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FEBRUARY 2011
icrossing + HEarst
building a
connEctEd brand
How brands bEcomE publisHErs
in a rEal-timE markEting world
RELEASE 1.0
by Adam Lavelle - Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
with Brian Haven, Alisa Leonard and Rob Garner
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand
1 The Big Shift:
Brands Must Evolve Into Media Machines.
Brands, media and audiences used to have distinct roles in the
marketing relationship. Today those roles overlap, creating new
opportunities and expectations.
The traditional messaging model still plays a vital role for marketers. Placing brand advertising
with media content consumed by audiences is an effective method to reach customers.
But alone, the tactic is insufficient. Traditionally, media (and media companies) served as
the meeting place for brands and audiences. But, media companies are no longer the sole
connective tissue for brands to communicate with their customers. Today, all three are equal
participants in an ecosystem where each party is both a content creator and distributor. This
fundamental shift, while disruptive to the status quo, creates both opportunities and liabilities
marketers cannot ignore.
Figure 1: Brand, media, audience – BeFore & now
BRAND
BRAND MEDIA AUDIENCE MEDIA AUDIENCE
BEFORE NOW
People are now their own publishers of opinions, experiences and preferences.
They share those sentiments with each other in social spaces. By working together,
audiences have commandeered many of the functions of marketers, driving product
awareness and influencing purchase decisions. They are telling both brands and each other
just what they think – and they are doing it publicly, for others to find and see.
Media properties are also learning to evolve as technology continues to
give rise to the voice of the customer. Magazine articles and news stories no longer end
when the writer or journalist finishes the piece. Media companies are now playing host to
serious conversations, with readers functioning as active contributors to the story. Media
innovators are learning to harness that user-generated content, responding to it, building on
it, and using it to inform further editorial direction. They are listening to their audiences, and
actively engaging with them. They are evolving into real-time curators of unique audiences,
each with their own robust communities.
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand FEBRUARY 2011
Brands are expected to share back. As audiences increasingly talk directly
to brands, brands are realizing that audiences are demanding more of them than simply
shouting about their products and services. Audiences want to hear what brands have to
say. Every day, millions of them are actively reaching out to connect with brands through
digital channels. Nearly 15 million people “like” the Skittles Facebook page —opting in to
daily messages from the candy brand. Zappos and Whole Foods each have nearly 2 million
people following them on Twitter. Shoppers even pay for the content brands provide:
witness the $.99 that iPhone users pay to download Kraft’s iFood Assistant app.
Content moves through networks at lightning speeds at a pace marketers
struggle to match. To complicate matters, one form of content can create another form
of content, and another, and another — moving through a constant cycle of replication.
Comments, re-mixes, mash-ups, parodies, derivatives — it seemingly never stops. And
as the content replicates, it spreads through networks exposing hundreds or thousands
of unique connections to audiences, creating public, visible histories of interaction.
Conquering this rapid cycle, a significant aspect of the content ecosystem, can prove
difficult.
The Takeaways:
As these three forces — brand, media and audience — blur together, the roles and
expectations of each continue to change. Most importantly, for brands there are two key
takeaways:
1) Brands are becoming their own media platforms
Brand equity is no longer being created by media spend alone. Instead ‘earned’ media
(visibility in search and social spaces, word-of-mouth, PR) and ‘owned’ media (a
brand’s website, official Facebook and Twitter pages, branded apps, etc.) are becoming
fundamental components of the story.
2) Always-on marketing is the new norm
Audiences are increasingly expecting constant, consistent engagement from brands.
Online stores are never closed, so marketing programs and customer service can’t be
either. When consumers want to know more about a product, need answers to questions
or are ready to take action, the brands are expected to be ready and responsive.
Hearst and iCrossing are committed to working with brands that recognize this
fundamental shift in marketing. Central to our approach is a marketing framework we call
connectedness, an approach that focuses on how marketing gets done in a networked
world. As our clients embrace this approach, brands become a new kind of publisher,
interacting with their audiences wherever they are, whenever they want, armed with unique
content that serves as the relationship-building currency they need. This results in higher
degrees of loyalty and brand preference — not to mention the ability to more precisely
influence purchase behaviors.
