1. An Ant's Eye Point-of-View: Tis the Season for Holiday "Social Media" Campaigns

    Tuesday, 20 Dec 2011 2 Comments Posted by:

    The countdown is on. With Hanukkah candles burning brightly, and with Christmas just around the corner, the energy of the holiday season is palpable.  With the hustle and bustle of shoppers scouring stores for that elusive last gift, it’s sometimes just easier to sit behind a computer and finish your holiday shopping in one fell swoop.

    According to Lab42, a Chicago market research firm, 61 percent of shoppers plan on finding ”the perfect gift” via social networks.  And retailers have responded. Almost 75 percent of retailers invested in their Facebook and Twitter accounts in advance of the holiday season.

    So what are retailers doing for the 2011 holiday season?

    Target: “Santa has elves. You have Target.“

    Who needs elves when you have Target? That’s the message at the heart of Target’s holiday advertising — and one that they successfully also extended on social media channels like Facebook. After clicking on the Target Christmas tab on Facebook, customers are treated to a blizzard of savings, free shipping and other coupons, making it easy for customers to tackle their to-do lists.

    TIP: Make it easy for customers to shop online by providing quick access to deals on social media channels and direct links back to online shopping destinations.

    Etsy: “Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends”

    Instead of painstakingly thinking through gift ideas for your friend (or boss), the handmade crafts e-commerce site makes it easy. With one simple click of a button, Etsy suggests an array of gift ideas based on the recipient’s Facebook preferences and at a range of different prices, too.

    TIP: Simplify the shopping process. Curate personalized content using social media data to create a gift list that customers can quickly find and purchase items on site.

    Nordstrom: “Nordstrom Santa”

    Rather than awkwardly dropping gift ideas to your friends and family, Nordstrom has made it fun and easy to “pick your must-have gift” with their Nordstrom Santa Facebook App. In short, you can choose what you’re wishing for, and their app will either post the hint on your Facebook wall or send a message to one of your friends via Twitter.

    @shaunacausey Ho ho ho! Psst, I know what @joannjen wants this year! Take a peek: is.gd/vfoAt5

    — Nordstrom Santa (@NordstromSanta) November 25, 2011

    TIP: Make it fun for customers to purchase products, and make it easy for them to suggest potential gifting ideas to their friends.

    For more helpful insights on how retailers can leverage social media to boost holiday sales, we recommend:

    What holiday social media campaigns grabbed your attention this holiday season? Which retailer wins in your book?

    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney, Anthony Garcia and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  2. An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View: Measuring Social Influence

    Tuesday, 6 Dec 2011 8 Comments Posted by:

    One of the hottest topics on the minds of social media marketers is the concept of quantifying influence, or the power of an individual’s voice on social channels. There are many vendors that offer solutions that analyze a user’s activity and network to deliver an “influencer” score.

    While these services are far from perfect due to questions about scoring algorithms and the ability for individuals to artificially inflate scores, they can be integral parts of social marketing and CRM efforts. In the last year influence monitoring services have started to segment into three main categories.

    Social Analytics:  These services are built to measure and score activity, friend/follower growth, and track common post topics. Social analytics can be useful to track a brand’s effectiveness on social channels. Some examples of these types include:

    Influencer Identification:  The next level of social services includes features that identify the top social influencers on particular topics. Influencer identification is particularly helpful for blogger outreach.  Examples of influencer identification services include:

    Reputation Quantification:  Turning social reputation into an actionable asset for marketers and customer service is the next evolution of influence monitoring service.  By taking social analytics, influencer identification, and adding user vouching these services enable marketers toeffectively target influencers. Examples:

    There are many new competitors entering the market and companies are constantly refining their services. As of now, however, social influence monitoring services are useful to social marketers even if there is some debate about accuracy.

    Here are some more helpful articles on quantifying influencer scores:

    We’re curious to hear your thoughts on this much debated topic. What tools have you used to measure social influence?
    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  3. An Ant's Eye Point-of-View: Measuring Social Influence

    Tuesday, 6 Dec 2011 7 Comments Posted by:

    One of the hottest topics on the minds of social media marketers is the concept of quantifying influence, or the power of an individual’s voice on social channels. There are many vendors that offer solutions that analyze a user’s activity and network to deliver an “influencer” score.

    While these services are far from perfect due to questions about scoring algorithms and the ability for individuals to artificially inflate scores, they can be integral parts of social marketing and CRM efforts. In the last year influence monitoring services have started to segment into three main categories.

