DISCLAIMER: I’m not preaching Google, I’m just observing. If you really think I’m preaching Google, we need to talk

Okay, essay begins:

Google drive is a major milestone towards the stone age (oops, cloud age). [1]

It was clear even before Dropbox launched that Google drive was on its way, what wasn’t sure was its true purpose: an evolution of Gmail? Another move by Google to want to organise all of the world’s information or just a move to take over the world without being evil?

In my opinion, which I think isn’t too far off from the truth, Google Drive is your future harddrive (if you have a Google account and you’re not paranoid).

G-Drive integrates well with all other G services and it already has an API. Recent trends in the the browser market indicate that Chrome will overtake Internet Explorer as the most used browser very soon (my wild educated guesstimate says in the next 12 months).

So, in order to be truly mobile all you need is Gmail, G-docs, G drive and G+ (but because the world is fair, you can open a tab for Facebook too. Oh, and I didn’t forget Google search. In other words, everything is in the cloud).

To make way for this new cloud based personal computing, Google has also been working on ChromeOS (an operating system that has only one app – the browser and everything runs inside this browser) which shares many of its features with the Chrome we all use (I assume).

So in the next three years the least paranoid of us won’t need more than just a slow computer and a fast connection to do everything. Google drive is not just a competitor to Dropbox but is another milestone to the new era of personal cloud computing.

Footnotes: [1] Stone age, industrial age, information age, cloud age, then we’ll start asking the last question

Within any digital strategy, we may find a business making use of one or more of the following elements in their arsenal, and we will look at how ORM can be used to augment each and bring added value and insight to these campaigns/elements:

Analytic Statistics:
Anyone proclaiming to have a digital strategy in place should have a means of monitoring their website usage, whether it is using a free tool like Google Analytics or a subscription service. In a statistical report on a website’s usage, it is easy to see which social profiles sent traffic, but we can’t see who or what comment directed them through those channels. ORM tools allow us to see beyond the “front gates” that analytic tools present, and show us what was said on those social profiles that directed visitors to the website, which is highly valuable to marketers using social media as a key traffic source.

PPC Advertising and SEO:
So many companies have resorted to using search engines and pay per click advertising on these engines as a major means of driving quality, targeted traffic to their websites. Because these systems rely on search keywords you wish to target, it is imperative that digital marketing agencies know which keywords to use and, make sure they are not missing out on a largely searched word or term because of an oversight. An example would be a company selling spectacles. If the search campaign included a myriad of keywords relating to spectacles, the company might accumulate a handful of clicks. However, using an ORM tool would give insight into exactly what keywords people utilize in their conversations on the Internet relating to this topic, and we may find that when monitoring the spectacles brand, that 99% of people use the keywords “reading glasses” instead of “spectacles”, and this would bring far more traffic in a search engine marketing campaign. So is it jam or jelly then?

Social Media Monitoring:
Do you know what people are saying about your brand on Facebook, Twitter and other big social portals? This is not something you can use Google to answer, in fact even some ORM tools don’t do this properly. If your brand is client facing and these clients speak about your brand online, you need to be monitoring your social media with a close watch. Online reputation management systems allow insights into which comments got shared the most, which social profiles speaking about your brand have the most influence and most importantly metrics regarding the sentiment these clients have of your brand. A new Twitter account is opened every 6seconds, think about that!

Website Usability:
Chances are people use your website every day. Do they find it easy to use? Did they find what they were looking for? We’re they able to contact you? Very often this is not the case, but you didn’t hear about it because they didn’t email you to let you know your website was offline for 5 hours. The place where frustrations like these get vented is on a blog, a Facebook profile or a Twitter feed, and listening in on conversations using online media monitoring can tell
you a lot about your website. Many people enjoy telling their friends why they don’t like a site or why they feel another is badly designed or difficult to use. These are comments a website owner must take into account and put into practice. Someone forward this to Telkom…

Online Display Advertising:
We have all run online banner adverts at some time or another, whether they were effective in their goal is a discussion for another day. The truth is sometimes these can be effective, and depending on the brand the effectiveness sometimes depends on risqué or taboo subject matter. This is after all how you get viral spread and memorability. Along with this will come criticism or praise, sometimes both. Top ORM tools like saidWot will allow you to have free market research on what people think about your ads, and will give you an idea of how successful the campaign is. Repetition is the mother of all learning, and this is what banner ads do. You don’t want to repeat a message people hate.

