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.

How to Understand Social Media?

Last time I wrote about social media's status in marketing strategies, I stated that companies sort of know where to go but what and how are still obscure. The major social media channels are well known whilst gaining visibility and interaction are the challenge. Firms are desperate to find ways how to benefit from their communities across social media.  

There is no general way how to categorize social media. To me, social media are the people who share personal views and media content. On the next level, defition of online community doesn't equal the platform used but is made up from communications across activitites in various platforms. This definition is rather ubiquitous and abstract, and isn't enough alone. In the other end is a functional categorization by e.g. Kaplan and Haenlein (2009 ) who divide social media into six types:  collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds by comparing provided possibilities of self-presentation and social presence in a specific medium. Just place the word 'social' in front of news, videos aka Youtube and photos aka Flickr etc. Whereas understanding the purposes and functions of different platfroms is essential for a marketer to choose and use one, it says little about the meaning of the community i.e. the ultimate target firms want to interact with. 

So what are the effective means to reach communities in social media? Firstly, social media must be a part of the firm's promotion strategy and in line with other marketing actions, which Mangold and Faulds (2009) also emphasize. Integration is the key. This really is a problem, because firms are affraid of the fact that they can't control what happens in the virtual grapevine.  Thus in general they don't fully consider social media's possibilities and the meaning to their business. This results just in actions of presence in stead of idea of serving superior value to consumers.

Often times social media are sold to managers with the idea of it being so cheap. Wrong, social media are all around and choosing the best channels just for your business is crucial to focus your marketing resources as being social is everyday task. Being active is the key. This is also question of who is willing and has the know-how to socialize in the name of the brand. As noted earlier my post, in many cases the brand is taking a backseat when the intreaction within social media is personalized to the person representing the company as well. Being social and interacting with consumers also translates to consumer knowledge and openness. You must have a hunch what consumers and communities would like to hear and do whilts communicating it with common sense. Thus being interesting is the key to drive discussion and virality.

Mangold and Faulds (2009) have really good examples in their article how this is done in practice, check them out. Though, examples are dangerous in two ways: one size doesn't fit all and secondly somebody has already done it i.e. saturation. Nevertheless,  I'm going summarize main points of the exmaples. To begin with, there is no separation between online and real life consumer as the goal of any marketing activity is to drive sales. Thus, limiting or focusing all networking opportunites of like-minded individuals to social media is not necessary as the first rule of integration implies. Brand networking events that take place face-to-face are likely to strenhten and prosper community relationships that will continue also online. Providing incentives, such as contests, is a traditional way of integrating consumption activities and company/brand attachment online. Leveling up the experience to community is easilly done by including voting logic. At the moment gamification is the THING to consider, how you could engage and entertaing your consumers.  And last but least, linking to fans' blogs in company homepage is worth of considering, too. Laissez-faire attitude isn't enough in social media and enthroning examples of innovative fan stories etc. in various ways is important way of socializing in social media.


Check what academics are saying:

Kaplan A.M. and Haenlein M. (2009) Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.

Mangold G.W. and Faulds D.J. (2009) Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.

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?

The Imperative of Social Media Marketing

Come down from you tower and realize the facts.  Social media is not a top-down channel but customer-driven. But don’t get too cozy either and think you can just survive by monitoring the online talk from your chair. Social media is also interactive and to engage your customers you need to be pro-active, too.


So get involved is still the chant of social media buzz. However, the discussion of social media marketing in general is medium driven in many ways. Everybody recognizes the top 3 biggest social media channels, but wonder which one of them is effective just for their business. Thus companies sort know where to go but what and how are still obscure.

In the heat of social media few years back, companies started blogs many of which now  have died out due to lack of participation from both parties. Oops, online brand awareness was more complicated than expected and building up customer relationship wasn’t that easy of a task after all, wasn’t it? If customers don’t accept the message the company is sending, the result does not fall far from traditional advertizing: no action, no community. The level of participation from a firm cannot be just news feeds but also providing real customer value.

