Now, the term psychographics might seem like some mumbo jumbo word that a marketing executive made up to sound smart. In reality, it’s far from some buzzword someone came up with on their way to a client meeting. Demographics represent what people are. They are finite and don’t change. You are the age you are even if your fake ID says otherwise. Nothing will change that. Psychographics, however, represent what people think and how they act. What kind of car do they drive? Do they drink soda? Do they like horror films or dramatic films? Are they calm and calculating or do they fly by the seat of their pants? All of these things are keys to understanding how media in all its forms affects people. That’s why psychographics are so much more powerful than demographics. A demographic doesn’t tell you much. Say you have two 30 year olds, Jim and Joe, from similar income households and who both hold advanced degrees. All of those are demographics. What do we know about these two people? Not much when you think about it. We know we can make generalizations about them because they are in the same groups. However, do we really know what makes them tick? Do we know what they like? Do we know what kind of communication they’re most likely to respond to? We can take a guess, but in the end, we really don’t know.

Now, let’s look at these two people using psychographics. Jim likes coffee in the morning, does the majority of his shopping online, is addicted to his smartphone, and currently drives a hybrid car. Joe has oatmeal for breakfast every morning while he reads his local newspaper. He also does the majority of shopping online but doesn’t use a smartphone and doesn’t like social media sites. He drives to work in a car with average gas mileage. Now what do we know about these two gentlemen? We now know a lot about them. Not to mention, the information we know about them is much more valuable. Demographically, they are equals. Psychographically, they are quite different.

This is why understanding your audience in BOTH areas is so important. Demographics will give you a more narrow audience. With demographics you are at least hitting the group of people the might be interested in you in the ways they may communicate the most. Using demographics, you get a good idea of where you can dig deeper with your information gathering. With psychographics, you have a target audience. You know how they communicate. You know they prefer Twitter over Facebook. You know they are on their smartphones and would potentially respond to an app or a Facebook interaction more than an email. You know that they are eco/health conscious based on the fact that they tend to buy more organic and fair trade products. These are the ever changing things that can make or break your social media campaign.

When planning any kind of interaction, whether it’s B2B, B2C, or even in a community environment, you can’t forget the “social” part of social media planning. It goes without saying that by truly understanding your customers and users, you can better understand your business. You can understand where your business is going and what kinds of changes or interactions your customers will approve of and respond to. It’s not just about connecting with the right age group or the right gender. It’s about connecting with the people who truly have the potential to make a difference to your bottom line. That’s why psychographics will always be much more than another mumbo jumbo buzzword.

Recent Gallup research shows that brands have very little influence on the decision of a consumer to purchase their product or service. Instead, they seek out the opinions of their spouse, children, friends, and others. At the very bottom of the totem pole are company sponsored Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. So does that mean that Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets are useless to brands when trying to cultivate their audience? Hardly. It simply means that brands cannot rely solely on putting up Facebook posts or sending out Tweets with quips about company information or the newest rebate. Brands must focus on truly engaging users if they want to build an audience that will, in turn, go out and spread the word. Brands have to put in the time and effort to create passionate engaged followers.

Source: Social Media: The Three Big Myths, Gallup

When brands don’t nurture these relationships they are opening the door for a larger audience to speak negatively or ambivalently about them. Look at the chart below that describes the different types of engaged users. What should stand out to you is the fact that an actively disengaged customer is just as likely to talk to others about your product as a fully engaged customer, just in all the ways you don’t want them to. When brands have Facebook pages that exist only to fill some percieved need to be on Facebook and don’t engage the people on those pages, they risk alienating their potential audience. The problem then becomes not only the fact that people aren’t giving you Facebook likes, but that they are also now talking poorly of you offline and that is something you won’t be able to track with metrics. Putting effort into truly engaging those who engage with you on social media sites and focusing on the quality of your interactions over the quanitity of your interactions will, in turn, have a greater reach and potentially be longer lasting over time.

