With more money comes deeper scrutiny of results. This influx of additional spending power for social marketing will require marketers to clearly set and monitor KPIs for delivering results. However, savvy marketers will need to look beyond just how they measure ROI, but how they actually influence ROI in the first place. The role of a marketer is to understand and implement the best framework of engagement for his or her company that will drive these results. For many brands this will involve deploying a more mature approach to social engagement, which will go beyond simply managing social media channels and conversations, to looking at how activation strategies can get a fan base to perform actions that drive measurable marketing results. I believe there is a fundamental difference between community management and community activation, and the best social marketing brands also understand this.

Working as the CEO of EngageSciences with global brands, retailers and media organizations, cumulatively having hundreds of millions of fans across 80 markets around the world, I have been lucky enough to clearly see emerging changes in social marketing strategy. I have distilled this into the 6 phases of social marketing maturity that categorise the journey and techniques brands employ. As a B2C business you will be in one or more of these core phases. The question is, are you still in the broad social media management category on the top row or have you progressed into employing effective activation strategies? To be competitive next year and to get results from social marketing, I believe brands need to be looking at activation frameworks, not just management tools. To continue the debate around this subject find me on Twitter @oldstriker

RICHARD JONES, CEO

To date many of our customers have experienced fantastic success running a broad variety of campaigns through our social marketing activation platform. But today, the more socially savvy brands are starting to adopt new strategies that leverage the value of their advocates and achieve long-term commitment from their fan base.

MAKE YOUR ADVOCATES YOUR BEST MARKETERS

We have recently developed a new campaign type called Refer-a-Friend, where brands are able to drive commerce by rewarding their fans for recruiting and converting their friends to take part. But, this type of campaign mechanic can only be successful where brands are able to recognize and track of the behavior of individual fans and their referred friends.

In this example from Nokia, fans can open-up discounts on accessories by recruiting just one friend. If they recruit five friends, a new tier of rewards is made available. Finally, the most effective referrers are entered into a prize draw for a money can’t buy experience.

DRIVE LOYALTY ACROSS MULTIPLE CAMPAIGN TYPES

Taking engagement a step further, brands must find ways to encourage participation from their customers between commercial transactions, product usage and store visits. They can now do this by adopting multi-faceted loyalty programs to recruit new fans and provide a framework for long-term engagement.

By using a range of social campaign types, brands can use VIP clubs, ambassador programs, badges and tiered rewards to acknowledge the value of their active and influential fans and reward them with community recognition or even financial rewards.

After attaining a single Facebook permission from a fan, brands are able to deliver a loyalty program that runs across multiple campaigns. So, fans can take part in a combination of product reviews, unlocks, competitions and challenges to achieve rewards in the forms of points, badges, coupons or tiered rewards. And, continuity of engagement is achieved by enabling fans to participate in a single loyalty program that seamlessly works across Facebook, websites and mobile.

THE FUTURE

Developing a framework for social loyalty opens incredible possibilities for building a holistic view of the customer. This is especially the case for companies that run traditional loyalty card programs e.g. airlines, hospitality, convenience and the retail sectors.

With the addition of social loyalty data, these companies will be able to augment their view of the customer with a combination of real-world activities e.g. purchasing behavior, store visits, reward tiers, etc., combined with information gleaned from their social profile e.g. badges achieved, competitions entered, products reviewed, level of advocacy, number of referrals, etc.

This holistic view of an individual customer, made up from social and real-world activity provides a goldmine of data for brands to recognize these fans and develop ever-richer marketing campaigns that can segment their audience and tailor messaging on many more variables than previously possible.

So, if you currently run a loyalty program for your customers, why not take the opportunity to talk to us about developing a new social strand to your activities.

However, the shift has happened quickly and most companies that market to fans on social media have struggled to adapt. Many companies have been creating great apps to engage their fans, but their results have been hampered by an inability to address the needs of users connecting to campaigns through mobile. At EngageSciences we use SmartURLs and device detection to serve up a mobile view of these campaigns. Without this, mobile users are simply unable to connect to your custom apps. However, we are not the only company that serves their clients with this type of technology.

The complexity of the issue marketers face is in the detail. A lesser known fact is that, whilst these approaches allow mobile users to connect with your apps, people that are not fans when connecting through mobile are not required to become a fan to connect with your apps. Whilst desktop users can be provided with a ‘like gate’ prior to accessing the content, this has not been possible for mobile users. So whilst you might get engagement from mobile users with your campaign, you won’t be building your fan numbers and therefore these people won’t see your future posts. With the enormous numbers of people globally that have shifted to using mobile to access Facebook, this represents a significant problem for marketers. Until now.

We are pleased to announce that EngageSciences is the first company in the world to allow brands to create mobile like gates for their campaigns, with fully optimized apps, pages and loyalty programs for mobile users.

