Razorfish argue that connected consumers are now the mainstream

So what is the best way to anticipate how people are going to change in the way they use technology? Razorfish think they may have found a way to do this. Rather than surveying the entire population they have taken a sample of highly connected users. They argue that by studying these early adopters of social media we can get a deeper understanding of where we are going and what works in this new more highly interactive, real time, connected world. Their main conclusion is that nowadays “the experience is the message”.

97% of these consumers had searched for a brand on line, 70% had read a corporate blog, 67% had watched a commerical on YouTube, 65% had played a branded browser based game and 73% had posted a product review on a website like Amazon.
40% had actually friended a brand on Facebook and 26% followed a brand on twitter. These customers were definitely being pulled.

However interestingly 44% of those who friend a brand on twitter said it was to get exclusive deals. Similar statistics were shown for Facebook. Dell of course have already shown that this works in cash returns. I can imagine many brands will look at this with interest. Pizza Hut and Papa Johns have had similar experiences when offering free stuff via an iphone app and facebook respectively.

The report also gave some insight into how change is taking place in how information is dispersed. They found that these consumers are increasingly getting their news from social networking sites from Facebook and Twitter. I guess the great thing about news from these sources is that it is very much customized to your interests. I have certainly learnt about several fairly big stories via facebook especially breaking news.

Razorfish conclude that in terms of brands we are more actively engaged with brands than ever before and the companies that are getting it right are the ones that are focusing on the “experience” that customers are having with their brand. 97% of these consumers reported that digital experience has influenced whether or not they went on to make a purchase.

So can these results generalize to the general population? Well Razorfish suggest that what is incredible about digital technology is that people are picking it up very quickly. The speed and scale with which digital fluency grows is very transforming. They believe these connected consumers do represent the mainstream. Personally I find this a pretty big jump to make. There is no way that the majority are behaving the same way as these more highly connected users. However this does not mean that in a year or two this will not change. They are certainly right that the technology is getting entrenched in society quickly and the next generation of young adults will be even more involved with it.

We would love to hear what you think. Leave a message or contact us.

If you need an example of real return on investment for social media (ROI) then it is worth considering the Dell story.

Dell has been using Social Media since 2006. They started out with a simple corporate blog.. However their real success came when they started to useTwitter in June 2007. This June (two years later) overall revenue traced to twitter links had topped US$3M. Those are fairly staggering statistics.

The beauty of the technology is that it is easy to track people that link to the system via their Twitter Posts. So at last we have some real hard evidence of Social Media return on investement. Most of the revenue has been generated by making ad hoc sales via their @DellOutlet stream. However Lional Menchaca Dell’s chief blogger argues that they have also seen that Twitter posts are “driving interest in new product as well”.

In the past year Dell have really upped their Twitter presence increasing the number of streams (focused around targeted groups of customers). Some of the streams include Twitter exclusive offers which have created a buzz and helped them to grow their follower base (now at 1.2 M followers in the US). This year they have also started to create international Twitter streams like @DellOutletUK.

In a sense with their Twitter streams Dell have mastered the idea of Seth Godin’s permission marketing in real time. Twitter followers choose to have the information and they have an easy way to turn on and off the marketing stream as and when they see fit. The customer is in control tailoring the type of marketing information that they would like to be sent to them and when. In addition by creating exclusive offers on Twitter Dell have developed a story to go with their stream. People like a good deal and so news has travelled fast about the special offers which in turn has generated more followers.

No doubt Twitter keep a record of which Twitter streams drive the highest number of new converts. It would be interesting to see what the Statistics are like for Dell as compared to other corporates!

Here at SociaLNK we like to keep on top of the latest changes in Social Media Marketing. We would be happy to discuss a strategy for your company.

Laura Fitton

So is Twitter useful to your company even if your customers aren’t on Twitter? Laura Fitton seems to think so. Laura is a great advocate for all things Twitter and recently co-authored “Twitter for dummies”. This is the woman who persuaded Guy Kawasaki (the worlds no.1 user of Twitter) to try the technology – her enthusiasm is clearly contagious.

As Laura puts it Twitter is a fantastic P2P tool (Person to Person tool). Any business needs to link with people in other businesses anyone can use it as a valuable networking and information gathering tool. Your company will only find their customers on Twitter if Twitter is relevant to that audience.

However she identifies five off platform benefits of Twitter:

1. SEO – Twitter makes for good SEO because it is frequently updated content.

2. Content Generation – you can live stream your twitter updates wherever your customers are, on multiple websites, blogs or forums. As Laura puts it “You can stream it out in interesting ways, it is very malleable, it is like clay”.

3. Research: Research can be passive to identify the keywords in your industry and their amplitude. She describe this as using Twitter as a  ”consumer sentiment engine”. You can also research more actively by following particular links or tags and analyse the results in detail. If you do have customers on Twitter some companies have actually used Twitter to  carry out live focus groups.

4. Word of Mouth – Word of mouth definitely leaves Twitter. Both Dell and U.S. National Hockey League have data to show that sales have been directly linked to twitter posts (they can be tracked because of the hash tags used to access the web sites for purchases). People pass on the twitter links to their friends and families.

5. P.R. Gravity – If as a company you are seen to be enthusiastically sharing content and engaging in the conversations around your topic then journalists will start finding you as a source. What an easy way to create good PR. What better way to be seen as a market leader?.

Laura’s more general advice for companies starting out on Twitter is to have multiple Twitter streams and have a dedicated home page that provides information about all their twitter streams. She recommends looking at the Dell, Zappos and Walmart sites for inspiration.

I really enjoyed this interview it gave me a good overview of the many ways we are learning to exploit this new real time technology. Contact us if you would like to explore using Twitter in your company.

Twitter is a medium we are all still learning about and many companies are nervous to jump on the bandwagon. It is worth considering what we can learn from some of the companies that have climbed the learning curve ahead of us!

Dell seem to be one the companies that have really thought about social media. They have a great website called “idea storm” where customers can post their idea’s about the company and then other customers can vote for which are the best ideas. Clear feedback is given when ideas from the website actually make it into their products.

On Twitter the company has created multiple twitter profiles and each one serves a specific audience. So Dell Outlet posts about the latest deals on refurbished Dell computers. Other streams are dedicated to small businesses. This means that you can really tweak your Dell tweets so that they are relevant to you.

Another company that is really using twitter to provide timely information is JetBlue. This is a no frills airline who have used twitter to provide the best customer service possible. They provide instant updates on flight information and delays. They also answer questions from potential customers live. They also monitor twitter very carefully and in this way are able to provide extremely quick responses whenever there is a complaint made about them on the airwaves! If your company has a real time element to it then twitter is surely a medium to consider.

It is not just technical companies using twitter. Zappos an online retail site has all its 200 employees using twitter on a regular basis. They have over 1 million followers! All this tweeting helps keep their brand profile high and helps them develop relationships with their customers which are hard to do any other way for an online retailer.

Here at SociaLNK we would love to hear if you have had any twitter success yourself? Maybe you know some other great examples?