family’s privacy, we developed protocol on who would have interaction with the family.

Q: What are the organizational requirements to avoid being taken by surprise by crises?
It’s important to have designated crisis representatives from across the company. We have a person on Sprint’s Corporate Communications team whose primary job is to manage crises, whenever they may occur. She has a backup, and he has a backup too. But she is part of a larger company-wide team and regularly works with crisis representatives from our Network division, corporate security, sales, marketing, legal, government affairs, IT, etc.

You may hear about a crisis occurring in a number of different ways – through social media, breaking news, a phone call. But everyone needs to know who to escalate it to – that’s why we have designated people. So whoever might first hear of a crisis, they know who to send it to for managing the issue.

Q: Once you hear of a potential crisis, how do you begin to manage it?
Well, it’s definitely a team effort, but I start by asking four simple questions at the onset of any crisis, no matter the issue or size of the organization:

  1. What happened?
  2. When did it happen?
  3. What did you do once you found out it happened?
  4. How can you assure the public that it won’t happen again?

If you have decent answers to these basic questions, you’ll survive the crisis. When you see a corporate or political crisis lasting longer than it should, usually there wasn’t a solid answer to the last two.

Q: Most companies experience complaints on a daily basis.  How do you tell the difference between a routine complaint and looming crisis?
Given social media, everyone has a megaphone these days. But you can’t treat every negative post on Facebook or Twitter the same. It does matter who it’s coming from and what they are complaining about. Is it a high school kid ranting on Twitter, or is it someone from the media with 20,000 followers? Is what they are complaining about true?  Would your competition benefit if this got viral? Those things do matter and can help you prioritize.

To me, what separates a big crisis is scope, or how much it impacts your company. I’m talking about impacts such as:

  • Business operations and customer base. Are we talking about a large region or large swath of customer base, perhaps from weather events like hurricanes and tornadoes?
  • Lives. Are customers or employees injured? Is there loss of life? Is the public in danger?
  • Cost. How much will a “fix” impact the company’s bottom line?

And while all these events can harm a company’s reputation, there can be also be issues that simply cut to the heart of what your company stands for – your brand, your CEO, or the corporate culture.

Q: Do you ever experience disagreements on how a crisis should be handled?
Of course. By definition, crises are messy. Even when you have a detailed crisis plan that outlines ways in which the company should respond, every crisis is different. And every company has silos of employees with different business functions. For example, lawyers are not eager to admit wrongdoing; Finance employees don’t like allocating money towards a “fix” that’s not planned in the budget; and the IT division always seems to be juggling competing priorities. So it’s difficult to convince everyone to “drop everything” to focus on an issue that wasn’t there yesterday. At Sprint, it really helps that we have three corporate priorities: Improve customer experience, build the Sprint brand, and generate cash. So building the brand, and protecting our reputation, is front and center in everyone’s mind. It’s part of our culture and part of how all employees are compensated.

Q: After you have a sense of what happened and the scope of the problem, how do you communicate it internally and externally?
Tone is important, and a crisis is not a time for spin. Mike McCurry, President Clinton’s former press secretary, advises corporate clients to think about the “C’s” when communicating during a crisis:

  • Clarity. Use understandable, plain English.
  • Credibility. Be authentic and willing to address shortcomings.
  • Compassion. Remember there’s a person on the other side of this crisis.
  • Commitment. Devote the time and resources to resolve issue.

And he’s right – how you communicate during a crisis is critical. These 4 “C’s” and the 4 “Q’s” I mentioned earlier are essentially my “cheat sheet” that I keep in the back of  my mind during a crisis. They help keep you on course.

There’s a lot of chatter in Communications circles about needing targeted communications for your many stakeholders – employees, investors, customers, etc. To me, it’s most important to get it right. Determine what happened and what the company’s response is, and make sure the facts have been verified. Everything else flows from there. And while the phone may be ringing off the hook and Twitter is blowing up, you should communicate first to any victims and make sure employees are well informed early.

