Google +1 and Using Social to Drive Network Based Search Relevancy

Posted on March 30, 2011 by teds

Google’s move with +1 is sparking a lot of conversations but one area which really intrigues me, even before I can see the feature in use myself, is the implication to relevancy via an individual’s social & geo network.

One of the chief issues I’ve always seen with search delivering the right results is the lack of insight into who is searching. With the introduction of +1 Google gains a much more real insight – what those around you are looking at. In aggregate this is useful in killing spam, building up good resources and sorting out poor / unliked results but when applied back to a search’s network whether it’s a contact or location based it becomes hugely powerful.

For example, if I search for “Miramar” result #1 is a city, #2 is a military base and nowhere on page 2 is the result I’m looking for – my former apartment community. Using location Google is able to infer some information about what result I may want, and even shows a map, but it’s not enough certainity to switch out the result set. With +1 data from local (geotargeted) networks they get a whole other dimension of insights to counterweight what is the most relevant (aka most linked too/ word weighted) with what is actually being looked at and suddenly the right result has a real shot of making it up top.

If Google is able to build enough of a profile network, +1 could become even more important in driving search results by understanding that all of my friends searching for a particular sports bar with a generic name or from within a larger chain were looking at the same venue and adjust accordingly, potentially even resetting the result in time given the type of listing.

Facebook is already doing this to some degree by leveraging your own likes, connections and your larger your network to suggest people, places and brand results in searches, and most of the time it’s right on (and with 2 million+ likes, that’s a big headstart). As Facebook and Google war over who is going to control searching, relevancy to the individual has got to be in the top couple of spots for importance and whoever understands the most about the person searching can deliver the best results to win their repeat attention and usage.

Google, while smart to bring in social feedback, is behind in a big way when it comes to making this applicable personally. Facebook and even youtube, twitter and others simply have them beat in connections per user and a partnership a la Amazon’s “your Facebook friends…” would have let them move quicker to incorporate individual social learnings into output. Even without the deep networks for users there’s a lot of implications to improving relevancy right now just by weighting down “-1” results, and of course there’s going to be a lot of blackhat attempts to leverage the tool to influence results too.

Combating the inevitable service issue: Building an army of advocates, or at least positive posters.

Posted on February 15, 2011 by teds

I don’t work in the flower industry, don’t know much about the business (beyond how to order products at least) but when Teleflora made a Facebook post with a customer service email address the day after Valentine’s Day, the reason why was pretty obvious – something had gone wrong – something which was making people very, very upset.

Of course anyone working in ecommerce, or any corporation, could have told you there would be problems. Tens of millions of flower orders , dozens of companies, and just 18 or so hours to get them all there on time (but not too early), it’s only logical that some orders would fail within the process… Some complaints were inevitable.

And some level of complaints are inevitable for almost all b2c companies. No matter how perfect the process is, something will fail at some point and whether it’s the fault of the company or something entirely out of their hands, like the weather, it’s all going to come back on them, and these days back to social media. So knowing that something bad will happen, it’s up to us as marketers/ social strategists to insure that when problems come up we have the right plans to respond, but also that they don’t dominate the conversation or become the purpose of our page. We need to be more than just support channels .

Going back to my Teleflora example (and to be clear and not just pick out one company, the same issue is happening with ProFlowers and others that I checked), something is missing – balance. On the pages of most flower brands I visited just about everything was negative and support related. If these companies had happy customers (and I know they do because I am one) they were nowhere to be found and likely for good reason, no one had asked them to join up and share.

My suggestion to flower business earlier in the week was to provide an insert with orders for people to evangelize their great orders (or their bad ones, a review is what it is). All it takes is a simple note to remind people to comment, to tell them where you are, and out of the millions, thousands or even of just hundreds of customers you touch, you’ll get some balance… You’ll get light advocates.

Take this a step further, build a social program that encourages fan participation before the issue and you’ll be far more prepared when one does strike. This is where best practices really kick in – buying fans in masse with discounts, coupons and giveaways is easy and gets numbers, but successfully cultivating them takes a great deal more than good offers, it takes useful content, engaging directly around posts other than support, even how the business goes to market, the policies and programs that you have and how your fans react to them. But if you can build a dialogue and a regular flow (and yes, this is possible for even seemingly mundane brands) then you have moderate advocates on and around to help when there are negatives, to explain that there is a good to the bad, and to be talking about things other than support and trouble. And of course if you really go all the way, develop that full advocacy program and engage customers to become brand evangelists, community leaders, and the like, well now you have a whole force of people to balance and even better, aid.

