Penetrating Social Media for Marketing

Last questions from the audience
3:03PM

An audience member asks about measuring "word of mouth" mentions. Bell responds by discussing the "net promoters" score, an concept created by Fred Reichheld. It's based on the simple question, "would you recommend this," and is supposed to measure loyalty.

Journalists and a personal brand
2:56PM

"All you need to do is look at someone like Robert Scoble," says Bell in asking why more journalists don't develop and promote their own brand. Responding to an audience question about news industry layoffs, Bell says that a clear option is building independent identities and content as newspapers and traditional media struggle.

"What is the Huffington Post," Bell asks. "A collection of personal brands aggregated under a larger brand," he answers, as he goes on to say that the future for journalists may require that time of brand development and affinity.

Confluence
2:53PM

"I think marketing and communications are coming together now," Bell says, "they have become so complex they can't work independently anymore."

"Journalism is still different because - you know - the sanctity of it."

He goes on to discuss the Knight Foundation and its program on community journalism. Not only is it philanthropy, he says, but they are looking to build new business models based highly local, aggregated journalism.

Measuring Success
2:46PM

"Engagement, reach, and conversion are the three main buckets," Bell says in talking about measuring efforts on the web. Citing the new tools' abilities to measure mentions on the web, tracking positive and negative language can be a compelling information, according to Belt.

Bell goes on to describe the need to engage users that share an "affinity" for a brand or product (or even a "personal" brand, as he describes it) in order to create a greater "product preference" towards the purchase of an item.

"Social Media Optimization"
2:42PM

Content wants to be found, says Bell, but once the user lands on a page they should have strong opportunities and incentives to link and bookmark. In talking about "linkability," he first delves into social bookmarking and the his view that giving away content can be a strategy toward spreading the reach of your organization.


Photo Credit: Cameron Nordholm

"Building your social graph"
2:36PM

Bell defines "social graph" as an organization's digital footprint. Business blogs, personal blogs, Facebook, Twitter all represent opportunities to "fuel your social graph," says Bell. He has pulled up a slide showing a radiating network of outlets for self promotion, which he descibes as his projection of his "personal brand."

New Views on SEO
2:31PM

"I can't get SEO from gaming the system anymore," says Bell, going on to discuss why he works with clients to bring "third party corroboration." He has now aims squarely at consumer review blogs, such as Consumerist.com, which pose a threat to the brands with which 360 Digital Influence works.

The other side to this coin are non-influential voice, says Bell. And in an example of Select Comfort beds shows how aggregating user feedback provides an opportunity to both reinforce the positives and reach out to detractors.


Influencers
2:23PM

"It's not enough to look at Technorati," says Bell, "what we end up doing is building a segmentation model." In the example of a bank in the current financial climate, he shows an array of "influencers" to major events. Bell says that a goal should be to reach out to these influencers and engage them to bring users closer to the product.

He now rolls a video of Lenovo's "Blogging Olympics" campaign, whereby they provided equipment to and a platform for 100 athletes to blog their Olympic experience.

Rewards of Listening
2:15PM

Radian6, Google Blogs, Technorati are all provide an aggregate perspective of what is being said about your organization or issue, says Bell, and can assist you in monitoring discussions that can affect your goals.

In his work with the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) he worked to tap into a network of previously unknown "Flubies" and "Flublogia," writes and blogs focused on pandemic flu. Involving them in the development of the HHS blog on pandemic flu was crucial to bringing community to new outreach efforts, says Bell.

"It's not all about blogging"
2:10PM

"Anyone can be an influencer" in online media, according to John Bell of Ogilvy Public Relations. Bell runs 360 Digital Influence, a business within Ogilvy, and encourages his clients towards a goal of penetrating conversations throughout the social media landscape.

Speaking today at American University's School of Communication, he began his talk by describing his client work with over 50 sites and platforms on the web. "There's no way to scam word of mouth," Bell said.

Photo Credit: Michael Flynn