This week I attended the Frocomm Social Media conference in Sydney - these were some of the key learnings:

• Decentralising your social media content can be empowering and productive for employees. We had a great case study from the Ray White Group discussing the grassroots approach and how it worked for her team
• Governance Is Critical – Lifeline discussed their new online crisis support service and the governance implications
• Specialist Skills – DEC PR discussed the Australian Pedigree Adoption Drive and the fact five separate agencies worked on it to make it a success (Digital Democracy was one of these)
• Advocacy creates Change – Nice case study here from change.org (online petition company) regarding the recent #vilekyle incident
• Trad Media relying on Social – Some good stats here from NineMSN such as 26 percent traffic to ninemsn news is now from social sources and growing
• Understand User Online Behaviour not just the Tools – The Works presented some statistics from their Australian Twitter study  with some of the 2011 findings - people in Canberra were the most aggressive, anxious or sad, particularly when compared to the upbeat West Australians.

These are just  a few of the learnings from the conference for further details you can view #fro2012 where a range of delegates were tweeting each presentation.

This week a paper by Emily Rosenzweig and Tom Gilovich in the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that experiences and stuff lead to different kinds of regrets.

The thinking goes that if you purchase an item such as guitar the associated regret is one where you compare the guitar with others and feel that perhaps in the end you didnt get the best deal. This is particularly true today when there are so many price-compare search engines.  Alternatively, the regret that is associated with experiences (not stuff ie items) is more associated with not doing the experience and because your experience (ie a holiday) is seen as individual it cannot be compared the way stuff (ie items) can.

So what does that mean for marketers? It gets back to ensuring your products are more than just stuff – ie they turn into experiences that are individual for the consumer. So how does this play out with brands? Nike is one of the brands that could simply been seen as just stuff ie a pair of runners – but by tapping into consumers love of running and experiences they have great content such as blogs and interactive content to ensure the runners move from ‘stuff” to ‘experience’.

When we think about the best of social media marketing moving a product from ‘stuff’ to ‘experience’ is at its core because if you open your brand up to consumers to make it their own you are well on your way to really engaging with that consumer – and lessening that buyer-remorse.

Much of this comes back to socialising your brand –  it gets back to a few Social Media 101s but it is a timely reminder that if you are simply selling a product and not giving your customers the opportunity to socialise and ideally evangelise your brand – well you may indeed have a few regrets.

This week the State of Social Media Marketing by Awareness was released. This is an annual survey (US based) looking at a range of social media questions to gain insights into what is changing in the social media arena.

Some of the insights included:

• The underesourcing of social media within organisations still presents a challenge. I am very aware of this issue after talking with clients but also my Masters students at UTS who are marketing managers and deal with this issue daily.
• Most social marketing departments are severely underfunded
• ROI is still seen as a key challenge though most companies are measuring it
• So how are companies keeping up to date with the latest social media news? Blogs, Peers and Conferences were the top ways to gain news and insights
• The big three platforms are Facebook Twitter and LinkedIn
• Most companies are using a variety of free and paid monitoring tools
• In 2012 Blogs, Forums and YouTube are the platforms organisations are planning for. This seems interesting as they are almost the old-school or original platforms many of us who first entered the space around 2005/06 were originally using. It seems the old platforms are having a resurgence.
• Presence and frequency of content remains a top priority for novices and dabblers
• Social Media leaders will venture into new platforms and focus on processes and tools to help manage their social marketing investment
• In 2011 only half of the respondents reported measuring the success of their programs and those that did measure their primary measure was reach. It looks like there is still some way to go in the measurement stakes in terms of usage and elements measured.
• The most experienced social marketers  plan to invest in robust social media management platforms compared to social marketing novices

View the full State of Social Media Marketing report for more details including a range of charts and graphs

Webicina  (the world’s first and only free service that provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics) has just launched the Open Access Social Media Guidelines for Pharma.

The document (freely downloadable) is a 14 page summary that was developed in the US because  drug companies, healthcare professionals and e-patients had been waiting too long  for the FDA guidelines on Social Media.