Now don’t get me wrong, the issue customers are having with their flower orders are certainly very real and need a response, not to be buried or hidden by a flood of off topic discussions. Transparency is good, real responses are what matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have both – it is again a balance of what your social media channels do for you and your customers.

As for the support side, we all know it isn’t easy, or cheap, but it is something which companies tend to get… and here, the flower companies are doing a good job of responding 1:1, giving direct email addresses, and all of the other support processes you’d hope for when customers are upset and support lines are backed up with callers… they may not be perfect but they’re on it for this part. But while the support side is going well, when all people see is bad, they get more upset, the assume nothing is going right, and they lose the benefit of peer to peer support or comments to turn too.

And that’s why you need your fans to know, connect and be involved with your social media presence now, when things are good. Social media is not just about offers and sales generation, not just a support system, but when used right, it can be a dialogue platform to get insights, have the right discussions that curtail or stop issues early on, and yes, be a place where people share all the great things your product / service / brand are doing that may them advocates and repeat customers.

5 tips for creating a successful contest on Facebook

Posted on February 25, 2010 by teds

Study social users and you’ll immediately find that what they’re looking to be engaged with through interesting content, events, photos and yes, contests. Contesting has long been used by brands looking to participate in user based communities as it offers a simple way to build discussion and potentially even capture customer data.

Of course with thousands of brands competing for the attention of the hundreds of millions of social users it’s easy to get lost in the dust, or even worse, turn a good program into a disaster with a logistical problem. So before you start in on a contest of your own here are 5 tips to get you going in the right direction.

1. Contest frequency is as important as prize value.

While users love the big prizes these are your fans and they want to participate. Brands that understand this successfully capture a lot of attention and day to day growth by giving away something here and there rather than waiting months to do all inclusive, super expensive giveaways.

Alternate between the big giveaways and the simple ones. Depending on your brand a t-shirt can get nearly as much response as a premium product. And the more often you give, the more people look.

In the example above Hot Topic drives great fan response and keeps people logged in by handing out movie tickets and other small ticket items one at a time, randomly.

2. Keep your contest on facebook, use apps to extend it.

While it’s easy, and generally a good idea, to do a simple video, photo or even “like” contest you want people giving something back to you and you don’t want to force them to leave your page to do so (that would reduce the interest and buzz). Whether it’s a few pieces of data, a survey response or virally spreading the giveaway, the basic contests are limited and you have to go jump outside the box to get richer tools.

Wildfire is one of the more popular apps offering a variety of features from basic data capture through to a fully co-branded sharable experience. This comes at a cost but if you’re expecting a larger response you want the email optins, the fans, the branding space.

Just don’t try to force people through long forms or to share the contest, never works in the long term.

3. Spell out all the details in your head & then to the user.

Individually people tend to be forgiving but in mass they can be easily upset and downright underhanded. You want your contest to be airtight so everyone has a good experience… fans take these things very seriously and confusion leads to disgruntled response, emails and other unneeded negatives. Keep it all positive and airtight so no one feels cheated in the end…

To be sure you’re got think your contest through at length yourself and then share it with a half dozen co-workers to see what they think.

Is it easy to enter? If so, is it easy to game?
Is there a way to figure out who entered? If not how will you get an answer?
Do people know who can enter and who cant?
Are the rules easily found to clarify things? Are they broad enough to cover an issue? Fraud? Cheating?
Do you have a way to contact the winner? That is an important one.

4. Take advantage of profile targeting & avoid upset users.

Since contests are rarely open to, or intended for everyone when it comes to ads or a post to your wall this feature is truly invaluable in facebook contests.

Use profile targeting (country / demographics) wisely and you can minimize upset fans who are not able to enter. This becomes essential as your page grows from country specific to global and fans feel left out.

You can also accelerate your growth finding well suited users and driving them over to your page. And since you’re fan page is where the contest takes place people can fan you in the same ad – double win.

5. Don’t “set it and forget it”

Your first few contests will have hiccups and users always have issues. Don’t leave your fans hanging and guessing… jump in and help. This not only solves problems but enables user to user assistance as fans find a solution and share it with others. There’s nothing worse than turning your computer on after a long weekend to discover the great promotion you did failed. Your users will be on 24×7, don’t forget that.

And remember to always K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple, stupid). Just like no one reads an entire web pages, users get bored with long posts, want to find a simple method and want a simple answer.

This is the golden rule of just about anything in social but even more so in contests. People’s attention spans online are short, as is their willingness to put up with barriers or issues. When you want to get people involved you want to get a lot involved and the easier it is for everyone to participate the more will.

