Data from JitterJam Social CRM Platform - Click to Enlarge

I’m sure you’ve read the news by now. On Tuesday, Meltwater Group announced its acquisition of JitterJam. TechCrunch reported the news, and the social space went wild!

In fact, JitterJam garnered over 5.6 million brand impressions over social networks on Tuesday. The vast majority of those impressions were not from our own social sharing; they were from people sharing the news out to their contacts and spreading virally. Now that’s what I call Buzz!

Speaking of Buzz, the entire JitterJam team is now a part of the Meltwater Buzz team. We’re happy to be a part of such a strong, global company, and we’re looking forward to being a part of the growth and success of Meltwater Group.

However, on this Fun Stuff Friday, we’re also celebrating what we have accomplished. We took an idea derived from the feedback of the customers of our original platform, JitterGram (mobile advertising), and went from idea to launch to acquisition in a little over 18 months.

Now that’s something worth raising a glass (or three) to.

Happy Fun Stuff Friday, everyone. And thank you for all the generous support and encouragement you gave us along the way.

The JitterJam (now Meltwater Buzz) Crew + Happy Investor

Meltwater Acquires JitterJam to Lead Exploding Social CRM Market

Marketing professionals will be able to leverage the combined power of SCRM, social media monitoring, search engine marketing and analytics to convert social conversations into lasting relationships

San Francisco, CA & Bedford, NH — March 22, 2011 — The Meltwater Group, one of the world’s leading social media and news monitoring companies, today announced the acquisition of JitterJam®, a leader in Social CRM software. Together the companies will provide marketing, communications and advertising professionals with the most comprehensive set of tools for tracking and engaging with customers on social channels to transform conversations into lasting and trusted relationships. Meltwater purchased JitterJam for $6 million, and all of JitterJam’s employees will join Meltwater.

Both companies have achieved market leadership by delivering distinct products and solutions around media monitoring and marketing. Meltwater has grown to a $100 million a year company by delivering engaging news and social media monitoring and search engine marketing solutions. The company has 55 offices around the world serving more than 18,000 customers. JitterJam combines email, social media and mobile engagement with an intelligent contact database to provide businesses with an integrated consumer engagement and marketing platform. The JitterJam platform is built for consumer-facing companies who are looking to generate ROI from social, mobile and email engagement and marketing. The JitterJam platform will be integrated over time with the Meltwater Buzz product, creating the most comprehensive and engaging Social CRM platform on the market today.

“Meltwater was bootstrapped with $15,000 ten years ago and has now grown to a $100 million leader without external funding in the online media monitoring space. Also, we have proven we have the expertise to achieve rapid success in emerging markets,” said Jorn Lyseggen, chief executive officer and founder of Meltwater Group. “The Social CRM space is clearly experiencing fast growth and within three years we aim to generate $100 million a year in Social CRM solutions alone. The JitterJam technology and talent will help us achieve this goal.”

Social CRM has evolved from a curiosity to an emerging business necessity. In a recent press release, Gartner, Inc. forecasts that “by 2013, spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1 billion worldwide.” The firm also predicts that “during the next two years, 30 percent of leading companies will extend the goals of their online community activities to the design of enhanced service processes, such as Social CRM.”

JitterJam’s unique blend of social analytics, CRM and digital marketing capabilities make it a comprehensive social marketing tool for businesses, brands and agencies. By using JitterJam, businesses can discover relevant conversations happening on the real-time web and engage to convert conversations into customers.

“We have been tremendously impressed with Meltwater’s rapid growth in the social and marketing space,” said Ric Pratte, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of JitterJam. “Meltwater’s expertise, highly impressive customer base and exceptional sales organization will help us bring the integrated JitterJam platform to a primed worldwide audience. We’re thrilled to be a part of Meltwater.”

In addition to JitterJam, Meltwater acquired BuzzGain last year and intends to acquire more businesses and technologies to help the company further expand its product suite.

