Research

Thursday, March 18, 2010

A blinding flash of the obvious: Reporters rely on PR pros for news

The folks at Crikey are shocked—shocked—to find that 55% of the articles published in 10 hard-copy newspapers were sourced one way or another by public relations.

The author of the article in Crikey—an Australian digital-only news source—believes this to be a dubious statistic, a view supported by the headline that reads, “Over half your news is spin.” The author (whoever that may be, since there’s no byline on the story) also seems to think that it’s a source of shame to practicing journalists. When called about it, “many journalists and editors were defensive,” he (or she) writes. “Who’d blame them? They’re busier than ever, under resourced, on deadline and under pressure. Most refused to respond, others who initially granted an interview then asked for their comments to be withdrawn out of fear they’d be reprimanded, or worse, fired.”

The study was conducted by 40 studnets from the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the university of Technology Sydney, and is available at a Crikey site (free registration required) with the provocative title, “Spinning the Media.” There, the ACIJ’s Wendy Bacon and UTS student Sasha Pavey conclude:

Our investigation strongly confirms that journalism in Australia today is heavily influenced by commercial interests selling a product, and constrained and blocked by politicians, police and others who control the media message.

The bar charts show the percentage of content across those 10 publications that was driven by media releases and by “other forms of public relations or promotions” and how many were published with “no significant journalism work.”

What strikes me most about this “Joint Crikey-ACIJ Investigation” is the notion that it’s something new. I attended a conference in the 1980s in which a speaker noted that an equally high percentage of the stories appearing in the mainstream press begin with some kind of PR contact. The same point was made in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s series on PR, “Spin Cycles,” produced back in 2007. And the Pew Research Project’s Excellence in Journalism unit found, during a week of reviewing Baltimore media, that more “more commonly than in the past…press releases from politicians, governmente agencies and companies were rewritten quickly by multiple outlets and posted on the Web with no additional reporting.”

Crikey and the ACIJ may have done a deep dive into the 10 newspapers they studied, but evidently they didn’t research much beyond that or they might have determined that the situation hardly warrants the sensationalist treatment it was given.

There are two separate issues here. The first is simple: Journalists get a lot of their news from PR people. Does this mean the news readers get from purportedly objective journalists is tainted by PR spin?

Let’s be realistic. Business and government represent a huge part of what journalists cover. And just how do the folks at Crikey think reporters learn about much of the news coming out of government and business? Are investigative reporters hanging around bars and diners hoping to hear snippets of conversation? Are they on the phones all day calling contacts, asking “Hey, mate, anything going on at Acme I should be reporting?” Does all news come from whistle-blowers and tipsters?

The role of media relations professionals is to inform journalists of their organization’s news. That’s how journalists find out that a new CEO has been hired, that a new product is launching, that a smaller company has been acquired, that quarterly earnings have been released. These are legitimate news stories. It is the newspaper’s responsibility to report them. And journalists rely on PR representatives to let them know when these events occur.

Once a reporter has been informed, he generally asks questions, does research, and produces a story. He does not accept the company’s spin. In fact, as former Financial Times reporter Tom Foremski put it, “In most news stories, the spin or angle, is set by the journalist” (the emphasis is mine).

There is a vast difference between spinning the news and providing relevant information about your company to the media. This is a relationship that most journalists take for granted.

Of course, newspapers don’t report on every press release or phone pitch they receive—just the ones about which theyr readers should know. God knows PR agencies shovel a lot of self-serving garbage to the press in the form of media releases and pitches, but that doesn’t mean those releases ever make it into print.

But what about that nasty second issue, that much of the newspaper content originating with PR was reprinted “with no significant journalism work?” Remember Foremski, who said the journalist, not the PR people, are the ones who spin the story? That happens, he says, in the first few paragraphs.

Much of the rest of the story is factual: what the CEO said, when the company was founded, where it is based, the stock price, the specs of a product, the price, etc, etc, etc. There is no need for journalists to rewrite this stuff…It is wasted effort because it duplicates work already done. The journalists should focus on their spin on the story, then assemble the news story from…the press release package.