    Social Analytics:  These services are built to measure and score activity, friend/follower growth, and track common post topics. Social analytics can be useful to track a brand’s effectiveness on social channels. Some examples of these types include:

    Influencer Identification:  The next level of social services includes features that identify the top social influencers on particular topics. Influencer identification is particularly helpful for blogger outreach.  Examples of influencer identification services include:

    Reputation Quantification:  Turning social reputation into an actionable asset for marketers and customer service is the next evolution of influence monitoring service.  By taking social analytics, influencer identification, and adding user vouching these services enable marketers toeffectively target influencers. Examples:

    There are many new competitors entering the market and companies are constantly refining their services. As of now, however, social influence monitoring services are useful to social marketers even if there is some debate about accuracy.

    Here are some more helpful articles on quantifying influencer scores:

    We’re curious to hear your thoughts on this much debated topic. What tools have you used to measure social influence?
    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  4. An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View: Ideation Communities

    Tuesday, 22 Nov 2011 1 Comment Posted by:

    Collecting product and services ideas from your customers is a great idea, right? An ideation platform will allow you to collect customer feedback, use crowd-sourcing to improve your products and services, grow your relationship with your customers through co-creation… in other words it is a technology that can enable mass collaboration with your customers.

    Not so fast partner! Implementing and maintaining an ideation community takes a lot of effort, during both the planning and maintenance stages. While marketing may be ready to gather customer ideas to demonstrate that they are listening, product development and operations must be ready to act on ideas that are both popular with customers and align with the company’s business objectives.

    Key steps to creating a successful ideation community:

    • Get executive support for an ideation community. They can serve as a champion for the community and get the appropriate teams bought in.
    • Determine where to start. Do you have a flagship product or service that customers would love to help you improve?  SAP’s Idea Place is not all-inclusive, but it lets users suggest products and solutions to add to the topic list.
    • Get commitment from those products or services teams that they will act on the approved ideas. Ideally, you can agree on a schedule for implementing ideas. Have a software product that only updates once a year? Strive to implement a number of ideas into that product each year. Have a product or service that can be continually improved? Get commitment to implement a certain number of ideas spread throughout the year. Dell implements about 10 ideas per month and in 2011 Intuit implemented 24 ideas from Inner Circle feedback.
    • Find resources to moderate the ideation community.  This includes standard community housekeeping as well as finding the correct people to respond to ideas when necessary and changing the status of the idea to indicate where it stands.  Starbucks uses two Idea Partners to make their community run smoothly.
    • Routinely review the ideas and decide which ones to act on. Consider setting up a process where ideas over a certain number of votes are reviewed by the teams responsible for that line of business.  Other consideration factors may be the cost of implementing the idea and whether or not it supports the objectives for that business line.  Threadless allows submitted designs to be scored for 7 days before determining whether to print them and P&G Connect and Develop looks for ideas that are strategically aligned with their business and provide a win-win for P&G and the idea submitter.

    Once the ideation community is launched the real work begins:

    • Promote the ideation community to customers through multiple touchpoints, paying specific attention to where your company previously has collected customer feedback. Send those customers to the new ideation community.
    • Actively moderate and review ideas. Set customer expectations by keeping them updated about the status of their ideas.  Statuses such as acknowledged, under review, coming soon, not planned and implemented are easy to understand.  On the salesforce.com IdeaExchange, you can easily see which ideas are under consideration and which were delivered in the latest product release.
    • Communicate reasons for not implementing popular ideas. Don’t just let them hang out in the community without a response. Customers will appreciate your transparency.  Forrester says “For ideation sites, transparency is key” (membership required).
    • Lastly, celebrate ideas that do make it to market. Customers want to see that you are listening to them and want to know what improvements have been made that make their lives easier. It may even convince them to buy the next upgrade. National Instruments launches their customer-driven software improvements at NIWeek, their annual user conference.

    Because ideation communities are only one way to innovate with your customers, don’t miss:

    10 Crowdsourcing Success Stories
    5 Steps to Success in Customer Innovation Programs
    A Co-creation Primer
    How to Turn Social Media Assets Into Social Co-Creation Assets

    Note: Some examples used in this post (SAP, Intuit, P&G, Salesforce and Dell) are current or former Ant’s Eye View clients.