About JitterJam

JitterJam is a web-based Social CRM system that helps businesses and brands Turn Conversations into

Customers™. JitterJam combines social media monitoring, an intelligent contact database and a multi-channel digital marketing platform into a single, integrated system. Consumer-facing businesses, brands, agencies and consultants are using JitterJam to capture relevant conversations on the social web and turn them into lasting, trusted customer relationships with new opportunities for revenue growth.

Founded in 2008, JitterJam is headquartered in Bedford, NH. For more information, visit http://www.jitterjam.com.

About The Meltwater Group

The Meltwater Group is a privately held software company founded in Norway in 2001, serving more than 18,000 clients through 55 offices located across North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia. Meltwater is committed to challenging existing business models by introducing disruptive technologies.​ The Meltwater Group delivers B2B solutions based on search engine technology, cloud computing and talent management software. For more information, please visit http://www.meltwater.com.

Contacts:

Kimling Lam
Meltwater Group

Travis Murdock
Edelman

We’ve all been there. The social newbie. “What’s this Twitter thing?” “Do you Facebook?”

I’m addicted to social media. Seriously. I love Twitter and Facebook. I love to see what people are doing. I love it when a long-lost friend discovers me and sends me a friend request. I love just having a glimpse into a long-distance friend’s daily life with the ability to participate. It’s brilliant.

It’s really interesting and fun to watch someone new to social media go through the stages of adoption. For instance, my husband wasn’t particularly interested in joining any social network until he found out that his family was quickly adopting Facebook. Once he got on, he discovered old friends and acquaintances. He even reconnected with some long-lost relatives that found him through his family network. A couple of weeks ago, one of his distant cousins posted a very old picture of his father and his father’s siblings in their youth. We downloaded the picture, uploaded it to a local drugstore’s photo portal, printed it, framed it on the spot and delivered it to his father that day. I’d say that the value of the social network proved itself in just that one act of discovery and sharing.

While he was a Facebook convert, Twitter was this elusive THING that he just didn’t get. I tweet. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I keep track of a ton of topics from social media to Dachshunds, and I find new people that are as passionate about these interests as I am. He didn’t get why I would do all of this. Do I really care that someone I don’t know posted a picture of their dog? Why, yes I do. But just the other day, he was at an industry conference where a speaker related a story about the power of Twitter and the “loose” connection of people. The speaker gave an example of the need to reference a presentation and paper for one of his upcoming talks. He was unable to find the information after numerous Google searches. He then tweeted about it. Within minutes, he had the reference link. He explained that the loose connections of people led to someone who had the answer. His close connections (friends, colleagues) were unable to supply him what he needed, but their very loose, unstructured connections (within their extended and unknown community) picked up on the conversation and found the data.

That one example lit the bulb over my husband’s head. And I think this happens many many times a day. One thing or another may draw someone into joining a social network, but a concrete example of personal value turns a newbie into a convert.

Life, as we know it, has changed for good.

Happy Fun Stuff Friday, everyone.

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

We’ve talked a lot about the strategy and implementation of social media and social marketing. Different types of businesses can have different goals, approaches and strategies for social marketing, and this series of discussions center round how different vertical markets and businesses can use social marketing to their best advantage.

The second discussion in this series focuses on Social Marketing for Non-Profits. Non-Profit organizations have many different challenges. From regulation to resources, lack of awareness to lack of marketing budget, non-profits are constrained in many ways. How can social marketing change the fortunes of non-profit organizations? How can they use social marketing to spread the word? How can they find the time and resources to engage with their community over social channels? How can they leverage their relationships to enable more effective communications? How does social marketing fit into their marketing mix?

Here are the ideas sparked by our discussion.