So on the one hand, there’s Crikey, sounding the alarm that organizations are infiltrating the press and scamming the public with a flood of fluff and spin. On the other hand, there is reality: PR professionals advising the media of their organizations’ news, followed by informed judgments by journalists about which stories warrant coverage. Sometimes these stories are written afresh, sometimes the reporter rewrites the first few graphs to infuse the article with her own perspective, then reporting the facts from the press release pretty much as-is. (And that doesn’t mean the facts haven’t been verified by the reporter, mind you. The appearance of press releases in those 10 Australian newspapers mostly as they appeared in the release does not mean that nobody checked those facts.)

Ultimately, the Crikey-ACIJ “investigation” is just a lot of hot air that doesn’t reveal a damn thing beyond a pathetic ignorance of the wholly ethical process by which the media-PR relationship works at its best.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Social media grows small businesses, study shows

I recently heard a well-known online figure denounce the use of social media as a business strategy, insisting instead that social media will kill your brand. All you need for a successful business, he said, is a good product, solid customer service and a domain.

There are so many problems with this it’s hard to know where to begin. I could start with the plummeting visits to company destination websites. Or, I could start with the fact that many competing companies offer comparable products, making it difficult to stand out in the marketplace. As business ethicist and author Dov Seidman suggests, when it is so easy for your comeptitors to duplicate your offering, it’s no longer what you do that differentiates you in the marketplace, it’s how you do it.

But I’m not here to list the problems with “good product/good service” as the sole foundation for business success. The videographer is right as far as he goes: Without a good product and good customer support to back it up, you’re hosed. But these are merely the price of admission. How do you stand out form the rest of the pack once your excellent products and service are on store shelves?

If you’re a small business, social media is an answer. It’s not, as aforementioned individual suggests, “stupid” and if you use it, you’re not an “idiot.” That’s not my opinion. That’s the proof released in a study from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business demonstrating that the intelligent adoption of social media can yield new customers for small businesses.

That’s a good thing, since attracting new customers is the main reason small businesses get into social media. Only 6% of the businesses surveyed believed social media did their brands and businesses more harm than good, according to the study.

Most of those businesses that have engaged in social media have seen their businesses grow as a result. The study cites an example in Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and founder of a vision care center:

In order to meet the growing challenges of a tough market last year, I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible. With a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities. Our Google ranking is consistently number one for many of the phrases people use to search for eye doctors in and around my city and we have received a “bump” in terms of new visitors to the site.

On top of that, Glazier’s presence in social channels—notably his blog—has led to media interviews, positioning him as a thought leader in his field.

About half of the survey respondents expect social media will generate further profit in the next 12 months. But small businesses have produced more than just profit from their engagement. The study—sponsored by Network Solutions—also found that 77% of businesses have found ways to improve their operational efficiencies through social media and 47% have identified new products and services that lead to still more business and sales.

But wait. There’s more. Social media has provided small businesses with a highly effective channel for answering customer questions and ensuring customer satisfaction, leading to repeat business, according to the study.

Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, sums up the measurable, proven benefits: “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service. Time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.”

So what about the video talking head’s insistence that people don’t want to be friends with companies? What of his concern that money invested in a social media site could evaporate should that site goes under?

First, as the study confirms, engagement in social media isn’t about becoming friends. It’s about providing access to customers where they’re spending their time and resolving customer service issues where they arise.

As the volume of visits to company-domain websites continues to plummet, companies simply need to be where their customers and prospects are. That’s how Dr. Glazier and the other respondents to the study found new customers—not by becoming friends, but by being visible, responding to questions and building their reputations and brands so they are viewed as knowledgable and professional.

None of these companies are putting their eggs in a single basket. It’s easy to move wherever the audience goes. And Dr. Glazier, who gained greater exposure and more customers, also reduced his marketing budget by 80%.

You can opt to listen to the cynics who denounce social media as “stupid” and employed by “idiots,” or you can pay attention to the evidence and grow your business.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Forrester’s blogging policy misses the IP point

Warning: Long post follows.

Readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast, “For Immediate Release,” know thast I focus primarily on the impact of online media on organizational communications. As a blogger and a podcaster with an audience, companies routinely reach out to me with their news and information in the hopes that I’ll find their content interesting enough to share. It’s only about 9:30 a.m. here in the Bay Area and I’ve already received about a dozen such pitches today via email.