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2 Connected marketing presents new
opportunities for brands.
Brands have no choice but to rethink their current approaches to
communication, customer engagement, and the metrics they use to
determine success. The rules have changed.
Connectedness is an approach to executing marketing in a networked world. It is a framework
for, and a measure of how intimate a brand is with its audiences. It’s a characteristic of a
brand, a ‘state of being.’ After all, a brand needs to be a living organism in today’s marketing
world, not an object, not a loudspeaker yelling at people. Connectedness is a way of thinking
about how successful brands do marketing: focusing on audiences, not targets; engaging in
dialogue, not shouting; and developing trust that is meaningful and lasting.
We see connectedness and measure it by looking at a brand’s visibility to its audiences, its
usefulness to those audiences, its usability (the ease of doing business with the brand), the
brand’s ability to create desire, and finally, its level of engagement with its customers.
A new approach is required for brands that wish to leverage the strengths of earned and
owned media, and adopt meaningful customer engagement as keys to marketing success.
To reinvigorate a brand and strive for category leadership, brands need to become:
Aware. Gone are the days of immense “consumer” A new approach is required
studies conducted every several years — audiences’ for brands that wish to
needs and behaviors are now changing dramatically leverage the strengths of
within much shorter timeframes. Brands need to stay on earned and owned media,
top of what’s truly important to audiences at any given
and adopt meaningful
time — sometimes even minute-to-minute. It is less
about isolated market research data and more about
customer engagement as
understanding your customers, in the moment. keys to marketing success.
Agile. Brands need to adapt quickly and precisely to
shifting audience attitudes, interests and behaviors.
What’s required? New processes for creating and
distributing content on a frequent and reactive basis.
Active. Brands need to play an active role in the
digital ecosystem by reaching out to audiences for
interactive, two-way conversations. Those that don’t
will either cease to be relevant with online audiences or
relinquish control of their brand image to the whims of
the masses.
Brands that mobilize around these themes, focusing on content and community, moving at the
speed of the net, and integrating their programs not just across traditional and digital channels,
but across the entire bought, earned and owned media landscapes, will define themselves as
connected brands, and will win in the marketplace.
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand FEBRUARY 2011
3 Content And Community Are
Essential Ingredients.
audiences expect brands to support them throughout their
decisioning journey, providing information and assistance in real-
time. marketers that fail to deliver erode brand equity.
At the core of a connected experience is Figure 2A: avery, home depot, and rei
content. Procter and Gamble provides recipes
and craft ideas on its Home Made Simple site,
while North Face and REI have developed
iPhone apps that report snow conditions
on popular ski trails. Pampers.com has a
complete tool set for moms including helpful
information for every stage of the child-
raising journey, and Avery helps moms stay
organized through its Organization Of Moms
Facebook community. The Home Depot has
produced hundreds of do-it-yourself videos
for its YouTube channel. The implication for
marketers who want to create connected
experiences: beyond campaigns and campaign
assets, brands need to create and distribute
meaningful content at significant scale, and at
increasing velocities.
Figure 2B: ally Bank and Best Buy
But content alone does not create a connected brand. Content may be the currency, but
active engagement is how a brand comes to life: content is shared, discussed, re-formed
and amplified. This is a new breed of communications strategy, where connected brands
participate in live, active dialogue with their audiences. Comcast, Jetblue and Best Buy
provide customer service experiences through Twitter. Skechers and bebe partner with
Kim Kardashian (armed with her 5M Twitter followers and 4M Facebook fans) to cultivate
conversations with their audiences. Ally Bank doesn’t just listen to what its customers
are saying in social spaces and on their blog, they use those conversations to inform new
products and services. In all of these examples, it’s the synergy between content creation,
sharing and community engagement that yields success.
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4 The Connected Marketing Playbook.
Brands need a framework to thrive in an always-on world.
Our approach provides the foundation necessary for brands to succeed.
