by Josh Bernoff

Mobile is a big part of our new book "Harnessing the Groundswell". To that end, I'm looking for your suggestions for the best mobile applications.

It's my contention that consumers are surrounded by more information, with more immediate access to it, than ever before. Mobile Internet access (but also mobile email and SMS text messages) are a big part of that. Mobile applications can get access to location, a camera, your identity, your phone number, and SMS messages, not to mention the plain old wonderful real-time Net. This changes things. As a marketer or other corporate staffer, your best action is to provide mobile customers as much information as possible, as instantly as possible.

So in the comments here, or by email, I'd like to hear your suggestions for mobile apps to go in the book. The best examples for this purpose:

• Empower consumers with instant access to information.
• Are of long-term value, not just for a short-term campaign.
• Can be iPhone apps, but I'm also very interested in Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, and SMS apps.
• I have a bias toward corporate, government, or non-profit apps, vs. startups.

Think of this as a contest. If your favorite application "wins," it gets profiled in the book. Looking forward to hearing your ideas.

by Josh Bernoff

The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA are in a strange position.  

People are discussing drugs and treatments all over net, from WebMD to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Survivors’ Network.

But pharmaceutical companies can’t encourage or participate in this activity in any way. In one case in my research, a pharma company employee begged me to take down a reference to a site her company had sponsored – the logo was right there on the site – even though the company had provided an unrestricted grant and did not influence content in any way.

This level of hypocrisy is absurd, and serves no one.   Now PhRMA – the pharmaceutical industry organization – is proposing the creation of a logo that could be placed on social sites to indicate where information that meets the FDA’s guidelines for fair balance, non-promotion of off-label uses, reporting of adverse effects, and other regulations would be strictly followed.

This is an ideal way out of the current state. The logo should be prominent. Furthermore, I think pharma companies should moderate and appropriately respond to social activity, including blocking off-label suggestions and following up on adverse effects. This works now for GSK’s alli community , which exists only because alli is an over-the-counter drug and therefore is not subjected to the same level of scrutiny by the FDA.

Sure it’s expensive to do this moderation, but alli shows it can be done, and effectively. Pharma companies are enthusiastic about social media but terrified by the lack of FDA rules, which means they never know if they’ll be cited for inappropriate behavior.   It’s time for the FDA to indicate what behavior is appropriate, including moderation and the logo linking to fair-balance information. Then people who need information about medications will be able to benefit from peer content. It’s a lot better idea than leaving all that peer content on unregulated sites, and allowing pharma only with ads with pages of small print disclaimers. How 20^th century!

by Josh Bernoff

Where do you go when you need the answer to a question?

While writing the first chapter of Harnessing the Groundswell, I wanted to cite a case -- a movie that recently tanked due to bad online buzz during its first weekend. I recalled the example, but not the movie.

Did Google have the answer? I tried combinations like "movie tanked word of mouth" and got nothing. (There is a right combination of words to get this -- can you guess it? Do you want to spend your time guessing stuff like that?) Google news, which is where I started looking, was similarly useless.

Twitter search is useless, too, since the event in question happened months ago.

So I asked Twitter.

In minutes, I heard back from nine people with the answer, Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno. @DwriteN linked me to her paper on the topic. @ericcomes cited an Infegy buzz study, which I'll probably footnote in the book. Others suggested Valkyrie and Gentlemen Broncos as alternatives.

People's brains. What an incredible resource!

P.P.S. the secret key word for google was "decline".

by Josh Bernoff

I was looking over the winners and finalists from the Forrester Groundswell Awards and it hit me: this proves excellence in social media can come from anywhere.

The consumer and employee winners sell car races, yarn, security software, credit scores, books, and shipping. The B2B winners sell computer products, marketing services, online services, regulatory compliance services, environmental services, and enterprise risk services.

The finalists came from a diverse set of industries including travel, education, retail, financial services, auto, media, wine, weight loss help, insurance, and steel manufacturing. Not to mention a product that lets women go the bathroom standing up.

The methods are diverse, too. The winners included online market research communities, blogs, podcasts, a word of mouth campaign, and online communities. Finalists used YouTube, widgets, avatars, idea communities, Facebook, and online events. And a number of successful entrants created campaigns that spanned multiple social channels.

The geographic diversity wasn't as great, but one winner was from Australia and one finalist came from Brazil. In the past we've gotten some fantastic European entries.

Look, people the message is this: Do not tell me you cannot do this. People in every country and in every industry, with all sorts of customers and all sorts of management and all sorts of objectives, are creating not just innovative but incredibly effective social applications. I've worked with six insurance companies in the last two years. I just talked to a bunch of milk processing executives ("got social?"). I have yet to find a company, an industry, or a geography that can't benefit from connecting its customers with each other through social.

