11. Ethical Bribe: Relevant Content Matters
It might sound like an oxymoron, but it really isn’t. The ethical bribe is used by marketers to persuade consumers to take action or change opinions by sharing relevant content within social channels. The persuasion can include the repositioning of a product or brand, or it can help build (or protect) the reputation of a product, a brand, and in some cases, a CEO. It can be the introduction of a new product, new uses for an old product, a new innovation, or a phase-out of an old product.
A marketing campaign is nothing if not tactical. It typically asks the consumer to take action, such as joining a community, liking a Facebook fan page, following on Twitter, downloading a white paper, or subscribing to content. The ultimate call to action is to persuade consumers to purchase a product.
Every external piece of communication that a company creates and distributes to customers is a form of content. Web site copy, press releases, print collateral, whitepapers, advertising, search, the company logo, a piece of marketing collateral, and creative—it’s all content. This form of content requires rounds of approvals from corporate marketing and legal to ensure that the material is honest, accurate, and “on message” within the brand guidelines. In most cases, this content alone, while ethical to its core, will not bribe anyone to do anything other than ignore it.
An ethical bribe, on the other hand, is designed to provoke consumers into action. It takes into consideration real discussions that are relevant to those who are interested. It reinforces the traditional marketing messages noted earlier. It’s ethical because it’s real, authentic, and transparent. The bribe, which may sound “unethical” to some, simply involves influencing and persuading those who are actually listening—and doing so in a way that’s not deceptive.
As the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals, consumers tend to find conversations with employees of a company and peers more credible than advertising, and they put more trust into experts and analysts than in CEOs.
An ethical bribe occurs when a company “humanizes” its marketing messages in an attempt to build a long-term relationship with consumers. However, paid media still plays an integral role for the ethical bribe to really make an impact. Why? Because paid media has the power to reach millions of people without much effort. To be truly successful, all outbound marketing from a company needs to be communicating the same message.
Figure 11.1 illustrates two customer journeys and the way each interacts with different forms of media (content) on the social web. This journey presents two challenges: one for consumers and one for brands. Consumers who live in the “stream”—that is, Twitter, the Facebook newsfeed, FriendFeed, and Google Reader, for example—are inundated daily with hundreds of marketing messages. As a result, according to Brian Solis, consumers are creating attention dashboards to filter content that they’re interested in following to stay abreast of what’s going on in the social web and within their own microcommunities. Everything else is noise and usually ignored.
Figure 11.1 The social customer’s journey is dynamic and changes every day. He is creating filters to consume only the content that is relevant.
Note that most consumers see only the content that is completely relevant to them at that precise moment. Figure 11.1 doesn’t even take into consideration the traditional ways that many people communicate outside of the social web, such as through email, text messages, phone calls, and in-person conversations. The result of this “content chaos” that consumers go through each day is tunnel vision, with consumers filtering information and ignoring the content that they consider meaningless.
From a business perspective, the challenge is clear. If companies want their messages to be heard, understood, and believed, they have to fight for the consumer’s attention. First, they have to be omnipresent on the social web and leverage multiple customer touch points with the same message. Omnipresent simply means that brands need to use paid media, such as display ads, search engine marketing, out-of-home advertising, broadcast, earned media (including influencer and advocate outreach programs), and owned media (including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and corporate blogs), to reach consumers with the same messages.
Second, businesses have to make their messages relevant. The Trust Barometer indicates that individuals need to hear, read, or see something up to five times before they actually believe it. The ethical bribe and traditional content such as advertising and press releases play an integral role in working together to break through the clutter and reach the attention dashboard in a relevant and authentic manner.
For example, consider a theoretical company called Orange that is bringing a new low-cost tablet to market. The communication strategy might include this:
• Traditional and online media buys, including display advertising, print and outdoor ads, and sponsorships
• Paid and natural search initiatives targeting relevant terms that consumers interested in this technology are already searching for
• Product launch events in key markets
• Aggressive engagement and community-building initiatives, including Twitter, Facebook, and blogs
• Influencer outreach programs
• Customer advocacy programs
• Employee engagement and amplification initiatives
A customer journey might look something like this. Jon, who is interested in purchasing a tablet, might first do a search in Google to see what’s coming next. He clicks on an Orange paid advertisement, which takes him to the company’s web site; he spends some time there reading about the features, specs, and cost. He clicks though to the corporate blog and subscribes to the RSS feed, to stay abreast of future product announcements and releases.
