The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras

[By Jeremiah Owyang]

Expect the Groundswell to continue, in which people connect to each other --rather than institutions. Consumer adoption of social networks is increasing a rapid pace, brands are adopting even during a recession, so expect the space to rapidly innovate to match this trend. Clients can acces this report; but to summarize what we found, in the executive summary we state:

Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

We found that technologies trigger changes in consumer adoption, and brands will follow, resulting in five distinct waves, they consist of:

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The Five Eras of the Social Web:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

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Timing of the Five Overlapping Eras: It's important to note that these eras aren't sequential, but instead are overlapping. We've already entered and have seen maturity for the era of social relationships, have entered social functionality but haven't seen true utility, and are starting to see threads of social colonization with early technologies like Facebook connect. Soon these federated identities will empower people to enter the era of social context with personalized and social content. The following diagram demonstrates how we should expect to see the eras play out in the future --with social commerce the furthest out.

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Interviews with 24 of the top Social Companies: Research isn't done in a vacuum, that's why we conducted qualitative research to find out what we should come to expect. We came to these conclusions based on interviews with executives, product managers, and strategists at the following 24 companies: Appirio, Cisco Eos, Dell, Facebook, Federated Media Publishing, Flock, Gigya, Google (Open Social/stack team), Graphing Social Patterns (Dave McClure), IBM (SOA Team), Intel (social media marketing team), KickApps, LinkedIn, Meebo, Microsoft (Live team), MySpace, OpenID Foundation (Chris Messina), Plaxo, Pluck, Razorfish, ReadWriteWeb, salesforce.com, Six Apart, and Twitter.

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How Brands Should Prepare What's interesting isn't this vision for the future, but what it holds in store for brands, as a result, companies should prepare by:

• Don't Hesitate: These changes are coming at a rapid pace, and we're in three of these ears by end of year. Brands should prepare by factoring in these eras into their near term plans. Don't be left behind and let competitors connect with your community before you do.
• Prepare For Transparency: People will be able to surf the web with their friends, as a result you must have a plan. Prepare for every webpage and product to be reviewed by your customers and seen by prospects --even if you choose not to participate.
• Connect with Advocates: Focus on customer advocates, they will sway over prospects, and could defend against detractors. Their opinion is trusted more than yours, and when the power shifts to community, and they start to define what products should be, they become more important than ever.
• Evolve your Enterprise Systems: Your enterprise systems will need to connect to the social web. Social networks and their partners are quickly becoming a source of customer information and lead generation beyond your CRM system. CMS systems will need to inherit social features --pressure your vendors to offer this, or find a community platform.
• Shatter your Corporate Website: In the most radical future, content will come to consumers --rather than them chasing it-- prepare to fragment your corporate website and let it distribute to the social web. Let the most important information go and spread to communities where they exist; fish where the fish are.

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This project took a team effort, and I'd like to thank Josh Bernoff as a guiding force in my career, Emily Bowen who kept the project going, Cynthia Pflaum for the quantitative data, Megan Chromik in our editing team for the polish, and Jon Symons in our PR team for the media outreach.

This was cross posted on the Web Strategy Blog.

P&G Social Media Night: The Results

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

The results are in.  And the collective effort of the four teams partipating in P&G's digital night sold 3,000 Loads of Hope t-shirts and raised $50,000 for charity.  Tide actually matched the money raised, putting the total disaster relief donation to $100,000 for four hours of effort. Thank you to all who bought t-shirts!

If you are just tuning in, Forrester analysts Lisa Bradner, Sucharita Mulpuru and I participated in a P&G-organized event with about 150 digital media experts this past Wednesday focused on understanding how digital media, social networking and word of mouth could drive site traffic and sell product (in this case, vintage Tide t-shirts which raise money for disaster victims.)

While the activity driven by this event was intense, I return to some of my former cynacism about social media (sorry, Jeremiah).  Here are the marketing lessons I learned from this experiment:

*WOM still doesn't have the reach of more mainstream (and dare I say, traditional) channels.  Don't get me wrong here.  I was jazzed about how quickly we created buzz (and sales) on Wednesday night.  But then I got to thinking.  We had some of the biggest social media powerhouses out there (David Armano, Pete Kim, Deb Schultz, Pete Blackshaw) pushing this initiative hard to their network and we only sold 3000 shirts.  When I started translating this into pallets of product I suddently realized that the total audience we had reached was quite small.

