In Category: Measurement & Governance
Update: On January 27, 2009 Rob and Mike will be headed out to San Francisco to share their research insights with the West Coast ARF. If you would like to attend for a discounted rate, head over to the ARF site and put in the Converseon code: LISTEN2009C. Hope to see you there.
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Today our CEO Rob Key, chief strategist Mike Moran and director of social media strategy Constantin Basturea will be attending and presenting at the 2008 ARF Industry Leader Forum at the New York Athletic Club.
Converseon is proud to play a leading role in such a significant event with industry leaders tackling the important topic ‘Transforming Research, Are You Listening?’. Research and listening strike to the core of our business at Converseon through our Conversation Mining technology and our team looks forward to sharing and learning from such an intelligent group.
The event’s website does a great job of outlining the objectives of the forum:
On July 15, 2008, magic happened at the ARF. A meeting of industry thought leaders was convened, rather innocently, to discuss a subject growing in importance for marketers. That subject was “listening” to the millions of organic online conversations that go on each day among consumers about brands, companies, products and services.
The 15 industry leaders that participated reflected the importance of the topic. They included leaders from P&G, General Mills, Nielsen, ESPN, Millward Brown, Unilever, Avenue A Razorfish, Digitas and others.
The day began with an exploration of new tools to enable intelligent listening and the application of the insights gleaned, but the group realized that they were onto something much bigger than a new toolkit. In fact, they were onto an organizational transformation built around the concept of listening – a new vision for the research function.
The group heard comments like “research as we know it will be on life support by 2012”…”80% of research is about testing and validation and much of that is wasted”…”research can code the meaning out of a response”…
This Industry Leader Forum will open up the discussion of this topic to another 100 invited industry leaders. The day will include a keynote address from Kim Dedeker of P&G; listening case histories from General Mills and Unilever; and breakout sessions focused on the how to leverage listening to build your brand including topics like:
- How to listen
- How to be sure that what you are hearing can be acted upon with confidence
- How to measure the impact of the action you take based on your listening insights.
Rob and Mike will be leading a breakout session entitled ‘Creating a Listening Organization’ in the afternoon, if you’re in attendance it should be a great one to attend. If you’re not an invited guest at the event you can follow both our Converseon and Mike Moran’s Twitter streams for updates.
Converseon worked in partnership with Graco Children’s Products (a Newell Rubbermaid brand) on a full scale social media strategy. The success of the community building, relationship driven approach has led to us submitting the following case study for the Forrester Groundswell awards on Graco’s behalf.
The Challenge
Connecting a 66 year old brand in a tightly-regulated environment with a highly-interconnected online community of influentials with a proven skepticism towards brands.
Graco needed to assess a complex and fragmented online conversation that occurred across multiple websites and environments including message boards/forums, hundreds of parenting blogs, numerous parenting social networks, Twitter, YouTube and many other social media venues.
The Concept
Graco first “listened” to the conversation to develop a clear understanding of the conversation landscape in the parenting category. This informed a strategy to:
- Make Graco an accepted and welcomed participant in the online parenting conversation.
- Humanize the Graco brand and build lasting relationships with the community by demonstrating that behind the brand are a group of concerned and engaged parents.
Implementation
Listening (“i.e. Conversation Mining”) activity found that there was a robust, active parenting conversation that was largely resistant to commercial efforts to engage them in conversation.
A core thrust of the strategy: Don’t force the brand into the conversations, but instead environments to facilitate relationships between influentials and be invited to the conversation.
A core component: A series of Graco blogger “Get-Together” events across the country t to allow Graco to engage in an acceptable manner. This laid the groundwork for the subsequent launch of a corporate Graco parenting blog authored by a multi-disciplinary team of Graco employees. The blog was carefully crafted to focus on “parent first” issues, stories, advice.
The blogging effort was supported with the complimentary use of other social media tools, including Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and more.
Successes
- Conversation Mining results showed the volume of the online conversation for the Graco Brand nearly doubled, while the polarity of online mentions rose from 68% positive in 2007 to 83% positive in 2008
- Amongst this shift, 100% of posts sparked by proactive outreach have been positive
- A significant increase in positive recommendations/reviews – this desirable topic became the most common discussion of the Graco brand
- Graco featured on the Today Show, Business Week and as a case study at BlogHer Business conference
- In just 6 months is ranked as the 59th top parenting blog in the hundreds strong Parent Power Index
- Thousands of monthly unique visitors to the Graco Blog, increased traffic and conversions at main Graco site
- Graco Blog ranks on the front page of Google for many relevant search terms
- Technorati Authority of 88 resulting from 224 blog reactions in 6 months (higher than many Fortune 500 blogs)
- 155 posts at the Graco blog garnering 530 comments
Hear What Others Have To Say
- Company Blog Check Up: Graco – Mack Collier (5th Best Score so far in Mack’s extensive series of corporate blog reviews)
- Graco Blog is Fantastic and Graco Continues to Rock Their Corporate Blogging Efforts – Jake Mckee (The Community Guy)
- Social Networking is Personal – Kelby Carr
- So You Want To Talk to Mommy Bloggers? – Erin Vest (Queen Of Spain)
- Rubbermaid Unit Gets Parents Talking Online – Atlanta Journal Constitution
To connect with Graco online subscribe to their corporate blog, see parenting blogger videos at the Ready For The Road Ahead car seat site, follow them on Twitter and see pictures from their blogger events on Flickr.
