The dividends for a well developed Facebook presence will ultimately depend on marketers investing in adopting sophisticated long-term strategies for customer engagement.
Facebook and Beyond - Lessons for Brand Engagement with Social CustomersLithium
Based on a 2011 social customer survey of our clients, Lithium presents the current state of customer communities and the social web, explores life beyond Likes and Tweets, and reveals what’s next for social CRM and social strategies in 2011. Dive into what brands expect from their investments in social networking sites, how and when they integrate community with social media, how they measure success, and what they hope for from social media in the future. Learn how brands are using both customer communities and their Facebook presence together to build trust, peer-to-peer engagement, pre- and post-sales support, to drive awareness, and to disseminate marketing messages.
What really drives engagement?
Most brands treat social media like traditional marketing. With crowdsourcing and co-creation, you can make your brand stay top of mind with fans.
Is your brand social?
Learn why some brands get it and have vocal, passionate fans who stay engaged, share content, and tell their friends.
Is your marketing user-centered?
Like user-centered design, this paper will show you how putting customers at the center of your marketing changes everything.
Whitepaper I developed while working at CitizenNet. Covers strategy for audience discovery and programmatic optimization of targeting using Facebook's interest categories
Facebook and Beyond - Lessons for Brand Engagement with Social CustomersLithium
Based on a 2011 social customer survey of our clients, Lithium presents the current state of customer communities and the social web, explores life beyond Likes and Tweets, and reveals what’s next for social CRM and social strategies in 2011. Dive into what brands expect from their investments in social networking sites, how and when they integrate community with social media, how they measure success, and what they hope for from social media in the future. Learn how brands are using both customer communities and their Facebook presence together to build trust, peer-to-peer engagement, pre- and post-sales support, to drive awareness, and to disseminate marketing messages.
What really drives engagement?
Most brands treat social media like traditional marketing. With crowdsourcing and co-creation, you can make your brand stay top of mind with fans.
Is your brand social?
Learn why some brands get it and have vocal, passionate fans who stay engaged, share content, and tell their friends.
Is your marketing user-centered?
Like user-centered design, this paper will show you how putting customers at the center of your marketing changes everything.
Whitepaper I developed while working at CitizenNet. Covers strategy for audience discovery and programmatic optimization of targeting using Facebook's interest categories
Purpose: This Social Media Strategy is primarily a resource to sharpen the focus on current Social Media initiatives using customer-centric methodologies that can be seamlessly integrated back into products to achieve core business objectives. Ultimately stepping up the level of engagement by providing actionable insight into emerging trends in the customer experience. Proposing guidelines that can be used by Stakeholders (on all levels) when collaborating with Marketing to measure success and get the envisioned results from Social Media endeavors. This strategy is not intended as a proposal for a Community but as response to customer needs to give the enterprise a common approach in order to reach customers in a “Right Here, Right Now” society. Therefore recognizing the benefits of a convergence strategy that leverages people’s passion for our products and the ability to collaborate in the social spaces where people live online.
Nuke Suite Whitepaper: Key Trends in Social AdsNukeSuite
This whitepaper outlines the trends and ideas that are shaping Social Advertising. Across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, and many, many more social networks, social media advertising is becoming a high-stakes game. This whitepaper goes over what brands need to know to play their best.
