Some of this I buy.  But still, looking at Social CRM as “CRM extended to Social” is a major simplification at a minimum …

Social CRM clearly differs from the conventional CRM in three ways:

1 ) Online users are not necessarily customers

In the traditional call center, the first thing an agent checks when you call up is your product ID. This is to make sure whether you are actually entitled to a response. If you are not a customer, you will be sent to a different call center where you will be screened as a prospect. Such screening is a major part of the process and a key driver to ROI.

Contrary to customer call centers, online users visiting a brand’s social sites are not necessarily its customers. In social media channels, anyone can write and tweet anything about a brand: customers, prospects, non-customers, people you would never sell to, press, high or low influencers, competitors, former employees, lobbyists…

2) The discussion is public

Most brands have developed different value propositions to different customer segments. Sometimes it does not make sense to disclose these value propositions to people who are not “on target”.

Take McDonald’s. They own Chipotle. Chipotle is all organic. When Chipotle advocates to the masses to eat organic, they must be careful not to shy people away from other McDonald’s brands.

3) The objective of the discussion is changed

CRM as we used to know it was all about achieving a positive outcome. It is naive to say that this is the same on Social.

I remember discussions with C Harbulot  from the “Institut de Guerre Economique” in Paris, telling about how sophisticated an attack can be built up on social.

Sometimes establishing a relation is the answer, sometimes shutting up or even conflict avoidance is a better approach.

It is too early to determine if she kept her promise, but we thought it would be interesting to mine eCairn’s database of Tumblr users for some insights on the acquisition. Last year, we compiled a custom list of bloggers to deliver a study for a fast food company on one of their target demographics: high school students. This list of younger bloggers (some of which have become college students) is all the more relevant to Yahoo as a vast majority are Tumblr users.

Let’s focus on the following questions:
1. The deal announcement highlights the high activity level of Tumblr users: 900 posts per second over the whole network, and 120,000 sign ups every day. How do these numbers translate in our tribe of high school and college students using Tumblr?
2. Between May 20 and June 1, Yahoo was mentioned in two different contexts in our tribe: marginally as a source for content (13%), and mostly as the acquirer of Tumblr (87%). What is the sentiment expressed about Yahoo in general and about the acquisition in particular?

1. Activity level and death rate

The level of activity found in our tribe is very high, with bloggers posting an average of 7 posts daily:

When we created the tribe 6 months ago, the tribe was over 1600 Tumblr users strong. As of today, however, more than 50% of these blogs have either become inactive or disappeared altogether. These numbers show that the death rate of Tumblr accounts is rather high, much higher than the blogs from any of the tribes we looked at in this post.

2. Sentiment about Yahoo as a source for content

Yahoo as a source for content does not generate much opinionated talk: sentiment is mostly neutral (65%). The negative mentions (30%) are due to reblogging of the following post:

so yahoo reports that michelle obama wore the same dress three times. congratulations, you have now confirmed that the white house indeed has washing machines

3. Sentiment about the Yahoo/Tumblr deal

Sentiment on the Yahoo/Tumblr deal among high schoolers and college students is largely negative (68%), with only 10% of positive mentions.

Negative posts use strong language, strong imagery, and a lot of cynicism and self-deprecation. In a tribe where reblogging is the norm, posts are quick to become memes. Three types of negative posts stand out:

• Tumblr is trash and Yahoo made a mistake buying it: among the posts in this category, the conversation involving Tumblr users selfdoubtandsyphilis and dankestrnemes (which have both disappeared since) is widely relayed throughout the tribe:
  

  dankestrnemes: do animals think in english or in the sounds they make
  selfdoubtandsyphilis: this is what yahoo paid $1.1 billion for

• Yahoo is going to change Tumblr and take away everything that we like about it: a lot of posts spread rumors of blog deletions and rules about post and picture publishing.
• A lot of Tumblr users’ conversations do not give specific reasons why they do not welcome the deal. However, the strong, apocalytic tone in which they are written is well worth noting. In the following example (reblogged from here), Yahoo is equated with the followers of Lord Voldemort, the arch-villain in the Harry Potter books:
  

  tumblr has fallen
  david karp is dead
  yahoo is coming

The conversations where positive sentiment is expressed were mostly published on May 20, either as a reaction to the announcement or to negative comments about it. Two trends are visible: one in which Yahoo is said to have saved Tumblr, the other expressing requests for enhancements. The latter may be the most important for Yahoo to leverage, like in this post:

plot twist: yahoo buys tumblr and we get proper blocking features, lockable posts, a sent folder in messages/fanmail with a better interface, ability to search multiple tags, removal of the post and message limits, proper search engines for likes/archives and removing that bloody “reblog as a link” option.