Marketers are struggling with changes in the media landscape, and are determined to figure
out how to take advantage of them. Do we just create a Facebook page and call it a day? Do
I use Twitter for customer service? What content should I be producing? What makes good
content, and what do I do with it? Can I control the conversation? How do I pull off the ‘live’
experiences my audiences expect?
We are helping marketers answer these and other questions, by identifying and developing
programs across four must-have areas:
• Listening: ongoing analysis of customer sentiment, expectations and intent
• Creation: content publishing, from high-quality branded content to real-time responsiveness
• Engagement: continuous dialogue with audiences, backed by defined governance models
• Measurement: benchmarking a brand’s performance within the networks and ways to optimize
Figure 3: the connected Brand system
LISTEN
MEASURE CREATE
ENGAGE
The Connected Brand System
Listening uses both comprehensive research studies coupled with real-time monitoring to en-
sure that a brand’s insights about their audiences are not only deep, but current as well. Those
findings drive the creation and distribution of the appropriate forms of content. A varied mix of
content ranging from high-production branded content to the harnessing of audience-gener-
ated content then flows across an ecosystem of publishing systems. As that content flows, au-
dience managers guide it to the right venues, motivate audiences to engage and participate in
continuing dialogue. As this engagement happens, metrics determine what content, and which
actions are successful. Ongoing optimization ensures that the appropriate mix and speed is
used to keep the audience engaged. Finally, all of this information feeds back into the listening
process to enhance overall insights and inform the content that will be created going forward.
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand FEBRUARY 2011
To guide our clients through the essential activities for building successful and sustainable
real-time marketing programs, we’ve developed The Connected Marketing Playbook.
These activities center around the four key areas described on the previous page: listening,
creating content, engaging audiences and measurement.
A Create a customer listening program.
A gap exists between the tactics in the typical marketing
toolkit and the behavior of audiences in today’s digital land-
scape. Marketers typically turn to focus groups, surveys and
customer satisfaction analysis to understand an audience —
but they stop there. As a result, brands are out of touch with
audiences’ digital behaviors — and most of their advertising
and marketing efforts prove it. While all of these techniques
are still useful, they don’t tell the full story. There are nu-
merous techniques to understand how audiences behave,
including conversation monitoring and analysis, search data,
persona development, web analytics, campaign performance
data, social media activity data and more. These newer
techniques improve a brand’s understanding of who their
audiences are, where they are in the network, and how they
behave— a substantial enhancement of insight over mean Together, iCrossing
income and gender. and Hearst can help
marketers form a
Additionally, much of this information can be collected now, detailed and accurate
in real-time — and should be, because it’s continually chang-
ing and providing insights. This means marketers need to
picture of a brand’s
shift their thinking — audience insights don’t happen in quar- target audiences — and
terly or annual research sessions, they demand listening right ensure that it’s always
now. Knowing and understanding this information in real time up-to-date.
is essential for a connected brand to develop and maintain
an effective strategy. Audience needs and desires shift in the
moment, and marketers and audience managers need to
adapt the content accordingly to remain relevant.
Leveraging both its own resources and those of its par-
ent company, the Hearst Corporation, iCrossing helps
marketers form a detailed and accurate picture of a
brand’s audiences— and ensures that the insights are
always up-to-date.
Our listening methods are targeted specifically at digital
audiences. We leverage numerous data sources to give us a
baseline understanding of audiences’ media consumption,
technology adoption and online behavior. We layer on our
own research into how audiences make decisions online, the
roles that various media channels play in the process, and
what (or who) the influencers are at each step along the way.
We leverage best-in-class monitoring tools — like Radian6,
Buzzmetrics, Cymfony and others — to listen to online
conversations and understand what specific communities
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand
are saying about our clients and their competitors. And with our proprietary linguistic
profiling methods, we mine search data to identify what people need and want. We find
exact language so our clients can connect with audiences using the audience’s own
vernacular.
Leveraging insights from Hearst’s media properties (magazines, websites, newspapers
and more) we are also able to keep attuned to changes in the aspirations, attitudes
and emotional needs of the audience groups that brands want. With a rich subscriber
database, ongoing custom research programs, and active reader panels, Hearst pro-
vides insights and informed opinions into what inspires and intrigues audiences right
now. Hearst’s expertise ranges from broad categories like teens, women, and men, to
specific interest areas like beauty, green living and retail shopping trends.
