Author Archive: Grey Garner
Talking with Tom follow-up
How portable data means better audience relationships
As a follow-up to my interview with Tom Martin about what’s next in tech, I want to create a little food for thought about how marketers can make the most of these evolving technologies. These advances influence the way brands can communicate with their audience in new and exciting ways.
In my interview, I focused on the evolution of how data moves more freely across the internet than ever before. Because folks who build web applications — like Emma, Salesforce, FreshBooks and more — have embraced the idea of open APIs (the way applications transmit and receive data), the challenge of getting member data out of one system, imported into another, then keeping everything in sync has shifted from something terribly difficult and time consuming to something potentially very easy, not deeply technical and mostly automatic. We’re entering an age where we can create a more customized web, built to our own specs for the way we want to look at our data.
So that’s basically what’s happening “under the hood” of web-based applications everywhere, but what does that mean for marketers? At its core it means that we can get excited about a parallel evolution happening in modern marketing, where the customer is empowered to interact with a brand in multiple ways, often on multiple channels, and extract value from the relationship in a way that fits their lifestyle, availability and medium of choice. And while that may sound like a daunting task for marketers to execute, it’s probably easier that you might think.
These three tips will help you strengthen your audience relationships by embracing a more customer-driven marketing plan:
- Focus on your members as much as your content. It’s easy to focus on what we want to say and how/when we want to present that information. But remember that you’re speaking to a bunch of individual people who are all at slightly different stages in their relationship with your brand. Investing some time creating smart groupings of members will make it easier for you to learn what content resonates, at what frequency, and it will give you deeper insight on how to make their experience better and to make your message stick.
- Have a clear strategy for each communication channel. The content-to-audience balance also extends to different communication channels. Social media provides a great opportunity to interact with members on an individual level and can also be your best bet for communicating timely information. Think about how you can engage or share socially in a way that provides complimentary value to what you’re sending to members‘ inboxes. Remember, the trick is to be social, not simply do social.
- Reward engagement to build evangelism. There is no better way to build evangelism and that all-important word-of-mouth recommendation than to personally acknowledge your most engaged members. The investment you make in learning, understanding and reaching out to your most loyal members in special ways will pay off in spades. In most cases, a simple thank you email or @mention on Twitter will make the recipient feel valued and even more likely to talk about that great experience with others.
At the end of the day, all of this new technology simply gives us more opportunity to understand our audience better and communicate in a more personalized way. Open APIs and portable data can break down barriers that have traditionally held member data hostage, and as marketers, investing the time to understand what this new holistic picture is telling us is the real opportunity.
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Google+ pages for business
Why it matters, or not ...
The launch of Google+ this summer was difficult to miss. It was a long-anticipated release and subject to all kinds of speculation about how it would change the landscape of social networks. Would it threaten Facebook’s dominance for personal networking? Would it replace Twitter as the de facto link sharing tool for millions? Would Google finally get social right or simply launch another mediocre product, destined for the scrap heap? While we’re a long way from knowing all of the answers, the last few months have given us a chance to get our hands dirty and start to understand how Google+ fits into the larger social picture.
With the latest news that Google+ has opened its doors for brand pages, marketers have a whole new set of questions to tackle. Is Google+ worth the time and resource investment? Can brands use Google+ to interact with customers in a new way?
To be sure, there are some considerations for integrating Google+ that don’t exist for Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. I’ve picked out a few pros and cons that will hopefully help frame up the unique space that Google+ is trying to carve for its social product.
The good
More customizable page setup
Google realizes that there are all types of businesses and organizations out there that want to communicate and share with their audience, sometimes in unique ways. Google gives you the opportunity to categorize your page in the setup process, with each designation having some unique benefit. The categories are:
- Local business or place
- Product or brand
- Company, institution or organization
- Arts, entertainment or sports
- Other
This is especially helpful for local businesses, for instance, who want to tie in their Google Places account, which displays helpful info like maps, hours of operation, phone numbers, etc.