Why It as a Service and new CIO's competences to survive?Michael Kozloff
Ситуация
- Бизнес-спонсоры считают, что ДИТ не понимает их ожиданий
Последствия
- Спонсоры считают, что ИТ это ширпотреб, оцениваемый по затратам
- Неохотно выделяют бюджеты на развитие ИТ
- Выбирают дешевый аутсорсинг в ущерб качеству
Решение для CIO: Управлять ИТ как услугами
- Понимать задачи, требования и ожидания спонсоров
- Уметь доказывать вклад ИТ в реализацию стратегии компании (ключевые показатели и приоритеты бизнеса)
- Предлагать ИТ решения и уметь считать затраты (TCO) и отдачу (ROI) от инвестиций в ИТ
Purpose: This Social Media Strategy is primarily a resource to sharpen the focus on current Social Media initiatives using customer-centric methodologies that can be seamlessly integrated back into products to achieve core business objectives. Ultimately stepping up the level of engagement by providing actionable insight into emerging trends in the customer experience. Proposing guidelines that can be used by Stakeholders (on all levels) when collaborating with Marketing to measure success and get the envisioned results from Social Media endeavors. This strategy is not intended as a proposal for a Community but as response to customer needs to give the enterprise a common approach in order to reach customers in a “Right Here, Right Now” society. Therefore recognizing the benefits of a convergence strategy that leverages people’s passion for our products and the ability to collaborate in the social spaces where people live online.
Nuke Suite Whitepaper: Key Trends in Social AdsNukeSuite
This whitepaper outlines the trends and ideas that are shaping Social Advertising. Across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, and many, many more social networks, social media advertising is becoming a high-stakes game. This whitepaper goes over what brands need to know to play their best.
Why It as a Service and new CIO's competences to survive?Michael Kozloff
Ситуация
- Бизнес-спонсоры считают, что ДИТ не понимает их ожиданий
Последствия
- Спонсоры считают, что ИТ это ширпотреб, оцениваемый по затратам
- Неохотно выделяют бюджеты на развитие ИТ
- Выбирают дешевый аутсорсинг в ущерб качеству
Решение для CIO: Управлять ИТ как услугами
- Понимать задачи, требования и ожидания спонсоров
- Уметь доказывать вклад ИТ в реализацию стратегии компании (ключевые показатели и приоритеты бизнеса)
- Предлагать ИТ решения и уметь считать затраты (TCO) и отдачу (ROI) от инвестиций в ИТ
2º oleada del estudio "The power of Like" elaborado por la compañia ComScore en colaboración con Facebook en el que se analiza el impacto e influencia que tiene esta red social para los intereses de empresas y marcas. (inglés)
The Power of_Like - How Social Marketing WorksBoris Loukanov
ANDREW LIPSMAN VP, Marketing, comScore
GRAHAM MUDD, Head of Measurement Partnerships, Facebook
Carmela Aquin, Senior Marketing Manager, comScore
Patric Kemp, Senior Data Analyst, comScore
La verdadera verdad sobre el alcance orgánico de FacebookAllan V. Braverman
¿Por qué las publicaciones en Facebook están llegando a niveles de casi cero alcance orgánico? ¿Qué pasará con Facebook en el 2014 para las marcas? Esto viene resumido en un whitepaper que preparó Social@Ogilvy del tema.
Facebook Zero: Considering Life After the Demise of Organic ReachOgilvy Consulting
Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero. It’s only a matter of time. With the impending end of organic reach, what are the consequences for marketers and others who use Facebook to connect with their communities? How can brands and corporates get the most from Facebook in the future? Is Facebook still a driver of “earned” conversation and word of mouth? Or is it just a straightforward paid channel? How should communities approach content and engagement going forward?
Are you serious about building and promoting your brand online? Do you want to reach out to and more important engage with your target audience? Want to build a live and engaging community around your brand? Ultimately, scale up your revenues & profits and move ahead of your competition!
If yes then this guide on building a community on Social Media (especially Facebook) will be quite relevant to you.
Quotes from THE VALUE OF A FACEBOOK FAN: AN EMPIRICAL REVIEW.
"Value is reflected not simply by the action of being a 'fan' but rather the value of the audience."
"A fan base is a self-segmented group of highly valuable customers."
"Facebook fans reported spending $71.84 more per year than non fans."
"Facebook fans are more loyal to the fanned brand than non-fans."
"68% of Facebook Fans indicate they are very likely to recommend a product."
"The Average Value of a Fan is $136.38."
"Monetary value of fans varies dramatically. Some are intensely active while others are totally inactive."
