BarnRaisers

If you think there are enough social networks already, Pinterest is proving there’s room for one more. It’s an “online pinboard” that lets us “organize and share the things we love” with others.  It was started in December 2009 and run in various beta formats until its launch in August 2011. Pinterest is managed by a team of noted entrepreneurs and investors from Palo Alto. It has been cited as one of the “50 Best Websites of 2011″ by Time magazine.

The idea is that users click on a bookmarklet in their browser when they find images they like on a web page, or they snap a photo with the Pinterest iPhone app, and then they are asked to categorize and describe the images. A collection of categorized images can be built by one person or can be opened up to contributions from other users.

Here are 12 reasons Pinterest is the social network to watch in 2012.

1. ADOPTION IS AT SAME RATE AS FACEBOOK. Since its launch in August, Pinterest is showing the classic “hockey stick” growth rate and is on the same trajectory as Facebook was at launch. It now attracts over 11,000,000 visitors per month.

2. COMPANY VALUATION HAS INCREASED 5X IN LESS THAN A YEAR. In October 2011, the company secured $27 million in funding from VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz. They valued the company at 200 million, up from $40 million earlier in the year.

3. SOCIAL RITUAL WE REALLY DO “LOVE” TO DO: The creation of a Pinboard around the topics we are passionate about is a a very simple idea. It is also something that reflects a fundamental aspect of our behavior with a very long tradition.

4. SHARING THROUGH A SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS:  When you participate in a pinboard discussion, you not share an interest in the same subject but the particular topic the rest of your group is talking about. The use of the word, “love,” is a company’s selling idea is a strong statement but it is something Pinterest delivers.

5. SENSE OF MUTUAL RESPECT AND RESPONSIBILITY TO OTHERS: Pinterest has Pin Etiquette. Although they merely reinforce responsible social behavior (e.g. Be Nice, Credit Your Source, Avoid Self Promotion, Report Objection Content and Tell Us How to Make Pinterest Better), they stand out as an admirable step other social networks haven’t taken. They also lead to some interesting topics and presentations you might not find on other social network.

6. VISUAL SOCIAL NETWORK: To describe Pinterest from the vantage point of other social networks, it’s like Flickr meets Facebook and bumps into Twitter. Pinboards have a “wall.” “Likes,” “comments,” “followers,” “pins” and “repins” but Pinterest is a visual medium at its foundation where pictures are the content for conversation.

7. WOMEN, WHO ARE MORE SOCIAL THAN MEN, HAVE EMBRACED PINTEREST: It’s clear from even a cursory glance, the majority of Pinterest users are women. This follows the trend of most social networks and, if you were trying to build a killer one, would be the profile you’d want to start.

7. ARTISANS ARE EARLY ADOPTERS: People from cooks, curators to designers have found Pinterest a place for personal and professional expressions just like so many mass appeal audiences that are built from a grass-roots appreciation of the arts.

8. CELEBRITIES ARE CREATING PINBOARDS: Although Kim Kardashian isn’t there yet, Paula Deen is. Maybe this says something about the values of tradition and moral responsibility mentioned earlier.

9. BUSINESSES EXPRESS THEIR PERSONALITY WHEN THEY PROMOTE: Unlike other social networks that offer a business page, Pinterest gives businesses a chance for a different and more personal type of expression. Look at Nordstrom.

10. PINTEREST HAS BEEN SMARTLY BROUGHT TO MARKET: The way Pinterest has been developed reflects smart and sophisticated thinking. Consumer adoption has happened quickly but at a pace where the user experience has been consistently maintained and investment have been secured with business milestones.

11. PINTEREST IS A TRUE BRAND COMMUNITY: A brand community is described as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand that exhibit three traditional markers of community: shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility.” Pinterest meets them all.

12. THERE IS A WAITING LIST TO JOIN: Like any desirable club that strives to maintain its appeal, to avoid simply becoming popular, it has to become exclusive. And that’s what Pinterest has done. To join, you can sign up and be placed on a waiting list or have someone who is already a member send you an invite. Like in life it’s not what you know but who you know, the latter will save time.

Have you heard of Pinterest? What do you think of it? Do you think it will be the social network to watch in 2012?

Digital and social media are held to highly accountable standards when it comes to return on investment (ROI). For the last two years, Social Media Examiner reports the #1 question marketers ask about social media is “How do I measure social media return on investment?”

On this blog, we’ve highlighted over 100 case studies (see related posts at the bottom) and believe digital and social media demonstrate the proven principles of relationship marketing better than any other communication channel, particularly when it comes to customer service.

If there are people in your company who still need convincing, here are 12 digital and social media case studies that prove Customer Service ROI.