Although ORM has its inherent vital place in a digital strategy, as you can now see it also enhances the effectiveness of all other elements that are part of your digital strategy, and brings with it hard fact, data you can count on and insights that may never have been brought to the surface.

So sure, corporations have tightened belts in the marketing department, maybe less so in digital, but is still here noticeable none-the-less. But can a company with a proper digital strategy in place actually afford not to be performing ORM and using it to enhance the other business functions?

This month’s Journal of Marketing breakfast at the Michaelangelo was well attended, and thanks to the well renowned panelists it was very well received. Among those who were there were Professor John Simpson of the UCT Unilevel Institute of Strategic Marketing, Gerard Augsutine – Marketing Director at Netcare, Andisa Ntsubane Marketing and Communications Director at Microsoft SA, and Greg Garden – Group Executive at Nedbank. The theme for the morning’s talks was “Marketing Masterclass”.

Kick starting the talk Jeremy Maggs asked Prof. Simpson why he thought marketing in South Africa has become such a challenge, and the response was one of admittance that marketers in SA have had it easy for so long, that they have now forgotten what it is like to actually put real thought into how to engage with the target market. In South Africa, we’ve had  five years of uninterrupted growth and following this, products were flying off the shelves. Marketers’ jobs were simple… Get a message out to the public and they will buy. It is certainly not that way anymore, and something that has been flagged in this regard, is that marketing people in South Africa have lost the art of persuasion, and actually forgotten what the core of the product they are promoting is. They have been so preoccupied with the perceived benefits of a product and spin-off slogans and tag lines that they no longer know how to sell a product for what it is.

When recession hit our economy, the first thing companies did was drop prices. Dropping the price means more sales, does it not? Not really, and in any case, this is not a marketing decision… Marketers don’t have this kind of power with regards to the workings and bottom lines of corporations. Lowering prices may help make a product more competitive in the marketplace, but unless it is accompanied by a solid marketing campaign and message, it won’t help in the long run since this only means lower profits anyway. A good example of a company that had a solid marketing position during the recession was Sunlight. When the economy flat-lined, instead of dropping prices to become more competitive, thy actually put prices up so as to make up for lower sales and profits. Sales didn’t drop proportional to the price increase, because it is a brand people know and trust.

Andisa Ntusubane  claims that marketers need to go back to basics and understand what people want  from a product and then address how to match the need. They also need to learn how to use systems in order to become more effective, as well as unique promotional methods that use better sales techniques to remain competitive instead of relying on price to do the work for them. This will only result in failure for the brand.

Marketers are very good at looking at what is going on and  consequently, designing clever campaigns around the current events, but Gerard Augustine puts it across using an ice-skating analogy and states that “We need to be seeing where the puck is going to be, not where it is”. It doesn’t help reacting to something anymore, since in most cases it is too late to use this as an effective element in a campaign. Marketers need to think of where the market, economy, trends and focus going and move their positioning of their brands accordingly to remain effective. This is the only way brands are able to stay ahead of the competition and remain memorable.

Along with the changes in our economy, the very people we are targeting are changing as well. As Andisa Ntsubane quite correctly asked, “ what LSM do you place a person living in a squatter camp who has and uses a smartphone?” This is something that needs to be inherent in all strategies, since you can no longer put your target market in a box and think you know who they are. Marketers need to assume that all consumers are different and are constantly changing, and thus messages need to be applicable to an array of  different consumers. It is also important to understand where consumers are spending their time, as with technological advances, this has been a large shift from time spent with traditional media to online media.

