I posted my first experiences with Twitter quite a while ago in May 2009. Since then it was difficult for me to actually participate in an effective way. Reading all the posts I was interested in and posting useful information myself. I still kept spending so much time on the platform, forgetting about all those other things I needed to do. Twitter became one of the tools, I loved to use for input, but I got overwhelmed by all the information, just like my google reader, which was stuffed with subscribtions of so many interesting blogs, that the “1000+” – sign is something I got used to an eternity ago.

Collective intelligence on the other hand was a term I stumbled upon in the beginning of this year, so while I was already using twitter. That there might be a connection between those two didn’t occur to me until month later. But how did I get to know collective intelligence? If I remember correctly did I watch a video from a German professor (Prof. Dr. Peter Kruse), who is engaged in research about collective intelligence.

In this video he explains what the term means (Wikipedia tells us: Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals.) and why it will be very important in the future, when information is free for everyone in the internet and only how good a person is able to  sort and evaluate this mass of information will determine how high someone climbs in a company’s hierarchy.

So when you think about it, social media, the internet and all of it finally offers tools to nurture the formation of collective intelligence. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) even has a center of collective intelligence. They mention Google, Wikipedia and Innocentive as the most important examples of collective intelligence on the internet.

A good article about the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo mentioning collective intelligence is from Heather Havenstein at Computerworld. She wrote: “While Web 2.0 technologies may have struggled in the past against criticism that they are self-indulgent time-wasters, Web 2.0 is now being touted as a collection of ground-breaking applications that can harness the collective intelligence of a multitude of users.”

So how exactly can Twitter help us sort / evaluate information?

Twitter is a way to spread information, which is useful to oneself to friends, colleagues or business partners. If the information is crap you either get called on it or nothing happens. But if the information is actually considered good in any way it will be shared = retweeted. Each person who shares this information read it and evaluated it before sharing, so you can say that a post, which got shared a certain amount of times contains valuable information.

BUT it is hard to say if 2 times is good or 10 times is already enough. I believe that information, which gets retweeted by a rather small group of people is likely to just be useful to them. For example the information, that you should add salt to water only when it is boiling and not in the beginning or the water will take more time to boil, might only be useful to hobby chefs, but not too a vast majority of internet users. As a consequence, information, which gets shared a really high number of times is information, useful to the majority of users. Objections?

So to see if an article is good. I could post it and count the clicks on my tiny URL or the RT (Bit.ly shows you both). Or I read a tweet form a person then copy the link or information and search it using Twitter Search. A problem is that people sometimes change the text of the message they want to retweet, even the link, so they can monitor it themselves. That makes it more difficult to know how often information got shared.

Some Applications can help you organize twitter, among others there are Twitturly (ranks most tweeted URLs), Tweettronics (monitoring tool, e.g. for brands), Tweetvolume and many more. But still leaves a lot to be desired.

One example is a very recent campaign against wild animals in German homes. The organisation body painted three models as snakes and put them on a couch in heavily frequented pedestrian area in Berlin. You can watch a video about this campaign on Youtube. It’s in German, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

By posting this video on Youtube they raised the level of the campaign. Now it’s viral marketing and they hope that people are interested and share the video with their friends and they share it and so on. Through that it can become an epidemic, the characteristic of viral marketing. But is the video good enough to be spread like a virus on the internet?

Successful viral marketing campaigns are the well-known example of Blair Witch Project or the viral videos sponsored by Volkswagen . The aim of one video by VW social marketing campaign was making people use the stairs instead of the escalator, which is better for their health. In the spot they introduce the Funtheory: “Fun can obviously change behaviour for the better”. When you make something more fun, you add another incentive to a certain behaviour. They did the same with another video, which wanted to make people throw their trash in a waste bin. Besides doing that for the environment, people now had fun within the process. See how they achieved it.

The communication instrument mass media is often used because of it’s obvious advantage: the possibility to reach a lot of people. Many companies rely on television, but also other media have great potential, like posters. Here one example by the Australian Childhood Foundation (this one by misereor is also quite good).

For an intellectual target group I consider PR methods as especially effective. That is because people, who were so fortunate to attend university, were trained in certain scientific approaches. So they rather believe a magazine or an organization, which are known for their good research and especially their independence. Is a product scientifically proven by a organization or does a product receive a recommendation by respected institute it will most likely convince an educated target group.

