Continue reading »]]> This week Google announced changes to their search results, incorporating Google+ Circles social data into an individual’s results, there have been many reactions and conversations about this new product “Search plus Your World”.  However you view this move good bad or just confusing, it is the start of the change and merging of search and social data and it is just the beginning.

From a business perspective this is changing the game significantly and where a number of successful online businesses who have built their online business and revenue model  based on an SEO strategy and played lip service to social, if they have not seen an impact on their bottom line, yet they will do so unless they acknowledge that the world is changing and SEO is no longer dominant and that the future is a combined strategy, with specialists in both areas, working towards the same goals.

In the diagram below, we show the 2 current silos and the way we envisage the Social Commerce Model to evolve with SEO, social data funnels merging to support the businesses goals.

Continue reading »]]> In a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article How Expedia Plans to Make Travel More Social Expedias vice-president of the US, Joe Megibow, discusses Expedias recognition of the value of travel bloggers and intend to introduce and their blog posts into the online experience of their travel customer.

Online travel is an industry which is best placed to benefit from developing an integrated social commerce and mobile proposition, which delivers each individual customer with a personalised service and has the potential to enhance the online experience and also combine a mix of travel content, bloggers, published content, customer reviews and local destination tour and activity providers to improve customers in destination experience.

In the spring of 2011, I met friends from Dallas in Paris for a couple of days, they were on a 5 day trip with their 2 sons and wanted to maximise the experience for all the family during their short stay.  In order to do this, Laura, carried out extensive desk research from her home using both online and guidebooks she purchased about Paris, she identified a range of activities from sightseeing, guided historic walks, places to eat, drop by for a coffee and take time out to relax and from this built a great schedule which she skilfully led, with the aid of her iphone, her husbands blackberry and google maps, their 5 day trip and my couple of days with them.

This inspired me to carry out research into the online travel space, an area I have been interested in since 2001, to look for a joined up consumer experience which would have created the type of city break my friend and her family were looking for and was surprised to find that this was not available, there were vendors doing the individual areas, but there IS NO_ONE joining this all up to create a streamlined customer experience….so I met with a number of technology vendors and carried out research into what makes travel sell on line and developed a contecept called CITEZE – a social commerce and mobile citybreaks travel service which I introduced to a couple of online travel companies, who expressed some interest but no urgency to develop this new customer experience and I have to ask why?

Below is an outline of the travel concept and I welcome views and opinions and volunteers companies and/or individuals who may be interested in developing this beyond a concept…look forward to hearing from you…..

Continue reading »]]> My interest and fascination with online communities started in 2001, and spurred me on to launch a startup to create an online brand community centered loyalty service for the hotel, airline and online travel industries. The concept was well received, by both potential customers and venture capitalists’; however there was some nervousness about consumers’ willingness to put their personal data online. However, there were signs that things were changing and that individuals were changing their behaviour online and becoming more comfortable with sharing their personal details and participating in online communities, blogs, forums and early social networks where there was a common interest.

My interest in this area grew and prompted me to ask two questions?

• Do online communities have identifiable characteristics which can help us understand why consumers participate in them?
• If we can identify key characteristics, how can this help us create online communities to support different business goals?

In October 2003, I enrolled in a Masters in Strategic Marketing at Kingston Business School in the UK, to try and answer these questions through researching and writing my dissertation “online communities: why do consumers participate?  why should marketers care?”

At this time, there was limited marketing based academic research in this area and literature was used from brand communities, online trust, and customer loyalty and non-marketing research in participation in knowledge communities.  The dissertation looked to answer 2 questions:

• Is there a relationship between the characteristics of an online community and a members participation levels in the community?
• Is there a relationship between an online community members internet experience levels and their participation levels in an online community?

The research process combined both a literature review and an online survey of participants active on Living TV’s forums and message boards, which was introduced via popup adverts and regular requests by the community moderators requesting participation from the members.  The survey ran for a period of 10 days, from the 12^th August 2004 and the results showed that

• There were key characteristics which were predictors of levels of participation in online communities, these were:
• Interest in the core subject discussed in the community
• A feeling of being included in the community
• A level of personalisation in the communication within the community
• A level of expertise in the key subject areas

• member experience (experience being their level of proficiency online) is not a predictor of participation in an online community
• over 46% have been members for more than 12 months, demonstrating a level of loyalty to the community
• over 64% visit the community more than once a day, demonstrating that engagement and relevant content bring members back throughout the day
• over 51% post on the community more than once a day, demonstrating that members can be active on a regular basis

The survey was carried out on one type of online community, forums and message boards focused on topical discussion around current TV programs which were airing on the Living TV Channel.

