Going viral: For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to define that as an idea, phrase or a piece of rich media being replicated and shared, spreading with the speed and intensity of a viral infection. A very popular meme.

Memes are an insanely interesting characteristic of the social media, especially for those who are in the business of harnessing the power of social for brands. These viral fads go through the same cycles as fashion and music. The unique kids adopt the meme or trend first; they feel a sense of ownership or that they’ve discovered this piece of content. The masses sniff this out and start adopting the meme; they forward it to all of their gchat buddies. A member of the masses sends said piece of content onto one of the early adopters who replies with “I saw that like a month ago.” The masses overplay and click-by- click kill this trend, bringing it to “viral” status. The cool kids move onto the next thing.

As a rule, it’s difficult for large brands to grab a hold of these large-scale trends and insert themselves in a relevant way while the trends are still hot. On the flip side, content creators have been attaching their inevitably viral blogs, tweets and videos to brands in ways that stick and get forwarded down the chain-of-cool. A notable example is Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. This serves as a terrific case study, so please bear with me as I do not wish to imply that you, dear reader, have not seen this video or heard this song. After the original song was posted to YouTube, several video iterations emerged as users adopted it and tweaked it to their own tastes. The combined total views of these videos mention Pizza Hut and Taco Bell thousands of times. However, as the meme reaches the main stream, its status as “cool” has effectively been killed.

It’s fairly safe to say that starting a viral movement requires the leader, or brand, to have the guts to stand out as different. More important than that, however, is a well educated community that collectively feels listened to by a humanized brand. Advocates. With processes in place to address concerns and praise positive contributions to a movement, the principles of Derek Siver’s TED talk apply. Siver outlines the importance of nurturing the first few followers of any movement. Without the first advocate or follower, the brand isn’t leading a movement; it’s just a “lone nut.”

Aside from the initial idea and execution, the entire movement is on the shoulders of the advocates. Creating the type of content that most brands are comfortable with requires a production budget and “talent,” but devoting a spend on something that may or may not be adopted by the community is risky. I would guess that Ford went through a similar thought process as it inevitably put a huge volume of its social content creation for the Ford Fiesta in the hands of its advocates. The brand acted as a leader, posing its community with challenges that required creating cool content with the Ford Fiesta in the background.

As far as going viral is concerned, this model is ideal: be the kind of inspiring leader that isn’t rigid about ideas for content. Allow the first follower to have the creative license to be just as inspiring as the brand itself.

Jeana is a Community Manager in our Chicago office.

Image compliments of www.seekyledraw.com.

Alex Clemmons | Critical Mass Chicago

It often takes months to develop a website or digital program.  After tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, persona development, creative reviews, usability testing and some long nights, launch date is a huge milestone.  But often times after a site goes live the client is ready to move on to the next project.  However, it is in the post launch period that we can actually have the most impact and ensure that all the time and money we spent is paying off.  Website optimization, the process of making continual improvements to the site in order to increase performance, can help make our clients, and ourselves, look like rock stars.

Part of website optimization comes from reporting.  Every marketing initiative should have goals, and it is the Marketing Science Department’s job to define and track progress against these goals.  Through reporting, we can identify underperforming areas and make recommendations for improvement.  When we combine reporting with testing we can start to understand not only what is working, but why it is working as well.

Almost every aspect of a digital program can come under debate; page layouts, calls to action, image size and page colors are just a few things that can be contested.

A testing program could help settle these debates and optimize the experience to meet our marketing objectives and more importantly our customer’s goals.

In a nut shell, testing is the process by which we test different versions of a web page on the live site environment and then, through scientific methods, declare a winner of the test (the page that has best shown the ability to best convert visitors to do the actions that we want them to do).

The simplest form of testing is an A/B test.  We pick a site goal, like conversion from a landing page, and then measure how different versions of this page perform against our goal.  With tools like Omniture’s Test & Target or Google’s Website Optimizer we can serve up pages that have different images, copy or other treatments in real time and measure the results against a control page.