If they do not trust in institutions, they trust in people who are close to them. Science has proven, that if you want to convince somebody to change their behaviour, for example do volunteer work, they are more easily convinced through personal contacts. That’s why viral marketing works so well. In the diffusion process the innovators and early adopters are the ones who achieve that the product gets accepted by the majority. Gladwell is the one who combined diffusion and viral marketing. And formed new groups of people, the connectors (who have many connections) , the mavens (who know the trends and communicate them) and the salesmen (who have a strong persuasive power). If you identify those people (opinion leaders) and make them “love” your cause, those can become a very strong marketing tool.

Besides your close friends, who obviously have great influence on you, famous actors or singers have a certain persuasiveness as well, because a lot of people feel personally connected to them and follow their advice. For example did Leonardo DiCaprio try to use his stardom to raise attention for the environment.

During these articles I read I had a fun idea for a social – guerilla / viral – marketing campaign for driving less (save carbon dioxide). I would convince an actor, who is known for his environmental engagement and big fan crowd, to act in a short video for me. In this video he sits behind the wheel of his car. Then there would be a close up of his hand on the key in the ignition. He moves a little, but then he doesn’t start the car. Afterwards you see the actor who is still sitting there slowly starting to cry.. then more heavily and more heavily… he bangs his head on the wheel. Afterwards there would be a black screen with the slogan. In the beginning you could not give it away, not say why he cries (or she for that matter). It would be possible to make people guess why. After the secret is lifted there could be a competition for amateur-actors to re-enact the scene and the best wins a price. There are many components which can be added to the campaign. It’s actually very much fun making up those ideas….

]]> http://christinarogge.com/2010/03/25/social-marketing-campaigns-successful-approaches/feed/ 1 http://christinarogge.com/2009/12/26/bachelor-thesis-issue-2-how-to-guarantee-sustainability-in-online-self-marketing/ http://christinarogge.com/2009/12/26/bachelor-thesis-issue-2-how-to-guarantee-sustainability-in-online-self-marketing/#comments Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:45:07 +0000 Christina Rogge http://christinarogge.com/?p=214 Will Twitter or Facebook win their battle for dominance and survival? How will the internet influence our life in 2010? Are you prepared for the future? These questions not only need to be asked in connection with the looming year 2010, but are required to be continuously considered, since The Web 2.0 is characterized as especially dynamic. That’s why it’s so hard to make predictions about future developments. That’s the reason why online marketing wants a system that guarantees the observation of their environment just like the management cycle.

In my thesis I developed a system like a circuit which is based on common management practices and traditional strategic marketing procedures. Within this cycle the Online Self-marketer can continually improve his online presence and by that guarantee sustainable development. I included several control methods by which it will be possible to evaluate the efforts made.

In Online Self-Marketing the most important aim is to achieve a positive online self-presentation. Every internet user should think positive of the person presented on the personal website or in the network profile. Since I wrote my thesis in the perspective of the student, the second important aim is the contact to an employee of an HR department, which is crucial for acquiring the “dream job” after graduation. The third important aim is the personal aim, which will differ from person to person. The student usually is interested in a certain industry, for example can it be an aim to become an expert for B2B Marketing in the oil business.

Around these aims flows the self-marketing cycle, all steps needed to continuously improve the online presentation. Naturally you need to start with the actual state analysis. According to traditional marketing you conduct a strategic audit observing the environment (PESTLE) and the internal situation. This includes not only the current period of recession, the personal characteristics but also the legal situation. After all this information has been gathered, they should be used to perform a SWOT analysis.

In the Target State analysis the personal 3. AIM will be identified. The product market growth matrix by Ansoff or other tools can be used. The strategic portfolio analysis is only useful when a person already has more than one source of income, for example a normal job, a consulting business and the publishing of books.

Strategies are developed in the third step, instruments get selected in the fourth and after that all taken measures have to be controlled according to their effectiveness. All this I will describe in detail in future posts. Especially important is the connection between “control” and “actual state analysis”, where the end of the cycle flows into a new beginning. Only the consideration of the past failures and mistakes can help to form a more successful Self-Marketing in the future.

About a week ago an article of mine about Coca-Cola’s new Social Media Marketing Campaign was posted on the German site facebookmarketing.de. This site wrote on 21st of September that Coca-Cola was amongst the 5 most popular brands on facebook (rank 3). But considering that this company supplies 400 brands to 206 countries with 1,5 Billion servings per day, the roughly 3,7 Million fans appear as a small portion of a huge potential.