IS IT ANY GOOD AND WHAT DOES THE MARKET THINK?

Apparently, Facebook are looking to change the way people interact with their mobile devices and live their mobile lives. Where apps make sense for PCs and laptops, they must be subservient to the way that people use their phones. As Mark Zuckerberg pointed out during the announcement at Facebook’s campus, “You see your world through people, not apps. One of the most important things we do as people is stay connected to what’s going on in the world around us.” And, it does seem with Home that Facebook has come to the forefront of the Android experience, where updates from people are featured as full screen photos that fill your “Cover Feed” home screen. You’re also able to seamlessly communicate via “Chat Heads” through linked apps, rather than individual apps alerting you to new messages or updates.

It certainly makes commercial sense for Facebook to become more embedded on mobiles devices. According to their fourth quarter earnings, about 23% of the money it made through advertising came from adverts shown on smartphones. So having Facebook on users’ lock screen and home screen (in front of their apps), certainly paves the way for a wider variety of ads. And, these ads will be better targeted, because you’re less likely to log out of Facebook Home, it’s linked to more apps and Facebook will be able to capture more behavioural and locational data. Maybe there’s a longer play here for Facebook Premium, where users can pay $5.00 per month not to get ads (much like Spotify does, very effectively…)

Whilst Facebook executives state that advertising is not currently present on Facebook Home, you can guarantee they’ll have this on the short-term road map. Look at where they were 2 years ago with mobile advertising and where they are now. The markets clearly see the potential of Facebook being embedded into the mobile experience, the company’s stock price was up 3.24% at the time of writing this post.

IS THERE A DEMAND OUT THERE?

This is a big but, do people want really want Facebook to be a larger part of their mobile lifestyle? Or, do they want the freedom to dip in and out of different social and community apps? Will they be happy with the inevitable onslaught of targeted advertising?  After all, who wants to see ads on their home screen?

Jan Dawson, senior telecoms analyst at Ovum, sums up the tension between what the users want and Facebook’s commercial objectives: ”That presents the biggest obstacle to success for this experiment: Facebook’s objectives and users’ are once again in conflict,” he stated. “Users don’t want more advertising or tracking, and Facebook wants to do more of both.”

HOW SHOULD BRANDS RESPOND?

There’s another big question, and this is one we’ll be scratching our heads about over the next few days. How will brands respond to Facebook Home? After all, Facebook’s users could shy away from liking a brand, knowing that branded content will appear on their home screens. Maybe they’re worried EdgeRank will be tweaked for Facebook Home to further prioritize friend updates over their branded updates. And, brands may feel more pressure to rely on targeted Facebook advertising as a means of reaching their audiences.

Our view however is that, as Facebook becomes more ingrained on mobiles, it’s more essential than ever that brands are developing an effective and well considered engagement and app strategy. And, the EngageSciences social marketing activation platform could be just the ticket.

If you’d like to discuss Facebook Home with us, please get in touch. Or if you have your own views on this new product launch, please comment on this post.

The music industry has readily available rich media, loyal fans, and interesting personalities. Music marketers are missing out on improving their marketing and social strategies by not including Facebook applications, and here is why.

DATA YOU CAN USE BEYOND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

When Facebook fans enable applications, page admins have the opportunity to gather information about the user. There is also an opportunity to create a short survey before accessing a special deal or exclusive content. By finding out the location of your fan or what type of music they like best, marketers can follow up with a more personalized email marketing campaign. Fans expect authenticity and personalization, so gaining access to this specific data is key.

SHOW OFF YOUR ARTIST

Fans love seeing photos and watching videos, which is why Facebook apps are such a great opportunity. By creating a content hub through a Facebook application, not only will you be able to showcase this rich content but your fans are more likely to engage. Think about how many people go to YouTube to check out a new song. Imagine if you could keep fans on your Facebook page, where they could proceed to purchasing a song or merchandise.

GIVE YOUR FANS A REASON TO RETURN

Data still shows that Facebook is the most popular social network in the U.S. As many musicians have quickly adopted Twitter, many of their Facebook pages look as if they have been deserted. If marketing teams do not keep up with their Facebook pages, fans will be less likely to return. By providing fans with exclusive content hubs, including contests, they are more likely to visit your page more often and even make a purchase.

Brands and marketers are often intimidated by Facebook applications, since developing them can be challenging and costly. With the help of platforms such as EngageSciences, music marketers could have pre-built applications readily available. These applications are wide in variety and are capable of having multiple campaigns running at one time.

Applications will keep your Facebook presence fresh and more engaging for fans while offering rich data and the opportunity to drive sales. The implementation of applications into an artist’s Facebook presence can help marketers showcase their artist’s brand and deepen relationships with music lovers. Which is ultimately a win for fans, artists and marketers.