8% of people on social media platforms befriend brands or companies. People do not fully understand how social media can work for a brand, and as such we need to view social media marketing as more than a platform for intrusive selling  and rather a tool for creating authenticity and listening to what people are saying. People do not buy your product on Facebook, but they will say things about it and we can manage our reputation on these platforms and have better control over the information people receive about the brand. It was a widely discussed theme that a digital strategy should never be separate from the marketing strategy; these are should go hand-in-hand as one strategy and should never be looked at as separate entities. What is important to digital is important to the marketing strategy, and thus needs to be considered as one. The most important element of your social media campaign is and always will be content. Content needs to be sticky, informative and entertaining all at the same time. This ensures that people have a reason to befriend brands online.

The market place is constantly changing, consumers are evolving and if marketers remain the same year after year and try the same old tricks, they will fall short of the mark. A marketing message that induces an emotional connection and response will be one that makes a brand succeed in the turbulent and cluttered marketplace.

saidWot is the official ORM and Social Media provider for the Journal of Marketing.

For more information visit:

www.saidwot.com

www.jom.co.za

The ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit and Excellence Awards 2012 is placing its focus on how to manage and interpret excessive amounts of data. 

The award celebrates organisations that contribute to excellence and innovation in this field. The judges criteria include assessing the business value as well as the technical quality of BI projects in selection of the finalists and winners.

 For more information pertaining to our nomination and this award, please visit ITweb. 

Today we take a look at the key role that ORM plays within a business strategy; the accuracy of the mention threads analyzed and filtered through is key to the credibility of the tool and strategist who is using this information to make management decisions.

Online Reputation Management within a Business Strategy

Every CEO, risk manager, marketing manager and stakeholder wants to know that the value of the company share price is increasing. This is an absolute measure of success, as the undertones suggest that the market has confidence in the brand, and of course the operations that are being carried out at the hands of the incumbent management team. Today, brand equity is also valued on the balance sheet and if this is diminished, it again affects the underlying value of the company share price.

The above key factors drive business decisions when setting the objectives and goals of an organization, and with digital discussion, Online Reputation Management (ORM) can play a critical role!

Online Reputation Management defined
ORM is the practice of monitoring online conversations to better understand the sentiment and positioning of a brand/company in the marketplace relating to reputation, negative and /or positive sentiment. It can be utilised for benchmarking competitors, in campaign strategy planning, product research as well as market feedback on campaigns and the companies’ products/services.

Addressing ORM from the perspective of the 5 P’s of marketing

Online Reputation Management should be the core of every business strategy, as it underpins each stage of the strategic decision making process. It is not merely a social media monitoring tool but is central to every successful stratagem, from goal setting, campaign planning, brand image and positioning, to return on investment measurement.

Product
In order to launch a new product, understanding the current performance of a product or service, based on marketplace sentiment (and the feedback regarding their experiences of the current offering and in relation to that of the competitor) is the first step in the brand and ORM planning process.
The transparency that social media has brought to the table allows for fast and authentic feedback for the business to interpret into the future needs of the company offering. Conducting this research is vital for any product to succeed in the coming years.
In this transparently candid environment consumers also value brands that ask their opinion and feedback, it “buys” loyalty down the line as they feel that they have a stake in shaping the company offering.

Price

The “total” value that the consumer is receiving for the hard-earned dollars that they are parting with is an imperative part of the strategic business planning process for any company. Besides the absolute price that they are paying, the aggregated opinion of the brand by others plays a major role in this “total” value perception… You aren’t going to buy something that your friends dislike and others have complained about constantly, as the supposed value will be diminished, even if price is fair. After-sales service can also play a significant role in price and perceived value. Feedback in this respect, and of course delivery of the brand promise is an area that can be measured as well as carried-out online effectively.