*WOM drives site traffic, but the on-site experience closes the deal.  Conversion rates across the four teams hovered right around 7% -- which according to Sucharita is really good for retail sites.  But I couldn't help feeling that conversion should be much higher.  All of the traffic coming online to buy was coming in response to a direct personal reference.  So presumably, they were an audience more qualified than your typical site visitor.  If we had been able to prevent site errors, limit the amount of information required from users at purchase, even merchandised the t-shirts on the site a bit we would have made more good out of our site traffic. 

*The big deals were relationship sales.  My team sold a lot of onesies and twosies, but what really moved our dashboard were a few 50 and 100 t-shirt sales.  And these deals were made personally through phone calls to contacts who might need matching shirts in volume for teams, schools, work groups -- not through digital/online outreach.

Overall, the experiment was definitely a succesful way to feel the power of social media.  My conclusion?  Social media is still young and best used only in tandem with other interactive and traditional tools to drive engagement around brands or issues.

P&G Tests the Power of Social Media

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

So I got a golden ticket to P&G's digital hack night -- a P&G party to bring together social media experts, P&G digital minds, and experienced interactive marketers to share ideas.  The event is to test the strength of digital media to try to generate $100,000 for charity.

Here's how it works:

*P&G has split us into four teams -- each team has about 40 people: P&G folks, social media gurus (Pete Blackshaw is my team captain and Pandora's Tim Westergren is sitting next to me) as well as online ad folks like me and Aaron Finn from AdReady.

*Each team has four hours to sell as many Tide Loads of Hope t-shirts as possible.  (If you don't know, Loads of Hope is a Tide-sponsored social initiative which raises money for disaster victims.  View a spot about it here).

*We can use any digital tools available to promote our unique url to sell t-shirts www.tide1.com

I'm admittedly the most cynical analyst about social media and its measurable value to marketers.  BUT, participating in this event is making me a believer.  In 60 minutes through networking, well targeted ads, SMS messaging, and viral videos we have generated 1200 hits for a site that didn't even exist before 5pm tonight.  We are tracking at about a 5-7% conversion rate...not bad.  The other thing that is happening here is that we are adapting our marketing strategy based on feedback from people who are responding to our viral outreach.  How often does that happen in a traditional marketing environment?

Barcelona Rumblings

[Posted by Neil Strother]

The quiet rumblings out of Barcelona shook the mobile marketing landscape this week – a little. If you weren’t paying close attention to goings on at Mobile World Congress, though, you likely missed it. Some highlights:

 

• GSMA’s interesting mobile marketing metrics for Europe: Search (Google), social networks (facebook) and news (BBC) are among top mobile sites, and use is consistent throughout the day, with early morning hours (7 to 10 a.m.) the heaviest

 

• Recognition the mobile Web has arrived – thanks to smartphones and that handset from Apple

 

• More brand advertisers spending on mobile – AdMob reported more than a doubling in number from last year

 

All encouraging. And props to the Euro operators involved in the GSMA feasibility study. So where are the U.S. carriers and those in Asia or Latin America on this?

 

Clearly, much work needs to be done to remove the friction involved in mobile marketing and there’s a need for greater understanding of the ROI. Yet these rumblings signal some growth, and the next jolt might not be so imperceptible.

Forrester Wave Report: The Leaders in Community Platforms for Marketer

Clients can access the full report The Forrester Wave™: Community Platforms, Q1 2009 on the Forrester site, however the high level findings are available below, as with all of our reports, we stand by our products.

Communities are a powerful way for businesses to grow
Used correctly, communities can impact the top and bottom line of company's financials: from brands encouraging customers to self-support each other (reducing costs), to spreading word of mouth to each other (efficient marketing and increased sales) to crowd sourcing innovation (streamlining R&D) communities matter more than ever --especially during a recession. 

