Duri's Zone

Yes there are the occasional fast wins, but the concept of a “one night stand” does not exist in social media. If you’re in it to win it, you gotta be in it for the long haul! Then and only then can you win it, and it, and IT.

You gotta connect with your friends quite often, be genuine, add value and have fun!

They gotta go out with you once, twice, thrice … before they decide to add you to their G+ inside circle, and only then will they decide to Vidi (consider) and Vici (purchase).

In social media it goes more like:

Veni, Veni, Veni
Veni, Vidi
Veni, Vidi, Vidi
Vici

However, once you’ve established that channel of trust, they will Vici & Vici & Vici

And when they Vici, their friends will know, and in turn they will Vidi, and they will Vici

That’s 190 friends on Average if you were in Canada (130 in the USA).

That means you would ONLY need 100,000 fans on Facebook to reach half the Canadian population!! IF, you connected with them often, were genuine and were fun.

So it’s worth the investment, take it slow, be genuine, be fun, and before you know it, you will stop needing to spill millions of $$ on TV ads, the channel they all fast forward, and start reaping the benefits of making your customers your friends.

And it’s not that difficult for brands to connect with people. I mean look around you, after all, your brand is made of people; it’s their creativity, their connectivity and their perseverance that CREATED your brand, so remind me, when did we decide that people should not handle a brand’s voice online??

Every route to all other stores is a two way street, so why would you want your customers to be stuck on a 500 mile one-way street with no u-turns, exits or fly overs to get to you?

Think about it …

As many of you may have been hearing over the past 6 months, the spring of Arab revolutions has been a long one, and is no where nearing the end.

As one of millions of Arab youth who grew up in the middle east (yes I still consider myself young!), I grew accustomed to facts of life unlike any my fellow Canadian friends  grew up with.

For example, I grew up accepting the same people ruling our region for decades without anyone questioning the legitimacy of their rule.

I grew up fearing anyone in uniform, and understanding at a very early age that men in blue uniform are above the law. And that fearful respect can get you out of trouble.

I grew up accepting the frown of every public servant whenever I went to process a govt document, as if I owed them for every ounce of blood that flows through my veins.

I grew up accepting the fact that 50% of our TV broadcasts consisted of patriotic chants glorifying the ground our god-like leader treads upon.

Deep inside, I grew up resenting all that BS, having been raised by a politician/mother who always swam against the current and refused the status quo of our nations.

Those where a few of many reasons that made me and my wife pack our bags and head to the True North, The Strong & Free: Canada.

I wanted my kids to live a life where the word “choice” was a way of life, not a fictional theory.

I wanted my kids to grow up in a multicultural environment, where they learn to appreciate, embrace and respect all cultures, religions and ethnicity. And have real friends from all backgrounds.

I wanted my children to be treated as equal citizens in a country that respects their right to be different.

Most of all, I wanted my children to never take fore-granted their right to chose their leaders, and most importantly, to be able to become a leader one day.

Social media may have changed the way we communicate and market our products and services in Canada, but in the middle east, social media has changed the way people dream.

It was social media that mobilized a few thousand Tunisian & Egyptian youth to do a stress test of their governments understanding of web 2.0

It was social media that allowed 80 thousand Egyptian youth to create a Facebook fan page for a young man called Khaled Saeed, who was brutally murdered by Egyptian state police . The event that triggered the revolution that toppled Husni Mubarak, one of the worst dictators known in Arab History, a revolution that will be taught in schools for centuries to come.

It was a YouTube video of Bou-Azizi, the Tunisian young cart salesman who set himself on fire to protest the brutality of  Tunisian state police, that sent hundreds of thousands of Tunisian youth to the streets of Tunisia igniting a revolution that toppled the ruling dictator Bin Ali.

Yemen followed, so did Libya, Syria, Bahrain … and it’s only the begining.

For this largely apolitical,  non-religious, web savvy group of Arab youth, It took one success story for them to wipe the slate clean, and replace decades of oppression and loss of hope with a bright flame of freedom.

Their weapon? Social Media.

They understood that no matter how well equipped and brutal the armies of their regimes are, no army is strong enough to annihilate 80,000 fans of a Facebook fan page, fans who have 100s of friends, fans who decided to  take it to the street.

They understood that no traditional media blackout can block SMS, MMS, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter … etc. So they shared, and shared and shared. So much that every news network in the world had daily access to each and every event happening on their streets.

At times I questioned their ability to pull it off, but a wise woman once told me: Never again will Egyptians be stopped. They now know the way to Tahreer square, all they have to do is get there. It was true, in a nation with 80+ million people, people who decided social media is the way forward. There was no army that could stand in the face of their social stampede.