Another cruel example of poor judgment comes from attitudes to crisis management. In the social media, companies need to have a clear strategy for mitigating any disasters—and preferably to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Finns know the urban legend of restaurant Lehtovaara. People talk about your business even though you’re not, and you need to participate in the discussion whether you like it or not. Whether a compliment or  a complaint, to show consumers that you’re listening and reacting can create loyalty.

Jessica Tsai also highlights the importance of relationships in her article Everyone’s Social (Already) (Customer Relationship Management, June 2009). Social media is foremost facilitating relationships and connecting people. These relationships stem from mutual interest and mutual gain, which also are powerful tools for customer loyalty. In mobilizing your customers to become your heralds is the fact that social media marketing is networking.

What does it take to get involved?

In practical level, another problem businesses face with social media is that they don’t have a strategy. But like any business decision, participating in social media requires a plan and a purpose. As Tsai acknowledges in the article, social media strategy requires operational, technological, and customer service resources—all of which extend beyond the marketer’s control. On the other end of the strategy, considerations of how social media will affect the company itself (brand-building, product development, marketing communication and advertising) ought to be analyzed, too.

Interesting prospect presented in the article was the growing role of company representatives. The brand is taking a backseat to the person representing the company. Social media is about people and personalization of content in both sides of the medium. This if anything stresses that social media is not some channel or crowd separated from the business; rather it’s the people representing the brand and the company. 

A common slant over getting involved is also the question of cost efficiency ratio. Whereas enterprises may have the resources to invest on research and social media experiment, small businesses can do only so much. However, as Jeremy Farber states in the article, social media provides a platform that can be just as effective. It requires knowledge of the mediums, the communities as well as best practices of communication in online environment. To me, succeeding in social media marketing is more dependent on the level of expertise in these areas rather than the size of the company and especially the content provided. Also, encouraging point raised in the article was that social networks themselves are struggling to establish revenue models, thus providing an opportune time for businesses to take advantage.

Warming up the conversation

Getting involved also means change in attitude. The confidence customers’ require demand authenticity and transparency from the companies they transact with. Many customers now feel entitled to talk to the brand - a phenomenon that Tsai predicts to only intensify as Millennials take over the market. 

Is there an art to channeling conversation into a meaningful activity for marketers? According to Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner, community members want freedom but they don’t mind ground rules. ‘If you’re all over the place, they don’t know why they’re there.’ stating that crowds need direction. ‘Tell them what you’re looking for and how they can benefit to create a sense of what’, this is what Sarner calls mutual purpose.

So what then? We have the purpose and the community, but do we really know who our customers are? David Dalka, independent marketing consultant, states that ‘social media still a giant blob of data not connected to individuals.’ Self-identity is required to know the customer. Tsai notes, that soon consumers will have a single online identity, such as OpenID. I, too, believe that in the future the ecommerce platforms and social mediums are brought to closer integration and co-operation e.g. in terms of user login and the overall purchasing process. But that future is still far ahead due to user identity development and security issues.

The reality

Let’s reflect how companies are performing social media marketing wise at the moment. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are taken over by the 100 largest companies in Fortune 500 according to Burson-Marsteller, the first  being the most popular platform. Two-thirds of the Fortune 100 have at least one Twitter account and on average 4.2 Twitter accounts. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are mostly West-oriented; Asia-Pacific companies don’t use them as much, instead preferring corporate blogs. 43% of Facebook fan pages had posts from fans. In fact, some of the pages were primarily set up for customers to post comments and questions to receive responses from the company.

However, a recent survey conducted on British small-to-medium sized companies (SMEs) gives some insight to the overall attitudes and the astray to social media. According to Forum of Private Business, where 52%of SMEs use social media, only 27% of respondents saw popular networking sites beneficial. Surprisingly, 21% described them as ‘not useful' and 6% labeled them ‘useless'. Only 7% respondents who use social media described it as ‘very useful' for their businesses.

Don’t lose your hope yet; it’s not about the size as noted earlier. In fact, young SMEs are spending more of their advertizing money online and have more aggressive social media strategies according to NetNewsCheck. Young SMEs are spending nearly three times as much of their marketing budget online as the older companies and want their money to be spent on iPad apps, reputation management, search engine optimization (SEO) and other new forms of marketing.