1. Non-profit organizations are all about engaging their community.
• Social media is an extension of “community.” Non-profits are already focused on serving their community. Social media extends that community—and the reach—of a non-profit organization.
• The community may be greater than the membership of an NPO. For example, an environmentally focused NPO (e.g. Sailors for the Sea) may appeal not only to the direct membership (people who have access to waterways), but to all people who are concerned about the environment (people who are concerned about the health of our oceans and waterways). The greater community of people concerned about the environment are potential members—not just the direct community of the focused organization.
2. NPOs can leverage one another.
• Peer organizations, vendor, service providers and other associated companies and organizations can leverage one another and share in the development of the common associations and communities where they intersect.
3. Time is not on their side.
• Like all organizations, resources are always in demand. With NPOs, resources are even more limited. How can they find the right mix of social activity? What’s the right mix? What kind of presence does an NPO want to have on social networks?
• One thing is certain. If an organization becomes active on social networks, they must continue to be active. Abandoning a social presence can quickly turn off current and potential customers and community members.
• Scale and reach are enhanced by social networks. NPOs can reach more people with less resources, so the investment IS worth it.
4. Thought leadership and content curation are cornerstones to social engagement for NPOs.
• NPOs are often the “go to” organizations for consumers looking for information about their area of expertise.
• Sharing information, links and data, making personal connections with those seeking guidance and information…these activities that were traditionally done in person are now leveraged across social networks.
• Finding the right content that resonates with your community is key.
5. Hub and spoke.
• Influencers are very important to organizations trying to reach a wider audience.
• E.g. in reaching a youth audience, the message is much more powerful coming from peers than from the organization. By identifying and working with peer influencers, the NPO becomes the hub and each influencer becomes a spoke.
6. Using social media for data analytics.
• While social media is about consumer engagement, it can also be a driving force for the NPO to become a data analytics driven organization.
• Analyze the data to do business development, marketing strategy, build broader capabilities within the organization
• Optimize, analyze, strategize the data that is available.
• Cull through the raw data to facilitiate the 3 major business goals: membership, fund raising, awareness building.
7. Community partnerships between NPOs and corporations are a win-win.
• Sharing success: Both parties benefit from the association and alliance.
• Corporations public image are enhanced by the community focus.
• NPOs can leverage corporate resources, analysis and insights and share them in concert.
• Corporations can share in the trust built between the NPO and the community.

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Our current series of discussions center around different vertical markets and how each can adopt and benefit from social marketing. Won’t you join us in the discussion? It’s free, and you can dial in if you can’t join us here in Bedford, NH!

Sometimes business travel can be fun.

Take, for example, my trip to San Francisco this week. It has been a blast. I’ve eaten every ethnicity of food that I have been missing since moving to New Hampshire. I’ve had the Ginger and Scallion Crab at R & G Lounge. I savored the Hotate (scallop) sushi at two restaurants, including one of my old favorites, Sushi Sam’s. I devoured the “world famous” Swedish pancakes at Sears Fine Foods, but I couldn’t finish an incredibly tasty and large Broiled Sea Bass with Roasted Garlic Beurre Blanc at John’s Grill (it was written in as one of the settings in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon). I’ve ridden a Cable Car (the first time since I was a teenager in the Bay Area), strolled through Fisherman’s Wharf and sipped the original Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista.

Strolling through downtown San Francisco is a treat. From the boutiques around Union Square to the smells and sights of North Beach, from the beauty of the Bay from the Embarcadero to the view from Nob Hill…I carved out a little bit of time to enjoy the city of my childhood on this particular business trip. While there were intense and productive days of meetings and discussions, I was very surprised to find that this trip has been a bit of a recharge for me; I haven’t been back to the area since I moved to New Hampshire two years ago. It hasn’t hurt that today was a quite balmy 69 degrees. After the cold and snowy winter in New Hampshire, shedding my L.L. Bean coat has been a true pleasure.

Now why did I move to New Hampshire again?

Thanks for the Fun Stuff Friday, San Francisco. I hope to be back soon!

I can’t believe it. It is 57 degrees outside right now. In New Hampshire. In February.

From the peanut gallery: “We need fresh powder.”

Um. Not me. I love the melt.