What you must do before you select a vendor
Many of our clients follow the POST methdology, which is a framework for them to first understand the People they're trying to reach, and how they use social technologies.  Then to pick an Objective that aligns with their business, next, they will spend most of their time scoping out the Strategy, which includes internal processes, stakeholders, roles, budgets, empowerment, policy, and change management.  Once you've done that, only then you're ready to choose a vendor, which is the Technology. As a rule of thumb, successful brands focus about 80% of their efforts on the People, Objectives, and Strategy, and about 20% effort on Technologies --don't get it backwards.

Over 100 vendors in this commodity market
Many an entrepreneur has realized this community opportunity, when I started to cover this market there were 8 vendors on my list, today the space now boasts 100 vendors and it continues to grow.  Fortunately, the Forrester Wave reports are designed to segment crowded industries.  It's important that your realize this report is for interactive marketers at enterprise-class companies that are seeking to deploy customer communities –not for the internal intranet, collaboration, or insight community vendors.

Therefore brands seek solution partners--not technologists
Having spent my time as a community manager at Hitachi and coupled with research we know that successful community deployments are far more than forums, blogs, rss or other technologies. As a result, we applied over 60% of our weighted criteria based on what our clients tell us they want, a solutions partner that delivers strategy, education, services, community management, analytics and support.  During a recession, brands want to be sure that vendors are around for the long term, so we also factored in leadership, executive team, client base, and of course, financial viability.

Key findings of the 9 vendors
What did we find? First of all, this is still a very young market, with the average tenure of a company being just a few years in community. Despite the immaturity, we evaluated nine and were impressed with Jive Software and Telligent Systems who lead the pack because of their strong administrative and platform features and solution offerings.

Next, a group of vendors ranked as strong performers: KickApps and Pluck enable large Web sites to quickly scale with social features. Also in the strong performer category, Awareness, Lithium Technologies, and Mzinga enable brands to build branded communities while LiveWorld offers brands agency-like services. While Leverage Software is not on par with the others in the category, they are ideal for medium-sized businesses and due to their cost-effective platform could have a strong position during this economic downturn.

Above Graphic: Forrester Wave™: Community Platforms, Q1 ’09

Customize the Wave report to your business needs
We don’t live in a world of absolutes, and we understand that the needs of one brand will differ from another, so clients that can access the report can also download the excel sheet. This detailed excel sheet for clients (which has scores, explanations, criteria, scoring criteria) has ‘sliders’ and ‘toggles’ that make it easy for brands to dial up or down specific criteria –creating a custom Wave report for their needs.  Different business  needs require different vendor offerings, so the Wave is flexible, you can make it your own.

A summary of the rigorous methodology:
I encourage our clients to be open and transparent about their products and services, in order to build trust with their market, so I’m holding myself to the same rigors, here’s a high level summary of the process:

First, we vetted the 100 vendors to submit to a vendor product catalog, over 50 submitted which we used the data to pair down who were appropriate for the Wave report.

Hands-on lab evaluations: I spent up to 6 hours with each vendor in a windowless room to evaluate their product live using common customer scenarios.  I grilled the executive team, and discussed their strengths and weaknesses.

Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their products’ functionality. We used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor’s product capabilities.

Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted reference calls with up to three of each vendor’s current customers for a total of up to 27 customer calls.

We collected hundreds of screenshots, presentations, samples, reports and all of this information was entered in a multi-tab spreadsheet that accounts for thousands of cells, scoring, and detailed explanations which clients can use to toggle up and down specific needs as in some cases, specific feature needs may need to be highlighted over others.

In the bottom links, I’ve made my research process very transparent, and have indicate the other three other blog posts documenting this laborious research effort.

The conversation is just starting
Although this report is a snapshot in time, and some vendors have expressed they've made some improvements to date, to keep this long process from going further, we have to put a cap on the updates.  Therefore, I will continue to keep the market updated with the the social networking weekly digest just as I have for the past years. In the spirit of the community conversation, if you’re a vendor in this wave in this space, I encourage you to voice your opinion online, I'll make sure the market sees it, I strive to be fair.   

A very sincere public thanks to the team
This was the most difficult project I’ve had to do in a long time, and I’d like to thank Shar VanBoskirk (editor), Christine Spivey Overby (editor and my manager), Angie Polanco (Research Associate), Oliver Young (subject matter expert), Sarah Glass (who went beyond the call of duty as a Senior Research Associate), Zach Reiss-Davis (Research Associate), Megan Chromik (editing), and Josh Bernoff (moral support), I couldn’t have done it without you guys, I assure you, it was painful for them as well as me.   