1. ACCOR: has over 4000 hotels in 90 countries and has to manage over 5000 comments each month on sites such as TripAdvisor.com and Bookings.com. The company wants to listen, learn and engage with what customers are saying about the Accor brand and approximately 12,000 competitors’ hotels so it can then establish dashboards to act on the data. Accor has found this type of customer service not only improves the company’s online reputation, it results in double-digit sales increases for key brands like Novotel.

2. ALASKA AIR: Is the first carrier in the world to let customers check-in from the internet and at self-service kiosks. Traditionally, weather delays and cancellation cause airlines to pull agents off inbound sales calls and handle affected customers. The result is many customers are not handled effectively or in time plus new bookings are lost. The internet provided a more time sensitive way to personally handle affected passengers without tying up sales staff. The result: Revenue and ROI increased because each customer costs 54 cents to re-ticket over the internet versus $1.60 on a live call; live agents can handle only 500 calls/hour while their web site can handle 20,000 calls/hour; just as important, not one negative comment occurred when the company made this switch.

3. AT&T: Has over 1.6 million fans on their Facebook page and a staff of 20 to engage, manage conversations and, when appropriate, encourage sales. The company trains and educates this team. Surveys show AT&T’s Facebook staff gets some of their best customer service ratings while also delivering some of the company’s highest sales per employees.

4. BEST BUY (Twelp Force): Gives employees the opportunity to help consumers on Twitter. Participation is voluntary and the community grows to 2,200 employees within 3 months. They respond to over 13,000 customers on Twitter answering questions, concerns, and opinions. The Twitter feed @twelpforce now counts over 40,000 followers and the number of questions averages 100-125 per day. It is considered a key value-add by customers and the company.

5. CARE ONE DEBT RELIEF SERVICES: Opens an online community on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in 2009 to help consumers with questions about debt relief, consolidation and budgeting. By going directly to social networks, there is no registration process and the company’s staff is able to give them a faster response. Lead generation is 179% higher, forms are completed 6X faster, customers make their first payment at a rate that was 7X better than non-social media customers.

6. COMCAST: Much has been written about @ComcastCares and the way Frank Eliason helped the company better handle the 3 million customer service calls (most unhappy) the company gets each year through blogs and Twitter with 3 simple words: Can I help? The company reviews 6000 blog posts and about 2000 Tweets each day to service more customers in a better and faster way than traditional inbound service. Here’s Frank explaining just what Comcast did.

7. DIRECTV: Has problems with churn among its 18.5 U.S. customers as more cable service develop a presence in satellite-based television. The best way to reduce churn is to increase customer satisfaction and one way to do it is optimize field technician routes for the 600,000 service calls received each day. DIRECTV implements Oracle GoldenGate to consolidate disparate data marts into a central warehouse. This improves the timeliness, granularity, and accuracy of customer and service data. It enables managers and more than 15,000 call center agents to conduct real-time data queries and analysis throughout the day—using dashboards, e-mail delivery, and end-user reporting tools—eliminating the reliance on outdated weekly or monthly reports.

8. FORD: The way we buy cars is changing. A 2011 survey of 2,485 consumers found that 28% visit websites five times or more during their car-buying process but only 11% visit dealerships that many times. Ford, in the UK, designs a multi-channel contact and lead management system based on its intelligentContact (iContact) platform. It manages every customer contact and increases agent efficiency by 25%. Where some calls used to take a minute to answer, now they are answered within 20 seconds.

9. H&R BLOCK: Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business.  H&R uses Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get It Right” social media campaign.  The effort secures 1,500,000 unique visitors and answers 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media “Get It Right” program. Here’s how Amy Worley explains how the company got it right.

10. LENOVA: Sees customers are talking about its products in third-party forums and is worried about being left out of these important conversations. Using a peer-to-peer support community in social media, Lenovo listens to customer experiences and establishes ownership of any problem. The results: 20% reduction in laptop support call rates, an increase in agent productivity, a shortened problem resolution cycle, and an increase in Net Promoter Scores…plus ideas from the community result in new product innovations.

11. MACY’S: Handles 130 orders every minute online from over 1,000,000 unique visitors every day. Macys.com and Bloomingdales.com link production to online orders and give access to 100 employees to optimize customer flow. For the first time, Macy’s experiences no downtime during holiday peak period and increases online sales +40% for December and 29% for the year.

12. SETON HALL UNIVERSITY: relies on tuition for revenue. They discover incoming freshmen are forming lasting impressions about colleges by reading a university’s Facebook page before they go to university’s website. Seton Hall gets actively involved in Facebook conversations to answers questions, participate in discussions and guide potential incoming freshmen. They tag the web traffic coming from Facebook to the website. Tuitions coming from Facebook are +18% and deposits are +25% than those who do not consult Facebook.

