One thing both consumers and marketers agree on is there is too much noise. What’s causing that noise are the 150 million users on Twitter, the over 700 million on Facebook and the millions across other networks of contribution. Last week Twitter reported they host 200 million tweets a day. Each is a person or company’s voice shouting for attention. Everyone wants to be heard, but our ears can only handle so much information.
Steve Rubel, social media thought leader and Executive Vice President for Edelman, referred to this shift in web dynamics as The Validation Era. The implications of this era apply to anyone trying to reach an audience: brands, retailers, broadcasters and publishers.
In the 1990s, there was an explosion in business interest in the web. Many properties sprouted up as part of The Commercialization Era, where being a web voice was costly, so media companies and huge venture-backed startups took control of the scene.
However, it quickly became obvious that people were more interested in letting their own voices be heard than corporate America. Hence, the Democratization Era dominated most of the 2000s, as evidenced by massive growth in social tools and social networking. The price of publishing went down to nearly zero with powerful services like WordPress and Tumblr allowing everyone and anyone to be a media outlet.
Finally, the current Validation Era is all about getting relevant and intimate content or interactions to the surface. We’ve amassed all these democratized sources of information, so now its time to filter them down to only the most trusted inputs. We are finally finding signal from the noise by validating our connections before getting overwhelmed, and making relevancy the rule of the road.
Online content trends are changing fast, as ideas of online marketing and content marketing continue to evolve. Which marketing concepts play into the social reality of 2011?
The Validation Era is an appropriate construct to highlight several themes (or “memes”) that are drawing a lot of buzz from marketers. Understanding these five will help marketers achieve the new era mindset of driving results.
Curation
One major way we are filtering the web and forcing quality is through curation. The concept of curation originates from the museum curator. As the selector of the masterpieces and keeper of the collection, the curator must make sure the gallery is coherent, thematic, and maintained. There is so much art – both new and historical – these experts sift out only the best.
Similarly, there is so much content on the web…especially social content, growing exponentially. We need content curators (tools and people) to filter the best content, with the criteria of relevance, coherence, and context. Drilling down into greater detail to select just the right content has never been as advanced as it is now.
The steps of curation are to aggregate (source content), filter (automated rules), moderate (optional hand selection) and display (visualizing the content in context). With social content, you can add a step by creating interaction with your audience. For example, with Mass Relevance, NBC Sports feeds expert tweets about a hockey game next to the online video. The audience can ask experts questions and post votes for their teams by tweeting.
While many different groups can serve as trusted curators, brands have a unique opportunity to take on this role. Each brand has a target audience with a unique set of interests. They can curate content that is important to them, becoming thought-leaders, trusted advisors, and trend-spotters. As long as curation takes place, stimulating content will continue to surface and companies will improve at delivering value.
Brand as Journalist / Brand as Media
Similar to the concept of curation, brands are using their reach to serve relevant information. Through curation or creation, brands are bringing stories that reflect their promise to customers. Similarly to how bloggers have carved out many niches and built trust with their audience, companies hope to do the same.
A great example of this is Red Bull, a $5 billion dollar company that basically has ONE product – an energy drink. Go to their web site. It looks like a sports media site, with a tiny link at the top left to see their product. I’ve been to their headquarters, where they have video studios, magazine editors, and event producers. They sponsor sports and athletes that represent the spirit of the brand, and use media (and social media) to amplify that message.
Take Intuit as another example. Their blog (http://blog.intuit.com/) highlights small business news and case studies of small companies overcoming challenges, and is a big hit with their audience demographic.
Companies understand that it is necessary to facilitate and drive online discussions around the promise of their brand for two primary reasons: (1) if they are driving the conversation, then somebody else (aka the competitor) is not; (2) if they are driving the conversation, then they have the ability to add value to the conversation and build the brand further.
The key is – can brands avoid looking like they are only serving their own corporate agenda? Being neutral is difficult, making the brand journalist a challenging concept in practice. However when done right, companies have a unique opportunity to stand out amongst competition.