Forrester Research is one of the organizations that engages in such outreach—and, candidly, it’s one of the few organizations whose content actually is of enough interest for me to share it with my community. When Forrester issues a report that deals with social media and communications, Forrester graciously offers me a copy of the report. These reports sell for hundreds of dollars or more, and as an independent consultant, I couldn’t possibly justify the cost of purchasing one. Because Forrester shares its intellectual property with me at no cost, I’m able to opine on the research and share the findings I believe are most significant.

All of which I do on my own blog and my own podcast. As a result, readers and listeners learn about the research who otherwise may never have known it existed. Some may become Forrester customers. Which is exactly why Forrester engages in such outreach: Its IP is only worth as much as people are willing to spend on it. The more people who pay for it, the more it’s worth.

Which is why I’m so completely dumbfounded at Forrester’s much-discussed analyst blogging policy. The company is confining its analysts to blogs that reside on Forrester’s own platform for posts about research. The reason, according to Forrester and several of its analysts, has everything to do with intellectual property (IP). In a recent post, Forrester VP Josh Bernoff (for whom I have enormous respect and admiration) explained:

What people need to understand is that Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product. Blogging is an extension of the other work we do—doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example.

...for Forrester, it serves our clients better to be able to get to all our blogs from one place, and to know the opinions of analysts that they see are part of the other opinions they read in our reports, in press quotes, and in everywhere else we talk.

The revelation of the policy has ignited controversy with opponents and proponents lining up with their various arguments. But for me, the underlying IP argument is perplexing. Consider this comment from Dana Baxter, left to the SageCircle blog that first reported on the policy and kicked off the whole debate:

I regularly read Bruce Tempkin’s blog “Customer Experience Matters” and it’s one of the best blogs I’ve run across. He seems to regularly refer back to Forrester. I didn’t even know that Forrester had research in customer experience until I read his blog. I know I’m not a client of Forrester, so they aren’t making money from me, but I’ve been trying to make the case based on his work. But if they’re shutting down his blog, then I don’t really want to read what Forrester has to say.

This is the key issue. When analysts have their own blogs with dedicated followings, their discussion of the research with which they’re involved can reach people the official Forrester blogs won’t reach. (If you think that’s not true, go back and read Dana’s comment again.) And if keeping the IP on the Forrester site is so all-fired important, why share it with the likes of me so I can report the same IP on my blog and podcast?

(Of course, after reading this post, maybe they’ll stop sharing their IP with me.)

I’m not the only one making this observation. Writing on GigaOm, Mathew Ingram says:

In his blog post, Bernoff defended the new policy as a necessary step, saying Forrester is “an intellectual property company, and the opinions of analysts are our product.” But a strong analyst who connects with readers and builds a following, wherever that following might occur, is a benefit to the company they work for, even if he or she eventually leaves to pursue other opportunities. That is the nature of a web-based business—something the research industry is becoming, whether it likes it or not.

Trying to confine analysts and control the access they have to readers through the web is not only wrongheaded (in our view) but ultimately futile. Strong analysts who are treated in this way will leave anyway, thus defeating the purpose. We believe that social media tools can be used both to build personal brands and to benefit the overall corporate brand, and that is what we encourage.

Why not aggregate content?

The IP distinction is one that Forrester’s proponents raise repeatedly in the debate. The notion seems to suggest that analysts who write about their work on their own blogs are somehow sapping Forrester of its IP. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see how, particularly if those blogs link back to Forrester, bringing the company to the attention of new prospects.

Other companies with bloggers don’t compare because, Bernoff argues, their products aren’t about IP. I would argue that Microsoft and IBM are entirely about IP. Both companies encourage their employees to blog wherever they like. The companies link to those blogs on a page that links to all of the company’s bloggers. (Here are links to Microsoft’s and IBM’s employee blog directories.)