Helping decision makers to be successful
Yet the pain will pay off for our clients as brands can easily find vendors that will meet their specific needs.  I’ve been passionate about the community market far before I became an industry analyst covering this space, and am glad to serve the industry. We went to great lengths to be objective, accurate, consistent, detailed, and fair and hope this accelerates your business. Thanks for your patience, and enjoy the Wave!

Related Resources
I'll be updating this section as I see interesting voices from media, vendors, brands and customers.

Read Write Web: Report: Community Platforms Market Led by Jive Software and Telligent

Leverage Software CEO Mike Walsh (and other vendors) have responded in the comments

Josh Bernoff: Picking a community vendor? We've evaluated a bunch

Tom Humbarger: Questions if these vendors are eating their own dog food read Walking the “Social Media Walk”

Telligent's corporate blog chimes in and makes the report available for you.

Connie Benson: Wave report showcases community platforms

Neighborhood America CEO, Kim Patrick Kobza: Forrester Wave Report Part 1

 

Read more about this Wave Research project:

Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process
Part 4: Announcing the Wave, the final report

How European Social Marketers Should Choose a Social Network

[Posted by Nate Elliott]

Since this is my first post here, let me begin with an introduction: I've worked at JupiterResearch — now a division of Forrester — for almost six years, first in New York, then in London, and now Berlin. During that time my research has focused primarily on video and rich media advertising, social marketing, and search marketing. I joined Forrester via their acquisition of Jupiter in July 2008, and I'm excited to announce that starting in January I'll be working as a Forrester Principal Analyst serving Interactive Marketers, and that I'll be based out of Vancouver.

Over the past year, I've had a number of European clients ask me which social network they should use for their social marketing campaigns. When they ask that question, the first thing I do is make sure that marketing on a social network is the best strategy for them — something that can be achieved by using Forrester's POST methodology. For many advertisers, marketing on a social network does fit their objectives and strategies, and so the question remains: how can they choose the best social network for them? To answer that question, I recently published a report called 'Social Selection: Choosing the Best Social Network for Your European Social Marketing Efforts.'

First, I should explain how I chose which social networks to discuss in this report. MySpace and Facebook were obvious choices — although many people still think of them as 'American' social networks, they're clearly the two largest networks in Europe as well, and the first two networks we're usually asked about by marketers in any country. I also discuss Bebo in the report; their only real European presence is in the UK and Ireland, but they're strong enough in those markets to make them a key player — and they're usually the third network European marketers ask about. There are many other notable European social networks, of course, but some of them accept only limited advertising (e.g., StudiVZ), some are strong only in very small markets (e.g., Hyves), some focus on specialized niches (e.g., Stardoll), and some simply don't attract as much attention from the advertisers I speak with.

Second, just to be clear, there is no single "best" choice for all European marketers, and the report specifically doesn't pick a "winner." Instead, it walks advertisers through a number of different considerations they should keep in mind when choosing a network, based upon their objectives and strategies, and then gives our opinions on how well Facebook, MySpace and Bebo perform on those criteria. Only by evaluating which considerations are most important to them can advertisers choose the network that's best-suited to their marketing efforts. 

Here are the things I encourage advertisers to think about when choosing a network, and an overview of which network I think performs best on each of those criteria in Europe:

