How HR professionals score as social networkers
December 14, 2009 at 3:28 pm | In Research | Leave a CommentTags: hr, Research, social media, word of mouth
We like to share the great research and thinking around word of mouth and social marketing that is constantly being done by our members, so take a look at the whitepaper WOM UK member and social media agency Pass It On Media have created in collaboration with CHA, the workplace communications specialists.
Conversations at your fingertips: How HR professionals score as social networkers looks at “how well HR professionals and consultancies are embracing this new medium, and how their organisations could benefit from a strategic approach to social networking to build closer relationships with clients and customers, employees and suppliers.”
As the graph above suggests, the findings might come as a surprise; the majority of work and career conversations are positive, despite the current difficult environment. The study found that HR professionals’ nervousness about embracing social networking is not vindicated by the online content, and that the field is still wide open for commercial players to get involved in conversations to build their brands, position themselves as thought-leaders and attract staff, clients and interest from influencers through word of mouth.
Look through the full whitepaper below and let us know your thoughts in the comments; if you’d like to discuss further or set up a WOM UK debate or workshop on the subject, drop us a line.
January Espresso Briefing: Dr Robert East on moving your WOM measurement beyond Net Promoter Score
December 10, 2009 at 1:51 pm | In Events | Leave a CommentTags: consumer behaviour, net promoter score, professor robert east, social media measurement, wom uk, word of mouth measurement
We’re going to kick off the New Year with a corker of an event. At 8.30-10.30am, Wednesday 27th January at Guardian News & Media, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, Dr Robert East, Professor of Consumer Behaviour at Kingston University, joins WOM UK to discuss: Net Promoter Score is a popular WOM measure but are there better alternatives?
Net Promoter Score is a popular WOM measure for assessing the performance of the brand/company. Along with satisfaction measures, it does predict sales growth. However NPS has several deficiencies as a measure; in particular it fails to measure negative word of mouth. With increasing interest in predicting sales, profits and equity gains, we need customer metrics that do a better job at predicting customer behaviour. In this lively morning event, Dr East will be asking:
- Why does NPS have shortcomings as a measure for WOM?
- What are the alternatives and why are they better?
- What are the implications moving forward?
Dr Robert East is Professor of Consumer Behaviour at Kingston University and directs the Consumer Research Unit in the Department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Marketing. He is one of the world’s most authoritative and respected leaders in word of mouth, brand switching and loyalty. He is the author of numerous books and articles on consumer behaviour and his research on word of mouth has been pivotal in improving our understanding of the importance of WOM.
All our Espresso Briefings are FREE and include breakfast and networking. To register for a place please email julian.ferguson@womuk.org – members get priority booking.
Should social media be paid for? IAB and WOM UK say yes…
December 8, 2009 at 1:19 pm | In Events | Leave a CommentTags: IAB, should social media be paid for, social media advertising, wom uk, word of mouth
Last night’s joint IAB and WOM UK debate, ‘Should social media be paid for?‘, was intended to be taken with a big pinch of salt. The two teams purposefully dug their heels in, ramped up the drama and pushed their views to the extreme to make the assembled crowd really question the possibilities and limits of paid advertising in the social space – but some genuinely interesting issues surfaced amongst the bombast.
On the ‘for’ side, Kate Box, Head of Social Media Sales at Microsoft Advertising, and Steve Filler, Commercial Director for Unruly Media, made the case that consumers don’t mind whether content is paid for. Brands need to act like brands, and they claimed that visibly advertising is more honest; paid advertising in the social space gets results, and is essential for the survival of the industry.
In the ‘against’ corner, President of WOM UK and WOM Evangelist at 1000heads Molly Flatt joined Ciarán Norris, Head of Social Marketing at Mindshare, to assert that paid media is, and should remain, by definition separate to earned or social media. Although paid can inspire social interaction, the independent social space is all about relationships, flourishing on a currency of status, passion, expertise and networking, and those can’t be bought. Interactive, digital, online PR and the like all have their place – but they’re not truly social media.
The votes came down on the side of ‘for’, but the atmosphere was lighthearted as both sides acknowledged that valuing one did not exclude the importance of the other, and that a mix of paid stimulation and inspired independent WOM and listening is best. For an idea of how an integrated view can look, it’s worth reading Neilsen’s Pete Blackshaw’s recent post on Maximizing Super Bowl Advertising ROI in a Paid Vs. Earned Media Environment.