Later in the day, in his Facebook news feed, Jon notices a personal friend “liking” Orange’s Facebook fan page. Curious, he clicks through and also “likes” the page to learn more; he reads through the Wall posts to see what others are saying. The next day, he asks his trusted community on Twitter whether anyone has purchased or knows anything about the new Orange Tablet. He gets a few responses and then notices several Orange employees responding to him on Twitter and answering his questions about the product. The next day, he receives an RSS notification via email from the Orange blog announcing a 25 percent promotion on the purchase of a new tablet. Finally convinced, he clicks through to the blog post, redeems the coupon code, and buys the new tablet.
Jon not only loves his new Orange tablet, but he is also super-impressed with the level of customer service he received throughout the process. He begins to talk about his experience online on Facebook and Twitter, and he might even blog about his experience. He also starts to evangelize the product on Twitter and answer specific product questions on Quora (a community where consumers can ask and answer questions) from people who are interested in the product. Orange recognizes that Jon is an advocate of the product and begins to pay more attention to him, sending him product swag, discounts, and accessories in appreciation of his support.
This is the ethical bribe.
In addition to having multiple content touchpoints to break through the clutter, companies need to be as relevant as possible when interacting with consumers on the social web. The ethical bribe relies on the fact that companies need to provide content that matters to the community. The net result of this content relevancy, and illustrated in the example of Orange and Jon, is true business value for the brand.
Relevant Content Creates Business Value
Content is the foundation upon which the entire social web exists. It involves everything—tweets, status updates, blog posts, online community discussions, videos, check-ins, and even Quora questions and answers. People read content, watch content, curate and aggregate content, listen to content, tweet content, retweet content, search for content, and like-vote-email-print-favorite-share-subscribe to content. Without social content, the Internet would be where it was almost 20 years ago.
But what’s important is more than just content. Companies need to create the right content, at the right time, for the right person in the right channel.
When companies can achieve this level of content relevancy, they not only deepen community engagement and grow their existing communities, but they also create customer advocacy. This is one reason why social CRM is such a hot topic for business. A quick recap of Chapter 5, “In Response to the Social Customer: Social CRM,” defines social CRM as coupling back-end, traditional CRM data with both external data from Twitter and Facebook and social listening data so that brands and marketers can provide a more relevant customer experience. The nature of that content influences the customer experience and is integral to the ethical bribe.
That being said, authentic, believable, and relevant content brings many benefits:
• Adds value to the conversation
• Happens as a result of listening and acting
• Positions the brand as a trusted advisor
• Is authentic and believable
• Builds trust with the community
• Increases the reach of branded messages
• Increases the “organic” search results
Adding all these together, relevant content drives true business value for the organization.
Relevant Content Adds Value to the Conversation
Many companies today aren’t sure how to start engaging on the social web. One way to determine whether a conversation is happening about the brand—and where—is to conduct a conversation audit. A conversation audit uses social listening software platforms such as Radian6 or Sysomos to scour the Web for brand- or product-related conversations. The data from an audit gives an organization insight into the following:
• Where the conversation is happening (Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs)
• Nature of the conversation (sentiment, product, brand, or all)
• Share of voice in comparison to competitors or the general market category
• Influencer identification—their total reach, their community size, and where they spend most of their time online
• Competitive audit—competitors’ community size, growth rate, and web traffic
The results of a conversation audit help organizations determine whether they can actually add value to the conversation going on around them. If the conversation is happening on Twitter and the sentiment revolves around complaints about the product, companies should jump into the conversation on Twitter to solve customer problems. If they aren’t prepared to do this for any reason, they need to think long and hard about how they plan to engage on the social web. Merely saying “thank you” or just following disgruntled customers’ Twitter accounts doesn’t add value to the conversation and will most likely add fuel to the fire.
That said, if the conversation is positive and results in several users praising the product, companies can say “thank you,” retweet content, follow those users, and decide later how to engage them in a way that does add value. This could be creating formal advocacy programs, adding the users to specific Twitter lists, or inviting them to be a part of another community.
