As social media is still regarded as a new form of marketing and engagement, lots of companies seem to be more comfortable “trying out” social media as a one-off campaign.

Social media campaigns are an attractive proposition as they can generate a lot of buzz and excitement and are usually the basis for a lot of the social media case studies you will find on the web.

Even though we’re a social media agency, here at FreshNetworks we don’t just focus on campaign work; we also look at long-term engagement through a sustainable social media strategy.

In our experience, social media campaigns are perfect for raising awareness on a short-term basis. They’re also a great way of getting exposure for brands, companies or products that might not be that well known, or have fallen from favour in some way.

Campaign work is high impact but due to the cost and resource involved it’s not good for driving value over a long period of time.That’s not to say that campaigns should be disregarded completely. In fact, they are very effective when used alongside a sustainable engagement strategy.

Campaigns generate the high level of buzz that brands so desire. However, if there is a long-term strategy for engaging with the people who have come across your brand or product as a result of the campaign then the impact won’t drop off once the campaign has finished. Using campaigns as part of a wider social media strategy will help you build awareness and drive value over a longer period of time.

In order for a sustainable engagement strategy to succeed it must be set up with the needs of both the company and the user in mind. The reason why single, one-off social media campaigns are often favoured by brands is that engaging with people on a long-term basis takes time and effort. You need to build up relationships and develop trust with your audience. However, it’s worth the time and effort as ultimately the people you engage with will become a valuable asset to your company.

The video below from Richard gives a brief summary about our approach to social media campaigns and sustainable engagement:

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This is true. On March 26 of last year, a woman I had never heard of before named Maria Xenitidou, or just “Maria X” contacted me. She is a British post-doc, a Ph.D., and so I feel justified in calling her “Professor X”. Or perhaps, since the X-Men are Legend, “The Young, Female Professor X.”

So, Maria, the Young, Female, Professor X, contacted me out of the blue with an email. She began by telling me that she had “recently undertaken a project with colleagues at the University of Surrey in which we are trying to locate innovations in social science research methods.” Her purpose? They were interested in identifying innovative research practices in the social sciences outside the UK, in other words, research practices that had not  yet filtered through to typical research methods courses. And, the reason she was contacting me was that my work “had been identified as involving innovative research practices especially with reference to netnography.”

That was pretty exciting. A completely non-marketing, non-consumer research group of scholars was interested in my work. These were sociologists and cultural scholars for the most part.

I wrote Maria back. We talked. We interviewed (on Skype of course). And on the basis of the material I sent her and our interview, she wrote up a very interesting document about innovative research practices that included netnography. The document was published. And then she invited me to a Research Methods Festival in Oxford at the University of Oxford on July 5th. In particular, to a smaller Workshop at the beginning of the Festival called “The Process of Methodological Innovation Workshop.”

The Festival was timed to directly follow EACR. By “coincidence.” Or, perhaps, if you are a Jungian, by synchronicity. That amazing synchronicity.

So of course, thinking that I would already be in England, and that I’d never been to Oxford before, I said yes. And I am very glad I did.

The session she assigned me to was called “Promulgating New Methods” and my mission (PhD students and post-docs like to hand professors missions, by the way) was to offer ideas and experiences about “Concentrated Activity, Networks and Diffusion Mechanisms of Methodological Innovations.”

That sounded heavy. Weighty. Meaty. I like heavy.

So I put on my Thinking Hat and started to ponder what I had learned in 15 years developing, tooling-up, and blabbing about this new methodological approach of netnography. What I came up with, and what I presented, was a way of thinking about what I do, about my approach to scholarship that I wanted to share with you here in blogglyand. But first, we continue the Oxford thing. I had to write something to present.

 In one of those annoyingly parenthetical postmodern fragments of titling, I named the presentation: “Netnography: Prom/ot(ulgat)ing a New Method.” The idea was that Promulgation, Professor X’s mandate to presenters in my slot, is always also Promotion. Science is always marketing.

