In 1997, IBM encouraged its employees to use the Internet.  The opposite of many companies who were restricting their employees’ Internet access at the time. “In 2003, the company made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and to encourage IBMers to participate. We continue to advocate IBMers’ responsible involvement today in this rapidly growing environment of relationship, learning and collaboration”.Source from IBM Social Computing Guidelines. IBM’s guideline controls employees’ behaviour online, and minimises any uncertainty there is to the employee. Today employees are your ambassadors to the online community, the more equipped and knowledgably they are the better they are prepared to participate and response to the online community.

Below is video about Social Media Policy, and what employees need to be trained on. It is simple information yet very often taken for granted. All our online actions have as either a positive or negative reaction. Everyone in your organisation has access to Social Media and hence no one should be excluded from the Social Media Policy training.

The online marketing and social media team should be internally championing the different platforms, and the benefits. By allowing the marketing division to talk employees about social media, employees can casually help out with the strategy. It is important to realise that everyone in the organisation can contribute to the social media strategy. Collaboration needs to start with your organisation first. Getting the buy-in within the corporate walls will only strengthen strategy. Here is a quote from the IBM website: “IBM believes in dialogue among IBMers and with our partners, clients, members of the many communities in which we participate and the general public. Such dialogue is inherent in our business model of innovation, and in our commitment to the development of open standards. We believe that IBMers can both derive and provide important benefits from exchanges of perspective”

Good Media Habits

Even consumers online need to practise “Good” Media habits. Peers recommending peers on LinkedIn for the wrong reasons and subscribing to too many blogs, twitter and RSS feeds can make it almost impossible to filter the valuable information.   The likelihood of consumers becoming frustrated with the information overload is high. Acts like these can make the social media initiative less credible. Here is a link to “A list of 10 social media habits that I am stopping immediately”, by John Welsh.

From corporate users to consumers online, we all need guidelines, to ensure it is a win-win situation.  Technology has enabled us to collaborate effortlessly, freely, and express ourselves. Transparency is one of the best attributes of the social media network.  Exchange of ideas and the combined knowledge of expertise enable us to grow and develop as a society more than ever before.  But is it possible that we could hinder this growth, and jeopardize this initiative, by taking Social media polices/guidelines and Good Media Habits for granted?

Another company that takes technical support serious is Microsoft, for its XBOX product.

“Less than a year after starting Twitter support, the Xbox Support Elite Tweet Fleet has become a major leg of the Xbox support foundation, pulling in the highest customer satisfaction rates across various support channels.” Mckenzie Eakin (Microsoft-XBOX Tweet Support) Sourced from XBOX Support.

They were awarded the Gunnies Record for Best Brand on Twitter.

Twitter has worked both ways for Microsoft, It has allowed technical staff to find issues fast, and it also serves to have the fasted way to alert users of services issues, fixes etc, before the calls, emails, and letters start coming one after the other.

Microsoft has 10 dedicated tweet support reps.  “We keep almost all tweets public.  We want our dirty laundry out there because we don’t want to have dirty laundry” says Eakin.

Mckenzie Eakin from Xbox says that “the type of engagement happening onTwiiter would rarely reach a call centre.”

By of using the social media/blog as a new channel for technical support Microsoft has managed to find and trouble shoot issues before they become live calls, which is the most expensive mode of service.  Overall they technical support cost has decreased. 

• Decreased administration cost,
• Fewer staff,
• Minimized repetition of faults, by mass communication
• And collaboration between uses online, to assist each other

Leads to an enormous overhead cost reduction that Microsoft is enjoying because of Social Media!!

There is a risk with supporting a product in public domain, primarily because in the new channels the discussions are totally controlled by customers and hence very difficult for product companies to make sure their technical support through the new media channels is consistent with other channels. This will be the challenge for product and even service entities.

How best a company can leverage Social Media for technical support? To successfully implement technical support via Social Media, What do companies need to think about?

The required number of resources?

Do you address all issues; if not how do you prioritize?

Will it be aim to be proactive support, or more of damage control?, Dell has started to listen to it follow bloggers “Dell is following their advice, selling Linux computers and reducing the promotional “bloatware” that clogs machines. Today, Dell even enables customers to rate its products on its site.” Microsoft aswell has decided to follow the proactive approach, engaging and getting users feedback. Here are the Stats for Microsoft Xbox:-

The Microsoft cases reveals that the new media channels needs to be more than marketing initiative; it needs to be another official channel for providing support, besides phone, email and chat, which at the end of the day results in exceeded customer satisfaction. Yes there are concerns which need to be thought off and planned for but overall one cannot ignore the benefits.

So will we see more product companies supporting their customers using the new media channels?  I believe yes .Personally I hope never again to call a call centre AND be greeted with a pre –recorded message, waiting for service.  I want to get technical support online!, and Social Media intergration with products (eg. Xbox) just aids the cause and makes it make more sense!