How Customer Communities Power Word-of-Mouth MarketingLithium
Word-of-mouth is storytelling—real customer experiences related by the real people that have them—and it influences up to 50% of purchase decisions today. Word-of-mouth becomes marketing (WOMM) when you harness the power of this inherent behavior, infuse it with intention, measure it, and use it to empower your brand. And in today’s social environment, doing so strategically is more important than ever.
Technology management in the age of the customerLithium
Don’t look now, but your company is losing control. Customers are now in the driver’s seat. Learn more by reading this Forrester Report on "Technology Management
In The Age Of The Customer."
Hey, Financial Services - Get Serious About Social, or Get Spanked!Lithium
Today’s banking customers want much more than a place to store and access their cash. They want help with financial planning, tracking, and goal-setting and are increasingly tapping alternative institutions for that help. Unregulated innovators like Google Wallet and PayPal are stepping in and putting increasing pressure on banks to adapt—or die.
Meanwhile, financial services firms have been slow to innovate, still stuck on strategies for increasing branch visits. In turn, the influence they have over the personal lives of their customers is waning fast. As we run headlong into a digital-first future, how can financial service firms remain relevant?
Download this slide deck from Lithium and learn:
1. Why social customer experience is fast becoming an important battle ground for the financial service industry.
2. How financial service firms use social for marketing, customer care and service innovation.
3. Which banks, credit card and insurance companies do social right, do it best—and how.
4. The returns financial service firms are getting from social.
5. Social strategies and best practices financial service firms can deploy today to get in the game.
Lithium whitepaper: Hey, Tech! Get Serious About Social Customer EnlistmentLithium
Learn about the current state social for tech and why social customer enlistment is a game-changer. Learn how to get social customers to co-create value with you with
gamification—done right. Get sustainable social strategies from Lithium.
Introducing Dr. Michael Wu’s The Science of Social 2 an in depth overview into how social media has revolutionized customer communication, the customer journey, and customer relationship management (CRM). As Lithium Technology’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Wu with his extensive knowledge has created a solution for our communication strategy by motivating customers and managing customer relationships for the long run. In this modern era where consumers demand convenience and quality, traditional business methods will no longer cut it. Dr. Wu along with Geoffrey Moore and his Four Gears, The Science of Social 2 presents a solution to help your business adapt and survive in this changing climate. To ensure a lasting competitive advantage, four gears are needed for success: acquisition, engagement, enlistment, and monetization.
Lithium Get Serious About Online CommunitiesLithium
When it comes to online branded communities, who’s doing it right? Who are today’s biggest winners and losers? Which brands should your customer community strategy emulate and why?
In this deck, we'll unpack the State of Online Branded Communities 2012, ComBlu’s evaluation of over 92 brands and 200 communities. Learn who is providing the most meaningful member experiences, the most integrated brand strategy, and the best engagement practices.
We’ll take a close look at today’s best and worst performers across three pillars of engagement— feedback, advocacy and community—and give you real-world advice for:
1. using customer communities as trusted content hubs.
2. tapping brand advocates to spread influence.
3. measuring the ROI of community engagement.
Today’s consumers want social experiences from web-based communities where they can find more relevant information, easily interact with peers and learn from other firsthand accounts of brand experiences. Join us and learn how your brand can get serious about customer communities.
Forrester Case Study: Giffgaff uses co-creation to build a differentiated mob...Lithium
In an empowered report by Forrester analyst, Doug Williams, giffgaff is highlighted for their vibrant community, run entirely by giffgaff customers using the Lithium community platform
Learn about social customer care told by Kate Leggett Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc and Katy Keim Chief Marketing Officer at Lithium Tech
Dig into the dynamics of online reputation and learn about the available tools for managing it. Find out how to find, engage and empower your superfnas to drive real business outcomes with social customers.
Gold in Them Hills: Computing ROI for Support CommunitiesLithium
Learn the approaches used successfully by Lithium Technologies' customers to compute a realistic ROI (Return on Investment) for their support community initiatives
In January of 2013, we benchmarked the telecom social customer experience in order to better guide today's service providers toward strategies that make sense.