Some genuinely interesting grey areas also emerged. Where does inspiration end and payment begin, when brands are providing trials and freebies? Doesn’t the industry need to firm up its definitions so that brands don’t just think they’re ‘earning social’ by throwing a few interactive ads online? And isn’t it essential that brands don’t see social media attention as ‘free’ – more that they must pay for it in man hours for listening, responding and creativity, rather than cash?
If you couldn’t make it to the sold-out event, let us know your thoughts and questions below, and look out for future collaborations. What would you like to see debated next?
When does information become incentivisation?
December 3, 2009 at 2:44 pm | In Ethics | Leave a CommentTags: disclosure, ftc guidelines, paid WOM, social media ethics, sponsored conversation, word of mouth ethics
Back when the FTC’s guidelines on US bloggers’ disclosure of brand payment and gifting were announced in October, the controversy was predictably loud. The likes of CBS and Media Bistro highlighted the questions and ethical issues that the guidelines left unanswered, and the IAB published an open letter warning that they posed a threat to the Constitutional right to free speech. Search Engine Watch in particular said what many others were feeling: that opinions are different from fact, and the guidelines will be near-impossible to enforce.
Well, we’ll soon see. This week the guidelines finally came into effect and the continued debate around their usefulness will almost certainly have implications for future UK, European and global legislation.
The Boston Globe has collated a number of opinions from US bloggers. Most agree that there is a need to protect the independence of social media word of mouth, but there is also a strong sense that the guidelines ignore the subtleties of the space. Particularly interesting is the view of Ryan Spaulding, of Ryan’s Smashing Life music blog, that certain assets given to him by brands simply facilitate his opinion-making, without obligation: “I don’t look at it as payment. It’s what it takes to get the job done. To me this whole thing is a wide-cast net that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
In some ways the hostility of the blogosphere has been surprising. Communities are fiercely protective of their independence and any attempts to astroturf, flog or conceal paid WOM have historically been met with vigilance and animosity. As blogger Dan Brown has asserted, the guidelines do have a necessary and positive role to play in maintaining trust. But it’s also evident that developing a relationship with a brand – which may bring certain assets, trials and exclusive information, events or opportunities – is a very different thing to being paid to talk. Bloggers who do the former, with the benefit of their readership in mind, do not want to be tarred with the latter’s brush.
What do you think? if you want to explore these and related issues in more detail face to face, join us at the FREE WOM UK/IAB debate Should social media be paid for? next Monday 7th December. Click here for details and to register.
WOM UK and IAB debate: Should social media be paid for?
December 1, 2009 at 12:48 pm | In Ethics, Events | 1 CommentTags: IAB, paid advertising, social media, sponsored conversation, wom uk, word of mouth
We’ve teamed up with the IAB to create a lively and provocative panel discussion. On Monday 7th December, 5-7pm at the IAB offices, 14 Macklin Street, London, WC2B 5NF, Molly Flatt, President of WOM UK and WOM Evangelist at 1000heads; Kate Box, Head of Social Media – Sales at Microsoft Advertising; Steve Filler, Commercial Director for Unruly Media; and Ciarán Norris, Head of Social Marketing at Mindshare will be debating:
Should social media be paid for?
via Guano@Flickr
Social media is not a marketing tool; it’s a public platform for conversation. So how does paid and sponsored advertising fit into the space – if at all?
At this debate we will be discussing the many issues that arise around paid-for marketing in social media. Is there a place for incorporating paid-for advertising and distribution? Does sponsored conversation have any real value for brands? Or does the true value of social media for marketers lie in independent peer-to-peer word of mouth and advocacy, inspired by passion not cash? Where do we draw the boundaries with incentivisation and transparency? Should we incorporate all of the above?
Our expert panellists will be looking at where social media fits into earned, owned and bought media, and where it should lie in the marketing planning mix. So join us for what will undoubtedly be an informative, entertaining and ever-so-slightly festive affair.
The event is FREE to all and there will be Christmas drinks afterwards while we continue the discussion, so register with elle@iabuk.net asap – we look forward to seeing you there.