There are no excuses left. Just do it.

by Josh Bernoff

This will go live just as I'm announcing the winners at the Forrester Consumer Forum. These awards are based on business performance, and with 140+ entries this year, they represent truly outstanding social technology applications. If you want to learn how to do social technology applications with real results, please click through and read these entries -- you're sure to learn a lot. This is a long post, since it includes all 13 winners and the finalists in each category.

Business to Consumer Division

B2C Listening

Finalists

Intercontinental Hotel Group / Communispace
McNally Smith College of Music / Risdall Marketing Group
Walmart SmartMoms Community / Martin Agency and Communispace

Winner

NASCAR Fan Council / Vision Critical

NASCAR and Vision Critical created a community of 12,000 fans and used it to reduce research costs by 80%. NASCAR took the community’s suggestion and changed its restarts from single file to double file, which fans loved. They also improved brand attributes including “thrilling and exciting” and “down to earth” by at least 10%.

B2C Talking

Finalists

Bank of America Morris on Campus / Organic
GoGirl Conversations / Risdall Marketing
HootSuite 2.0 Launch Campaign
MasterCard Brazil “What’s Priceless To You?” / Universal McCann & McCann Erickson
TripAdvisor More Than Footprints Charity Campaign

Winner

Lion Brand Yarn Blog and Podcast / Converseon

Converseon identified influential bloggers and social networks dedicated to knitting and crocheting. Entering this conversation, Lion Brand Yarn created a biweekly podcast that generated 15,000 to 20,00 downloads and a blog featuring “knit-alongs” so customers could work on the same project at the same time. This drove impressive ecommerce at the brand site, including people ordering the knit-along projects. Those who visited the company’s social media were 41% more likely to buy at the Web site.

B2C Energizing

Finalists

Adobe Students Real or Fake
Intuit Social Campaigns
Jeep Experience / Organic
Mad Men Yourself / Deep Focus
Redwood Creek Blaze the Trail / Affinitive

Winner

Norton Advocates / Zuberance

Zuberance’s simple yet clever program identifies those who are most likely to promote a product through surveys, then gives them the tools to put their reviews on sites like CNET and Amazon. Using Zuberance’s word of mouth platform, Norton recruited 10,000 of its fans or advocates and helped them to post 1000 reviews on online review sites. Among the amazing results for Norton after this campaign was that its average rating on consumer sites shot up from two to four stars, and its Net Promoter Score doubled.

B2C supporting

Finalists

Atkin’s Community / Powered, Inc.
Lenovo Customer Community
Marriott Rewards Insiders / LiveWorld

Winner

myFICO Online Customer Community / FICO

FICO, an organization that scores consumers on credit, created a site where consumers can share credit knowledge, experiences, and advice with each other. Because FICO was prevented by regulations from advising customers on how to improve credit scores, it created a community where those customers could help each other. Among the results: a 1% decrease in support costs (costs had gone up 23% in the previous year) and 10% of all support calls are directed to the community, cutting the amount of time CSRs need to spend on the phone. Plus 39% of search engine traffic now lands on a community page, and 13% of all online sales include viewing one of those community pages. Finally, a customer spends on average 66% more after joining the community.

B2C Embracing

Finalists

Adobe Acrobat Ideas / BrightIdea
Hyundai ThinkTank / Passenger
Justin.tv Feedback Forum / UserVoice

Winner

Scholastic Book Clubs Reading Task Force Community / Communispace

Scholastic truly embraced the input of the community in its project to redesign the flyer that is its main vehicle for book sales through schools. Using a community of 200 teachers and 100 parents, the company embarked on a 10 week collaborative process to improve the design of its school flyer. The process generated ideas like including student recommendations and showing interior pages so parents could judge the reading level of the books. Results – the new flyer has already generated a 3% increase in sales in test markets.

Employee and Non-Profit Division

Managing

Finalists

AFLAC Field Force Buzz
American Family Facebook
ArcelorMittal Web TV
Xerox Competipedia

Winner

UPSjobs Problem Solved / TMP Worldwide

UPSjobs, a social program created with advertising agency TMP Worldwide, reached 4 million job seekers in one year. It included employee videos of actual UPSers, email, employee retention marketing, college recruitment, search engine optimization, job boards, search engine marketing, and social media sites including MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, YouTube, radio, cable television, text messaging, mobile marketing, and the newspaper. 30,000 responses came from mobile marketing alone. Since January the program has generated 345,000 job applications, at a cost of 75 to 80% less than traditional newspaper ads in many cases.