Source: Making the Most of Social Media, Gallup

The idea of taking social media to this level was fascinating even though the “big brother” aspect was admittedly a little creepy. The comments I read in the Economist article were mostly against this kind of heavy social media driven interaction. Many of the comments lamented the loss of human interaction in our society while others were somewhat unsettled by the thought of companies knowing that much about where they were and what they were doing. One commenter actually recounted how he stayed at a hotel only to find out that the hotel (and many others) had actually removed the in-room phones because they assumed that all their guests had cell phones and it was just costing them money to keep them in the rooms.

Taking it to the extreme that the fictional hotel did does smack of something from Minority Report but I’m still left asking myself why shouldn’t companies engage their audience (or event heir business partners) in this way just on a smaller scale? I don’t know that I lament the use of social media by companies to pro-actively engage their customers. If my options for communication are calling a company and being put on hold for an undetermined amount of time or making a request online which can instantly be dealt with, I know which one I’m picking.

I recently helped put together a presentation on examples of companies successfully implementing social media into their business plan. One of the stand outs was TATA Docomo, a telecom provider in India. Rather than operating like most corporations who expect the masses to come to them, TATA Docomo realized that the only way they were going to make inroads in the tough Indian telecom market was to go to the people. They now skillfully leverage both Twitter and Facebook as their main means of communicating with their customers for both customer service issues as well as informing them of new offerings. This has lead to huge customer loyalty despite the lack of a “physical” connection.

The generations that are coming of age now are doing it in a time of amazing digital advancements. I’m old enough to remember the days before the internet was a daily part of life but young enough to be in the generation of adults who are keen to absorb any new digital gadget that comes onto the market. Businesses need to realize this fact and capitalize on it. Don’t be afraid of using social media for these kinds of communications. Companies that start a Facebook page only to tell all the people who ask for help that they need to contact the customer service number are going to be sorely disappointed by their “community” building efforts. That’s because they aren’t engaging people in the places where they actually want to be engaged. The example of TATA Docomo is one that companies should look to as the way forward. TATA has engaged their communities consistently on the formats they know are the most popular. What did it get them? It took them from the bottom of the Indian telecom barrel to the top of the mountain. They were the 9th telecom company to enter the Indian market and faced competitors who had been there for years but in a very short time they were the top. Why? It worked because they embraced what social media could do for them.

Ignoring the changing communication landscape is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. The world is changing around us, why not change with it? Our two part blog series on this very topic titled Executive Use of Social Media discusses the importance of this changing landscape and highlights the success several major companies have had in implementing social media into their business operations. Part One is already posted so be sure to check back and watch Part Two.

If your social media strategy is all about coupons and discounts for your company, you’re not really getting the point of social media from a business perspective. Sounds a bit arrogant right? Well, let me explain what we’ve seen over the past several weeks as we analyzed a segment of the retail space…

Company A (Large U.S. Based firm in the Womens’ Apparel category) – Analyzed 400 tweets, 293 were related to promotions for a 10% coupon. Analyzed 125 wall posts, 96 were related to the same promotion.

Company B (Large U.S. Based firm in the Sportwear category) – Analyzed 200 tweets, 127 were related to a BOGO (buy one get one) offer. Analyzed 63 wall posts, 48 were related to the same offer.

Company C (Large Internations firm in the Apparel category) – Analyzed 320 tweets, 148 were about a buy X amount of merchandise online and get a coupon for 20% off your next purchase. Tweets autoposted to Facebook. (YIKES!)

Is this what social media has become for the B2C market, a platform to push coupons?

What our analysis, limited as it may be, is showing us is that the Retail market is simply building an audience which activates only for a deal. Yes consumers want a deal, but do you as a seller only want your customers to come to your site when you offer a coupon? Doesn’t really seem like brand building does it? While many companies get it right (see Nike for one and Zappos for another), many do not. It’s as if these companies are competing with the Groupons, Living Socials, CouponDeals, etc. of the world rather than focusing upon their customers’ needs and building their brand in the process.

Maybe B2C social media marketers could learn from how B2B companies are using social media to build relationships.

“But Mike, that won’t work. You have to capture the shopper’s attention.”

