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Net Promoter Score: Why you should use this customer loyalty metric

Kristian Olsen — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:45:06 +0000

What is it, and why should I care?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an easy-to-use metric that is gauges a consumer’s general sentiment of a brand. Its popularity has grown over the years because of its simplicity to execute and its linkage to a brand’s profitable growth.

The scores and sentiment derived from NPS also directly correlate to the loyalty a consumer has for a brand.

The Net Promoter Score question is typically asked in this format:

How likely are you to recommend Brand X to your friends?

0——————————5——————————-10

(Highly Unlkely) (Highly Likely)

How a person scores allows him or her to be bucketed into three categories. Namely:

Promoters (for those who score between 9 and 10)
Neutrals (for those who score between 7 and 8)
Detractors (for those who score 6 and below)

A brand’s Net Promoter Score is then derived by taking the percentage of Promoters (9 to 10) and subtracting the Detractors (6 and below) from it. A higher score indicates a stronger sense of satisfaction and brand loyalty by the consumer. A negative score means that there is work to be done.

How do we use it to our advantage?
Whether a brand’s Net Promoter Score is positive or negative, combining it with the right group of questions allows us to take the results further – possibly even to a campaign level. By adding in a question such as, “What can we do to improve our service?” you can obtain an indicative gauge of what irks consumers the most.

The brand now knows where problems are lurking and can choose to concentrate on making improvements to that sector. As improvements are done and deployed, a repeat Net Promoter Score survey is sent out again after a few months to gather data on whether customer satisfaction has increased.

For example:
Anti-Virus Software Company XYZ incentivized their customers who answered five easy questions:

How many computers do you have in your household?
How many hours a day do you spend online?
How can we improve our services?
How likely are you to recommend XYZ to your friends?
Tell us your details and particulars. (This includes blog addresses and/or Twitter handles)

They derived that their NPS was negative at -12. Customers were not satisfied with them and did not feel the need to be loyal to them anymore.

To change customer sentiment, three things had to be done:

1- They needed to identify key customers who took their survey.
They selected customers who had 2 or more computers at home, who spent more than 6 hours a day online and still scored 9 to 10. (Note: Why just Promoters? Your promoters are your most loyal customers. They will always support your brand and spread the word for you. You need to get the word out that you’re making improvements. Your detractors and neutrals can be handled after.)

From that narrowed down field, they then checked their blogs and Twitter handles to get a quick insight into who had wide networks and well-followed blogs. These individuals were then labelled as the Key Customers.

2- Identify the areas of improvement
From the “How can we improve our services?” question, they identified the top 3 areas that needed improvement.

3- Creating triggers of conversation
Steps were then put in place to improve on their shortcomings as told to them directly by their most loyal customers. As these steps to improvement took place, the brand reached out to these key customers to let them know that their feedback had initiated the improvements taking place. The idea behind this, aside from keeping customers informed, is so that the “promoters” know that they played a part in the initiative and would potentially start talking about it.

The brand would continue to take NPS measurements in increments of six months. That is, six months after improvements were made, the Key Customers were contacted once more and asked to complete the same survey. Then, 12 months later, the same people who took the initial survey were sent a new set of Net Promoter Score questions to measure the success of the campaign.

Typically, Net Promoter Scores increase after specific improvement initiatives are taken. I’ve witnessed first-hand how a company, over a period of 4 years, saw yearly increases in its Net Promoter Score – moving in tandem with the brand’s public perception from negative to positive.

While this is NOT a deep dive indicator into a brand’s consumer behavior and sentiment, Net Promoter Scores are simple, ‘more-than’ topline insights into customer loyalty. Their simplicity makes it easy enough for anyone to understand and explain – making this metric one of the most effective and easy-to-implement.

For more reading check out:

Have a question about Net Promoter Scores, or want to see how your brand can use them? Email Kristian.

#HyperTextLive: Best Practices for Growth in the Era of Transparency

Jason Clarke — Thu, 10 May 2012 01:07:30 +0000

Last Thursday, Text100 hosted #HyperTextLive, the first in a series of events aimed at taking many of the hot topics being discussed on the HyperText blog and extending the conversation in an offline forum with senior marketing and communications executives from across the industry.

