Social Media and Marketing Research

Shifting the conversation from online influencers to customer advocacy.

Social business planning and initiatives can give birth to employee advocacy across the organization.

Social media must be used to build customer advocacy.

Companies need to figure out how to turn word of mouth marketing into sales.

It's time for companies to invest in and enable their brand advocates.

In sum, we believe that the way most marketers approach social media misses the point. And the point is: Social media provides a means to not only microsegment but to establish actual relationships with your customers and prospects. To show that we’re not totally out in left field on this, let’s take a look at what some of the most advanced brand marketers are currently doing with microsegmentation.

This is the third post in our Infinite Touches(tm) series.

You know about the carpenter who only had a hammer, so every problem looked like a nail? That’s what I think about advertising on social media: It’s a useful tool, but it’s not suited to the problem.

This is the first in a series of blogs about our Infinite Touches(tm) process.

If you have been in this space for a while, you will already know that moms are pretty influential online.

Employee advocacy in social media is crucial to the success of companies today who wish to build credibility on the social web.

Brands must learn how to inspire customers and create brand advocacy if they wish to remain competitive in today's landscape

The article that inspired this series of posts is entitled Brand Engagement Rate Still 1%, But Facebook Is OK With That which appeared in Ad Age on 11/15/12. In addition to the implications in the title, several comments in the article got my blood boiling.

Foremost among them was this assertion:

Facebook is becoming more and more like traditional media. It may be time for advertisers to move on from worrying about how many fans they have to instead explore how many category buyers Facebook can reach, for what cost, and to what effect.

That’s a rubbish idea.

OK, it’s a sensationalist headline. I don’t really think segmentation should be ditched. Far from it.

But segmentation based on high-level, limited demographics and not behavior is dead in brand marketing because it ignores the real promise of social media.

The second post in our Infinite Touches(tm) series.