I suppose this is only a reflection of how social media and the groundswell is constantly changing and evolving. I just found this news while doing some research for my internship, looks like there's a new social technographic group in town!
Everything below I took from BrianSolis.com a kingpin in the social media world. You can see the full article/post here. I just reposted what is new to us.
2010
This year, Forrester observed notable activity that warranted the creation of a new rung on the Technographics ladder, one that earned a top position just below Creators. According to Forrester, America is increasingly becoming a nation of social chatterboxes. A recent Forrester survey that polled more then 10,000 consumers shows that one in every three online Americans is a “conversationalist” – someone who updates their status in the statusphere (any social network with an update window) at least once per week. Conversationalists represent 33% of today’s online social behavior.
The survey identified the people behind the category, with 56% of conversationalists representing the highest concentration of women in any social group. And, 70% of this group were 30 years or older.
You know you've heard of him, whether on purpose or not. The baby-faced pop sensation has been turning up everywhere from radio, tv, the internet, to your kid's bedroom wall. Well we've all seen teeny bop phenoms come and go, but what makes Justin Bieber's presence a little different? What makes him social media royalty? And how does his journey reshape the traditional track to becoming a famed musician?
Let's start with a stat... Bieber's most recent music video, Baby, currently ranks as the most viewed video EVER on YouTube with over 250 million plays; it recently knocked Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance to number two and the infamous Charlie Bit My Finger - Again! to number three. If anything, there's no denying YouTube, people are tuning in.
The 16 year old pop star we know today was essentially born online. His modest first YouTube video was posted 3 years ago…. So what’s happened since then to sky rocket his fame?
Bieber’s journey to stardom isn’t a unique one, but the magnitude of it is something unmatched. Since the advent of SoundClick, MySpace, and YouTube, musicians have been able to market themselves in a way that makes producers and record labels come knocking on their doors for a change. Soulja Boy Tell’em is a prime precursor example to the Justin Bieber method. In late 2005, Soulja Boy posted his original songs on the website SoundClick, an online social community focused around music. From there he made pages on YouTube and MySpace and in just a year and a half signed a deal with Interscope Records.
The key difference between the stories of Soulja Boy and Justin Bieber is that Bieber was discovered online whereas Soulja Boy independently produced his album after his online success and then was signed to a major label.
So what has Bieber done differently?
Worldwide attention for the pintsize celeb exploded exponentially from 2009 - 2010.
But where has this attention been centralized?
Bieber has utilized Twitter to keep up to date on communicating with his fans as well as a means to comment on his media presence; and although it has been said, “All publicity is good publicity” it would sure be easier to rise to fame if that publicity were positive. Here is a progression from the last month to the last 12 hours to illustrate how quickly Bieber’s online Strength, Sentiment, Passion, and Reach have increased.
Strength: the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media (Calculated: phrase mentions within last 24hrs divided by total possible mentions)
Sentiment: the ratio of mentions that are generally more positive to those that are generally negative
Passion: a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly (for example: if you have a small group of very passionate advocates who talk about your products or brand all the time you will have a higher Passion score. Conversely if every mention is written by a different author you will have a lower score) Reach: a measure of the range of influence. (Calculated: # of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total # of mentions)
Not only is Bieber’s online presence growing stronger in sheer numbers, but it is also gaining strides in positivity.
So why are people jumping on the Bieber bandwagon?
To understand that we need to dissect the primary members of Bieber Nation: Girls 12-24. Although social technographics are not available for US women under 18 it can be seen that US women 18-24 are represented by a large majority of Joiners and Spectators.
This means that social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are regular outlets for his audience. Bieber has used these sources to connect with his fans in order to give them a peek into his life and form a deeper relationship than just listening to his music; instead they're listening to his life. Bieber has given his followers front row tickets to watch his day to day particularly through Twitter. Bieber has the 7th most followed Twitter account, two down from President Obama and one up from Oprah, and his growth isn’t slowing down. Just take a look at the numbers he's pulling...
By connecting to his fans through Twitter, Bieber is utilizing the main feature of social media: building relationships. The platform of his campaign has been getting him as close to his fans as possible, giving them the opportunity to "get to know" Justin. By positioning him in a reachable way to fans, he has become the boy next door celebrity. The videos on the original YouTube channel that launched him, provides fans with "behind the scenes" looks and a collection of his early videos. Fans can be one of the millions watching "Baby" but they can also watch a quaint video tribute to his grandmother recorded before his ascent to fame. This type of social media campaign creates fans who feel more intimately connected with the artist. He could be anyone of us or anyone of us could know him.
In order for Bieber's success to continue, he needs to keep giving fans the ability to follow not just his music and career, but also him as a 16 year old. His fans have become so loyal because the social media efforts already made have kept them closely connected with him; social media has made them feel like they all have a one-on-one relationship with him. The negative aspect of his social media campaign will be the day when he wants his privacy back. Transparency is helping him today to become closer to his fans, but now that he's given people access to his life, it's going to be a hard thing to get back and Bieber Nation is only growing bigger, stronger, and more powerful.