Q: While a bad customer interaction can happen anywhere, they tend to mushroom into crises on social channels.  Do you monitor social channels 24/7 in real time and if so, how is this helping you deal with potential crises?  
Employees from three distinct departments are engaged on social media – Corp. Communications, Marketing and Care. Marketing also has an outside ad agency and Sprint has more than 75 Care representatives actively resolving customer complaints/issues through Facebook and Twitter. Sprint also has a progressive employee advocate program where more than 3,000 employees use their personal social networks to discuss devices, promote Sprint offerings, or refer their friends to Care.

Q: The lines between corporate communications and marketing are increasingly blurred.  And certainly the customer doesn’t care who responds as long as their needs are satisfied.  Who ‘owns’ crisis communications?
Most of our proactive Facebook posts, infographics, and paid media ads are developed and managed by our Digital Marketing group and their outside ad agency. And they have frequent contact with our Corporate Communications social media team to develop an editorial calendar of social media content. But when it comes to issues management or crisis communications, Corporate Communications clearly owns that public response.

Reviews on User Generated Video

Posted on by Drew Neisser

John Courtney

I met John Courtney at the MediaPost Social Media Insider Summit this past August.  As the person with the longest title I know, “Certified Agile Project Manager & Marketing Professional” at Sears Holdings E-commerce Content Strategy,  I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck he did.  Turns out, he’s a busy guy especially in the area of content marketing and more specifically product videos.  Sears now has over 33,000 user generated product reviews on its website which are helping to drive online sales.  That’s a lot of videos by any measure.

If a brand tried to create all of these videos themselves, the cost would inevitably be in the millions.  To help facilitate the creation and moderation of these user generated videos, Sears partners with ExpoTV.  And while John was cagey about the future not wanting to reveal confidential information, reading between the lines it seems like Sears will be upping its investment in these videos perhaps even matching the millions of products it sells online.  Regardless of the exact number, I found our whole conversatin quite enlightening and suspect you will too.

Drew: You mentioned that you have over 33,000 user generated product video reviews up on Sears.com.  That is a ton of videos.  What is the strategy behind creating all these videos and how long did it take to figure out it was working for Sears.com? 
Yes, currently there are over 33,000 consumer-generated product reviews directly matched to approximately 12,500 relevant items on product pages.  It’s been said that one in every four consumers posts something about you and your product or to you.  This segment is growing rapidly and brands call this growing sector the “Brand Connected Consumer.”  These people choose to be actively engaged in the conversation about product sharing and as they keep going, consumer-generated video numbers will increase geometrically.

The strategy behind creating all of these videos is really to test whether or not there is any lift benefit for key product page performance indicators such as revenue per visitor and average order value.  This content also naturally lends itself to YouTube to drive more traffic back to product pages.  It’s still probably a little too early to tell but so far product pages with consumer-generated product review videos appear to outperform those without.

Drew: Do these videos cost a lot of money to produce?  If not, why not?  (Feel free to talk about the vendor that helps you get these videos)
There’s definitely an investment to get consumer-generated media like this, but it’s completely different than producing professional video and other types of crowdsourced content. There is a really large investment in developing the community, getting brand connected consumers excited about this new form of supporting other consumers and communicating with brands, making the process easy for them and then just all of the infrastructure to support product matching and content distribution.  That being said, once consumer-generated media is scaled it becomes much more cost efficient.  You can get hundreds of consumer-generated videos for around same cost of a handful of professionally-produced videos. Both media types have unique benefit however and can be synergistic when combined.  Professionally-produced video conveys perceived benefits while consumer-generated validates those product claims giving the consumer more information to make a confident purchasing decision.  The sales effectiveness should offset costs to produce videos. Fortunately, Expo’s service also takes a lot of the investment burden off starting from scratch.

Drew: Have you been able to see a direct lift in sales (or at least site traffic to Sears.com) as a result of video views?
So far, the program indicates lift in conversion, engagement, intent and loyalty across numerous tests over the past year. At this point in program, the content is having the impact naturally expected by combining the power of video and the authenticity of real users.

