Welcome to the Afterlike

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Three things Brands do that turn off Superfans.

Ignore

There's a difference between not interjecting yourself as final authority into every discussion, and completely ignoring your fan base. It's the old cocktail party metaphor. These are your guests, but not your audience. They want to know you're at the party, an occasional hello, and they want to see that you're listening and weighing in where it matters. Showing appropriate care to upset customers is important, but don't just focus on the negative and ignore the positive contributors, or they'll feel like they don't matter and won't come back. 

The Stats: We looked at a random sample of over 2,000 comments across 20 brands and found that when the brand interacts, fans are a full 425% more likely to create additional positive comments within the next ten days.

Lump

I'll admit it, I'm not great with names the first time I meet someone. I still can't stand meeting someone for the fourth time, after we've chatted in some depth, and having them look me right in the eye and introduce themselves like we've never met. Whether it happens online or in person, it doesn't feel good, especially for a fan that strongly identifies with your brand. Try to keep track of your very best fans, remember what they've shared, and respond with some context that shows you've been paying attention. You'll be surprised how far it goes. Also, having an informed sense of the different types of superfans you have can be really informative, from understanding how to motivate them to planning a balanced and effective content strategy.

Hand out megaphones.

Because nothing says authentic, valuable conversation like a megaphone. I hate the megaphone as an icon for anything advocacy or word of mouth related. We have a very strict no-megaphone policy for anything Crowdly design or copy related. Yelling and talking are two very different skill sets, put the megaphone away or you'll quickly end up with no one to talk with. To that point, don't expect your fans to be mini-megaphones you can strategically distribute and have them yell your canned message at their own particular group of friends. Many marketing purveyors might offer the claim of mini-megaphones at a per action rate, but you're buying yellers, and usually those willing to sell at the cheapest conversion price. Great if you want noise, but if you'd rather be heard, respect your superfans enough to encourage them to share in their own voices.

Any superfan no-nos you've seen, either managing a brand or as a fan? Let us know in the comments below.

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Spreading the seeds of superfan disdain

Nutella, in the words of one of literally thousands of angry fans on the brand's Facebook wall just "went from hero to zero with this boneheaded stunt." Their capital offense was in their regards to their recent heavy handed moderation of "World Nutella day" a successfully viral and completely authentic fan organized celebration in it's seventh successful year. Nutella recently wandered into the brand love party waving a cease and desist and demanding the event and related fan site be shut down, somewhat akin to the curmudgeonly grandparents from Weird Science swinging their tweed hats at the celebrating crowd. You can read about it here: http://huff.to/13IKIhG Apparently, someone at Nutella corporate legal wants it to be known that they won't stand for boloney. Someone on their social media team should have known better. 

On social, your brand identity is what your best fans say about you. The only brand free from the risk of audience interpretation is one that's completely ignored. As brands, we can, and should, say what we are – and say it clearly, persuasively, and authentically. If we do right, and we’re lucky enough that good people speak well of us, we can work to shape that conversation, but we can not control it. We’re in the business of conversations, not monologues. Great brands are great hosts, and have a real seat at the table with their fans. Great hosts provide a meeting place, foster conversation, and introduce relevant people. They don’t talk just about themselves, and they don’t shout over any competing conversation.

Sara Russo, the founder of nutelladay.com sadly recounts her shock at receiving the cease and desist, and her remorse at having to end the long running event and take down the corresponding site and Facebook page. It is a fan community that has spawned hundreds of stories, photos, recipes, original Nutella odes, even enthusiastic short films. Sara and her Nutella-minded kin folk are not brand hijackers or trolls or crazed lunatics. They're the super fans that every brand hopes to earn, a collection of normal people with an extranormal amount of love for a particular brand. 

In semi-anonymous aggregate, it's too easy for the brand to lose sight of the individual, and the massively personal nature of the relationship of each brand fan. We can't tell them exactly how to love us. "I would have been open to any kind of discussion," Rosso said. "[It] didn't have to be a legal document." 

I believe there's still a common sense test that can help us navigate the complexities of fan communities. When considering an action, try to imagine there is no "US" the Company", and no "Them" the Fans. Rewrite the script as a conversation between two people. You, as a representative to the brand knocking on Sara's door, invited into her Nutella scented kitchen, offered a snack, perhaps hearing the faint background music of Nutella Day carols through the radio. Now ask her to stop. How does she react, and does it feel to ask her?