Page A is our control; it has not had any changes made to it.  On page B, we can start to swap things out; it could be a new image or a different call to action.  We run our test and find that visitors who saw page B had a 300% higher conversion rate than those who saw page A!

A more complex test we can run is a multivariate test, which allows us to change multiple components of the page at the same time.  Doing so can help us find a combination of images, copy, offers or anything else we can dream up that work the best.

Optimization programs can lead to some very powerful insights and recommendations.  But there are a few things that need happen for an optimization program to be successful:

1. Commitment to the program.  This one seems pretty obvious, but if the client is not committed we are destined to fail.  This commitment includes the creation of extra comps/copy/offers/etc. for us to test.  It also may include timing and process changes as well.
2. We have to invest in the right tools and process.  Some tools are free, others are not.  With any Marketing Science program, we need to evaluate our needs and implement the right tool for the job.  We also have to secure some time from our developers, so they can add a code snippet to allow for testing on the page.  Finally, we have to ensure that we are staffed to analyze these results on both the client and the agency side.
3. Socialization of our results.    Testing can lead to some very powerful insights that can help inform the work of every team that touches the site.  But it is all in vain if we do not share what we have learned both internally and externally.

So where do we start?  You have to be able to walk before you can run so start by running some simple A/B tests on your top landing pages – this is most likely where you will see some immediate results.  As you begin to get the hang of things, you can start to experiment with the more complex multivariate tests and before you know it you will have pretty serious optimization program in place.

The fact that most concepts include many creative options means we may already have material to test, so why guess which will work the best when we can prove it through testing?  Given the opportunities that the digital space offers, it is important that we understand what works and what does not.  It is also important that we plan for change, and understand that the launch of the site is just the beginning of the optimization process.  Tight budgets and short timelines mean that we are forced to do more with less; optimization can help ensure that we get the most bang for our buck and achieve rock star status.  Let’s rock and roll!

Alex is a Marketing Science Analyst out of Chicago.

By Jeana Anderson | Critical Mass Chicago

Illustration by EffingBoring

I recently started following the White House on Twitter, @WhiteHouse for those of you who want to check it out. A closer look at the content in the twitter stream sped me on a path towards applying some of Critical Mass’s Community Management best practices to the White House’s social media presence.

Best practice one: Research and understand the community before engaging. Moderating a community of President Obama’s supporters alone, the over 13 million citizens who opted into the campaign’s e-mail list, presents itself as a gut wrenching challenge for a single moderator. Thinking big picture: moderating President Obama’s social media community would never just be those 13 million opt-ins. The community would potentially consist of every U.S. internet user, 163.3 million people according to comScore.

Best practice two: Align the moderator’s skill set to the community’s interests. When I sat down to write a post commenting on the use of social media by the White House, I had planned to outline a strategy for the implementation of a single White House Community Manager. Considering the size and moving pieces in any White House agenda, it became increasingly clear that the White house couldn’t use just one community moderator – it would need one for every major initiative.

Each initiative is essentially a brand, with groups that buy into or oppose a viewpoint based on certain demographic and psychographic characteristics, giving each issue a different agenda and audience. Picky hiring for these community moderator positions would be a must. The moderator would likely need to have the perfect storm of a professional background, bringing together both a working knowledge of social media, government process and the issue.

Best practice three: Keep your community moderator in the loop. The sanity and success of these moderators would hinge on being treated as essential members of the team. They would have to be present in strategy discussions, provided texts of presidential addresses before they are presented and would need to be given resources for discovering answers to constituent questions in a timely manner.

Best practice four: Be consistent. A little over two years ago, the meme buzzing through both traditional and social media was Barack Obama’s campaign change. Not the “Change We Can Believe In” variety, the change that used social media to enable small donations and mobilize the unengaged gen Y. I mean they were really talking. This administration, known for its “first online social networking president” has been criticized by the Press Corps for muting its campaign-trail openness and honesty. For these community managers to be successful, they would need to be able to answer questions from all sides of the aisle, fence, or whichever metaphor you’d like to use.