While our Australian industry has some differing regulations many of the guidelines are appropriate and cover basic areas such as Social Media Rules of Engagement but it also covers individual guidelines on each platform such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.

The main editors of the Guidelines were:

Dr. Bertalan Mesko (@Berci) Dr. Felix Jackson (@felixjackson) Silja Chouquet (@whydotpharma) Andrew Spong (@andrewspong) Denise Silber (@health20paris) Rob Halkes (@rohal)

Further Reading

Interested in Social Media and Pharma? you might be interested in these additional sources:

Yesterday along with NET:101 I presented an advanced Social Media course with organisations as diverse as local councils, specialist social media agencies, health ngos and others.

One of the areas that can be difficult to find is local statistics on our own use of Social Media as much of the data produced is US and UK centric.  Via the very lovely @em_skins I came across this data provided by EConsultancy.

It is a great summary of a range of reports by companies such as AIMIA/Sensis, ComScore, ACMA and others

What’s the internet penetration like?

• 94% of the Australian population access the internet, 79% do so every day. [AIMIA / Sensis]
• 60% of Australian internet users go online multiple times a day. [OMP]

Video

• 65% of Australian users have watched an online video clip in the past month [ADMA]
• Online video streaming has grown 550% in less than four years. It’s expected that there will be more than 11bn views of video content by the end of 2011 [Frost & Sullivan]
• More than three quarters of Australian users (77%) watch video content on their computer and just over a quarter (26%) do so via their mobile phone. [Nielsen]

Social media

• 38% of Australian users regularly interact with companies via social networking sites. [Nielsen]
• Impact of social media on purchase behaviour: Actions done as a consequence of viewing online video/listening to online audio vs. reading online consumer comments. [Nielsen]

• The average small business is investing $2,050 into social media marketing on an annual basis. 27% expect this to increase over the next twelve months. [AIMIA / Sensis]
• The average large business is investing $78,750 into social media marketing on an annual basis. 66% expect this to increase over the next twelve months. [AIMIA / Sensis
• Types of incentives provided by businesses through social media [AIMIA / Sensis]

E-commerce

• The most likely Australian age group to shop online are those aged between 35-44 years old (73% of total online consumers) [ACMA]
• Travel goods, tickets and accommodation are the most popular items purchased online, followed by clothes, shoes and personal items. [ACMA]
• 36% of Australians made a purchase after researching products via social media. [AIMIA / Sensis]
• The reasons behind consumers shopping online have changed during the last 18 months: there has been a decline in convenience and an increase in looking to save money. [ACMA]

Search engine marketing

• Search is the biggest online activity, with 89.9% of Australian users doing this on a regular basis. Social networking came a close second. (81.6%) [comScore]
• Australian users make more than four searches, per search visit [comScore]
• Australia leads the APAC region for mobile search, with more than 61% of mobile users doing this activity. The next closest country is Taiwan (29%). [iProspect]
• After making local searches via their devices, nearly half (49%) of Australian smartphone users called a business. [OMP]

Email marketing

• Email is by far and away the method most preferred for (personal) online communication [Nielsen]

• 62% of web users in Australia use email on a regular basis. [comScore]
• 68% of Australian smartphone users have read email on their devices. [OMP]
• 72% of Australian users unsubscribe from emails because the content is irrelevant. [Epsilon]

Mobile

• 26% of Australian smartphone users have made a purchase on their devices. [OMP]
• 75% of Australians using GPS devices are open to viewing targeted deals when visiting bricks and mortar outlets. [Galaxy Research]
• 83% of 18-34 year old Australians find geo-targeted content via mobile when shopping an appealing prospect. [Galaxy Research]

This week Tourism Research Australia has just released some new research into tourism businesses use of the internet in Australia.

The internet has been steadily increasing as an information source for all visitors in recent years. In 2010, 29 million international and domestic visitors used the internet for information prior to commencing their trip, up 11% since 2007.