I’d agree with you on that, it’s how you do it with social media where I differ… Let’s go about this use of social media in a different, more consumer-brand friendly way. Start with your brand. Is this something that you continually want to cheapen by constantly incentivising followers/friends to only care about when they get a discount? More importantly from a business perspective, how does constant couponing impact your margins?

Really successful social media programs understand that there are steps to reach success. First there is audience building, then engagement and activation, which in turn leads to value for the company. Too often companies lead with activation, skipping the audience building and engagement processes that generate loyalty. Audience building is time consuming, but works to give your company an group of followers and fans who actually are interested in your brand and products. (To learn more about why followers and fan counts are not a measure of influence, read this.) Audience building takes compelling content that excites and interests your potential customer. Social Media activities which compliment your existing brand building activities help to build audience. Use your branding messages from Television, in-store promotions, print, etc. to expand your reach to social media viewers.

Engage with your fans and followers. Pay attention to their content. Are they retweeting or tweeting a positive mention for your brand? If so, send them a direct message and thank them. Does a customer want help with store locations? Sure they could go to your site and use your store locator, but why not engage and ask them what city they are near and then give them a list of locations? What about that person who complains about a poor experience? Engage with them by apologizing and offering to have customer service contact them. Post content about your product line, post content about what your company is doing in the communities it operates in, post content about industry news from news sources you trust, and post pictures of people using or wearing your products.

Remember visual ques are just as important as customer reviews. That’s why so many brands pay celebrities to use their products in public. Social Media just allows a larger group to do the same thing. User generated content is a powerful tool to utilize in social media, yet we see very few brands even try to do this without offering a prize or coupon.

And that goes back to the point of this post, by providing incentives as your main content on social media, you are doing a disservice to your brand. From our blog post on incentives, “Remember that it’s EGO that drives the participation of your top members. They crave recognition for their efforts, not trinkets.”

That message holds true today for your best customers… so engage with them, give them an opportunity to shine, then recognize them. Otherwise, you’ve doomed your social media audience to be a zombie group which only activates for a coupon, not because your brand is of interest.

Zombie Image from: http://neighbourhoodzombiewatch.wordpress.com/

Too often, companies launch Facebook and Twitter sites before fully understanding why they want them. They don’t know what it does or how to use it but they know their competitors have it and they assume they need it to give them an edge. So, they get their Facebook page going, send out a few Tweets, and make ready for the waves of new fans and maybe even some customers. Except, the fans and customers don’t come. Why? Because the company didn’t think about what they were going to do with their new toy once they got it and now it’s just another waste of money.

Be a beacon for your users

Social media has power; a lot of it. But you have to wield that power in the right way. We at Impact Interactions strongly believe in what we call the “Beacon Strategy.” You want to utilize certain tools in ways that will guide new users to your main repository of information (your website), not leave them lost in the sea of digital clutter. Facebook and Twitter can’t replace a robust website full of quality information, nor should it. These are simply tools, lures even, that should be used judiciously. When considering how to use these tools you must first know where you’re going, what you want to achieve, and how you can measure your success. Once you have determined those things then you can go out and make the investment in developing a social media campaign. Always understand the why of your campaign before you think about the how and then make a commitment to nurture the campaign over time rather than letting it sit and get dusty next to the last latest greatest business toy you just had to have.

What are you doing this week?

If you are like many folks, you’ve got an interest in social media and perhaps are working for an organization helping with their social media. This week is all about you! Social Media weeks are one of the best opportunities for people who are passionate, curious, slightly interested, skeptical, and totally immersed in social media to network and learn more about how social media is being used successfully. There are many different events around Chicago this week. Even better, you can follow the Social Media Week activities around the globe thanks to Nokia.

To get started, all you have to do is start at the SOCIAL MEDIA WEEK web site and register.

We’re excited to meet with our friends in social media here in Chicago as well as to learn more from companies that are successful with their applications of social media.

