Open The Dialogue

As we close the year, real-time conversations, and their implications for brands, are emerging as one of the mainstream trends going into 2010. Consider these introductions, to name just a few.

As we mentioned in our last post, every marketing manager will sooner or later need to deal with these conversations aggregated in one central location.

The question remains: Should you capitalize on these conversations? And if so, how?

A Simple Framework

Here’s my stab at a simple framework that uses easily available data to bring clarity to such decisions. It isn’t all encompassing or definitive. But it will give you a starting point in answering the question – “should I leverage real-time conversations for my brand?”

The first step is to review conversation reports from your favorite social media monitoring service. Don’t have one yet? You’ve got to get one! Really. In 2010, you cannot afford not to listen to your customers online (shameless self-promotion: see D.insight.)

Consider the tonality and volume of conversations about your brand over the last 30 to 60 days and apply the framework below.

As you will see, analyzing real-time conversations based on tonality – and especially volume –can give you a good starting point to plan out your course of action.

Turning Insight into Action

No doubt, there will be several ideas specific to your situation on how you can leverage conversations or resolve issues. Below are a few general thought starters based on the quadrant most relevant to you:

Mostly Positive/Neutral, High Volume (I): If your brand lies in this quadrant, congratulations! Your customers are probably excited about your brand, and they certainly voice it. In my view, your biggest opportunities are:

1. Aggregate & promote: Next to ensuring that your customers are happy, the most important thing is to let others know your customers are happy (apologies to J.D. Rockefeller for twisting his quote). By aggregating conversations in one place you can serve up a stream of endorsements and candid commentary to potential customers.  True, you cannot completely control these conversations, and yes, you will see occasional negativity. But these risks are inevitable and exist irrespective of your participation. But the benefits outweigh the risks when you know that most of the chatter is positive. In fact, by actively listening and contributing, you can also address any negativity quickly.
2. Market research: It’s not very sexy, but its true. Tuning in and listening to the stream of chatter about your brand can deliver immense insight about your customers’ true tastes and preferences. This unfiltered, candid feedback can be further sliced and diced in numerous ways to offer deeper insights.
3. Customer support: Using customer-powered forums to provide tech support is already a popular practice. Adding real-time conversations can add a new level of immediacy that could further reduce your customers’ reliance on phone support. By identifying and rewarding the biggest contributors in a moderated forum, you can very quickly create a small army of fans who can help others out in real-time.

Mostly Positive/Neutral, Low Volume (II): The good news is that your customers are mostly happy. But sadly not too many others know about it or talk about it using social media. But you could explore ways to jump-start the conversation:

1. Identify and embrace your greatest fans: Everyone is passionate about something. Chances are, there are people passionate about your brand or product. It’s a matter of finding them and empowering or motivating them to share their candid thoughts online with others.
2. Chime in and participate: You can also jump-start conversations by building a presence across social media channels and adding distinct value. Remember, adding value means sharing something your audience cares strongly about.

Mostly Negative, High/Low Volume (III, IV): As you probably know, your greatest challenge is to understand why your customers are dissatisfied and negative. Typically, negativity results from:

• Misinformation: Inaccurate facts can spark rumors and negativity. However this is relatively easy to fix if you have an established presence online.
• Poor one-off experiences: Inevitably, mistakes will happen and some customers will be dissatisfied. Your reaction to such a situations will define the tonality of conversation. An established presence online and moving quickly to resolve issues can help you turn negative conversations into positive ones.
• Consistent product/service issues: You may need a more comprehensive program – including reviewing your product/service offering – to mitigate negativity.

If your volume is low, you can also address negativity in real-time. By monitoring the conversation and resolving issues on a case-by-case basis, you can turn the tide to some degree.

Ultimately, the opportunities with real-time conversations are clear and the ideas above may help. But perhaps the most important determinants of an organization’s success with real-time conversations will be its posture toward transparency, willingness to accept the inherent risks with conversations and a commitment to resolve negativity quickly.

How are you using real-time conversations in your conversations? What ideas can you suggest?

FOOTNOTE:

Notes and Assumptions:

1. Tonality: ‘Positive’ means that most readers consider a product/service favorably after viewing a post or conversation; ‘neutral’ means readers’ views remain unaffected; ‘negative’ means readers’ view product/service unfavorably.