It makes me so happy to see the melt water flow across the parking lot. It has been a hard-fought winter, complete with 5-foot icicles cascading off of the eaves of my home. Now, we have a clear sign (outside of Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction) that Spring is just around the corner. And I couldn’t be happier.

I hope this is the end of our cold, snowy winter. My California bones are aching for some warm sunshine!

Happy Friday everyone!

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

We’ve talked a lot about the strategy and implementation of social media and social marketing. Different types of businesses can have different goals, approaches and strategies for social marketing, and this series of discussions center round how different vertical markets and businesses can use social marketing to their best advantage.

The first discussion in this series focuses on Social Marketing for Restaurants. From local favorites to national chains, restaurants are harnessing the power of social media to get the word out about their unique value. From Yelp to Facebook, Twitter to Foursquare, Flickr and beyond, how can restaurants best utilize the vast opportunities of social sharing to prosper? How does social marketing fit into the restaurant’s mix?

Here are the ideas sparked by our discussion.

1. Restaurants are already focused on their local communities. Social is a natural exension.
• Local establishments thrive on engaging their local community, and social media is an extension of that established outreach. If a business has a culture of being a contributing member of its local community, then their move into social is a natural extension of their current activities.
• The community activities of a restaurant can be easily shared—and fostered—via social channels. A restaurant’s associations, charitable works, events and more should be shared socially. People connect with businesses on many levels, and knowing that a local business is giving back to the community that supports it…that helps people connect to the business on a much deeper level and fosters greater customer loyalty. Social is also a great way for a local business to announce and promote their local causes.
2. How can social media help a restaurant thrive and grow?
• Reaching new markets. Social media can help a restaurant reach a different target market. For instance, a fine dining restaurant that has traditionally drawn an older clientele can start using social media to reach a younger generation of diners.
• Drawing consumer mind share. Regular and engaging content via social channels enables an establishment to continue to remind its customers of what it has to offer. Regular brand impressions (including enticing new menus, specials, seasonal food, etc.) will keep a restaurant’s customers interested and prompt them to dine with the establishment more often.
• Social discovery. One core value of social channels is brand growth through “organic” sharing. Restaurants shouldn’t limit their social chatter to information about themselves. They should curate and share information, recipes, food knowledge, local events and more and share information they find through their social channels (e.g. retweet).
• Direct customer feedback & engagement. Interacting with customers directly enables a restaurant to elicit direct feedback from visitors and draw “fans” in closer to the brand. If there’s a negative feedback situation, restaurants can attempt to turn a negative experience into a positive customer service experience, and, perhaps, change an unhappy customer into a rabid advocate. Most consumers will respond to an attempt by the restaurant to make amends for a bad experience. The key is for the restaurant to not only respond to directed comments (e.g. phone call, email, Twitter DM) but also publicly shared comments on social channels.
3. On which social channels should restaurants concentrate their efforts?
• Facebook. Having a fan page is a great way for restaurants to start actively engaging their current customers. Facebook enables rich content sharing by both the restaurant and its fans and viral sharing simply by showing up in their fans’ news streams.
• Twitter. Twitter enables restaurants to search for and engage individuals by location, by profile information and by their social conversations. Finding and following new people who are talking about restaurants, food, wine and dining in a local area enables the restaurant to “lightly” touch new contacts and make them aware of the restaurant. If the contact follows back…that’s the first step towards a happy customer!
• Yelp, Trip Advisor and other travel/review sites. Yelp provides restaurants with a way to both connect with diners and to provide diners with incentives to visit their establishment. Trip Advisor Some restaurant owners are concerned that competitors might try to “play” the system and post negative comments about their establishments. Others are concerned that some of these sites try to extract advertising dollars in exchange for removing negative comments. However, many sites enable restaurants to curate relationship with diners.
• FourSquare, Gowalla and other location-based services. Location-based services enable restaurants to incent people to visit (e.g. reserved table or parking space for the Mayor, Ben & Jerry’s 3 scoops for $3 for checking in) but also allow the restaurant to interact with the customer when they are on the premises.
4. How should a restaurant integrate social into their marketing mix?
• Create a strategy. Integrate social into your overall marketing strategy. Define your goals and measurement for social media just as you would for your other channels. Since social media is an ever changing “moving target,” make sure you leave room to review, refine and experiment your approach and tactics as you learn.
• Cross-pollinate. Make sure to provide links to your social accounts through your email marketing newsletters, on menus, on signage, on the restaurant’s website, on advertising, etc. Make sure that you can enable customers to immediately connect with you through social channels while their on your property (posted connections via text, email, Twitter and Facebook links, etc.). Cross-pollinate your channels by announcing your email marketing newsletters, events, new menus, etc. on your social channels.
• Make it fun. Social channels enable you to engage with customers on a more informal basis. Use humor, share fun photos (and let your customers share their own), create fun contests and more creative methods to allow people to engage with you on a personal level.
• Plan for it and staff it. If you decide to engage in social marketing, make sure that you plan for the resources necessary to manage the effort. Social consumers don’t like being abandoned, and doing so will turn these current and potential customers off. Your social presence and image should mirror the experience of your restaurant.