We’ve produced results like these for our client and have case studies of our own to share on the website. We’re proud of the results and ROI achieved and the demonstration these business principles work. We’d be glad to share what we see working so effectively in the marketplace for your brand.

Do these digital and social media case studies prove Customer Service ROI to you?

Related Posts

33 case studies that prove Social Media ROI

67 case studies that prove Social Media ROI

16 case studies that prove Social CRM

12 case studies that prove Social Commerce

Peter Drucker said: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.”  This succinctly stated truth is the essential requirement for every brand.

Although Peter left us in 2005, I think he would agree the spark that keeps the customer relationship going is relevant content. It’s a fundamental way to create trust by proving you understand what your audience values.

For some more revealing percentages, here are 42 reasons every brand needs a content marketing strategy in 2012.

1. 93% of CMO’s plan to use some form of user generated content in their marketing effort this year
2. 92% of shoppers have more confidence in information sought online versus a salesperson or some other source
3. 90% of all purchase decisions begin on the internet
4. 90% of CMO’s participate in an average of 3 or more social media activities
5. 84% of brand managers says they use online videos on their brand websites for marketing product and services
6. 81% of CMO’s say they plan to track social media activities to revenues in order to determine ROI. However, only 40% actually do.
7. 80% of traffic to a web site begins with search query
8. 78% of marketers believe content is key to the success of their organization but only 49 have a content strategy in place
9. 78% of B2B marketers say generating high quality leads is their top priority
10. 77% of search users choose organic over paid search listings
11. 74% of consumers rely on social networks to help them make a purchase decision
12. 73% of companies now use social media for marketing
13. 66% of companies report using online video for brand awareness; 21% for lead generation and 12% for ecommerce/sales
14. 66% of marketers says their greatest concern is lead generation; only 17% say it’s brand awareness
15. 65% of consumers report a digital brand experience changed their opinion about a product or service
16. 62% click a link on the first page of search engine results
17. 61% of marketers say they implement a social media strategy for lead generation
18. 60% of retailers use customer reviews as a form of content marketing
19. 60% of brand managers says they are going to increase spending for online videos in the next 12 months
20. 55% of the time people spend on the internet is directly related to content consumption
21. 55% of companies use case studies as part of their content marketing strategy
22. 51% use a blog for content marketing
23. 51% of marketers say they are going to increase content marketing spending within the next 12 months
24. 49% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation from a social network
25. 44% of all content shared on internet comes from Facebook
26. 43% of companies says they are writing “white papers” and sharing them online as part of their content marketing
27. 43%of companies report higher click-through on RSS feeds with reviews than without
28. 42% of consumers say, when shopping online, they prefer to look for an answer online
29. 40% or Republican and 38% of Democrats use social network sites to become more polictically involved
30. Only 38% of consumers say they watch an online video in its entirety
31. 32% of consumers now browse or research products at least once a month on mobile devices
32. 26% higher conversion results for products when they have product reviews
33. 26% of total marketing budgets are allocated to content marketing by B2B marketers
34. 25% of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
35. Only 21% of branded mobile apps now contain videos. However, 70 of brand manager says they are going to add videos to their mobile apps within the next 12 months
36. 14% of B2B marketers say they send e-mails on an opt-out basis; down from 23% a year ago
37. Only 2.6% of all brands views occur through off-site embeds of branded videos
38. 300 other companies compete with Facebook for content sharing
39. 30 minutes is the average that people watch online videos every day
40. E-mail providers, such as Yahoo, AOL and Gmail, all use the number of time a consumers hits the “report spam” button as their #1 criteria for sending future e-mails to that consumer
41. Companies with over 1000 employees use an average of 9 content marketing tactics
42. Companies with under 10 employees use an average of 6 content marketing tactics

Laurence Peter, the educator who developed the Peter Principle said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up someplace else.” The numbers clearly state content marketing is on the rise but, before you jump in, have a content marketing strategy.

NOTE: The facts and statistics in this post all feature studies conducted within the last year. The sources include: Nielsen, eMarketer, comScore, Edelman Digital, BazaarVoice, MediaPost, Webbiquity among others with appreciation.

The number, 42, was deliberately chosen to acknowledge the great work Junta42 and Joe Pulizzi do in content marketing.

In the compilation of the stats, the best infographic I came across on content marketing comes from Marketo and was passed along by Wendy Emerson at business2community.com because a picture is worth 1000 words. It is below.

Will your brand have a content marketing strategy to create and keep customers in 2012?

The Pew Research Center released findings this month about our social media behavior.

The facts and figures are telling, but more telling is the insights they reveal about our character as human beings.

