Glorified Monkey

In response to this article from MediaPost – Razorfish Study: Special Offers Drive Engagement In Social Media - one thing to note is that Dell (@DellOutlet) has been doing really well in using Twitter to offer special sales deals in the last two years.  They have earned additional revenue with the low-cost Twitter marketing.  So both Dell and Whole Foods are strong examples.

Though, some of the interesting stats from the FEED report that I want to highlight:

• 40% have friended a brand on Facebook or Twitter
• 77% have watched a commercial or video ad on YouTube with some frequency
• 73% have posted a product or brand review on sites such as Amazon, Yelp, Facebook or Twitter
• 70% have participated in brand-sponsored contests or sweepstakes

It is inevitable that sales and marketing will become real-time.  With Twitter lists, techniques to market new products and offers in social media can become more focus to meet customers’ needs.

Here is the original article:

Much has been made of the ability of social media to help brands connect with consumers in new and deeper ways — to establish a “dialogue” with users through various interactive tools that blend seamlessly into their online activities.But a new study suggests the key to engagement on social properties comes down to old-fashioned direct marketing techniques like offering discounts and special promotions. “Based on our research, it’s not so much about some type of ’shared passion’ for a brand’s values. Largely, it’s about deals — pure and simple,” states the 2009 FEED report from Razorfish examining consumers’ digital habits and attitudes.

The findings were based on a survey of 1,000 “connected consumers,” or people that roughly mirror the 63% of the U.S. population with broadband access. It also encompasses Internet users who have spent $150 online in the last six months, visited a community site, and consumed or created some type of digital media.

So social media marketing isn’t so much about boosting brand awareness as enticing users with concrete offers. “That to me is a big ‘Aha!, said Garrick Schmitt, Razorfish group vice president of experience planning and editor of the study, in an interview. “What we’re finding is that with Facebook and Twitter, marketers are assuming some deeper dialogue, but what’s really going on is — people want deals.”

Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, for example, 44% said access to exclusive deals is the main reason. And on Facebook and MySpace, 37% cited special deals as the main reason they have “friended” a brand. The report points to companies such as Starbucks, which has amassed nearly 5 million fans and soared to the top of Facebook brand pages by offering coupons for free pastries and ice cream.

Whole Foods, meanwhile, leads brands on Twitter with more than 1.5 million followers by promoting weekly specials and shopping tips. Razorfish identified customer service as the other key driver of consumer interaction in social media, with 33% friending a brand on Facebook and MySpace for that purpose, and 24% on Twitter. Companies such as Comcast, Zappos and Virgin have all gotten high marks for using the latter as a customer relations management (CRM) tool.

The report also draws a direct link between brand engagement online and sales. Of those surveyed, 64% had made their first purchase from a company as a result of a digital interaction — such as through a Web site, microsite, mobile coupon or email. Nearly all (97%) said a digital brand experience had influenced whether they went on to buy a product or service from that marketer.

“Consumers are not only want to engage with brands, but engaging with brands is having an inordinate effect on affinity for brands and the likelihood to purchase,” said Schmitt. Among the factoids on online interaction in the report:

- 40% have friended a brand on Facebook or Twitter
- 77% have watched a commercial or video ad on YouTube with some frequency
- 73% have posted a product or brand review on sites such as Amazon, Yelp, Facebook or Twitter
- 70% have participated in brand-sponsored contests or sweepstakes
To retain and add customers, Schmitt stressed that marketers need to shift focus from brand awareness and impressions to creating campaigns that drive people to make purchases and spread the word about products and services they use to friends.

That can cut both ways, of course. Sixty-five percent of survey participants said they had been influenced by a digital interaction with a brand, both positively and negatively. “A premium brand may not come out with a premium digital experience, and that could change someone’s perception,” said Schmitt.

Nonetheless, companies neglecting or underestimating digital marketing risk at this stage risk looking “as if they’ve shown up to a cocktail party in sweatpants,” according to the Razorfish report. “Invariably, consumers will choose to converse with a savvier — and hopefully more stylish — partner.” Or one simply willing to offer them a better deal.