Held at the Grand Hyatt, San Francisco, this first #HyperTextLive event themed ‘Best Practices for Growth in the Era of Transparency’ was a roundtable discussion on the changing state of the PR industry. Text100 invited Burghardt Tenderich, Associate Professor and Associate Director of USC Annenberg’s Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center to present a few of the highlights from its seventh bi-annual Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP VII) study.

As the year’s largest and most comprehensive study of the most senior communicators in public and private corporations, government agencies and non-profits in the United States, the research provides Chief Communication Officers (CCOs) and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) with the information they need to make informed decisions on budgeting, staffing, evaluation, reporting lines, organization, the use of agencies, and general gauge of the health and perceptions of the PR/Communication profession. The report uncovered some interesting insights including:

PR/Communications has a seat at the table – In nearly 60% of responding companies, the PR/Communications lead reports directly to the “C-Suite” (Chairman, CEO, COO, etc.), reflecting today’s increasingly transparent, communication-intensive environment

Marketing/product PR is in a state of decline – There has been a substantial decrease in the emphasis on traditional marketing/product PR. This could be attributable to an increasing reliance on social media to promote products.

The PR/Communications field is expanding to include new functions – PR is experiencing growth in internal communication and customer relationships.

Budgets are mostly up but agency-of-record relationships are in decline – Public corporations on average reported higher PR budgets than two years ago. However, the AOR model is changing rapidly. In 2002, more than 50% of corporations reported an AOR relationship. This number decreased continuously and has now shrunk to just over 15%. At the same time, the number of agencies used by corporations on an ongoing or project basis continues to increase. This is likely the result of a need for specialized and/or regionally focused agency services.

However, for the purposes of the roundtable the discussion focused on two primary areas of insight – the increasing importance of social media in the overall communications mix and the continued need for more meaningful measurement.

The increasing importance of social media in the overall communications mix

The study revealed that more than 70 percent of PR/Communications departments report budgetary responsibility for social media monitoring and 66% for social media participation. This reflects a 17% and 13% growth over two years ago. Further reflecting a shift to Web 2.0 communication is a rise in responsibility for search engine optimization (SEO). In addition to social media monitoring and participation and SEO, other PR disciplines seeing budgetary increase are corporate communications, executive communications, internal communications and, somewhat surprisingly, corporate external websites. The big loser in the mix product PR, which has experienced a significant decline in spend.

Highlights from the discussion included:

Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text100, on the increasing importance of internal communications as a function of PR:

“Communications departments now believe that the entire workforce functions as social communicators of the brand, whereas historically it hasn’t been a communications function, it’s been the role of HR.”

Ken Shuman, Head of Communications at Trulia, added:

“Your employees are your best social recruiters. We spend so much on internal communications compared to four years ago. We now provide hashtags for internal events and encourage staff to put pictures on Facebook. It’s amazing how much time is spent on internal communications now because of social.”

Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen Communications, on social media monitoring and participation:

“Customers want to know what’s going on – they want to listen – but the participation piece still lags. They listen more than they do. The smaller companies are more brave and are more likely to jump in but the bigger companies will listen more than they participate because there are still incredible risks around social.”

Ken Shuman, Head of Communications at Trulia, on the changing role of corporate blogs:

“We’ve produced multiple new blogs in the last twelve months because we view it as a valuable distribution channel. We have a trends blog, which is all data. We have a lux living blog, which is all homes, lifestyles and celebrities. It’s a chance for us to get the content out so the people share it via Facebook and Twitter and the media visit our blog for trends that they can write about. Content is king. We create it and we see it shared across multiple channels.

Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text100, added:

“Blogs are now one component of an overall owned media strategy or community or content strategy. It’s an evolution. Blogging has become part of a bigger community responsibility within an organization as opposed to a standalone blogs that have historically been independent.”

John Earnhardt, Director, Corporate Communications at Cisco on the role of video content versus written content:

“It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and the audience you’re trying to reach. At Cisco, we find a written piece of content and a video gets about the same level of interaction or the same level of views, but we have had some videos go viral, whereas viral text doesn’t really happen. You have to consider the audience and the ROI because videos take more time and cost more money, but if they perform the same then what are you accomplishing other than spending a lot more money?”

Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text100, on the ‘ownership’ of social media within a corporation:

“To some extent, social is becoming the forcing function that will get rid of the definitions we have around departments and functions. We’re still living in a world of functions and departments, which are aligned with an old model. If social becomes the predominant way of communication we’re moving to an era of social business, which will force corporations to align in a different way.”