Figure 4: customer listening program
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SEA
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iCROSSING
ACTIVI
“LIVE”
AUDIENCE
TIES
TRACKING
AUDIENCE INSIGHTS & PERSONAS
(Needs, Desires, Aspirations)
This combination of traditional research efforts, Hearst media insights and iCrossing digital
audience knowledge provides brands with the needed intelligence to develop powerful and
effective programs. Programs that are authentic, intimate and connected to desired audiences.
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand FEBRUARY 2011
B Develop a process for content creation and distribution.
There is a tendency to think that an effective tactic to marketing in an always-on
environment, rife with chatter, spam and other noise that may keep a brand from achieving
its rightful share of voice, is to simply push out massive amounts of content. After all,
consumers are likely to produce more content about your brand, more quickly than your
marketing department ever could. There is a bit of a content war going on online, and brands
are on the front lines, like it or not.
We believe success lies in distributing the right content to the right audience in the right
places at the right time. And that’s a tricky thing to figure out. What topics will engage
audiences the most? Where will content have the most impact — in a blog, on Twitter, or on
a branded website? How often does new content need to be distributed and how quickly
do audience comments need to be addressed? Even if marketers find the answers to these
questions, they still need to develop the content. Articles, stories, video, photos, blog posts,
and responses to audience-generated content — new ideas for specific pieces of content
— all need to be produced. For many marketers, the resources and expertise required for a
real-time marketing program can be daunting or just simply undoable.
With expert content strategists, content creators and premium material at our fingertips,
the unique combination of iCrossing and Hearst can help brands create and distribute
content efficiently and effectively.
iCrossing’s dedicated content team is coupled with Hearst experts and resources, giving us
access to an extensive editorial network for the development of premium content. We can
also tap Hearst’s deep archives of existing editorial content assets for brand use. And of
course, because we adjust our plans on an ongoing basis, much of the content we produce
is developed dynamically, on-the-fly. Throughout the content development process, we also
involve iCrossing’s creative and user experience experts, who ensure a smooth and consistent
brand experience as audiences follow the content trail from search to Facebook to a brand
website and beyond.
Connected Brands Create & Inspire Content From Many Participants
While content, sharing and community are at the foundation of a successful connected brand,
not all content is created equal. The digital network through which content is published,
consumed and re-purposed is increasingly multifaceted. The complexity of creating and
distributing content aligned with audiences’ needs and desires requires a robust approach.
Therefore, a content platform for a connected brand is:
Relevant to the audiences’ needs first. Many marketers put their own needs ahead
of their customers. Pressure to meet financial objectives, achieve disjointed marketing
metrics, or simply believing that buyers of the brand are still “consumers,” drive marketers
to miss the mark. Connected brands know that business objectives begin with an
audience need, and that’s no different with content creation. Content must be useful to the
audience, otherwise there’s no reason for them to engage.
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand
Cohesive across touch points. Content creation must be diverse to meet audience
needs, but it also must tell a larger brand story. Content generated by a brand should align
thematically across all touch points, ensuring that the subject matter aligns with audience
expectations and allows them to accept, or give permission, for the brand to engage on
the topic.
Designed to foster engagement. While not all content created will generate massive
amounts of interaction, brands should strive to achieve that interactivity as often as
possible. One significant tactic to creating engaging content is listening. The brand
audience provides ample information about what is interesting, exciting, and useful for
them; all the brand has to do is observe their behaviors and listen to the words they
say. Built into a robust content plan, this feedback can be invaluable to keeping people
engaged.