    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  5. An Ant's Eye Point-of-View: Ideation Communities

    Tuesday, 22 Nov 2011 1 Comment Posted by:

    Collecting product and services ideas from your customers is a great idea, right? An ideation platform will allow you to collect customer feedback, use crowd-sourcing to improve your products and services, grow your relationship with your customers through co-creation… in other words it is a technology that can enable mass collaboration with your customers.

    Not so fast partner! Implementing and maintaining an ideation community takes a lot of effort, during both the planning and maintenance stages. While marketing may be ready to gather customer ideas to demonstrate that they are listening, product development and operations must be ready to act on ideas that are both popular with customers and align with the company’s business objectives.

    Key steps to creating a successful ideation community:

    • Get executive support for an ideation community. They can serve as a champion for the community and get the appropriate teams bought in.
    • Determine where to start. Do you have a flagship product or service that customers would love to help you improve?  SAP’s Idea Place is not all-inclusive, but it lets users suggest products and solutions to add to the topic list.
    • Get commitment from those products or services teams that they will act on the approved ideas. Ideally, you can agree on a schedule for implementing ideas. Have a software product that only updates once a year? Strive to implement a number of ideas into that product each year. Have a product or service that can be continually improved? Get commitment to implement a certain number of ideas spread throughout the year. Dell implements about 10 ideas per month and in 2011 Intuit implemented 24 ideas from Inner Circle feedback.
    • Find resources to moderate the ideation community.  This includes standard community housekeeping as well as finding the correct people to respond to ideas when necessary and changing the status of the idea to indicate where it stands.  Starbucks uses two Idea Partners to make their community run smoothly.
    • Routinely review the ideas and decide which ones to act on. Consider setting up a process where ideas over a certain number of votes are reviewed by the teams responsible for that line of business.  Other consideration factors may be the cost of implementing the idea and whether or not it supports the objectives for that business line.  Threadless allows submitted designs to be scored for 7 days before determining whether to print them and P&G Connect and Develop looks for ideas that are strategically aligned with their business and provide a win-win for P&G and the idea submitter.

    Once the ideation community is launched the real work begins:

    • Promote the ideation community to customers through multiple touchpoints, paying specific attention to where your company previously has collected customer feedback. Send those customers to the new ideation community.
    • Actively moderate and review ideas. Set customer expectations by keeping them updated about the status of their ideas.  Statuses such as acknowledged, under review, coming soon, not planned and implemented are easy to understand.  On the salesforce.com IdeaExchange, you can easily see which ideas are under consideration and which were delivered in the latest product release.
    • Communicate reasons for not implementing popular ideas. Don’t just let them hang out in the community without a response. Customers will appreciate your transparency.  Forrester says “For ideation sites, transparency is key” (membership required).
    • Lastly, celebrate ideas that do make it to market. Customers want to see that you are listening to them and want to know what improvements have been made that make their lives easier. It may even convince them to buy the next upgrade. National Instruments launches their customer-driven software improvements at NIWeek, their annual user conference.

    Because ideation communities are only one way to innovate with your customers, don’t miss:

    10 Crowdsourcing Success Stories
    5 Steps to Success in Customer Innovation Programs
    A Co-creation Primer
    How to Turn Social Media Assets Into Social Co-Creation Assets

    Note: Some examples used in this post (SAP, Intuit, P&G, Salesforce and Dell) are current or former Ant’s Eye View clients.

    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants: Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  6. An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View: The Rules of Engagement

    Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011 4 Comments Posted by:

    Practically every month, we have a new organization as a poster child for customer engagement failure. The recent fiasco with ChapStick deleting fan’s comments illustrates that although online enterprise engagement is no longer new, companies are still failing customers in a very public, proliferating, and often tailspin manner.

    As such, we thought it was time to brush the dust off some of our favorite engagement principles, and share some tips and tricks for the best ways to engage with customers online.

    • Building relationships in the enterprise world often takes the form of community.  In this post, Ant’s Eye View’s very own Jake McKee shares his rules for community building.
    • Conversely, there is no faster way to derail and erode customer engagement by ignoring or failing to consider their needs them before making huge decisions that impact their relationship with you – just ask Netflix. At least they were ultimately able to own up to their mistakes.

    Ultimately, it’s not terribly difficult to make online engagement successful.  One simply needs to abide by a few principles and learn from those who have succeeded and fallen before us.