Lee Flanagin, Senior Director, Corporate Communications at SanDisk, on the challenges of using social for engaging with a B2B audience versus B2C:

“No one has cracked the code. Everyone seems to be trying to promote social from a B2C philosophy into a B2B environment. In some cases the argument is viable, in other cases it’s a complete leap of faith. No one has really figured it out yet. If you can somehow define it and prove it, you’re going to have the tiger by the tail.”

The need for more meaningful measurement

The study revealed that corporations report an increase from 4% to 9% of total PR budgets. Companies utilizing “outcome” measures such as influence on stakeholder attitudes and opinions, the bottom line, etc. are much more likely to say they have a good external reputation and are successful than are companies that rely on traditional “PR output” measures — such as clips, impressions, and advertising equivalency.

Highlights from the discussion included:

David McCulloch, Director, Corporate Communications at Cisco on the increasing PR spend on measurement and analytics:

“We’re spending more because it’s really hard to get the data you want and it’s tempting to throw more money at more tools in the hope that you’ll get the answers you’re looking for, but even with the growing sophistication of measurement tools it’s still really hard to make sense of it. I think the challenge is that we’re spending more but we’re not necessarily getting more back.”

Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen Communications, on the importance of human analysis to reveal more meaningful insights:

“Human analysis is key. You need folks to sit on top of all the tools to crunch it all down and determine the cause and effect. There are tools out there that push out data but often times it doesn’t really tell you anything unless you have human analysis to re-crunch the data and make sense of it.”

Jeremy Woolf, Senior Vice President at Text100 added:

“What are people actually measuring? It seems like companies are still just measuring their own output as we used to do in the old media days as opposed to focusing on web based behavior i.e. what have people done and what caused them to have that reaction.”

Lee Flanagin, Senior Director, Corporate Communications at SanDisk, on the importance of up-leveling the measurement conversation with the C-Suite:

“We’re a $5.5 billion company focused on B2B and B2C audiences. Historically, the communications team had not tried to connect what they do to product sales. In many cases, it’s impossible to do that in the B2B world but by having a conversation with the executive team to talk about ways to potentially tie our efforts to sales – direct or indirect – fundamentally changes the way my department is seen by the executive team. At the end of the day, I want to be seen as a cost center – a function that could potentially drive to overall shareholder value of the company.”

Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen Communications, added:

“There are a lot of companies that are using measurement to justify what they’re doing rather than to drive what they’re doing. A true marketer would say what we should be trying to do is figure out what’s the best way to spend our money going forward, what can we learn and what would we change. Some of these measurement categories are derived from communications executives managing up to speak a language that the C-Suite understands in order to get the budget they need.”

Burghardt Tenderich summarized the discussion by drawing three general conclusions:

The field overall is expanding. The skill-sets that organizations need are getting broader
PR is being up-leveled within organizations with more communications executive having a seat at the corporate management table
The future of traditional communications, specifically media relations, is in decline so companies and agencies need to adapt and evolve by taking a more integrated approach.

Against the backdrop of stunning panoramic views of San Francisco, the roundtable brought together senior marketing and communications from across the industry. Full audio (can be downloaded) of the discussion and pictures from the event are available online.

Stay tuned for the next #HyperTextLive event, which is planned for early August.

Is Content Algorithm Optimization the Next SEO?

Pierre Le Leannec — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:15:25 +0000

Algorithms not only help with finding content but also impact the content creation process. Therefore, any online content producer – from the media to corporate entities – might have to take this into account in the future.

Until now, SEO has played a major role in governing how content is distributed online – and in some cases, how content is created. Copy optimization and keyword distribution are now common strategies (among others) for maximizing the visibility of content online. Nowadays, algorithms also impact directly not only visibility in search engines, but also the way content is structured or even processed. From Robot Journalism to live content optimization, algorithms now rule the world of content. Understanding how those algorithms work will offer a big advantage in terms of insights for those working on the distribution and creation of content.

Optimizing content with algorithms

Content-optimized algorithms already are part of our daily life –search engine algorithms display content in a way that is optimized for the reader, with results also customized based on geolocation, common search terms, etc. Social networks know more about you to serve you not only the most relevant ads, but also the best content (look at the detail of Facebook’s Edgerank for instance). News portals are displayed according to your taste (look at Google News or Yahoo News customization options).