Here's your last chance. Stop fighting it, you know you want to be one of the now 260 million (and yes, it jumped that much since I first started writing this)
In the readings for this past week there was one part of a case study that really stood out to me. While describing the journey of salesforce.com within social media, there was one section entitled, “Be Gone Sawbanners Please [Be] Gone”. It talked about a user’s comment which pleaded for salesforce.com to remove the sawbanner ad that popped up on a user’s screen every time s/he logged into the website. The comment quickly gained attention and thousands of votes and additional comments poured in with support for the proposal. Although the solution to this problem was basically unanimous amongst users, internal debate over it created conflicting opinions.
The developers of the site’s platform wanted to work towards maximizing the application’s usability. Therefore when users united in the elimination of the sawbanner, developers saw the next step as clear. However, organizational structure within a company causes different departments to have different goals. So when developers decided the obvious solution towards maximizing usability would be to eliminate the sawbanner, the marketers interpreted this as an obvious problem towards their own goal of connecting with the customers (for which they had come to depend on the sawbanner).
The issue of the sawbanner took nine months to address internally. In the meantime, users continued to make suggestions on the site, many of which were acted upon with positive results and stored in their delivered archive. Before reading this, the idea of the trust built from listening and talking was only in one context for me: users trusting a company; the idea that when a customer talks the company will listen and react. The example from Salesforce shows that this trust is a two way street however. Salesforce had to build trust that the suggestions their customers gave were constructive and of high quality. The details were not explicit in the section, but I would assume that the company didn’t start off reacting to extreme suggestions that would have highly impacted the company. Most likely they began by targeting small changes that would demonstrate to the community that they were indeed listening. This allowed users to trust the company, but it also allowed the company to trust in the quality of suggestions their users produced. The fate of the sawbanner wasn’t decided upon until other suggestions proved positive. When this happened Salesforce was able to have the trust and confidence they needed in order to implement a controversial change and eliminate the sawbanner.
Overall this speaks to another concept from the book. The idea that social media marketing isn’t something that one department or group of people exclusively does within a company. Everyone within the organization must be on board. Consumers aren’t just critiquing and influencing a company’s products or services anymore, consumers have taken the next step and are influencing the interactions and experiences they have with a company as a whole. Suggestions don’t just impact one section of an organization and all employees need to appreciate the voice of the groundswell because no matter where an employee falls in the structure of a company, s/he is now never beyond the influential reach of the consumer.
Lean on Me The Groundswell's Symbiotic Relationships
I remember the first time I saw the Old Spice “I’m a Man” commercial during the Superbowl back in February and here it is 5 months later still being relevant. I went on YouTube yesterday to find the following video on my homepage...
As we discuss the relationships of Creators, Critics, Joiners, Spectators, and Collectors, this video made me think about how extremely symbiotic those roles really are. Old Spice is depending on the groundswell to make a video like their "I'm a Man" commercial viral and Creators like Mike Relm take an already recognizable thing and flip it around to create the video above. Users, such as myself, will watch Mike's video because I'm already familiar with the subject and I know I find it funny. Now Mike is receiving traffic to his channel thanks to the publicity Old Spice has already generated. In return, Mike is generating a new spin on the material which will perpetuate Old Spice's current campaign, keeping it relevant. Instead of Old Spice charging Mike for using their image and Mike charging Old Spice as if he made a new commercial, both parties are exchanging exposure which is what fuels any venture in social media marketing. Mike is depending just as much on companies like Old Spice as companies are depending on people like Mike.
There are plenty of examples of people like Mike out there who are using popular and highly searched topics to their advantage. For example when I typed "iPad" and "Snuggie" into YouTube I got hits for two parodies from the same Creator.
In these clips, Jacksfilms isn’t recreating the product in a different but still positive way like Mike above. Jack has decided to parody popular things because he knows that by searching something like, “iPad” he’s bound to wind up as one of the links. Although Apple probably isn’t thrilled about the video Jack has posted, Snuggie is most likely ecstatic since their product is already viewed as borderline gimmicky. It’s that extra publicity such as with Jack’s video that keeps Snuggie relevant. In terms of Apple, chances are that anyone looking to purchase an iPad will be referring to customer reviews and ratings rather than a parody on YouTube. Like Mike, Jacksfilms is trading exposure for exposure and everyone involved in this example got exactly that.
You Had Me at Hello Entering and Relating to a Conversation
As I find myself about halfway through with the course book, Groundswell, it is clear that so far the authors have one main point to drive into the minds of budding social media marketers and it is that social media marketing is a conversation. The concept of tapping into this online dialogue is quite a familiar one when it is likened to the physical world of interacting to which we are accustomed.