Thomas Nelson Publishers goes one better, pulling the content from each of its employee bloggers into a chronological display of the most recent posts from company bloggers. Admittedly, these posts don’t deal with IP at anywhere near Forrester’s level, but it seems a logical solution, one Tac Anderson suggested in a comment to a post about the policy by Cliff Condon, Forrester’s VP in charge of the company’s social media efforts. Condon replied that too few Forrester analysts are blogging to justify such an effort. ” I feel it’s up to Forrester to help more analysts start blogging by providing them a platform for doing it (rather than creating it on their own).”

In fact, Condon never even mentions IP in his post, asserting instead that the policy is designed to give Forrester analysts a tool designed to get them more involved in social media, to provide each analyst with a personal blog and to make it easier for Forrester clients.

I have no argument with these goals. After all, Hill & Knowlton provides a platform for its counselors to use for blogging. The difference, though, is that Hill & Knowlton doesn’t require its staff to use the platform. Many of the PR agency’s staff maintain their own blogs; their posts are aggregated on the same platform along with original posts.

Is it about control?

Forrester’s representatives argue that the policy isn’t about wielding control over what analyst bloggers write. In fact, they argue, analysts are being encouraged to stretch with their blogs.

Still, one defender of Forrester’s policy—Edison Research Strategy and Marketing VP Tom Webster—thinks control may well have something to do with it, pointing to a post former Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang wrote on his Web Strategy blog that required a follow-up apology. Writes Webster:

This could have (and maybe did) hurt Forrester right in the wallet. It’s not my intent to rehash that particular incident, but let’s all agree it was a significant black eye for the company and indeed the analyst industry as a whole. Forrester can afford to lose an analyst here and there -– but they can’t afford incidents like this.

(Webster, by the way, is a terrific dinner companion.)

I’m inclined to take Forrester’s word for it that the policy isn’t designed to keep a tight rein on its bloggers. After all, a well-communicated policy—like the one Hill & Knowlton implemented—would prevent virtually all such mistakes.

A policy would also preclude analysts from giving away more of Forrester’s IP than they should. But on this point, it’s worth looking at an article appearing in the March 2010 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, “Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead, and a quote from lyricist John Perry Barlow:

What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then—the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t regulate (taping at) our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.

Yep, that’s intellectual property Barlow’s talking about.

So I’m still befuddled about this notion of lost IP. I still don’t grasp how an analyst blogging about the research he’s engaged in on his own blog, informed by Forrester’s blogging guidelines, represents a tangible loss to Forrester. Do they not grasp what Barlow does? Are they less savvy about social media than they’ve been claiming they are?

The Altimeter equation

Most of the speculation by those aghast at the policy suggest its origins rest with The Altimeter Group, founded by former Forrester vice president Charlene Li; Owyang and Ray Wang are both partners who joined Li and Altimeter after leaving Forrester. In his SageCircle post, strategist Carter Lusher writes:

Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware of that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on “Altimeter Envy”). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts’ personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure.

I’d be more inclined to call this “The Scoble Effect.” Uberblogger Robert Scoble built his audience and his personal brand while blogging about Microsoft on his personal blog. He became Microsoft’s de facto spokesperson, its voice in the social media space. When he left Microsoft, he took that brand with him to each of his subsequent ventures. No single Microsoft blogger has been able to capture the share of attention that Scoble enjoyed, while Scoble ceretainly benefitted from the personal brand he had built based on Microsoft’s IP.

(Side question: If Scoble had been forced to blog on a dedicated Microsoft platform, would the company have deleted that blog upon his departure? One high-tech company—I can’t recall which—was called out in the blogosphere for doing just that and had to reinstate the posts in the face of accusations of altering history.)

I’m not inside the heads of Forrester’s leaders, so I can’t say how much of a factor the fear of losing analysts who build strong personal brands played in the decision. I’d be disappointed if it was a major consideration, since it seems petty and mean-spirited. In his post on the kerfuffle, C. Edward Brice cited David Armano’s brandividuals, “people who represent your brand and their own, balancing the two may be something we see more of, not less as companies and brands try to figure out how to engage on a web that’s become increasingly social and personal.” Brice, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Lumension Security, writes, “Basically today when you hire someone you bring their on-line social network into your company, and when they leave they take it with them.”

And if you already had a blog?