• Target demographic and behaviors. This is perhaps the most important consideration, since you can't reach your audience if they're not there to be reached. Bebo's average age is under 17, while the average European user on both Facebook and MySpace is in their mid-20's. Not only are the age ranges different on each network, but so are the users' motivations for networking, and therefore the activities they engage in on the networks — all of which, thinking back to the POST methodology, means you need to pick a network only after you've examined the people you're targeting and chosen your strategy.
• Opportunities to engage users. 'Engagement' is something I get asked about a lot, but advertisers have to think about whether it's really one of their goals: will they be measuring success on getting users to talk to or about their brand, or will they actually be focusing on clicks, impressions/reach, or other classic online metrics? If advertisers really are interested in engagement, then I think Facebook has the best tools to make that happen (such as their new 'engagement ads').
• Sponsorship opportunities. For advertisers who are interested in reaching lots of users and making sure their own brand messaging gets through, rather than generating engagement, the sponsored pages on MySpace and video sponsorships on Bebo may be more appropriate. 
• Ad targeting. Banners may not be the most exciting way to market on social networks, but they're still a key part of each network's ad offerings — and they're very useful for driving engagement and visits to sponsored pages. I was very impressed with how Facebook and MySpace use member-contributed data for ad targeting — but unfortunately MySpace hasn't rolled out that targeting across Europe yet. 
• Flexibility for experimentation. We know that most advertisers are still experimenting with social marketing to see if it works for them, and that social marketing budgets today are typically very small. I think Facebook, with its free branded pages and no minimum spend on display ads, makes it easiest for most marketers to experiment with this channel. And for more advanced marketers, Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect, as well as the OpenSocial initiative being supported by Bebo and MySpace, make it relatively easy to experiment with applications and bringing social behavior back to marketers' own sites. 
• Ad reporting capabilities. Measurement is often overlooked by social marketers, but it's absolutely vital — especially given this is a new medium and marketers will be challenged to prove it works. Again I was very impressed with both Facebook's and MySpace's reporting features, but again Facebook edged it.
• Pan-European reach. For advertisers who want to reach users in more than just one market, it's important to work with a network that can help them reach a large number of users in each country. MySpace is the only network with a strong presence across all the key European markets.

If you're a European advertiser interested in marketing on social networks, think about which activities your target audience is ready to engage in and what your own objectives and strategies are. Once you answer that question, then have a look through this list — and I think it'll be a lot clearer which social network is the right one for you.

I'd love to hear your opinions — which of these considerations are most important to you? Are there any key ones I've missed? Do you agree with my assessments of which network is strongest for each criteria in Europe? And are there other networks I didn't talk about that excel in helping marketers reach their goals?

Participate In Our Research

Want to see how your Interactive Marketing budget plan compares with that of your peers?  Interested to see if you have the same view of Social Media as others in your role?  We're conducting a survey of Interactive Marketers and we need your help!  If you know about your company's Interactive Marketing or Social Media strategies, please take our short survey!

In exchange for your participation, we offer the following:

Your choice of one of three complimentary research pieces immediately upon your completion.

A spreadsheet with the aggregate results when the research is complete.

A copy of the research based on the data we collect.

The survey is quick (10 to 15 minutes), we only publish responses in aggregate, and we respect your privacy.  We'll be running it until the end of the year, but please take the survey as soon as possible.  Feel free to spread the word to your colleagues and peers as well!

If you have any questions, please contact me directly:  tcummings@forrester.com

Thanks!

Tom Cummings
Researcher, Interactive Marketing
tcummings@forrester.com

P.S. This is a separate survey from the Customer Reference Survey by Laura Ramos and Merv Adrian that is posted below.  If you've already participated in that one, you are more than welcome to participate in this one, and vice versa!

What Facebook's New 'Engagement Advertising' Means to Brands

[Posted by Jeremiah Owyang]

Facebook's new 'Engagement Ads' require marketers to think interactive
Facebook launched a new product called 'Engagement Advertisements' that encourages members to interact with the ads by leaving comments, sharing virtual gifts, or becoming fans. To combat dismal click through rates of traditional advertisements, these features emulate widgets and encourage users to increase member adoption, viral growth, and brand interaction.  Brands will only succeed with these "WidgetAds" if they create content that puts community first, lean on new interactions, integrate with other tools, plan for the long haul, and change how they measure success --traditional internet advertising tactics won't apply.

[Facebook's 'Engagement Advertisements' emulates natural activities of members --in hopes to increase interaction, network spread, and brand preference]

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Facebook, a Fast Growing Global Social Network
Facebook, noted as the largest social network, is on a growth rate to increase it's active users to 90million active users today in August, 2008 up from 54 million aprox at the start of the year.  While presumed to be of a younger college educated demographic, it's not the domain of the young alone as the largest growth rates are educated white collar workers, over age 25. Facebook has global growth in markets such as  66% growth rate in EMEA, and 35% and 33% growth rates in Europe and Latin America, respectively.