Social Impact

Finalists

CaringBridge.org Online Communities of Care
Boundless Fundraising / Charity Dynamics

Winner

Flowerdale Bush Fire Social Outreach

Flowerdale, a community in Victoria, Australia, was was devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires. 13 people died, 224 houses were lost. The Flowerdale Recovery Committee used blogs, the video site Vimeo, YouTube, and Flickr in a coordinated social effort to raise money to rebuild the town. Social media has helped build a village in a few weeks, raising over $1.5 million, including donations of goods like cars. It has also been crucial in keeping residents informed, liasing with media and government and maintaining a historical record that the Australian National Library wants to put into the national archive. According to the organizers, "We couldn't have coordinated the 20 organisations involved without the wiki."

Business to Business Division

B2B Listening

Winner

CDW Advisory Board / Communispace

Communispace created a research community for B2B retailer CDW, which used it to redefine its sales techniques, generating a 17% increase in customer value.

B2B Talking

Finalists

Blurb Inc.’s Killed Ideas / Ammo Marketing
Juniper Networks Fast Track Promotion

Winner

The Conversation / Eloqua

Eloqua, a marketing services company, created “The Conversation, a online sales tool, and promoted it with blogs, Twitter, social networks, and emails. 18-20% of those who participate convert to leads.

B2B Energizing

Finalists

Mashup Developer Community / JackBe & Never Stop Marketing
NIWeek Activities / National Instruments
Web & Social Media at Impact 2009 Conference / IBM Corporation

Winner

UNLEASH 2009, The Mediasite User Conference / Sonic Foundry

Sonic Foundry’s social applications for its 2009 User Conference included online video, Webcasts, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They created persistent online value from the conference and helped conference attendance, engagement, and satisfaction.

B2B Spreading

Finalists

Inbound Marketing University / Hubspot, Inc.

Winner

MetricStream Community / Regalix

Regalix created a community for MetricStream – a regulatory compliance solutions provider. The portal has 500,000 users and generates 30% of the company’s sales leads.

B2B Supporting

Finalists

NetApp Community
SAP support forums

Winner

commonground Global Community For Environmental Professionals / EDR

The commonground community for environmental professionals helped increase EDR’s search ranking and contributed to 93% of its clients rating its service good or excellent.

B2B Embracing

Finalists

Chordiant Mesh / Chordiant Software
Thwack / Solar Winds

Winner

The Archer E-GRC Ecosystem / Archer Technologies

The Archer E-GRC Ecosystem, including both a community and an application exchange, generated 1529 ideas for Archer Technologies' enterprise risk, governance, and compliance business.

by Josh Bernoff

As usual, when Seth is onto an idea, he gets right to heart of it. He cites two examples: Kindle readers and the people who buy books at Wal-Mart. (While both are book examples, the Kindle readers are more valuable to publishers and authors, the Wal-Mart book buyers are more valuable to Wal-Mart.)

The punch line:

The challenge, then is to look for cues that people give you that they are better, and then cater to them. Every industry has people who are worth more, buzz more, care more and buy more than other people. Don't treat people the same, find the ones that matter more to you, and hug them.

This is exactly right, and what mass marketers mostly get wrong. Do you know who your best customers are? Find out, and roll out the red carpet for them.

For marketers, dealing with individuals is hard. It's about to become central. That's what "Harnessing the Groundswell" is about -- how to efficiently find and harness your best customers.

I also believe in Seth's specific examples, which is why we'll do something special for Kindle readers for our next book. Count on it.

Shel Israel has written a great book, Twitterville, that really shows how businesses large and small can use Twitter as a communications tool. I loved it because of the richness of the stories. Worth your time.

We conducted an experiment -- we did an interview via Twitter earlier today. As one of our spectators, rrupinski, commented: "Interesting experiment - but like watching conversation by telegraph." I found the content interesting, but the delay between when tweets are entered and when they appear made this challenging. Twitter has the reputation of being real-time, and it is a very immediate medium, but measured in minutes, not in seconds. Anyway, as a Groundswell blog reader you get to see the results neatly packaged up for your reading pleasure, below. (This is basically a transcript, but I've made edits to assemble sentences together, fixed spelling, and removed irrelevant comments. But you can still see the abbreviated Twitter style showing through.) My questions are in bold.

jbernoff: Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to our Twinterview with @shelisrael, the author of Twitterville. http://bit.ly/2qVoc If you want to follow the conversation, I recommend this search on Twitter: http://bit.ly/3XTob3

jbernoff Let's get started. First Q: There are already lots and lots of books on social media. Why write another?

shelisrael: The stories of the business & people who have thrived in the community. Hopefully it will give readers some ideas. 

jbernoff I found the stories in the book great and insightful. But is Twitter, one tool, worth a whole book? Why?

