Social influence

How Much is a Like Worth?

Advertising, Brand, Social influence, Social media, Strategy 1 Comment

Nothing. Zero. A Like on Facebook has zero value.

Yet so many brands are obsessed with Likes, as if this is the ultimate indicator of social media success. In award entries I judge, there are boasts of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of likes, which to me has all the credibility of a businessman boasting to his friends that a stripper in a gentleman’s club (has there ever been more of a misnomer?) winked at him. I know the love, or in this case the like, was bought. Most of the time, the more dollars you put into attracting (buying) Likes, the more Likes you will get. And Likes by themselves are of no value.

Before you slam me in 140 characters, let me explain. Read More

Casanova’s secret

Advertising, Brand, Marketing, Social influence, Strategy 0 Comment

Brand X makes a good product but has what they deem to be a relatively small slice of it’s category, enough for business to tick over but should ideally be growing faster.

In addressing this issue Brand X, unfortunately, are prone to committing the number one biggest mistake in marketing.

They continually look at the problem from their own perspective, rather than their customers.

In fact, through market research and focus groups Brand X has recently discovered, the WRONG people are buying their product.

This annoys conceited Brand X because these customers that they DO have, don’t match the image the brand has of itself. Read More

The Voice: Australia’s best example yet of social TV

Advertising, Marketing, Social influence, Social media, Social TV 1 Comment

[Posted by Rodd Messent]

I am an addict of Channel Nine’s hit show The Voice. Such is the extent of my addiction I seriously think my housemate might kick me out of our apartment for the semi-frenzied yelling and tweeting that ensues in our lounge room each time the show airs.

It’s the first time in almost three years that such disagreement has resulted in less than civil behaviour towards one another, and it’s made me think it might be a microcosm of the large volume of online debate about the show and, correspondingly, an explanation for its success as a social TV experience.

Monday night’s first live performances saw #thevoiceau trend worldwide on Twitter and the performance of contestant, Karise Eden, reach number one on the iTunes pop charts.

Love or hate it, The Voice is arguably the best mainstream example of social TV we’ve seen so far in Australia Read More

*blush*

Inspiration, Social influence 0 Comment

An initiative/experiment in Melbourne by .blush that allows building to ‘speak’ – well not literally – but tell their environmental tale to passers by. More specifically, the project is looking to take data from something like Pulse, squishing it into LEDs mounted on the facade and allowing buildings to blush if their energy consumption is too high (I presume there will be an opposite ‘boast’ if output is good).

Its all very well saying you believe in something like the environment but unless you can actually show your actions it all a bit shallow and unfounded. By being so held so publicly and visually accountable it means that it becomes everyone in the buildings responsibility to think about their overall energy consumption. It’s a great heart-on-your-sleeve type of statement that has data backing up the claim. With multiple voices this becomes even stronger – nobody wants the stigma of working in the one building on the street that’s blushing, it changes attitudes and gives everyone in the building a clear and common aim. Read More

I was wrong about anonymous comments

Inspiration, Social influence 4 Comments

Around 5 years ago I wrote an article for a well known print magazine where I advocated the need to allow anonymous commenting.

I talked about the fact that allowing anonymous comments created greater good than the perceived harm that resulted. I talked about the fact that we had to put up with negative anonymous comments because of the liberty that anonymity affords.

I now put my hand up and admit I was wrong. I was very wrong. Read More

The myth of the ‘influencers’

Social influence, Strategy, Technology 0 Comment

Here’s the thing.

This keeps coming up, so just to be clear on what is and isn’t correct it’s worth considering this.

There’s a lot of false assumption and BS that tends to fly about ‘seeding’ and ‘bloggers’ and ‘online pr’ etc with regards to the relative ‘influence’ that certain individuals supposedly have on the behaviour of the rest of us.

And this:

The alleged ‘influencers’, or ‘the few’ if you remember The Tipping Point are documented as consisting of, at most, 10-15% of any given population.
These ‘influencers’ are the so-called opinion-leaders in any given category or sphere.

These ‘influencers’ are thought to initiate up to, and at most, 25-30% of the conversations about brands in any category or sphere.

While these people do have some influence, granted, it’s a danger to overestimate that influence. Read More