With it’s campaign “Expedition 206 – happiness goes around” Coca-Cola is joining all the other large companies trying to have a share in the social media buzz. The concept is that one team consisting of 3 “happiness ambassadors” travel the 206 countries where cola is supplied to in 365 days. I heard about it through a female friend of mine, who’s boyfriend Brendan is a member of the Team WOW! now competing against two other teams for the going on this mission. All three teams promote themselves with video clips on the Expedition website to convince the Internet user to vote for them. On 30th of October Team Sha-ba-ba-do brought up the rear with 21%, Team Wow was on second place with 37% and Team The Mix was leading the field with 42%.

But how does it work exactly?

The website depicts the teams and the videos as a decision making tool for the site visitors. After they informed themselves and chose a team they click the “Vote for this team” button and a window opens. The user is asked to choose a Social Media Application from these:

• Youtube
• Twitter
• Windows Live
• Orkut
• Facebook

It would be really interesting to know, what made the Coca-Cola marketing team choose these and not others. What criteria did they consider? In my opinion Cola aims at a global advertising impact, trying to convert customers to fans and give them the opportunity to communicate amongst each other. But does Coca-Cola look at all countries on earth? Did the marketing department realize how high the complexity of it’s target group really is?

Brendan, member of Team Wow! and currently living in China, did encounter problems vote catching. Scarcly anybody uses the Social Media Applications in Qingdao, a famous vacation spot in China. If you want to reach 206 countries (and more), you should know the applications ranking high (or number one) in users in those countries. I personnally do not believe you will start using an application just to be able to vote for a team on their website.

With more than 300 Million users facebook should and does play a key role in Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 campaign. Besides casting a vote on the mission website you are able to do the same on facebook. Additionally are you requested to share that you voted on your FB wall or become a fan of Coca-Cola. But the campaign is far from being omnipresent on their facebook fan page. When a user is viewing the wall of the Cola-Page he is the tab for the campaign doesn’t show and if nobody would post anything on the wall about the campaign there won’t be any hint to it. A method of resolution would be repositioning the tab next to “info” or adding a note about the campaign to the profile picture.

Another point of criticism is that the campaign is lacking viral cross-linking. And some channels of the Internet are ignored. The videos of the teams aren’t shareable with social bookmarks. Only after I did search for the Expedition 206 on YouTube, I found their own channel, but except a link to their website in the information section of the channel there are no (click-able) links connecting those two web presences.

Aside from these details, one point is crucial: Nobody in my proximity had ever heard about Coca-Cola’s social media campaign. And if they did, it was because my friend sent a mass mail to her friends prompt them to vote for Brandon’s Team WOW!. There is still a lot left for their marketing team to do. Especially when it comes to using all of facebook’s potential: I did not see any adverts promoting the Expedition and including it in FB applications like “LivingSocial” would be another starting point.

During this process I get assistance from the University of Applied Science Konstanz, where I am a student. And by  Jan Mittelstaedt, who offer his enthusiastic support, as the managing partner of Lorth Gessler Mittelstaed, an advertising agency supplying their customers with services from motion picture to corporate design.

This semester, besides the courses I am taking, I write this thesis focusing students, who I try to help with my work especially, but I do think my findings will also be applicable to others as well, since I am trying to describe strategies and tools for developing your personal online self-marketing plan.

Power distance is one of the four dimensions of cultural variation identified by Hofstede. He defines it as the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations (and similar systems) within a nation expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.

That practically means that in countries with high power distance (Asian, African, Latin American..), the employees expect the boss to give orders and they won’t criticise his desicions or give suggestions (among other characteristics). In countries with low power distance (North America, Netherlands…), the relationship between the boss and the inferior is more equal, the superior asks for his employees opinion and they more often call them on their mistakes.

In front of this background I thought about the experiences I had when researching on Asian Websites, which I did during my internship in Taipei. Those are the features on these websites, which could have been caused by the high power distance:

• organization charts – one person on the top
• message from the CEO prominently placed
• often absence of corporate blogs or any other envolvement of employees
• almost no pictures of “real” employees (as the people behind the brand)
• …

These are a few I thought are the most obvious. I’d like to know about your experiences surfing Asian websites!

low-context vs. high-context

These are terms first used by E.T. Hall to describe an attribute of communication. In relation to this context is ‘the information that surrounds an event’ (Hall & Hall, 1990) The opposite of context is text, which is according to Hall ‘the coded explicit, transmitted part of the message’ (Hall, 1976).