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Engagement Advertisements Integrate with Natural User Behaviors
Facebook's innovative way of monetizing is unique, they were the first to launch a developer platform (F8) as well as the ill-fated Facebook Beacon, and are now launching with a new interactive marketing and advertising product.

[Facebook's 'Engagement Advertisements' more akin to interactive marketing with a social twist: "WidgetAds"]

Unlike Beacon or Facebook Connect, both products intended to aggregate the actions on third-party sites (like Blockbuster.com) this new product called "Engagement Advertisements" is intended to nicely integrate with Facebook's newly redesign profile and news pages.  Early brands to trial this include: Paramount Pictures whose video commenting for Tropic Thunder ran two weeks ago --I've asked for campaign results.  Future early adopters also include General Mills' Betty Crocker which will have image commenting and the ability to 'fan', and video commenting for Addias, both to trial late August.

Engagement Ads provide three unique experiences
Rather than clicking on the ad and being whisked away to a branded microsite, these ads allow members to stay within the contained walls of Facebook and their social community. Engagement ads come in three major flavors:

1) Comment Style Ad: Members can now leave comments on these advertisements, much like wall posts.  Brands that are focused on entertainment, new product rollouts, autos and apparel are well suited. The ad can show up to 4 comments per object, and the activity spreads to the users newsfeed.
2) Virtual Gifts Style Ad: Brands can now create virtual items that users can share, spread to each other. This wildly popular behavior within applications and Facebook is suitable for consumer products, entertainment, and some media.
3) Fan Style Ad: A play off the Facebook pages, users with a persona affinity for a product (like Apple) can become a fan, triggering a notification to their network, and could then tie on social ads.  Will work great for established brands, like guitar hero, passion products, luxury products, or any brand with a rabid customer base.

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Forrester Data: Social Networks foster communication, self-expression
With horrible click through rates (I've heard cases of .04 percent CTR) of ads on social networks, some brands prefer to focus resources elsewhere.  Why the low rates?  Our research indicates that youth primarily exhibit behaviors of communication and self-expression --not searching for products, looking at ads, or hunting for information.   

Common Behaviors of Youth on Social Networks
See what my friends are up to: 86% Sent a message to someone: 79%
Posted/updated my profile:  70%
Looked at profiles of people I didn’t know: 65% Sources:
North American Technographics Retail And Marketing Online Youth Survey, Q4 2007, Forrester Research

This youth data supports that social network behavior is in fact, 'social' and these respondents are not seeking to find out about product information, nor learn about the latest products at a media site, product review, or a search engine like Google. 

[Brands will only succeed with 'Engagement Advertising' if they lean on user behaviors like communication, self-expression, and social exploration --traditional internet advertising need not apply]

Knowing that the use case between social networks and product-focused sites is key for marketers to deploy successful marketing.  For success, marketers and advertisers need to focus in on the key social behaviors, and integrate the marketing activities within the community.

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Demystifying Facebook's Marketing Tool Chest
Facebook's marketing toolset is confusing, and many brands frequently ask me what is the current set, and how do they use it, here's the current toolset as of today. Remember that when it comes to groups and brand engagement, the most powerful activity is for employees to actually participate in the community with their customers --not stand by the idle wayside. With that said, here are some of the other tools available to marketers to engage the Facebook community.

Engagement Ads: (new, and detailed above) allow community members to interact with the ads in the profile and newsfeeds –without leaving the Facebook site, increasing interaction, social spread, and brand engagement. Currently unproven, brands may not be ready for these types of new ads, until they change how they measure success.

Standard Advertisements: These Text and image ads can appear on homepage or profile pages, neatly integrate with the new redesign.

Social ads: Are helpful for brands to increase the velocity or acceleration by marketers, allowing them to buy ads that echo the behaviors "what did my friends do" of opt-in users. These primarily appear on the newsfeed, which will encourage spread to an individuals network.  Some brands have been under fire from users who felt this was invasive. 

Traditional IAB graphic ads: Advertising laden brands may still purchase the standard IAB skyscraper and banner ads from Microsoft both an investor and partner.  With low CTRs, some brands have better places to spend their money for return on investment.

