How much do your friends mean to you....and to anyone else ?

The latest edition of Business Week carries a fascintating article about the value of friendships not only to us but also to companies how by analysing the closeness of friendships and associated behaviour a great deal of useful information can be gleaned about that person and the opportunty they represent.

One part that particularly struck a chord was from a study that is being carried out by Cameron A. Marlow, a research scientist at Facebook, who has studied social media communications including wall posts, shared photos, pokes, and friend requests among 200 million people to determine how close we are to our friends online. According to the article "They looked at how often people clicked on their friends' news or photos, how often they communicated, and if the communications traveled in both directions. Studying this data, they determined that an average Facebook user with 500 friends actively follows the news on only 40 of them, communicates with 20, and keeps in close touch with about 10. Those with smaller networks follow even fewer"

The conclusion to this is obviosuly that in order to make sense of the opportunity to drive WOM then the focus should be on the closest friends ignoring the wider group - as they say "By focusing campaigns on people who interact with each other, they'll likely get better results".

I think the opportunity does differ by product as I know I have a small group of close friends with which I will discuss certain brands and products in detail I also have a slightly larger group of friends who are experts in certain areas - wines, holiday destinations, bikes, technology etc. BUT I also have a much wider group of acquaintances with whom I will discuss either very specific issues with eg a new laptop or music system (as they are perceived to be experts in these areas) and this is is where it becomes an awful lot more complicated.

I guess as a brand or company trying to tap into this the key is coming back to the traditional method of understanding your consumer and their decision making journey and where and what degree of influence the friendship group carries on this journey.

Do you Wordle ?

Writing a good presentation is always a challenge that takes time, skill, great content but the biggest challenge of all is making it interesting and there are fantastic resources out there that help not only hold the attention of the audience but also interest them and make them want more - http://www.wordle.net/ provides a perfect resource to create and interesting first page. Have a play with it - I have directed it to look at this blog and it developed the word cloud displayed here - I guess we talk about social media a lot then !

How dirty is your mind ?

Apparently according to Irish bank RaboDirect" Life is more interesting when you tell the truth" and they have launched a viral to support a website that does just that - a place "where you can confess your truths read confessions or get things off your chest. Up to you.There are 5 categories - Money, Relationships, Personal, Professional and the obligatory 'Other' for the stranger ones among you." I had a look through the "confessions" and most are pretty tame and a little boring even - the Sarah Beeney one was funny. Overall I like the approach- it works well with their "straight talking" proposition and the involvement of their staff work well at adding a human face to the brand plus they seem to be getting some traction judging by the forums and the increase in chat online BUT the videos are boring (they could have had a lot more fun with these) and it feels like they could have gone one step further and linked the viral more directly to their brand and product offering or related their offering to the areas eg insurance or cover for accidents that people confess to or some of competition for most juicy / honest confession with a financial prize eg money in a bank account to escape the consequences or pay for the damage etc. That way they also have some sort of follow up.

Interesting (and probably inevitable) that the top 5 are all about sex !

Everything you need to know about Social Media - in one place

Last month I was invited by UTalkmarketing to attend a round table discussion on social media with (their words) "some of the UK’s biggest agencies, brands and experts in the world of social media." the full article is included in "an unmissable ezine" which you can download here - as they say "It gives you everything you need to know about social media - all in one place!"

My take out from the discussions was encouragingly everyone involved agreed that social media was not just another channel but rather a whole new opportunity for brands to get involved in in a huge number of ways - from listening to learning, embracing to engaging and talking to energizing - the reality check was that there was a general lack of knowledge about the opportunties and concern about the potential fall out.

Personally I think this can be overcome by not creating such a halo of complexity and black magic around the area but rather talking about how easily social media integrates and enhances more traditional marketing - that way it is not seen as a step into the unknown but instead a hugely interesting and exciting opportunity.


Have a read and let me know what you think.