Passion2Publish

Merry Christmas from Passion2Publish.com

Hey everyone!

Hopefully this will find you a few days AFTER Christmas, even though it is 1:23 am Christmas Day! I just wanted to take the opportunity to be one of the first to wish you a merry Christmas, or relaxing break, and thank you for taking the time to read my blog this year. I started Passion2Publish.com at the end of January this year, and what a rewarding experience it has been.

I've met so many incredible professionals through comments and back links, and in turn, my own knowledge and communication of social media has steadily grown and improved over these many months. I am truly grateful for your attention. The only way I can see to pay it back is to continue providing relevant research and thoughts through this blog.

As always, please let me know how I can respond better -- every single comment gets my direct attention and reaction, so make your voice heard. There are some amazing events coming soon in January that I can't wait to share with you, so STAY TUNED!

This is Bud in last-minute shopping mode (taken at whole foods in Austin):

The Top 10 Articles Now at Passion2Publish.com

A new feature on the site, below are the top 10, most read, articles on the site over the last month:

For Nov 11-Dec 11:

1. Why I love Twitter, and Introducing Twitter Airlines
   
2. Measuring the Return on Engagement
   
3. Rant: Starbucks, Pass the Cheer, and It's Red Again
   
4. Web Metrics, Are You Missing the Engagement Mark?
   
5. How to Build an Online Community, Our Process Revealed
   
6. It's Statistics Tuesday! Teen Shopping & Multimedia Usage
   
7. Social Media Creates Efficiencies: An Example
   
8. Measuring Participation Inequality in Social Networks
   
9. Driving Traffic with StumbleUpon and Jumping Bunny Rabbits
   
10. How to Launch a Magazine

UPDATE: I used this post as a test to see if presenting content in this fashion would increase page views per visit. The numbers say it didn't. Any comment?

Study Says Word-of-mouth Beats “Highly-connected” Influencers

Via, A soon-to-be published study co-authored by James Coyle, assistant professor of marketing in Miami’s Farmer School of Business and of interactive media studies; Elizabeth Lightfoot of CNET Networks; and Ted Smith and Amy Scott of MedTrackAlert, is said to show that the practice of segmenting 'evangelist' customers could be a waste of time:

The findings contradict a common advertising practice of segmenting and pampering the few elite and highly connected consumers believed to have the most persuasive power by suggesting that instead, most people can influence consumer behavior through viral communication or word of mouth.
"This study provides a fresh alternative for those who have been confused by the mysticism of influencer marketing consultants,” said Smith who is a CNET Networks Research Fellow and president of MedTrackAlert.

We find that trying to track down key influencers, people who have extremely large social networks, is typically unnecessary and, more importantly, can actually limit a campaign or advertisement’s viral potential,” said Coyle. “Instead, marketers need to realize that the majority of their audience, not just the well-connected few, is eager and willing to pass along well-designed and relevant messages.

A few of my thoughts:

• Can anyone explain to me why scientific studies need to be promoted this way, in which the results are advertised before publication, without any shred of data?
• What the study appears to be describing is the ability of social media to enable more customers to become fans and more fans to become evangelists. Digital media strengthens influence circles by making connections far easier to create and use. The labor involved with spreading word of mouth has been lessened.
• Digital media also enables us, as marketers, to identify evangelists/influencers with much greater ease -- basically, through analytics and conversations, those customers 'bubble up' to our attention.
• Not all of your customers will pass along information -- plenty of research has been done to show users segment themselves by their activities -- with in-active users around 50%.
• We segment users by influence to limit costs. With finite resources, we are forced to make determinations about the best use of advertising dollars. We also keep in mind likelihood of repeat purchases. (which is often another characteristic of evangelists/influencers)
• Word of mouth/"viral potential"/traffic is not a business objective. Conversions are. I wonder if this study tracked word of mouth AND conversions -- as most campaigns I've been a part of have shown that evangelists/influencers are much more likely to bring actual purchasers to the site.
• The mysticism of influencer marketing consultants? mysticism? Do I confuse anyone?