We surveyed 40+ global telecoms on their social customer experience investments and returns and found that more socially mature telecoms enjoy serious benefits:
greater reduction in call center volume
greater reduction in support costs
more confidence in the customer experiences they deliver
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
2. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
Executive Summary
As recently as two or three years ago, the idea that brands would provide a social
channel for their customers to engage with them was controversial, even radical. Now
it’s convention. Facebook is a big reason for this change. As of this writing, 56 percent of
Fortune 500 companies host Facebook pages, and that number is growing daily.
Since social customer programs were controversial just two years ago, many of those
companies are new to the experience of engaging with social customers and are looking
to answer the question, “What do we do next?”
Brands that have engaged with social customers in other channels can help us answer
this question. Lithium’s clients have considerable experience with social customer
engagement through brand communities and Facebook pages. Lithium conducted a
survey of its clients to better understand how they see the role of Facebook (and other
social media outlets) in their overall engagement strategy. The results provide an
interesting glimpse into the different roles played by different social media channels,
and potentially into how they will converge in the future. Some highlights include:
ƒ On the whole, respondents rated their communities as more successful than
Facebook at activities that require trust: peer-to-peer engagement and providing
pre-and-post sales purchase support; Facebook was seen as more successful in
disseminating marketing messages.
ƒ The two channels were seen as roughly equal in their ability to create brand
awareness. Clients who have initiated brand communities see awareness benefits
as particularly salient in the first year, suggesting that “newness” of an engagement
channel is in itself a big driver of awareness.
ƒ The ability for customers to submit and discuss ideas for product or service
improvement is the biggest downstream benefit of social customer engagement
for clients who have developed brand communities. Clients who consider their
Facebook efforts less successful are particularly interested in bringing this
capability to Facebook in a more structured fashion.
After Peak Facebook
As Facebook itself approaches full penetration of its core markets and its members
start to regularize their behavior, historic growth rates for participation in corporate
Facebook pages will slow. Call it “peak Facebook.” Recent surveys have also shown that
existing consumers’ engagement with corporate Facebook pages may be tenuous and
fading. For example, 81% of those who have become fans of a brand have abandoned at
least one such relationship because of “irrelevant, voluminous, or boring” marketing
messages.
2
3. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
This suggests that marketers who are committed to using Facebook to foster
relationships with social customers will need to invent or adopt sophisticated long-term
strategies for customer engagement. Fortunately, many of the techniques learned in
brand communities can carry over into Facebook.
What Is an Online Community?
One of the first questions we see from brands developing a social customer strategy is,
“Do I need both a brand community and Facebook, and if so, what role does each
one play?”
The answer to this question always depends on circumstances and business
requirements, but given that our audience has experience with both venues, we have a
very good sense of the role that each one plays.
improves our search results
creates awareness of our
brand, products, or services
allows us to communicate our marketing
message effectively to customers
creates beneficial
customer-to-customer engagement
empowers customers to help one
another with pre-sales purchase questions
empowers customers to help one
another with post-sales support questions
Gives us metrics we need
to assess program goals
Gives us a good sense of
how our customers are feeling
Helps us identify
particularly valuable customers
Creates goodwill for
our brand in social channels
community effectiveness
facebook effectiveness
Figure 1: Overall effectiveness of Facebook and brand community.
Figure 1 compares the brand community’s perceived effectiveness with the Facebook
page’s perceived effectiveness in 10 different areas.
