A number of our digital media clients were early pioneers in tracking their (and their competitors) brand(s) for understanding the sentiments around them and for discovering key topical issues. These "Social Media 1.0" listening platforms (300+ to date) provided an early baseline for basic comparison among brands, but did not provide an easy option or guidance for using the information gleaned to further enhance a brand. To paraphrase one customer of ours: "I have been listening for over two years, now what?"
To fully understand what the brands are missing out (and hence to answer the "now what" question), let's look at some numbers:
- Today, roughly 8 billion conversations take place daily across social media channels globally, of which about 15-20% could potentially be conversations about product or relating to services
- For conversations within a product category, only about 2-15% mentions a brand explicitly. For example, "Love hanging out at Starbucks" is far less common than "what's better than grabbing a cup of coffee in a rainy day like this".
Brands today are focusing their social media efforts on gathering "fans" on Facebook pages, or followers on Twitter handles, blogs etc. These conversations taking place on brand-owned properties have several advantages: they can be collected and analyzed with relative ease, giving brands far greater control over the conversations taking place.
However, vast amounts of generic conversations people have about themselves, their choices and likes occur outside a brand owned platform. Ability to access these peer-to-peer conversations can open up new avenue for brands to create brand and customer building activities, amplifying a brands presence manifold.
Proprietary research by Salorix indicates three key characteristics of these ongoing generic conversations:
- The majority take place on a "peer-to-peer" basis
- These discussions have a short "half-life", typically in the order of few hours to up to a day. This is easily tested-- you can count the number of comments you get on your Facebook page in the first few hours after a posting vs. the next day
- Very rarely are brand names mentioned, unless it's in a negative connotation
Salorix strongly believes that harnessing peer-to-peer communications to amplify a brands presence and messaging is something that smart social brand marketers will start exploiting in 2012. The opportunities are huge: a brand can reach an audience size of 20-50 times by harnessing peer-to-peer conversations than it can through existing brand-owned channels in social media.
CEO Insight: Participating in peer-to-peer conversations to amplify a brand
Dr. Santanu Bhattacharya, CEO, Salorix, Inc.
A number of our digital media clients have were early pioneers in tracking their (and their competitors) brand(s) for understanding the sentiments around them and for discovering key topical issues. These "Social Media 1.0" listening platforms (300+ to date) provided early baseline for basic comparison among brands, but did not provide an easy option or guidance for using the information gleaned to further enhance a brand. To paraphrase one customer of ours: "I have been listening for over two years, now what?"
To fully understand what the brands are missing out (and hence to answer the "now what" question), let's look at some numbers:
- Today, roughly 8 billion conversations take place daily across social media channels globally, of which about 15-20% could potentially be conversations about product or relating to services
- For conversations within a product category, only about 2-15% mentions a brand explicitly. For example, "Love hanging out at Starbucks" is far less common than "what's better than grabbing a cup of coffee in a rainy day like this".
Brands today are focusing their social media efforts on gathering "fans" on Facebook pages, or followers on Twitter handles, blogs etc. These conversations taking place on brand-owned properties have several advantages: they can be collected and analyzed with relative ease, giving brands far greater control over the conversations taking place.
However, vast amount of generic conversations people have about themselves, their choices and likes happen outside a brand owned platform. Ability to access these peer-to-peer conversations can open up new avenue for brands to create brand and customer building activities, amplifying a brands presence manifold.
Proprietary research by Salorix indicates three key characteristics of these ongoing generic conversations:
- The majority take place on a "peer-to-peer" basis
- These discussions have a short "half-life", typically in the order of few hours to up to a day. This is easily tested-- you can count the number of comments you get on your Facebook page in the first few hours after a posting vs. the next day
- Very rarely are brand names mentioned, unless it's in a negative connotation
Salorix strongly believes that harnessing peer-to-peer communications to amplify a brands presence and messaging is something that smart social brand marketers will start exploiting in 2012. The opportunities are huge: a brand can reach an audience size of 20-50 times by harnessing peer-to-peer conversations than it can through existing brand-owned channels in social media.
About the Author
Dr. Santanu Bhattacharya, CEO of Salorix, is responsible for driving the company vision and strategy. He founded Salorix when he realized brand marketers and advertisers needed deeper analytics and insights to make sense of the growing volume of online data and its impact on marketing decisions. Prior to Salorix, he started and led the Analytics Solutions Center for America Online (AOL), managing a staff of over 200 employees who delivered marketing advisory, analytics and consulting services to AOL and its key advertising clients.
Previously, Santanu was a management consultant with A.T. Kearney where he advised leading consumer brands including J&J, BMW, Gillette, Pepsi, and State Street Bank. He is an alumnus of MIT's Sloan School and holds a Ph.D. in Physics from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and University of Maryland.
Trained as an astrophysicist, Santanu has authored over 30 peer-reviewed papers and has contributed to studies widely reported in the Wall Street Journal, CNN, CNBC, Investor's Business Daily and The Economic Times.