There are variables, there are complexities, there are nuances and strategy. And there should be, but, however persuasively pitched, how ever  data justified, good social strategy never ever fails the common sense test.  

-Dan

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Obama vs Romney advocate retention

As a social media wonk and a political wonk, I thought it'd be interesting to fire up the Crowdly platform to bring a unique data driven perspective into the trends of each brands faithful. There's a lot to be said for polls, and there's no shortage of them out there, but with turnout of the base at least as important as swaying the last few percent of undecideds, gauging enthusiasm and fan-to-friend influence happening within the fan communities provides a fascinating window to what moves the base and what each campaign might expect on election day.

We're able to gauge that enthusiasm and influence on a pretty granular level, and preparing a longer post that delves into that in the detail it deserves. In the mean time, I'm sharing the overall Advocate Retention score for each candidate. This important number looks at the most influential 5% of fans that interacted in the previous week, and gauges whether or not they've re-engaged this week. Knowing that a core minority drive almost all communities, the behavior of these superfans is a very predictive indicator on performance of a community to influence behavior of fans and friends of fans. 

In the snapshot given, the Obama community is outperforming the Romney community 42% to 27%, which is a decent trend up for Mr. Obama from previous snapshots, and about a straight line for Mr. Romney. 

More to come, but as a teaser, despite the Obama campaign's touted prowess on social media, we were generally surprised by some areas of real parity in general performance, though there were some stark differences as well. This breakdown is a bit of a departuire for us, so let us know if you find this interesting or not, and any particular insight about each community you think would be valuable to highlight.

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Dave defines influence as the “ability to motivate others to take an action.” He notes influence also incorporates elements of reach and amplification – as those with influence know key people and can communicate effectively with them to drive action. According to Dave, the way to most successfully harness influence is to create advocates out of those with influence, as WOM marketing is made even more powerful when it begins with an influential voice.

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But the real $100-billion question is this: What does Facebook going public mean for brands? Here’s the answer.

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"The rest of the blame rests with EdgeRank, a Facebook algorithm that determines what every user will see in their news feed. Based on the three variables of affinity, weight, and time decay, it is this formula that is the cause of 84% of your Facebook fans to never see your page updates. Simply stated, Facebook assumes the lack of your fans’ liking, commenting, and sharing is enough reason to not show your updates to your fans."

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“Engagement is all about consistency. You can’t be there one day and gone the next. If your resources can be more consistent across many channels, then by all means try and do it. If you spread yourself too thin, you offer an experience that changes for fans, and I don’t think they respond as well to that.” - Andrew Patterson, director of new media at MLB Advanced Media

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Interesting take on measuring social media ROI found on Mashable.

“We often approach social media like it’s the destination rather than the vehicle,” says Thomas. Marketers often want to “be on Twitter,” but don’t consider that it’s actually a communications tool and that consistent action must be taken to engage a following.

Thomas compared measuring social media ROI to the task of calculating the ROI of a business card. Conference attendees rack up hundreds of business cards, but how do you calculate the ROI of all of the business cards that you hand out at a conference?

Like a Facebook fan or Twitter follower, a business card merely represents potential — so, you can’t accurately measure the ROI of a business card, just as you can’t measure the value of a Facebook fan, says Thomas.

This concept shouldn’t seem new, though, because traditional marketing — such as email marketing and telemarketing — runs by these rules, Thomas explained. Marketers don’t ask, “What’s the ROI of this email newsletter?” Instead, they ask, “What’s the conversion rate for our email campaign?” And telemarketers don’t ask, “What’s the ROI of a phone call?” They ask, “What’s the conversion rate of our sales calls?”

Click the link above for the full article.

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Here's a great infographic put together by social media agency, Pandemic Labs as part of their 'Science of Social' series on the type of content brands are currently posting, vs what fans actually engage with.

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‎55% of car maker fans own a vehicle made by the brand and loyalty among fans is higher — 62% to 46% — than non-fans. Finally, 82% of fans are very likely to recommend their vehicle to a friend vs. 69% of owners who are not fans.