Promotion
As digital matures to be a key channel within the marketing mix, the platform and execution mechanics are vital to ensure a ROI (return on investment) that not only meets the objectives of the business, but is also realistic to the channel returns that can be expected.
Understanding what works for your brand/product. and where to place emphasis are all key areas in the ORM research and planning process. The nature of the campaign or engagement to be implemented depends on what needs to be achieved, what the competitor is doing, budget constraints and performance/sentiment of your current activities.
Once a campaign is activated, ongoing monitoring and measurement is vital to ensure success. It also allows updates to the initial plan to ensure objectives of the business strategy are delivered in the campaign.

Positioning
You would never open a store in a shopping center right next to one that you already have. You would also not offer products and services in that store that have no appeal to the demographic of consumers residing in that area. …..The same can be said for the positioning and engagement of your brands online.
Understanding where your brand currently features, how it is portrayed and where engagement would be most relevant (based on your target market activities) are where you need to focus. A brand cannot adopt the shotgun approach and hope to succeed online however, through understanding, research and focus of where the brand will gain the most traction and improve the visibility is crucial to success. All of which also goes a long way to building and managing your reputation online.

People
A brand’s reputation and equity is always increased when key media and industry influencers talk about and publish articles, mentioning the company and activities undertaken by the company – even if it is sometimes negative.
Having a full understanding of who these people are, if their tone is negative or positive and how you can leverage their share of voice in your favor, will go a long way to building the brand and turning them into fierce brand ambassadors.
On the flip side, there are also consumers out there who have a strong following and in understanding them, measuring their activity and getting them on your side is an important part of brand building process online. These influencers, as brand ambassadors will often provide the brand with a huge amount of “free” advertising due to their propensity to engage online and follower numbers.
Another key aspect in relation to people, is who is representing the company online- which employees are commenting and responding to posts about the brand, and how are they doing this.
This step in the reputation and PR process utilizes ORM to monitor the brand, and then implement companywide guidelines relating to who may represent the brand online and how they should do this.
This practice protects the company and guides in empowering staff to support the building a well-positioned brand, that they can also be custodians of.

Implementing a well-thought strategy that is managed and reviewed on an ongoing basis is vital for any company today – and in utilizing the right tools, such as ORM to implement this strategy will go along way to achieving sustained success.

Ingrid Rubin
February 2012
For more information visit www.saidWot.com or email us at infosa@saidwot.com

For more information on the awards and saidWot’s official press release: 

http://www.dst.gov.za/other/techtop100

http://www.saidwot.com/2011/12/saidwot-wins-at-the-top-technology-100-awards/

The Top Technology 100 Awards are recognised as the premier business excellence awards in South Africa; a longstanding national program mandated to celebrate South Africa’s role-models in science and technology that acknowledges with fanfare the success that today’s organisations enjoy through their development and use of technology. More importantly, it encourages, measures and honours these organisations for the value their use of technology brings to the South African economy.

“We are proud to receive this acknowledgement in what is a highly competitive environment, maintaining focus in our product offering and excellence in delivery are key cornerstones of our success to date. Keeping up with ever-changing trends in the online space and meeting the needs of the client in our product delivery is a constant challenge to our team” says Ingrid Rubin, CEO saidWot Global.

saidWot (Pty) Ltd is a leading online monitoring, management and reputation strategy company. Offering a software application that can be accessed by clients globally to research their market and manage and monitor their brand reputation online. The tool supports the analysis and development of robust communication strategies for the ever-growing social media space, and allows the brand to report back on the Return on Investment from the campaigns implemented.  

Carla Jones – GM & Chief Strategist: South Africa and Armond Furmie – Technical Lead, were at the event to accept the award on behalf of the company.  “Winning this and similar awards is an important and well-deserved acknowledgment of success based on the focus and passion of our team”, says Carla.

To read more about the awards: http://www.dst.gov.za/other/techtop100

For further information about saidWot contact:

South Africa: Carla Jones – Carla@saidwot.com

United States: Ingrid Rubin – Ingrid@saidwot.com

You can find the eBook here: http://www.mtnradioawards.com/ebook/on-air/

saidWot is the official Social Media management agency for the MTN Radio Awards.