Great question Josh. Last I checked there were 24 books on Twitter at AMZN. I regret to say that most of them are damned good. What makes mine different from the other 23 is I try to tell you the stories mostly of business folk who have succeeded on twitter. What make my book unique is the story-telling approach

jbernoff: So, sum it up for us. What would you say are the three to five biggest takeaways from the book?

shelisrael: 1. Twitter more closely emulates real life behavior online than anything that preceded it. 2. It's a tool of communications not marketing 3. It works best in many cases w/other SM [social media] tools. 4. It's as diverse in application as the telephone or email. 5. In a few years a biz without twitter will be like a biz without phone.

jbernoff: Interesting what you say about Twitter being a comm tool. Is Twitter really best for marketing, or for customer service?

shelisrael: Comcast shows a killer app for support. CarlsJr feels it is succeeding with marketing to young males with attitude. Narrowing Twitterville to just 1 biz function is like the blind men describing an elephant.

jbernoff: As writers, you and I know that big thoughts need concentration. But Twitter is conversational. What would you say to the argument that online conversation is destroying our ability to concentrate?

shelisrael: I think those studies should be taken with a grain of salt. Through history "experts" have produced studies about cars, cellphones, email, the web. Last week a study said SM is like cigarettes. All have some truth to them; none are THE truth. All innovation carries unfortunate consequences; not enough to stop progress.

jbernoff: My next book is on the power that technology gives individuals, both employees and customers. How do you think Twitter contributes to empowering individuals? What changes will this cause?

shelisrael: Great book idea Josh. I see the power of the individual in SM enhanced by the network. We are all network nodes. It's a human application of Metcalfe's Law. We are all exponentially empowered as individuals.

jbernoff: What happens with Twitter when employers don’t trust their employees?

shelisrael: Compaies that have not learned to hire & maintain employees they CAN trust are likely to lose best to wiser employers in better economic times.

jbernoff: What’s the #socialnetiquette of using Twitter both professionally and personally? It can be confusing.

shelisrael: I think netiquette & ethics remain constant regardless of the venue. Rudeness at a social gathering looks the same in SM.

jbernoff: I agree in general about #socialnetiquette. But professionals are talking about personal stuff. Can get a bit dicey.

jbernoff: Twitter makes you egotistical. Twitter makes you humble. Which is it?

shelisrael: I don't think Twitter makes you anything that you aren't already. You just have more witnesses for better or worse.

jbernoff: My short review: Read Twitterville. This little book will change the way you think about 140 characters, marketing, and yourself.

Just a quick note to thank the American Marketing Association for recognizing Groundswell with its 2009 Berry-AMA book prize for the best book in Marketing.

The association recognized Groundswell with these words:

Groundswell hit a real ‘sweet spot’ with the selection committee. Not only does it deal with crucial, cutting edge set issues of importance to both large and small firms, but it does so in very pragmatic fashion. Li and Bernoff present a very well-integrated framework for dealing with the array of decisions that must be made, and they provide vivid and compelling examples of the various ‘new media’ at work.

I'm truly humbled by this award, especially since it beat out "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely, which is truly a great book. In the year and half since Groundswell was published, I've enjoyed working with lots of marketers -- that's the most rewarding thing.

I feel a debt at this moment to Charlene Li, my coauthor, and to all of you in the groundswell who continue to help me see what matters to marketers. Keep doing great work, and I'll keep writing about it.

I've been very impressed with Shel Israel's new book "Twitterville." Shel practically initiated the study of corporate social media with his book "Naked Conversations," coauthored with Robert Scoble. Now he's done it again, with a highly readable, thoughtful analysis of strategies for Twitter.

I like to interview authors and other thinkers for the Groundswell blog, but this time we'll do it a little differently. We'll do it on Twitter.

This Friday, 16 October, I'll begin Twittering questions to @shelisrael, and he'll respond to @jbernoff . The interview will start at 12:00 eastern time, 9:00 pacific time.

You can follow the conversation even if you're not a Twitter user. Just go to this address and watch at the appropriate time:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=jbernoff+shelisrael

We'll also be using the hashtag #tville to identify our tweets.

I'll also be posting an edited transcript after the interview is over, so if you miss it, just watch this space.

One more thing. Because Twitter allows anybody to address anybody, some of you may wish to join in this conversation, but to avoid chaos and improve the experience, I'm going to concentrate on the thread of my interview from 12:00 to 12:30 ET. That is, while you can of course tweet at me or Shel during that time, don't be surprised if I don't respond to your tweets as they happen.