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Our current series of discussions center around different vertical markets and how each can adopt and benefit from social marketing. Won’t you join us in the discussion? It’s free, and you can dial in if you can’t join us here in Bedford, NH!
 
Photo Credit: Mattox

This is our 50th Fun Stuff Friday post!

One year ago (tomorrow, in fact) we posted our first Fun Stuff Friday blog post. It seems like ages ago to me rather than just one year.

Milestones are fun. I like having places along the way where I can stop, look back, evaluate where I’ve been and review where I’m going. Goals should have milestones to ensure you’re on track. Personal milestones can be the hallmarks of success and satisfaction. But milestones don’t need to be tied to a measure of success; they can just be a stop along our way, a time to reflect, or a really good excuse for a party.

We use milestones at work to measure progress, to motivate people and reward them for their accomplishments, and to mark significant change. I think that whenever possible, we need to celebrate what we’ve done and thank those around us that helped us get here. We’ve written 50 blog posts about Fun Stuff in the office and in our lives. I think that’s a great milestone, and I look forward to the next 50!

So to mark my 50th post, I’d like to thank Dave (yes, you Dave!) for his ever-patient support as I grumble about html and CSS, drive him crazy about Java script and PHP errors, and generally become a pain in the…you know…when I post to and update this blog and this site. (Don’t kill me Dave. Please?)

Is it time for our official Fun Stuff Friday beer bash yet? I hope so. We certainly have a lot to celebrate!
 
“Fifty” Photo Credit: Berkeley

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The eighth (and final) use case in this series of discussions is Community Development. In our prior discussions, we talked about how social media opens the door not just for “media impressions” (aka Building Brand Awareness) but direct engagement with consumers. In this discussion, we talked about the new “community.” In the past, a brand’s direct consumer engagement was either initiated by the consumer, required the business to create their own hosted community, or was held behind closed doors (e.g. focus group). Community Development was focused on brand-hosted, closed communities that were only focused on the brand’s products and were often centered around customer support.

Today’s social networks are enabling organic and user-generated virtual communities to flourish. The word “community” may just mean a common thread amongst individuals—a conversation, a linkage, or an organic group like a Twitter list—and thus much harder for brands to identify, participate in and benefit from. How can they find these communities? What are the ways that they can engage consumers within those communities? What are the rules of engagement?

Here are the ideas sparked from the discussion.