Sourced from the appropriate creator. Most marketers cringe at the thought of
generating the volumes of content required to maintain an engaged audience. But
marketers need to remember that they don’t have to generate the content alone. Brand
content can come from within the company, from agency and media partners, aggregated
from third parties, and developed in conjunction with the brand’s audiences (see Figure 5:
Content Continuum)
Adaptive to modification by all parties. Brands no longer have full control of the content
created about them. Content can be owned by the brand, influenced by the brand, or
merely observed (see Figure 6: Degrees of Content Control). Any content, regardless of
source, ‘belongs’ to all other participants in the dialogue. This means it can be repurposed
or recreated in newer and more meaningful ways. The connected brand’s role is to design
for, allow, encourage and facilitate these modifications. Once the content created by
a brand becomes the ownership of the audience, it’s more valuable and it brings that
audience closer to the brand because it’s a co-creation.
Figure 5: content continuum
AUDIENCE
BRAND COMMISSIONED PARTNERED AGGREGATED CONVERSATIONAL
GENERATED
Pre-existing or New, custom con- Pre-existing con- Pre-existing con- Short, rapid Personal content
newly created tent requested by tent created by tent created by interactions frequently cre-
content by the the brand partners third-parties between ated by the audi-
brand’s staff audiences and ence, about the
between the brand or tangen-
audience and tially related to
brand the brand
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand FEBRUARY 2011
These content sources can be classified into three primary categories: 1) Owned—fully
in the control by the brand, 2) Influenced—requested by the brand but not necessarily
controlled, and 3) Observed—outside the control of the brand, but still usable (and critical) to
a connected brand’s content strategy.
Figure 6: degrees oF content control
AUDIENCE
BRAND COMMISSIONED PARTNERED AGGREGATED CONVERSATIONAL
GENERATED
CONTENT
SOURCES OWNED INFLUENCED OBSERVED
Connected Brands Share Content at the Appropriate Velocity
Content that is created for the appropriate situation and activated by audience management
must be distributed at the necessary speed to remain relevant since content exists in many
forms and it takes varying amounts of time to prepare. Sometimes weeks or months of
research are required to answer a complex question, other times it’s a rapid and instantaneous
dialogue — and any type of content can inspire or instigate the creation of a different type. It’s
this robust cycle of content creation that demonstrates the need for content that can be shared
in a manner that:
Allows for the proper preparation time. Some content may require extensive research
or preparation, from investigative editorial article to a long-form video, these types of
content don’t happen overnight. Additionally, some content is instantaneous, from
comments on a blog to @replies on Twitter, a brand need to be prepared and have a plan
to respond. Content plans and the appropriate staff are critical components to bringing
these disparate forms of content to life in the same ecosystem.
Transforms when appropriate, spanning long-term to real-time.
Any piece of content can instigate a flurry of responses by an audience, derivative content
that can spread like wildfire. Additionally, some content should be designed for change,
allowing the audience to transform it into something completely different. Perhaps a long-
form, in-depth article motivates a days-long discussion about the implications. Or perhaps
the advice of an expert inspires the audience to test the advice and capture it on video.
Any piece of content must be designed to consider multiple forms of derivative output.
Achieves the necessary velocity of distribution. Each form of content within the
Content Continuum has a different pace for development. As content moves from Owned
to Influenced to Observed, the pace becomes evermore explosive. As a result, different
content development strategies are employed given the preparation times involved. In fact,
there are different types of people employed along the way, but they all must work in a
tight knit, integrated fashion to ensure a fluid process.
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Figure 7: the content continuum + velocity VELOCITY
COMMISSIONED AUDIENCE
CONTENT BRAND PARTNERED AGGREGATED CONVERSATIONAL
GENERATED
SOURCES
OWNED INFLUENCED OBSERVED
Presents an appropriate amount of information to the audience.
Distributing these types of content in the right channels and at the right pace will play a
significant role in the level of audience engagement. Too fast, and they get overwhelmed.
Too slow… boring. A highly-astute staff must monitor the pace of content generation
and distribution (both internally and externally) to ensure the proper flow.
Promotes dialogue, not just consumption.
Content must be shared in a way that it facilitates a conversation. Long gone are the
days of “consumption,” media control, and push-only messages. As the authors of The
Cluetrain Manifesto observed, “markets are conversations”. Connected brands contribute
content and perspective to these conversations, but the dialogue belongs to the audience
as well. This means that content must be shared in a venue that is optimized for the
desired method of response — perhaps YouTube for video responses, or Facebook for
polling.