Sentiment was rated as neutral in conversations where no strong opinion is expressed, or where positive and negative comments are expressed with approximately equal weight. Here again, enhancements are suggested, like fixing the video player.

Conclusion
Limited in its scope, this quick study shows that the Tumblr community is indeed vibrant, but also fleeting, with a high level of activity and a high death rate.

The Yahoo brand name did not generate much talk until the acquisition, when general sentiment became overly negative. Negative, positive or neutral, these conversations carry valuable insights for the buyer. Will Yahoo listen to the Tumblr users? Will the negative buzz die down? What do you think about the Yahoo/Tumblr deal?

 Starting by Chicago, we can see in the expression cloud that the three F’s (Family, Food and Friends) play an important role in that community. Other than that, Chicagoans also have their education system on close watch. Parks and local transportation also rank high in the list.

Out West, San Franciscans seem more preoccupied with public safety. The hot housing market in the Bay Area is also on the radar of people living in that region. Like Chicagoans, these Californians regularly mention their family and friends in their posts on social media.

It is interesting to point out that New York shows up with relevant weight when we extract the 50 most popular expressions in both tribes. The name of the city is ranked 14th in the San Francisco tribe, and 15th in the Chicago one. When we look at the conversations, we see that influencers frequently use New York as a point of comparison.

Talking about the Big Apple, New Yorkers do not make any reference to other cities. Besides business, the locals seem much more into entertainment and culture. Among the most popular expressions are words like art, park, play and restaurant. However, the life these influencers describe in their posts does not have too many references to family or friends.

What do influencers from Chicago, San Francisco and New York City have in common, then? Their sense of community. This expression is among the most popular ones for influencers nationwide, showing that regardless of their preferences or the size of the city, the sense of community remains very strong in the US.

The share of voice graph over the past six months shows that within the Mommy tribe with around 8000 blogs there were more than 7000 conversations:

Comparing to eCairn’s Scrapbooking and Stamping tribe with more than 3000 blogs, the share of voice graph over the past six months shows that the increase of conversations about Mother’s Day started in the beginning of March:

Why is the trend different between the 2 communities?

Let’s look at the word clouds from the conversations talking about Mother’s day in those 2 tribes:

Mommy:

Scrapbooking and Stamping:

As you can see, mommies focus more on gifts, giveaways and coupons, whereas scrappers focus more on design, inspiration and creation.

As a marketer targeting Mother’s day, understanding the nuances of the various segments in social media adds relevance to marketing activities.

I think you can make something special for your mom as well . Here are links to my favorite blogs that can help you prepare the best gift for your Mom!!

Corporate blogs are the most important social media service, according to a Hubspot study. Yet, there are still many ways companies can improve the impact of their blogs, beside writing top notch content.

1- Invite guest bloggers:

One of the risks for Corporate blogs is “isolation”. We see many companies investing in building great blogs but their content is never reused/linked to by other bloggers in their vertical.

Inviting prominent guest bloggers is a great win/win. The blogger gains authority from the brand and the brand gains authenticity from the blogger and visibility from their network.

Pick bloggers carefully: ones that are both influential, independent and not “professional guest bloggers”. Below is the graph of Top Social Media Influencers who wrote about… Corporate blogging recently:

2- Make citations:

While writing your content, always refer to influencers in the field of interest who have expressed opinions on the same topic. Make citations, send “link love” and let them know about it (a tweet or a message in Facebook/Linkedin should do it).

Influencers who are mentioned in your article will retweet, drive their audience to your content and… make you closer to “the family”, the tribe.

3- Select your topics by listening to bloggers in your domain:

This increases your chances to get read and also makes it easier to do #2.

Other recent articles you may want to read:

- On authenticity: How to Maintain Your Brand’s Authentic Voice (Convince & Convert)

- On guest blogging: The Small Wins From Social Media (Mitch Joel)

- On scaling, leveraging employees as authors: Transform Your Team into Epic Content Creators: 6 Steps (Steven Shattuck)

Try these techniques, and come back with comments !

@dominiq

How much talk is devoted to sunscreen, sun damage and sun protection in the US beauty tribe? Who are the bloggers who talk the most about it? Since a lot of cosmetics contain some level of sunscreen, the topic we created requires more than just an SPF index.

