Social Media: 10 Key Trends & Observations

1. 10 Key Trendsand ObservationsSocial Media for BusinessNeville HobsonHead of Social Media EuropeWCG, LondonDecember 7, 2009 www.wcgglobal.com

2. What’s In a Name? New Media Social Software Social Business Social Media Enterprise 2.0 Web 2.0

3. Customers are co-shaping your reputation every day. Trend #1

4. Reputation Are you accidently outsourcing the building of your brand? What is the impression of your brand?

5. Customers Shape First Impressions

6. YouTube 2nd Biggest Search Engine

9. http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=1092512 The Ecosystem Is Complex Social SoftwareHype Cycle 2009

10. The Value of Listening A monitoring approach that tells you: Who is driving share of conversationfor your brand What the top issues are thatmatter to your customers Where your customers liveonline How you can add value foryour customers When you should engagethe community Why customers arepassionate on certain topics

12. The Value of Metrics

13. Tools of the Trade

15. Most business issues are known about in advanceTrend #4

16. Patterns Emerge before Public Awareness A common problem emerges in a forum in Poland, a blog in France and a mention on Twitter in the UK Your monitoring and listening activities give you the means to analyze what is happening and prepare When the issue becomes public, you are ready with answers Customers trust us to be smarter on identifying issues

18. You build trust by being there when your customer needs you, not when you need your customerTrend #5

20. Purchasing Decisions Evolution

23. Share of conversation is what’s importantTrend #6

24. The Media World Isn’t Changing… …it has already changed Media Outlets: 74 of top 100 outlets for Techmeme are blogs/online sites Bloggers: 3 of 4 look to each other for their next story Customers: 3 of 4 look to each other for purchase advice Conversations: the driver of share-of-voice, influence and recommendations Don’t define it as offline or online: it’s all one media world.Just know which conversations are defining your brand.

25. The New Media

26. Meme Trackers = Competitive Advantage Complete knowledge of where the opportunity really is for your brand Where are conversations occurring? Who has true influence? Clear, brief, actionable insights for your brand Who are the top influencers? Which keywords matter? Knowledge of your competitor’s actions So that you outsmart them Ability to get ahead of issues to improve preparation See trends emerge before they become public, in some cases Capability to integrate your learning’s into all brand activities, eg, natural search/paid search, use of keywords and much more Insights delivered so you can easily utilize them

28. Ideas, Knowledge, Solutions Share ideas Let’s improve the next product or service together Share product knowledge Here is what I know…hope it helps you Help peers with problems I had the same problem, here is what I did

32. You’ve made the mindset shiftTrend #8

33. Maintaining Trust You understand ethical behavior is a key part of maintaining trust You don’t support flogs or splogs You would never create a fake ad, so why a fake blog post, fake Facebook fan page or fake tweet? You always practice full disclosure That means about ghost writing, too http://www.socialmedia.org/disclosure/identity/

35. Employee 2.0 Ideas Idea Communities – ask your employees for ideas; accelerate R&D decision-making Prediction Markets – wisdom of crowds for specific ideas Community Forums – empower teams Ratings & Reviews – to improve within the company Private B2B Communities – unlock the teams between your company and your partners, in support of Account Leaders Competitive Sites – bring competitive knowledge direct to your desktop Smart Phone Ideas – build new way to share news direct via phones to reach salesforce

36. Reality…

38. You’ve made the mindset shiftTrend #10

39. The Mindset Shift Old Model Mainstream media rule Bloggers repurpose ideas/stories from media Online influence dictated by homepage Offline and online treated as separate New Model Media are bloggers. Bloggers are media Stories originate with either online or offline media Online influence dictated by syndication and search Offline influence must lead to online influence / vice versa

40. Why Care About Social Media? It’s about knowing Where the conversations are happening What your share of the conversations is What the conversations are that you could / should be in Who the key influencers are who can help build your brand It’s about expanding your news flow Simple syndication – distribute news via basic sharing tools (eg, Twitter and Facebook) It’s about understanding communities Which groups, forums and networks matter? Who drives share of conversation in these communities? What are the next steps in driving relationships? It’s about leveraging existing contentand improving your natural search

41. Right Now? What Can You Do?

42. Start Here Listen Give up control Be natural Make a commitment Be where your customers are Learn to deal with negativity Be humble Have a clear and measurable objective Develop a plan Listen

43. Start Here Google your primary brand Then see what’s being talked about in blogs Plot a trend on Blogpulse www.blogpulse.com Open an account at Twitter, and listen twitter.com

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