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C Actively Manage Content and Communities
Content alone does not produce a successful connected marketing program. Nor does a
stand-alone Facebook page or Twitter account. No matter how strong their initial foray into
branded content or social media, many marketers lack a plan for sustaining their efforts on a
long-term basis. Today’s real-time, networked environment requires that brands produce rich,
engaging content on an ongoing basis and continually cultivate relationships with audiences.
Brands that can’t keep up with these constant demands will see their online presence start
to languish, along with their opportunity to reach audiences and convert them to brand
advocates.
Hearst and iCrossing believe that there’s a synergy between a strong content strategy and an
active audience management plan. Through this approach, we compound the value of our
clients’ real-time marketing efforts. We develop and execute a Communications Architecture,
that requires specific strategy and planning skills to leverage the expertise of individuals who
understand the reciprocal relationship between content, community and crafting ongoing
brand narratives across multiple touch points through content and conversation.
Whether it’s reaching out to audiences in existing communities or fostering dialog and
relationships in communities that we build, iCrossing’s teams work on behalf of the brand
to engender deeper engagement with audiences. Depending on the client and the content
strategy, our daily efforts might include posting updates to a brand’s Facebook page,
responding to questions or comments on Twitter, or directly emailing influential bloggers
within a community. But beyond simply publishing content, our community managers
play an active role in iterative content development. We turn audiences’ comments into
conversations by creating polls, open questions, and other dialogue-based content intended
to amplify conversation and interaction within a community. We leverage the Content
Continuum to create assets, publish them to appropriate media formats, and propagate them
across the brand’s digital ecoystem (see Figure 8: Connected Marketing Ecosystem). All
delivered within the wrapper of a defined governance model, and brought to life through an
engagement strategy.
Figure 8: connected marketing ecosystem
MEDIA Partner
.com Brand 3rd Party Facebook YouTube
PLATFORMS Site Flickr
Blog Site Twitter
• Article • Editorial Article • Blog Post • Status Update • Tweet
CONTENT • Story • Brand Mention • Blog Comments • Facebook “Like” • Retweet
• Photo • Comments • Blog Link • Facebook Comment • Twitter Follow
TYPES • Video • Link to Brand • Video Embed • Facebook Poll Response • Twitter @Reply
AUDIENCE MANAGEMENT
AUDIENCE
BRAND COMMISSIONED PARTNERED AGGREGATED CONVERSATIONAL
GENERATED
OWNED INFLUENCED OBSERVED
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
GOVERNANCE
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By continually keeping the community engaged, we encourage audiences to create an
enormous amount of additional branded content in the form of tweets, comments, status
updates, and likes. This audience-generated content magnifies both the volume and speed
of branded messages throughout the network — and it does so in an extremely cost-effective
manner. Because we’re always in the loop on what audiences are talking about, we’re able to
constantly feed new ideas into the content strategy and master content plan.
Connected Brands Embrace The Art & Science of Audience Engagement
While content is the critical ingredient, and sharing the essential frequency, community is the
process that activates that content and defines the pace. The ‘network effect’ of a published
piece of content can result in hundreds or thousands of unique connections to audiences,
creating public, visible histories of interaction. For brands to be relevant today, they need to
entrench themselves where people already spend time, across the fluid ecosystem of digital
channels. Managing this ecosystem is a full-time job. It must leverage the expertise and
skills of talented individuals who understand the engagement landscape, the power of smart
content, and who think and function as strategists, communications designers, and user
experience experts. Architecting and managing activities embedded within this ecosystem
requires an audience manager who can:
Be the steward and voice. A connected brand exists and participates in many places.
Some are owned, like the website or microsites. Some are semi-owned, such as social
spaces like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Others are not owned, like forums and blogs.
Regardless of the venue, the brand needs audience manager(s) who can speak on behalf
of the brand in a unified and consistent voice. Many of these individuals become quasi-
celebrities as stewards of the brand, so marketers need to find a person (or people) with
not only the right skill, but also with the personality that aligns with the brand and is inviting
to audiences.