Some websites go even further by adapting their homepage in real-time to account for the most recent trends (see the example of Melty.fr) or by detecting the next big trends (Buzzfeed.com for instance). With the integration of Facebook in media (and media in Facebook), newspaper homepages are getting more and more personalized and computer-assisted editorial content is already a reality.

Affinity content – predicting audience taste from your social graph

Social networks collect data all day long about user preferences and have built databases to profile tastes. Based on content, it’s now possible to determine the affinity not only with a brand but with its content, opening the door of targeted content based on the audience tastes. Some companies are already investigating these options (Curata, Infinigraph or Gravity among them). Don’t be surprised if tomorrow your behavior and tastes make brands be even friendlier with you.

Do robot journalists dream of electric sheep?

What if robots could understand audiences better than humans? Robot journalism isn’t science fiction anymore – it’s becoming reality. In a world where information is becoming a commodity and where economic pressures force content creation to lower costs, robots are the ideal companion for productivity. They already outperform sports journalists in some articles. And the progress in Artificial Intelligence, semantic analysis and trend analysis lets us imagine a not-so-far future where robot journalists would be much more developed.

Content Hacking and Public Relations

If these emerging trends are a reality, the job of PR agencies might have to evolve to adapt to this new type of content distribution. They’ll have to understand how influence is reshaped with the help of algorithms and how to glean insights through this new mechanism. In fact, PR will more than ever have to act as a filter to target a specific audience and make sure that the message gets delivered.

A couple of years ago, search engines disrupted the way content was distributed and accessed online. They led to the creation of Search Engine Optimization as a way to understand how to optimize content visibility. In this age of computer-assisted editorial content creation, content algorithm optimization might be the next SEO. Public relations consultants may have to develop the skills to be ready for new content distribution and creation strategies in the coming years, which involve a new stakeholder: the machine.

Interested in reading further? Some reading suggestions

Image credits

Does Timeline affect engagement on brands’ Facebook pages?

Melissa Chanslor — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:09:43 +0000

On March 30, Facebook migrated all brands to its new Timeline format. As brands continue to look at how to best leverage the new format , social media measurement and analytics company Simply Measured has released findings indicating that most brands experience increased engagement with Timeline (disclosure: they only looked at 15 brand pages).

As you can see, Simply Measured’s data reflected in this chart f rom eMarketer shows that average engagement with brand pages (defined by comments and likes) rose from an average of 672 points of engagement per post to 2,441 or 46 percent over the course of the three weeks following the move to Timeline. That said, Simply Measured also reported that when looking at individual brands such as Old Spice, Target, AT&T and Ford, it saw a decline in engagement with brand posts. Despite the increase in people liking pages, however, Simply Measured found that interaction with specific content is declining. Hmm…

Sure, numbers don’t lie, but I question the analysis that Timeline is affecting engagement this significantly. As my colleague Lars Basche noted, it’s a known fact that engagement primarily happens in Facebook users’ news feeds, not on the page itself. And Timeline does not impact content within the news feed, so why would it have such a considerable correlation with engagement? Timeline is a change to the format of the page, not to a page’s EdgeRank or exposure within Facebook. And while it naturally may take people time to get used to the new look of Timeline, I don’t see how it would change the way people experience brands on Facebook, given that most of this interaction takes place in their news feeds.

Although the data dates back to earlier this month, EdgeRank – who I consider credible, given the algorithm was actually developed by Facebook – conducted an analysis of the very same topic as Simply Measured. However instead of the sample size of 15 brands that Simply Measured used, EdgeRank examined more than 3,500 Facebook brand pages, and found that Timeline had no direct impact on content within the news feed. Not to mention Simply Measured’s sample size seemed to noticeably lack B2B brands, and given our Text 100 clients are a combination of B2B and B2C companies, we care about both. As stated on the EdgeRank blog, “It appears that a majority of Pages experiencing abnormal changes in Engagement/Fan is due to the publicity that has occurred since the implementation of Timeline. Many high profile blogs are discussing the changes, how to use it, and which brands are using Timeline best.”