Social Networks and Communities

Gaming

Widgets and Wikis

Blogging including micro-blogs (Twitter)

RSS

Podcasting and Videocasting

Virtual Environments

The rate at which facebook and other social media communities grew was much faster than as compared to Television and Radio, because of the present enabling technology. Here is a snippet of Facebook facts.

Here is a video on the Social Media Revolution.

Gaming has been pushed to a new frontier: Real Problems > Real Solutions in a virtual world. Here is a link to IBM’S innov8.

Widgets are now being used in raising Brand Awareness online.  

“Interest in widgets is rising as marketers become disaffected by other methods of online advertising, especially on social networks.”  Sourced from: Building a Brand with Widgets- Businessweek.

“Some marketers say widgets may do a better job engaging users than, say, so-called banner ads emblazoned across the sides of social network profiles”.  Sourced from: Building a Brand with Widgets- Businessweek.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Functionality and new creative content is what people want, consumers want to have something some helpful and useful.  They want problem solving Widgets!  Widgets are capable of delivering on this need.  I believe Widgets have added itself to the viral marketing portfolio.

Here is an interesting link, which is an interview with VideoEgg CEO Matt Sanchez; he discusses how widgets can be used commercially.

Wikis allow world-wide collaboration, and is an example of disruptive technology.  Wikipedia has become more reliable and faster at rectifying faults, than other online Encyclopedias. Users online are invited to co-create, add and enhance the content.  Collectively users world-wide provide a better Encyclopedia service! 

Blogging and micro-blogs (Twitter) as become a vital form viral marketing. Customers, prospects, partners, and colleagues can view your updates. Simple yet effective information is sent to intended audience. Today we are in a Dynamic age, News, information, ideas, all need to be real-time, as our society demands. Blogs are just that, hence they often are ahead of traditional media streams for major stories. Blogging is also a major help in Public Relations.  As Sandy Carter discusses it is “an innovative PR media with Strong influence when the bloggers are part of the community/group you need to influence, inform, or seduce.”

As Jeff Schick, IBM’S vice president of Social Software commented, “We have learned that twitter can play an important part in our communications efforts and be a keystone as we raise brand and product awareness/credibility in these nascent communicates of purpose.”

Blog are part of the marketing mix. There is 2 way communication, and fresh dissemination of information and messages.

RSS simply assists busy consumers, marketers and businesses, by providing a summarized version of content online. With the influx of information managing and tracking the important information can become a daunting and time consuming task.   

In Podcasting and Videocasting users/corporate entities create media content, which is available to other users, to listen and watch at their leisure. Video casting is growing fast too, both by corporate entities and individuals. Corporate entities have the chance of building enticing fresh creative video, and publish these on the web (example is YouTube) for free. Both Podcasting and Videocasting have elements of co-creation, personalization and viral marketing, which are needed to be competitive.

Virtual environments like Second life are still in the infant stage, nonetheless it is providing new place for marketers to meet consumers, even consumers meeting consumers globally.  Growth is increasing and I think more consumers will start to explore this sort of channel in the not so distant future. “Active users on Second Life are around 50000, which is up significantly from 30000 a few months ago” quoting Sandy Carter. 

From the above I agree with Mashell McLub’s statement.

Social media is more than a credible marketing channel. It complements the traditional channels in engaging consumers. We can see that as a Marketer you will benefit from a Wide Audience base, dynamic Feedback, Low Cost, and Improved Brand Credibility. These new channels are under the public eye. Everything that you do is viewed by your followers. It is this transparency that will aid and cause the concept of the new vessels to grow. 

Anderson and FREE.

However his argument can be challenged, for the simple reason that people prefer quality over quantity. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. (Malcolm Gladwell, Priced to Sell).

Thinking about the broadcast industry, people prefer quality over quantity too. Therefore most of the PAYTV operators world-wide, are doing much better than the “free to air” public broadcasters.  The principle of “Free” is not lucrative in this instance. Specialty and scarce services/content/products can be an organizations main source of survival, and indeed competitive advantage, why give it away for free? The public broadcast television which is a practitioner of Free is struggling financially. But premium TV, who offer scarce resources and specialty content, is more profitable even with the high rates.

Anderson argues that online companies like Wikipedia, Facebooks and Google benefits from transaction cost reductions, which is passed onto the end user. A user of Google docs, benefits from the free online “Word” packages, and free online storage.  But this is not the same for all media entities.   The revenue strategy and user needs that these online societies depend on are different from that of the Broadcaster.

In parallel with the release of Anderson’s Free, an equally important book Entitled Cheap: The high cost of discount culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell, explores the broad consequences of a free culture.

