My blog: The End of the Road or a Change of Lanes?

In three days, it will be the two year anniversary of my first blog post on Experience: The Blog.  Originally intended to be an exploration of experiential marketing strategies, my interest and focus quickly turned to social media and how the growth of the peer-to-peer groundswell creates challenges and opportunities for marketers.  It is apt to recall on how my blog started as one thing and became another, because change is in the air again.  I'd like to reflect on that change, put it into context and invite you to join me as I shift my blog publishing to a new address.

A month ago, news broke that Forrester would be altering its blog policies and analysts would shift their industry-related blogging into a new, common platform on Forrester.com.  I posted at the time that I believed aggregating Forrester's thought leadership in one place made sense and that I was eager to continue blogging, sharing news, and building my reputation within the new Forrester blog.

The reaction was swift and emotional.  Hundreds of tweets and blog posts weighed in on the topic; a few supported the new blogging policies, but most did not.  One person tweeted I was "licking the boots of (my) corporate paymasters," and a friend sent an email with heartfelt condolences at the loss of my blog.  I ignored the tweet and assured my friend that I was not progressing through any of the stages of grief (unless bemusement was one of those stages.)

The reaction was interesting on several levels.  First of all, there seemed to be a knee-jerk backlash to the very concept of corporate rules for social media. The idea that corporate policies don't have a place in social media is patently ridiculous and ignores the responsibility companies have to protect against legal, reputation and brand harm. 

Many observers made rather wild assumptions about the intent of the new policy, drawing incorrect conclusions that analysts posting to the new Forrester platform would no longer be free to share their thoughts without constraint.  This is also silly--how could it possibly benefit Forrester to restrain analysis, dialog and thought leadership?  Those are the very things that create value, demand and differentiation for Forrester's services.

Lastly, there were detractors who implied Forrester's actions were designed to undermine analysts' abilities to build their brands and reputation.  I find this accusation lacking for reasons far greater than that I still have my own blog with my own name and my own thoughts.  In fact, I was particularly bothered by this argument because of what it implied:  That my reputation, personal brand and value were inexorably bound to an Internet domain.

To paraphrase the movie "The Elephant Man," I am not a URL; I am a human being! Wherever I go in life, my experience, knowledge, reputation, abilities, value, and personal brand go with me.  "Experience: The Blog" doesn't contain Augie Ray; I contain it.  And later this week when I meet with a Fortune 100 organization to discuss their social media opportunities, it won't be my Twitter feed or domain address they care about but my ability to consider their situation, analyze the research conducted by Forrester, and draw insights and recommendations that drive their business.

My blog has not come to the end of the road;  it's just changing lanes.  If you subscribed to "Experience: The Blog" I invite you to join me at Augie Ray's Blog for Interactive Marketers (or subscribe to my blog's RSS feed).  I hope to see you at the new URL and (as always) welcome your comments, feedback, criticisms and ideas.

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How Do You Keep Mass Influencers Engaged? An Example from TripAdvisor

[This blog post was cross posted with my new blog on Forrester's Interactive Marketing blog:  http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/03/tripadvisor-and-mass-influencers.html]

In the Forrester report, Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid, we introduced the Mass Influencer, a category of online influencer comprised of people who create most of the peer impressions about about brands in social channels.  Although just 16 percent of the online population, Mass Influencers create 80 percent of all peer impressions about products and services.

Engaging Mass Influencers is tough--getting a sufficient number of bloggers or Twitterers to mention your new product or participate in your promotion is challenge enough--but keeping them engaged is tougher.  In the middle of last year Moonfruit, a free web site builder, ran a Twitter sweepstakes that got many tweeting.  Some found the program spammy, but it was undeniable Moonfruit earned a lot of attention.  The site received a huge spike of traffic, but the volume of Unique Visitors has since returned to exactly the same level as before.  The promotion was successful in reaching many but did not succeed in creating lasting engagement.




One way Mass Influencers can create peer impressions for a brand is to post ratings and reviews, but there isn't much of a feedback loop to this activity. Are people reading my reviews?  Do they find them worthwhile?   

TripAdvisor needs to keep reviewers reviewing, and an email message they sent to me suggests one way to do so. They don't merely ask for more reviews but instead appeal to some of the motivations that Mass Influencers have for their social media activities.  The TripAdvisor message takes away doubt about readership of reviews and implies that those who post reviews have an audience eager for more content.  Here is what I received: 

Do I believe I have an audience waiting to read my next hotel review?  Of course not, but this email still motivated me to write a review of another property in which I stayed this past week.  TripAdvisor's email message confirmed my content is relevant to and read by others, and this acted as encouragement for me to post more content (which, in turn, drives page views, return visits, and revenue for TripAdvisor.com).