    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants:Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  7. An Ant's Eye Point-of-View: The Rules of Engagement

    Tuesday, 8 Nov 2011 4 Comments Posted by:

    Practically every month, we have a new organization as a poster child for customer engagement failure. The recent fiasco with ChapStick deleting fan’s comments illustrates that although online enterprise engagement is no longer new, companies are still failing customers in a very public, proliferating, and often tailspin manner.

    As such, we thought it was time to brush the dust off some of our favorite engagement principles, and share some tips and tricks for the best ways to engage with customers online.

    • Building relationships in the enterprise world often takes the form of community.  In this post, Ant’s Eye View’s very own Jake McKee shares his rules for community building.
    • Conversely, there is no faster way to derail and erode customer engagement by ignoring or failing to consider their needs them before making huge decisions that impact their relationship with you – just ask Netflix. At least they were ultimately able to own up to their mistakes.

    Ultimately, it’s not terribly difficult to make online engagement successful.  One simply needs to abide by a few principles and learn from those who have succeeded and fallen before us.

    An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View is curated and written by Senior Social Business Consultants:Kristy Bolsinger, Joann Jen, Geoff Knox, Ali McCourt, Laura Feeney and Sam Eder. Ideas and reactions are welcome in the comments section.

  8. An Ant’s Eye Point-of-View: Online Privacy

    Tuesday, 25 Oct 2011 3 Comments Posted by:

    Online privacy is a hot topic. With every Facebook change, launch of a new location-sharing service, and every Federal investigation of online privacy, data concerns get more and more attention. Rightfully so.

    As individuals, we are putting more and more data “out there” about ourselves than ever before. Often times we are sharing or providing this information without realizing it, or understanding the implications.

    There are varying philosophies surrounding online privacy security ranging from highly conservative to highly liberal. But more important than opinion, we think it’s valuable to look at the data and privacy issues from a frame of reference that acknowledges bias.

    So stepping back from the conservative versus liberal debate, we give you the Ant’s Eye Point-of-View of Online Privacy from the major players perspective.

    Facebook

    Facebook (re: Mark Zuckerburg) has publicly declared its stance on the issue of online privacy.  To “Zuck”, the age of privacy is over.

    With the addition of Timeline they may have taken it a step further. It can all be quite confusing for the users to understand the privacy settings

    Google

    In it’s most recent attempt to protect user privacy Google has announced it will now be encrypting all sessions for signed-in users.

    Sounds simple, but many in the online marketing world take objection.

    Amazon

    Recently Amazon announced a new line of Kindle’s along with a new device called “Fire” and a browser/operating system called Silk. Shortly thereafter a member of Congress with some concerns contacted them requesting a response on several issues.  The issues surrounded their handling of  personal information and user data. They have since responded alleviating/addressing the privacy issues.

    4Chan

    While many Internet users may not be familiar with 4Chan, they are aware of it’s effects. The image board website is responsible for many things including some of the webs most popular meme’s.  The founder Chris Poole (aka ‘moot’) has been a strong advocate of online privacy and anonymity. He, and the fellow anonymous users of 4Chan will undoubtedly continue to be a major voice in this conversation.

    You

    You. Me. We. Cumulatively we are THE biggest “player” online.

    At the end of the day, it is up to each of us to define our own levels of tolerance with privacy and security. You dictate how much information is being shared about your life so it’s important to understand as much as possible.

    A nice walk-through of the new Facebook settings can be found here.

    Google’s privacy policy is rather lengthy, but a good read if you’re concerned and definitely explore through the links. For a more concise list of what you are sharing with Google check out dashboard.  The Better Business Bureau offers up a list of tips for helping to secure your online activity.  And finally, Google offers up a ton of helpful information on staying safe online and managing your data that we highly recommend checking out.

    Knowledge is power.

     

     

  9. An Ant's Eye Point-of-View: Online Privacy

    Tuesday, 25 Oct 2011 2 Comments Posted by:

    Online privacy is a hot topic. With every Facebook change, launch of a new location-sharing service, and every Federal investigation of online privacy, data concerns get more and more attention. Rightfully so.

    As individuals, we are putting more and more data “out there” about ourselves than ever before. Often times we are sharing or providing this information without realizing it, or understanding the implications.

    There are varying philosophies surrounding online privacy security ranging from highly conservative to highly liberal. But more important than opinion, we think it’s valuable to look at the data and privacy issues from a frame of reference that acknowledges bias.