“Shell argues: “Free is a category unto itself. It can rob us of our reason. As a great seduction, she explains, “Free softens us up for the sell”. “It’s a unique price-point”, she argues, “Because it jettisons market-based values and the question of whether the object or service is worth the cost.”” Sourced from Telegraph.

Quoting Eric Schmidt of Google, Anderson is also willing to admit that the digital network economy tends to lead to monopolies, a development which, ironically, Shell also observes. Anderson himself understands the cultural perils of FREE.  (Sourced from Telegraph).

Chris Anderson is right, free is revolutionizing the present times, however free information isn’t necessarily quality information. I believe it cannot be a law across all digital sectors, and we need to approach this with suspicion. The concept of free needs to be in line with the organisation.  Scarce resources are more profitable with-out adopting a “free” mentally, even if it is acquired at a falling rate year on year. Hence there are plenty of companies that have chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free.

“Customers want you to know them” according to Hewlett-Packard Chief Marketing Officer Michael Mendanhall. “Customization and personalization is the trend…”

Customers expect you to apply the information you know about them and to continue to learn from the relationship. They don’t want their time wasted with irrelevant or inappropriate offers.  The personalisation technique used has either a positive or negative impact on the customer. I think as a marketer the line between providing personal attention, and being intrusive will be the biggest challenge. By understanding and predicting customer behaviour, companies can create stronger and more profitable relationships with customers, which is their competitive advantage. Establishing relationships with customers is the biggest incentive to personalization.

“Dynamic personalisation technology allows companies to provide their customers with an entirely new experience of personalised offers and content. The process requires the collection, analysis and distribution of information about the customer. This technology enables a more precise matching of offers to customer needs, which can improve customer relationships and build loyalty. The real-time capabilities of dynamic personalisation provide greater accuracy and the flexibility to adapt to changing trends.”  Sourced from Eurescom.

Figure 1: Intelligent e-Communications Platform

Each customer will see different, personalised web pages with personalised navigational links.

Figure 2: Personalised web pages  

Something Memorable Via Technology

We can be Creative in our personalization of messages, by utilizing the vast technologies available online. We need to humanize our organization and marketing messages by giving them a face. It is all about leaving a lasting impression. An example that continuously surfaces is personalized video that greets recipients by name and speaks to his or her needs. This may seem tedious and a little cumbersome, but it can be really simple. Below are some online videos showing how marketers can utilise technology available online from (Talk Fusion).

Technology is here to assist personalization!

Emails can equal spam!

By personalizing emails, you differentiate yourself from spammers by making it obvious that your communication was created specifically for that person and not the masses. But the new form of mass marketing in the form unsolicited e-mails are driving us all crazy. It’s super cheap to send out spam. So cheap, in fact, that it represents about 43% of all the e-mail we receive!  Sourced from Radiantbrands. There is a thin line between personalization and interruption.  Your information if incorrect can be a hindrance to the consumer.  This is where we can incorporate permission based marketing.  Our websites and marketing material needs to entice consumers- let them take the next step into the marketing plot, and this can be the “permission”– the green-light needed to build a relationship with the consumer. 

Theoretically, if marketers know more about potential customers, personalization will allow them to offer exactly what people want. But does it really build brand loyalty or does it invade individuals’ privacy? Unfortunately many marketers are bordering on the invasive tactics that so many folks are getting upset about. Is it about really knowing everything about the customer, or understanding what the customer’s interests and passions are and delivering only what they want?  Consumers’ need to control marketing that goes to them. They only want to see what they want. This is where tactful use of relevant personalization targeting customers with loyalty and passion about interests or products makes perfect sense.  The key is to ask Permission!

Below is the graph of Netflix percentage of total demand (with ratings used as a rough estimate of rentals) – vertical axis, and the popularity rank of the DVD titles – horizontal axis, sourced from the Longtail website.  Between 2000 and 2005, the Netflix selection grew from 4,500 DVDs to 18,000, and the effect on the demand of this increase in variety is shown below.

Skype is another example who is challenging telephone operators around the world.  The attractive pricing and video conferencing makes it a worthy opponent.  

Having said the above, more is not always better, focussing out the broadcast industry and scanning through the local satellite provider, there is spectrum of channels of no real significance and is of poor value which is in the long tail.  Nonetheless the choice is now available to the customer. A company that took advantage of this was Nike in the 2006 World Cup, according to Sue Elms, and she talks about the “Media Long Tail in Action”

There is no question that the long tail of media presents tremendous opportunities to a savvy marketer. Nike proved this by using the tail to outmanoeuvre Adidas during the 2006 World Cup. As the official sponsor of the event, Adidas was able to prevent Nike from running any advertising during the 64 televised games. This was the dominate side of the long tail (The HEAD).