GUEST BLOGGER – NORA SNODDY

Nora Snoddy works as a social media professional in the tri-state area. Her blog, Tennessee Was A Guitar, focuses on music marketing strategy in addition to country music news and reviews. She believes that social media marketing can create unique opportunities for artists in every genre.

REWARDING SOCIAL ADVOCACY

That said, something caught our eyes that is a reflection of the importance of loyalty and advocacy for brands. Yappem rewards users for their advocacy, by giving them discounts for mentioning brands and products on social media. And, they are on to something. The truth is that fan acquisition is an outdated objective for social media marketing. Amongst forward thinking brands, loyalty and advocacy has now leap-frogged engagement as the ultimate goal.

Whilst Yappem is only available in the US at the moment, it’s a reflection that brands now understand the monetary value of a fan’s recommendations on social networks. We can certainly support this view, with Social Hub seeing an average 300% increase on time spent on the page by fans, a 300% increase in conversions on calls to actions on the page and a 30% increase in fans exploring the rest of the website.

To reflect changing objectives for social strategy, we are launching badging, loyalty and social VIP programs that reward brand advocacy across our customers’ most valuable segments of fans. In addition, refer-a-friend programs are being built into the platform that incentivize and reward fans that successfully get referrals from their friends.

Whilst there are a number of companies that offer badging and loyalty programs, these tactics are useless over the long-term if you can’t link them directly to an audience database that tracks the lifetime activity of individual fans across multiple social touch-points. This is why we’re getting a huge amount of interest from brands looking for loyalty frameworks that are a core part of our social marketing activation platform.

#SXSWRedBus

During SXSW Interactive we teamed-up with two other successful British exports, Brandwatch and Econsultancy, to hit the festival in style on board our SXSWRedBus. Guests were invited to network, drink Pimms, see the sights of Austin and listen to some thumping tunes. Everybody was kept up to date on SXSW trends, the bus route and pick-ups via the #SXSWRedBus hashtag.

Attendees at SXSW and those unfortunate enough not to make it to Austin could keep up to date with SXSW Interactive via some impressive data visualizations provided by Brandwatch and social content aggregated and published via the EngageSciences Social Hub. Thanks to Econsultancy for providing some outstanding content and hosting the page.

Take a look at the live site here: http://econsultancy.com/us/hello/sxsw-live/

SODA PARTY

We also sponsored the SoDA Speaks Happy Hour at the Dogwood on the Monday evening. It was a prefect way to spend some time with our customers and partners. Check out this video from Brandwatch for a taste of that event and some footage from the SXSWRedBus.

THE SPOTIFY HOUSE

SXSW also provided the opportunity for us to hang-out at the Spotify House, listen to some tunes, relax with some beers and kick-back with our favorite customers. Certainly the best environment for a meeting we’ve had in a long time and beat the Arctic conditions in New York and London.

Take a look at another example of Social Hub that was developed to support Spotify’s presence at SXSW Music. Hopefully the first of a number of Spotify social hubs to support a series of festivals around the world.

SPEAKERS:
1. Brad Spikes, Head of Social Media & Influencer Marketing at Nokia
2. Mike Hutney, Director Emerging Media at The Stelter Company
3. Richard Jones, CEO at EngageSciences

PANELISTS:
1. Varuni Jaipershad, Marketing Specialist – Social Media at HSN
2. Mark Curtis, CEO & Founder at enter:new media
3. Dan Bratone, SVP Americas at TBG Digital
4. Gretchen Ramsey, VP Strategy at MRM
5. Michael Wrigley, CMO at EngageSciences (Moderator)

There is a growing realization amongst brands that fan growth is an arcane method of measuring social media success. These days CMOs are looking for proof that social is effective, whether that’s brand awareness or socially referred commerce. The key questions are how do you engage your audience, identify your advocates and amplify the voice of these fans?

But whilst it’s good to talk, conversations with fans are so much more rewarding if you know who you’re talking to and what they’re interested in. Brands need to be able to understand their relationship with their fans, what resonates with them and what they respond (and have responded) to. For those of you old enough to remember, ‘It’s good to talk’ was an advertising strapline made famous by BT in the 1980’s. In the age of social media, it’s not so much an advertising strapline as a must. If brands want to be relevant to today’s consumer they need to be talking to – and I stress ‘to’ not ‘at’ (a failing of so many brands on Facebook) – customers, prospects and influencers across social channels.

Curiously, this all sounds familiar… Not surprising really, because it’s the basic principles behind CRM applied to social. To truly engage fans we need to see and communicate with them as individuals rather than a generic group.