Here are 7 insights into what social media usage reveal about our character.

1. FRIENDS AND FAMILY ARE OUR #1  PRIORITY: The top reason we use social networks is to stay in touch with friends, family members and connect with old friends we have lost touch. Meeting new people or interacting with celebrities are much less relevant than deepening bonds with those who are already important.

2. PEOPLE OF EVERY AGE WANT TO BE INVOLVED: A common misconception about social media is older demographics don’t use it because they’re either not computer savvy or didn’t grow up with social media. Not true. In 2011, we see, for the first time, saturation among the youngest demographic while the oldest (65+) is growing at the fastest rate.

3. ENGAGEMENT IS GOOD: When asked to describe their experiences on social media, positive comments like “good,” “fun,” “interesting” and “great” dominate testimony as this tag cloud visualizes of engagement experience.

4. WOMEN ARE MORE SOCIAL THAN MEN: We known for some time women are the networkers of the species. This is confirmed across social network with the exception of LinkedIn.

5. IT’S TOUGHER TO BE A TEEN: Are people kind or unkind to one another on social networks? When this question is asked, the answer, for the most part the answer is yes but teens navigate a more uncertain social world.

6. TEENS CAN HAVE A DARK SIDE ONLINE:  When teens (12-17) are asked how people behave online, the negatives outweigh the positives. A good number of the descriptors are troubling. If you’re a parent reading this, you should take away social media, like the internet in general, is a different world for teens than adults. Take the time to help your teen through it and tell them you understand what they’re going through.

7. TEENS KNOW WHAT’S RIGHT: When asked how people should behave online, the answers change and a different picture is painted.  Teens, like all of us, know what the right behavior is.

Taken together, these findings show extraordinary growth of social media bringing out a primal part of our character – to look out for one another.

If you don’t know, The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It is a charitable trust that gives away its research for free.

To learn more about some of the extraordinary work the Pew Research Center is doing, take a look at this video from Mark Schaefer, marketing/business consultant and a fellow Rutgers MBA faculty member, with Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

What do these insights into our social media behavior say to you?

In 1899, the first edition of Who’s Who in America was published.  Its’ purpose: To profile leaders influencing the nation’s development. For a long time, we’ve accepted third-party authorities to tell us who influences and who matters.

When Klout was launched in 2009, it quickly became the authority for Who’s Who in social media. It used data from Twitter and Facebook, then LinkedIn, Foursquare and YouTube, to measure a person’s influence across their social network. Authority is better if it’s earned rather than assumed. Does Klout deserve to be the authority?

Here are 6 foundational faults with Klout.

1. A ROLE NOT CLEARLY DEFINED: Klout assumed, not earned, the position of “Standard of Influence” (in social media). They said they “measure influence based on your ability to drive action.” What action? Unlike Who’s Who that says it looked for actions that prove influence on our nation’s development, the action Klout drives is not clear, nor does it result in real positive change.

2. SELLING OUT: A benefit to Klout is you can get Klout Perks. They get “distributed to select influencers based on their topics of authority, location and score.”  Isn’t that discriminatory and doesn’t it encourage people to sell out?

3. NO CASE STUDIES: On this blog, we promote the business value of social media to brands. You can find close to 100 case studies that prove social media ROI (see related posts at the bottom) based on hard sales measurements across every business sector (e.g. B2C, B2B, profit, non-profit) and social network (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs). After two years, we can’t find one substantial case study from Klout. Hmm.

4. GAMING AND MANIPULATING, NOT INFLUENCING: But, with very little searching, we can find plenty of anecdotal stories from people who have gamed the system like this one from a researcher who set out one week to drive up her Klout score and, with very little effort, did.

5. UNEXPLAINED GLITCHES: In late October, Klout launched a new algorithm. To many of us, it not clear why except it caused a dramatic and unexpected decrease in the Klout scores to most users. At about the same time, Google announced it reworked its algorithm to give greater importance to recency of content because so many people now look to social networks for the most recent news. We all got it and it made perfect sense. Can anyone explain the new or old, for that matter, Klout algorithm?

6. SOCIAL MEDIA SHOULDN’T BE ABOUT KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES: Do we need a status symbol for participating in social media? Shouldn’t we just do it because we enjoy it.

This week, the Pew Study came out with findings about how we use social media:

• 67 percent said the major reason they use social networks is to stay in touch with current friends
• 64 percent to stay in touch with family members and 50 percent to connect with old friends they had lost touch with.

Pew didn’t mention the percentage that was checking their Klout scores. What does this say to you?

Related Posts

34 case studies that prove Social Media ROI

67 case studies that prove Social Media ROI

16 case studies that prove Social CRM

12 case studies that prove Social Commerce ROI