If I have any (small) regrets about leaving Forrester Research, it’s that I miss working with folks like Augie Ray each day. I found his recent research on the growth in the number of people who update their statuses using social media – tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter – interesting and worth a read.
Forrester has long counseled marketers to follow a simple four-step planning process called POST to set social strategy. POST is an acronym Josh Bernoff coined to remind business people to keep audience first and objectives second on their list of social media priorities. Understanding your audience involves more than knowing profile information. In this new social world, marketers must also know where your customers go online and how they interact with social tools already.
Social Technographics is the tool Forrester analysts, including myself during my tenure there, use to categorize online, social behavior. From a B2B retrospective, I have to say that the tool did not always uncover distinct differences between business technology buyers, IT folks, and technology marketers in various demographic groups. Techies love technology and this fascination produces extensive experimentation with all variety of tools, hence they tend to profile high in most categories.
I found that it was important for marketers to know if the target audience is participating (as Creators, Critics, Joiners, and now Conversationalists), observing (as Collectors or Spectators) or simply inactive socially. Three categories are easier for B2B marketers to understand than seven, especially since the conversation quickly turns to “So, where do buyers spend their time — on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn?” (BTW, Augie’s report offers some good insight on this question in Figure 1.)
Putting the nuances of Social Technographics aside for a moment, I think Augie offers some solid advice for marketers wanting to engage with potential buyers and current customers through social media. For B2B marketers, I would summarize Augie’s list of ways to engage socially-active customers to read:
1) Listen to social conversations. Listening helps marketers learn how to engage socially as well as understand what buyers think about your brand. Online monitoring tools – like Google Alerts, Radian6, or Biz360 — help here.
2) Use customers to energize others. Social updates are a viral element of online branding – and yes, there can be risks to the brand of doing so. Read Groundswell for a number of examples of what not to do.
3) Support customers as they support each other. Many companies have begun to support customers by listening to status updates and intervening on behalf of those currently experiencing problems. Most of the examples of what to do – or not do – involve consumer brands. But tech companies adopt this approach with success. The jury is still out about whether responding socially helps to lower customer support costs overall or simply papers over inadequate support processes.
4) Solicit customer feedback and ideas. Those who use your products can be the best source of innovation that other buyers will also want and use.
Most of all, I agree whole-heartedly with his recommendations, namely: listen before you leap, use social tools internally to understand the uses and limitations of each technology, and empower your employees. Marketing alone cannot run the whole social show – it’s definitely a group undertaking.