Nike responded by developing a new media campaign around the idea of “Joga Bonito” (Portuguese for “play beautiful”). The campaign featured the broadband TV channel JogaTV, viral videos, and a social media site, co-sponsored by Google, called Joga.com. By the middle of June, halfway through the tournament, Joga.com was getting nearly twice as much traffic as Adidas.com. They targeted the tail!!

Below is the Long Tail of Media, courtesy of Geoff Livingston. From it we can see: -

Adidas = the Head, and Nike = Long Tail. Nike exploited the long tail, because they saw opportunity, giving the customer more choice!

There is abundance of choice to the Consumer, for the following clear reasons:-

1. Companies understand the phenomenon of the long tail, reduction in transaction costs is now possible, and to remain competitive more variety is needed. Collectively the sum of unpopular “GOODS” could potentially be more than the popular ones. 
2. Technology not only reduces transactions costs, but brings in new players into the market, whom in turn create more options to the customer. No need to watch the TV schedule, you can download your content! 
3. The tail is an opportunity for competitors to penetrate markets that seem to be closed. As long as there is opportunity there will be a drive to increase the tail! Nike shows us this in the 2006 World Cup!

Citing eMarketer, there is ongoing penetration of smart devices (including tablet units like Apple’s iPad) and the increasing ubiquity of mobile broadband networks as catalysts behind the anticipated revenue growth, eMarketer adds that an improved user experience and access to cloud-based content also will attract new mobile content consumers in the years ahead

Mobile marketing is becoming increasingly relevant as an advertising channel for businesses, mobile is moving towards being an essential device in everyone’s lives. The Smartphone certainly changes mobile marketing and offer new opportunities to complement SMS. However it can be expected that there will be added degree of complexity to the market. You’re able to reach the consumer at the very moment they are making a purchasing decision. According to Matt McNeil on Microsoft Resource News.

Do all Organizations really understand the benefits of adopting the mobile platform as a marketing platform?
Oliver Chivers, head of business marketing at T-Mobile UK, recently told Fresh Business Thinking that more firms are now aware of the benefits of mobile working from cost and productivity perspectives.

However from a recent Survey from eROI Titled: Marketers place little importance on consumers’ mobile experience, this is not the case.  With the  headline being “With over 285 million mobile phones in the U.S., and more than 70 million smart phones, you would think that marketers were ensuring their email and online offerings were maximized for such devices. Think again.”

This reveals that the new platform still needs some convincing to marketers.

Here is a link:  , which dismisses 3 Myths of the new platform:-

Myth 1: Mobile is only Hype.

Comparatively speaking there are more mobile subscribers.

Myth 2: Mobile is only mainly Youth.

Myth 3: Mobile Marketing is equivalent to SPAM.

Then theres the iPad.

According to Apple, the Ipad is the first truly Ads and Interaction device. And what sets iPad apart from previous marketing channels is its capacity to seamlessly integrate ads into applications and media content. Some much so that Apple announced that they will have there’re own advertising network.  Which promises to introduce rich media ads that keep the user within an app.

The iPad marketing initiatives is said to blur the line between entertainment and advertising, with a focus on branded applications that include interactive content like games and video. This new device will for sure leave traditional marketers a little perplexed. I believe that marketer’s creativity, in using the iPad, to engage consumers could be the differential advantage!

The iPad is optimized specifically for entertainment, not utilities. “Marketers can push more interactivity, game play and narrative–that’s the content iPad users are looking for”,  sourced from fiercemobilecontent-Ipad-RevolutionizeMarketingMix.  

From Smartphone’s to the new iPad the question remains, will society accept these  new channels, and will marketers embrace the new platform of marketing, to aid the co-creation co-producer philosophy? Do we have a choice to start off?, Is adaptation expected of all organizations who wants to be an industry leader?, From the numbers and industry trends the answer is Yes!

The art of with talks of a dual effort from Consumer and Producer.  The internet has indeed open and enabled dual communication for us as consumers and producers to express our feelings, thoughts and ideas. There will however be a level of openness depending on the industry.  This is the challenge to all organizations going forward, the level of intellectual property disclosure to users in the online community. We have seen the success of Linux. But this organizations has managed to fit the sharing and peering concept as part of the original business strategy,  or even by chance, when the concepts was in their infancies.  But the question now is how do companies like Sony and Apple, whom comparatively are closed organizations, able to decide on the amount of disclosed Information given, knowing very well that this Information could give consumers more control, and then the line between consumer and producer could be non existent?

From the above arguments I agree with the statement that the media landscape is changing fundamentally and with it society has to rethink the fundamental relationship of companies and consumers.  There are many challenges for companies whom were not traditionally into peering and sharing with consumers. In an attempt for radical innovation and breakthrough with the help of users online, could companies risk their core business practices?