In all fairness, the President opened up his State of the Union address in January to questions from social media submitted via YouTube, but the process of selecting questions was criticized for being closed and biased. If the White House had opted for a Digg Dialogg format, with questions submitted and publically voted up or down, a true public dialogue could have been achieved through social media. Thinking beyond that, with a moderator and a monitoring tool, the White House wouldn’t need to wait for a State of the Union address to gather questions; they could step up their efforts to pre-election standards and have ready-to-go FAQs and answers.

Implementing these best practices to enable staffers’ to responding to questions in real-time instead of sending form letters to constituents may be the way to the transparency and open government called for by this administration. After all, there can only be one first online social networking president, and one can only hope that he does the title proud.

Jeana is a Community Manager in our Chicago office.

But when it comes to listening (and I mean really listening), there are times (as I believe Abbey would agree) that product reviews may not be enough. We believe MROCs (market research online communities) are able to bridge part of the gap between the richness and depth of qualitative consumer feedback and structured information.

With many of our clients expressing interest in learning more about these private communities, and after my last post, we thought it might be worth a quick discussion. So, we’ve put together this simple checklist to help you determine whether a market research online community is right for you.

1. You want to know all about your target audiences – deeply. Communities are about evolving with your customers rather than doing point-in-time research. They are ideally for clients that are committed to continual learning, or have the desire for it – because consumers don’t wait until your survey or focus group to have great feedback or ideas.
2. You need to control the conversation. Our clients often need customers to focus on their questions, which is much harder to do in public communities. Community clients also rest much easier sharing confidential information or assets when members have at least agreed to non-disclosure legalese.
3. You need to know who’s talking back to you. Community respondents are profiled in depth (demographics, attitudes, behaviours, etc.), so we can look at how comments and discussions may differ among subgroups (gender or generational differences). In public communities, you may know a person’s screen name, country, and maybe age at best.
4. You need decisions faster. One of the most beautiful benefits to private communities is that you can have data coming back in hours instead of the weeks needed to plan and implement traditional research methods. Market researchers, rejoice!
5. You wish your best customers were sitting beside you. The flexibility of communities allows you to ask whatever questions you want, whether large and in depth or quick one-offs that wouldn’t normally justify a traditional research budget. This means you can get meaningful consumer feedback on your specific needs before making important or even not-so-important decisions.
6. You are looking to control costs. For companies that gather the right amount of consumer insight to inform decisions, the cost of building and maintaining communities can often save over a given year compared to traditional methods. Sometimes communities can replace other methods, and sometimes they build in incremental context. But consider a (slightly oversimplified) example of spending $15-$25K in a traditional, 2-hour focus group with 20 people, with the same amount for a month of time with 200 people.
7. You want to look like a star at your company. Trust me, I’m still reaping the benefits at Critical Mass for getting our own (first) community off the ground. But in all honestly, my brilliant team of researchers is entirely responsible for the continual homeruns.

We’ve got clients ranging from CPG to financial services to automotive, and we’ve used online communities to gain insights about everything from shopping habits to desired product features.

So I’m curious to know: What’s holding you back from considering an MROC?

Written by Arif Hirani, Research Director for CM’s Curious division

Former CMer David Armano wrote a popular post here in early 2008 entitled 10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive In A Recession. I encourage you to read it – its lessons remain salient today.

David’s post examined the opportunities offered to brands by a poor economic condition. And some marketers have caught on. But many still believe some common online marketing myths; an especially dangerous practice during a recession.

In the spirit of David’s post, here are 10 marketing myths de-bunked in order to thrive during the recession.

1. Things are stable now – I shouldn’t rock the boat.

The boat is already rocking – you just haven’t noticed yet.

Joseph Jaffe has this to say about marketers and risk:

“Instead of taking bold chances, we have become seduced by the promise of glory and reward that comes from sticking with the status quo. We have failed to manage risk. And in doing so, we have also failed to manage another unavoidable reality of our industry: change.”

Seth Godin adds that managing risk is not only our job as marketers, but part of the natural order of the industry. In his book Tribes, he writes that “[s]tability is an illusion…Today, the market wants change. The market demands change.”

Marketers must expect change – even plan for it. It is often the most exciting part of the job.