2008: The Shift is Coming, Mobile Content Creation

Looking at these various studies, its clear that mobile content delivery will soon be a requirement of doing business and a potentially lucrative one at that. It being the end of the year and all, I'll venture a forecast that by 2009, most large companies will be struggling with creating an engagement model around mobile content.

The top mobile activities right now are IM, music purchasing, tv watching, and content uploading -- clearly, people are doing more than simply consuming media on their mobile devices. What's your brand experience on mobile? Nothing? Eek. Well, I mean, maybe that's alright, maybe your target market is 75 years old and Amish. No? Ouch.

Sure, the first, truly engaging content and services provider will open up such a massively fungible advertising platform, but there's still a lot of room for providers to gain a competitive advantage by simply opening up to this medium, without the ads.

Speaking of mobile content delivery, you can now subscribe to my updates using Viigo -- just click on the link on the sidebar under 'Updates Your Way.'

Why I love Twitter & Introducing Twitter Airlines

Twitter is everyone's favorite whipping boy when it comes to 2.0. "I don't get it" or "It's useless" or "It's trite" -- and I am certainly guilty of some of this thinking myself.

In defense, I point you to Joshua Porter's 'Opaque Value Problem'. Technological 'value' can only be measured by the needs of a single individual. And as Jeremiah Owyang has said, if done correctly, Twitter functions more like a chat room than a stream of disconnected thoughts. In business school, we'd call this 'network effects'. Lately, I've been following more and more people in the social media/web development arena whose opinions and foresight I greatly value. I have definitely learned a good deal, and have had the opportunity to actually engage in conversations with them. (and I'm just a d-list web personality at best)

Case in point, today I started ranting about what kind of airline I wish existed. Complaining about air travel is like complaining about Chicago winters -- its one of those collective ills. It seems like airlines have been reduced to the same level of customer service as a Greyhound bus. My snitter was going crazy with replies (snitter is a desktop app that accesses twitter -- so far, it's been pretty reliable). From my one, almost random complaint, emerged an entire wish-list of services/features for our perfect airline, and I'll share it with you:

At fictional Twitter Airlines, we offer:

• all flights with absolutely no children under 12 (arbitrary but ideal)
• free wifi access
• but no mobile calling service (cell phones have ruined enough, haven't they? controversial, maybe)
• movies & tv on demand -- and normal headphone jacks
• no barriers to using your miles (we made em up, you earned em, why would we stop you??)
• opportunities to earn more miles (did you show up early? buy food or drinks? used us multiple times in one month?)
• on time service, and greater communication about possible delays (on a recent flight, Southwest waited until 30 minutes before a flight to notify me of a 2 hour delay -- even though the delay originated much much earlier)
• if we're delayed or we have to cancel a flight, we'll do our best to immediately negotiate you onto other airlines and flights
• real leg room, real elbow room, and real bathrooms -- having no first class section will help out -- every seat is in first class!
• customer service -- no, not just the little booth with the people that are obviously trying to avoid you as quickly as possible -- use your phone/laptop in the terminal to immediately connect with a customer service person that can serve you
• actual food and beverage service -- you can even order those chicken strips from the Chili's in the terminal from us up to 30 minutes before your flight so you don't have to wait in line
• the kind of respect and trust you should receive from a company that values your patronage

Anything to add? to subtract? Would you pay a premium for these services? How much of a premium? 20%? 30%? 100%?

Companies are already on Twitter, with their ear to stream and there's a lot they can learn, but there's even more to be gained by active participation. As a fellow twitter-er put it, "glad you're taking notes. Any airline that's taking notes as well will do well."

What is something you've learned from using Twitter?

Rant: Target, Rounders, and Facebook

Oh, kids -- they're an attractive demographic, pretty good at making sneakers, AND an excellent stumbling block for most companies and their poor advertising campaigns.

Exhibit A: Target, and their Rounders campaign on Facebook

The Breakdown: Target gave freebies and large discounts to kids who promoted Target on the site and on the Facebook Group page. Members of the Rounder group were told to "keep it like a secret" from other users. One member felt this was wrong, wrote a paper for college, and her professor posted the info on her blog.