3
4. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
The first thing to note is that the one area where Facebook shines is in outbound
messaging. Because Facebook offers outstanding reach and many brands use it as a
publishing platform for periodic updates, its prowess as a vehicle for disseminating
marketing messages is not surprising. Social media marketing vendor Vitrue has
computed that a fan base of 1 million translates into $3.6 million in equivalent media
per year, and brands such as Coca-Cola already see more unique visitors to their
Facebook page than they do to their company web site. In these situations, Facebook
represents a means of message dissemination that compares favorably to advertising
on a cost-per-impression basis.Interestingly, however, Facebook was not cited as
significantly more effective than a brand community in creating brand awareness, or
creating goodwill for the brand in social channels. Given the Facebook platform’s reach
and viral features, one might have expected higher scores for Facebook’s ability to
increase brand awareness, but there are several reasons why the scores may be lower
than expected:
ƒ Brand awareness is still largely campaign driven, and a Facebook page alone does
not constitute a campaign.
ƒ Even when campaigns drive users to Facebook pages and increase the brand’s fan
base, there is no guarantee that these people were new to the brand. Most users
who associate with a brand page probably have a prior affinity for that brand.
ƒ Finally, as we have seen through social media monitoring studies, “buzz” around
brands spikes during successful campaigns, but typically returns to a steady state
after campaigns end.
One further explanation may be that our community clients report that brand awareness
benefits peak during the first year, even as other benefits increase over time. If this
holds true across other social channels, it is possible that the fact of starting a new
program in and of itself is responsible for increased awareness—probably because that
program involves an introductory campaign. When the shock of the new wears off, what
is left?
As it turns out, brand communities annuitize exceptionally well. Peer-to-peer
engagement and an environment where users answer one another’s questions emerge
as a corps of devoted users forms and mobilizes. Indeed, scores rise in these areas as
communities move into their second and third years, suggesting that communities hold
their users’ interest over the long haul.
4
5. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
anticipated realized anticipated realized
13.5%
27%
46%
78%
pre-sales customer
consultation feedback/ideation
Figure 2: Anticipated benefits versus realized benefits. Peer-to-peer buying advice
and customer ideation were two benefits exceeding client expectations.
The survey tells us that benefits clients anticipated when embarking upon a social
customer program are not always the same benefits that emerge over time. This is
particularly true in two areas: idea development, and peer-to-peer pre-sales consulting.
Customer feedback/ideation was listed as an original purpose of a community 46% of
the time, but a realized benefit 78% of the time. Peer-to-peer pre-sales consulting was
an original purpose 13.5% of the time but a realized benefit 27% of the time.
Both of these “downstream” benefits are most likely to emerge as byproducts of trust
among members of a community. Brands tend to be more willing to harvest and discuss
ideas for service improvement when they trust that their customers are ready for a
sustained dialog rather than drive-by complaints. And people are more willing to trust
product recommendations from their peers when those peers have proven themselves
to be reliably knowledgeable over time.
To see these benefits, brands must cultivate relationships with their social customers
over the long term. While the constraints and affordances of the Facebook platform
and brand communities differ, there is no reason why the aspects that make brand
communities deliver annuitized benefits cannot exist in Facebook. Whether they will
emerge depends largely upon the choices that brands make about how to engage with
their customers on Facebook. And those choices will likely depend on whether brands
consider what they are doing on Facebook successful or not.
5
6. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
Success/Failure and Future Needs
As we can see from Figure 3, among respondents who consider their Facebook
efforts successful or very successful, three key benefits stand out: the creation of
brand awareness, the ability to communicate marketing messages effectively, and the
fostering of goodwill in social channels. In each of the three cases, there is a wide gap in
perceived efficacy between respondents who are happy with their Facebook efforts and
those who are not. On the other hand, even those who are happy with their Facebook
program do not consider it to be very useful in helping users answer one another’s
questions (either pre- or post-sales) or in helping them identify particularly valuable
customers.