Better search results
Google has integrated brand pages into its search algorithm with something they call “Direct Connect.” Now, adding a “+” to a standard Google search will take you directly to that brand page, skipping the whole search results stuff. For example, try it by typing “+Anderson Cooper 360” into a Google search bar. You’ll see that it jumps straight to Anderson’s +Page. Again, this is a great benefit to local businesses who often struggle to make it to the first page of standard Google searches. And speaking of that first page, Google’s algorithm will now count how many of your followers have clicked the +1 button (Google’s version of liking) as a way to boost your overall page ranking. It’s leveling the playing field for brands, while adding a way for Google to improve the user experience for their main search product. After all, most users are more interesting in finding than searching,right?
More targeted sharing
As we try to get better at tailoring messages and content to the right people at the right time, the need to segment and understand your audience is more important than ever. That idea is baked into the Google+ platform in a fundamental way with its Circles feature. When it comes to sharing content, page managers will have a much easier time sharing links and content to one, some or all of their members with just a few clicks and some smart grouping of members into circles. Google+ also opens doors to easier direct engagement with hangouts — think of it as group Skyping. The combination of circles and hangouts means that a page can share and interact with only specific groups of followers really easily and all on one platform. Pretty powerful stuff for businesses who don’t have a full staff of marketing and customer service folks at the ready.
The not-so-good
No support for multiple users
At this time, pages can only have one manager who is allowed to own or post to the official page account. This will make it hard for social media or customer service teams to collaborate or divide up work among team members.
No contests, sweepstakes, offers or coupons
Perhaps the biggest difference between Facebook and Google+ will be the nature of the interaction between brand and follower. According to Nielsen, the number one reason folks “like” a brand on Facebook is to receive special discounts or offers. This will be fundamentally different on Google+, and depending on your strategy, could be a dealbreaker for you.
No vanity urls
I expect this feature will come shortly, but as of now it will be a tad cumbersome to tell folks how to navigate to your page. Vanity urls aren’t in play yet, so instead of something easy like plus.google.com/Emma, urls look more like plus.google.com/106168900754103197479/ – not the easiest thing to remember.
At the end of the day, we need to craft a mix of content and communication that meets our customers, fans and followers where they are, and one that delivers consistent value, regardless of delivery channel or network. I don’t think Google+ will be a natural fit for everyone, but I do think it offers some interesting and unique value to a great many businesses. If you’re time-strapped, a small team or a predominantly local business, Google+ may be a perfect fit for you, with benefits that extend beyond the direct engagement you create on your page. As with any new technology or tool, taking an inventory of your own strategy, your audience and how you engage is always a great starting point for determining where you should spend your time and energy. Who knows, a few weeks from now Google+ may be your new one stop social shop. Have a look for yourself, and come back to tell us about your experience.
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Insights about “what’s next”
Emma's market strategist weighs in on what's missing from Talking with Tom's digital predictions
Hopefully you are following along with Tom Martin’s Talking with Tom series. It’s an interesting experiment for many reasons, not the least of which is the amazing content Tom is collecting from some of today’s top thought leaders in marketing and technology. The premise is simple: Ask really smart people what they think is the next big thing. I’ve been a close follower of the series so I want to share a few thoughts on the trends that I’ve seen emerge and also talk about a few things that are missing from the conversation.
The trends
Tom is a social guy — professionally, yes, but also just an all-around good guy to hang out with — so he’s been able to collect a great mix of interviews from people with a wide variety of web-based businesses. And while there’s a nice variety of people, there are a few notable trends emerging:
- Mobile: Lots and lots of people say mobile is the next big thing. I can see why. Advances in technology make it easier than ever to market via mobile, either with location-based technology, with advertising served inside apps or by redeeming a coupon using your phone and QR or bar codes.
- Social analytics: We’ve moved beyond the question about whether social is a viable medium for brands. Now we want to know how we’ll measure our investments of time and energy there. We’re abuzz with talk about social ROI, engagement metrics, deeper data slices and influencer identification.