Companies can also add value to general inquiries about a product or brand. If customers need to know where to download the company’s latest software driver, they can simply respond to the conversation with a link to the download page. Content like this not only adds value to the conversations, but it happens as a result of listening to the conversation.
Relevant Content Happens as a Result of Listening
A conversation audit identifies where exactly the conversations about a product or brand are happening. An audit also analyzes the nature and tone of the conversation. For example, if a company just launched a product, much of the conversation might involve recent purchases, likes or dislikes about the product, and in-depth product reviews. A conversation audit is a good first step, but ongoing listening helps brands understand how to engage—and where to engage—to add value to the conversations and become more relevant.
Many companies today are setting up command centers to accomplish this. They monitor the social web daily to identify customer service opportunities, address crisis-management issues, and get a more thorough understanding of the community at large. In early 2010, Gatorade created the Gatorade Mission Control Center inside its Chicago headquarters. It’s a room that sits in the middle of the marketing department and resembles a scene from the sci-fi thriller, Minority Report; it calls to mind a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across the entire social web.
Later in the year, Dell followed suit and launched its Social Media Listening Command Center. Dell is using Radian6 to power its command center and is tracking close to 22,000 topics daily related to the brand and its products.
Both Dell and Gatorade can use real-time data to solve customer problems and answer questions from existing customers and prospects. But the issue doesn’t always have to relate to support or crisis management. Dell or Gatorade might well come across customers who are praising the brand. Amplifying those conversations through retweets or, in this case, saying “thank you,” is a way to show the community that a company is listening and participating in both good and bad times. The listening data can also help companies understand exactly what matters to their customers.
If companies amplify the voices of customers and their messages, and basically “show them the love,” customers will certainly reciprocate.
Relevant Content Positions the Brand as a Trusted Advisor
In the past, some companies have relied solely on press releases to launch products. Others have leaked product information to tech influencer blogs to leverage their reach, influence, and community size, as well as to create buzz. The problem with these two methods is that they result in a one-time communication opportunity. After all the hype and buzz dies down, a company has no way to communicate with the community again—until, of course, the next release hits the wires or the next blog post goes live (assuming that the third-party tech blog is willing to post it).
As companies today are getting more sophisticated, adopting governance models, and empowering their employees to blog and tweet, they’ve begun to rely on their owned media channels to share and leak information. An owned media channel is a company-owned community that controls the messaging, such as a corporate blog, a Facebook fan page, or a corporate Twitter account. The company can communicate directly with its community through these channels instead of having to go through a third party. And it makes sense that most consumers interested in a product or brand will want firsthand knowledge about a release date, future enhancements about a product or service, and other corporate communications.
As long as the messaging on a company’s owned media channels is relevant, isn’t inundated with sales propaganda, and delivers valuable information, the company can essentially position itself as a trusted advisor of content related to its own products and industry-related information. The key is to be authentic and trustworthy, with the end goal of being believable.
Relevant Content Is Authentic and Believable
One could question the authenticity of any politician, but during the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama did something businesses can learn from. Not only was he authentic in the way he communicated, but his core message was believable. During his entire campaign, his message of “Change we can believe in” occupied every piece of media, every conversation, and every bumper sticker from California to New York. First, Obama was consistent with his messaging and emphasized the “change” point in every television appearance, speech, and interview. Second, the content of the message itself was very relevant for that time period. Most Americans wanted the war in Iraq to end and felt that a change in leadership would help facilitate that. Finally, Obama’s supporters (his advocates) were sharing the same message with their own microcommunities in every channel and community they were a part of.
The lesson for business is that consumers today expect companies to be authentic. From a business perspective, content and messaging have to go beyond authenticity—they have to be believable. A company can truly be authentic in all its communication strategies, but if its content isn’t relevant and doesn’t add value, the community will not fully believe the message. The end result will be a huge disconnect and irrelevant messages that the community ignores.
Building and fostering a healthy community, establishing trust, and becoming believable takes time before positive results emerge. Obama’s message wasn’t believed overnight; it took more than a year for voters, especially those in the middle, to learn to trust his vision for the country and vote for him. The same is true for business. A company cannot change its positioning overnight. It takes consistent and integrated messages to clearly communicate their new messaging throughout all media, especially within its social channels.