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Results from an

• Multimedia Galleries follow chats as one of the least-used features in online communities - This also comes as no surprise.  While most audiences are comfortable sharing photos these days, many hesitate to take that next step into video on their own accord unless there is a clear benefit (read: incentive) to them creating and sharing a video with the community, and it's simple for them to share.  I'll caveat this by separating multimedia content shared in online communities from content shared in ad-hoc studies where members are recruited specifically to take video of a given task or subject (e.g., video ethnography or video chat groups).  In the latter, they are obviously going to share video since that is what they were specifically recruited (and paid) to do...
• Feature set of platform is the number one selection factor - This comes as no surprise, given that feature set is a unifying element that allows for easy comparison between platforms (for more thoughts on this, check out a previous post - "

Now for some of the surprising findings (to me, at least):

• Surveys are the fourth most commonly used feature - Surveys and polls are fourth, which was even ahead of activity feeds.  In the context of marketing communities that do not have a research/insight focus, this is rather surprising.  I have seen studies where polls help increase engagement, but I didn't expect them to be near the top of this list... 
• Service and support by the vendor is in the middle of the list - Given much of the talk about how services are a critical element for many organizations embarking on online community initiatives, I was surprised to see this near the middle of the criteria.  I suppose part of it has to do with how this is more difficult to compare across vendors than the platform feature set...

I haven't seen the full report, so I can only comment on what is in the summary post.  What do you think?  What (if anything) surprised you about this report?

-Matt

As a social media agency we’re always interested in what makes people interact and engage with brands online.

We’ve already written about why people follow the UK’s top brand on Twitter, and a recent report from ExactTarget builds on this analysis  further by revealing why people follow companies on the popular microblogging site.

Here are the top 5 reasons why people follow brands on Twitter:

1. To get updates on future products

38% of respondents said that they use Twitter to get updates on future products or new product developments.

From a brand’s perspective, this shows that Twitter is a useful PR tool for creating buzz around a new product launch. It would also work well for innovative companies who continuously update their offering or for FMCG businesses where new products are frequently launched.

2. To engage with the company or brand

32%  of respondents said they wanted to stay informed about the activities of a company or brand, with a further 20% stating they become  followers to interact with, share ideas and provide feedback about services or products.

From a brand’s point of view, this proves the value of Twitter as both a customer engagement and customer feedback tool.

3. To save money

Saving money seems to be another key motivator for people to follow brands on Twitter. 31% of respondents said that they follow a company to receive discounts and promotions. A similar percentage of people also hoped to get “insider” information about upcoming sales, discount events and free samples.

This means that businesses could use Twitter to feed out discount codes and coupons in order to encourage brand loyalty and drive sales.

4.  For entertainment

For 26% of the people surveyed, following brands on Twitter was simply for entertainment and no other reason.

With this in mind, perhaps brands and businesses need to evaluate the way they engage people through Twitter and include more fun, interactive content, like videos and pictures, rather than just a news and updates, in their Twitter stream.

5. To display loyalty

23% of people surveyed said they follow brands or companies to show support. In other words, it is to show their loyalty to others.

For a brand or business, this type of user could be a key influencer and, as a brand advocate, if you engage them in the right way they will help spread positive word-of-mouth about your products or services.

It would be interesting to know why you follow brands on Twitter.

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I am about to embark on a trip alone across Europe overland – mainly by train. It’s almost 15 years since I last made a similar trip. Many things have changes over this period – I’m older, have travelled a lot more and am now more likely to stay in hotels than camp rough – but the biggest change is the way that social media is helping me do things I could never do back then. On that first trip, I had no mobile phone and not even an email address. Now I have many tools at my disposal to help plan and do more.

1. Planning the trip

Then: 15 years ago my only planning tool were two big books – a set of European train timetables that I had to pour over to check if I could get from one place to another, and a Western European guidebook. I couldn’t find out anything about the journeys I might take except for when the trains would be, and I risked falling into the trap of only going to places in the guidebook. I could only plan, not book, and I put my faith in some timetables and 0ne guidebook.

Now: I have bought some guidebooks – but only for cities that I am planning to spend a lot of time in. My main planning tools this time have been online – a mix of more traditional tools (including the fantastic European train directory at The Man in Seat Sixty-One) to reviews sites (such as Tripadvisor), individual forums and blogs about certain destinations and even Twitter and Flickr. I’ve been able to research the different options, discover places I would never have found about in guidebooks and even check things such as what the overnight trains I am getting look like, what people say about them on Twitter and use these user reviews and images to decide when I want to travel in a seat, when in a couchette and when it is worth paying extra for a sleeper compartment.