- More noise: Granted, this is my own takeaway, but I don’t hear anyone talking about less of anything. It’s more content, more ads, more traffic, more measurement, more channels, more devices.
What’s missing
The truth about what’s next is probably a complex combination of everything based on Tom’s interviews, plus even more. And while there’s already a lot to think about, I’d like to offer one more dimension to the conversation: how to match the DNA of our content to the the DNA of the channel we choose to use.
When we talk about each communication channel, there is a fundamental reason why it was created. There’s a DNA to the platform that was baked into its very concept, and, ultimately, that DNA is why the platforms is successful today. To illustrate this, let’s look at the DNA of a couple of platforms and think about how we can shape our content and engagement strategy to embrace their natural sweet spots.
- Facebook: The “make me feel something” platform. The DNA of Facebook is about real connection and the opportunity to maintain and grow personal relationships. It’s about sharing meaningful bits of our lives and engaging with others when what they share resonates. As marketers, if we take a step back and look at Facebook for what it was built to do, it helps clarify a content strategy that falls into the natural flow. One example: We see countless brands using Facebook to collect “likes.” The promise of a coupon, discount, VIP status or other incentive tactic can, indeed, bring you “likes,” but is that why Facebook users really use Facebook? Does a “like” translate into a memorable brand experience? To a connection? Is it similar to that person’s other interactions on Facebook, where they are sharing their stories, pictures and comments? I’d bet the answer is no. Since Facebook is all about stories and meaningful experiences, marketers need to share real stories, ask question that matter and start meaningful dialogue on Facebook.
- Twitter: The “keep me informed or make me smarter, and do it quick-like” platform. Twitter’s DNA is about short and timely updates on news, great content and significant events happening “right now.” It’s a fast-paced ticker tape of our personal interests, shared in near real-time. A great Twitter citizen understands that there is as much to gain by sharing other peoples’ content as your own, and when you embrace that part of Twitter’s DNA, you can expect all of those good things like trust, influence and engagement to grow. Develop a content strategy in which you are a regular contributor, sharing ongoing and multi-faceted content inside the Twitterverse. If you’re only tweeting about yourself and your brand, you’re limiting the potential for growth and influence which probably brought you (and others) to Twitter in the first place
- Email: The one-to-one, personal communication platform. Email is by far the most personal channel and its DNA is built on a totally different paradigm. It wasn’t built to be social; its promise is that it’s a secure and personal space. That’s why we value our email address more than our Facebook page’s URL or our Twitter handle. In its most simple form, email is: from me to you. As marketers, how can we embrace that simple notion and create content truly feels personal and one-to-one? Relevant, targeted messaging and list segmentation become even more vital when you think about how they’ll help you embrace the natural grain of the email channel.
So, what’s next again?
Lots, clearly. With all the new tools, channels, devices and analytics to choose from, I hope you’ll take the time think strategically, and remember that every channel has its own special DNA. Crafting a content strategy that acknowledges and embraces that flow will help you create new levels of resonance and engagement with your audience, no matter where they may find your brand.
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Get involved in Tom’s social media experiment. Help decide who will get the last word. Vote here!
Notes from Austin: This year’s SXSW Interactive
This year, the conference was all about improving customer experiences.
South by Southwest Interactive is the Super Bowl, or maybe the Olympics, of the web-based tech world. Each year, thousands descend on Austin for a chance to hang out, learn from industry thought leaders and discover the next big thing in tech. Or at least that’s the promise of SXSW. But like all things, the conference is evolving, and over the last decade we’ve seen a gradual, but steady, move away from the bleeding-edge early adopter and toward the general tech enthusiast, social media marketer and corporate advertiser.
As someone who’s seen the conference evolve over the last several years, it’s clear to me that it’s no longer simply a technology conference aimed at generating buzz for new tools. It’s now a people-centered event, where the value of these new tools isn’t measured solely on technical merit, but also by the extent to which they make our human connections and web experiences more meaningful. Is it still the greatest event for showcasing the best and brightest new technical innovations? No. But there’s still plenty to appreciate.