Relevant Content Builds Trust with the Community
The messenger of the content also plays an important role in building trust. As mentioned in the previous chapter, and according to the 2009 Forrester Research report, 94 percent of people trust their friends. The 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer also states that subject matter experts, employees of a company, and regular people are highly trusted and credible. These two data points and the general intuition of how people are influenced by their peers provides a clear lesson for business today.
Empowering employees to engage on the social web and share “branded” messages authentically is a natural way to build trust with the community. Equally important is identifying a company’s advocates and empowering them to do the same. These two methods and the arsenal of other content (such as traditional marketing with display ads, search, print ads, and press releases) reinforce the company positioning and continue to foster trust within the community.
Building trust simply means that companies need to learn how to be human. A relationship between a brand and its customers is no different than a relationship between two really good friends in which listening, two-way communication, and some resulting action take place. However, before a company can learn to be human, it must learn how to humanize its business operations.
The entire first half of this book provides clear direction on how to humanize business processes and culture, and how to identify and empower employees to engage externally with customers. It first requires a shift in culture to truly make this happen effectively. Executive support, governance models, and training also play a vital role.
Chapter 10, “The Rise of Customer Advocacy,” provides an in-depth look at customer advocacy and examines why advocates are trusted, their affect on the purchase funnel, and how to create advocate programs that work.
Building trust with a community requires keen listening skills. Without listening, a company might head into a conversation where it doesn’t necessary belong.
Relevant Content Increases the Reach of Branded Messages
Most blogs and community-related websites use social bookmarking icons to enable their community members to more conveniently share branded content within their own personal networks. This is a widget that lets companies place customizable buttons on their blogs that let users share content that enables users to share content with the click of a button on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, and email.
Consumers share content within their social networks when that content is valuable and relevant; the result of sharing is the increased reach of branded messages.
According to a 2010 study using AddThis data, users mainly share content on Facebook, which accounts for 44 percent of the total sharing volume using the tool. In 2009, this figure was only 33 percent. A similar study in 2010 from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies found that close to half of consumers share content online at least once a week; the vast majority of content is shared through email (86%) and Facebook (49%).
Additionally, in 2010, Sysomos, a social media analytics platform, analyzed 1.2 billion tweets over a two-month period to identify what happens after a tweet is published. The research suggested that 30 percent of all tweets garner some form of reaction, in the form of replies or retweets. Although 30 percent might not seem like a huge number, it still accounts for more than 360 million tweets in just a two-month period.
For example, assume that company A has 1,000 Twitter followers. Every time it shares a piece of content, its potential reach is 1,000. Of course, this number will naturally grow as the company acquires more followers. The reach of the messages will increase exponentially as more followers retweet the message. If one of the company’s tweets gets retweeted 10 times and each of those followers has 1,000 followers, the total reach of that branded message would be the following:
1 tweet × 1,000 followers = 1,000
10 retweets × 1,000 followers = 10,000
1,000 + 10,000 = 11,000 total reach
An engaged community that finds value in content that is shared on Twitter is likely to share that content with its own microcommunities.
Content within blog posts operates in a similar fashion, just not as fast. When a company creates a relevant piece of content that is valuable to the community, the result is a waterfall of additional third-party blog posts referencing the original piece of content. So not only does the brand message spread organically, but it also results in inbound links, which are crucial to achieving high rankings in the organic search results.
Relevant Content Increases the “Organic” Search Results
It’s a well-known fact that Google is nearly everyone’s home page today. Millions search every day for information and click on links hoping to find the most relevant results possible. Many companies already spend millions of dollars with Google, paying for clicks and visibility within the sponsored search results. The main difference between sponsored search and organic search is that users can turn off sponsored search rather quickly. A company looking to gain visibility in the organic results may have to wait months to see any lift in the rankings. The key to achieving high organic search results is relevant content and inbound links; this makes the sum and quality of links pointing back to a company’s website or blog very important.
Another differentiator between paid and organic search is that organic search results cannot be bought. Many companies attempt to manipulate Google in an effort to increase their visibility, but it’s a huge risk that can get their web site banned from the search results if they’re caught.