facebook page's community's
effectiveness effectiveness
improves our search results
creates awareness of our
brand, products, or services
allows us to communicate our marketing
message effectively to customers
creates beneficial
customer-to-customer engagement
empowers customers to help one
another with pre-sales purchase questions
empowers customers to help one
another with post-sales support questions
Gives us metrics we need
to assess program goals
Gives us a good sense of
how our customers are feeling
Helps us identify
particularly valuable customers
Creates goodwill for
our brand in social channels
more successful more successful
less successful less successful
Figure 3: Facebook and brand community effectiveness in 10 areas, cross-tabulated
by more successful and less successful overall perceptions of success
Strikingly, only about 12% of respondents who consider their Facebook forays
successful believe that it helps users answer one another’s questions. Fewer than
half thought it created beneficial interactions of any kind among customers. At this
point in its evolution, Facebook seems to succeed or fail for brands based on reach
and the perceived goodwill that goes along with that, rather than on elements that are
specifically social.
6
7. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
As we can also see from Figure 3, respondents who see their community as successful
or very successful give the community exceptionally high marks for creating beneficial
peer-to-peer engagement, for helping customers with questions, and for providing
insight into customers’ attitudes. Interestingly, there is basically no difference in clients’
assessment of a community’s utility for communicating outbound marketing messages
between those who think it is a roaring success and those who think it is moderately
successful. On the other hand, there is a large perceived gap in the awareness value of
a community between those who feel it is very successful and those who feel it less so.
Perhaps one reason for this discrepancy is that members themselves are the marketing
channel in a brand community. Even though it provides opportunities for outbound
communication—though blogs and tweets—a brand community succeeds or fails on the
basis of its ability to create engagement.
51.4%
answer product questions
50%
42.9%
display status or achievements
8.3%
submit ideas for 62.9%
service/product improvements 50%
search our knowledge base 60%
66.7%
see the best/most useful content 60%
that others have submitted 58.3%
identify other customers with 42.9%
similar backgrounds or needs 50%
find products their friends or 60%
colleagues have recommended 50%
mentions by respondents who rate their Facebook pages as less successful
mentions by respondents who rate their Facebook pages as successful
Figure 4: Additional needs from Facebook by perceived success level with Facebook.
7
8. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
We can see that when Facebook isn’t seen as successful for brands, its best benefits are
still as an outbound marketing vehicle—just not a particularly successful one. In that
case, what do brands want Facebook to do for customers that it’s not doing? We asked
respondents to rank various things that their customers might do on Facebook that they
can’t do or can’t do well. When we correlate those rankings with the level of success
those clients are currently enjoying with Facebook, several things stand out:
ƒ Overwhelmingly, brands whose Facebook efforts are flagging want some way to
recognize their customers’ status and achievements on Facebook—in other words,
to reward good behavior. Conspicuous display of status and achievement is a
deeply ingrained feature of Lithium communities and is generally seen as a prime
motivator of consumer participation.
ƒ Respondents who do not see their current Facebook efforts as successful see the
ability for customers to submit ideas as substantially more important than those
who are satisfied with Facebook. Again, this maps very closely to the ideation
benefit we saw earlier as a downstream effect of brand communities.
ƒ The ability to find products or services recommended by friends or colleagues is
also seen as a potential area of improvement by those who are not particularly
satisfied with their Facebook efforts.
47.6%
answer product questions
56%
52.4%
display status or achievements
20%
submit ideas for 57.1%
service/product improvements 64%
search our knowledge base 57.1%
64%
see the best/most useful content 57.1%
that others have submitted 60%
identify other customers with 38.1%
similar backgrounds or needs 52%
find products their friends or 47.6%
colleagues have recommended 64%
mentions by respondents who rate their communities as less successful
mentions by respondents who rate their communities as successful
Figure 5: Additional needs from Facebook by community success level.
8
9. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
As we can see from Figure 5, brands who are less successful with communities also
want to see a more prominent display of status and achievements on Facebook. But
what is perhaps more interesting is that clients who are at higher levels of success with
brand communities are much more interested than their peers in introducing the ability
for users to find others who resemble them, and the ability for users to locate products
that their friends and colleagues like. These are characteristic “social networking”
features.