One of those defending the policy is new Forrester analyst Augie Ray, who will abandon his “Experience: The Blog” in order to comply with the Forrester policy. Ray isn’t thrilled with dropping the blog that has accounted for so much time and energy.

But I also understand Forrester’s reasons for the changes.  There are obvious benefits to the company of aggregating intellectual property on Forrester.com, including Search Engine relevance and creating a marketing platform that demonstrates the breadth and depth of analysts’ brainpower and coverage.

I appreciate Ray’s measured response, but I think it misses the point. He has developed a following on his blog and not all of them will necessarily follow him to the Forrester platform. That represents a considerable number of people Forrester won’t reach with its message, limiting the exposure to prospective new paying customers.

Consider Scott Monty, who brought his considerable following with him to his job managing Ford Motor Company’s social media efforts. He has used the blog effectively as a means of telling Ford’s story to a large audience than he could reach if he had been forced to scuttle his blog and start anew on a dedicated Ford platform.

The value of Scott’s Ford-focused posts still accrues to Ford (even as he continues to build his personal brand), just as the value of a Forrester analyst’s post on her own blog would still accrue to Forrester. Sure, it can also serve to build the blogger’s own brand, but even Forrester’s Bernoff admits that his brand has been built just fine without his own blog. So what’s the difference?

From a personal perspective, had Joe Jaffe told me that I’d have to give up my blog and podcast before joining crayon, I would have declined the offer. While a lot of prospective Forrester analysts may agree to drop their blogs in order to work there, it’s impossible to know how many may never apply in the first place knowing what the policy is. Some have argued that nobody would pass on the job to salvage their blog, but if I would, I’m probably not alone.

Did Forrester conduct a cost-benefit analysis?

I wonder if the powers that be at Forrester engaged in a cost-benefit analysis. What is it truly costing in terms of lost IP? (To reiterate, I can’t figure out where they’d lose a single nickel.) What is the cost if an analyst builds a personal brand and then leaves, taking her blog with her? (You’d also have to factor in how many of those analysts would have left anyway.) And what is the benefit of the expanded reach of Forrester’s messages and stories, the same reach that leads marketers to offer the IP free of charge to people like me?

I may have just answered my own question. If a cost-benefit analysis had been done, I can’t believe it would have led Forrester to adopt this policy.

So why, then? It’s either a provincial and wrong-minded understanding of IP or a knee-jerk reaction to the Altimeter Group situation.

Either way, it’s a mistake.

It’s also Forrester’s call, not mine. The company produces terrific research and I hope this all works out for them and their analysts in the long run.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Revitalizing StopBlocking.org

With only so many hours in a day, I have to choose where to commit my energy. As a result, some projects take a back seat. But after pondering two sets of data, I’m recommitting myself to my Stop Blocking initiative.

But it won’t do any good if I do this by myself. I need help to keep the wiki updated.

Bear with me, and I’ll explain all.

First, the data

By themselves, both of these sets of data are intriguing. Juxtaposed, however, they’re startling. One one side, you have organizations warming up to social media, particularly as a channel for marketing. On the flip side, you have a surge in companies that are blocking their own employees’ access to social media.

Add to the mix the fact that internal social media—also known by names like enterprise web 2.0—is gathering steam, and you’re faced with a genuine conundrum.

Let’s review these stats, starting with business embracing social media. According to Equation Research’s “2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report,” reported by eMarketer, 59% of brand marketers use social media, and the ranks will swell to 82% in the next year. A mere 13% claim they have no plans at all to jump into social media marketing.

This data reinforces the results of other research, like a study from the Association of National Advertisers that shows 66% of marketers have used social media in one form or another this year.

Returning to the Equation Research study, the results indicate that only 7% of companies don’t see social media as a good use of employee time.

Clearly, the companies surveyed by Equation weren’t the same ones analyzed by ScanSafe, which earned a boatload of free publicity when it released a study reporting a 20% increase in the number of companies blocking access to social media in the last six months.

So, companies want to market through social media but they don’t want their employees using it? First, that means employees will have to go home to participate in their own companies’ efforts. And second, if everybody follows suit, the total pool of consumers engaged in those marketing efforts will plummet.