2. Keeping people informed

Then: Without a mobile phone or email address the only way I could keep people informed was by finding a public phone box and calling home. I had an unwritten agreement that I would call home every five days to let people know where I was. I had left a rough plan with them and that was it. I don’t know, but I imagine there were some worried moments when I missed my planned call as I had to choose between queuing for a phone at a station in Rome and jumping on the train that evening to Sicily (I chose the latter!).

Now: This is an area of real change. Not only do I have a plan that some people can see on TripIt, but social media and mobile internet means I can inform individuals but also anybody who is interested in what I am doing, seeing and experiencing. And where I am. Twitter will let me update people in real time, tell them where I am and even share photos of what I am doing and seeing (if you’re interested you can follow me @mattrhodes). Foursquare is a great tool to allow me to quickly and easily share exactly where I am – the hotel, restaurant, station or beach I am on. People back home will know what I am doing and will be able to share the experiences I am having.

3. Keeping myself entertained

Then: On long train journeys and overnight you need ways to keep yourself entertained and distracted. Back then I had a MiniDisc player and a set of compilations I’d put together before I went. I had some books and then had to rely on meeting people who knew of things to do and things that were on

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Just kidding ;-)   But now that I have your attention...

The title of this post refers to a recent request we received to build two 120 minute-long online research communities.  By no means is this post a criticism of this individual and their request (they acknowledged they were in a pinch and had no time at all to research the methodology - their client had merely asked for a community).  Of course, they were really looking for an online focus group so I suggested the names of a few vendors they could contact.  However, the conversation got me thinking...

Are we all hyping communities to death?

Calls like these make me worry that people are just looking for the word "community" in anything that they do because it's the hot new thing, and aren't stopping to think about what a community actually is, how the approach should be applied and what it's good for (and not so good for).  Don't get me wrong - companies like PluggedIN have benefitted quite a bit from all the attention given to communities the past few years so I'm not complaining, but having so much hype and confusion around the term isn't good for anyone in the long-term. 

I have a feeling the dust will settle eventually, but I worry about companies that end up with a bad taste for "communities" when in practice what they're really getting is what most qualitative market researchers would call an online focus group or bulletin board.

What is an online research community?

Of course, this also brings up the broader question of what a research community is, and that's where things get a bit trickier...  Going back a few years to Forrester's report "Will Web 2.0 Transform Market Research," a MROC is defined as "captive interactive groups of people online joined together by a common interest, which are systematically harvested for qualitative market research purposes."  Nothing in this definition explicitly states duration or size of the community, so I guess with a definition this broad an OLFG could be considered a form of MROC.

Jeffrey Henning (@jhenning) of Vovici put together a helpful chart with the variations of online research communities ("Online Research Communities by Type") according to whether they are temporary/permanent and open/closed.  The chart includes OLFGs, although Jeffrey acknowledges in the comments that he de-emphasized them on purpose...      

My take on it...

Having been involved in many OLFG, BBFGs, short-term MROCs and continuous MROCs over the years, I can only appeal to personal experience running each.  I can say "qualitatively" that even a short-term MROC (which I'm defining here as at least one month) has a very different feel (and value) than something that is a few hours or days long (like an OLFG or BBFG), but that's just my experience...

What's your take? 

Is the buzz around communities going to help or hurt in the long run?  How do you define a research community (or insight community, market research online community, online research community or whatever you prefer to call it)? 

You may have seen Cadbury’s new spots and stripes underwater advert. It’s the one that starts off a little like a high-resolution marine screen saver but then develops into something that resembles a mini film.

If you have watched it, did you know what it was advertising? Or did you have to follow the call-to-action at the end of the ad and visit the website URL to find out what the hell was going on?

This new campaign by Cadbury really seems to recognise something that we’ve said before -  social media doesn’t just take place online. Their advert is incomplete without referring you to their social media site (www.spotsvstripes.com). And this site would not stand alone and be as successful without the advert driving people to it.

As an official sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the thinking behind the current Cadbury campaign is to  split the nation into two teams, the spots and stripes, to compete in game play in the lead up to London 2012. All people need to do is join one of the teams by signing up on the website to begin scoring points for their chosen team.