As a final suggestion, never forget about the wall – that’s the most valuable real estate in social marketing and where you should be aiming to get. So in every giveaway be sure you’re aware of how your promo can, or can’t get you in that space.

Social Media Strategies: You can’t afford to turn the computer off Friday at 5

Posted on December 23, 2009 by teds

I think it’s safe to say we all enjoy getting away from the office at least sometimes but for many companies, social stops when the clock strikes 5 (or maybe 6). While there’s a lot of logic behind this in the eyes of those doing the posting it doesn’t reflect the reality of the channel – customers don’t stop knocking. The notion of responding 24×7 or close to it isn’t new, many companies have customer service on 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, potentially every day of the year, but with so much of social being handled by more “senior” staff this philosophy is often forgotten.

When companies go away from their channels two important things happen – first the questions stack up which is an annoying experience for the customer who is waiting and the employee who must wade through tweets all of Monday but more importantly an opportunity is lost.

Think about it for a second – a few years ago your web traffic was probably minimal on the weekend and big during the week. Weekdays may still be bigger than weekends but it’s a digital world and people are online all days of the week, from the office, from the home, even the mall on their cell phone.
Think about it some more – issues happen 24×7 and in a connected world no one waits to hear back on Monday. By the time you respond to provide the insight your customer needs, they already bought or that new nasty video with an incorrect fact is already out there.

The solution is of course an unpleasant one for anyone reading this but it is reality. You need to be on more than from the office. Whether it’s a customer service rep taking an hourly glance at automated reports or your staff actually getting into the weeds the biggest gains happen when no one expects it. Respond at 9pm on a Sunday and you’ll wow a few power users. Get product announcement clarified and you’ll avoid the confusion from that one blog. It’s not like you aren’t already on checking your own accounts anyways…

Not going to respond, don’t bother playing in social media

Posted on September 17, 2009 by teds

The astonishing growth of Social Media can be attributed solely to the relationships that are developed through it. Indeed while social may have the term media attached, media is a far second to the social component. Thus when companies get involved in social they must remember that success comes only from a two way communication.

Coming into the social space is not a selective engagement; the second a twitter account is established, a facebook page launched or a video uploaded, customers gain a new channel by which to respond and respond they do. Unfortunately many organizations in their rush to get on the social train forget the purpose of social and therefore abuse and ultimately suffer as a result of their participation.
With twitter it is common for companies to setup shop and blast out special offers and discounts but remain silent when a question is asked. Instead of benefiting from a relationship these companies look clueless and add to the frustration that their customers already often have about reaching someone for help. On the other hand companies who respond are often praised and certainly preferred. People on social expect companies to act much like their personal contacts.

Getting it right is not a difficult task. In an ideal world both marketing and customer service should utilize the same social channels to sell and serve but even that is not always required. So long as someone with information, awareness and a list of support phone numbers can do a great job in connecting customers back to whatever it is they are looking for. Responding to questions asked directly is the first step but over time reaching out into conversations to provide assistance not only helps build a relationship with one customer but can quickly add to the overall visibility and positive impression of the organization. Companies who “get it” commonly see comments about how great their service is, even if phone or email users may have another opinion.

While acquisition marketing is a benefit of social, it’s wrong to make it the only focus or even the main focus for most companies. The true value of social as so many great case studies have indicated is in engagement, brand visibility and loyalty. Thus while offers are definitely successful it is ultimately about using social to reach out and be reached that brings real results. For companies who lack the resources, or simply are unwilling to go from talking to a customer to talking with a customer social is the wrong vehicle. As a customer of many businesses we all know that going without any response is one of the fastest ways to be turned away from a business. On the other hand the companies that get it, connect and are on our level are the ones we trust, chose and pass along to our networks.

Competing in the social space means moving right now.

Posted on July 7, 2008 by teds

Last week I put up an article about ways to get your brand into user generated content and social networking websites in which I mentioned that if you aren’t willing to move fast, you shouldn’t move at all. This morning’s release by EA of a Scrabble Game on FaceBook serves as a great example of just why you have to be ready, willing and able to move quicker than quick to play in the current market.

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Let’s talk viral… getting your brand into an online community

Posted on June 24, 2008 by teds

If you run a big, or even just an older brand’s online presence you’ve probably had the “viral” conversation at least once and are downright sick of executives asking you how the company can get more “social”. While a lot of companies have put a great foot forward in building their own communities, this is a difficult proposition and even if it succeeds, it’s only going to reach a small slice of the viral world. The truth is, most user’s live on big networks (social networking sites) and niche sites (the independent forums, blogs, etc…) so let’s talk about some ways to reach out in someone else’s field.

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