But it gets more interesting when you look at the results of the Nielsen Norman Group‘s recent study, “Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets: A Report From the Front Lines of Enterprise Social Software Projects.” This in-depth research revealed that social software adopted by companies that produce significant results are nearly always introduced as under-the-radar grass-roots initiatives by front-line employees. That is, once social software efforts prove their worth, the powers that be push their implementation.

Let’s be clear: Employees who are not permitted to innovate with social media will not be able to introduce beneficial tools to the enterprise, ultimately costing these companies in untold ways, from innovation and collaboration to increased market share and profitability.

Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman group nails it:

Social software is a trend that cannot be ignored. It is bringing about fundamental change to the way people expect to communicate with one another. Companies cannot use social tools with their customers and not also allow their employees to utilize them.

Yet, according to the data, that is exactly what’s happening.

So let’s summarize:

• Companies want to market using social media.
• Companies rely on employee grassroots efforts to identify social media that will pay off internally.
• Companies are blocking employee access to social media.

Is it just me or does the math just not add up here?

And now, the call to action

I started Stop Blocking a few years back out of frustration over the knee-jerk reasons company denied employees access to social media. The blog was meant to provide updates on research and news items related to the topic. The wiki was designed to provide an archive of resources people can use to make a case against blocking in their organizations.

There has been plenty of evidence to add to the wiki which I have neglected. For example, there’s the University of Melbourne study proving a 9% productivity increase among workers allowed to use social media at work. Or there’s the BizInfo/Blackline study that revealed 65.3% of business professionals claiming that web 2.0 services help them to achieve business objectives and 78.1% who believe social media increases collaboration among employees.

I’ve written extensively about this elsewhere on this blog and over at StopBlocking.org. I’ve catalogued and attempted to debunk the reasons companies implement blocks. None of them hold water in light of the evidence of the real business benefits that accrue to organizations that prudently allow their employees access to the Net. I could go review all of these, but this post is already running long enough.

I will add the latest studies to the wiki. I will cross-posting this item to the blog. And I am committed to getting back to maintaining the blog. But I need your help.

What can you do?

• Send me resources—When you find a study or survey that either related to employee use of social media, blocking access, corporate policies or anything else that helps build the body of knowledge, please send it my way.
• Link to StopBlocking.org—The only way this initiative will build into a movement is if it’s visible.
• Put the badge on your blog—There are several versions available.
• Share success stories—Blog about the benefits of access to an open web in the workplace, and let me know so I can link to your posts.
• Make the case—Use the information at StopBlocking.org to make a solid business case for open access in your organization.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Less than 20% of online adults don’t use social tools

At the SNCR fellows retreat this past weekend, several of the academics in the group lamented the lack of longitudinal research, studies that explore the various dimensions of social media over a number of years. Indeed, most studies present a snapshot in time.

Forrester Research contributes a longitudinal study with today’s release of The Broad Reach of Social Technologies, a $499, eight-page document by Sean Corcoran. Groundswell co-author Josh Bernoff is among the four contributors to the report, which examines the 2009 Consumer Technographics research compared to the last two years. (Bernoff’s has written his own post on the report.)

For both fodder to convince management of the increasing importance of social media, as well as data to help target your efforts, this longitudinal study is a goldmine. There’s a lot to digest in its eight brief pages, but a few data points stand out, notably the increased involvement of consumers 35 and older. A lot of organizations have held back on social media involvement based on the belief that it was dominated by youth. But the 2009 survey finds that adults aged 35 to 54 increased its participation in online social activities by more than 60%; more than half of adults in the 35-44 bracket participate in Facebook and other social networks. Thirty-eight percent of the 54-54 group are regular users of these sites.

Equally striking is the fact that nearly everyone has joined the “spectator” Technographic category, which Forrester defines as those who consume but don’t contribute: They read blogs, listen to podcats, watch consumer-contributed videos, read online forums, and read customer ratings and reviews. According to the research, this category is populated by 75% of the adult online population.

In fact, only 18% of online adults in the U.S. don’t use any social media.