We’ll be attending a couple of events after hours here in Chicago:

Chicago Icons – Wednesday, September 21 from 5:30 to 8:00 (Hosted by the Chicago Social Media Club)

Taste of Social Media Served up SMCChicago Style - Wednesday, September 21 from 3:00 to 4:30

If you are attending either of these events, we’d like to connect. Our president, Mike Rowland and Senior Director of Client Services, Lauren Bittner will be attending these functions. We look forward to meeting you!

Chicago, here we come!

As many of you know, Impact Interactions was started in Chicago back in 2003. After several years in Maryland, we’re opening our newest office in the Windy City as of August 1, 2011.

Our new offices will be located in the Loop at the following address:

IMPACT INTERACTIONS

79 West Monroe, Suite 810

Chicago IL 60603

(312) 578-8070

We’re excited to be back. We’ll be up and running at the new location by the end of the first week of August. Until then, we’ll continue to work with our clients remotely during the transition time.

And for those of you in Chicago looking for a social media job, we are hiring associates. You can learn more about the openings by clicking here.

So, off we go….

Last week several members of the our team attended the iStrategy Conference in San Francisco. Along with our clients Cisco, SAP, and NetApp, I hosted a panel discussion on B2B Social Media: Moving Beyond the Hype. (You can get the download of the presentation slides here.)

As is often the case with conferences, the best part is usually the networking that we do at lunch, cocktail hours, and late night at the hotel bar. What I found fascinating about this particular conference and its attendees was the dilemma that many are in relating to social media. Whether business to consumer or business to business, the same issues continued to come up in conversation. That is “how can we manage so many sites and messages and still deliver results?”

Of course, we’re an outsourced provider of social media and online community services so it would have been easy to say “Hire us!” But I really wanted to uncover the underlying reasons for the issue and why it was causing so much angst amongst the attendees. In short, there were four main reasons:

1. Budgets for social media remain very limited at larger organizations who are just getting started. That translates to minimal staff to get the program up and running.
2. Staffing models are not clear. Too often there is a single person or a team of 3 to 6 members running the entire social media program with responsibilities split between full time and part time activities.
3. There remains far too much focus on which tool to use versus the appropriate content for the audience. Choosing a tool is easier than gaining commitment for content generation and teams are falling into the “if you build it, they will come” type of thinking because there isn’t a clear social content strategy for their firm.
4. When it comes to measurement, social media practioners remain focused on traffic at the expense of value. I heard a lot of questions about “growing” followers and fans but hardly any about gaining business value from using social media tools. (In fact, when our client NetApp discussed how they found value (hundreds of millions of dollars of sales), not a single person tweeted about it. When our client Cisco discussed how they believe 90% of internet traffic will be video in the coming years, everyone tweeted about it. Think about it, which is actually more important to resolving your social media dilemma?)

So where does this all lead? Well, it reminds me of the early online community period back in 2000 or so. Companies wanted to interact with their customers and inherently understood that this was a good thing to do. But they didn’t know for sure how to go about it. In many cases, companies made community management 10% of ten people’s responsibilities to get to the 100% effort and focus. Back then that didn’t work, and from the comments of the folks I spoke with last week it’s not working now either.

What we’ve learned is that social media takes a team with multiple roles to achieve success. From an executive champion who can get budget and support for the project to facilitators who know how to properly interact with the social audience, there needs to be a team to achieve success. To only have a social media manager who is responsible for using all the tools, training/monitoring internal users, scambling for useful content, measuring success, and recording best practices is never going to work in most cases. Not everyone is a strategic thinker, nor is everyone able to tie back their activities to business objectives (or even define them), nor is everyone able to interact with online audiences appropriately.

Yet too often, that is what we are asking our social media managers to take on 24/7. It is a dilemma.  In our experience, the best way for social media teams or managers to solve this dilemma is by achieving and sharing relevant customer social wins with their stakeholders. These social wins can be qualtitative (commentary that shows intent or influence) or the full quantitative (number of new registrations added to the marketing database for example). Wins gain momentum internally, uncertain results help projects remain as second class cool things which don’t really add to the business. Which can you deliver to help you solve the dilemma and get what you need to be successful?