For once in my life, I can tell my kids about something that happened in 2011 that may bring them pride of their ancestral land, instead of “in 500 BC, we invented algebra”

For the first time, people in my region have tasted real freedom, freedom that did not come in a shipping box imported from overseas, freedom that was home grown, freedom that was well deserved.

Not a military coup, not a extremist plot, but a genuine no agenda movement from social media savvy youth – like me – who wished for more for their kids. Youth who traveled the world through the WWW, learned the meaning of choice, and challenged the status quo.

The best part? Well it’s that these rusty decade-old regimes never saw it coming!

So thank you social media, for succeeding where all BS political opposition parties failed. Thank you for succeeding in mobilizing real, educated, moderate, ambitious youth who want nothing but RESPECT.

And thank you Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain & Syria for setting new examples on what my cultural background can be.

And for the upcoming 2.0 revolutions I say: Onwards and upwards!

As a Social Media practitioner who spends 8 hours every day preaching the value of social media and consumer engagement to clients and colleagues, there are no brighter moments in my day than those where I see my beliefs put into practice.

Yesterday, I got to experience one of those moments, and it was absolutely a MasterCard moment!

To cut a long story short, I had been trying to change my monthly payment option on my MasterCard for three months.

I submitted a request through my bank’s front desk, then through my bank’s account manager, then through the call center, and all went to no avail.

After giving up on 1-800 numbers and front desk people, I resorted to the web.

On Aug 25^th at 1:44 PM, after exhausting every last drop of patience and reason in me, I tweeted the following:



Less than an hour later, I get the following Tweet from MasterCard:

Clearly it wasn’t a coincidence

Lucky for me, it turns out that they have an always-on listening post monitoring all Social Media conversation about MasterCard and flagging any major incidents.

So I follow MasterCard on Twitter as requested and we exchange direct messages where I explain my predicament, share my contact info, and they very professionally absorb my messages, take all my details and send me the following DM at 4:30 PM :

At 4:31 PM (ONE MINUTE LATER!) I receive a call from the US from an amazing person called Dan, who works at MasterCard USA and who – very respectfully – listens to me ranting again about my problem.

After I finish ranting, Instead of trying to fill my head with apologies, Dan simply tells me:” I have all the details, I am not going to give you excuses and promises, but I can tell you that I will be calling you in 24 hours to tell you how we will solve this problem”

The next morning I get a call from someone at MasterCard Canada who confirms that my requested update has been done effective immediately, and offers me a compensation for the mishap in reward points.

Less than an hour later Dan calls and confirms that I received the call from MC Canada and asks me if I am now satisfied with the way things have been sorted out.

Needless to say, by then Dan had become my newly found hero and MasterCard turned into the brand that wooed me, so I couldn’t help but Tweet to my followers:

And:

And MasterCard, who was clearly still listening posted this:

What Dan from MasterCard and his Social Media team accomplished:

• In less than 24 hours, they turned a highly frustrated customer on the verge of cutting all ties with a brand into a wooed customer who felt like a king!
• Proved to me and to all my 1,000 + followers that they are a brand that listens, engages, admits mistakes and fixes them
• Proved to the social media fanatic in me that they are a brand that fully understands the dynamics in today’s media world where consumer facts (positive and negative) outweigh brand facts
• They also showed me that they are a brand that understands that you cannot hide from your customers anymore and that the best way to solve a problem is to address it.
• But what impressed me the most is that MasterCard has a fully functional early warning system that works! A system that connects social media people to regional marketing people to senior management to local management. All working for one purpose, ensuring customer satisfaction.

So thank you MasterCard for giving me my own personal social media case study, and for proving to me and thousands of Canadians (and their friends) that Social Media is the way forward.

Important Note: I am sure that many people who read my blog know me or know of me and this message is not for you, but for those who don’t know me well, I just wanted to confirm that MasterCard DID NOT ask me to write or say anything on their behalf, and that I am writing this blog post out of pure admiration to their social media monitoring process, and to Dan

The quality of a social network is a topic that is surfacing more and more these days, with numerous leading social networks trying to put a qualitative value against their quantitative supremacy.

No one questions the supremacy and reach of Facebook for example, with well over 300 Million addicted users worldwide – 14 Million in Canada. But what is the true value of a Facebook fan?

Is it truly $170 as per latest reports?

What about Twitter? It’s true it lags waaaay behind in terms of numbers, but do they offer more marketable users?