Drew: What role do videos play in your overall marketing mix?  Or asked differently, what role do they play in the customer journey?  
Consumers are empowered.  By sharing their thoughts and opinions through video, they have gone beyond joining the conversation.  They’ve created it. In the past, merchants told the public what they would be buying.  Then again, in the past revolutions weren’t forged on Twitter.  Now they are.  Think about being in the middle of a flash mob of any sort?  It’s a pretty powerful phenomenon, just as an illustration.  Yes.  The public, as in the consumer, has created the conversation and brands all need to listen because they have the power and they’re not giving it back, and the more you listen and heed the comments to strengthen your brand, the more valuable the conversation will become.

Drew: Are you increasing your investment in videos?  If so, why?  (If possible please provide how many videos you plan to produce in the next 12 months as part of this answer relative to how many products you list online) 
Investment in video is definitely increasing. Consumers are getting used to having video and it is obvious it drives behavior. At the same time, the barriers to creating the content are falling and more creators are getting involved. Any major retailer has millions of SKUs but the bulk of revenue is highly concentrated. Videos tend to be concentrated on those key products so the impact is much greater than it would look by a raw coverage stat. Long story short, the program is moving from trial stage and into the scaling phase.

Drew: What metrics do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your videos and how to you rank them in terms of importance?  Asked differently, is there typically a direct correlation between quantity of views and say click thrus to your website?  Or are there a few videos with only a modest number of views but that have very high conversion rates?  
The metrics most focused on are revenue per visitor and average order value for product pages with consumer-generated videos.  Other CTAs are evaluated but these are probably the two most important.

Drew: With so many user generated videos, are you concerned about the production values of these videos?  Does the customer care?  
This is definitely something that has come up.  As volume of videos has grown this has become less of a concern.  Watchers of the consumer-generated videos can rank videos so as more videos match a product the higher quality videos naturally become front and center with the poorer quality being pushed down.  It’s important to mention that all consumer-generated videos are screened by an ExpoTV editorial team to screen out content that is either lascivious or demonstrates improper use of a product that could cause potential harm.  Outside of ensuring these types of videos are removed it’s important all other consumer-generated product review videos, whether good or bad reviews, be available so it’s authentic to the consumer.

Drew: With videos, is it as simple as making and posting them to generate viewership?  Or do you need to “market the marketing” either via media (paid, earned and/or owned) to generate significant viewership?  And if so, can you talk about how you “market” your videos?
Posting videos on product pages generates its own interest and drives sales even when people don’t watch the videos given the visual impact from the still image.

Drew: What recommendations do you have for other marketers when approaching a content marketing program like the one you have in place?
It’s important that marketers have clear objectives and expectations entering a program like this. As discussed above, if the idea is to get professional production quality videos done cheaply they are going to be disappointed. You can’t force reviews to happen for a specific product. Some videos will be negative. Some videos will have poor production quality or feature a creator who probably won’t be featured on America’s Next Model anytime soon. The benefit is in the conversion lift, the authenticity of the content and the breadth of coverage afforded by consumer-generated content.

On the Future of Instagram Ads

Posted on by Drew Neisser

photoCan I just say for the record, I love Instagram!  As a longtime amateur photographer (yes, I spent many hours developing & printing in a darkroom way back when) I am quite happy taking an “insta-break” to soak in well composed shots and blow by the rest.  Add in the fact that I believe you can’t just talk the talk in our business–to be a good social advisor, it helps to walk the walk or perhaps in this case, seize the #selfie. So it was with mixed feelings that I responded to Saya Weissman of Digiday’s questions about the pending arrival of ads on Instagram.  Undoubtedly, ads will change the Instagram experience and it is hard to imagine it will be for the better.

Now without going out on a limb here I suspect Facebook didn’t pay $1 billion for Instagram without a monetization plan.  No such thing as a free lunch or a free app. So ads on Instagram? You bet.  Non-intrusive ones that actually enhance the experience?  We’ll see.  And since predicting what Facebook will do is a fool’s errand, I jumped right in, offering my best prognostications (see below). Fortunately, Saya’s article also includes quotes from GE’s Katrina Craigwell (see my 2012 interview with Katrina here) and Matt Britton of MRY (one of NYC’s best places to work), two people that I know and respect.  Bottom line–I suspect you’ll want to read their opinions as well (after you get through mine of course!)