If you want to increase engagement, the answer has not changed with the rollout of Timeline: get more likes and comments so that EdgeRank shows your posts to more of your fans, and run sponsored story ads. How do you get more likes and comments? Craft engaging content, think visually and identify the best times to post, and you can check out these posts for further recommendations:

Exploring Facebook Timeline for Brands – 7 Tips for Success

How to Increase Feedback on Your Brand’s Facebook Page – Take a Hint From Journalists

Best Practices: Determining the Value of Facebook Ads

Using Data to Increase Engagement: The Science of Timing

Learning Creativity – born or made? (part 1)

Anna Bray — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:28:12 +0000

The C-word is often thrown around. For me, it conjures images of the great innovations and innovators like Leonardo Di Vinci, Einstein, Steve Jobs and Picasso. However you choose to interpret the concept of creativity, we can probably all agree on something – it’s an extremely valuable attribute in today’s business world and particularly in the Public Relations and Advertising industries. This post is the first in a two-part series on creativity that will examine some prominent myths and suggest ways to improve personal and group creativity.

Myth 1: creativity cannot be learned

Creativity is often viewed as a ‘do or don’t’ trait, an inherent characteristic in the lucky few – you either have it, or you don’t. This is evident in a recent study that found that 68 percent of business leaders firmly believe that great innovators are born and cannot be made: a shocking finding and one far from the truth.

The immense scientific study and psychology research behind creativity has indeed found that creativity, like any other skill, can be learned and refined. Academics have argued that creative capabilities can be divided into two parts: 30% of creativity you are ‘born’ with and is defined by your genes, while a whopping 70% is determined by your attitude and mindset, which can be cultivated. However, if someone is to typecast him or herself as a ‘non-creative type’ – as is expected by the pre-existing notion that you either are or aren’t – then there is a very limited chance that that person will awaken, explore and build the 70% of internal creative possibility within them.

Sir Ken Robinson, author of New York Times best-seller ‘The Element’ and passionate advocate for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity, argues in line with this philosophy. He believes that we are all born ‘creative’, and that creativity should be treated with the same status as literacy, but that we are educated out of it. The education system currently ranks creative subjects like art at the bottom of the hierarchy, favoring math, science and literacy. When children first go to school they are not afraid to think innovatively and they’re certainly not afraid to be wrong. They aren’t hindered with the same fear of making mistakes that adults are, they’ll simply have a go. And as Einstein said, ‘if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never create anything original’.

In his inspiring TED talk that has been viewed more than 10 million times, Ken recounts the endearing story of watching his 4-year old son play one of the three kings in the Christmas Nativity play. As the story goes, the three kings come bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh. Unfortunately, the three boys went out of sequence, got confused and the script went like this:

“I bring you gold”

“I bring you myrrh”

“Frank sent this”

The important point is that if a child isn’t sure, they will have a go anyway as a child is far less likely to be inhibited by fear of being wrong and making mistakes.

Lesson 1: ALL of us are born creative

Myth 2: Only geniuses are supremely creative

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers: The story of success’, he recounts a common psychology convergence test measuring creativity, which I want to do here. Give yourself 30 seconds each to write down the different possible uses for:

a) a brick

b) a blanket

This test was carried out on two people, one with an average IQ and one with an off-the-scale score. The only examples the prodigy came up with for the uses of a brick were ‘building things and throwing’, while the first respondent said a brick could be used for smash-and-grab raids, to help hold a house together, to use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces, turn and throw—no evasive action allowed), to hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner, and as a breaker of empty Coca-Cola bottles. While his IQ was substantially lower, his ability to think creatively reigned supreme!

Even if you did not wow yourself with creative thinking for the uses of a brick or blanket, I bet any money that the next time you are engaged in a similar situation or activity you will recall this experience and as a result think more laterally, which serves to reinforce the first point that we CAN learn to be creative with practice and experience in different situations.

Lesson 2: High IQ does not equal creativity

Tips to get the creative juices flowing:

I hope I have now convinced you that you have the ability and potential to be creative, so what’s next? There are a range of tools and exercises available to help build your creative skills, which I will provide links to in the additional resources section below. A simple tool to start with is Roger Van Oech’s ‘Whack Pack’ that provides one stimulating thought on creativity each day. Creativity happens in different ways and different places for all of us. Some people feed off a collaborative frenzied branstorming session where others may prefer a tranquil room where they can gather their own thoughts. We canvassed some of the Text 100 Sydney team on what they felt was their best creative ‘zone’:

Andy Wray:

Simon Clark:

Additional reading:

Norman Doidge, ‘The Brain that Changes Itself’ (book)
Ken Robinson, ‘The Element’ and ‘Out of Our Minds’ (book)
Malcolm Gladwell, ‘Success: Story of Outliers’ (book)
HBR: ‘Creativity Lessons from Charles Dickens and Steve Jobs’

Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared on the Text 100 Sydney blog, Digital Comms Down Under.