The share of voice graph over the past six months shows that less than 1% of all 100,000+ conversations in the beauty tribe match our sunscreen topic, with an increase from about 0.75% to 1.25% starting in the spring.

Volume of conversations about sun protection in the American beauty/cosmetics tribe over the past 6 months

Do the share of mind numbers make up for the low share of voice? Not really. Only 24% of all influencers in our US Beauty/Cosmetics tribe mentioned sunscreen and sun protection over the last six months. What’s more, the influence level of these bloggers is not likely to help the message spread too far in the network of US beauty bloggers. As shown in the table below, the people with the most conversations matching the sunscreen topic (highest relevance scores, 10% to 30%) have very low influence in the tribe. Conversely, the most influential bloggers in the tribe have very low relevance scores to the sunscreen topic.

 
Our quick study of the US Beauty/Cosmetics community of bloggers shows that awareness about sun protection and indeed skin cancer has a great potential for growth in the tribe and in the general public. As with any other social media marketing campaign, one secret is to identify and engage the people with the most influence among their peers, i.e. the ones who are the most likely to help spread the message and raise awareness in their circles and beyond.

The month is still young, and things could change rapidly with the right strategy. In the meantime, let me share some Australian wisdom: “Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat!”

            With that said, we could assume that boomers are much less active on social media than young adults. That is where things get interesting. Looking at the chart below, we see that baby boomers have generated many more conversations than generation Y during the last six months.

             Now, you may ask yourself how many conversations out of these thousands linked out to a different social media platform. We found out that 10% of the blogposts published in the last six months by influencers in the Generation Y community have a link to a different platform. The percentage is very similar in the Baby Boomers community, 8%. Here is the total of links to each platform:

 Highlights

- There are more links to Twitter than to Facebook in Generation Y.

- Linkedin is almost completely eclipsed by the other platforms in both communities.

- Very few baby boomers link to Instagram.

            We also found out that 22% of the conversations generated by influencers in the Generation Y community had a link to WordPress or Blogspot. The number is much smaller in the Baby Boomer tribe, 9%. Both tribes show a higher number of links to blogs than to all the other platforms combined.

         Influencers from all ages are actively using social media to communicate and propagate their ideas. Bloggers often link to other platforms. If we consider that the number of outbound links to each of them is an indication of their familiarity with them, we can conclude that baby boomers are not too familiar with Instagram, for instance.

            From a marketing standpoint, understanding how influencers use the tools available to them, and how they build their relationships through social media is crucial. Attention should also be given to the power of the strong bonds between influencers in the blogosphere.  Bloggers talk to each other constantly; they rely on each other, and they help each other. In this environment, identifying the right influencers to engage may be the first step to a successful campaign.

• shut off the source of the buzz
• correct misrepresentations and alter the spin associated to the content of the buzz
• control the reach of the buzz, i.e. the number of people/share of the people who are aware of the buzz

Two months ago, Christian Harbulot was telling us about reputation attacks, i.e. how negative spin can affect a company’s reputation, even when the legitimacy of the source of the spin cannot be established. Sometimes, companies (or people, in the present case) are their own reputation slashers, and they can end up taking down much more than just themselves in the process. If you haven’t been following political news in France, we’re talking dishonesty, deception and utter lack of clairvoyance at the highest levels of command: after months of denial, former Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac just admitted to tax evasion. How did the scandal get relayed in the French political blogosphere?

Among the 800+ French political bloggers in our database, Jérôme Cahuzac has received a lot of attention in the past six months: 100% of the top influencers, 71% of the bloggers with medium influence and 36% of the less influential ones have blogged about the former minister. The past six months can be divided into three periods: before the allegations of tax evasion (Oct 2012 – Dec 3, 2012), before the confession (Dec 4, 2012 – April 1, 2013), and after the confession (April 2, 2013 – now). How much of the talk is devoted to Cahuzac, and what is the general tone in each of the three periods whenever he is mentioned?

The volume of conversations mentioning Cahuzac in the three periods is very different, going from an average of less than 0.5% of all conversations before December to 30% in the past couple of days:

Volume of conversations about Jérôme Cahuzac in the French political blogosphere in the last six months

This massive increase in share of voice is accompanied by a drastic change in tone. The following expression clouds let us to get a sense of how talk surrounding the former Budget Minister evolved over the past six months. No need to perform sophisticated sentiment analysis to gauge what the French political blogosphere thinks about Cahuzac after Tueday’s confession of tax evasion.

