Outdoor University Managing Consumer Buzz On Social Media

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Consumer Buzz/Social Media

Managing Consumer Buzzon Social Media


Managing Consumer Buzzon Social Media

WELCOME TO OUTDOOR UNIVERSITY®



PresenterMike GeraciV.P. Strategic Development

Verde PR & Consulting



• PR• Strategic brand communications• Media Relations• Integrated social media campaigns• Online Community Relations• Social Influencer Marketing

What We Do


• What is Buzz?

• How do you Generate Buzz?

• How do you Leverage Buzz?

• How do you Monitor buzz?

Managing Consumer Buzz on Social MediaWill Cover


What is Buzz?• Buzz = WoM x 7• Word of Mouth (WoM) = Face to face, telephone,

email, text messaging...Most potent form of marketing

• Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to new data from (Publicis media network ZenithOptimedia, 2008)

Managing Consumer Buzz with Social Media


What is Buzz?

• Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. (“Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch, March 2007)



What is Buzz?

• Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations (65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities). (Yankelovich)



What is Buzz?

• eMarketer found that for 18 to 34-year-olds, social media has become the second-most important marketing form, behind only recommendations from friends and family



What is Buzz?

“When asked how certain sources influence respondents in the awareness, consideration and action phases of making a purchase, respondents consistently attribute strong to heavy influence to word-of-mouth from known peers, both online and off. This bears out across all phases, with influence nearly doubling during the awareness and action phases, as compared to the consideration phase.”

- Razorfish Social Influence Report ‘09



What is Buzz?

• Buzz = WoM x 7?

• People need to have at least 7 touch points before they make a purchasing decision. (David Ogilvy)

• Buzz can be positive or negative



How do you GENERATE buzz?

• Sociology – Understanding why people and groups act the way they do.

• Emotional Contagion - The tendency to catch and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of others.

• How social channels turbo charge this




"Conversations about brands, products and services are increasingly woven into the interactions of social networks as a means to connect with others, and these conversations have great influence even though people aren't consciously asking about brand opinions."

- Shiv Singh, RazorfishFluent Social Influence Report



Online Buzz drives offline



Online Buzz drives offline


Why do people talk?

65% of forum contributors give advice offline based on information found online, compared with 35% of noncontributors.



Why do people talk?• The “you” reason - People talk because you’re

creating or doing something worth talking about. Word of mouth only works for great products and great services sold by great people.

• The “me” reason - People talk when it makes them feel smart, important, or helpful. When we share recommendations about brands and products, there’s a lot of emotion behind it.



Why do people talk?

• The “us” reason - It’s one of the most powerful human emotions, and whenever you can help your fans better organize themselves, you’re rewarded with real, sustainable word of mouth.

- Andy Sernovitz,

Damn I wish I’d thought of that




“Brands are built on what people are saying about you, not what you're saying about yourself. People say good things about you when…You have a great product and

You get people to spread the word about it.”

- Guy Kawasaki



How do you generate Buzz?

• Be remarkable

• Be immersed

• Have an opinion – Don’t be Vanilla

• Take risks that benefit the community

• Be of service

• Boring offline, boring online



How do you get people to spread the word?

• Target the influencers:– Activists: influencers get involved, with their

communities, political movements, charities and so on.– Connected: influencers have large social networks– Impact: influencers are looked up to and are trusted

by others– Active minds: influencers have multiple and diverse

interests– Trendsetters: influencers tend to be early adopters

(or leavers) in marketsKeller, Ed and Berry, Jon. The Influentials, Free Press, 2003



How do you get people to spread the word?

• Social Influence Marketing (SIM)– Focus is placed on specific key individuals (or

types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.



The Right People

• Key Influencers– Pros, guides, media, retailers,

• Social Influencers– Every day people who participate in social platforms

• Known Peer Influencers– Family members, friends…closest to inner circle



HOW do you get them to spread the word?


• Before you engage, you have to gather

• Build a relationship/establish trust

• Incentives

• Illusion of Scarcity

• Swag is (still) King


Department of Goods Launch





Strategy = Social Influence Marketing• Leverage all marketing channels to drive viral beta/VIP

launch– Best customers get email invite– Athletes posted code on their FB, blogs...– Media received 10 codes to give away– Communities– Facebook page

• Time sensitive viral VIP Code• 1 in 10 orders fully comped• $$$ in door prizes





Department of Goods Launch Results


• People posting codes in...• Twitter feeds• Online forum/community threads• Their Facebook profiles• Media held contests giving away codes for ReTweets,

Trivia, etc... (Wired, BoingBoing, Luxist...)• Facebook page hit 2,500 fans in 3 days• 50,000 visitors in first 7 days.


Department of Goods Launch Results


• Build a relationship/establish trust • Incentives• Illusion of Scarcity• Swag is (still) King


How do you MONITOR Buzz?


• Why is it important to monitor?– Customer Service– PR– Competitive Analysis– Crisis Management– Impressions– Trends– News– ROI


How do you MONITOR Buzz?


• The (Free) Tools to Listen– Social Mention – (www.socialmention.com) – search.Twitter.com– Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts)

• Premium Services– Channel Signal (www.channelsignal.com)– SM2 (Sm2.techrigy.com)


Monitoring Case Study


• A Green Bay Packers football player, Nick Barnett, got mad at Backcountry.com.

• He tweeted that Backcountry.com showed him disrespect by inking ‘Go Bears’ on the box that contained his order, and then contacted CS to complain.

• Nick Barnett has 86,085 twitter followers, and his feed is aggregated into multiple NFL player twitter feeds, potentially reaching nearly a million followers nationwide.


Case Study:



Case Study:


Later, another tweet, very upset that his overnight package didn’t arrive on a Saturday (a misunderstanding), telling his followers never to order from Backcountry.com again:

Not only did these tweets reach a huge audience, they were ReTweeted extensively by his fans. It was a PR and CS nightmare.


Case Study:


Communications started with this Tweet:


Case Study:


Mea Culpa on our Blog




This post was brought to the attention of Barnett, his followers and our customers via our Twitter feed:

CS called Barnett directly and spent five minutes on the phone with him apologizing and sharing a few laughs. Barnett was thoroughly impressed with the call and said: “Man, I really appreciate you taking the time to call. It shows your ethics in the business world, and you can consider me a repeat customer. You have won my business.”




Barnett followed up with this tweet:

Greg Bedard of the Milwaukee Journal read The Goat blog post and tweeted this:




Which was later picked up by Barnett himself

And ReTweeted by his fans...


So, yeah...Managing Consumer Buzz with Social Media

• Buzz happens...

• Brands need to “socialize” to help drive buzz

• Be remarkable, increase relevance and value

• Listen/Monitor


Links/Resources


Infuse – Blog for Influencer Marketinghttp://influencer50.wordpress.com/

Andy Sernovitz – Damn, I wish I thought of thathttp://www.damniwish.com/

Guy Kawasaki – How to Change the Worldhttp://Blog.guykawasaki.com

White Paper: Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Reporthttp://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1

White Paper: Creating Contagious:http://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/documents/research/Creating%20Contagious.pdf


Questions

Mike GeraciVerde PR

[email protected]@mikethegeraci

@verdeprwww.verdepr.com/blog

Mikegeraci.posterous.com(307)734-7575


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Outdoor University Managing Consumer Buzz On Social Media