Which social network is closing people down and getting them to stick to their comfort zones? and which one is opening them up? And what effect does that have – marketing wise – on their consumer behavior?

If you do a deeper study of the average Facebook user, you’ll see that for them it’s all about “Me Time”; My family, My friends, My colleagues. All connections are permission based, with very little space for “strangers with experience”.

What people connected on Facebook have in common already exists, with very little self discovery happening.

This sets a very introverted tone for their social experience from start to finish; they log in with a clear agenda: check friend’s updates and pictures, upload their own, and possibly go over their latest pics to decide if they still look good sober.

Think of your family’s annual Thanks giving dinner. This is Facebook. You know what you’re getting into, you go in with a tail of gossip to confirm, and come out with more.

Now imagine the guy from the infamous ‘Grey Power’ ads crashing in on your family Thanks Giving dinner trying to sell auto insurance. Not a good sight, No? Other than your grandma possibly punching him right in the face for labeling her “grey and old”.

This is Facebook. A group of people seeking me time, and for the majority of the time wanting to keep it that way.

Not buying this? Go ahead and Search for the largest brand fan pages on Facebook (100,000 fans +) and you will see that – on average – daily user interactions do not exceed 5-10 fan posts.

In fact, you don’t even have to visit the fan page to like it, most people who ever liked a brand on Facebook have seen it in their friend’s feed (Joe likes XYZ brand) and clicked the like link without ever having to visit the fan page.

Moving on to Twitter, a bunch of people enter an environment where – most of the time – the only connection between them and the person they’re following is a common interest.

On Twitter, people connect with other people they’ve never met, because they find them interesting.

The wonder of eMarketer’s “strangers with experience” is at full play on Twitter. A true “We time” environment where people are always open to learning something new. Where forming opinions is not a challenge, but a given.

Yet very few marketers are taking advantage of this qualitatively rich social consumer environment, as most are still measuring social networks by the yard. For now at least.

Twitter may be the youngest and least experienced sibling in the social family, but – marketing wise – it is most certainly the most promising. I know this because sometime last year we increased one of our client’s quarterly sales by 85% due to a well executed activation on Twitter.

At the end, in a world of on-demand digital marketing, size no longer matters. Its not how big your database is, how high your website traffic is or how massive your fan group is, it’s how receptive and willing they are to listen to something new.

And for all you Marketers out there who are still in doubt, if you are looking for the medium that is the amalgamation of your most receptive audience – let me introduce you to Twitter!

I have been reading a lot of blogs / articles over the past few weeks debating the legitimacy of blogger outreach campaigns, specifically the very sticky topic of paying bloggers for reviews.

As someone working in the Canadian social media space, here are my 2 cents:

- The great Adam Smith said in his Economics theory “The Invisible Hand” that in a perfect competition market, demand and supply offer an automated price correction mechanism.

I believe that credibility will have the same “Invisible Hand” effect on the Social Media market.

- I was lucky enough to sit down with a number of amazing Canadian social media influencers a few weeks ago, where we spoke about various social media topics. One that left a big light bulb hovering over my head was the one I had with @everythingmom who – like everyone else I spoke to that night – is a strong believer that the BIGGEST asset social media influencers in today’s world have is CREDIBILITY.

We spoke about how – in today’s world – It’s not how well designed your blog is, or how many banners you have on it or even how much traffic you have, it’s credibility within the consumer space as an authentic consumer voice that really counts.

- Advertising Agencies in today’s world are no longer in the business of marketing, they are in the business of “forming opinions”, and in a media world dominated by “consumer facts”, brands are certainly starting to understand the importance of reaching out to consumers – and more importantly – “Super Consumers” to aid them in building a better case for their products and services.

- It’s the marketers’ duty to preserve this massive, credible consumer voice by protecting the consumer status those key bloggers have and never transform or allow them to be transformed into just another media channel.

- It’s the bloggers’ duty to protect their credibility and always put consumers and the community first

But between this and that, left to its own devices, I am a strong believer that the market will correct all.

If Bloggers accept to be paid for positive reviews for products that don’t deserve it, reviews that will result in consumers buying these products to find out they are crap, everyone will lose.

The consumer will suffer, Bloggers will lose their credibility and their followers, and so will the product.

However, if Bloggers only endorse products / services that they have tested and cross checked against alternatives, consumer and community value, and ended up loving them, then everyone wins.

Bloggers will gain credibility and more followers, so will the product, and the consumer will be the ultimate winner.

Not only that, but they will also force other brands / products to live up to the standards and benefit the entire community.

