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Web Strategy by Jeremiah

Jeremiah discusses how web tools enable companies to connect with customers

Executive Video Interview: Why Dell Continues To Use Social MediaNovember 25

Bob Pearson (Twitter at bobpdell) Vice President, Communities & Conversations at Dell invited me out to Microsoft’s Architect Forum to co-lead a session on social computing.

I let my twitter community come up with questions, and I took three from the dozens to pose to Bob, select questions from: Cece Salomon-Lee, Ravit Lichtenberg, and oemporor (can’t find his tweet)

Here’s the questions I posed to Bob, if I could only spit the words out as well as I could write them:

Is IdeaStorm increasing revenues? Is social media impacting the bottom and top line of Dell? How Dell has made $1mm in revenue from Twitter. Is social media superficial branding, or does it truly change the company? How does an economic downturn impact Dell’s social media efforts? Is it better for customers to self-support each other rather than calling Dell Support? What’s the URL of your corporate webpage?

It’s great to learn first hand from Dell how they’ve used these tools to increase revenues and reduce costs –it’s time we focus on the business aspect of things rather than the feel good branding only. You can see one of Bob’s recent video interviews on the D

Retweet: The Infectious Power Of Word Of MouthNovember 23

Word of Mouth, the Holy Grail of Marketing
Word of mouth marketing is one of the most desirable activities to brands, why? Because research on trust shows that consumers (folks like you and me) trust the opinions of people we know more than anyone else. It makes sense of course, think about the next time you’re going to buy a car, who’s opinion are you going to trust, those of your friends or the opinion of the sales guy representing the product?

[Information within Microblogging communities like Twitter encourage rapid word of mouth –of both positive and negative content]

Twitter, Although Small, Continues to Demonstrate Influence
Twitter, which I’m seeing informal stats of around 5 million users, has continued to show it’s viral capabilities, with last week’s Motrin mom’s brand punking of an advertisement to news being spread about natural disasters faster than traditional news, this toolset allows content to spread faster and farther than we’ve ever

Why Magpie’s Advertising System Is Self-DiminishingNovember 21

Testing a Twitter Advertising System
I tested out Magpie, an advertising system that creates tweets in my tweet stream, from third party advertisers then pays me.

Some have already blogged about their opposing thoughts on it, and some are publicaly open that they are now Magpies. For me, it was just a test that I’ve now ceased.

Part of my job as an analyst covering social media is to use the very tools in which I cover. I use this knowledge to write reports, help clients, and make suggestions to the vendors themselves. You can expect brands to ask me “how should we engage in Twitter” and I’ll point them to this very post.

There was quite the vitriolic reaction from some, others didn’t seem to mind, a few were acceptable of it. If there was anyone to test it, it makes sense for me, it’s part of my job, and I have a large enough follower base to average reactions.

I’m also going to measure the amount of folks that may have unsubscribed with TweepleTwak, hopefully they’ll realize it’s not permanent and return.

The Test
I setup the system a few days ago, and set it for every 10th tweet there would be an ad, the system is supposed to line up ads with content rel

Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008November 19

Stats on social networks are important, but I’m going to need your help in creating a community archive, can you submit stats as you find them?

I’m often asked, “What are the usage numbers for X social network” and I’ve received considerable traffic on my very old post (way back in Jan) of MySpace and Facebook stats, even months later. Decision makers, press, media, and users are hungry for numbers, so I’ll start to aggregate them as I see them

An industry analysts’ perspective on web measurement:
To be clear, my employer Forrester doesn’t provide specific numbers about social networks like Compete, Comscore, Nielsen or others, we conduct our own surveys on user/brand behavior, opinions, and technographics, so I’m often asked for these numbers by press. I’ll use this page as a library, and point clients, press, and media to it, so they’re armed.

Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and intrepreation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time.

I put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual us

Categorization of Brand Backlash StormsNovember 17

While brand backlash (one example of a Groundswell) from social media tools are certainly an impact to the reputation of companies and how their consumers react, there are many different levels of severity from each.

First, see this list of brands that were punk’d from social media, I’ll add some categorization to each of them as I can best gauge in coming days.

To help gauge the differences, I’ve constructed these categories of brand backlash storms (leaning on the Hurricane categorization)

Category 1: Consumer revolt and use social media tools (Twitter, Blogs, YouTube) to tell their story, the brand doesn’t flinch, and there is no mainstream media coverage. Examples: A weekly, if not a daily occurance.

Category 2: The backlash extends beyond just social media tools (Twitter, blogs, YouTube), the brand makes changes based on consumer feedback, and coverage extends to mainstream media and press. Examples: Louis Vuitton brandjacked, Exxon Mobile’s Twitter experience.

Category 3: Consumers use social media tools to spread backlash and there is considerable mentions from mainstream press. the backlash is more severe resulting in significant changes from the brand (hiring, firing, processes, policies or new teams put in place). This becomes a case study for social media books and is often discussed in s