These three themes from the conference show how the industry is becoming more customer-focused, improving our experiences on the web and beyond.
The tools themselves
New applications and web-based services are still the technical foundation of SXSW, but this year the currency is less about technical innovation and more about providing clear value to a community — from hyper-local to global.
- Group texting – The pre-conference buzz was all about which of these services would emerge as the leader of the pack. And while there’s no clear-cut winner, the underlying theme is clear — in a noisy, busy world, we need tools that help us connect and communicate easily with close-knit social groups.
- Localmind – Last year, location-based services got our attention by introducing a game layer on top of real-world locations. This year, Localmind took it a step further by allowing people to ask questions about specific places and get answers by people who are actually there. As we see services like Gowalla and Foursquare struggle to gain mainstream traction, a service that offers a value in the form of real-time recommendations may be the tipping point that brings location services to the masses.
Giving back as a business unit
Giving back is quickly moving from something that businesses and individuals do as a side project, afterthought or only during holidays to a dedicated and sustained effort in making the world a better place. This year’s SXSW saw everything from individuals pledging relief money to Japan via Twitter, to a keynote address that told the story of how an entire business was built by their giving initiative.
- HelpAttack – This service allows you to pledge a dollar amount for each of your status updates. They facilitate the transaction at the end of the month and work with you to determine a per-update rate that fits the amount you want to give in a month.
- Thank-you economy – Gary Vaynerchuk gave a rousing speech dedicated to the idea that saying “thank you” to your clients, in whatever way you can, is the key to building meaningful relationships in business. In a world with ever-growing marketing noise, it will take a vocal community of evangelical fans to make your brand stand out.
- TOMS Shoes – At the extreme is TOMS. Blake Mycoskie has built his entire business around the story of “one-for-one.” You buy a pair of Tom’s shoes, and they donate a pair to a needy child. Blake explains that without the story, TOMS would never have grown to become the organization it is today. His word-of-mouth marketing by people who bought his product has been his most valuable business asset. And even though he didn’t set out do to do something philanthropically great as a marketing strategy, the results speak for themselves in the continued success of the business.
The customer voice is stronger than ever
Even the way we build applications is changing. How? By inserting the voice of the customer in the build-and-release process. From methodologies to best practices to applications, the voice of the customer has a larger role than ever before in shaping the tools that help businesses grow.
- The Lean Startup – The Lean Startup movement has taken the startup world by storm and even had a day-long track at SXSW this year. The key principals are building products and services as efficiently as possible by involving the customer at the earliest possible stage, and then building to the market using your audience as the rudder for features, value and price. These ideas mirror the conference direction as a whole by emphasizing concepts like feedback and value over simply building the newest shiny object.
- User-centered design – From websites to applications to registration processes, user-centered design is the future of the way we conceive, prototype and build new features and applications. The very definition of design is evolving from something that needs to look great, then perform, to something that has to meet the needs of users intuitively, then be styled to make that experience fun and visually engaging.
- Get Satisfaction – This year’s winner at the conference for best business app, Get Satisfaction facilitates user feedback by embedding a friendly link and interface into websites, allowing users to post comments and suggestions on-the-fly as they use a product.
What made SXSW especially fun this year is that the trends we saw there are very similar to how we work here at Emma. We preach engagement and relevance, segmentation and availability. Also, giving back is important to us, and we make it a part of our day-to-day operations.
I know lots of you are thinking about the same things. So how are you making your product or service more meaningful? What ways are you finding to engage people in a personal way? Please let us know in the comments. After all, we don’t have to wait for another SXSW to roll along – there’s plenty to talk about all year long.
What to know about Facebook’s mail announcement
You may have heard that Facebook was deviously plotting the end of Gmail and others by creating an email platform of their very own. Well, we tuned into the announcement for a little more insight, and I’d like to share a few takeaways. Turns out email’s still not dead (no surprise there), but Facebook would love to be the center of the messaging experience for their 500 million users.