    So stepping back from the conservative versus liberal debate, we give you the Ant’s Eye Point-of-View of Online Privacy from the major players perspective.

    Facebook

    Facebook (re: Mark Zuckerburg) has publicly declared its stance on the issue of online privacy.  To “Zuck”, the age of privacy is over.

    With the addition of Timeline they may have taken it a step further. It can all be quite confusing for the users to understand the privacy settings

    Google

    In it’s most recent attempt to protect user privacy Google has announced it will now be encrypting all sessions for signed-in users.

    Sounds simple, but many in the online marketing world take objection.

    Amazon

    Recently Amazon announced a new line of Kindle’s along with a new device called “Fire” and a browser/operating system called Silk. Shortly thereafter a member of Congress with some concerns contacted them requesting a response on several issues.  The issues surrounded their handling of  personal information and user data. They have since responded alleviating/addressing the privacy issues.

    4Chan

    While many Internet users may not be familiar with 4Chan, they are aware of it’s effects. The image board website is responsible for many things including some of the webs most popular meme’s.  The founder Chris Poole (aka ‘moot’) has been a strong advocate of online privacy and anonymity. He, and the fellow anonymous users of 4Chan will undoubtedly continue to be a major voice in this conversation.

    You

    You. Me. We. Cumulatively we are THE biggest “player” online.

    At the end of the day, it is up to each of us to define our own levels of tolerance with privacy and security. You dictate how much information is being shared about your life so it’s important to understand as much as possible.

    A nice walk-through of the new Facebook settings can be found here.

    Google’s privacy policy is rather lengthy, but a good read if you’re concerned and definitely explore through the links. For a more concise list of what you are sharing with Google check out dashboard.  The Better Business Bureau offers up a list of tips for helping to secure your online activity.  And finally, Google offers up a ton of helpful information on staying safe online and managing your data that we highly recommend checking out.

    Knowledge is power.

     

     

  10. What is your Social Media ROI? Who Cares?

    Thursday, 29 Sep 2011 2 Comments Posted by:

    The ongoing crusade of answering “what it the ROI of social media?”, comes around every season. Two years ago I blogged about “Coping with Social Media ROI” especially since ROI was the yellow flag thrown onto the playing field to stall social media efforts.

    The dogma? If you can’t measure the ROI, we can’t spend money on social media. This season, however,  I’m optimistic that the ROI question gets traded for “what should I measure?”

    In 2011, I am finally seeing valuable measurement discussions in place of ROI question. Many books, speeches have been given about measurement. Readers and attendees line up to hear about ROI. The ROI formula is easy, and in case you don’t have the formula handy, here it is:

    ROI

    But we might have been asking the wrong question. What we SHOULD ask is “what do I need to measure to signal success with social media?” And the question should be asked when designing social media strategies, not to prevent social media planning.

    We’ve mentioned the Social Engagement Journey in blog posts before. A critical theme within this transformation journey is insights and analytics, the outcome of impactful measurement.

    journey

    At the crux of this theme is that within different stages of the journey, businesses have different requirements for measurement. At stage 2, you should be asking, “what should I measure?” And within Stage 2, a simple answer is to measure what will get you to the operational stage – metrics that will signal success in your social media operation and align with your objectives. For example, if your objective is brand reputation, then sentiment is an appropriate measure.

    AT&T was at this juncture in 2010. ROI was being asked for, but in reality, the question was “what should we measure?” Together with Ant’s Eye View, measurements were determined and a new framework devised that would support stage 2 and beyond. This measurement framework is a nominee for 2011 Forrester Groundswell Awards.

    stage3 iconAt stage 3, your needs are a more for a coordinated measurement framework to respond to the needs of multiple social strategies and outcomes. A holistic measurement framework is necessary to coordinate and communicate across business units and disciplines. Measurement is the stitching that can bring together siloed social media activities across the enterprise. If your culture that looks for measurement to validate, then you will need to update or align your current measurement framework to be inclusive of social media metrics (that signal business outcomes). If your culture is lacking a measurement discipline, then a social media measurement framework can be built.

    Still struggling with measurement? Start with the following:

    1. Conduct a self-assessment to determine current stage of the social engagement journey.
    2. Include your analytics and finance teams to help validate your social metrics.
    3. Be patient, you start first with operational metrics, refine over 2-3 quarters, then start planning for ways to align with financial metrics.

    Let us know what you think. How do you measure Social Media ROI?