2. Volume: ‘High’ volume means that, compared to your competitive set you get at least above average volume. (A steady stream of daily chatter – several posts a day.) ‘Low’ volume means significantly below average volume (occasional posts in a week/month – little to no daily stream.)

3. Why ‘Neutral’ is combined with ‘Positive’: Our assumption is that neutral conversations can still influence customers’ opinions positively because they reflect dominance/top-of-mindedness of a brand/product/service.

The real-time web is creating thousands of conversations about brands and products. These conversations, ranging from tid-bits of opinions to live mobile streaming videos, aren’t fleeting away as fast as they were created. Instead, they’re indexed, archived, streamed and searchable. Combined together, these conversations form a collective intelligence that is influencing choices, opinions and purchase decisions.

Can brands find opportunity in these streams of chatter? Can they use them to reach more customers or build greater loyalty?

We think the answer is a resounding yes as long as certain criteria are met.

But before we go into our reasons, let’s consider why brands should even care about this topic.

Why should we care?

When Seth Godin announced his Brands in Public Project, it drove plenty of discussion. The project automatically aggregates real-time conversation and trends about a brand on one side of the page. The other side is handed over to the brand, allowing them to feed their own content, add commentary and curate the page as they see fit.  Godin faced some Brands in Public Project, it drove plenty of discussion. The project automatically aggregates real-time conversation and trends about a brand on one side of the page. The other side is handed over to the brand, allowing them to feed their own content, add commentary and curate the page as they see fit.  Godin faced some criticism about the idea’s execution, fee structure, and legal/ethical issues.

However, there was very little discussion about the aspect we felt that mattered most: implications of a real-time collection of opinions for brands, CMOs and consumers.

Fact is, real-time conversations are increasingly becoming sources of information for consumers. Google’s introduction last week of real-time search shows how easy it is for consumers to access real-time conversations – even if they’re not participating.  In fact anyone can use simple feed aggregators to quickly create public portals that track conversations about a brand from sources like twitter, backtype and blogsearch.

Trying to control, restrict or discourage such aggregation or expect company permissions will probably prove to be naïve in the long run.

Take Wikipedia for example. Brands have no control over what’s written about them. They can persuade, influence and educate but they cannot control. A parallel for the real-time web is inevitable.

Taken a step further, if technologies like Google’s sidewiki find popularity, millions of users will be empowered to have conversations about your brand, right on your home page (well, next to it) without any permission or control from your company.

This underscores why we ought to focus on finding opportunities to embrace conversations rather than trying to control them.

Where’s the opportunity? Where’s the risk?

Opportunity and risk go hand-in-hand with real-time conversations, especially when they are aggregated in one place. Let’s break some of these down:

Opportunities

• Powerful endorsement: We trust each other’s opinions (or even strangers’) far more than we trust advertising. By simply streaming the genuine excitement and opinions your customers express for your brand, you can get powerful endorsements for prospective customers.
• A chance to chat: A central hub that aggregates conversations about your brand also offers you the opportunity to join in. You can educate, influence and persuade people to see your point of you.
• Steer a situation rather than be steered by one: Issues will occur. But when customers know where to go for answers from the official source and from other customers, they can resolve issues faster.
• Real-time research: You can continue to spend thousands on market research but don’t ignore the powerful insights you can get for free and in real-time by listening in on the conversation.

Risks

• Conversations can be biased: Though every member of a community can voice opinions, sometimes only a fraction of them actually do, making conversations susceptible to biases. Often times a vocal minority dominates a majority of the conversation and tone.
• Anonymity can skew tonality: Anonymity online can lead people to act in extremes (online disinhibition effect) and the resulting conversations can skew the (usually negative) tone or gravity of any situation to extremes.

Should You Capitalize on Real-Time Conversations or not?

There is obviously no template answer to this question. Developing a strategy that leverages conversations online depends on variables such as brand, reputation, culture and internal support, among others.

That said, if the current tone of conversation about your brand ranges mostly between positive and neutral, then it’s likely you can leverage this conversation very successfully. On the other hand, if current conversations are mostly negative, measures to fix this are critical.

Ultimately, every marketing manager will sooner or later need to deal with real-time conversations about their brand in one central location. And they will have neither the ability to impose permissions nor control.