Real-time Marketing
There once was a dream that marketing research would be instantaneous so that markets would not change by the time the information was ready and opportunities would not be lost. Technology granted that wish. Now large amounts of consumer data are instantly like firehoses to marketers and there are digital tools that: (a) capture real-time data, (b) develop real-time insight, and (c) enable real-time interaction. Throw in the ability to amplify and spread relevant content to multiple marketing channels (i.e. web, TV, mobile) simultaneously and companies now end up with the ability to instantly market in relevant ways at all times. The companies that leverage this technology can use time as an advantage because they now refine products/services instantly based on feedback from customers in the marketplace.
Shiv Singh, director of digital for PepsiCo, presented the concept of real-time marketing at the Conversational Marketing Summit. The steps he suggested to real-time marketing include: (1) Real-time Insights; (2) Real-time Response; (3) Real-time Content Studio; (4) Real-time Co-creation; (5) Real-time Distribution; and (6) Real-time Engagement. Clients use Mass Relevance to surface, respond, create and distribute real-time social content throughout owned distribution channels and through media partners (ex: advertising, publishers, etc.).
Social Media Post-Casting / Integration
Post-casting and social integration is all about distribution. In addition to monitoring and engaging with the real-time firehose, why not also harness it for your customers to see? Brands are looking for ways to present info in new engaging ways that take advantage of what is happening now – because real-time posts are way more relevant, timely, and engaging. Companies are integrating what customers are saying about their brand into their ‘surfaces’ (TV, mobile, web site, etc.).
For example, Purell uses Mass Relevance to post the Twitter feed of anything relevant to their brand on the bottom of every page of their site.
Mass Relevance creates modules for integrating social content into web sites, mobile apps and TV display, like this one for elections coverage.
Mass Relevance also recently powered the presentation of tweets on the hit NBC show The Voice. When the social media room was shown, a banner appeared at the bottom of the screen displaying real-time curated tweets from fans across the world. Beyond television, other social media post-casting opportunities include website widgets, real-time polls, billboards, and social Q&A sessions.
The benefits of this capability are: (1) it creates ‘social proof’ for a brand; (2) it gives customers the opportunity to be part of the brand; and (3) it synchronizes a fragmented community around a topic in the right context. When a company creates a social media post-cast, visitors are driven to the website because the data is now compiled, lives in a single place, and has a social scene. Whether they post content or not, visitors feel like they’re more a part of the experience than if just a marketer or show were to broadcast to them. As a result, visitors are then more likely to explore other pages on the website, follow the brand for future viewing, like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, post something so that they can see themselves on the company’s website, and take action to purchase.
Content Shifting
Coined by New York venture capitalist and startup guru Fred Wilson, content shifting is all about moving your content around. People don’t want their music, video, and other multimedia to be chained to specific times and places. If I discover a song on satellite radio, I may want to listen to it on my iPod. If I watch a YouTube video of a concert by The Arcade Fire, I want to see it on my television and listen to it on my surround sound system.
Similarly, content like tweets and Facebook posts are on their given web platforms, but moving that content onto different websites or apps can be very difficult. Some services though are trying to free your content. For example, the Flipboard iPad app brings in content from Facebook, Twitter, and various blogs, presenting it in a magazine-like format perfect for leisurely consumption.
Many of the memes above relate to content shifting. As a brand journalist — curating, integrating and post-casting – you’ve essentially shifted content for your audience into your contact points to create relevance. Said another way, while several consumer apps are nodes of shifted content, brands can provide these nodes themselves.
Closing thoughts
Audiences are adapting faster than ever before. They’re adopting technology faster as technology accelerates ahead of them. As a result, their experiences are becoming more fragmented across multiple contact points (or “surfaces”), requiring new ways to distribute and engage them.
Companies participating in the social world strive to stand out and ultimately have their efforts grow their business. How can you make your content more portable? How can you leverage real-time social posts to engage your audience? How can you be seen as a thought-leader and first-responder in your topic area? The companies that answer these questions will have unique advantages over their less savvy competitors.
Brand experiences and sales conversions can improve when technology such as Mass Relevance creates experiences that engage consumers and drive valuable interaction. The ability to become relevant in the Validation Era is becoming more attainable, and having the agility to leverage this trend is a tremendous opportunity for marketers.
Sam Decker
(contributors: Tim Gaspar and Cress Terrell)