Findings

84% of all tourism businesses that take bookings have an online presence:

71% on their own website

74% on others’ website

Research commissioned by the Tourism Ministers’ Council Digital Distribution Working Group show that while internet presence is high for Australian tourism operators, booking and payment capabilities remain low.

It would have been nice to see some research breaking down Social Media usage among the travel industry but perhaps that is available in a more detailed report.

Download the Snapshots 2011 Internet Use in Trip Planning and Booking pdf

Social Media strategy templates and Social Media strategy tools are often in demand by the social media marketing industry but is there such a thing? is there a one size fits all?

Recently Vocus has produced a Social Media Strategy planning tool.  The tool developed by Vocus and MarketingSherpa entails a Drag-and-drop module where you answer answer questions and create a social media strategy tailored to your needs. 

Overall it is a nice snapshot of some elements you will need to think about but it does breeze over concepts  rather than examining them in detail. The ability to compile relevant readings however is a particularly useful component to the tool.

Verdict? It certainly can’t replace an experienced online marketer who can view your online strategy wholistically but its a fun and reasonably well executed tool.

I read with interest that The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) is joining forces with the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) and the Council of PR Firms to form a Coalition to develop global standards in social media measurement – one of the four key commitments of the Lisbon Summit Measurement Agenda 2020 initiative.

When working many years ago for the global media content analysis company CARMA,   AMEC set some standards for the media content analysis industries which was much needed after the many years of simplistic AVE measurements.

Tim Marklein, coalition chair and Practice Leader, Technology & Analytics, WCG  said “Clients and agencies are hungry for expert guidance to navigate the changing media landscape, and they deserve guidance that’s based on sound social science, proven practices and openly available methodologies.  Too many of the social media measurement options available today are based on proprietary tools and methods that can’t be easily replicated across brands, campaigns and organizations. As a coalition, we intend to break down those barriers and map out a path to standards that address key social media measurement challenges, including content sourcing, influence, sentiment, engagement and ROI among others.”

On 17th November, AMEC is running “The Big Ask” social media measurement conference in London, when it aims to ask PR and media intelligence professionals what they want to see as part of the new global standards. Let’s hope the conference has many social/online mechanisms  where international marketing professionals can follow the event and participate widely in it.

Internet marketing research company ComScore released a white paper this week that detailed which Facebook features receive the most usage and where users interact with branded content. The report showed that:

-27% of Facebook browsing is on the news feed and home page

-  21% of time was spent on profiles,

-17% on Photos,

-10% on applications, and 25% on the rest of the site

The report states that “Most engagement with branded content happens on the news feed, not Pages, yet the average brand in the top 100 Facebook Pages reaches only 16% of their fans per week if they post five days a week”

It is interesting how companies can spend a huge amount of money on Facebook apps yet the above report shows relatively little interaction within this area.

Methodology: The report is based on a two million person opt-in panel of web internet users that agreed to be monitored, so the sample size is ample though it might skew towards savvier, less skittish users.

It is certainly worthwhile viewing the report for additional insights.

Nice summary here for Forrester subscribers and a list you may also find valuable of key marketing articles:

Surviving Disruption in the Age of the Customer by Josh Bernoff, Advertising Age feature
The Post-PC Era: It’s Real, But It Doesn’t Mean What You Think by Sarah Rotman Epps, Forbes feature
Facebook Won’t Become E-Commerce Force, Analyst Says, The Wall Street Journal feature
How CMOs Are Adapting For The Future, Marketing Week feature
Can Mobile Apps Save Customer Loyalty Programs, CRM feature
Where’s Your Company On The Social Maturity Scale? by Sean Corcoran and Josh Bernoff, Forbes CMO Network feature
Why CMOs Must Learn to Understand the Customer-Experience Ecosystem by Kerry Boudine, Advertising Age feature
Marketers Failing Interactive Part of Interactive Marketing, Advertising Age feature
Are You Prepared For The Intelligent Enterprise? by Tamara Barber, ESOMAR feature