After getting soaked in the Texas-sized rain here, it’s time to get Monday-tastic with Shiv Singh from Ave A / Razorfish.

I’m a little skeptical with this being a sponsored panel — of one person. But it will be interesting to see the agency’s take on social media. And if there’s a few concrete takeaways, well, all the better.

There is a pic on the screen of a snowman on fire, which I’m taking as a sign of something. Exactly what, I don’t know.

Shiv jumps up and comes alive.

He tells us we’ll find out about the snowman at the end.

Shiv’s in charge of Razorfish’s social media strategy and activities.

Social Influence Marketing

Two months ago, he moved into a new apartment and needed a sofa. In the past he’d just order one online. But now that he’s married, buying a sofa is far more complex project. He needed a bunch of input from a lot of family members, check against their sofa (for social status), and be sure it would last a long time. Which sofas will stand the test of time for style and comfort?

He had to email sofa pictures, discussions. All of these communications was really a highly social interactive process.

The difference is that the Web to date hasn’t been that social.

He goes to crate and barrel, searching for sofas, found them, zeroed in on one that he likes — but then wanted to share with a whole bunch of people and get feedback. Pass it around — round-trip it between family members.

But there’s very little room for that — they’re trying to funnel you into the checkout cart. That was micro shopping a ling time ago.

When we shop now we’re taking advantage of a social network and interface that influences decision making. But a lot of ecommerce sites don’t support this.

Where do you compare all the sofas from all the different stores. He wants to shop collaboratively in stores and with people.

When brands think about the Web and think about people buying goods, it’s all about the shopper in isolation, in anonymity. Ignoring the fact that when we shop, we shop as a group, and that there are a lot of factors influencing us.

Compliance
An individual agrees with a point of view and acts in a certain way in order to achieve a favorable reaction among his peers.

Identification
A person acts in a certain way in front of a group because she believes in what she says and belong to a group that is important to her

Internalization
A person’s views having been accepted by another person and transformed into their view

Most brands don’t take this process into account.

Brand marketing is like TV — reach. Direct response is catalogs, reminders, postcards. Now with the Web, it’s treated like another platform to push direct mailers and messages like anything else.

Now us as users and consumers interact with a brand online, we care about the people behind it, what they’re telling me. Then I’m going to check with as many as 50 people to validate those ideas.

Social influence marketing — we’re more influenced by other people more than anything anymore, especially marketing budgets.

How does this tie in social media? It’s a means to an end. How can we affect social influence?

From Forrester:
Indicate your overall level of trust in the following forms of marketing (in order of popularity)
recommendations
brand websites
Email I signed up for
Consumer opinions posted online

Another example…
Frequency with which US online buyers read reviews:
22% always
43% most of the time

How does a brand play into this? With A blog? A wiki?

Minimum number of customer reviews required by us consumers to make a decision — ugh, he passed that slide pretty quickly. But it was a lot.

Behind the scenes

Corporate Website doesn’t matter as much anymore. We’re spending a lot less time on these sites. Going more to 3rd party reviews and social sites.

I’d rather just not spend time there.

I’m going to open multiple browser windows and visit multiple touch-points, and that dilutes the influence of any single brand.

Another key change is that marketing is where the conversation is happening in the traditional world. But you can’t leave the conversation to marketing.

We all need to talk to our customers. In each of the departments in the org. everyone has their own customer and needs to be talking to their constituents.

Who are the designers making my sofa choices? Why did they make the design decisions to create this?

Everyone has a customer that wants to hear from them. It’s not about having a consistent message anymore, it’s about a variety of viewpoints, and sharing those people with the customers.

We talk about building blocks too much. If you’re a company, you can’t build a block for the sake of it. You need to think about your goal, what you’re going to say, and do it genuinely.

why?

120,000 blogs created everyday
12 million blogs active online
100 million blogs published

Why doesn’t a corporate site matter as much? If your a brand buying media to drive web traffic it doesn’t work. We take bits and pieces of sites, and post those pieces on other places to share. Companies need to allow you to have that portability.

What about crate and barrel flikr feeds published back to the ecommerce sites? See how sofas look in other people’s homes, under use conditions, etc.

The key thing is that there are lots of different channels, you have to let those messages out, and then let them come back to your property.

Become your consumer
Get close to them, be like them.
Don’t let the agency separate you from your consumer

Aggregate info for your consumer
If Crate and Barrel aggregated reviews and allowed sharing, it would be a clear starting point.

Articulate your product benefits better
Descriptions are boring, and you can’t share them easily.

Amplify the favorite business stories
Publish and highlight what will support your brand mission.

Participate where your consumers are

Don’t do it all at once — build over time. Evolve the channel.

Community participation

How did these communities happen and evolve over time?

What’s happening in all these online communities?

Man — I finally looked up from the laptop. Standing room only!

Why do SN’s matter?