Media Relations Advice from Reuters: PR 101 Still Key in the Digital Era

Sarah Caporusso — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:00:17 +0000

“The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” - George Bernard Shaw

Communication is the heart of our job. As public relations professionals, we are responsible for communicating with and on behalf of our clients. However, are we certain that we’re always being heard? And even more importantly, are we being heard and interpreted in the right way?

Last week I attended the webinar, “How Reuters Journalists Use Social Media to Uncover Today’s Stories” featuring Reuters’ Social Media Editor, Anthony De Rosa and Reuters’ Wealth Editor, Lauren Young. Both Anthony and Lauren discussed how they actively use social media channels to monitor for breaking news, find sources and find out what their competition is up to, but it was also a helpful reminder to remember the PR 101 basics.

Following a brief synopsis on how they are individually using the tools, the webinar quickly turned to every journalist’s favorite topic: working with us PR folk. Their discussion on PR made one thing quite clear – even in the digital era of today, PR 101 still remains true in that building relationships with reporters should always be top of mind.

Rule #1 from Anthony and Lauren: never blast out a template pitch to reporters. Sure it sounds like a no-brainer, but Anthony and Lauren said this happens much more than one would guess. And when they can tell it’s a blast email, it heads straight in to the trash.

The reporters also emphasized that the digital era provides us with another set of portals to help us to build that ever important relationship between journalists and PR. Anthony said it best during the webinar when he described Twitter as a “virtual water cooler” and Facebook as “the virtual town square” where you can have a dialogue.

Anthony and Lauren provided a few quick and simple tips on how we can use social media to help build relationships:

We have the ability to interact with reporters at the “water cooler” and at “the town square,” so take advantage of it.
Social media is all about building communities – become a part of the communities of the journalists that your client values most by following the same people and joining the same online groups.
Know the reporters’ likes and dislikes. Are they a huge San Francisco Giants fan? Obsessed with Game of Thrones? – use this information to stand out from the pack when you contact them
Don’t make it all about your client, but send them articles, stories and surveys that you think they would enjoy and appreciate.

In all reality, it is easier than ever to stay true to the basics and when you build a relationship you will become a trusted counterpart who journalists will want to hear from and who they will reach out to for information – client related and not. It’s a good reminder to take advantage of digital and social media footprints to get back to the basics and to build relationships with journalists. It is then that we’ll be most successful at what we set out to do every day – communicate.

Photo credit: Flickr user lapideo.

Three Ways Community Management is Evolving

Amber Rinehard — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:38:29 +0000

Community management is not a new concept by any means – it’s a function that essentially began in the “old days” of online communication, when people connected primarily through forums and chat rooms. But the rise of social business has given life to the role in a whole new way. What used to be looked at as a role primarily for moderation of niche community forums, is now seen as a necessary function within any company that cares about evolving their business to meet the needs of the social customer.

Ask any community manager to describe what they do, and you’re likely to get a slightly different answer wherever you turn. Altimeter Research’s Jeremiah Owyang studied community manager job descriptions from 16 different organizations and found four key elements: community advocacy, brand evangelism, savvy communication skills and editorial planning, and liaising between internal decision makers and community members. A jack-of-all-trades, so to speak. But even this doesn’t fully sum up all that a community manager is capable of.

When fully integrated, successful community management can touch nearly every other business function in an organization – from product development, to customer service, marketing, HR and communications. And the role continues to evolve to become more strategic, in many cases incorporating some components traditionally handled by social media managers – things like content creation, measurement, or more “big picture” strategy for social media platforms. While community management “purists” argue that these two roles need to remain separate, I think there’s an evolution happening that is forcing the roles to blend whether we like it or not – especially for businesses that may not have the means to hire for two separate roles.

Bearing in mind the evolving role of the community manager as a more strategic function and, in my opinion, the glue of a social business, there are three things I see becoming increasingly more important for the role.