Cadbury will encourage people to engage with the Spots v Stripes site through dedicated social media channels, like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, in combination with more traditional marketing methods  like TV and outdoor advertising in keeping with their online/offline theme. And while the site definitely plays on social gaming interaction, you can score points for offline games like running or crazy golf and can also download games from the site to play offline.

Perhaps the key sales driver for Cadbury from this whole campaign will be the introduction of a brand new product – the Challenge Bar. The Challenge Bar is a milk and white chocolate bar divided into three sections; one spotty, one stripy and one chunk in the middle which the Spot and the Stripe must play for.

The launch of this new chocolate bar will be supported by traditional offline marketing, but each Challenge Bar has one of 20 different games printed on the inside of the wrapper to get consumers playing for the “winners” chunk and driving people online to claim the points for their chosen team. The campaign will also see Cadbury touring the country in order to get the whole of the UK involved with both the Cadbury and olympic games, and, more than likely, promote the Challenge Bar.

Given that the campaign only launched last week, it remains to be seen whether this fully integrated offline and online  campaign will really take off. What is interesting to see though is that Cadbury has recognised that offline is converging with online – something that all digital marketers need to be aware of.

Read more of our Social Media Case Studies

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“Have you checked us out on Facebook?” As I queued to pay at Abercrombie & Fitch in London over the weekend I kept hearing this phrase over and over again. In fact as everybody paid for their purchases the sales assistants asked them this very same question. Some may have found this annoying, some may have found it forced, and some may have found it distracting. But it is actually a sign that Abercrombie & Fitch is taking its social media strategy seriously. And a great example of just how to embed social media across your customer touchpoints and with all your staff.

Developing a social media strategy and how you will use the various channels and tools at your disposal to engage your customers is only the first step. Now you need to actually engage people. And to do that people need to know where you are.

There are many ways that you can grow your social media channels. And it is often best to start small with a process of thorough seeding. Identify a small group of people in your target audience that you can work with – they may be brand loyalists, people you interact with already or those you know would be keen to work with you. You can then work with these people to start to build content and engagement in social media. You can create a starting point from which you can grow. But once you have begun to seed the site, and you are ready to open it up to your whole customer base you will want ways to increase the number of people you are engaging and how regularly you engage them. The question then comes: how do we engage more people in social media?

There are many ways to do this. Initial seeding with brand loyalists will help to spread the word about what you are doing. Outreach marketing in other social networks – such as Twitter – and engaging with bloggers and relevant forums will help you reach new audiences. And you also have the options of advertising, running competitions and other more traditional ways of promoting what you are doing. Of course, your aim may not be to reach large numbers through social media. But if it is, the best way to do it is simpler that any of these: use every existing customer touchpoint.

We’ve written before about how social media does not just take place online, and the best way of growing and embedding social media is to fit it in to your existing processes and customer touchpoints. Rather than social media begin something that is separate to the other ways you engage and interact with customers, it should complement and add to it. You should examine every customer touchpoint and talk about social media where relevant and where possible. If you mail out envelopes to customers, you should put your social media channels on the back. If you include telephone and other contact details in marketing material, you should put your social media channels there too. And if your staff actually meet or speak to your customers you should talk about social media with them.

Abercrombie & Fitch get it right. There are a few moments at the till when the assistant is usually quiet – the customer is finding their money or waiting for their bank to authorise their credit card. It uses these moments to talk about their social media activity – and in particular a campaign they are currently running on Facebook. And with 1.5 million people liking them on Facebook, they are clearly doing something right.

So if you want to grow and engage mo

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I'm jumping in late to the game on this conversation so forgive me if I'm rehashing old wounds, but I've been thinking lately about the debate between calling online communities for research/insight "Market Research Online Communities" (MROCs) or "Insight Communities."  The conversation started largely on Twitter and then found its way into various research blogs over a few weeks, including a post shared by Tamara Barber of Forrester that seemed to include many research community industry players chiming in.

First, a bit of background...  When Forrester first introduced the term back in 2008, we were ecstatic.  PluggedIN had spent quite a bit of time at that point educating people on how to use "online communities for market research," so when a nifty acronym came out to describe what we had been trying to educate people about all along, we jumped all over the chance to use it!  Sure, it didn't sound all that sexy, and it still used the "market research" moniker that everyone seems to want to run away from these days, but for convenience sake we decided to run with it, and I'm glad we did.  I hated the acronyms BBFGs and OLFGs back in the day, but they were useful, convenient to use and clients understood them right away so I didn't care...  

