Archive of tag "Word of Mouth Supergenius"

Live coverage recap from yesterday's Word of Mouth Supergenius

December 17, 2009

Yesterday’s Word of Mouth Supergenius: The “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing” Conference was a huge hit. A big thanks to all of our brilliant speakers, attendees, sponsors, and partners who helped make the event such as success.

If you missed anything or are looking for a follow-up, here’s a rundown of the live coverage from the day:

Opening Keynote

12 how-to classes

Halftime Show

12 real-world case studies

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Also, you can check out all the live discussions from Twitter by checking out the hashtag #Supergenius

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Case Study: Texas Instruments -- live from Word of Mouth Supergenius

December 16, 2009

4:40 — Jim Lovelady introduces Telligent’s George Dearing and Devashish Saxena of Texas Instruments.

4:41 — George introduces Devashish, saying he’s a great example of a guy who’s really in the trenches.

4:41 — Devashish starts by dispelling some rumors, including that only people who own calculators own Texas Instruments (TI) products — but in reality, anyone who owns electronics probably owns something from TI.

4:41 — Devashish: At the end of the day, marketing is about connecting with people and influencing them. Our customers just happen to be engineers.

4:42 — Devashish says they’re focusing on the moment when the engineer is planning out their next gadget — that’s when they can potentially decide to use TI products.

4:43 — George: Why do we need an online community? How is it going to drive the business?

4:43 — Devashish: Right, looking back to the engineers, we really have a lot of data about these customers. Colleagues are a huge influence on engineers.

4:44 — Devashish: So we look at that data and say: Is there a way we can help connect them to these colleagues? It turns out, the main reason they’re trying to do it because these are complex issues and they rely a lot on their colleagues to solve these problems.

4:45 — Devashish talks about how Texas Instruments launched their E2E Community (Engineer to Engineer) to help connect these influencers and customers — with the big selling point being that their community offered access to TI’s engineers.

4:46 — Devashish says that internally, he found the people who were passionate about the idea and started by building something small. They went from a beta site to something live in 2-3 months.

4:47 — Devashish explains how from there, he was able to collect some data and take it back to leadership to show the potential.

4:48 — George: It’s interesting that you guys went external first. If you had to do it again, would you try to sell it more internally first?

4:49 — Devashish: No. It’s a large company, lots of businesses — if you try to take an idea and build consensus across a broad community of marketers, then you’d be spinning and wouldn’t make much progress. It’s better to build something small and put it out there and then you have real data. And it may not work, but that’s OK because you started small.

4:50 — George: Can you distill down some metrics?

4:50 — Devashish: Our use of metrics has evolved over time. Devashish explains how he started by looking at “activity,” but now look at desired behaviors that they measure. The key question they seek: Does engagement in the E2E Community drive more conversions?

4:51 — Devashish: After about a year of their community being out there, they pulled out the average engagement profiles of their community members. Devashish says the results blew them away — their members were requesting six times more samples across three times more of the product areas.

4:52 — Devashish: It made us step back as marketers to realize that traditional campaigns usually resulted in one request from one product area, whereas the community did so much more. We started to question if we should use our other marketing tactics to push the engineers to the E2E Community.

4:53 — Devashish: For us it’s about finding the business people internally that are willing to experiment and try stuff on a small scale. If there is genuine passion and excitement, then stuff can happen. But if you’re the one trying to lead, then it’s tough.

4:55 — Devashish: A big change for us was just a willingness to try it. We’ve really shifted toward that over the last few years.

4:56 — George: What’s next for the community? What’s your road map?

4:56 — Devashish: Our marketing messages start off in their first phase as being not the major influencer, and it gets smaller and smaller as they proceed along their purchase track. The basic marketing problem is the same for us all: How do I get my engineer to be an ambassador for me? I want to help them find and share this message in a way that allows them to take it externally. This is one of the big things we’re focused on.

Q&A

Q: From an HR standpoint, what kind of training to you give your engineers on the rules and standards that TI has?

A: It was an evolutionary process. The first thing we did was involve the engineers who supported outside engineers anyway in a customer support role. This just made it easier to help more people faster. We’ve since moved on to creating our own engagement guidelines. Not just on E2E, there are conversations happening everywhere.