In other words, when Facebook efforts are not successful, brands want Facebook
to behave more like a community. When communities are successful, brands want
to benefit from Facebook’s networking features to a greater extent. If Facebook’s
potency as a generator of awareness begins to decline over time, that trend suggests
a convergence between the interaction modes in Facebook and those of brand
communities is extremely likely.
Organizational Ownership
If we see a coming convergence between the way people interact on Facebook and
the way they interact in a brand community, it is worth asking who will lead that
convergence and how it will take place. Enterprises vary in their determination of who
owns social customer initiatives. In some organizations, social customer initiatives are
owned by customer support or customer experience teams. Increasingly, however, they
fall under the purview of marketing or corporate communications functions.
61.5%
answer product questions
36.8%
46.2%
display status or achievements
21.1%
submit ideas for 73.1%
service/product improvements 42.1%
search our knowledge base 73.1%
47.4%
see the best/most useful content 69.2%
that others have submitted 47.4%
identify other customers with 50%
similar backgrounds or needs 36.8%
find products their friends or 61.5%
colleagues have recommended 52.6%
customer support and experience groups
marketing groups
Figure 6: Additional requirements from Facebook by social program ownership. 9
10. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
As we can see from Figure 6, organizations where marketing owns social initiatives are
demanding less of Facebook in terms of new modes of customer engagement. In fact,
ownership by marketing is more important than the perceived success of a company’s
Facebook page in determining whether a company is interested in customers engaging
through Facebook in more involved ways. Customer support and customer experience
groups continue to be more interested in the exchange of ideas and the answering of
product questions.
customer support and experience marketing and comms
a f
f
e b b
e
d
d
c c
Figure 7: Largest challenge with social customer programs, by program ownership
a) executive buy-in
b) resources to scale our efforts
Marketing-led organizations’coordination acrosswith social customer programs is how
c) biggest concern teams and departments
to scale them. Figure 7 shows the chief concern as scaling initiatives with (relatively)
d) too many tools
less concern about coordination across teams metrics and standards for of marketing-led
e) lack of agreed upon and departments. 44% success
f) lack of customer interest
organizations cited “resources to scale our efforts” as the biggest challenge, as against
34.4% of everyone and (9/34 - 26%) of non-marketing led organizations. This suggests
that one reason marketers are less aggressively pursuing “deeper” engagement
through Facebook is that, unlike support or customer experience organizations,
they lack human resources—like contact centers—that are perceived to be required
to ensure that social customers get the satisfaction they require from engagement
through Facebook. Better, perhaps, not to hold out the promise of a sustained dialog
with customers if an organization cannot make good on that promise.
The survey shows that marketers and customer experience are equally committed
to responding to customers in brand communities and through Facebook and
Twitter. However, it would not be surprising if Facebook’s reach threatens to become
overwhelming if customer actions on Facebook called for a response. Indeed, perhaps
10
11. Facebook and Beyond:
Lessons for Brand Engagement with
Social Customers
one thing that marketers have learned with online communities that they have not (yet)
learned with Facebook is that customers themselves can be the solution—not just the
cause—of the scaling problem. Time and again, we have seen that larger communities
with a devoted core of superfans actually require less intervention from companies
than fledgling communities. The “downstream” trust benefits pay dividends. There is
no reason why this shouldn’t be so on Facebook, but many organizations are in earlier
stages of their experience with Facebook.
brand communities
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
customer support and experience
marketing and corp comms
Figure 8: Requirement for ROI measurement by channel and program ownership.
A final area in which brand communities differ from other channels for marketing-led
organizations is in the need to prove themselves through ROI metrics. As we can see
from Figure 8, marketing-led organizations generally have higher demands for ROI,
but this is particularly true for brand communities. We suspect this is a function of the
perception that Facebook engagement is free because a Facebook page is itself free, but
also of the maturity level of Facebook as a technology and a marketing venue. As we see
increasing convergence of social channels, we should also expect to see demands for
more sophisticated Facebook measurement tools, and growing demands for Facebook
to prove its value.
11