The conclusion from this research was that

“online communities have the potential to offer marketers a tool which assists in the creation of a loyal customer base, a forum through which customers and other stakeholders can voluntarily engage in a relationship with the community or organisation and through the different forms of participation can enable an organisation to both educate and learn from the community members.

The key to online communities is consumers voluntarily engage in a relationship and provide personal and lifestyle data, something that marketers have been trying to achieve through the implementation of customer relationship management systems.”

Since 2004, there has been an exponential growth in social networks and online communities it would interesting to develop this area of research further looking at a range of social networks and online communities in order to refine our understanding of individual’s behaviour and motivations for participation in online communities.

A copy of the full dissertation is below and I would be interested in hearing from you if you are interested in helping me develop this research further or sharing your views opinions and research on this blog.

Continue reading »]]> As more organisations and their business partners look to develop social strategies in one or more areas of their business, the need for cases studies is increasing. We have compiled a selection of social business cases studies, which show the business value from an individual social media campaign, to customer service, social commerce, evolving business models and developing a new business model with social at the heart of the strategy.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does demonstrate that social both in discrete projects or areas of the business, to disrupting business models. If you have other business cases, you can point us to please drop us a line or comment below.

Continue reading »]]> Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) have been working with Communispace, the private community company, to build on-going relationships with 300 elite customers, who provide feedback and insights into all things IHG.

The private communities have provided IHG with the opportunity to

• raise over 3,000 questions within the community
• provide a platform for peer to peer customer engagement resulting in a further 7,000 questions being asked and answered by the community
• listen to and learn from the customers
• provide tactical feedback on campaigns and messaging
• provide strategic feedback on new product development and customer experience
• facilitate sharing of member generated content ie photos, views, opinions and questions
• provided internal education for senior executives as to the value of developing and running hosted customer communities

Following the continued success of the private communities, IHG have developed an external public community called Priority Club Connect, where priority club members can share their photos and travel blogs with other members. This has a growing number of members and participants.

InterContinental Hotels Group: Inside Out: How Private Communities Catalyzed Our Social Media Efforts, presented by Nick Ayres from GasPedal and SocialMedia.org on Vimeo.

Continue reading »]]> The Altimeter Report identified 4 internal requirements common to organisations who they perceived to be advanced in the implementation of social business projects:

1. Baseline Governance and Re-enforcement: Established  and reinforced a corporate social media policy that allows employees to participate professionally
2. Enterprise-wide response Processes: Defined processes for rapid workflow and engagement with customers in social media
3. On-going Education Program and Best Practice Sharing: Fostered a culture of learning through on-going social media education Leadership from a dedicated and shared central hub: Organised in a scalable formation, with a cross functional “center of excellence”

The full report is below.

The Purple Spinnaker Social Business Framework provides organisations with a social business strategy framework and an operational implementation process which helps organisations to:

1. Develop their first social business strategy
2. Provide a framework for existing social business strategies
3. Develop an internal education program for all levels within the organisation

As, with all social business strategies, the core of the framework is based on listening, learning, engaging and growing your business:

To support our framework, we have identified the key workstreams a business needs to manage to develop and implement their social business strategy:

Central to the success of your social business strategy is putting a team in place, which combines an internal social business leader with executive level support and the identification and engagemnt of external partners who can help you:

1. Develop your company and/or projects social business framework
2. Land the social business strategy into the operations of the business

Social business strategies are adding value to companies across all industries today, but we are in the infancy of this area of business and as we see more successes, then we will see the evolution of the framework and also more experienced and skilled professionals leading and managing these projects.

Today, it is still a bit of trial and error, but if you dont try you dont learn anything!

Altimeter Social Business Readiness: How advanced Companies Prepare internally:

Continue reading »]]> Have just watched this video from becky brown, social media director at Intel, where she discusses their current centralised social media strategy, tools platforms and their journey to their position today.

Intel has been developing their use of social media channels for a couple of years and understands that the majority, 80%, of the conversations around their brand and products take place on blogs and twitter.  However there was a growing use of Facebook within the business which at 250 individually created and managed pages, it was difficult to co-ordinate and manage multi market campaigns.