Q: How much time are engineers allocated to interact in this space?

A: I don’t think we’ve defined it yet. In the support area, it’s very defined. But on the other side, we haven’t really defined it, and my thinking on it is you kind of want to keep it a little organic. Because if you start saying you “must” spend an hour on this — maybe 30 minutes is enough?

Q: Can you talk about how you have to integrate the feedback you receive back to TI?

A: I don’t think we’ve cracked that one yet. Our product groups have these “inner circle” meetings to learn about what customers want — and more and more they’re pointing to how our customers are telling us how they want. Now they’re finding how to channel this feedback to the R&D teams.

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Case Study: Bucks First Credit Union -- live from Word of Mouth Supergenius

December 16, 2009

4:40 — Kurt Vanderah introduces Braden Young of Bucks First Credit Union.

4:41 — Braden: We’re a two-branch operation.

4:42 — Braden: We wanted to introduce credit unions to young kids, who mostly just knew what their parents used. So we wanted to create an account built for them. So we asked kids who were already members what they wanted.

4:47 — Braden says they found out that kids received too many fees. They found a way to deduct the fees and also start to educate kids in financial responsibility.

4:48 — Braden also says they rebranded what they had of their site for kids. They knew they were onto something when management didn’t like the site, because it didn’t quite speak to them.

4:49 — Braden: To run Project Flipside, we knew none of us wanted to run it, so we found three kids to run the website. The run the blogs and do YouTube videos. They became our ambassadors.

4:50 — Braden: We didn’t have a lot of budget. The big question we had was how to find kids to blog for a credit union.

4:51 — Braden: We were just a teacher’s credit union so a lot of our marketing was in schools. When we first launched the search, we didn’t want an adult to say “We want you to join us.”

4:52 — Braden talks about how Zach, a young employee, became the face of the search. They then tried to look for two more people to help him.

4:52 — Braden says they created about 100 posters and info packets for counselors and teachers who then went out and sought students they felt would be perfect for the campaign. The teachers and school officials became their cheerleaders, because they saw that Bucks First Credit Union was trying to help kids.

4:53 — Braden: We went directly where our consumers were.

4:54 — Braden: We sold it as an internship, and ambassadors were given a few gadgets to help them blog.

4:55 — Braden: We got about ten applicants from the 15 schools. We narrowed them to five, and this is where WOM came in. We wanted the kids to still advertise the website, and rally for votes. The two kids with the most votes would win the spots. Four of the five had Facebook fan pages. They had close to 800 fans combined and they amassed 1600 votes for all the kids, which we didn’t think we would get.

4:57 — Braden then shows a video that the Flipside crew made.

4:59 — Braden: Kids were responding heavily to the three ambassadors, who are in the community trying to just build an awareness.

5:00 — Braden: We’re finding that kids are just remembering the ambassadors whenever they speak at events. We’re trying not to do the hard sell, because we want them to keep coming back, so when the time comes that their parents want them to start saving and open an account, we’ll be at the top of their mind.

5:01 — Braden: We created a fan page for the Flipside crew, and kids are responding to that.

5:02 — Braden: Somehow we found that a debit card with the Project Flipside logo resonates with kids. They go crazy over it.

5:02 — Braden: The Flipside crew has created close to 50 youtube videos. We don’t try to hold them to what they have to do though sometimes we have to remind them they’re also working for a credit union. Our numbers have been growing since.

Q&A

Q: Did you measure the amount of Gen Y customers you had before and after?

A: Our average age is 47. We didn’t use the kids we had as a measurement tool, but we’ve tried to work them in.

Q: How did you measure your success after this campaign was over?

A: The campaign isn’t over. We’re doing it every year– we’ll be looking for new kids again. What we realized with the search is that if you’re not hitting kids constantly they’re not going to come. What this turned into is a way to frequently be in their minds.

Q: The other challenge we face is that college students would maybe see a hundred dollars’ incentive in other banks, and they’d just go there. How do you deal with that?

A: I think kids can be brand-loyal. Those deals have fine print, and kids know that. This is why we’re removing fees from them, because this is what they want.

Q: Have you dealt with maybe getting older people poking their noses in and maybe turning off the kids?