Using crowdsourcing and co-creation for adaptive brand planning
November 26, 2009 at 12:25 pm | In Events, Research | Leave a CommentTags: adaptive brand planning, co-creation, crowdsourcing, research 3.0, social media, wom uk, word of mouth
Word of mouth marketing is usually associated with building consumer advocacy, but this week’s WOM UK Espresso Briefing looked at a more inward focused use of WOM: using the groundswell of consumer knowledge and enthusiasm as a research base to develop an adaptive brand planning strategy.
Head of Social Media and Planning for Face, Francisco D’Orazio, presented Research 3.0 to a packed east London room of agencies, brands and researchers all interested in the latest developments in the WOM industry. After half an hour’s coffee and networking, Fran explained how brands can use our participatory, real time and constantly changing culture to move research onto a whole new level.
He identified three key elements in the process. Companies must first learn to immerse themselves in the real time intelligence available in social media to build a picture of the emotions, intentions and actions of consumers. They can then use this to develop an insight journey, or feedback loop, which should be as short as possible in order for them to change quickly, according to the opinions evolving in the space.
The next step is to conduct collaborative research in two ways. First, a wider crowdsourcing project connects a number of relevant individuals and communities around problem-solving tasks which prompt both hypothesis validation and ideas generation for the brand’s marketing. Then a more focused co-creation stage gathers a select few opinion leaders to test the best ideas and nail down specific proposals for activity. Both strategies have limitations by themselves – crowdsourcing can be rather messy, impersonal and limited by confidentiality constraints, while co-creation can be too rigid and retains a few-to-many philosophy – but together they combine individual and group thinking, bottom and top down structures, to provide a nuanced and effective outcome. Check out Fran’s deck below for more detail.
This was a fresh and exciting concept for many in the room and there was some animated discussion afterwards, around where the collaborators come from (a mixture of Face’s own communities and per-project targeted voices), the tricky issue of reward (different incentives and payments are offered depending on the client), and the role of brand-sponsored WOM in skewing the real time intelligence (there was a general concensus that communities would remain self-regulating and analysis could take into account the dubious value of those paid-for opinions). It was great to see so many new faces, suggesting that WOM UK events are addressing issues a broad range of people are interested in.
If you think you might be one of them, keep an eye out for our next FREE Espresso Briefing – details soon.
The latest WOM issues and insights from WOMMA Summit 09
November 23, 2009 at 4:03 pm | In Events, Research | 2 CommentsTags: measurement, Research, roi, social media, wom uk, womma summit, word of mouth
WOM UK President Molly Flatt hit Vegas last week for the annual conference of our US sister organisation, WOMMA…
Having arrived back in Heathrow at midnight, I’m still dogged by jetlag and trying to assimilate the great eclectic beast that was WOMMA’s 2009 Summit in Vegas, no less. With three days of keynotes, panels and case studies from some of the biggest US brands active in the WOM space such as Ford, HP and Coca-Cola, as well as research from the likes of Forrester Research, Nielsen and The Keller Fay Group, it was a mindblast of the latest theories and commercial applications of WOM.
Measurement was predictably high on the agenda. Clients are crying out for industry-wide standards, but there was an acknowledgment that meaningful metrics will be be different according to client objectives (visibility, sales, loyalty etc) and therefore project-specific education is still essential. Conversation relies on context, while most ad metrics are stand-alone and focused on scale alone. Consequently, the most successful examples of effective measurement involved a brand combining insights and figures from other departments (sales, eyeballs, customer services calls etc) with a broad range of qual and quant WOM data.
Internal ownership was also a massive issue, with some great sessions from IBM & Newell Rubbermaid and Mars on how they’ve integrated WOM listening and advocacy programmes into their existing structures and processes. This was related to an ongoing conversation about how Customer Services links with WOM. A panel including Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen, Frank Eliason from Comcast, Tom Asher from Levi Strauss, Denise Morrissey from Toyota and John Bernier from Best Buy looked at examples such as @TWELPFORCE and @comcastcares which fully integrate Twitter into CS. The main takeaway was: just try, keep communicating, and help employees learn and progress from their mistakes. Take the risk, and as long as your approach has integrity and strategy behind it, the benefits will be enormous.