(1) Perfecting your timing

We know that community management isn’t your standard 9-to-5 job, especially if you manage a community that reaches globally. It’s incredibly important, especially for new and growing communities, to pay attention to spikes in activation and engagement within your various communities. Using tools like Crowdbooster, SocialFlow, PageLever, and good ‘ol fashioned Google Analytics, identify which days of the week and times of the day your community members are most active, and engage appropriately. Community managers don’t always need to insert themselves in to the conversation, but it’s important to pay attention to what your members are saying and be available to respond or manage relationships if necessary. This is key to maintaining an active community and making sure your community continues to grow. Dan Zarrella’s Science of Timing research is a great resource if you’re not sure where to get started.

(2) Playing the numbers game

Understanding and reporting on a community’s visitor data and analytics is something that’s fast becoming an important function of the community management role as more attention is placed on the value for the bottom line of the business. The C-suite doesn’t care how many followers you have or how many discussions have been started in your community, but they do want to know how those things tie back to business goals – and it’s more than just reporting on the hard numbers. Are the discussions generating feedback that can be integrated in to product development or the sales cycle? Is your website receiving an increased number of visitors from the community, and if so, what’s the path visitors are taking through the site? Is there content on your blog or website that is especially popular with your community that can provide additional insight about your customer base? As an integral piece of a social business, community managers will increasingly be relied on for this type of business insight and must be able to communicate the findings in a way that’s understandable for internal decision makers.

(3) Improving searchability

Search engine optimization is a tactic that certainly falls more under the realm of marketing, but with so many community managers reporting that they handle content creation and editorial planning for their organizations (as evidenced by the 2012 Community Manager Report from Social Fresh), it’s a skill that more community managers should take in to consideration when developing content for a brand. The social customer is masterful when it comes to search – so you want to make sure the helpful content within your communities is easily accessible when current and potential customers look for it.

The evolution of community management is inevitable. Purists will continue to advocate for the separation of the community manager role from other social media functions and communications will always be more of an art than a science. But at the end of the day, we can all agree that as business continues to change as a result of our social world, it’s important for all functions to fold in things like data, analytics and search to improve a customer’s experience with the brand.

Editor’s note: A version of this post originally appeared on Social Business News as part of a partnership with Text 100.

Image: Stock Fresh Social Media Network

How to engage journalists through social media [INFOGRAPHIC]

Lance Concannon — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:21:13 +0000

To mark our sponsorship of Social Media World Forum this week, Text 100 carried out some research into the way journalists use social media. We interviewed 72 journalists about the way they use social media channels in their professional lives to research companies and communicate with PR executives.

The top-line results of our survey are shown in the infographic below, and you can download a full copy of the report with a more detailed look at the survey findings by clicking on this link. Please feel free to share the infographic anywhere you like.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Text 100 UK blog, as part of their sponsorship of the #SMWF.

SXSW Comes to an End – What Brands Dominated the 2012 Show?

Melissa Chanslor — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:32:01 +0000

Human FedEx Charger to Power up Devices at SXSW

And it’s official. Another SXSW has come to an end, with SXSW Music wrapping the final leg of the show this past weekend. Now that I’m settled and (somewhat) recovered from Austin and the “SXSW SARS” that promptly ensued, it’s time to reflect on how brands leveraged the show. Text 100’s involvement primarily focused on the Interactive portion of the show, as you’ve seen from our SXSW content hub, so this analysis is centered on SXSWi.

One of the primary reasons companies flock to SXSW is to find “the next big thing.” In 2007 it was Twitter, then Foursquare in 2009, and while there wasn’t a breakout company or technology launched in conjunction with the show this year, from a marketing and branding perspective, SXSW remains a key event to reach tech influencers. SXSW has evolved substantially in the past few years from an event focused on emerging scrappy startups to one in which big brands are equally as eager to make a big splash with influencers and media. What companies were most successful from a branding perspective? Just to name a few…

American Express was identified by AdAge as the winner of SXSW from a branding perspective. AMEX debuted a new product offering that allows merchants to provide special offers that consumers can redeem by tweeting the offer via Twitter. The benefit to consumers was clear – discounts and deals – and to incentivize people even more, people who synched their AMEX with Twitter could get free JayZ concert tickets.
Nike has successfully evolved itself from simply being a consumer sports brand (a successful one at that!) to what it’s calling “digital sport.” SXSW served as a successful venue for Nike to promote its FuelBand activity-tracking wristband. Nike leveraged the data from participants using FuelBand to publicize it at SX on a massive LED billboard, and set up a mini state park with basketball hoops, etc to promote its broader Nike Fuel concept.
And one of my personal favorites – FedEx had human power chargers all over SXSW and corresponding events. I spotted one at the Foursquare lot, providing outlets for people to charge their devices that ran low on battery power. Brand awareness was certainly achieved by providing a necessity for many SXSW attendees.