TripAdvisor cannot succeed in being a content and opinion destination if reviewers only post a review or two and then never return. Their simple email program suggests one way that feedback can be used to keep influencers influencing.

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My First Forrester Report: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid

[This blog post has been cross-posted with my new Forrester blog at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/my-first-forrester-report-tapping-the-entire-online-peer-influence-pyramid.html]

Three months after starting at Forrester, my first report for Interactive Marketers is now available: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid.  Forrester subscribers can click the link to read about the Peer Influence Pyramid, which describes and shares recommendations about three types of online influencers: Social Broadcasters, Mass Influencers and Potential Influencers.

Each of the three types of influencer is important to marketers, and each must be engaged in a different manner.  Social Broadcasters are appealing because of their large followings, but they tend to assist more with awareness than with preference. Mass Influencers are a new category of influencer--28 million in number in the U.S. alone--created thanks to the scale afforded consumers by social media tools. (I'll be sharing more about Mass Influencers in my next Forrester report.)  Finally, the vast majority of social media participants are Potential Influencers, people who have modest networks rich with trust.

For me, the publication of this report marks the end of a long journey and the beginning of another.  I started this report back in September, before I was even a Forrester employee.  As part of the recruiting process, Forrester requested I write and present a report that demonstrates the sort of research and analysis I would offer to Forrester clients.  Version one of the report did the trick and I was hired.

At that point, it seemed the "Peer Influence Pyramid" report might be polished and published within a matter of weeks, but instead it took over three months; I have lost count, but I think the report now available on Forrester.com is version number seventeen. One reason for the time and edits is that Forrester reports adhere to a very particular style of writing. I am having to unlearn some bad habits and enjoying my continued development as a writer.

Another part of the challenge was that Forrester has a rich history of research on the topic of influence. Before Forrester could release my report, the concepts and language I developed independently as a job candidate needed to reflect and expand upon the work done by my new peers and those who came before me at Forrester.

Most importantly, I learned that Josh Bernoff had just completed some new and fascinating research on the topic of influence in social media.  That research was conducted for the upcoming book Groundswell HEROes, a follow up to the popular and very informative Groundswell. This good luck in timing afforded me the opportunity to work with Josh and leverage some groundbreaking research to further guide and strengthen the ideas within my report.

A lot of time, effort, and consideration went into Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid. I hope Forrester subscribers find it informative and interesting.  Within a month, I will be sharing some news about my second report, which dives even deeper into the new category of influencer--the Mass Influencer.

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Single ID: What Consumers Think and Why It May Not Matter

[This blog post was cross-posted with my new Forrester blog at http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/single-id-what-consumers-think-and-why-it-may-not-matter.html.]

I saw some interesting Forrester research this week. We asked over 4,000 consumers about Single-ID systems, which permit a profile to be used on multiple Web sites and eliminate the need to register, create and maintain separate profiles on each new site. While we didn’t ask consumers about the currently available options (such as Facebook Connect, OpenID, OAuth, etc.), the Forrester survey did explore what consumers care about when deciding whether to use a single-signon tool.

We early adopters were quick to use and see the benefits of portable IDs, so I was surprised by one big discovery out of this study: A lot of consumers aren’t yet that interested. When asked to select the most important features that would motivate them to use a single-ID tool, more than four in ten didn’t see any of them as compelling. With a list that included features as simple and appealing as “The ID worked with Yahoo,” “The ID worked with Google,” and “The ID would only be used with sites I select,” 44% of consumers surveyed instead selected “I'm not interested in creating a single ‘ID’ that works at multiple Web sites.”

There is demographic skew to this data; only 32% of young adults responded “not interested” compared to 52% of those 55 and older. Still, a significant number of people don’t yet see the benefit of portable IDs and unified registration systems.

What should marketers do with this information? Given the significant indifference, should they slow down efforts to implement single-ID profiles on their sites?

I don’t believe so, and here’s why: First of all, while many people may not understand the benefits, a lot do. Facebook Connect recently celebrated its first birthday with an announcement that 60 million Facebook users are using Facebook Connect across 80,000 Web sites.

Secondly, single-ID systems provide benefits for marketers now, and when implemented with a focus on the user needs and experience, consumers see the benefits. Take the Huffington Post, for example; thanks to their implementation of Facebook Connect, I can easily see what content my friends find interesting (which—not coincidentally—always seems relevant to my interests). So, although many consumers don’t see the benefits now, it is reasonable to expect they can and will adopt these tools as sites make the advantages more evident.

With all the buzz about Social Commerce, there was one more finding from the study that caught my eye: The number one factor that consumers say is essential for them to sign up for a portable “ID” is that it not be associated with their credit card information. Consumers are just not quite ready to make their financial data as sharable as they are their photos and status updates.