FlowingData’s recent post – 7 Visualization Groups On Flickr to Find Inspiration – is worth reading for those who like to get new ideas on data visualization techniques and examples.  The seven groups mentioned in the post are:

• Info Graphics [link]
• Guardian Datastore [link]
• maps and charts [link]
• WebOps Visualizations [link]
• Diagram Diaries [link]
• Cool Data Visualization Techniques [link]
• FlowingData [link]

Check it out!

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I finally received an invite to test Google Wave in the Dev Preview sandbox, thought it would be a good idea to share some information. I’m not planning to document pros and cons, rather, I just want to share my personal view of what I like and what I don’t like.

Google Wave (GW) is a cool web application that will likely change the way we communicate.  It uses HTML 5 and Google Gear heavily as far as I can tell.  The layout is more extensive than how Gmail and Google Docs are currently designed.  But since this is a Dev Preview, there are still a lot of things that Google has to finish and refine in the next few months before launch.

To understand the new concept in Google Wave, I would suggest to read this article from Mashable.

When I create a Wave, I can add in robots or gadgets into the Wave.  It makes life easier because when having a conversation with multiple people, visualization works better than only words.  So if we are talking about travel, what better way to start off the conversation than to pull in a Google Map into the Wave and start pinning down some locations on the map.  In some way, this is similar to the Cobrowsing concept.

Twitter, Facebook and Adobe Flash supports are added by the dev community.  There are also YouTube supports as well via Google Gear.  The whiteboard capability by the dev community is useful as well.  And similar to blog sites, you can both categorize a Wave and tagging it.  This should be able to cover different user preferences.

When you first create a Wave, it is only viewable by you.  In the system, groups of people are setup kind of like mailing lists.  So if you want to invite everyone in the system to view the Wave, you can simply add the “wave-discuss” contact into the Wave.  But once added, you can’t remove the person or group from the Wave.  (This is probably a feature for a later time.)  Assuming this is a “feature”, for business/enterprise adoption, this will post a security risks.  I guess I can say the same thing with e-mail too when forwarding to the company-wide mailing list.

By default, GW supports Internationalization and someone in the developer community is working on a translation UI extension.  IMO, this support is already better than a lot of rich-client software.

One of the robot available in the Dev Preview is to parse information and stats in a wave on demand.  So what happen is that, let say if you copy and paste a table of data into a Wave, you can use the robot to generate data visualization on demand while you are in a conversation with others.  This makes collaboration much easier because everyone will be able to see the same (raw) results.  There are also data aggregation robots out there to pull data from Amazon, The Guardian UK and weather channel.  In theory, users can utilize OpenAPI from anywhere on the Internet and pull information into a Wave and generate contextual views.  This makes plain-old Web 2.0 tools look like dinosaurs.

For each Wave, you can post reply to messages from other like what you do in a Forum, or you can edit the post like a document.  The real-time feature to see who’s typing what is very cool.  When you are getting a long answer to a question, you don’t have to wait till the person has finished typing.  There is also a playback feature where you can see the sequence of replies and editorials of the Wave itself.  So this feature is kind of like mixing Wiki history with real-time collaboration.

Did I say that this is Open Source?  And there is a voice feature.  May be it will link to Google Voice as well in the final product?  For businesses, running a team meeting would be possible via GW.  The search and filtering features in GW are pretty decent as well.  But if the user is not aware, he/she can stay in the filter mode all day instead of looking at new Waves from friends or the team.

Although I like what GW has so far, I think at this point GW is too complex for a lot of non-tech savvy users.  Learning curve will be longer for some people, and it can be weeks or months.

A Wave is definitely more of a conversation, as in a 2-ways dialog.  In addition, we can turn the a wave into a document.  This makes Twitter more of a self-center update.  I think GW will definitely reduce the time for people to collaborate and communicate, as long as the users are comfortable with it.  Offline feature enabled by Google Gear would be a nice addition to any web application.  And Google Gear is already working on Android phone.  So I can’t wait till Google Wave to be available on my Android phone.

My next step is to test the Google Wave API when the new update in Dev Preview is available.  (Also pending on what new features will be added in Google Wave Federation Protocol.)  May be then I’ll be able see all the true power of Google Wave.  Stay tuned.

After much consideration about installing Moveable Type on my ISP for about a few months, I finally decided to create a new blog on blogger.com. Moveable Type is really a good package for blogging, but since I have been spending most of my time at work, I don’t think I will have time to manage the configurations.

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