A: Like we said, we used Zach as the face of the program. I think parents just realized that they weren’t part of that conversation. We’ve made separate collateral geared towards parents.

Q: How do you incorporate the collateral to facilitate the conversation between parents and kids?

A: We put together a handout for parents whose kids were about to go to college.

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Case Study: Starbucks -- live from Word of Mouth Supergenius

December 16, 2009

4:00 — Kurt Vanderah introduces Starbucks‘ Matthew Guiste.

4:01 — Matthew: I want to talk about six ways that we can create action using social media.

4:01 — Matthew: A couple of assumptions:

- You have a community and credibility in that community.

- You have a level of buy-in from management.

- You have some supergenius-ness.

- You have a thorough understanding of what your community cares about.

4:01 — Matthew: Let’s jump in.

1. Read/Watch

Always be in the lookout for little things you know your community will care about.  It doesn’t always have to be in your publishing schedule.

Ask if it adds value to the community.  You may need to test many types of content.

2. Respond

Can be characterized as “liking”, voting, commenting.

3. Sign up for further communication

Use it to amplify the trend. We noticed there was an excitement over the red cup, so we put content into the channels announcing it was “Red Cup Day” and we turned our channels red, etc. We also put advertising in Facebook to ask them to vote for their favorite holiday drink.

Listen for organic expressions of enthusiasm. Find appropriate ways to celebrate that enthusiasm.

4. Share content with someone else

Changing perceptions about products can be done by sharing content. An example is the launch of VIA. Starbucks started tracking the responses to VIA, and it turned from having negative responses pre-launch, when it was leaked, to positive responses three weeks later.

5. Buy something

Start small. We made sure we were causing the action. Then we had something called Free Pastry Day where Starbucks had a three-hour window where anybody who bought coffee can get a free pastry. Starbucks was originally going to use advertising and PR but we decided to go with digital channels exclusively.

Starbucks had 23 digital deployments. It was the biggest traffic day ever across every digital channel. More people opened the emails than we sent it to. It was the #1 topic on Twitter and it was extremely successful in store.

6. Create advocates for Starbucks

Based on Free Pastry Day, Starbucks UK wanted to launch Free Muffin Day. Unfortunately before that could be launched, negative comments on Facebook surfaced, about an old rumor that’s been going around.

Starbucks started responding to every post.

Two things happened:

a) People who had no facts to back them started to post less.

b) People who supported Starbucks started to speak up.

We also found out that the UK call center had been receiving 14 calls a week regarding this issue, and that number was reduced to 2 a week since the responses were posted on Facebook.

4:09 — Matthew: Keys to sharing content:

- Knew our communities cared about the issue.

- Had credibility in our communities.

- We acknowledged skepticism.

- Shared key reviews and information with our customers.

4:13 — Matthew: Make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew.

4:14 — Matthew: Social media seems to be better with short-term high-intensity activities than longer-term, lower-intensity activities.

4:14 — Matthew: Coordination across channels is key,  both digital and non-digital.

4:17 — Matthew: Social media is a contact sport.

Q&A

Q: How much of what you do is in the calendar and how much is more spontaneous?

A: About 50-50. We’re always on the lookout for current trends.

Q: How much of your employee participation online is structured?

A: We’re trying to have more formalized guidelines but there’s a lot of hand-holding right now. In the short-term it’s manual but we’re working to create a process.

Q: What happened since the Free Pastry program?

A: It was successful in every regard. It’s the single biggest thing we did in social media this year.

Q: Over the long haul, what are the key metrics you’ve defined as an organization that you would measure and what tools do you use?

A: It’s about the number of people are engaging with us and the level of engagement they have. We don’t track with as much numerical rigor but we’re getting to that point. Right now it’s about causing action.

Q: Do you use editorial calendars for social media and do you have a certain amount that you post on a certain day, or do you base it on what information you have?

A: We look at topics and just decide how much coverage they merit. We don’t have a formal calendar but we do have a good sense of what’s coming and the level of effort we’re putting into them.

Q: Do you use the “Red Cup” as a benchmark for future posts?

A: I think everything has a certain level of conversation that we expect. We’re trying to find the most interesting things to talk about but we don’t get too caught up with that.

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