Its all about foresight, those who think short-term gain, will face long term shameful loss, and those who think long-term gain, may lose some of the hype at the beginning, but will definitely get more than they bargained for at the end.

One of the legitimate ways bloggers can and should be paid – in my opinion – is when they are involved in media production and/or contest administration, where they are sought after as “delivery experts” and where it does not involve them having to essentially market or praise a brand, but to merely execute a quiz to their audience or offer video coverage for an event for example.

And even then, it must be an activation for a brand they “trust” and a cause they believe in, and should be done in absolute transparency.

At the end, and as per the great Spider Man movie quote, I believe that: “with great power comes great responsibility”.

The US-FTC may have done a great job in setting the ground for social media consumer protection when they issued their 2009 “blogger disclosure” memo for all paid / free product blogger endorsements , but it will be up to the true social media market leaders; those “Super Consumers” aka bloggers, to be the true protectors of their followers rights.

Social Media ROI remains to be a debate in today’s world. Does it work? How can we measure effect on sales? How does it compare to other media channels?

There is certainly no lack of knowledge on what Social Media tactics are out there, be it a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, a You Tube channel ..etc , however, the true essence of Social Media is not the WHAT but the WHY?

Enter search.

If the challenge in yesterday’s world was SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and ensuring your website ranks high on a search engine page, the challenge in today’s world has become actually OWNING that search page! Or at least, part of it.

With 83% of Canadian’s searching more than 33 millions keywords a day (eMarketer), Google has become the true headquarters of today’s brands. If you exist on that first search page when your customers are searching for a relevant term, you exist on their shopping list, if not, you most probably won’t.

So the challenge is eliminating as many “other” options on that search page, buy ensuring multiple results appear for your brand when customers search.

What does that have to do with Social Media?

Everything!

Go to google.com in any country you live in, and search for: Real Beauty. You will notice that Dove – the leading Unilever brand – literally OWNS the search page.

Its not because they created 100 websites for Dove and did an amazing SEO job with them, it’s simply because they created an amazing – award winning – viral video called evolution, back in 2005, which resulted in tens of millions of Youtube views, blogs, discussion forums, fan pages and other user generated content that allowed Dove to own the search term representing the big ideal behind their brand: Real Beauty!

Apple is another example. Previously known as a fruit! In today’s world, a man called Steve Jobs created such a powerful brand with amazing “social currency” that it literally erased the word Apple (fruit) from the first search pages on Google. Try it, search for the word Apple on google, you will notice that there is almost not one mention of the word as a fruit on the first few pages.

Again, all because of the massive user generated content that comes in the form of reviews, videos, comments and fan clubs for the Apple computer brand / ipod / ipad … etc.

A more recent living example is yours truly.

Almost a couple of years ago, I moved with my wife and kids to Toronto. A new – big – city where our Dubai savviness equaled to next to nothing. So we did what any reasonable couple in today’s world do when they needed something, we Googled, and Googled and just when we thought we couldn’t Google anymore, you guessed it, we Googled.

We Googled best home locations, best schools for the kids, best TO summer camps, best car resale value and of course, best Italian food!

So it was one of those days, both me and DW were craving Italian food – namely a good old big serving of Risotto. So we took to the web and searched for: Best Risotto in Toronto. We browsed through a Google map, found different options for Italian restaurant reviews, and one caught my eye that said “great food, amazing ambiance, great service, tastes like my moms Risotto”

Clearly I never met the guy (or his mother), but something in that review sounded more genuine to me.

So we arranged a baby sitter, and headed to “Noce” on 875 Queen St West, enjoyed an amazing Italian dinner at a very cosy restaurant where the head Chef keeps roaming around checking on everyone, the food was fresh and fancy, and the Risotto kicked major butt.

The “stranger with experience” was right, and we ended up putting our money where his mouth was: Noce, and recommending it to 10s of friends.

So to answer the WHY in Social Media? It is so you can generate enough positive word of mouth across multiple social media touch points so you may own more of that Google search page.

And for those who still say there is no ROI from Social Media, I say: The proof is in the Risotto.

In most Social Media client meetings, the first thing we always tell our clients is: there are no gurus in Social Media, the fact is, we are all
merely learning from our consumers.

However, if I must name a social media Guru, it would most definitely be Master Yoda from Star Wars. Wasn’t he the one who said: “To become a leader, a follower you first must be” (or something!)

Other than having the force on his side, he obviously used a listening tool back in the 70s to listen to conversations between Darth Vader and Darth Maul and save the republic.

He also had the vision and foresight to predict how Twitter would function 30 years later, the tool that redefined leadership and following on a global scale.