When it comes to social media strategy, 43 % of US companies with 500 or fewer employees report that their marketing department handles social networking outreach, followed by public relations (26%) and human resources (19%). Usually employers have 1-3 people communicating on behalf of their organization in social media, whilst 7 % report that 4-5 individuals and 11% more than 6 individuals to manage the communication.  Not surprisingly, 57% stated that they didn’t know.

How about the efficiency? According to Social Influence Benchmark Report by StrongMail , email proved to be the most popular method of sharing content, with 86% of the companies using that as their preferred sharing method. However, the percentage of information to go viral was much higher on non-email channels. Only 41% of email was re-shared whereas in Twitter the content was re-shared 1837% of the time. Also, personal links (i.e. embedded links for blogs) were more viral than Facebook. On the other hand, emails resulted in approximately 16% more clicks (e.g. purchases, sign-ups) than blogs and badges.

From these results it’s obvious that building presence in social media channels requires more than just company/product profile. More strategic and cross-media approach need to be taken to build the relationship and dialogue with consumers. As for the SMEs, the confusion that traditional SMEs are experiencing may be form the fact that they don’t know how to use the platforms; they don’t have Doers to advantage the new marketing channels. 

Conclusions

Whether companies like it or not, social media is impacting business. Not only the marketing functions and product development but attitudes, too. The follow-up and dialogue with consumers not only reinforces customer service but helps the company better understand the life of its product. More importantly, the focus should be in the future. To catch and assure purchase intents is more relevant than emphasizing past transactions.

However, it must be clear that social media cannot be ignored. Not every channel work for every business and thus early adoption is crucial. Getting involved in social media is more than presence and building brand awareness, and more importantly is creating value and being alert. Social media is changing and evolving all the time which highlights the need to participate in this co-creation. The sooner you jump in, the better you get.


Source: Tsai, J. (2009). Everyone’s Social (Already). Customer Relationship Management, June 2009, 34-38.

Multitasking is procastinating?

Do you ever wake up to notice that you're doing things that you were not supposed to do? How many tabs you usually use when at your laptop? Do you think multitaskers are todays heros? Neither do I but everyday I find myself in the middle of these sinful situations. The entertainment side of web and social medias are my favorite substitutes when preparing to an exam or not getting creative grasp on work etc.

Past Friday's workshop of culture made me to analyze the culture of media consumption. During the past year I have come across studies that forewarn the dangers of media multitasking. They say that media multitaskers pay a mental price: bad memory, stress, unability to concentrate. Do I need to continue? The press is also starting to publish these little news of new research. For example, Naomi Baron in her book Always on states that online and mobile technologies (instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, social networking site as Facebook and blogs) profoundly influence the way we read, write, listen and speak. 

New technology makes possible to fulfill even the short moments with music, images, news, messages and entertainment in general. Baron argues that our ability concentrate is on stake as we loose the capability to bury ourselves into something. We procastinate.

Many everyday routines require multi-tasking, take driving a car for example. While listening to radio we coordinate our limbs,  observe traffic and other drivers. I guess multi-tasking depends on the level of routine we have gained, to become the ultimate driver you need a license and heaps of experience. Online media is not as approachable and manageable to all. Especially for the latter it is why online literacy and media education should be provided already in primary school.

Baron states that new technologies haven't influenced the language as much as our relationships. Baron poses a question: what kind of people do we become as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media? Are we really present for our friends when hanging around in Facebook while doing our work? Is it the medium that allures me or the need to chat with a friend?

It's obvious that the pace of technological change compared to cultural evolution is power to ten. But blaming online media is No Go as these new technologies only boost the features inside us. 

Balancing between mediation and meditation is a tough job even for new savvy leaders.