Based on what those spectators are doing, it seems clear that they are eager to get the opinions of what Emanuel Rosen calls “hubs” in his excellent book, “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisted.” Hubs are those individuals who attract a following based on their knowledge of a particular subject, but not necessarily loyalty to any particular brand. Forty-eight percent of spectators read product ratings and reviews written by customers. That’s up from 25% just two years earlier.

The lesson should be clear: The time to get into the conversation with those hubs is now. In his book, Rosen uses Microsoft’s MVP program as an example. The invitation-only program connects the company to those who contribute their knowledge of Microsoft products unselfishly with others, even if they’re also sometimes critical of Microsoft.

Even more striking is that 55% of spectators watch consumer-contributed videos. I have reported recently on For Immediate Release a couple of studies that confirm the spectacular growth of online video. For example, research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project demonstrates that watching videos is more prevalent that participating in social networks.

Online video strategies need to be factored into any social media plan.

One last bit of intelligence to share from the Forrester study: Adults 55 and older are moving out of the “inactive” and “spectator” category: 70% use social tools at least once a month.

Forrester concludes the data-rich research with a series of recommendations that mirror what most social media-savvy communications consultants would counsel, all focused on overcoming intertia and getting active where your customers are.

Friday, August 07, 2009

More meaningless data on social media and employee productivity

A Nucleus Research study mangles numbers to prove that Facebook causes productivity losses while another shows employers are buying this nonsense.

Links:

• Nucleus Reserach study: Productivity and Security Red Flags with Facebook Use at Work
• Only One in Three Companies Address Social Media Concerns

And, lest we forget…

• University of Melbourne research proves workers are more productive when allowed to use Internet for leisure

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Conclusions drawn from Twitter study don’t add up

There is so much wrong with the conclusions eMarketer has drawn from a LinkedIn and Harris Interactive study of Twitter, it’s hard to know where to start.

The results of the research—conducted in June among US advertisers and Internet users—led eMarketer to conclude:

While marketers, advertisers and members of the media have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, the average US consumer has not. And without broader consumer acceptance—not to mention awareness—it can’t be considered an effective marketing tool.

This assertion is based on these findings:

• Only 31% of Web users are familiar with Twitter compared to 83% of advertisers
• 58% of advertisers found Twitter very effective or effective as a marketing channel
• 50% of consumers found it to be a very effective or effective marketing channel

Here’s the standard eMarketer graph of one of the key bits of the LinkedIn/Harris report:

eMarketer’s belief that Twitter is ineffective is based mostly on the fact that only 31% of Web users are familiar with it. While this suggests that Twitter has not yet become the take-it-for-granted infrastructure some believe it has (what percentage of the Web population is familar with Facebook?), it does not diminish its potential as a channel for marketers who use it well. After all, the idea in social media marketing isn’t to reach your consumers directly, but rather to reach influencers. Early adopters are generally seen as influencers who share their opinions with their networks, which are not confined to Twitter.

Then there’s the notion that one of Twitter’s best uses for companies is in establishing and building relationships, not traditional marketing. Comcast’s initial “Can I help?” outreach to complaining customers is one example; the army of Dell employees who build communities is another. And despite a rocky start, the concept behind Best Buy’s Twelpforce is a bold one—front-line employees volunteering to respond to customers who send them questions.

Speaking of Dell, the $2 million earned by the Dell Outlet based on tweets announcing special offers may be chump change in the overall scheme of the company’s earnings. But it’s $2 million they wouldn’t have earned without the Dell Outlet Twitter account and the effort involved in generating that $2 million was minimal.

On a side note, I have to wonder about the 50% of consumers who find Twitter effective, since only 31% are aware of it at all. I assume that’s 50% of those who are familiar with Twitter. But it’s something of a specious argument, since Twitter continues to grow at an astonishing rate—from May to June alone, Twitter added about 5 million users, according to Nielsen. Greater awareness is coming.

The Nielsen/Harris study also suggests awareness of Twitter is greatest among younger Web users—even though Nielsen’s data shows that just 16% of U.S. visitors to Twitter are under 25. This group represents 25% of the total active base of U.S. Internet users.

And finally, when half or more of respondents tell you they find a channel effective for marketing, isn’t it a bit of a stretch to conclude that the channel is ineffective?

This is why research needs to be taken with a grain of salt.