So how can we take advantage of the opportunities created by the real-time web?

We’ll explore this in greater detail next week. But meanwhile we’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you see opportunities? If so, how would you leverage these?

Endorsement deal: Real-time conversations about Avatar aggregated by Google’s real-time search show average folks raving about the movie – the most powerful endorsement you can get.

This graphic tells a compelling story about just how central the internet is to communication and content development on a daily basis.  The numbers are amazing – and it looks pretty too.

Created by Online Education

Product reviews have become standard practice for most online retailers, yet many brands are simply not implementing it on their own websites for their products.  Whether you go to Amazon.com or Best Buy’s website for purchase, the presence of the consumer reviews of products is unavoidable.  These reviews can have significant impact on consumer purchasing decision.

A consumer reviews practice on a brand’s website has a different purpose than that of an online retailer.  It is about communication and PR and less to deal with sales.  There is stronger link to sales only if the brand has an online store selling directly to consumers but otherwise it is mostly about brand perception management.  This is why a product review practice accomplishes several things.

The top three benefits from my perspective are:

1. Communicates that the company is listening to consumer feedback on its products.  While reviews are pretty structured in format, it is still an avenue for the consumer to channels their views back to the brand about the product, short of calling the customer support line.  It also allows the consumers to voice both positive and negative views about the product.  It is important to understand that while the views are specific to the product, simply having review practice in place also communicates volumes about the brand itself, which brings me to my next point.
2. The willingness of a brand to listen to its consumers communicates greater transparency, which in turn can increase trust in the brand.  If consumers think that the brand is open to not just praise but also “constructive criticism” about its products, it creates the perception of honest dialog between the two parties.  As such, this is as much about brand perception management as it is about marketing to improve product sales.
3. A review practice on the brand’s website can draw in people searching for product reviews through increased SEO value.  As more reviews are written, a brand’s page can increase its SEO value and become the source for information on a particular item or rank high in a given category of products.

However, the a review practice simply can’t be a replacement for quality improvements on a given product or service.  If a product is not improved upon after countless feedback from  consumers, it can not only have negative PR implications, it is also poor business management as sales will suffer in the long-term.  However, a product review practice can certainly help with brand perception while giving time for improving based on the feedback received through multiple channels with consumer reviews being one of them.

Are there any other benefits that should be included in this list?   Do let me know in the comments below.

Don’t let the numbers fool you: Facebook’s steady rise to the top of the social media heap wasn’t by magic or luck. Instead Facebook has grown from Harvard’s Ethernet to 350 million users by aggressively trying new things, for good and the bad.

For a while it seemed that the one thing that Facebook would never get correct would be the privacy issue.  As Facebook has grown from a college-only hangout to a widely used networking tool for everyone, Facebook has had to reconsider their privacy policy along the way.

After a few miscues (cough Beacon cough)  it seems Facebook has understood that controlling privacy is one of the best ways to keep their expansive user base. Now with several changes, they’ve made privacy so easy that even an orangutan can do it.

1. Shutting Down Beacon: Facebook’s Beacon was meant to be the start of social media advertising but ended up being too pervasive.  Facebook has since shut down the service and settled a lawsuit surrounding Beacon’s privacy practices.
2. Marketer’s Beware!: Facebook change the rules on marketers may protect Facebook more than the user, but with all the different contests I’ve been seeing lately maybe this is a good thing.
3. Scam Crackdowns: One of the best and worse things about the Facebook platform is the apps. That’s why its great that Facebook is cleaning house and getting rid of apps that are scammy. Now if someone could just get rid of Farmville (someone had to say it!).
4. Eliminating Confusing Policy Rules: Getting rid of all the network mumbo-jumbo and simplifying the system makes sense.  At one point I was on three different networks and controlled each privacy setting individually.  Now with simple controls for each piece of content I put up and easier privacy language, most people are going to feel a lot safer on Facebook. More importantly this plan has been discussed since July, meaning that Facebook may avoid the backlash they’ve felt every other time a change has been made.

It is this concern over people’s privacy that have allowed Facebook to grow to 350 million people worldwide.  By tweaking their privacy, Facebook has taken the lead on an issue where other major social networks like MySpace ended up failing.  Now the question is: can it last?

What do you think about Facebook’s privacy changes?  Do you feel safe online?