And what about B2B brands? While SXSW buzz is heavily skewed toward consumer and content brands, below are three examples that demonstrate how some in-device brands did it at SXSW this year:

Prior to SXSW, Intel sponsored a 3-day DJ battle on Turntable.fm. The winning DJ was awarded an Ultrabook, and DJ-ed live at a joint Intel and Turntable.fm-sponsored party at SXSW Interactive. Additionally Intel sponsored a SXSW Music event, the third annual MOG at The Mohawk with hip hop headliner The Roots that was live streamed on MOG.com.
NXP, a semiconductor brand that you wouldn’t think would have a place at SXSW, spoke on a panel about mobile payments and a sponsored space in the Alcatel-Lucent Lounge that included consumer-centric demos with NXP’s Near-Field Communication (NFC) chipsets and presentations.
AMD co-sponsored a SXSW Interactive concert with famed Indie-Film Director Robert Rodríguez, featuring music that was featured on soundtracks of Rodriquez’s films. This stems from Rodriguez’s use of AMD Technology in his films to deliver 3D visual effects.

What brands do you think dominated SXSW this year? Would love to hear from you in the comments section of this post!

Astonishingly the panel entry process for SXSW 2013 is not far away and will open on Monday, June 25. Time to start thinking about next year already…

Are PR Professionals Attention-Hungry?

Dinah Alobeid — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:41:59 +0000

A recent article on Yahoo! listed the top Careers For People Who Crave Attention and guess which vocation ranked first? Public Relations Specialist.

It was a task in itself to find out where these assumptions were coming from, and it’s still not 100 percent certain. There is frequent reference to the U.S. Department of Labor “saying” specific characteristics of each career throughout the article. Nowhere does it explicitly state the U.S. Department of Labor ranked this list. Here’s the full list:

Public Relations Specialist
Teacher
Police Officer
Reporter of News Analyst
Fashion Designer
Advertising Sales Agent
Human Resources Training and Development Specialist

I was a combination of slightly shocked and somewhat understanding when I first read that PR specialist was the number one career choice for people who crave attention. I think the strong wording that “crave attention” connotes sent a negative feeling at first glance.

Photo courtesy of flickr user Bmaas.

I can, however, see both sides of the coin on this one. On one hand, the traits of well-seasoned and successful PR professionals often include humility, focus and a team spirit since they are conduits for their clients. People who crave attention would feel a major dichotomy of interests if they are most interested in self-promotion and their own reputations. If you are tasked with stating the one true goal of PR, it’s to garner attention for your client, not for yourself.

But it is true that PR is one career that requires a certain confidence to pick up the phone to track down answers, walk right up to someone at a tradeshow to network, and dive into a topic to become a true industry expert.

The write-up asks, “Are you good at building relationships and reaching out to others? As a PR specialist, it would likely be your job to present information about your company to the media – and public – says the U.S. Department of Labor.” This begs the question, is a flair for building relationships and reaching out to others a clear indication of an attention-seeking individual? I want to say it isn’t; it’s the sign of a confident and determined person, which doesn’t immediately say “craves attention” in my opinion.

The article continues saying “Communication is generally a key component for a public relations specialist. Whether it’s creating press releases, speaking to media contacts, or representing the client in a public forum, it is all about keeping your clients – and often your company – in the positive spotlight, according to the Department of Labor.”

An article from this past November in Ragan’s PR Daily reflected on Journalists, PR executives explain the traits of talented PR pros. The article describes a multi-tasking, respectful, and patient individual as a successful PR person from the opinion of both reporters and PR professionals.

Nowhere in the article is there an evocation of a career in PR being an attention-seeker’s dream job. “This year, James Crawford of CustomerThink did a roundup of why he feels that the renaissance PR person needs to be a jack of all trades: a risk-taker, creative artist, content marketer, door buster, and technician.”

Much more than an individual who seeks attention, PR needs people who can see the bigger picture past themselves and their own wants and needs. PR is often a time-consuming, stressful and fast-paced industry and the people who flourish in it seek things other than personal attention – they seek recognition for others.

Do you think PR professionals crave attention? Share your opinion on this topic in the comments.