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!
Last week’s Creativity Coffee focused on Characteristics of Key Influencers—who they are and how you recognize them. But once you do identify key influencers and others you have engaged/desire to engage in social conversation on behalf of your brand or business, what kind of information should you be gathering on these people? Why is it important to do so? This was the topic of our last Creativity Coffee—Social Profiles.
- What’s a Social Profile?
- Core component of a Social CRM. The social profile is the heart of a Social Consumer Relationship Management system. It provides a 360-degree view of the individual and enables the brand to target its communications, marketing, messaging, promotions and outreach based upon the wealth of information collected and summarized within the Social CRM.
- Collection of data versus usage. Each brand/company has their own view of an individual. The information gathered in a social profile is only as powerful as the way the brand uses it. Unique tagging and customization is critical to enabling the brand to create highly segmented groups for specific messaging, handling and engagement only if that brand decides to created targeted messages!
- What are the components of a social profile?
- Contact points. Contact information is no longer limited just email or snail mail addresses. Social profiles are multi-dimensional and include contact points from a variety of traditional and “new media” sources—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, etc. People can also have multiple identities that map to either their professional or personal associations, interests and networks.
- Activity profile. A social profile includes a record of an individual’s relevant social communications and activities. This includes direct communications with your company, but also expands to public social communications that pertain to your brand, your market, your products, your company, or even your competitors. Brands want a view not only of a person’s influence within social communities but also their engagement within those communities. The social profile should provide that information.
- Communications analysis. The social profile should include a history of every communications between the brand and the individual, but it should also provide an analysis of the social conversations that the individual has had. How engaged is that individual? Have their conversations been positive, negative, neutral? How often have they mentioned or discussed the brand’s products? What communities are they engaged in? How often have they been exposed to the brand’s communications?
- Segmentation and customization. While a system’s core data and analysis is essential to developing a view of the individual’s personna, it’s the brand’s own definitions of important segmentation that makes or breaks the value of the social profile. Enabling multiple custom categories or tags within the social profile enables the brand to (even on the fly) define an essential way of defining an individual in relation to the brand for later use in communications, messaging and marketing.
- Influence analysis. The social profile should include ways for the brand to evaluate a person’s standing within the social community—how much that person can influence and reach others.
- Preferences. Interests and communications preferences need to be an integral part o the social profile. How they want to be contacted, how often, which channels and what they want to receive…these are essential and should be strictly adhered to.
- How can brands use the Social Profile?
- Targeted marketing. At the end of the day, everyone wants to sell their products. Using all the intelligence developed in the social profile, the marketer now has the opportunity to fine tune their messages, offers, communications and engagement with a willing and interested audience. Higher response and action rates will ensue.
- “Free” data. Much of what we’re gathering into the social profile is freely available data. Marketers pay a high price for lists that include demographics and psychographics. Using the right tool, all that “free” data can create a powerful profile.
- Adjusting the tenor of a conversation. Using the social profile will help the brand determine the best way not only to reach an individual but to speak to them in a way that is appealing, desired and appropriate.
Are you developing social profiles on your social contacts? How are you using those profiles to drive your social marketing?
Image Credit: Hilde Vanstraelen