Saya: What do you think is the best ad solution for Instagram?
Drew: The beauty of Instagram is its  elegantly simple user experience.  The best ad solution will be the one that is the least disruptive.  For example, allowing sponsored posts to show up in feeds will not be too disruptive as long as there aren’t too many of them.  A highly disruptive experience would be adding pre-roll to video posts.

Saya: What is going to be the biggest challenge in implementing ads on Instagram?
Drew: From a marketer’s perspective, Instagram is going to have to make a lot of changes to be competitive with Facebook.  For example, right now you can’t include hyperlinks in the copy that goes with Instagram photo/video posts. Without a means of driving clicks somewhere, Instagram will only be able to sell impressions and cheap ones at that.  Another challenge is that Instagram doesn’t know nearly as much about its users as Facebook other than geolocation and the hashtags they use.  While hashtags may represent a currency that can be sold to marketers, it remains to be seen if these will have as much value as more direct search terms.  Perhaps the biggest challenge is that marketers are already on Instagram.  Those that are doing it right are getting thousands of fans to see their posts without paying a dime.

Saya: How do you think users will react to ads on Instagram after having it ad free?
Drew: It depends how disruptive the ads become to the overall experience.  Most will live with the occasional “promoted post” because the app is free. However, if the ads are too disruptive, Instagram can count on a user rebellion like the one they had over their privacy SNAFU.

Saya: Do you think it will be difficult for Instagram to woo advertisers?
Drew:  Certain advertisers will consider Instagram given its highly engaged user base.  That said, Instagram will need to prove that it can offer highly targeted exposure AND drive traffic either within the app to a brand page or outside of the app to external sites.

Saya: Will ads ruin Instagram?
Drew: Ads could ruin Instagram if they go too far too fast thereby disrupting their currently elegant user experience.  They will be wise to pilot various approaches with users who will give them honest feedback.   Also they might want to offer an alternative paid app subscription that is ad free for the purists.

One possibility is that ads will actually ruin Instagram for marketers who are already successful on the platform.  It is conceivable that Instagram would suddenly throttle brand feeds to increase the value of its impressions.  So for example, Oreo’s Instagram posts currently reach all 97,000 of its followers. Instagram could decide to throttle this feed to say 16% and make Oreo pay to reach the other 84% of its organically earned fan base.  I suspect this would not inspire smiles or happy cookie images from the marketing team at Mondelez.

Saya: What can Instagram learn from Facebook’s ad model?
Drew: Facebook is extremely marketer friendly when it comes to buying media on their network.  First, provide an easy to use self-service buying platform. Second, make it extremely easy to monitor and evaluate ad performance based on both CPM and CPC.  This is why Instagram will need to figure out how to include hyperlinks either in post copy or on the post itself.  Third, don’t oversaturate a user’s feed with sponsored posts. Fourth, allow marketers to sponsor posts to existing customers (like Custom Audiences) and “look alike” customers.  Fifth, have very clear and strict ad guidelines that limit that amount text on any image or video post. Sixth, make sure ads are identified as ads.

As always, if you have some thoughts to share, please do either here or on Instagram itself.  

Thinking Differently About Influencer Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This may be the last (no promises) in my recent series of interviews on Influencer Marketing.  Fortunately for you, Matt Hixson, CEO of Tellagence, brings a different perspective on all this stuff since his company develops tools that help other companies identify and then engage communities.  Stay thirsty my friends as this influencer marketing party is just beginning.

Drew: First, can you give me a brief overview of what Tellagence does?
Tellagence predicts how information moves across a social network and informs anyone responsible for a brand’s content and communication what should be shared within their audience. This is accomplished by unlocking complex behavior and dynamic relationships. We have built two products that help us do this. First, Tellagence Discover allows brands to identify an audience, their interests and their choice of words.  Second, Tellagence Community allows you to identify the people who will not only engage on this subject but have the greatest potential to spread a message throughout this audience.

Drew: How would you define Influencer Marketing vis-a-vis Social Media marketing?
Social media has always been about WOM and the relationships needed to be successful. In the early days of online social networks it was simple because the number of users was much smaller. You could hustle and find the people you needed to reach. Influencer marketing is the ability to focus our resources on creating the one-on-one relationships that can significantly and predictably spread the message at scale and drive responses to our calls to action.