I’d love to hear how you are solving the dilemma at your firm. If you have questions, post them and we’ll help…

Recent research has shown that executives across many industries are expanding their use of social media. At the same time, the research shows that the majority of business to business executives in charge of social media believe they are not achieving the optimal business results from their efforts. At iStrategy San Francisco, Impact Interactions’ president Mike Rowland, Cisco’s Jeanette Gibson, SAP’s Sara Larsen, and NetApp’s Navneet Grewal will present case studies of integrated, coordinated social media programs based upon proven strategies that provide a positive impact on the organization’s top and bottom line.

With over ten years of experience in the online interactive world, Mr. Rowland brings a wealth of best practices from clients such as NetApp, Cisco, SAP, AARP, Intel, and many other major brands. The methodology developed by Mr. Rowland and Impact Interactions utilizes measurement as part of the initial planning process for social media in order to provide clients with instant clarity into how the success of the project and effort will be demonstrated. To provide additional insight at the
conference, Mike will be joined by top B2B social media professionals from his clients Cisco, SAP, and NetApp. Successful case studies of B2B social media projects, organizations, and strategies will be presented and discussed with iStrategy attendees.

“Too often companies begin with the tools or third party sites like Twitter or Facebook then wonder why they aren’t getting the results they anticipated,” stated Mike Rowland, president of Impact Interactions. “Our methodology begins with defining success from a measurement point of view. We then build out key performance indicators (KPIs) to track our success based upon three categories of measurement: Traffic, Behavior, and Value. Too often marketers substitute traffic metrics or behavior
activities for value. This is why so many senior executives have difficulty believing that social media is effective. In order to demonstrate true value to the organization, you have to move beyond traffic and behavior and find the economic value of social media activities. Our expert panel presentation for iStrategy San Francisco attendees will help their organizations to move forward and realize the economic value of their efforts using social media in a B2B setting.”

By demonstrating a stronger method of using social media to compliment rather than compete with existing marketing activities, Mr. Rowland’s presentation will provide real world case studies from clients such as Cisco, NetApp, and SAP that translate efforts into stronger conversion, engagement, and ultimately business results. Whether the focus is lead generation, brand awareness, trial, promotion, or support, this presentation will demonstrate why integration of effort is critical to success.

Attendees will be able to understand why traffic and behavior metrics do not equal value in social media. Through social media case studies, marketers attending the iStrategy event will also understand why counts and followers don’t necessarily lead to value, while activities with strong calls to action and follow through do bring value to the organization.

“I look forward to presenting our best practices which help our clients succeed,” states Mr. Rowland. “If social media is to move past the hype and become a successful long term strategic asset for companies, we have to demonstrate not only what works but how success is measured.”

Impact Interactions’ president Mike Rowland to host panel discussion “Riding the Hype of Social Media for B2B Marketing” at iStrategy Conference, April 5, 2011 in San Jose, CA.

In the current economic environment it becomes absolutely vital for businesses to be able to reach and acquire new clients and grow while at the same time managing costs. Social networks are a great and easy way for B2C companies to communicate with their potential customers, but their use by B2B businesses presents a number of challenges. Nowadays buyers set the ground rules on when and where they will engage and increasingly turn to trusted third parties for education (including blogs, Twitter, and other social media), not sales people. This means B2B marketers must develop an integrated social media strategy which identifies where customer conversations are taking place and effectively uses various digital channels to acquire, convert and retain business customers while simultaneously nurturing existing clients. Sound challenging? It is.

This panel discussion will examine NetApp’s, Cisco’s, and SAP’s social media strategy and how new online channels and interactions provide the company with innovative ways to market to their business audience. It will also look at examples how these companies organize their teams and how they integrate social into the rest of their campaign mix, with results of specific campaigns, and show simple tools used to build an integrated Social campaign and measure success.

Join Navneet Grewal, Director of Online Marketing with NetApp; Jeanette Gibson, Director Corporate Communications with Cisco; and Sara Larsen, Senior Director of Digital Marketing with SAP, along with Mike Rowland in learning how to help your B2B efforts move to the next level of success.

To learn more about this great senior executive level event, please click here.