When companies are developing the content they plan to share on Twitter, Facebook, and corporate blogs, it’s good practice to first understand what people are searching for in Google. Along with listening and monitoring on the social web, this will help companies guide their content planning.
Consider a quick illustration. The Google Keyword tool is a free online tool that identifies relevant keywords and their corresponding search volume. For example, a quick search for “phone service” yields the following results:
• “Phone service” is searched for approximately a million times per month in Google.
• “Long distance phone service” is searched for approximately 10,000 times per month in Google.
• “Residential phone service” is searched for approximately 8,000 times per month in Google.
Volume is important to consider because higher-searched terms are more difficult to attain high rankings for, simply because of the competition. Most telecommunication companies probably want to rank number one in Google for “phone service” because of how many people are searching for it each month. In this example, it would certainly make sense for a company to write a blog post titled something like “Learn more about our residential phone service” and then share it on Facebook and Twitter. Eventually, Google will index that blog post and it will appear in the search results when users search for “residential phone service.”
The end result of creating relevant content that exactly matches what consumers are searching for can result in engagement, community growth, and search engine visibility.
Taking the Next Steps
Two types of content are discussed in this chapter: proactive content and reactive content.
Proactive content considers all outbound engagement and includes the sharing and distribution of brand-related messages on corporate blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other owned media properties. Proactive content can include product- or company-related announcements, industry perspectives, contest management, and other promotions.
For proactive content to be relevant and impactful, it’s important to have a content strategy. The first step in creating a content strategy is to listen to the external nature of the conversation using social media listening platforms. This strategy also includes listening internally to product organizations, marketing, and public relations; and understanding the product road map, upcoming events, and announcements that might be relevant to the community.
The second step involves content planning. The findings from listening both externally and internally will help craft an editorial calendar encompassing each of the company’s owned media properties, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and corporate blogs. Some companies create just weekly or biweekly editorial calendars. However, it’s good practice to also maintain a six-month thematic calendar that documents and includes upcoming events, holidays, product launches, and other topics of interest to customers.
The third step is content creation. This can include writing blog posts with corresponding tweets and Facebook status updates. It may also include creating video content, tutorials, and other programming ideas.
The fourth step is the actual execution. The engagement can include informing and connecting with community members, responding to comments and tweets, answering questions, providing context to and around a topic, and also collaborating with or co-creating content with the community.
The last step in the content strategy is measuring the effectiveness of the engagement. It’s important to understand which types of content drive the most engagement in terms of retweets, comments, likes, shares, page views, and impressions. With insights into the analytics, companies can create content that the community finds most relevant. This deepens community engagement and increases the reach of branded messages.
Reactive content happens as a result of listening to conversations on the social web and responding when relevant. It can certainly include responding to comments on corporate blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, but it can also entail leaving comments on third-party blog posts. Usually, reactive content deals with customer support issues, crisis communications, responses to critical comments, and corrections to faulty information.
It’s important for companies to have a crisis communication plan and be prepared to act quickly if they have to. In this situation, it’s imperative to be proactive instead of reactive because time will be of the essence. If a company isn’t prepared to act in a timely fashion, a potential crisis might only worsen.
Setting up a command center is ideal for monitoring brand-related conversations. However, in most cases, much of the monitoring will come from a community manager, a support team member, or an employee who is monitoring Twitter. In any case, having a process for flagging potential support issues and ensuring that the customer problem is solved is a priority. The good news is that many of the social media listening platforms are equipped with workflow-management systems that can classify posts, tag them, and route them to team members for follow-up.
When a company is looking to launch a new blog or community platform, it must enable community members to share and add content to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and other social aggregators or bookmarking sites as conveniently as possible. Additionally, adding the functionality of emailing content to friends is important because most people share social content online in this way.
Finally, it’s important for anyone responsible for outbound engagement to partner with internal search engine optimization teams. They need a clear understanding of what people are searching for that relates to the company, brand, products, or industry. These insights will help drive future editorial, in an attempt to be more relevant, increase engagement, and grow the community.
The ethical bribe is a way to influence the community in some way to change the perception of a brand, reposition the company, grow the community, increase engagement, and sell products. For the ethical bribe to be effective, companies need to consider the amount of content people consume every day, their own content, and how content can be used to influence, inform, and educate across all media and communication channels.