What it really is.
The most important thing to understand is that Facebook’s primary goal was to create a seamless messaging platform, and email is one piece of that. While it’s true that all users will have access to a new @faceboook.com email address, the goal is to fill a gap in an overall messaging system, which includes their mobile apps, instant messaging inside the application, texting and more. Email, therefore, helps round out a suite of options for communicating inside the Facebook ecosystem. (Oh, yeah — we called it an ecosystem.)
Why they built it.
They wanted to build a modern messaging system that eliminates the “friction” of traditional communication channels. In other words, they’re simplifying the notion of a conversation between two people, without restricting the channel that the message goes down. For example, let’s say I email my friend at her new Facebook.com email address. That friend happens to be logged into Facebook, so my message shows up in a chat dialog box. She responds to me in her chat window, and Facebook sends me her reply via email, since that’s where my message originated.
What does it mean?
The announcement raises some interesting questions about the future of social media and how we might integrate different forms of communication. Still, HTML emails — like the ones you send in Emma — will probably be a challenge for Facebook. There’s a lot of complexity rolled into how Facebook will decide how to route a message, so HTML seems like a difficult hurdle.
We’ll plan some serious testing to see how their filtering and sorting works. Your messages will be sorted with something similar to Google’s Priority Inbox, depending on your user preferences, so we’ll have to see what that means in terms of even getting a message into someone’s inbox, much less what folder it lives in once it’s there. It’s easy to see from the outset, though, that this system was built for users, not for marketers — all the more reason to make the content you send valuable.
They didn’t talk about fan pages at all in their announcement, so many people have questions about whether becoming a fan of a brand is the same as adding someone as a friend and how that relates to inbox sorting.
We’ll just have to keep everyone posted as they release it and we can test it more. In the meantime, we put together a graphic to help make sense of it all.
(Additional writing by Jim Hitch.)
More SXSW notes: collaboration, social space and science fiction
From looking at product design through the eyes of science fiction to searching for the most influential people using your product, topics at this year’s SXSW are as varied as usual, and they’re almost as thought-provoking as the queso is delicious. (Which is to say, very.)
A couple of main themes to talk about so far, from my perspective as Emma’s product manager.
1. Collaboration, innovation & expectations. As we all know, consumer expectations have changed. Not only do we want access to the latest information and support when we encounter problems, but as consumers we also want to be a part of the product itself. To that end, it’s important that companies don’t create new products in a vacuum. After all, we’re creating and building something that we hope will bring value to our customers, so we should get them involved early in the process and let them help shape the final result.
We’re also learning that releasing new products or features is just the beginning of the process. New technologies to collect and respond to feedback, paired with iterative development techniques, are giving users a more active voice in how products evolve over time. As product builders, our role is to listen to lots of single voices and ideas, and then synthesize and reshape that information to create innovative solutions that do more than just solve problems – they create value.
It’s not quite a haiku, but:
Collaboration leads to innovation…
Innovation is shaped through iteration…
Iteration validates the vision…
The vision inspires collaboration.
2. Social space trends: reach & influence. So if reach indicates how wide your network is and influence indicates how much your endorsements matter, it’s time to rethink what’s actually more important. Reach used to be all the rage, but influence is measurable.
And as for the science fiction, one session about “design fiction” emphasized that story-telling, including science fiction, can do things that science itself cannot. Imagining people in the future keeps ideas focused on how we’ll work and play, buy stuff, communicate with friends and coworkers and so on. As the stories of people emerge, the objects and gadgets and interfaces that they’ll use start to magically appear right along with them. And sometimes those objects look very different than if the conversation starts by trying to envision the “future version” of the gadgets we use today. People use products, so the more clearly we can visualize how people will change, the more clearly we can aim the technology to support those new stories.
And with that I give you the future of note-taking – maybe.
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
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