One of the things marketers are learning from consumers about Social Media is you cannot use it to market every product.

Unlike one-way communication channels, when you dangle the “bait” in Social Media consumers can “bite”, and if they don’t like the “taste” they will let everyone know and scare all the other “fish” away.

What’s the solution you say? Well it’s Definitely NOT avoiding Social Media! Cause you simply can’t.

Brands never built Social Media and will never be able to bring it down.

So if Social Media is not working for your product, then you should seriously consider changing it – your product that is.

This is what the computer giant DELL did through ideastorm.com and what Frank Eliason did for Comcast through comcast cares on Twitter.

The fact is, in today’s world, Social Media has succeeded where most Consumer Protection Boards failed; It brought the consumer back to the center of attention.

So even if big companies spend 10s of Millions of Dollars on one-way media polishing their brand, unless they connect with their consumers and count the like and dislike votes they have on their Facebook fan page, they will never breakthrough and achieve real innovation and growth.

So Brands of the world … “May the consumer force be with you”.

In its simplest definition, Social Media Marketing is getting our happy customers to tell our potential customers that they’re happy.

That may sound like a simple goal, but in reality, we all know that it isn’t.

In most conversations we have with clients on Social Media Marketing, the question that clients ask the most is: what do we do with all the social media noise we will be triggering?

The two key stages that mark the Social Media Marketing cycle are: proactive social media marketing and reactive social media marketing.

While proactive social media marketing aims at triggering mass, credible, positive word of mouth, reactive social media aims at managing and channeling all that conversation.

As part of my work at Ogilvy Canada, I developed a proprietary social media response chart that aimed at mapping out all possible conversation scenarios and the required response for each of these scenarios (See Image: Ogilvy Social Media Response Chart ™)

The idea behind building this chart was to act as a decision making tool for clients engaging in social media to minimize the anxiety that comes with it and ensure proper management of social media conversations.

In the proposed process, each scenario was mapped according to three factors: tonality, authority & frequency. Each scenario was then given a priority level between 1-5 and a proposed action.

Any decisions taken through this process aim at achieving one of three key social media tasks: amplifying the positive, neutralizing the negative or activating the neutral.

Between this and that, the only true guarantee for a successful social media activation remains the product itself. Consumer sentiment can never truly be manipulated, dictated or timed, so always make sure you are working with the right products and services before proposing a social media plan.

Businesses in today’s world better be aware when they make brand claims. Not only do “strangers with experience” have 4 times more pull than traditional advertising, but consumers in today’s world also have two new best friends: Google & Social Media!

So much that my token cynical statement to my close friends whenever someone fires a big claim is: I CAN GOOGLE IT!

And the fact that over 70% of Canadians have mobile access to web (according to an article published in Business Week – Jan 2010) is not helping. People now have access to consumer based truths on the go, truths that they prefer 4 times over brand truths, according to an eMarketer study.

Whether its booking a hotel room at Blue Mountain, buying a house in Oakville, choosing an Italian restaurant on Queen Street or going to your movie of choice, consumers today know that there are alternatives to banners and TV ads to deciding on their vendor of choice.

Brands can no longer hide behind protective TV screens and enjoy one way communications, the sleeping giant has been finally awoken … and it doesn’t seem it’s going to sleep anytime soon.

The fact that Google paid $1.6 Billion to 3 college kids back in Oct 2006 for a simple video upload engine they had built 16 months earlier wasn’t stupidity, it was foresight. They knew that the broadcasting power of consumers will soon match and surpass that of media giants such as Time Warner and an amateur wedding dance video with a Chris Brown song will get 44 Million views in 7 months and be featured on all top TV shows.

Whether brands like it or not, consumers are loving the new shift in media loyalty. Today you can Tweet about your frustration from a certain service provider and wake up to a call from their VP and if you enjoy a high authority score in Social Media, maybe get a few free services here and there to ensure you are kept happy.

I have heard many people say: “Social Media revolution is a phase that shall soon pass, and that we should not give up on traditional media yet”.

To those nostalgic people I say, the world of PUSH media is slowly, but surely coming to an end.

TIVO and PVR are replacing TV

iTunes and iPods are replacing Radio

YouTube and VEVO are replacing MTV

The world of PULL media is here to stay, and one day in the very foreseen future, Search and Social Media will become the two biggest consumer engagement channels for brands who want to stay in the communication loop, and many noticeably have started making the shift.

For those brands still living by the: “As Seen on TV” statement, I say start working on your products and making sure they are up to consumer standards, because very soon “As Seen by the Consumer” will be the constitution all brands will live by.