Facebook pages: Launched last year, brands can (at no charge) create their own pages, embed applications, encourage discussions, and start to garner "Fans" of it's products.  Most brands are incorrectly using these, based upon the findings from my recent report on the best and worst of social network marketing for 2008 -Forrester Research. 

Event Feature:  based pages allow marketers to promote events through viral invites, rsvp tools, and event rollups from media and community interaction.  While a useful utility, for most brands that market on the web, this is often a side-effort, not the primary push.

Facebook Connect: Perhaps the biggest untold story is the day when Facebook (and other social networks) will connect with corporate websites, I've outline future scenarios in this post What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites.

Applications: Facebook was afirst mover to allow third-party developers to create an entire eco-system of applications that are growing their own applications.  Most brands are harassing successful apps through sponsorships, cross branding, and a few are building their own apps, see how Dell was able to let the community create --and spread-- ads on their behalf.  Also read my posts on Widget strategies to learn more, or my overview of Facebook’s F8 Developers Community.

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Key Takeaways
Monetization of social networks continues to be a challenge, and Facebook continues to innovate, however for this announcement, brands and Facebook should:

To Succeed, Brands Must Learn Social Marketing
While costly, risky, and foreign to brands, the biggest missed opportunity for brands in social networks is to become part of the community, interact and build real relationships. Although we should expect interaction rates and viral spread to increase with engagement ads, brands should wait and see how these ads CTR perform.  For those brands that are ready to forgo the risk, and pursue 'Engagement Ads' they should:

Community themed: Ads created by the brand will succeed if the content is first focused on the needs of the community.

Rely on new interaction activities: The rules of the game have changed, the goal is to increase interaction within the community --not pull them offsite.

Approach with an Integrated Mix: Facebook offers many tools, 'Engagement Ads' shouldn't go it alone, instead increase chances of success by involving other tools.

Change how they measure success: Brands must also change they way the measure success with these interactive ads, rather than weigh success solely on page views or referral traffic.

Marriage of Widgets and Advertisements offshoot: "WidgetAds"
Looking forward, this announcement helps to set in place how online marketing will start to evolve.  Widgets have already become advertising units, and now these advertisements are starting to become widgets.  Expect Engagement ads, and Widgets created by third parties to start to exhibit these behaviors outside of Facebook.  Facebook Connect, Google Connect, and OpenID will bridge social graphs with interactive ads --springing forth a new generation of widgetads.

Although Innovative, Facebook must focus on marketers
Although pushing interactive marketing, Facebook must hand-hold many brands with their frequently changing marketing offerings. Facebook must develop a client solution that will help optimize these tools with professional services based on data, results, and demographic information.  Marketers can't afford to experiment with their brand without the help of a trained and experienced group of social marketers provided by the platform. The only caveat being that the experience of users, always, always comes first, I'll point to others that cover this aspect.

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This is cross-posted on the Web Strategy blog

 

Case Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign

[Posted by Jeremiah Owyang]

Situation
The market pressure to create technology products that protect or at least damage their impact to the environment continues to grow.  Sustainability and green-tech campaigns are coming from nearly every tech company --esp hardware manufactures.  Dell is no exception and launches this Regeneration campaign.

[Dell Leaned on an Active Artist Community in Facebook to Create, Vote, Self-Regulate what it "Means to be Green" Regeneration Campaign]

Goals
I've not spoken with the Dell marketing team, but it's pretty obvious this is a campaign helps to help improve Dell products to be more eco-friendly, and of course, spur affinity torwards the brand from green leaning consumers, the ReGeneration site has more details.

Strategy
Dell Computers, along with Federated Media (A social media marketing agency), and Graffiti Wall (A popular self-expression Facebook application), deployed an interactive marketing campaign that encouraged existing Graffiti artists to be involved in a contest that spurred a member created campaign resulting in affinity towards Dell.  The artists were encouraged to 'own' the message, their creativity would spur a contest, and would continue to fuel the campaign.

Tactics
I was briefed by James Gross, who shares his thoughts mid-flight, a Director at Federated Media, as well as CEO John Battelle (interview), and they explained the contest to me.

1) Existing application with thriving community

Graffiti is a self-expression application in Facebook. It has popular (rated 4 out of 5 stars) Based on 242 reviews, and has 177,506 daily active users.  Rather than creating a new application, this campaign took advantage of an application --and community--that already existed.