The book first explores ways to enter the groundswell. Like with any conversation, the approach needs to be thought out. Your first day in a new office, you see a group of fellow employees huddled around the water cooler chatting with one another, just as you would find in a forum, discussion board, or online community. This group is already familiar with one another considering that they all have been contributing to the water cooler conversations since they trickled into employment here at the office. Your approach to joining the conversation is something to consider. Do you walk up to the group and immediately make your presence known by introducing yourself? "Hello" may direct attention at you for a second, but it'll take much more than that to captivate the ears of a discussion forum (unless that discussion forum is Tom Cruise and you are Renee Zellweger of course). Do you wander over and linger on the outskirts of the group, waiting for a relevant moment to contribute to the subject? While executing one of these tactics do you first listen to the conversation and then comment on another person’s words? Or instead do you immediately bring up a new, but related discussion point of your own? All of these options translate into viable approaches to entering an online conversation; however some have proven more successful than others.
Listening was the most highly endorsed course of action in the book. When trying to join a conversation either with a group of people in the physical or online world, chances are you’ll receive a warmer reception if you first listen and learn from the people already in the group. Imagine walking up to those coworkers at the water cooler and immediately barging into their conversation with your own discussion points. Although they may humor you at first, since you’re the new guy and all, bets are pretty high that when you head back for your desk eyes will start to roll and people will ask, “Who’s this guy?” An online community rooted in a certain topic bands together around it. Just as the employees will question who the new guy thinks he is, consumers in an online community will join together and question what your motives are as the company. I think the best way to join an online conversation is the same as joining any conversation: listen to what the crowd is talking about and contribute in relevant and helpful ways. By connecting with what the group is talking about, you will be able to more effectively cultivate a relationship and in turn foster an even better line of dialogue.
One point that I had never really considered before starting the reading is the fact that a person can’t simple start a conversation anywhere. In order to start a conversation you must find people who are interested in discussing the same topics as you. If a business wants to enter social media marketing it isn’t enough to simply start a Facebook page and wait for the Creators, Joiners, Critics, Spectators, and Collectors to find you. Just like you can’t simply start talking out loud at the bus stop and expect someone to stop, listen, and reply (they would probably run, ignore, and avoid). Instead a social media marketer must go out and find the conversations. A lot of successful interactions with the groundswell occur when a business finds conversations already happening and relates to consumers through them. A person may approach a group thinking the conversation is about one topic, when in fact it is about something entirely different and that person must then adapt to contribute in a way relevant to a group. This is the same as a company finding a conversation about them that they may not have expected. Instead of ignoring this topic and starting a new one, it is important to respond to what the groundswell is talking about. Consumers may be talking about and relating to your company in a way you never considered before. So far I have learned that it is important to communicate with the groundswell in a way that interests them! Not only that, but now I’m sure I’ll feel much more comfortable at the water cooler for my first day of work tomorrow.
Years ago when Facebook was primarily for personal use and few businesses were represented, it wasn't uncommon to see your friends liking groups about random quotes from movies, celebrities, or TV shows. For the most part, these fan pages and groups were created by other individual users who had no connection to the original source of the subject. They simply created a place for people with like-minded interests to go and talk about that specific topic. A usual notification on Facebook would read something like, "John Smith likes It is pointless to make your bed when your going to sleep in it again.," or "Jane Doe likes not spilling oil in the gulf of Mexico". Pages linked to other media types were also common such as, "Joanna Clark likes The Office" or "Mary Johnson likes Jay-Z". As Facebook became open to anyone with an email address (instead of strictly college students), businesses launched pages and groups of their own and soon new notifications began to show different trends of Facebook use.
I remember the first time I saw a post that said a friend of mine likes "Gatorade". I paused at the line. It looked so weird compared to the pages generated by users with long random titles. I thought, "Why would someone bother to like a product?" To me it seemed so random and unlike one of the pages above, it didn’t even give someone viewing your personal profile a sense of who you are or your personality. It seemed useless. However with more and more companies making pages it doesn't give me pause to see friends liking, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Skittles, or Verizon Wireless. That wasn’t until yesterday, when I saw that a friend of mine had liked, “Clorox”. This made me pause, and laugh. How Clorox got a 20 year old girl to like their page is kind of impressive in a way and it prompted me to click on the link. I looked through the posts they had recently generated and came across the website http://cloroxconnects.com/pages/home. I found that what Clorox has done is quite interesting.
For any company, it is a challenging prospect to create buzz using such a relatively new medium that at first may seem only most successful with younger generations. Being a company which sells mainly bleach and other cleaning products, the process of creating excitement through social media would appear very difficult. However, Clorox tapped into the basic principles of social media marketing and simply fueled the groundswell. By creating the Facebook page and then the corresponding website, the company immediately put power into the hands of their consumers and watched what happened. On the website, “CloroxConnects” users have the option to join the community as a Partner, Consumer, Inventor, or Employee. From there, opinions are shared about current products as well as possible ideas for new products. What really stands out for me is the fact that consumers can post ideas and suggestions for new products as well as ways to improve current products. Clorox has given every consumer the power to contribute to the future of the company in ways that most pertain to their needs. Social media marketing has provided the company with a direct line to consumers and in turn Clorox is learning more and more about what their customers want and need from the company. With that kind of information, Clorox will be able to improve and innovate in ways most relevant to the people.