Too many brands proudly talk about the number of fans they have. But, that’s all they know: the number of fans. They understand nothing about the fans as individuals. Which means they don’t know who they’re talking to, what to say and how to say it. So how effective and engaging can their conversations really be?

Let’s cut to the chase. To be effective on social media, a brand must know and act on the following:

1) Who are the individuals that make up this fan number?
2) Who of these individuals are my real, active fans?
3) What content/messaging resonates with them?
4) What’s the most effective way to deliver that content?

1) A NAME NOT A NUMBER.

There is a wealth of information available about fans, but curiously, many brands haven’t thought about how to access this and then how to build up a profile of each individual fan. Or if they have, they haven’t got the right tools to do so. Simple fan profile data can surface up name, email address, location, age, sex, dormancy – all critical building blocks to identifying your fans and enabling a brand to create a true customer profile.

2) A FAN NOT A WALLFLOWER

Who from the individuals that make up your fanbase are actually real, active, vociferous and influential fans? Every interaction that a fan has with a brand socially should be tracked and those interactions appended to their fan profile so you’re building up a customer lifetime view of their behaviour. Do they comment on your posts; click on links; share your content; interact with your apps; invite their friends to interact; do they influence their friends?

A brand needs to understand who of those individuals are just wallflowers, which are engaged and interacting with them and which are advocates sharing your brand and promoting it to their friends. Know this and you unlock the key to creating more advocates and influencers and converting ‘spectators’ into engaged fans.

3) NOT QUITE LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION, BUT CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT. 

So now you know who your fans are, you need to understand what content/messaging they respond to: what do they want to talk to you about? And which fan segments respond to which content. You might be looking to re-engage dormant fans, encourage engaged fans to become advocates or nurture your existing advocates. You might have a diverse product range or broad audience appeal. Regardless, a brand should be immediately able to see who’s responding to what content – otherwise how do you know what you should be talking to your fans and followers about. You don’t – it’s just spray and pray.

4) IT’S NOT (JUST) WHAT YOU SAY, IT’S HOW YOU SAY IT. 

The final piece of the jigsaw is how do these individuals engage with your content. A valuable conversation is supposed to be interesting, reciprocal and stimulating. Brands need to deliver content in a range of ways that makes the conversation worthwhile for their fans. A mixture of conversation and interaction – posting of passive and interactive content. And the ability to see how a post or app performs – what’s the reach, how was it shared, clinks clicked on, apps interacted with, did it go viral?

SO IT’S SIMPLE…

You need a tool that enables you to create an audience record in a database around which you can build a rich profile of each and every fan. You can then identify and ‘talk’ to your fanbase in the most effective way. And, then you need the ability to track how each individual fan connects with your brand socially and what they connect with for the lifetime of their relationship with your brand.

After all, if only an average of 4.7% of your fanbase deliver pretty much all of your brands’ social reach and engagement – knowing who they are is fundamental. But we’ll save that for another time…

A final word – if this all makes absolute sense to you, it made a lot of sense to us when we founded EngageSciences, that’s why we built the only social media management system that is centred around the audience database and the customer lifetime view.

Simply put, the decision journey for consumers has changed and this change is global. The same survey highlighted the percentage of consumers that are active in different stages of this process. It is not only high, but it is impacting the very nature of the way people explore, refine and finalize brand purchasing decisions.

That’s why we believe that websites are the new frontier for social disruption. For brands to adapt to the new decision process, they need a major overhaul of all their digital marketing activities. Websites cannot be purely about product content anymore. They need to be a reflection of how people are interacting with that brands’ products and their marketing activities on multiple social channels. Websites need to accelerate the decision journey for the social consumer. Curation, advocacy and highlighting a brand’s fans are ways to adapt websites to the modern global social consumer. We believe this should be the number one priority for digital marketers in 2013. The data backs this up. It’s also a change that can be accomplished relatively easily with the right tools. So in terms of effort and reward, it is right up there for ROI modelling.

It is great seeing the very first steps in this change happen at the most innovative brand marketing companies. Check out these examples below from Nokia and Pepsi. The most important thing to understand about these pages is they are curating the social web and publishing that into these websites. It’s current interaction and advocacy around their brand. As a social consumer, it feeds into your decision journey. Brands are adding call to actions into this experience to get people to interact with social promotions that people share with their friends, creating more social engagement, the best of which will get reflected back on their website. If you are a digital marketer who wants to socialize your website to be ready for the global social consumer in 2013, but don’t know where to start, then you can watch a video here , which will give you a walk-through on how to get cracking. Brands have seen an average of a 300% increase in time onsite with these social pages and a 300% increase in click-throughs on embedded call to actions. These are the kind of results that highlight that if a brand adapts to the modern social consumer, the returns can be quick to measure. Make this your number one priority for 2013.