2) An art contest: What does Green mean to you?

Facebook members who used Graffiti were encouraged to join in a contest to win a 22" environmentally friendly Dell monitor (appropriate for artists) to create art around the theme of "What does Green mean to you?"  The contest lasted for one week


3) Engaged contributors spur theme Over 7000 pieces of artwork were created and submitted to the contest.  If you watch the replay of the art being created, you'll see hidden messages (like easter eggs) from the artists as they discuss what green means to them. Many of the drawings had the Dell logo or the regeneration logo embedded in it. The Regeneration microsite promotes a few contributors.

4) Self Regulation There were few negative pics that would detract from the campaign, as the community of existing artists will self-regulate and vote off pics that were not appropriate.

5) Community Voting and Winners Announced

Voting began on the second week by the members and over one million votes were cast.  The winners were from United States, Canada, Sweden and Maldives.  You can see the actual winners here, or click image.

Results The campaign was a success, thousands of engaged members participated, created the campaign on behalf of Dell (similar to the Chevy Tahoe campaign a few years ago), and the community was rewarded.  I don't know for sure, but I'll guess the majority of the campaign dollars were spent creating the microsite, then hiring FM, and working with Graffiti.  The monitors, were likely less than a $1000 each. 

Over 7300 Graffitis created from Jan. 16th-Jan 23rd around the theme of “What Does Green Mean to You” Over 1150 fans of the contest

Over 1,000,000 votes were logged from Jan. 26th-Jan.31st for the artwork. (Here are the Top 150 based on votes)

Over 1,000 ideas have now been submitted over at ReGeneration.org

209 comments to the post at ReGeneration.org

Over 197 blog mentions in Technorati

What could have been better
When it comes to social media, the mentality of short lived campaigns should go away.  Communities existed before a brand reaches to them and after the campaign stops.  Marketers should plan for long term engagements with these people, rather than short two week spurts.  There was clearly traction here and now's the time to step on the gas and continue forward.

Secondly, the artwork created by the winners (and runner ups) should be included in future products, such as digital wallpapers, in the primary branding for Dell, and even the artists should be given an option to continue as sponsored artists.  With the relationship forming, take it to the next level.  Encourage artwork to be part of next generation green computers, with proceeds going to non-profits or back to the artists to continue forth.

Thirdly, the campaign was limited to Facebook, which isn't the extent of artists on the web, as well as limited to other social networks such as Bebo or MySpace where similar communities can be found.  The contest should have been created not just within the walls of a closed gardens, but also spread to the open web.

Summary
Unlike most marketing campaigns that deploy heavy ads, fake viral videos, or message bombardment, this campaign let go to gain more.   Overall, this is a successful campaign as they turned the action over to the community, let them take charge, decide on the winners, all under the context of the regeneration campaign.  The campaign moved the active community from Facebook closer to the branded Microsite, closer to the corporate website, migrating users in an opt-in manner that lead to hundreds of comments was clever.  Well done.

Articles and Related Case Studies

Article: Virtual art for the natural world

MediaPost Social Media Insider: Maybe Advertising In Social Media Should Be An Oxymoron

LA Times: Web Scout: Spinning through online entertainment and connected culture

Case Study: How Sony connected with the Vampires Application

Case Study: Facebook Sponsored Group Analysis: Target vs Wal-Mart

Cross posted on the Web Strategy blog

Interactive Marketing Maturity Research

[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]

I’m launching a quant study to fuel two pieces of research: 1) The first is focused on identifying the levels of maturity among interactive marketers across industries. When finished this report will define the different interactive marketing maturity levels, the characteristics of firms at each level, and also present a roadmap for growing from lower to higher levels of maturity; and 2) The Interactive Marketing Channels To Watch in 2008. This piece is an update to our annual study examining which interactive tools marketers are using, piloting or planning to pilot in 2008. We’d love your input on this study. If you or one of your colleagues is involved with interactive channels (e.g. email marketing, search marketing, display ads, social networking, blogs, widgets, mobile) we would love your input in our research. Take the survey here. We’ll send you a copy of the research when it becomes available. Thanks in advance for your contribution!