Drew: Can you give my readers an example of an Influencer Marketing program in which Tellagence played a role?
The value Tellagence provides is simple: we are able to find individuals who may not be considered an ‘influencer’ due to say a lack of or low follower count in Twitter, but instead play a critical role in how information moves across an online social network.

One of our earliest clients was an agency representing a large fortune 500 brand. They had a decent grasp on the client’s obvious network but we were able to identify a large group of people engaging around an important subject to the brand, which they were completely unaware of.  As opposed to having them mass market to this entire group we were able to identify highly targeted individuals that were critical in how this group not only received information but passed it along to the large percentage of the community.  These were people who had less than 100 followers and a low influencer score but were critical and would be overlooked by most.

Drew: How should brands be evaluating Influencer programs from an ROI standpoint?
There are a couple of core outcomes most brands want in any influencer campaign.  How can they get their messages to spread and how can they drive responses to their calls to action.  Influencer marketing is a much more focused approach than, say social ad buys, were the idea is that by putting more effort into fewer people you drive more reach or more responses to your calls to action. The basic question is what resources (time, money, people) do you put in and how much output did it create.

Drew: Do influencer programs have a role in customer retention or is mainly about driving leads?
If you do an influencer program in the most powerful way then you move from the idea of running a campaign to building a community.  The idea of community has waned a bit as there is much more pressure on CMO’s to drive results in the short term. Influencer programs can definitely do both.

Drew: Are there any risks associated with these programs and if so, how can they be mitigated?
The risk is not engaging with your online community or reaching them inefficiently and at scale. People expect to engage through social networks at all turns.

Maybe not a risk but another missed opportunity is only looking as far as a campaign. In social networks people curate their own content and streams by choosing the people they want to engage with. If you are not providing them value they turn your relationship off, either by not following you or not listening.

Drew: You said in an interview with the WSJ that what’s most important about social media data is the context in which it appears. Can you give us a little more insight about how information travels as it moves through social networks?
Context is where we believe you start, which is why we built Tellagence Discover. The conversation or debate about follower counts, social scoring, and does it make an influencer, is a sexy and emotional one. But the core of this question is answered in deep analytics. People build relationships in context, over time. As that context changes our relationships change. Once we understand those relationships by the context of language used, we build a network predicting how information moves to help the marketer.

Drew: Does Big Data play a role in all of this? If so, how?
Abstolutely. Twitter produces 1 billion tweets every 2 days. See here: https://blog.twitter.com/2013/behind-the-numbers-how-to-understand-big-moments-on-twitter

That’s some big data. The challenge for organizations is how to make sense out of all of that.  What Tellagence does is help them filter out the contextual noise to get to their target audience and then filter out the broadcast noise to get to their engaged audience. Big data gives us the opportunity but it is critical to get to the relevant data within there to create value.

Influencer Marketing From an Expert

Posted on by Drew Neisser

tahoe shotOkay, okay, I know I have been talking a lot about next week’s panel on influencer marketing.  Well, tough.  I’m not even close to done. Trust me, this is a hot topic and there are experts to be consulted.  Case in point, Teresa Caro, SVP, Social and Content Marketing at Engauge (just acquired by Publicis) who suggested the panel topic to MediaPost in the first place.  But before we get to Teresa’s insights, here for the record is the official description of our panel which is taking place near beauteous Lake Tahoe:

Your Biggest Fans: Best Practices for Engaging Influencers
Building and maintaining relationships with influencers can be difficult and sometimes time-consuming. But, when done right, the relationships can be rewarding for both brands and for the influencers. How do you identify the key influencers for your brand? How do you maintain those relationships and what type of monetization is required to keep those influencers engaged? Join our panel of brands, agencies and social media specialists as they take you through the best practices behind influencer marketing.

Now onto the interview which I for one found particularly interesting.  After all, how often does one get to use the phrase “influencer porosity” in a discussion?

Drew: How do companies begin to implement an influencer outreach program?
First off, don’t allow a tactic such as social influence marketing drive your strategies. Objectives and strategies should drive your tactics. So, the first thing to do is to define your objectives and the strategies you will use to achieve those objectives. This is especially important with influence marketing because there are so many different types of programs.

