The six social media trends for 2010 Dave Armano wrote about at HBR are by and large taking place today. With the increased emphasis on business as unusual, companies are starting to feel the real pressure of the permanent nature of customers’ new buying habits and decision making patterns.
Add to that a general trend towards social network fatigue, and what seemed like the salvation to boost many companies’ existing marketing programs, albeit more people-intensive, now seems to be a moving target for many brands.
In a research study dated last Fall, Forrester analyst Lisa Bradner discussed what’s next for modern brand management. She writes about the old model’s inability to handle the world of “always on” marketing social brought to the fore. Dubbed Adaptive Brand Marketing, the study makes a case for the shift from the classic four P’s — now table stakes rather than differentiators — to the addition of permission, proximity, perception, and participation, the four new P’s when it comes to social commerce for brands.
Social brand commerce
Adaptive brand marketing is in essence about using storystreaming, a term Armano used in a comment during the discussion of the HBR post, to engage in social brand commerce.
What are the implications of permission, proximity, perception and participation in the current online trends?
1. Social networks are looking less social — and thus help you get more done
We still get things done through search. The powerful Twitter and FriendFeed search functions have not gone lost respectively on Google and Facebook. Both companies incorporated those features in their algorithms.
The other trend under social networks becoming less social is the rise of subscription-based or velvet rope networks. They engage the four new P’s and help cordon off the increasing noise in the free for all online networks.
2. Companies that scale are making social media operational
Just like automation software is helping companies track the digital body language of customers interaction with their online content, technology will continue to help them scale social media efforts. Tracking who participates where from the company is just the beginning.
The best part is associating participation and proximity tracking with perception and subsequently permission. For brands to be able to learn and evolve through these activities, there needs to be a built-in knowledge mechanism with the technology that allows a company to make what it learns operational.
3. Social business is serious play
Tools like Foursquare are bringing to the fore the most social of human mechanisms, that of seeing and being seen. Carrots embedded in public game-like interfaces to engage human competitive nature are not enough over the long haul.
Brand participation as the same old sponsorship and coupon code is still phase I. With proximity there’s opportunity to capture real-time data and perform analysis that will reveal perception and set the tone for permission levels. Brands need to learn how to act on this information to further their products, services, and customer relationships.
4. Social media guidelines become policies
The widespread adoption of social networks by employees is making many companies nervous. That’s why the initial wave of guidelines will become policies complete with expected behaviors for individual participation as company representatives.
Companies struggle with the idea that proximity and participation will empower individual employees to gain more permission and a better perception than the brand itself. In addition, since so much of what companies do these days is knowledge-based, beyond the individual’s brand, companies will look to leverage that person’s knowledge exclusively. The recent move by Forrester to confine its analysts to blogs that reside on Forrester’s own platform for posts about research is an early example of that.
5. Mobile is the new personal hub
The last frontier of personal freedom for many individuals in the settings, access, and data they can hold on their personal mobile devices. Always on and with fewer filters than company networks, smartphones are becoming the new information and participation hubs.
We’re barely scratching the surface of what is possible with iPhone apps. At the same time as participation, proximity, perception and permission are becoming more personal, due to increasing privacy concerns, there will be a need to start separating social and commercial selves for brands.
6. Sharing off the company Web site is easier than ever
What started with email, continues with iPhone apps, social media outposts and content aggregators. All are making it easier for individuals to share content off and away from company Web sites.
As the official company Web site becomes more optimized than ever for search, it will be the place where transactions are made, and not where the conversation takes place. Social search meanwhile will move to tracking and alerting, which has the individual more in control where it comes to the four new P’s.
In 2010, we’ll see more social brand commerce like, for example, Best Buy’s Facebook fan page.
Are the organizational structures that support brands ready to address these already established trends? Will brands thus be able to capitalize on these trends for storystreaming? Or will companies tire of the conversation once they achieve the commerce end of the goal?
This post was written by Valeria Maltoni. Was this helpful? If so, please feel free to follow my writing by subscribing to this site's full-text RSS feed. I also write at Conversation Agent. Want to connect elsewhere? Find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Contents © 2006-2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.