Another highlight was Steve Knox from P&G’s Tremor using cognitive psychology to explain why customers talk – apparently if you disrupt their schema (the model in their head of how the world works and their assumptions about a brand) it’s WOM gold. And the panel of WOM academics tackling the toughest questions in the industry had some powerful messages, in particular the importance of overlooked visual, aural and offline WOM triggers; the need for research into geographical and cultural differences in behaviour; and the use of future visioning to sell in the value of WOM to brands: if we do or don’t engage this talkative customer, what will the impact be?
Steve Knox from Tremor on cognitive psychology. Spot me earnestly taking notes on my Mac…
On the flipside, some of the examples I saw were still too based around an old-school marketing approach. Isn’t a moderated, branded page or forum in an independent community (such as Tropicana for BlogHer) really just a microsite dressed up in social clothing? From a WOM UK perspective, it was interesting to observe the differences in approach between the US and UK. I’m not sure that some of the more gung-ho, blatantly branded adovacy groups such as the Feld Family Activators at Mom Central would gain much traction in a nation that tends to be highly sceptical of associating itself so strongly with commerce. And some agencies were even stipulating time limits whereby participants were ‘expected’ to talk in return for goods or experiences – where’s the spontaneous, independent and heartfelt advocacy in that?
Overall it was a rich and stimulating event and I’m sure more thoughts and observations will trickle through across the next few weeks. For more, check out my live tweets from the Summit @WOMUK, as well as video highlights here and photos here. And if you want a more detailed lowdown on insights and issues raised, just drop me a line and I’d be happy to take you through it over a coffee… or indeed a Vegas-themed cocktail.
UPDATE: Change of venue for tomorrow’s Espresso Briefing
November 23, 2009 at 1:49 pm | In Events, News | Leave a CommentTags: adaptive brand planning, social media event, WOM event, wom uk
Big apologies are due as we’ve had to make a last-minute change to the venue for tomorrow, Tuesday 24th November’s WOM UK Espresso Briefing on ‘Monitoring and analysing WOM in real time to enable adaptive brand planning’ by Face. It will now be held at Insight Research Group, 11-13 Charterhouse Buildings, London, EC1M 7AP (closest tubes Farringdon and Barbican) at the same time, 8.30-10.30am. With croissants, coffee, an insightful WOM presentation and a dollop of networking thrown in, it’s well worth coming.
Register for your FREE place with julian.ferguson@womuk.org if you haven’t already and we look forward to seeing you there – at the new venue!
Martin Oetting discusses the key drivers of empowered involvement at latest WOM UK event
November 20, 2009 at 7:03 pm | In Events | Leave a CommentTags: empowered involvement, martin oetting, social media, the ripple effect, word of mouth
Wednesday evening saw the second in our series of WOM UK Thought Leader events – and the first in our new time slot, offering more of a chance for relaxed networking over a glass of wine after the presentation. 50 WOM UK members and friends packed out Grey’s east London offices to hear trnd’s Research Director, Dr Martin Oetting, give an extremely insightful talk on the importance of ‘Empowered Involvement’ in driving word of mouth.
Based on the findings of his doctoral thesis, The Ripple Effect, Martin’s presentation focused on the area of ‘contagious relationships’. He explained that marketers wanting to harness blogs, Facebook and the social web in order to build relationships, both with and between their customers, need to focus on four key drivers of Empowered Involvement – Meaning, Impact, Choice and Competence.
Using several case studies along the way to bring his presentation to life, Martin discussed examples such as Kettle Chips (competence), Livestrong (meaning) and Dell’s Idea Storm (impact) to show where brands have come up trumps, and examples such as Facebook (choice) to highlight where brands have come unstuck.
The presentation was followed by a lively Q&A, which touched on several different issues ranging from WOM metrics to the supposed decline of traditional advertising – see his presentation below and feel free to add any other comments and questions you have in the comments section of this post.
A big thanks to Grey for hosting our first evening slot, and we’d appreciate any feedback on how the later networking event compares to our monthly morning Espresso Briefing sessions. Talking of which, our next Espresso is with Face on Tuesday 24th November, where CEO, Andrew Needham and Head of Social Media & Planning, Francesco D’Orazio will share how real-time WOM monitoring and analysis can enable adaptive brand planning. Check out full details here and register for this event by emailing julian.ferguson@womuk.org your name, company, phone number and email address. As usual, attendance is free to all.
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