They've got a hunch on you

Hunch is a fairly new player in the field of social media but was ranked as one of the world's most intriguing start-ups in Busines Week just last year. It's basically a recommendation engine which personalizes a taste profile of the user by asking questions. Then it gives recommendations based on the decision pattern of people similar to the user. Thanks to this matching taste graph logic, it can predict answer to user's problem. Or can it?

So you answer a bunch of questions and get a solution. Easy. The more you use it, the more accurate it is. The bigger and active the user community, the better it works. In addition to Teach Hunch About You (THAY) questions, you can educate the engine by fixing its default beliefs of you around the topic, e.g. sports. Also, the service pulls in data about articles, topics and people that you and your friends “like” on Facebook or follow on Twitter if user logs on through these profiles. 

User can suggest and produce topics. Co-creation and participation are brought forth, encouraged and emphasized on the site. Hunch has its own 'member programme' in which active users receive creds and banjos. Yes, banjos! It also provides heavy users with profiling padges such as Inventor, Early Bird, Curious and Good Citizen. So why should I participate? you may find yourself asking after 10 banjos. Everybody knows how empty it feels when nobody notes your updates, posts or ideas. But no worries as hunch also understands the importance of feedback. When users thumb up hunches and share views within topics, the initiator is informed as well. 

So how did hunch work for me? I find answering to random questions rather entertaining and addictive. The first session of 20 questions doesn't take too much time and the results are shocking enough to trigger my interest. It also is intriguing tool to reflect yourself to other users. Whilst you go about the never ending THAY questions, it's  fun to know how common your choice in fact was at the time of answering  For example, it's kind of nice to know that 51% of hunch users use the same smiley that I do and that only 39% of the respondents twitter. What does Who you follow say about You? asks hunch's Twitter Follower Stats application where you can compare answers to the ones of other twitterers'. For example, the followers of The Economist strive for power over riches, fame and security. The ones of Barack Obama, on the other hand, don't use the phrase LOL. 

Conveniently hunch doesn't allow any ads on its site but sponsored links are presented in some of the topics such as travelling locations. Ultimately hunch is a behavioral data gem as B2B service and especially to e-commerce. With behavioral data firms can find more relevant consumer groups. Hunch sells external companies taste graphs and other aggregated information with which companies can also define their recommendations on their own sites. This month TechCrunch announced hunch's new partnerships, but partnership co-operation is yet to be explained on the site.

But again the question on everybody's mind: when you proactively educate a engine about you, can it really recommend anything new? So far hunch's predictions have fallen to things-I-already-know category. Moreover, I find the topic descriptions rather dull - most of them copied from Wikipedia. IMHO an engine telling people what they want doesn't hook for long unless there is a twist. So hunch is dependent on the community not only volume but also interesting content wise. 

Hunch wants to give smart recommendations and ease the search process. It is true that search engine results usually include spam and finding pleasing information can take a lot of energy. But in the end, is hunch the new influencer and do the recommendations result in any actions? Let's stay tuned!

Check out useful articles here and here!

Approaches to Online Consumer Research - Segmenting and Targeting

Let’s take a leap into the 1990s. Imagine how was the Internet like. How did you use it? Feels kind of a vague of a task, doesn’t it? Blogs and forums have been around for decades but e.g. YouTube was established just five years ago.  And in e-business five years feels like an eternity - just enough time to forget and start taking the services and applications available today for granted.

Against this scenery, Robert V. Kozinets perceptions of virtual communities seem rather fresh to a person who just started high-school in 1999. In his article “E-Tribalized Marketing? The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption” in European Management Journal (17/1999) he criticizes data-based marketing’s status by analyzing ways how to target, segment and approach virtual communities. Even though Web 2.0 exploded during the past decade, a breeze from the past can help us reflect how have we gone along.

Kozinets noted that most of virtual communities are structured around consumption activities and thus being important source of knowledge of what products/services are consumed and how.  Virtual communities of consumption, or e-tribes, include common social spaces where people with shared interest and enthusiasm create group-specific meanings and norms, which serve to organize interaction to maintain certain ambiance and order. How could a marketer gain understanding of these complex social communities? Kozinets suggests interaction- and fragmentation-based segmentation to target the most important virtual communities and community members.