To make this concept clear and accessible to you I’ll tell you a little story:
Karl from Germany is studying Chinese Culture together with Monika. When they invite their Chinese friends Ling and Nan over for dinner, Ling gives them a wrapped box. Karl takes the gift and says “Thanks”, but the moment he makes a move to unwrap it, Monika says: “Karl” and gives him a special look. Karl understands and puts the gift aside.

The text in this communication is “Thanks” and “Karl”, but the context is more interesting, because the context behind “Karl” is rather large. Monika and Karl share the same knowledge about Chinese culture, which includes the custom of Chinese to unwrap gifts only when their guests are gone, in order to hide their feelings concerning it. This is a method to protect their guest’s and their own “face“. So Monika actually reminded Karl of this principle by simply calling him by his name. A different person, which doesn’t share the context would not have been able to understand this message.
According to that cultures with high-context communication generally use less text and more context, for example Chinese or Asians. Cultures with low-context communications use more text than context.

That’s why you would expect the German website of Yahoo to have more text than the Chinese or Taiwanese one, which is not the fact. This is the contradiction I mentioned above and which threw me a curve.
Just now I was able to create a theory explaining WHY.

Since Germans are used to low-context communications they put their message across in an effective way using a certain amount of text. But Chinese are used to high-context, so since in the web, there is hardly any context, they try to make up for it by more text which leads to bigger websites than the ones of low-context cultures.

But here I have to state that this is only one possible explanation. Aside from culture which influences communication there are several factors which we shouldn’t forget. What kind of website are we dealing with here? How big is the target group they are focussing on? What characteristics does this target group have? And what goals is the company trying to achieve with the website.
I am just trying to give all this yet another angle.

To demonstrate what I mean and analyze it I picked out the website of yahoo for Taiwan and the USA.

You can clearly see that the page of Yahoo USA is offering less information.
So what did Yahoo Taiwan do differently?

• the “sign in – field” is bigger and has more options
• advertising (acer, LG and a housing project)
• less news (above acer ad) and more shopping (shoes, mobile phones, cosmetic)
• when you view the page in your browser you’ll also notice that the Taiwanese site is longer
• less icons

(to only name a few)

I asked myself: Why do they do it that way?
Obviously their customers are different. Consequently does the difference between Chinese and Americans (please excuse my generalization here) dictate the way Yahoo sets up their websites.

And in general it’s a culture difference, because culture is:

“the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and which is transmitted from generation to generation through learning“ Bates DG, Plog F: Cultural Anthropology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990, p 7

If the members of a society use their culture as a “tool” to deal with the world, it is no wonder it should influence the design of websites online.  In the next few posts I will describe some aspects of culture, which are most influential for web design.

Before I got into online marketing or the professional usage of social media, “2.0″ would have meant nothing to me. But when I furthered my Internet related knowledge from how to read and write emails, download music and use facebook (or studivz) to FTP, Wordpress, twitter networking and more, I first got to know what Web 2.0 actually is.

Tim O’Reilly explained it very good in his article “What is Web 2.0“.

By switching from “1.0″ to “2.0″, the web entered a new age of it’s usage, applications and definition. Becoming something more.

Related to Technology I understand “2.0″ as a sign, which tells me that this is a product’s successor or its second improved version. Nowadays however, “2.0″ gets used outside of the world of High Tech to assign the meaning: “related to Web 2.0″ as I may put it.

A few examples are:
PR 2.0
Business 2.0
Enterprise 2.0
Taiwan 2.0
Arbeit 2.0

It is fascinating what can be done in Web 2.0. I am thinking about a lot more you could do with it:

Pregnancy 2.0:
Sites with information about pregnancy exist, let’s take it to another level and create a social networking site, with discussion boards about what to eat and how to workout (I agree with people saying in the future every website will be social). Women could upload their belly pictures and scan prints of their baby. Later in life the once newborn can say: “I got my first online profile when I was an embryo”. Generation web?

Ethic 2.0:
Does anybody think about ethic while writing a blog? Maybe you should. Practice value management online!

Or maybe science 2.0… wait there someone was faster!

I belive the web will soon influence every aspect of life. It will be your job to improve it, it will help you find a partner and answers every question you might have? Did we find the holy grail and not realize it?

What are your ideas? Opinions?