We don’t have enough time and means to comprehend all the information that’s out there, so we use our friends to filter through what’s important.

The strength of weak ties
Marc Granavetter — argued that in a group of people, the ones that are the most helpful for learning something aren’t my buddies. They’re the weaker relationships that you have, because that person is tied to more other networks that I don’t have access to.

There’s also an absent tie, not strong or weak. You know their name or face, but not them, which renders them useless?

Centrality

When you think about a Facebook group — who are the most important people? It’s the people at the center of the network. In this diagram, three people affect the network the most, but in different ways. If they have the most friends, if people have to connect through me to other people, or if I don’t depend on anyone to talk to the whole group.

Why are we getting to this concept? When you think about social influence. How can I do a Facebook campaign? You need to understand this dynamic and who these three people are.

Singletons, giant components and middle regions

Why did Facebook succeed? Because they inherently understood how networks start and grow over time.

Most networks have a very large middle group, then you have smaller groups with one cool guy who brings a small micro network on the periphery. Then you have lone rangers who aren’t part of any group, but will be out there on the cusp hanging out.

Over time, the middle regions join the big region. And all of a sudden, these two networks come together. As time passes, it becomes completely integrated into the larger network.

Are you using the singletons? What’s the size of your network? How many middle people do you have?

People join networks with friends on them.

Behavior patterns on one network are influenced by activity on another network. What happens on myspace has an affect on facebook, or Friendster.

Growth happens in the giant component and is influenced by stars.

Network size has a complex influence on members. There’s a very complex change dynamic. The more people that join, the more that leave.

People will share online if they trust each other offline.

Networks are driven by common property or event based relationships.

Social media implications

People put in a position to disseminate information that belongs to someone else in their social networks. That’s where the trust breaks down.

Information needs to travel just two ties away before control is lost.

Depending on what I’m sharing, there needs to be different kinds of controls.

For sustained interest in a network, you need a memory. You want to have something that serves as an artifact, a paper trail.

Some examples

Sheraton: belong

They built this two years ago. It was the first time that a major brand allowed user reviews right on the homepage. They understood that people are more influenced by each other in the context of the brand than by the brand itself.

CNN

When they launched, they solicited feedback and published all of it, and responded to it. They understood that the process is based on audience communication.

Garnier

Trying to reach men with hair products. What they did was to create a totally fake story. That there’s a new TV series, like 3′s company, and it’s going to be the next big thing, and sponsored by Garnier.

That seeded a whole viral campaign. A storyline where the show was in conflict with the sponsor. It created a lot of interest and blurred the lines between entertainment and advertising.

What they’re showing us is a pretty stupid 3.5 minutes of comedy that leads to sex. I guess sex and humor is the original interactive social network?

The storyline of rubbing the product in a mans hair and then wanting to have sex with the guy, to me, qualifies as at least a tacit agreement between the show and the brand.

These clips spread across the blogosphere, and no one knew if it was fake or real.

Really? Let’s not get carried away here.

All of a sudden, the audience knew about the product.

Levis 501

Project Runway — worked with them to allow users to create their own designs, the best ones actually being made into a clothing that was shown on the show. Levi as a brand is put in the background, and the interaction between the people and designs is the star.

Crystal light — pump-it-up

A Wellness site for women to challenge each other and to perform and compete in these challenges. Again, the brand is in the background.

Go!
How do organizations need to change to get into this world? It was created for Ford Marketers across the world, to share ideas, have conversations, learn from each other internally.

Future directions

What’s coming next?

Social influence marketing is only going to get bigger.
Any company that wants to play in this game has to understand the theory and practice..

Ads will only be more integrated.

The marketing funnel transforms. Attract, convert, ervice, and extend don’t apply.

Social Networks matter as much as any other site.

Engagement metrics will come to the forefront. How the viral is spreading, how the viral is happening.

The interne blends in with everything else — other media like TV and mobile.

Niche social networks matter. Long tail matters. Small communities of dedicated people matter.

NCAA, Sheraton, Wave — there’s something big coming.

goingsocialnow.com

Q&A

What about b2b?

a:
Typically, you know your audience, and are communicating with them in private networks

Where can we find engagement metrics.

I don’t agree with this either. There are social business networks that develop offline around products perceived as commodity. It’s actually a great tactic to try and combat commoditization for a B2B brand. Show all the competition’s choices in a branded environment that allows for discussion. I think this is a great way to start separating a B2B brand from losing margin and market share with those basic products people are always comparison shopping for.

Also, it’s worth noting that Shiv rocked the house. Really well done presentation. The guy is obviously sharp, and a step ahead.

You can see the slides from his presentation here.

Also, Shiv put a great follow-up to his presentation over here at Going Social Now.

Related posts:

1. SXSW live: Social Media Marketing Metrics Strategy
2. SXSW Live: Social Search: A Little Help From My Friends
3. SXSW live: what teens want online and on their phones
4. SXSW live: Welcome to Sunday