Segmentation through interaction

Motives to go online are e.g. searching for information, reading the news and learning from products/services. We also may do all these things in a virtual community and even produce our own content. According to Kozinets, whether a person actually takes part in an e-tribe or not depends on the formation of identification: the relationship to the consumption activity as well as the intensity of relationship to the community. The more important the product/service is to a person’s psychological self-image, chances are that (s)he will pursue for a membership in that community. Usually a member of virtual community will progress from a visitor to an insider as (s)he gains online experience and discovers a group that meets her/his needs.

For segmenting members of virtual community, Kozinets distinguishes four different member types which are later used to analyze the interaction modes of each. Tourist lacks strong social ties to the group and has only a superficial or passing interest in the consumption activity. Minglers, too, have light interest to the consumption activity but have strong social ties to the community. Devotees have few social ties but on the other hand have strong enthusiasm about the subject. Insiders are both socially and factually interested in the community of consumption.

A member’s social orientation in this classification can thus be seen as individualistic (short-term personal gains) or relational (longer-term cooperation). Devotees and insiders which both have strong personal interest to the consumption activity are the most important targets of marketing. They are so called heavy users that within the community can upgrade tourists and minglers to their own level.

Member types are related interaction modes, which are informational, transformational, recreational and relational mode. Minglers and tourists whose factual interest is on superficial level tend to pursue recreational mode for their primarily selfish gains. Usually member’s interaction moves from factual information type of exchange to one that easily mixes factual and relational information in the social context.

Interaction-based segmentation is used to better recognize different opportunities and needs of each mode group. Analysis may help to pinpoint the virtual communities with the highest potential for positive consumer response.

Segmentation through fragmentation

Kozinets approaches segmentation and targeting mainly through the concept of loyalty, which is largely the criterion behind data-based and relationship marketing.  Fragmentation-based segmentation attempts to bring more dynamic understanding of the member loyalty of virtual communities of consumption. Contrary to economic terms of retention and switching, Kozinets considers customer involvement in the consumption activity as the basis of consumer loyalty. Thus loyalty should be taken as cultural and experimental terms of depth of experience and emotional devotion.

Fragmentation-based segmentation is based upon the observation that even a unified community will always include important divisions and micro-segment. Basically groups are arranged by members who share certain media forms, social communication modes and consumption tastes. But as virtual communities of consumption become more mainstream, communities differentiate through active re-articulation and spread into new factions which necessarily do not retain ties to old group.

According to Kozinets, effective marketing should account for this changing and politicizing nature of virtual communities. By following these different tastes of virtual community factions, marketers can find new product enhancements and ideas, differentiate new customer segments and gain richer understanding of how product/service is given meaning and appreciated in consumption.

Another loyalty feature of virtual consumption communities is that loyalty is two-dimensional. A member can be loyal to a particular product/service but disloyal to the community and vice versa. In marketing’s perspective it is crucial to recognize the influencers which can create group switching according their own tastes.

Virtual communal marketing

Internet provides B2C, C2C, one-to-many and many to many communications.  Online consumers are not only influenced by virtual communities but they’re also a part of their virtual reference groups. Thus, even though Kozinets type and interaction mode analysis is based on individual behavior, he sees that marketing to an entire community is more realistic that one-to-one.

Virtual communal marketing model (VCM), which rationale lays on naturalistic observation of online consumers in social interaction and the principles of network economies, could be seen as a solution that combines the customization of single node marketing approaches to the appreciation of communal consumption concerns that multiple nodes evoke. VCM’s focus is underlined in its assumptions that 1) consumers are active creators 2) marketing company-customer-relationship is a multimodal network and 3) the value of online data gathering of consumers lies in its multidimensional potentialities in addition to sales and demographics.

Communal consumption means that consumers create and negotiate their tastes; moderate product meanings; brand and re-brand together. To understand customer needs, consumption must be seen from this social context that encompasses multimodal relations. A portrait of community, factions or unique consumers’ interests can weave together different forms of consumption patterns and explain customer (dis)satisfaction.