Drew: How should companies approach an influencer? Should all potential influencer relationships be thought of as a long-term commitment? 
The answer to these questions all depends on your strategic framework and which social influence marketing programs you choose to deploy. And yes, because it is time intensive to identify and ramp up your influencers, we always recommend a long-term commitment, yet we understand this is not always feasible and again, depends on the program you choose to deploy based on certain objectives and strategies.

A few examples of the many approaches include:

  • Surprise and Delight: You already have social influencers out there talking about your brand. Why not put a program together that surprises them with samples to share with their fans or a simple gift to say thanks. This is a good way to get a sense for how an social influence marketing program would work for your brand. For several of our brands, we start here and then evolve to the next bullet.
  • Advocacy/Social Loyalty Program: Are you looking to evolve to more of a social loyalty program, identify your most valuable advocates and reward them appropriately? Chances are you already have a strong relationship with your Tier 1 and Tier 2 consumers and can simply reach out to them directly to ask if they are interested. It can be positioned initially as an unpublished loyalty program and a test. Once you get it right you can role it out.
  • 3rd Party Influencers: For those brands who are looking to launch a new product or need to hit their numbers during certain seasons, incorporating paid influencers into a campaign helps to extend the reach and increase brand resonance. In this case, we spend the time to find the right influencer through organic search with the occasional 3rd party provider.

Drew: What are some best practices for understanding the influencer-fan relationship?
Let’s face it, we want to reach the influencer’s fans. An influencer’s success depends on audience satisfaction and, by proxy, so does the success of the brand within those audiences. Understand what the audience expects from the influencer. If the influencer is passionate about pure bread dogs, will a message about Rachel Ray Nutrish resonate with them? Unlikely, since this brand is focused on dog rescue. If the fans are looking to be entertained, is providing the influencer with information (which may be useful to some) going to work with this audience? Know what the influencer values and what the fans expect.

Drew: How should brands approach “influencer porosity” in terms of shaping content, building relationships, and simply starting the conversation? 
It means when brands work with influencers directly they need to understand their primary and secondary channels, their role and purpose, how they flow and how they can be leveraged by the brand. The more effort you take to understand the more effective the results. When brands are working with 3rd parties, it again depends on what you are looking to achieve and through what kind of medium. If you want an influencer to review a product, you need to work with the 3rd party to let them know the type of influencer and the type of content you want. What’s fantastic about influencers now (it’ll probably evolve) is if they love your brand and they’re excited about the experience, they’ll meet their commitment and do more. We just finished up one influencer program and were excited to see the abundant number of Instagram photos… something we did not include in the contract.

Drew: How do you remain attuned to your relationships with influencers and by extension, the fans when social is constantly changing? 
Channels change, people remain the same. If a brand has a long term social loyalty/advocacy program, you are going to evolve that program as you would any relationship marketing program: by asking your audience what they need and expect. With short term programs, we always recommend the 70-20-10 rule: 70% is allocated to those channels/programs that we know will allow us to hit our numbers and get our bonus check. 20% is for those areas you know you need to do. The market has already proven it works, a brand just needs to figure out how best to get it to work for them. We feel influence marketing falls in this bucket. The 10% is for those shiny objects that come by. By having a budget and a process for these channels and tactics, it allows you to test and discard (or optimize) quickly without disrupting the rest of the marketing plan.

Drew: How can brands make sure they “don’t suck” as you suggested in your Slideshare presentation?
This is more of a brand problem, one that can be exasperated by social. I’m always fond of saying that social is like alcohol: the more you drink, the more it enhances your underlying personality. Social is the same way, the more you engage in the social space, the more a brand’s faults come to the surface (and their good features too).

Drew: When setting up an influencer program what are the right metrics for success?
Success is in the eye of the beholder. Before you embark on any program, ensure you know your business objectives and you know the KPIs that align to those business objectives (share of voice, NPS (net promoter score), pre-/post- brand awareness/perception, etc. The metrics for that campaign depend on what you are looking to achieve. We had one client who simply wanted to look more innovative than another brand. We have another who wants to deepen their relationship with their audience. We have another who is media-focused and measures success based on impressions.