Encourage an active dialogue. The audience manager has to be both a good listener
and a social butterfly. Much like a conductor, they must orchestrate many different topics
and ensure that the audience stays engaged. Their tactics span from issuing requests
for content, to soliciting stories to sharing new content. It’s a never-ending process of
monitoring, encouraging, activating and conversing.
Enhance the visibility of content. But audience managers don’t just engage in
conversations with the audience, they also promote and distribute content. Some of that
content is contributed by the brand (Owned or Influenced content) and made available
through various digital channels. Additionally, sometimes that content is created by the
audience themselves. Either way, the audience manager acts as the hub making sure
anyone who might be interested knows the content exists. Lastly, iCrossing’s audience
managers access search and social data, to ensure the visibility of content in search
engines and relevant social spaces.
Drive buzz and word-of-mouth. Getting the word out is not only the job of the audience
manager. The audience itself plays a crucial role in exposing the brand and the conversation
to new people. The audience manager must ensure that the community has all of the tools,
motivation, and interest they need to spread the work. Audience managers use techniques
like contests, promotions, and audience generated content initiatives.
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Create and inspire derivative content. Just like spreading the word is a role for the
audience, so is the creation of content. An effective audience manager actively encourages
the audience to create new content or enhance and modify content contributed by the
brand. It’s a process of co-creating that furthers engagement and brings people closer to
the brand.
Build relationships with influencers. Some audience members are of significant
importance because they are key influencers — they also inspire the audience. The
audience manager constantly seeks out and identifies these influencers and engages in
relationships with them to help promote both the brand, and the influencer themselves.
This mutual benefit helps motivate these influencers to amplify brand messages.
Contribute to an enhanced audience experience. In many ways, the audience manager
becomes an extension of the brand’s products or services. The engaging interactions they
inspire contribute directly to the overall brand and audience experience. Connected brands
differentiate themselves from the competition by using audience management and robust
content strategies to enhance the experience.
D Measure and optimize.
The point of connected marketing is to help brands maximize their marketing spend by
creating deeper engagement with audiences. While many marketers have jumped on the
social media bandwagon to create a branded presence on Facebook or Twitter, they’re just not
seeing results. Or worse: they don’t even know how to measure their performance. In order to
take full advantage of their investments in real-time marketing, marketers need to understand
what content is getting the most traction in the community — and how it’s performing across
paid, owned and earned media.
Our dedicated measurement teams and proprietary technology enable us to quantify the
results of our marketing programs and make strategic adjustments to our approach over time
— ensuring a positive ROI.
We start by creating an initial baseline for audiences’ conversations around a brand. We
benchmark KPIs such as blog mentions, social signals and referral traffic and then monitor
these metrics over time to understand what’s working — and what’s not. We measure
conversions from Facebook fan pages and referral traffic from Twitter followers, which allow
us to determine the actual value of a brand’s participation on these sites. Our real strength lies
in our proprietary platform that tracks audience behavior across SEO, SEM, display, brand
websites, and social spaces in order to create a robust understanding of who’s engaging
with what content and where. In addition, our custom Web-based marketing intelligence
dashboards enable our clients and our internal teams to view all content performance data
at a glance.
Once we understand how certain pieces of content are performing in different contexts, we’re
able to adjust the content strategy and master content plan accordingly — creating additional
content around a hot topic or scaling down our efforts on a particular site. Often, we’re able to
adjust our programs that same day. Our ability to continually fine-tune our approach ensures
that brands are always getting the most of their marketing budget.
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand
5 iCrossing + Hearst: Your Connected
Marketing Partners
Creating and managing a connected marketing program takes preparation and strategic
vision. It also requires an ability to see and react to changes in audience behavior and
conversations as they happen. This is clearly one of the biggest challenges that marketers will
face in the years ahead — and many are unprepared.
Marketing programs at most companies simply aren’t designed to keep up with audience
expectations for real-time content and interactions. Marketers spend months designing and
developing microsites — and years on their primary .com properties. They treat social media
efforts as on-again, off-again campaigns with stringent review processes that cripple new
content development. And while analytics platforms can provide immediate visibility into data
trends, most marketers don’t look at their website or search analytics data until they’re
months out of date. In short, many brands are stuck in old-fashioned marketing practices
that aren’t conducive to — and actually hinder — active participation with audiences in a
connected manner.