When the talk of "insight community" started making the rounds, I was initially excited because it definitely sounded sexier than "MROC" and makes me feel a bit more "warm and fuzzy" inside, but I still have my hesitatations...  Namely, over the years I've noticed the word "insight" is misused, overused and really hard to define exactly.  It's one of those "you know it when you see it" type of moments, which isn't easy to describe or promise in advance.  For a great blog post on this topic alone, look no further than Tom Ewing's recent post on "A Brief and Biased History of Insight."

To me, "insight" doesn't automagically emerge from an online community, so it can be misleading.  One can run an online community for market research without uncovering the magical "insight" we're all looking for (though that would be a shame).  The point is that the "insight" is what should (hopefully) emerge after synthesizing data across a community and other methodologies, as the result of deep observation and analysis.  It doesn't happen just because you're running an online community; rather, it happens as a result of everything a consumer insights team is doing to provide value to the organization.  

However, here's my real point of this blog post...  My problem isn't with the name - call it whatever you want, it's the fact that we're debating topics like this in the MR industry while we face so many other threats.  It's a bit of the old "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" argument (I'm being a bit dramatic here, but you get the idea).  We're selecting the proper acronym to use while our clients are complaining about 70 page decks that make no sense and sit unused on the dusty shelves of the company intranet.  If you haven't already seen this, check out this interview on Research Live with Volkswagen's Insight boss.  This is what we should be figuring out as an industry!  This should be the "hot topic" on Twitter, not "MROC" vs. "IC" and which hashtags we should be using.  Research Rockstar also alluded to the bigger picture challenges in the research industry the other day in her great blog post on market research decentralization.

I know that "MROC" isn't perfect or sexy or whatever, but it works.  It's worked now for more than two years since it was introduced, and it will work for a long time from now.  Let's refocus the conversation away from terminology and toward what really matters - our clients... 

- Matt

My name is Kristin Labisch and for the last couple of months I have been an intern here at social media agency FreshNetworks.

Before I started my social media internship I found it quite difficult to imagine the type of thing I would be doing. I really didn’t know how a social media agency functioned or the kind of work I would be given to do.

Most of my friends and family thought that my social media internship would involve doing just “Facebook stuff”, but I soon found that “Facebook stuff” doesn’t nearly describe what work at FreshNetworks is like.

Yes, there are 500 million people online on Facebook, but with  93% of the world not on Facebook I applied for the internship at FreshNetworks  to learn more about social media and how it can be used to help generate real value for businesses, rather than just how to use Facebook or Twitter. In fact one of the first things I learned is that whilst some brands will say ‘we want to be on Facebook’, that isn’t a social media strategy. And it usually isn’t the right answer for them.

I also saw the internship as a way to help me answer the many questions I found myself asking about social media. And actually, much of my internship has been spent working on these unsolved questions, as well as trying to work out what has not been asked yet by looking towards future developments in social media.

And this is why working at a social media agency like FreshNetworks was so appealing to me; everyone is always open to new ideas. Whilst they believe in taking an analytical approach to social media, there is no stiff or inflexible theoretical framework and each client is looked at on a case-by-case basis to assess their unique conditions, circumstances and strategic needs.

Because of this, work at FreshNetworks never gets monotonous. Every part of the team (and yes: this also includes the interns) is considered a valuable asset – an individual with their own ideas that will be welcomed at any time.

I know this is not a direct advert for FreshNetworks, so I will refrain from saying that I have never experienced a more welcoming and enjoyable working atmosphere with such an enthusiasm and passion for ideas. So I will put it another way: If you want to work with and learn about social media, have creative ideas and want to get to know creative minds, follow my lead and apply here for an internship. It’s not easy – it’s fast-paced and can get hectic, but the experience is rewarding and memorable.

Overall, my experience as an intern at FreshNetworks has shown me that there are endless opportunities for using social media both personally and for business. I can now describe to my family and friends how social media goes way beyond just “Facebook stuff” and can prove what a good social media strategy and the opportunities that some social media monitoring can bring to brands and businesses.

Fancy learning about social media with FreshNetworks?

At FreshNetworks we are always keen for Interns who want to learn about social media , shadow our teams and run their own projects for the business. If you would like to apply for a community management, ma

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