Marketer’s goal is to use information in order to build long-lasting relationships between consumer and product/brand. In virtual communities of consumption the information is readily available thus offering an excellent venue for the marketing research that underlies the understanding that builds these relationships. VCM also offers a basis for pursuing a subscription or membership type of relationship.

How to approach e-tribes?

With VCM in mind, in addition to interaction-based and fragmentation-based segmentation, strategies for efficiently targeting desirable types of virtual communities and community members include opting, paying-for-attention and building networks by giving product away.

Online marketers should speak to a group and co-opt communities by sharing important information. Kozinets proposes to treat virtual community members as partners in promotion and distribution. Virtual communities of consumption have implicated their own identities profoundly with the consumption object and its symbols. By linking marketing information to symbols that provide meaning and gather attention in virtual consumption communities, can provoke insiders and devotees to share what it is that makes consumption especially special to them. The more marketers can provide members with the meaning and sense of purpose that is related to their shared consumption identities, the more those consumers would become and remain loyal.

Kozinets saw pay-for-attention marketing as a transitional strategy that could bridge one-to-one approach and communal online marketing by considering the active nature of online consumption. In practice this could mean offering incentives such as games, contests and prizes in exchange for a person’s permission to tell them more about a product/service. Traditional marketing trend emerging in the digital economy already in 1990s was also the importance of networks and that networks are often created by giving things away.  Even though morally and socially biased, giving things away could also be seen as building loyalty.

Conclusions and critique

The question at hand was - and still is - how to approach the unstable marketing medium that we know as social media today. Virtual communities have truly become mainstream in Western countries, and an important arena where people interact as citizens, community members and as consumers. What makes Kozinets views most outdated is the diverging and expanding landscape of these communities. Where Kozinets doubted that online interactions would replace physical encounters or information from traditional media, in reality being online is changing consumption patterns as well as the ways we keep in touch with our friends and family. Online presence is becoming everyday complement rather than occasional supplement.

On the other hand, it is still true that certain mediums and segments of virtual consumption communities are more suitable for marketing than others. Whereas the fleeting nature of interaction was seen as prevalent community feature in the 1990s, the name of the game today is increasing velocity of information. Even though Internet provides an archive of marketing information of online consumers, the question is whether the data is up-to-date, relevant and popular. The world of virtual communities is so extensive and complex today that companies find themselves in trouble trying to focus and target their (potential) customers. Without social media metrics is can be hard to follow the crucial flow of customer interests.

Another dimension lacking from the analysis was group dynamics. A community cannot just be the sum of its individuals as social interaction arouses experiences that are not only personal. Thus you can distinguish different layers of interaction: personal, interpersonal, inter-groups and between groups and the mass. As the goal is to provide symbols and meanings to which the consumer relates to, all these layers play important role in how meaning develops within consumer’s life. Therefore the level of sociality must be measured also with other criterion in addition to the amount of interaction. Also, the changing nature of communities involves other power dynamics than the ones deriving from opinion leaders and dispersing.

As for the approaching methods, many of Kozinets suggestions can still be seen in today’s online communities. Social media can be an opting channel if you just know how to use it. A fresh example of opting consumers to share their brand meanings could be Marimekko’s Minun Marimekkoni –campaign for Indiedays blog platform. The paying-for-attention, on the other hand, is coming to its end in brassy online advertizing, but otherwise still commonly used in polls and competitions. The network focus is obvious but taking another course from giving things away as the Virtual Wild West is taking steps to social and legal codes of conduct.

Discussed methods by Kozinets are really for targeting and segmenting tools, and the analysis should be taken as such. He doesn’t discuss about how to position one’s self between different communities and factions. Nor does he give profound approaching suggestions e.g. by analyzing examples what kind of reactions the proposed means initiate within the communities. Customer segmentation analysis through qualitative data is still called for but should have more broad approach than amount of communication and motivation type. As Kozinets notes, when qualitative and quantitative online information work in concert, it becomes to possible to understand thoroughly how consumers view the products within the entire lived experience.