To succeed with connected marketing, brands need to align with partners who can inspire
people around the world through rich content – and distribute that content to audiences
precisely when and where they need it. iCrossing and Hearst have joined forces to do just that.
iCrossing is a full-service digital marketing agency. Our heritage in search engine marketing
and optimization affords us unmatched skills in understanding what online audiences need
and defining how to distribute content so that it’s highly visible to the right audiences. Our
social media strategists and community managers keep an active pulse on audience attitudes
and conversations for brands as diverse as bebe, The LEGO Group and Mazda. We’ve got
data in our DNA and a relentless focus on measurement, so our clients always know how
effective their marketing efforts are. Our clients also have access to our proprietary tools for
audience research, analytics and content optimization.
Hearst’s creative legacy provides a complement to iCrossing’s deep technical expertise.
With 14 U.S. magazine brands – six of which are over 100 years old — Hearst has mastered
the art of understanding audiences’ ever-changing needs and creating branded content
that’s fresh and relevant. To support its publishing engine, Hearst has world class resources
including a global network for editors and writers, digital photography and video studios, and
a deep archive of historical content. Marketers can leverage all of these resources for their
own branded content programs. And marketers can tap into Hearst’s extensive distribution
network, which reaches a truly global audience through 14 magazines, 24 websites, 10 mobile
websites, and nearly 200 international editions. Each month, Hearst’s U.S. magazines alone
reach 72.6 million readers, and its websites draw 21 million unique visitors.
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FEBRUARY 2011
Brands can leverage the authenticity and authority associated with brands like Good House-
keeping, Esquire, Popular Mechanics and Seventeen by tapping Hearst’s vast editorial net-
work and its archive of evergreen articles and images. Hearst offers premium content in the
following areas such as Luxury, Beauty, Family, Men, Moms, Food & Home, Technology and
Young Women.
Figure 9: hearst content category Breakdown
LUXURY
MEN
MOMS
FOOD &
HOME
YOUNG
WOMEN
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iCROSSING: Building a Connected Brand
By combining our respective talents, iCrossing and Hearst help marketers connect with
audiences through real-time marketing programs. Here are a few examples of how we make
this work:
Hearst insights are used to advise brands on topics that might be of particular interest
to certain communities.
iCrossing taps into Hearst archives and commissions new content from Hearst’s
network to create branded content for sites, Facebook pages, microsites, blogs, Twitter,
YouTube, and many others.
iCrossing curates relevant text, images, video, etc. from Hearst archives to create
branded service or entertainment-focused display ads that can be displayed on Hearst
and/or third-party properties.
iCrossing leverages its robust technology platform to monitor, track and distribute
content throughout the ecosystem, providing a technological platform to support a
connected brand.
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FEBRUARY 2011
6 How can we help you?
iCrossing and Hearst have joined forces to help marketers create communities around rich,
engaging content. We’re developing powerful connected marketing programs for some of the
world’s top brands — and our combined expertise in social media, search technology, content
creation, distribution and community cultivation means that we can help marketers sustain
these programs for years to come.
You might want to talk to us if you:
Struggle to keep up with the rapid changes in your audience’s needs, wants,
interests and conversations online.
Want to figure out the right level of active participation for your brand.
Aren’t sure what kind of content will best engage consumers.
Aren’t ready to build an internal editorial department.
Lack the resources to continually engage with your consumers.
Seek skills and approaches to measure the ROI of your social media efforts.
We want to help you succeed in today’s real-time marketing environment. Please connect
with us:
Join the dialogue:
http://thecontentlab.icrossing.com
Email us:
thecontentlab@icrossing.com
Call us:
866.620.3780
Follow us on Twitter:
twitter.com/icrossing
Become a fan on Facebook:
facebook.com/icrossing
Read our minds a Great Finds, the iCrossing blog:
greatfinds.icrossing.com
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