2. I’m Afraid.

How is this a marketing myth? Think of everything you hear around the office that translates into “I’m afraid.”

“Has the boss seen this?”

“Nobody’s done that before.”

“It’s risky.”

A lot of businesspeople hunker down during a recession, hoping they can just ride it out without creating too many problems. That’s actually more risky (and scary).

It’s OK to be afraid of new marketing tactics, but it’s not OK to allow that fear to stop you from taking risks. As General Eric Shinseki said: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

3. Forget [insert social media initiative] – we just need to sell our client’s stuff.

True, selling is important. It was the focus of my post last week: The Modern Agency Still Sells, Right? But social media marketing can help build trust and gain supporters.

Phil Dunn recommends five ways for you to use social media to increase sales, including prospecting, persuasion, closing, delivering value, and customer service. Keep your focus, but don’t discount the medium’s potential to increase sales, if done correctly.

4. We finished the website – now we’re done.

This is digital – you can go back and make changes. In fact, you should!

Compared to print, digital efforts are astoundingly inexpensive in alter. Armano calls it the Beta Economy (#1 on his list). As a marketer, it’s imperative that you check your web statistics, garner knowledge from them, and make changes based on this data.

Why spend so much on a website and ignore its optimization? We’re always in beta…always.

5. I’d be better off letting my competitors try [insert new marketing initiative] first. Then I can learn from their mistakes.

What you consider mistakes are actually learning opportunities. Sure, some missteps are more seriously, but consider the experience your opponent is gaining while you sit on the digital sidelines.

Expert commentary from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War explains the importance of being ahead of your opponent:

“Once war is declared, [the leader] will not waste precious time…with all great strategists, from Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte, the value of time – that is, being a little ahead of your opponent – has counted for more than either numerical superiority or the nicest calculations with regard to commissariat.”

Being first allows you to build up what Len Kendall describes as a sort of “giving storehouse.” His “Give/Take Ratio” post illustrates that subsequent market competitors will have to work much, much harder to earn trust than the early adopter.

6. Cutting our marketing and advertising budgets will help us squeak through the recession and end up stronger afterward. [If you're not thinking this, your clients might be.]

Henry Ford said, “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”

Think things have changed so much since Ford’s time? John A. Quelch, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School concurs:

“This is not the time to cut advertising. It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic time.”

‘Nuff said.

7. Focus groups are expensive, but it’s the only way to get customer information.

A recession is a great time to expand your online customer research because focus groups are simply too expensive. You can often garner just as useful information by observing customers and potential customers online.

David’s post discusses this as #7: Trade focus groups for digital ethnography.

“Social networks and search engines can be rich ethnography tools…before you slash that discovery phase, think about how digital can be used to find things about the behavior of your target.”

I would add web analytics to the mix. One of the best indicators of how your audience will respond to a message is to determine how they’ve responded in the past. Test headlines, ads, designs, and copy variations to determine the most effective tactics.

8. We don’t have anything to share with our customers. Besides, they don’t want to talk to us, anyway.

This is sometimes true. Not many people want to chat up the guy who makes their ball bearings.

But there are a lot more brands people want to interact with that aren’t making an effort yet. So what do you have to offer?

First, you’ve got access. If customers are interested in your product, it’s likely they would want to take a peek behind the curtain.

Second, you’ve got an experienced workforce with highly specialized knowledge. Employees frequently have the potential to be amazing brand representatives, given the proper encouragement.

9. I’m in a highly regulated industry…so I can’t do anything remotely risky.

Pew comes out with reports all the time verifying that Americans interested in their health are online (the latest is here); and heck, my health insurance company has a Twitter account. Chase Bank and others have even developed iPhone apps.

Even the stodgiest, most regulated industries – from health care to insurance to banking – are realizing that their customers are online…and they’d better join them or risk being left in the dust.

10. ROI is the only thing that matters.

ROI or “return on investment” is the ultimate metric. I’m not saying we should trash it.

But ROI is different in a web 2.0 world – especially one in a recession. Unlike direct marketing in days of old, customers take a more round-about path to purchase.