Following a review of their 250 Facebook pages  and 250 Twitter handles/account  presence,  Intel took the decision to change their social media strategy from being decentralised to a centralised global strategy underpinned by

• internal guidelines
• training programs
• content editorial
• publishing schedules

complemented by a suite of publishing Vitrue, listening, Radian6, & internal reporting tools.

This centralised strategy allows them to listen and respond globally, locally or to individuals, based on the context of the conversation.

Intel also use, a global community of brand ambassadors, who are identified as influencers, either throgh their online activity around the intel brand and/or range of products and are invited to join an intelambassadors program, where they are given pre-launch info about products and encourgaed to blog, comment and spread the word globally about Intel, their brand and products.

This is the start of their emerging strategy and ince the facebook strategy is underway, the next challenge is the 350 Twitter accounts…….

Continue reading »]]> Jeordan Legon of Chevron, the energy company, recently presented their corporate social linkedin centred communication strategy. Chevron, have developed and currently run a strategic corporate marketing social campaign, whose main focus is the development of a community of energy leaders on LinkedIn, which uses Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.  The project has

Listening & Learning
Listened to conversations for 2 years

• Identify key community support and facilitation channel
• Linkedin is primary channel
• Additional Facebook, Youtube and Twitter channels

Identify community member profiles

• Leaders the energy industry
• Energy industry knowledge experts
• Energy industry business partners

Identify key goals for community

• High levels of engagement
• Repeat Visits
• relevant online discussions about energy

Engage with community   
When engaging with the community Chevron, identified key areas to focus on:

• Identify key individuals to invite to community
• Identify key subject areas
• Energy
• Doing business with Chevron
• Create community guidelines
• Create, Manage and moderate community content

Integrate into other communication strategies
As a TRUSTED developed and engaged community Chevron can channel campaigns through the community to drive traffic back to websites, surveys, other conversations on other channels.

“we agree” http://bit.ly/oC5QVz

Grow and develop
As a trusted, community within their target audience, which is depicted in the
chart below:

Chevron now has an engaged community to drive their online communications
strategy.  They combine an internal team, who are responsible for the data to day management of the community, for educating other internal teams in their use and success of social channels and are in partnership with external teams:

• Listening insight, reporting and tools
• Linkedin as a community platform and insight partner
• Communications to help with individual campaigns

To hear the full presentation and view the slides, click on the video below and review the slides at the bottom.

Continue reading »]]> We are working with an education client and came across some interesting research from the University of Massachusetts, http://bit.ly/qfCSrB in August 2011, which demonstrates the adoption rates of one or more social media channels is almost 100%.  The chanels are used in 3 primary areas, student acquisition, on-going communication programs and gaining an insight into how students live today.  The graphs have been taken from the research report.

The primary public social channels are Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Linkedin with University hosted social tools including blogs, forums/messageboards, video blogs and podcasting.

Social media is recognised by the universities as a key tool in the recruitment of students and also in gaining insight into the lives and online behaviour of potential, current and alumni students.

To see the research in detail please click http://bit.ly/qfCSrB

Do you have any examples of good university and higher education social media case studies to share?

Continue reading »]]> What is Social Commerce?
In todays world social commerce is an online store on Facebook, as this is the largest social network with the most global brand and global user base.

Who is experimenting in Social Commerce?
We are seeing a number of  different consumer companies experiment with social as a new channel to both engage with customers on their purchase journey and provide them with a place to buy their product or service through the social channel, be that social networks like Facebook and Twitter or as an app for smartphones and tablets.

Facebook & Twitter
Facebook and Twitter are the primary social networks companies are experimenting with social commerce platforms.  Twitter was the first channel where brands gave consumers the opportunity to buy, not in the social network, but were directed straight to a point of purchase.  In 2008, Dell was one of the first companies to use Twitter in this way, communicating daily deals with a direct link to a page where they can purchase the product.  Dell reported revenues US$6.5m through this channel in the first 2 years.

Facebook provides additional functionality through the ability to create a fully functioning e-commerce application on their site.  ASOS the UK based online fashion retailer, has taken advantage of this an in January 2011, launched  a fully functioning store on Facebook.  Their customer experience combines that of their store, with access to their full range of stock, plus the social aspects of Facebook, where you can share the clothes you are looking at and purchasing with friends.

The travel industry is another area, where we are seeing the ability to book flights with Delta Airlines, hotel rooms with Hilton Hotels and a holiday with HolidayIQ.

jwtintelligence, have published their social commerce research which discusses their observations and findings on social commerce, Facebook, consumers social and interest graphs.