Steve Baker, a notable Business Week journalist, has just published a story about the growth, trend, usage and consumption of Twitter by journalists and brands. The interesting thing was his approach to developing the story and finding participants for the facts/insights for his article. We saw via twitter that he was drafting a story and reached out to him to contribute. Using Twitter for PR outreach as well as for participant insight collection is novel and something to watch. The article discusses how some brands such as Dell are recognizing revenue/ROI through Twitter/Tweeting. Look for much more conversations about how the Twitter channel continues to grow and moves more into the mainstream.
How Business Week Used Twitter to Create an Article
5.15.08 by Blake Cahill {Blake Cahill, General}
Repairing Damage to New England Pats Brand
5.14.08 by Mike Spataro {Reputation Management}
It’s not often you see full front page apologies like the one that appeared in the Boston Herald over the New England Patriots spygate scandal.
Despite the false allegations that came the day before this year’s Super Bowl, the Patriots have a ton of work to do to get back their brand mojo following a year of tremendous highs and lows. The Pats were certainly owed an apology after the Herald could not substantiate accusations that the team had taped the walkthrough of the St. Louis Rams the day before Super Bowl XXXVI.
Even so, the Pats had been caught illegally taping other teams and were rightly slapped with a major penalty by the NFL. People within the organization dealt the brand a major setback, but there is optimism that spygate may be finally coming to a conclusion.
The Kraft family, which owns the Pats and the Revolution, have been a great asset to the New England region for years and if there is one thing owner Robert Kraft knows is that having a respected brand is priceless. “I must compliment the Boston Herald for doing what is unprecedented in terms of recognizing their error in a major way … (we) had our brand damaged,” Kraft said.
The Kraft family should look start to look at ways to rebuild its brand by connecting with the media and its fans in new ways and reaching beyond traditional marketing and communications to communicate how and why the organization has changed for the better.
Web 2.0 to Transform Market Research?
5.13.08 by Blake Cahill {Blake Cahill, Brand Management, Consumer Generated Media, Market Research, New Media, Social Media}
A great report was recently published by Brad Bortner from Forrester Research about “How Web 2.0 will Transform Market Research”. Online communities offer marketers - real-time, cheap, and unique insights that traditional qualitative focus groups don’t necessarily provide. We continue to see clients leveraging our software to listen and understand what consumers are saying about there brands. Web 2.0 and social media provide a new laboratory for listen and dissecting consumer opinions. Forrester interviewed 31 leading Fortune 500 firms to compile this new piece of research. I would encourage marketers and market researchers to purchase the report and learn more.
Demographics in Social Media - Women very active Partcipants
5.13.08 by Blake Cahill {Blake Cahill, Blogs, Consumer Generated Media, Social Media, Social Networks}
Very interesting post from WOMMA of an article that I missed from Jack Loechner last week from the Center for Media Research. 36.2 Million Women Actively Participate in the Blogosphere Weekly. Of the 36.2 million women who are active in the blogosphere each week, 15.1 million of them publish posts of their own, and 21.1 million read and comment, according to new research from BlogHer. As evidence of their passion for blogging, 55% of the women surveyed reported that they would give up alcohol in order to keep their blogs, 50% said they would give up their PDA, 42% said they’d give up their iPod, 43% would give up reading newspapers or magazines — but only 20% said they’d part ways with chocolate.
Dell’s Bob Pearson at WOMMA-U
5.9.08 by Blake Cahill {Blake Cahill, Consumer Generated Media, Customer Experience, Dell, Social Media, Word of Mouth Marketing}
Attending, speaking, and exhibiting at WOMMA-U in Miami yesterday and today. This morning was kicked off by Bob Pearson from Dell, VP of Conversations and Communications (note the title!). He opens with stats about the grow of the internet and consumption of online content and its continued assent. Then some learnings about content created in other languages. Only 1/3 of total internet content is in English. Dell is focused on listening and communicating in customers’ 1st language - guess what - that’s what customers like - imagine! Also, there is need to recognize that communities are like countries - i.e Facebook, My Space, Twitter.
Great quote from Bob - “Leaders will enter and become relevant in conversations that occur everyday everywhere all over the world about your company or product”. The question for marketers that Bob presents is - Are you or your brand present in the places that consumers are researching and having conversations?
Key Learnings/Actions from Dell:
- Engage in relevant conversations with our customers online 24/7 worldwide in all major languages
- Blogging is global..blogging is multi-lingual..blogging is a community of passion
- Join the conversation
- Would you rather do a focus group of 10 people or listen to 100,000 people debate ideas?
- Start with Listening
- Customers are partners
- Communities are more powerful than individuals. Communities want to help each other improve.
- Online experience at work should be similar to online experience at home
- Join your customers communities
Dell has actually recognized revenue via Twitter - $500K thus far by offering discounts/specials via Twitter. One of the first revenue conversion stats I have heard about Twitter from a large company.
Great job Bob! We are honored to be but a small part of enabling Dell’s monitoring and outreach in social media.