If you’re stuck on ROI, consider this slight twist. David Alston calls it the “return on ignoring“. From the post: “Exploring investment return for social media is valid and necessary within a business framework. But equally important is carefully assessing the price for not being involved.”

Can you afford to ignore channels where your customers are already discussing your product? Not likely.

Economic slowdowns are opportunities

I started thinking about this while writing my e-book: Marketing During A Recession: Economic Slowdowns Are Opportunities. It seems to me that this is the time when marketers should be pushing the envelope; yet, it seems like most aren’t.

Do you agree with the marketing myths listed here? How has your marketing changed during the recession? Click the title of this post to add any comments, we welcome them all.

I picked up my voicemail messages on Sunday evening to find a call from a nice sounding man trying to sell me some sort of holiday package. He stated that he got my information from one of my Facebook friends. This angered me. I quickly deleted said “friend”.  I have to admit that I had a quick moment of nostalgia when I received the message, but I quickly checked the irritated box once I heard why and how the silver voiced man had reached me.  Needless to say, my experience was not a positive one and I lost a “friend” in the mix.
Experiences – we all have them. Hundreds of them. They define our likes, our loves and our lives. Some experiences are good, some bad, some are even questionable, but what we care about are the valuable ones because they happen on OUR terms.  We (consumers) have come to expect the instant provision of service, information and entertainment on our terms and not on the marketer’s terms.

What’s a marketer to do?

Listen to your audience. Get to know what they really feel about your brand. No, what they REALLY feel. You may be surprised what you hear – good and bad.  There are some free social monitoring tools that can help with this process, but if you only listen for a small amount of time you will find yourself back at square one sooner than you can tweet about the experience. Build a solid foundation for the future. Take the time and invest in a tool that will help you get ahead.

Mr. Silver Voice may have irritated me no matter what, but what if he changed up his approach and spoke to me in a different channel using a different message? I just got back from a wedding in Oklahoma and tweeted about it. If he was listening and approached me in a different manner, I may not have had the same emotional reaction. Being equipped with the right messaging in the right place when the consumer chooses to engage is being ON DEMAND.

The creation of an On Demand Framework is essential

Without a framework, most marketers tend to start with the tactics, focusing on the hottest new channel, tool or gadget, without thought into how, who and why they are there. So where should you start? We here at Critical Mass have outlined seven principles for being an On Demand brand to get you started.

Be…

1. Insightful – Know your audience. What do they like? What is their online behavior?
2. Remarkable – Stand out from the crowd. Use emotion to connect with your audience. Let them know you understand them and can make their lives easier and/or more enjoyable.
3. Valuable – Getting someone to engage with your content is the first hurdle, but how do you get them to return or engage with you again? Give them something of value. Make it about them, not you.
4. Dynamic – “2.83 million pieces of new content are posted every day.” (Nielsen BuzzMetrics) Don’t be part of the clutter; create a path that is uniquely yours.
5. Portable – Engage with the consumer wherever they are, at any time. Consumers are looking for you – be there to greet them.
6. Conversational – Online media has transformed into a social and interactive experience. Brands must participate in the conversation. Consumers now expect it.
7. Everywhere* – Consumers don’t see the difference between channels. They do not care nor do they want to understand your online strategy.  They just want to find what they are looking for when they want it. Simple. Be where your consumers are. Use insights to make these decisions.

Do I really need to be everywhere?

No, not at all. If you want to have a long lasting relationship with your audience, then you must understand where they spend their time online, how they use each channel and why they use each channel.  We use the three P’s as a reminder.

Penetration – What’s the penetration of a channel against the target audience?

Perception – What is the consumer perception of a channel among the target?

Potential – Can we successfully market to them in a particular channel?

If you always start with the customer, use the On Demand framework and consider the 3 P’s, you can place your bets and win every time.

Hopefully you won’t be getting a call from Mr. Silver Voice, but if you do, let him know that he needs to brush up on his 7 principles. He is definitely not On Demand.