“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”
-George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
We’re happy to announce that we will be hosting the second installment of the Social Media Measurement Roundtable at our New York City headquarters on Thursday August 7. This intimate event will feature a select crowd of leading social media measurement thinkers and doers and follows on from the success of the first such event in Toronto earlier this year.
Katie Paine, author of Measuring Public Relationships and CEO of KDPaine & Partners will be assisting in leading discussion at the roundtable. She will also be joined by Marshall Sponder, the Chair of the Web Analytics Association`s Community and Social Media committee and Converseon’s Director of Social Media Constantin Basturea. Social media professionals, PR practicioners and web analytics experts will be present to discuss the methodologies and resources available today in measuring PR and social media initiatives.
Here are the details:
Date: Thursday August 7, 2008
Time: 5:00 – 7:00pm
Location:
Converseon
53 West 36th Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10018
We’d love for you to join us and throw your two cents on this topic. However, space is limited and it is essential to RSVP for this event, so if you’d like to attend please RSVP as soon as possible to Chrissie Hsu (chsu AT converseon.com)
The Converseon team is in mass conference mode this week as CEO Rob Key, Constantin Basturea and Paull Young each appear at leading online communications conferences around the USA. Details follow, if you will be attending any of these events please be sure to seek us out.
SMX ‘Master Social Media Marketing’ Conference– Rob Key Promotes Social Media Evangelism
Location: Long Beach, CA
When: April 22-23 (Rob’s panel is on Wednesday April 23 from 10:40am-12:00pm)
Rob Key will speak on the ‘Evangelist – The Marketer’s Role in SMM’ panel discussing the importance of evangelizing social media as an active participant in online communities in order to truly succeed in social media marketing. The session will also provide tips on how to authentically engage in online communities.
SNCR New Communications Forum – Constantin Basturea Looks to the Future of Public Relations
Location: Sonoma County, CA
When: April 22-25
Converseon has long been a proud supporter of the Society for New Communications Research as it is one of the most forward thinking organizations focusing on the rise of social media. Converseon director of social media and SNCR Fellow Constantin Basturea will be appearing alongside Brian Solis and Darren Barefoot on a panel entitled ‘Detour Ahead: Closing the Road to PR 3.0′.
Authentic Communications Conference – Paull Young Discusses New Methods to Measure Communications ROI
Location: CUNY Graduate Center, New York
When: Thursday, April 24 (Paull’s panel is from 1.30-2.15)
The Authentic Communications conference’s tagline is ‘Beyond Web 2.0’ and it aims to ‘bring together the best minds in the industry to showcase and explore success, failures and discuss how the industry can make sense of and take advantage of the rapidly changing environment facing us‘. Paull Young will be moderating a panel on measurement and ROI featuring Allison Murphy from PR Newswire, Kirsten Osolind of Re:Invention and Edelman’s Steve Rubel.
Today Aberdeen Group released its Social Media Measurement and Monitoring Report.
As a leading company providing social media monitoring and measurement services Converseon agreed to help sponsor the report earlier this year to help educate the industry. To find out more about our Conversation Mining and eResponder social media monitoring technology, visit our site here. We will be providing a review of the research in the coming days; however, on an initial glance it appears to have some interesting findings, such as:
- It found that Best-in-Class organizations are over 680% more likely than Laggards to improve their ability to predict customer behavior through the use of social media monitoring and analysis tools.
- Best-in-Class companies are nurturing technology implementation with key organizational processes and capabilities, such as a formalized process for monitoring consumer-generated content (65%), dedicated personnel devoted to social media monitoring (52%), and an “early warning system” for detecting potential threats to the brand (42%).
- As a result of strong organizational support, Best-in-Class companies are 5 times more likely than Laggards to be “extremely satisfied” with the number of actionable insights derived from social media monitoring and analysis.
The report is an important contribution to other research of the industry that has been growing, including Peter Kim’s industry report (The Forrester Wave™: Brand Monitoring, Q3 2006) and Nathan Gilliat’s comprehensive Guide to Social Media Analysis.
Access to the report is free until March 31 (just requires a registration) and please click here to download your copy.
We hope you find it interesting and of use and look forward to feedback.