View our advertisement on page 31.

Did he go on this rant out of pure frustration and used his opportunity of being on live radio wisely? Did he do this to draw attention and make a name for himself as a controversial and opinionated radio personality in the hope of following in the footsteps of the likes of Mark Pilgram and Gareth Cliff? Or did he really commit career suicide?

At this stage, public opinion seems to be that he was only saying what most of us were thinking anyway and most individuals are applauding him for this and, although some are questioning if it was truly necessary to swear so much, others believe that this is exactly what caused the huge impact. Additionally, with an initial 3568 followers to a growth of 453 on Twitter within a matter of 24 hours, I would say the impact has been tremendous.

However, some opinions on answerit.news24.com include that he is an “Attention seeking twazzer, he wanted his 15 minutes of fame and he got it. Silly, childish little boy” and “Certainly not very high ambitions. He was quoted as saying ‘all I ever wanted was for Gareth Cliff to read my blog’. That would be the pinnacle of success…?”

A Marketer’s Perspective on this:

Let us ignore the question of why he did what he did and have a look at the impact it made, and what marketers can learn from this.

Firstly, the incident took place at 1 am, a time that most media strategists would not consider for advertising their brands. This incident has proven that a truly impactful, unexpected message can take place at any time and that it can reach your market virally anyway. A Brand that applies this often is Nando’s. Their ads are usually only aired once or twice and their posters are only up for a day before somebody complains about them and they are removed by the ASA. However, by the time this happens, they have already made their rounds on the Internet by members of the public, through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or blogs.

Secondly, and this is widely known, but a reputation that takes years to build can be destroyed in seconds. Although, it is uncertain whether in the curious case of Mark Esterhuysen he intended to build his reputation with this outburst or if it was truly an act of insanity based on pure frustration; the rule still applies. It takes years of hard work and sometimes countless efforts to own a specific space in the minds’ of your audience and all this hard work can be instantly ruined by a silly mistake. There are many examples like this that are easy to find with a simple Google search, try it out with the keywords “car recall”.

So, in this world where incidents that take place in the early morning hours can spread like wildfire through the interconnected network that we take for granted every day, how can one ensure that the reputation that they worked on for years stays intact? Well, in my opinion you should use this interconnectedness to your advantage and constantly keep an eye out for what is being said about you. Consumers no longer only share their opinions with friends and family around the braai, but share this with the rest of the world.. And we all know that it is easier to share a bad experience than a good experience with your peers online. Therefore, keeping a close eye on what is being said about you and analysing the impact on your brand, makes a huge impact in terms of maintaining brand health. This can easily be done with the use of Online Reputation Management tools.

So, if you are planning on doing something outrageous, unexpected or shocking, or you are just interested to see what is being said about you, make sure that you contact saidWot for a free trial as your first port of call.

The Job to be done:

My job title ‘Online Brand Analyst’, even 5-years  ago  would have seemed completely futuristic. So what does this job entail, how exactly does one analyse a brand online?

I’ll tell you how; we filter through all the mentions collected via the monitoring tool that we use (from social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google +, and YouTube, to blogs and websites) regarding brands, based on keywords that we have inputted into the system. 

What I particularly enjoy, is that I get to read unadulterated opinions of consumers and see how the ad-guys use the information to better brands.

After all, consumers are king, so , shouldn’t their opinions be valued above all else? Their opinions form the basis of all research that we provide and that should be conducted before the work on any brand commences.

My job is also highly entertaining; this is where having a good sense of humour comes in. Sometimes people create jokes out of a brand name, it’s hardly ever reputation damaging, however, it does add to the brand awareness created online especially through the use of retweets. It is also vital to understand these acronyms and pet names and to update them in the system to track and start to use in in the content that the brand is generating to show the consumers that you are listening and do understand where they are coming from. Currently, my favourite mention I picked up is: “Dear Snooki, there’s a fine line between a tan and looking like you rolled in a bag of Doritos, Sincerely, you’re making me hungry!”.