For more on the 7 principles to ensure your brand is On Demand, check out our deck on Slideshare

Written by Allyson Hohman, Search Director in the Chicago office

I’m inspired by all of the industry chatter about the impact of social on search. Last week, I read Jasmine May’s post on OneUpWeb’s study about how consumer generated content is influencing search behaviors. While the news is definitely insightful, it’s important to understand each social media tool as a separate beast, each having its own unique impact on your brand’s “findability” online.

Let’s start with twitter. Although this tool was designed to create and build relationships, it does have an SEO value. I recently sat down with Allyson Hohman (CM’s super-smart Search Director) and got her perspective: “The real time feedback from Twitter is slowly, but surely changing how people conduct a search and, ultimately, what results they will find.” In addition, twitter is optimized as its own destination, as distributed content becomes increasingly important to branded messaging and community relationships.

Together, we came up with the following 15-point twitter SEO checklist:

1. Handle. Is it something people search for?
2. Brand Name. May or may not be the same as handle. Is this displayed as searchable content? (tip: no abbreviations or brand acronyms)
3. Bio. Is it relevant? Does it say why your brand is there? Does it include influencer buzz words?
4. URL. Is your brand linking to your twitter URL in company blogs and sites? (and vice versa?)
5. Tweet Copy: First Words. The start of each tweet (40-45 characters) is factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, and however many characters are left go to the beginning of the actual tweet. (tip: pack the punch in the first 20 characters if possible
6. Real Words. Is your brand using language that people (influencers and enthusiasts) use?
7. RT Friendly. You have 140 characters to tweet, but should only be using 115-125, so people can RT what we’re saying without editing your content
8. Relevant Messaging. Is your tweet valuable to community conversation? Have you engaged social monitoring tools to guide your creative, content & copy? *tip: If not, you’re already in trouble
9. Link Tracking. Links are ignored by search engines, but you can measure what’s working (tip: bit.ly or Budurl can track links even when other people shorten/modify the URL. Think of it like a redirect tag – but it’s not 100% accurate)
10. Reduce.Reuse.Recycle. We hope you get new followers each day, but did they miss something smart you said? Re-use appropriate high-profile tweets that demonstrate your company culture, timely news and or profound ideas. (ex. “In case you missed the announcement…” ) *tip: don’t abuse this one!
11. Valued Followers. Get the high-profile tweeters to follow as they will boost page rank, as twitter will internally link followers to our profile. *tip: remember you’ve earned these followers, and don’t forget to tend to them with care
12. Directory Listings. Wefollow, Twellow, even wikipedia.. Is your twitter handle listed?
13. Linking Out. Share photos, and video (flickr, twitpic, twinkle, twiddeo)
14. Linking In. Use other sources to link to the twitter profile vs. blogs, etc. Use “tweet this” buttons for people to re-share/re-circulate from your site.
15. Site Tags. Add call-to-actions and twitter handle in site meta data and title tagging (ex. “follow <your @ goes here> on Twitter”)

In case you need some aditional background, Allyson breaks down how this happens in real-life, “Many start their search for local information on a Search engine – movie times, locations, where to buy tickets and a map to get you there in time for the show. Consumer behavior is changing and more are starting their searches on Twitter. They are soliciting feedback and looking for reviews on a movie before heading to their favorite search engine to find a time and location. With that being said, it is extremely smart (and needed) that the search engines are reaching out to microblogs to start to incorporate tweets into their results (i.e.BingTweets.com). They surely don’t want to lose those eyeballs to Twitter on top of the funnel keywords or phrases – that’s where us PPC folks pay mucho bucks for each click.”

The doldrums of summer notwithstanding, I’ve noticed no dearth of self-reflective articles discussing the changing role of the advertising/marketing agency in a web 2.0 world.

Great minds wax poetic about the move from push to pull, from TV to web, from monologue to dialogue – and these are great discussion topics.

But you know what? Almost none of these articles talk about sales.

Are we forgetting our purpose?

Bursting A Bubble

I remember back when the internet was the shiny new object of fascination. Over time, businesses that marketed online to sell products survived (i.e. Amazon.com) and those that just focused on the fun online marketing stuff…well, didn’t (i.e. Pets.com).

