Holy Trinity of Social Media Making - Actors vs. Concepts

Yesterday I went to check how the N2 social media hub is heating up after summer. Here few reflections of the hour and a half session of SoMe buzzing.

The hub started as always: you get there and find yourself in a middle of big room with only 10 anxious people in it. Then, sharply 2 minutes to five people rush to the event and soon it's too hot and heavy to breath. As one the fellows noted, people are in "the meeting manuscript mode" such like you get to the meeting, you attend the meeting and then you leave the meeting minding your other business. Yep, feel guilty!

Anyhow once again, the repertoire was entertaining and nicely bundled around one theme to which different actors bring insights. Yesterday, the focus was on what are the contributions of the holy trinity - media, advertising and digital agencies- to good SoMe marketing. 

From the very start the audience got best laughs of the simplifications over where digital advertising is at the moment: "Like us and win ..." is the easy option over challenging the customers' imagination. This is to say, firms are still buying customers rather than building a relationship which arises the dull question of what are the prospects of good marketing performance (awareness, differentiation, loyalty, phenomenal media coverage) when 50 other firms are using "the win the iPad 2" ?

Self-critical discussion also took off around the frames (budget and planning) within which SoMe monitoring and customer listening can actually succeed to impact marketing outcomes. In this sense, what are the possibilities to create ADHOC campaigns when treasury holder doesn't allow it as it's not planned?  Reactions, such like gin in a tin first aid transportation from Helsinki to Brighton as captured in Lonkero for People campaign from Hartwall last month, are not going happen too often as somebody rationalized. 

This is how the 2 week's first aid campaign started. What I would have wanted to see in the campaign pages was hooray for media coverage across countries - did it get any?

Continuing with the budget aspect further, heading off with this kind of reactive campaign is risky - what if it doesn't succeed? In this sense, budget must be flexible between both ends which holds that 'kill your darlings' is rather quick decision to avoid any further expenses. 

All of this (delivering triggering marketing content & social mechanics) finally comes to listening and understanding the customer. Today companies, projects and jobs are atomized to complex networks - often times the knowledge disappears in the chain. The company is orchestrating different agencies to deliver successful (SoMe) marketing for multiple brands: media buying, advertising design and finally those who actually build them together as the deliverable outocome. Agencies, on the other hand, are balancing between the threat of hyperspecialization and collaboration with competitors while dreaming of becoming a full house solutions partner. Orchestrating then again implies that the firm must hold the helicopter view of how different projects tune in the marketing strategy. 

Unfortunately, from industrial echoes organizations are still functioning through silos. In his sense, one might ask who is responsible for social media monitoring and how? If lucky, it's designated to one person or diced to one unit within a silo or even across silos. Not so good options could be that it's outsourced or it doesn't exist at all. Whatever the chosen option, the questions are: Do the people have listening skills? How the  information is moving across silos and different projects?

Often times the holy trinity of social media are though over channels where to be (Facebook/Twitter/Blogs) or what different concepts are involved in social media (technology/content/customers). For the firm though, it seems to be the mastering the different partners and actors involved doing it.

As for attending these small scale hubs and breakfast sessions, I highly recommend them as above all the presentations initiate good remarks and discussions in situ that are not present in the slides provided afterwords. Finnish networking then again... we can only for so long take lame excuses that it's a week day.

Measuring Social Media

I wouldn't have missed yesterday's N2 social media hub for anything. Hot topic of the day was measuring social media to which I have been eagerly focusing the past two years. As a  business it's new and evolving, but in everyday life an area where marketer needs to know one's stuff. Experts giving insights over the subject included Jari Jaanto representing both IRC-Galleria and IAB Finland, CEO Tommi Lehtonen from Whitevector & Digital Marketing Manager Jussi-Pekka Erkkola from Nokia.


When it comes to marketing and social media, the leading question is whether you can measure ROI for your campaign. Can traditional thinking of reach, frequency and return on investment work fully in the complex net of attitudes, motivations, associations, relationships, feelings and behavior? All of the speakers gave supporting answers but noted that it really depends on the product and whether its consumers are in social media. There is no winning formula that fits all but rather the success in social media should always be compared to firm's own business goals and past performance. What is our goal in raising awareness, discussion and sharing? Are we stimulating the viewers or engaging participants? What are our long term social media goals and how are they integrated to overall marketing strategy?


Another challenge with social media, in addition to accountability, is that there are so many metrics to choose from yet only some of them fit the specific needs of the firm, campaign or the uniqueness of one social medium. The time span is also important as usually campaigns and trends follow the long tail. The beauty of social media monitoring, however, is that you can follow the phases and act upon them. Even though consistency is the key in both monitoring and measuring, the ultimate advantage is that you act upon it whether it's customer support, brand management, changing your campaign core theme or observing weak signals. And acting requires understanding the qualitative side behind the numbers.  


Ultimately you're not measuring social media per se but your customers behaving and socializing within it. We all can jump around for skyrocketing sums of consumer responses but rarely have time to explore what explains the change and what does it mean for our strategy. Thus in addition to money talk, successful social media marketing should be measured also in terms of consumer behavior as Hoffman and Fodor point out. Social media marketing should aim to satisfy customers' needs to connect, create, consume and control. And in measuring marketers ought to know how to read the numbers behavior wise.


Overall the evening gave good insights from different angles from practical customer approach to the one of monitoring tool provider and finally to measurement standard development in the field. Let's stay tuned!


Finnish readers pls check the presentations here.

Social Casual Gaming - What an Hilarious Misunderstanding

Series of clicking, stages, badges and helping co-players. A casual routine shared with friends. Entertainment. This is what more or less 40% of people use Facebook for. This is social casual gaming.


Tiina Zilliacus from Ironstar Helsinki  gave an introduction to social casual gaming industry in previous  N2's Social Media Hub, the new monthly arena for media professionals to discuss current topics and to mingle around.  The themes also covered content marketing á la Vapa Media and the rationale of CRM - or Romantic CRM - in marketing served by Kari Tervonen from N2. To me and based on the amount of questions for others as well, Zilliacus' presentation really blew up the bank. 


MUAHAHAHHAHA! They are not REAL games! AHAHAHAHAA! Middle aged women and their game logic! Who would REALLY play Facebook games? But then again, we all have our odd habits. Usually they're hidden from friends but social games are quite the opposite when every task you make is posted on your wall. It's as okay to build a virtual farm or a bar in Facebook as it is to smash egg snatching pigs on a bus ride home. Social casual gaming seems to be an hilarious misunderstanding for the trendy ad people and hard core players. 

The numbers are serious business, though. According to AppData, at the moment the top three social games include CityVille, FarmVille and Texas HoldEm all by Zynga. CityVille, which was launched last December, has 96,153,837 monthly active users (MAU) whereas FarmVille still goes strong with half from that. That's loads of city cash or farm bucks.  

Thank God the customers are rational grown-up people! Pleaded Zilliacus when compared their game to HABBO which has been popular among youngsters and teens almost a decade. Surely the popularity of social gaming makes you re-think how to benefit from game dynamics and elements in your marketing, but there is no point to overlook teenagers' creativity. All the arenas in HABBO are user-generated and goods have a secondary market. That is more than clicking. However, as a new segment of players arises from Facebook users, also HABBO is ensuring it's new player acquisition with a Facebook app. 


Winds of change are blowing also in this new game business as developers have their own game going on with Facebook which is making Facebook credits a mandatory currency from the beginning of July 2011. Is it an inspiration or a headache?