 Although jokes such as these don’t really give brands any useful information from the consumer’s point of view, it still creates awareness around the product. Additionally, the chances of me recalling the joke and the product related next time I’m looking for comfort food in the chips aisle, is rather high.

It’s all in the understanding:

Right now you’re probably wondering what jokes made online have to do with research for Ad agencies and the Brands they serve; here’s the answer to your question…. it’s all part of the research process, the conversations that occur online and the jokes that spark off conversations all relate to what people are saying about a brand or product. Therefore, it’s all relevant.

This brings me to my next point, with ORM tools such as saidWot, one can observe what consumers are saying about certain brands or a product, including what or how they consume certain brands; and this information is incredibly useful during the research process of a campaign. Not only because it allows a brand to fix any problems that consumers are having with the brand/product, but it also allows us to delve into the habits and passions people have around certain brands, this makes up valuable consumer insight.

For example, a couple of weeks ago “I wish they would bring back” hash tag was trending on Twitter and many individuals tweeted that they would like a certain product brought back. This information allows brands to find out what consumers most like about their brand and also cater to their needs. When consumers see that a brand they’re loyal to has taken time to respond to them and make provisions for them, consumer loyalty will increase. Consumer insight doesn’t stop at products; it also applies to ATL adverts.

Traditional advertising through billboards, print media and TV commercials are all great mediums when trying to create brand awareness, however, how often do above the line agencies find out what consumers are saying about the brand before creating a campaign? There are loads of adverts that get slaughtered online on a daily basis and it’s usually due to insufficient research. Through the use of ORM tools such as saidWot, valuable consumer insights can be made and research should form the backbone of all campaigns. Moreover, measuring the success of a campaign can be easily tracked online. What people say, the amount of times people mention a certain advert they saw, the impact it created on them, all these aspects are vital for ATL agencies and the ROI they are delivering to the Client.

How campaigns are received online and whether the feedback has been positive or negative will allow agencies to improve their campaigns or to keep doing what they’ve been doing all along. This all adds to the research process, and like previously stated, research should form the backbone of any campaign, not only to benefit the agency, but also so that campaigns are received favourably by the consumer. Now you’re probably thinking “of course we conduct research, we just pay market research companies to get the information we need before we start our campaign”, however, there’s a huge difference between results received by means of online reputation management tools such as saidWot, and research conducted by market research companies

The real truth online;

Firstly, receiving and sifting through mentions made online is unbiased, it’s raw, and it’s the consumer expressing their opinion for no incentive whatsoever, so results are never skewed. Plus, it’s anonymous. People feel they can say whatever they want without implications. The truth is, they can and they should be encouraged to do so. This can only help brands improve their services or products. Although social media is an easy tool to complain about bad service or products that weren’t satisfactory, it is also used for those rare occasions where people show some brand love. This is always encouraged; a happy consumer equals a loyal consumer. Brand loyalty is something most companies try to achieve and are never able to because building lasting, satisfactory relationships with consumers is difficult, but it’s not impossible.

I recently had a problem with Vodacom and I whined about it on Twitter, not only did I get a response immediately, but the problem was resolved within the hour. The person dealing with a very angry and disappointed customer was friendly and that experience managed to get me to change my mind about switching to another network. Thus, positive mentions are great, it means a brand is doing all the right things, and negative mentions can be considered as constructive criticism, or a chance for the brand to rectify its mistakes. Mistakes are okay, everyone makes mistakes; the important thing to remember is that consumers are forgiving, as long as the brand takes action. An apology goes a long way. However, a television advert and a great big billboard isn’t going to fix the problems people are having with a brand, being aware about the issues and dealing with them before going forward with a new campaign will be received far more favourably than a campaign that’s been launched to very disappointed consumers.