The Idiocy: The driving factor in word of mouth marketing is trust. Receivers have to believe that the source of information is trustworthy -- and not "ad-like" -- and blowback can be deadly. The damage from this type of outright deception can be much worse than simple negative feedback from a customer.

The Lesson: There are no well-kept "secrets" online -- especially in communities, especially regarding massive companies. Target, you were literally asking people to lie for you. People love Target, I know, I've tried going to Target and its always over-run with happy, smiling, excited customers. Asking customers to write about you is fine, but lying about why they're doing it ... that isn't acceptable on the social web, and this is just one more cautionary tale to prove it.

Besides, you're muddying the data. Feedback, whether its positive or negative, is valuable. By handing out cookies, and saying "say something nice about us," you're not taking advantage of the power of a simple conversation. Look, we're smarter than you think. When we see a page with nothing but celebratory comments, we know it's bullshit. But when we see honest feedback and engaged customer service reps, we see proof of a company that is customer oriented.

Creativity Annual Awards - Gold Winner, Passion2Publish.com

I don't like to toot my horn -- I just let other people do it for me.

The Creativity Annual Awards gave me the Gold Award for Passion2Publish.com. I'm quite proud of this little blog and everything it has done for me. I can't tell you how much this process itself has accelerated my understanding of digital media, analytics, and outreach.

About The Creativity Awards
Created in conjunction with the pioneering and prestigious Art Direction magazine, the Creativity Awards Annual was one of the first books to showcase leading-edge design not just from New York, but from across America and all points of the globe.

Hopefully now I can get away with getting caught twittering or blogging a few more times a day.

Sharing is Caring: Hot Links for Tuesday - Tweens, WOM, and Hillary Clinton

I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday -- blame the cold and the rain and my southern blood -- so I wanted to offer up some great posts that accumulated in my Reader this morning:

From YPulse (a growing favorite of mine) -- some stats on tween (8-12 year olds) mobile usage and more, here are a few takeaways:

• 35% of tweens own a mobile phone
• 20% of tweens have used text messaging
• 21% of tweens have used ring & answer tones

Why is it that all I can think of is that I'll never again be able to enjoy a movie in a theater [especially without Alamo Drafthouse] ... I'm old.

Only about 5% of tweens actually use their mobile devices to connect to the internet -- but watch that number explode in the near future -- and mostly through games, which is the number one activity of tweens online.

Next up, via, in case you weren't already "Duh" about the power of product reviews/recommendations: (from a Kelsey Group survey)

• More than 3/4 of users believe reviews were very influential in their purchase decision
• Consumers generally valued other consumers’ reviews more than professional reviews
• Purchasers reported a willingness to pay at least 20% more for a service rated “Exceptional – 5 star” vs. a “4 star” rating
• 30% to 40% of review driven purchasers said they would NOT purchase from a service business with a 1 star rating
• 62% of consumers said they write reviews to help other consumers
• 24% said that they wrote reviews to “get back” at a provider after a poor experience
• 30% wrote reviews because they were asked to do so
• 19% wrote reviews because of some financial incentive (money, coffee cards, other)

From a WebVisible study, customer's motivations for writing an online review :

• Had a negative experience: 45%
• Had a positive experience: 39.5%
• Mixed experience: 15.5%

The real take-away for me is the aspect of online reputation management and outreach for my clients. Users are more motivated by negative experiences -- and other users definitely listen to bad reviews. I'm not sure how the study arrived at the 20% price increase for a 5-star review vs a 4-star review, but that definitely validates what we do. The post has even more quality stats, so go check it out.

Other items of interest:

• I got a comment that my posts are too long. If you can't stand me in full sentences, follow me on twitter.
• Technorati redesigns ... Techcrunch had to clue me in, I didn't notice.
• Kraft singles gets a myspace page. No. No. No ...
• Good idea, bad execution -- Hillary's Attack-regrator