Think of this as you would a panel at a conference. We’ll be talking mostly to each other, at least for the first half hour. You can Twitter notes to us and talk amongst yourselves, but we’ll only be answering those if they go along with the thread of what we’re talking about. At 12:30, we’ll take more questions from the “audience” -- that is, we'll look more closely at the tweets from the rest of you and respond to some of them.

I'm looking forward to seeing if this experiment works -- and regardless, with Shel on the line we'll all learn something interesting about Twitter.

by Josh Bernoff

From my Marketing News column.

Mobile advertising has been the coming thing for so long that some of us gave up on it. Now it’s here. In a Forrester Research survey of 176 interactive marketers in March, one in three were currently using mobile marketing, and another third were planning to do so. Of those who market with mobile, 47% will increase their budgets this year.

Mobile is so close to the customer (in her pocket!) that it’s pretty powerful if you do it right. It’s also dangerous to your brand if you do it wrong, especially since consumers are very aware that they pay for mobile phone and data services. So rather than just be a cheerleader, I’ll put down some advice here based on successful marketing campaigns.

Let’s start with adoption. As you might guess, the interest in mobile is driven by the adoption of Web browsing phones from Apple, RIM, and others. Around 26 million people, 15% of the mobile phone customers in the US, use the mobile Web at least once a month. That’s a juicy, young, affluent segment, and it’s growing. So it’s no surprise that marketers have gotten moving in reaching them.

And mobile marketing isn’t just mobile Web sites. It also includes banners on other mobile sites, short codes (like the codes you send text messages to when voting on American Idol), ads in phones’ video programming, and even little two-dimensional codes (like bar codes) that send mobile customers to Web sites when photographed.

Just as in developing social technology strategies, we recommend using the “POST” method (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology – and note that the choice of technology comes last). As my colleagues Julie Ask and Charles Golvin explored in a recent report called “The POST Method: A Systematic Approach To Mobile Strategy,” you have to start by assessing the mobile technologies your customers use. Even if you don’t have access to Forrester survey data, you can still learn from your customers’ behavior. For example, Sears found traffic from mobile phones to its sites growing, but those customers were bouncing off because the sites weren’t designed for mobile. If your site doesn’t recognize and reconfigure itself for mobile, you’ll see the same thing. As soon as you can prove that a significant number of your customers are mobile Internet users, you should do what Sears did, and build a mobile site.

After people, think about objectives – and note that mobile can serve a variety of different ones. For example, after Jiffy Lube used mobile coupons to drive foot traffic at one of its franchises, 50% of its new customers at that franchise came from the mobile promotion. Ford had a different objective; it wanted to generate awareness for its Ford Flex and used banners ads on mobile sites to generated 3.5 million impressions and a 1.4% click-through rate.

Your strategy and tactics will vary based on your target. Take AXE, Unilever’s personal-care brand for 18-to-24 year-old guys. AXE advertised on MTV and suggested a short code. Texting to the short-code generated a link to a site on “hair crisis relief.” That’s a tactic that works great with young men, but don’t try to get business executives texting –or you’ll find the yield is a whole lot lower.

So, how can you not screw this up? First, keep it simple. The more complex the process, the fewer the people who will follow it, and the less success you’ll have. The diversity of tools in mobile is tempting, and that’s the problem – you can get sucked into the technology and leave the marketing behind.

For example, in a recent case study, Neil Strother, Forrester’s expert on mobile marketing, describes how simple banner ads helped RIM sell more advanced BlackBerry devices. They started with ads on mobile sites for Yahoo! and The Weather Channel, since those mobile sites had experience with generating and dealing with large volumes of mobile usage. The banners were formatted automatically for the customer’s current device and one click led to RIM’s mobile-enhanced site. When RIM found success was correlated to those who clicked on the mobile store-locator page, they used that as a key metric for the program. Simple plan, simple execution, and simple measurement led to a successful campaign.

Second, integrate it with other media. Media can drive texting; if you’re advertising, think about how mobile could boost the engagement of your customers who took the time to read the ad. And if you’re a mobile marketer, ask yourself how your campaign fits into the overall media picture.

Third, follow the rules in the Mobile Marketing Association’s Code of Conduct to stay on the right side of the privacy line. You’re about to interact with people on a device they feel very personal about, so you’ll need a framework for treating their data right.

Finally, make sure you think a little longer-term than the average advertising manager. The advertising manager wants to think of mobile as a new medium to tap, and that’s fine. But the database marketing manager is lusting over the new contacts she can make with short codes and opt-ins. Unless both get what they need out of the campaign, you’ve wasted your mobile opportunity.