Are we seeing a similar trend with social media? A lot of brands are throwing money at engagement and conversation and friending – but is this making the cash register ring?

Image Courtsey of Big Mouth Media; http://tinyurl.com/nellt9

Real Marketers Still Make – And Sell – Stuff

Phil Johnson’s Ad Age piece entitled Agencies Should Be Defined by What They Know, Not What They Make is one of the articles about the modern agency that rubbed me wrong.

As I read it, his article focuses on what we know (communication) at the expense of what we make (ads/experiences which turn into sales).

My conviction is that advertising agencies should become a community full of intellectually curious people…Clients should feel compelled to work with a given agency because they hold the keys to the mysteries of how people communicate with each other.

OK, sure, but isn’t this a tad esoteric?

Clients aren’t comforted by what you know. They’d rather see how you turn that into sales.

Agencies that use social media, then foster loyalty and trust, and then turn that into sales – those agencies will triumph. But agencies that dabble in social media without even considering ROI or sales…think Pets.com 2.0.

Marketers and advertisers who consider sales not lofty enough of a goal would do well to remember David Ogilvy’s number one obiter dictum from Confessions of an Advertising Man:

“We sell – or else.”

It’s true that agencies are differentiated by what they know, but they will be defined by what they create.

Because last time I checked, clients hired agencies to make, to create. Try explaining to a client that you were “evolv[ing] with the communications zeitgeist” on their dime (Johnson quote). They won’t buy it (and they shouldn’t).

So, let’s be predictably irrational when we join the conversation and have a big ol’ bowl of meatball sundae. But let’s remember our purpose as we’re doing it.

(If you want more about how the modern agency model is changing, I recommend Jeremy Abelson’s Embrace For Impact, Rick Liebling’s Agency Nil, Crispin Porter + Bogusky & BBH Labs on agency models, and Danielle Sacks’ interview in Selling Soap. Literally. published in Fast Company magazine.)

- John Wanamaker

I can’t stand that quotation.

Even today, it is bandied about as though it has any meaning in the current world of (online) marketing. It contained some truth when it was first said, but today it just identifies the lazy marketers in our midst.

Why the vitriol? It’s because almost everything is becoming measurable. Now, there is no reason to claim ignorance to analytics – we are swimming in data.

But that might be the problem. As the recession continue to apply pressure to all industries (and on advertising and marketing more than most I would venture) there is a redoubled focus on return on investment (ROI).

And this is wonderful. The online channel is made to justify advertiser’s investments. But the advent of social media has thrown a monkey wrench of sorts into the works. How do we define ROI in a web 2.0 world? How has the landscape changed and how can we plan for tomorrow?

Where Have We Been?

For decades and decades, there was little evidence at all to prove ROI. What was the value of your PR representative annoying journalists with phone pitches? No one could say. How many sales resulted for your Times Square advertisement? No one knew.

This started to change with mass online adoption. Scores of processors and bits of code could record our every action. There were only two problems:

• Our recorded actions were throwbacks to an older era, such as “impressions.”
• Certain actions were deemed valuable simply because we had the means to measure them, not because they actually proved engagement (i.e. “hits” – any single access to a web server).

We operated under the flawed system through the 1990s and much of the 2000s, possibly because it offered better metrics than the past (read: next to none) and because it fit the web 1.0 style. We offered up content to a passive audience who had a limited ability (if any) to respond. Kinda sounds like television, doesn’t it?

Where Are We Going?

But now, we are in a different era – certainly different from the heady days of radio and television, and different even from those swaddling days of web 1.0 analytics. We’ve long passed the old media measurements and metrics from the early days of the internet because they simply don’t provide enough value in an online community based on conversation, niche groups, and viral sharing.

We need to determine some critical components: What we’re going to measure, how we’ll measure it, and why.

The good and bad news is that this will require a more personalized analytics review. Clients (the smart ones, anyway) and agencies must spend more time identifying the goals of each web tactic and how success can be measured for that tactic.