In the first period, the most common expressions used in conversations mentioning Cahuzac pertain to his activity as budget minister (finance bill: projet de loi de finance, budget: budget, public finance: finances publiques, fiscal: fiscale, funding of social security: financement de la sécurité sociale, income tax: impôt sur le revenu) and to the French president and fellow ministers (President François Hollande, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, economy Minister Pierre Moscovici).

Expressions used in conversations where Jérôme Cahuzac is mentioned. Oct 01 – Dec 03, 2012

The next period sees negative expression take precedence, with mentions of laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud (blanchiment de fraude fiscale”), of a bank account in Switzerland (compte en suisse), of a preliminary investigation (ouverture d’une information judiciaire, enquête préliminaire), and of the minister’s resignation (démission de Jérôme Cahuzac). Mediapart, the investigative news site which is the source of the allegations, is also widely mentioned. At this point, indictment (mise en examen) does not apply to Cahuzac himself, but to former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Despite an audiotape released by Médiapart incriminating the minister, the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty (présomption d’innocence) is palpable in the political blogosphere, fueled by the minister’s denial and efforts to discredit the source.

Expressions used in conversations where Jérôme Cahuzac is mentioned. Dec 04, 2012 – April 01, 2013

In the last period, however, talk is focused on Cahuzac’s indictment and his confession (aveux de Jérôme Cahuzac), which turned him into the source of the buzz. On the one hand are his own words (devasted by remorse, dévasté par le remords, spiral of lies, spirale du mensonge), on the other are President François Hollande’s, who had been assured face-to-face (les yeux dans les yeux) by Cahuzac, the leader in the fight against tax evasion (lutte contre la fraude fiscale), that he was innocent: Cahuzac has committed an unforgivable moral fault (commis une impardonable faute morale). The picture is further darkened by mentions of far-right Marine Le Pen’s entourage (proche de Marine Le Pen, for being instrumental in opening the Swiss bank account), and of a possible dissolution of the French national assembly (dissolution de l’assemblée nationale).

Expressions used in conversations where Jérôme Cahuzac is mentioned. April 02 – April 05, 2013

In this case, failure to control the source, spin and reach of the negative buzz helped uncover the truth about the former minister’s ethically questionable actions. There are things that PR just cannot fix, fortunately, and that are best left to justice. The question is, now: how far will the ripples of the scandal go?

• reach (# of followers, fans, views ….)
• relevance (%of conversations/pots/tweets that are on topic)
• influence in the target tribe/community (which we define as use of relevant content by peer influencers in the same domain)
• targeting “mavens” (the ones who produce content) or “connectors” (the ones who spread it).

And the truth is, it really depends on the objective of the marketing campaign.

However, whatever you end up doing (engaging with 50 or 5000 influencers), there are 3 very good reasons why you need to monitor and profile the thousands to tens of thousands of voices in your target market i.e your entire target tribe.

1- Measuring the results:

You need to measure whether your campaign is picked up by the other influencers in the target tribe.

The graph below shows a map of “Moms of Baby” influencers in France. In green are the influencers who were part of the campaign, in yellow the influencers having mentioned the campaign.

In this example, we see that the spread is limited (although the combined reach of the yellow influencers is of the order of 100,000 followers).

Using a similar approach/technique, you can also measure the performance of your campaign against any campaign carried out by competitors.

2- Broadening your options:

Influencer landscape is getting more complex by the day. Even if you end up engaging with an handful of influencers, you still need to research and understand

• how active and engaged they are on different platforms
• where they fit in the eco-system
• where they are located (if your business is local).

In today’s world, the question is often: How to find 50 fashion influencers, in the NYC area, who have a significant audience on Pinterest and talk positively about… let’s say Nieman-Marcus?

3- Understanding your competitors’ moves:

For some of your campaigns, you may not want to work with Ambassadors who also work with your competitors. But what if you did want to work with them?

Here below are showed, in gray, the influencers considered for a campaign and in red the ones who have also recently participated in a competitor’s campaign.

“Measuring your campaigns, Broadening your options, Understanding your competitor’s influencer plans”, three good reasons you should monitor your networked market!

@dominiq

We analyzed our food & beverage tribes and found nearly 14k conversations around Saint Patrick’s day celebrations, essentially in America and Ireland. Proximity to the big day sparked conversations around beer, party, green, shamrock, Guinness, harp beer, etc

As expected most of the buzz originated from the East coast of the US, and of course, from the Republic of Ireland…