1. How have communities evolved?
• Communities used to be focused on formal organizations on a local and national level. Before online communities existed, organizations formed on a local (and eventually grew to a national) level to bring people of like minds and interests together. The goal was to promote networking, education, and common interests and commerce. Trade organizations were the most prevalent, but interest-based organizations of all kinds formed.
• The online world expanded the breadth of interest-based communities. The online world enabled communities of all kinds to form and for people from all over the globe to participate on a local, national and global basis. “Community” no longer pertained to professional or trade organizations; community could now be people with common interests connecting with one another.
• Social networks have changed the notion of community. New, organic communities with both loose and tight ties have formed due to the growing prevalence of social networks. People are finding others with the same interests just through the content and conversations they share and post, and brands have the same opportunity to search for, find and engage these organic communities as a member of those communities.
2. How do businesses find these “organic” communities?
• It starts with search. Example: A dog food company looking for Dachshund owners for their special Dachshund food. The company can do a search (e.g. Twitter search, Google search) on the word “Dachshund” and start to evaluate the shared content, the crowd, the degrees of engagement, and the links and figure out where and how to start engaging the community.
• Many communities are very loosely organized. The threads of an online community may just be conversations. The definition of social community may just be people who share the same interests. That community may be linked by a single conversation, and the community might grow, change and even appear or disappear based upon current conversations. However, a brand can pick any point in time and find those community members with that common interest or thread and start following that thread for the people participating in the conversation, linked to the people talking, looking at blogs/websites/content that show a common interest, etc. These are the threads that bind these organic communities and a way for brands to find those who are participating.
3. Why do people seek online communities?
• Affinity. Finding others with a common interest to share common experiences. Finding people like you.
• Support. Finding information, answers, solutions or just comfort and assistance from others who have experienced the same situation, have the same problem (e.g. Intervertebral Disc Disorder in Dachshunds, repair diagnosis and parts for a vintage Mercedes).
• Information. Share or gain information on a specific subject or topic of interest.
• Ego. “I become the expert. People look to me as an authority.”
• Personal satisfaction. There’s an interest in contributing in a community for personal satisfaction; giving back to others; making connections with people; bridging a knowledge gap. Of course, even though a person is a member of a community, there are levels of engagement like the levels described in Charlene Li’s Book Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (illustration to the right).
4. What are the “Golden Rules” for any business joining online communities?
• Contribute. Organic online communities are about common interests. Contribute to those communities with genuine, valuable insight, content and comments. Don’t let your membership in that community be about YOU.
• Be unselfish. Share information. Share experiences. Share content.
• ROI should not be your immediate goal. ROI should not be an immediate goal. Join the community without that expectation.
• Be genuine. People with passion about the subject matter should be driving the community membership. Fake interest in a community will show through. Be genuine and real.
• Be appropriate. Show that you GET the consumer.
• Build trust. Your participation in that community is the first step to building a trusted relationship with these new contacts. Once you start tooting your commercial horn, you can easily destroy that trust.
5. Online communities are not ALWAYS the answer.
• Online fallacy. Note that a brand can’t make the assumption that their community is online. The community is out there…just not always online and on social networks! It’s very market dependent.
• B2B vs. B2C communities. There’s a significant difference (e.g. HVAC business vs. Dachshund owners). What’s clear is that the people who join communities are generally passionate about the subject or interest, but that passion and level of engagement vary in intensity. There are also natural leaders that emerge…the influencers in a group.

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Our next series of discussions will center around different vertical markets and how each can adopt and benefit from social marketing. Won’t you join us in the discussion?
 
Photo Credit: biewoef

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The seventh use case in our series is Product Development & Innovation. In our prior discussions, we talked about how social media opens the door not just for “media impressions” (aka Building Brand Awareness) but direct engagement with consumers. In this discussion, we talked about one of the advantages of this direct engagement—the ability for brands to generate new product and enhancement ideas from their customers. Listening to customer feedback AND engaging consumers to provide ideas and input to future product features and offerings—even crowdsourcing to develop or vote upon new product ideas—enables consumers to participate in the product launch process and enables brands to get early feedback and develop early advocacy from these engaged consumers. Here are the ideas sparked from the discussion.