It’ll be more work, sure. But this is the information that will identify critical gaps, illuminate key strengths and weaknesses, and determine market leaders of the future.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester suggested what to measure in his recent report, Social Media Playtime Is Over:

“Demonstrate how social media marketing is effective during budget trimming. Don’t concentrate on measurements like page views that don’t affect the business; instead, focus on how customers have moved farther down the marketing funnel…Focus on measuring based on business objectives, not just traditional Web analytics.”

We are moving from a period of raw quantitative measurement (i.e. How many unique visitors did we have?) to a qualitative period (i.e. Did our social media engagement create more trust which in turn created more sales?). Trust, loyalty, and brand advocacy aren’t intangible anymore.

Web analytics aren’t going away. They still have some use and heck, the C-level is beginning to understand them. However, this is a moving target and you should be prepared for changes in the months and years to come.

But don’t take it from me. Your agency should be explaining these integral components of online marketing in a web 2.0 world. They are explaining it…aren’t they?

Its official.  Oprah Tweets.  @Oprah Stedman and I are shopping for light bulbs.

Not too many celebrities have an HBR (Harvard Business Review) case study written about them (I’d link you to it but they don’t give those away for free).  It talks about her humble beginnings, her work in Chicago television and ultimately how she ended up staring down execs from massive distribution companies over the negotiation tables in an effort to maintain control over her destiny.  No mention in the case of best friend Gayle (seriously, she needs a Wikipedia page?) which I found refreshing.

Her ability to maintain control of her brand has enabled her to create a distribution strategy rivaled by few.  Magazine, radio, book clubs and potentially her own network.  But it is less about the properties in her network and more about the message she consistently communicates. That message is simple and authentic:  be strong and resilient and you can live your best life.

Over the last couple of months, Oprah has launched a Facebook page (she brought Zuckerberg onto the show for a very awkward, appearance to demonstrate how to use it) and now is on Twitter.  So how will she continue to expand her experience into digital channels, specifically social, where judgment of success is tied directly to authenticity?  It shouldn’t be all that different from how she has built her brand.

If Oprah calls me and asks for advice, and I’m sure she will, I will offer two thoughts.  First, her greatest asset is her perceived authenticity.  Yes, perceived, because I think it is all just marketing.  That being said,  women sit in that studio and cry; they get online and talk about her the way men do about sports.  They do so because they relate to her and her stories in a way that they can’t duplicate in other areas of their life (Sad?  Maybe, but its true). If she can maintain that level of authenticity in social media her brand will continue to resonate and she will attract Kutcher like followers on Twitter.  If that happens, as some tweets are implying, her and Ashton will be holding hands as they jump the shark.

I’m on the family size!  Wow, thanks Oprah!!!!

Second, she is arguably the biggest influencer in history.  Brands beg, borrow and plead to get on her “Favorite Things” show and when they do sales go through the roof.   When she knights a chosen one like Dr. Oz or Rachel Ray, they take off and get their pictures on boxes of Triscuits.  Her ability to be a social media infuencer could be a bigger challenge.  Twitter users are anti-mainstream.  They are a core group of early adopters, specialists who believe they drive a revolution.  A scan of Tweets about her are wonderfully cynical:

thekat0711 :

Guys, I hate to say it but I think he’s right: Oprah and Ashton Will Destroy Twitter http://bit.ly/RiIWe

helmsb :

I think historians will look back and decide that when @Oprah joined Twitter is when it jumped the fail whale

2009-04-17 11:42:59

AmyZQuinn :

RT RT let us gather on the last day of Twitter, for verily Oprah doth approach,&her people shall bring the Whale of Fail

2009-04-17 11:50:09

Clearly she will need to establish herself as serious about her role in social networks.  She can do this the same way other influencers do.  She can create value and insight for people that follow her, not just another channel to hock merchandise.

Love it or hate it, the fact that Oprah is now tweeting is yet another example of a brand reaching out to consumers rather than waiting for consumers to come to them.  I giver her credit for recognizing that experiences must be distributed.  But since my wife has a handbag, make-up and a Suze Orman book because of her – Oprah still owes me.