1. Consumer beverage example.
• Through their product monitoring, they took a look at the brand mentions of the consumer beverage brand and the keywords that people used to describe their product experience. The keyword that kept coming up was “Protein.”
• They stuck the word “Protein” on the label and sales went up.
• Listening to consumer chatter to learn what consumers perceived was the value of the product helped the brand to tap into a new market need. What happened here wasn’t a product innovation per se, but a marketing shift to meet the perceived market need. The MARKET identified the value proposition, and the marketer tapped into that value prop through monitoring social media.
2. Avoiding the “marketing effect.”
• Companies have historically turned to focus groups and surveys to get product ideas and feedback. However, being a part of a focus group or a survey has a conscious or unconscious impact on a subject’s answers and opinions. Controlled studies can provide valuable insight, but the “marketing effect” of these controlled environments may skew the results in a way that could skew the results favorably/unfavorably from true consumer opinion. In addition, people often self-select for focus groups; they WANT to provide strong opinions, and those opinions may not be representative of the general population.
• Social media allows brands to “listen” to the “true utterances” of consumers, unguided by their own questions or biases. By monitoring social channels, brands can see consumer’s spontaneous or unguided opinions and experiences about their products.
• However, are social consumers representative of the customer base as a whole? Does a company make a decision based upon just the social voices? Is the social consumer a target SEGMENT or representative of the customer base? How does the demographic of the target customer map to the demographic of the social consumer? Do they intersect? If you’re using social media to drive product innovation, does that feedback represent the entire buying public? These questions need serious discussion and evaluation to determine the fit between social feedback and overall market evaluation.
3. How are brands using social media for product development?
• Not many companies are doing it. We’re still in the early stages of this kind of brand monitoring and the integration of those results into product research.
• Gatorade’s Social Media “Mission Control” and Dell’s IdeaStorm are exceptions.
4. Product Development Use Cases.
• Listening for Feedback.Listening for feedback is the first step. Start listening for what people are talking about, how people are using our product, how they perceive the value of the product, what messages and keywords are buzzing (e.g. “Protein” in conjunction with a beverage).
• Marketing Messaging.Shift product messaging to match consumer preferences, discussions and use cases.
• Crowdsourcing.Get people to drive the design and specifics of a new product. Or even pre-pay for a new product based upon crowdsourced designs. Utilize crowdsourcing to vote for a favorite (e.g. Mountain Dew flavors).
5. What kind of consumer companies can benefit from these use cases?
• Airlines.Southwest was not charging for passenger luggage when the trend from the other major airlines was to begin charging for bags. “Bags Fly Free” shifted their marketing message (rather than policy) and turned into a huge consumer value proposition.
• Dominos/Food Service.Took consumer comments (e.g. “tastes like cardboard) and created an ad campaign to combat those misconceptions. Additionally, Dominos used a potentially damaging PR incident and launched their social campaigns to combat the potential PR headache. Their public transparency helped save the brand’s image.
• Everyone.Individual consumers have a voice today. One conversation can drive a brand’s message, and a brand can take a potentially damaging, negative comment and turn it into something hugely positive. (e.g. Wheat Thins “Crunch is Calling” takes tweets and drops a huge load of product in front of the consumer who tweeted)
6. How does the “social innovation” process happen in a company? How do companies develop the right processes to handle this innovation?
• Someone (usually a stake holder) within a company needs to see the value of this kind of new media “experiment” and prove its value.
• A company’s internal culture and processes have a deep impact on whether social innovation can occur within a company. Is the company receptive to new ideas? How do they process and internalize product feedback? Do they continually try to drive innovation?
• Lots of companies believe that social marketing = having a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page. There’s SO much more to it.
• Ease of implementation has a significant impact on social innovation. Southwest’s “Bags Fly Free” was a marketing campaign. It required no business process change. Mountain Dew’s flavor crowdsourcing was a huge campaign that impacted packaging, bottling, shelf space, media, etc. However, innovation can also come from within (Subway Five Dollar Footlong came from a single store).

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Won’t you join us in the discussion?
 
Photo Credit: 123dan321