Digital CPG Blog

From start-up entrepreneur and marketer Neil Patel, here are our favorite lessons from Fortune 500 companies about blogging:

Lesson #1: Let Your Audience Think for You

1. Ask for ideas in a blog post – you write a post where you share an idea you think you’d like to pursue [Think Starbucks and their crowdsourced blogs]. You then ask your readers to tell you what they think. You could also use this tactic to ask your readers what they would like to get as content from you in the coming year. 2012 is just around the corner…so why not give this idea a shot?
2. Create a separate platform for idea creation – My Starbucks Idea is really a huge forum that is open to the public. You can read any posts you want, but you have to be a member to comment and add posts. Forums for private members is really a great way to up the engagement of your audience. However, make sure you test this idea. I did and found that it didn’t work out too well. But you never know… it may work for you.

Lesson #2: Niche Blogs to Build Brand Awareness

When you think about General Electric (GE), what immediately comes to mind? If you are like most people you probably said “light bulbs.”

But GE is so much more than that. That’s why they launched a line of blogs to break the public view that all they do is light bulbs.

Here is what they offer:

• Txchnologist – this online magazine is about all things technology. From how climate has affected the way baseballs are made to self-healing electronics. Pretty much things that GE has its hand in.
• Data Visualization – GE takes all the really complicated yet useful data behind science and technology and creates easy-to-understand infographics.
• Ecomagination – this is the blog for the environmentally-minded GE customer, demonstrating their concern for the environment and how they are tackling the latest issues.
• GE Reports – great daily, detailed stories and reports on issues like the Top Five Technology Challenges Tackled by GE in 2011 and The Unsung Hero of the Maternity Ward Helps Deliver Baby No. 35 Million
• Healthymagination – this blog is dedicated to showing how GE is helping people live longer and healthier lives, for example, by providing top-notch cancer treatment and AIDS/HIV cures.
• The GE Show – this series of videos deals with topics like the future of flight and airplanes, railroads and solar energy, industries that GE creates products for.

Lesson #3: Never abandon your blog for Facebook

• You can’t fully brand your Fan Page experience –you can customize certain aspects about your Fan Page, but you won’t have control over such things as color, logos and messages.
• Facebook notes suck compared to blog posts – there is no comparison between the two. Besides, Facebook Notes hardly get read, right?
• They own the content – of course you could download the content if you wanted to, but why go through the hassle when you can publish the content on your site?
• Lack of SEO – inside Facebook it’s tough to control meta tags connected to photos, videos, updates and notes. On the other hand, you can easily optimize your blog. SEO on your blog will help you control your content’s ranking, bringing you greater visibility unlike Facebook.

Facebook is great for deepening your engagement with your readers, but it should never replace blogging. Ever!

Read more here. Blogging is still one of the most powerful corporate communication tools in my opinion. Other platforms will evolve, but blogging will continue to evolve as well.

A few predictions from MediaPost:

I completely concur with these predictions. What do you think? Is your relationship with mom bloggers changing?

For consumers, Facebook’s Like button is a pathway to getting discounts, promotions and special offers. Marketers have a more narcissistic view, according to a new study.

Citing the “Variance in the Social Brand Experience” study from the CMO Council and social CRM firm Lithium, apost from digital intelligence firm eMarketer stated that:

• 57 percent of marketers thought a ‘like’ meant the content on the site was agreeable;
• 41% thought it meant customers wanted to be heard;
• 33% of marketers said they thought customers were looking for incentives or rewards for their ‘like.’

From the consumers’ perspective, the study says they engage with brands through social channels primarily to:

• Be eligible for exclusive offers (67 percent);
• Interact with other consumers and compare experiences (60 percent);
• Find games, contests, and other unique experiences (57 percent);
• Find service and support from their social networking site (50 percent);
• Share ideas for new products and features (41 percent).

There was also a difference between the two groups in terms of perception of customer loyalty. Of the 132 marketers surveyed in the study, only 24 percent thought a ‘like’ meant the consumer was also a loyal customer. Conversely, 49 percent of the 1300 consumers surveyed said they liked a brand because they were already loyal customers.

Most damning was the revelation that, though brands are seeing benefit to the use of social media, less than one-fifth (17 percent) have yet to fully align social channels into the marketing mix.

Ouch.

Bottom Line? Give your customers and fans whatever is valuable to them!  Don’t assume they just want to talk to you. Engage is a huge buzzword, but value is what marketers should really be thinking about.

Facebook has begun introducing a new feature which allows business pages to receive private messages from their fans on the social network.

The new communications option, which has appeared for Asia-based admins only so far —is a significant introduction that will allow businesses to interact more closely with customers on the service than ever before.

Consumer facing businesses will find the feature particularly useful as it enables more personal communication with individual customers, opening the possible of a greater level of customer service on Facebook. The move is also likely to cut down on the pain of off-topic comments on company pages and reduce communication lost when Facebook fans fail to take their comments to customer service channels outside of the social network.

The move isn’t an all out opportunity for business to contact customers, however, as communication must be initiated by the customer. However, once that has been done, the conversation is open to both parties.

I think this is a great move for Facebook, and sorely needed! So many customers reach out on Facebook and you’d love to be able to discuss account details, but to do so you, you must move the conversation to email or phone. Hopefully customer service teams will become familiar with these new features when they are rolled out to all business pages, and perhaps we will even see some apps that allow for increased customer service! One can dream… 

Spice company McCormick introduced two social media applications on Facebook in December in order to inject itself into as many online conversations as possible. The Merry Merry Menu Planner lets users post menus that friends and family can comment and vote on; the Big Cookie Share provides tools for creating custom digital cookies, which can be sent to Facebook friends with messages.

“At a time when laptops and tablets rival spatulas as the most-used kitchen tool,” the company says in its release, “we are offering our fans new ways to share the holiday spirit and create memorable taste experiences — whether they’re putting the holiday menu up for a vote or frosting Facebook cookies for faraway family members.”

I like both of these applications, and would love to see what the results of their campaign. It looks like in December they had 9100 fans (see screenshot above), but if you visit their Facebook page now, they have nearly 280,000! Quite the increase if most of it came from their new initiatives.

Really? Are you sure? Because most brands ignore 50% of consumers’ Facebook posts!

Despite glowing percentages about social media users – 65% of users recommendations led to a purchase, and recommendations by social media users were twice as likely to lead to holiday gift purchases – brands apparently are not responding to consumers on social media sites.

More stats:

A slim 36% of social media users trust brands that have a social media presence more than brands that don’t.

Only 55% of brands respond to consumers via Facebook.

Brands respond to consumers via Twitter 61% of the time.

Here at Alice, we respond to every mention on Facebook or Twitter (even if it’s just a “like” or RT), but I imagine it becomes increasingly difficult the more fans and followers you get. Does your company respond to every customer on social media? Is it any different from responding to every customer who emails or contacts your Support team? I don’t think so.

We all understand that in order to effectively market products to consumers you need to have a good understanding of the attitude and behaviour patterns of your target audience. Psychologists have defined six universal traits that have been seen in shoppers and are now being seen in social commerce.

• Social Proof: 81% of customers reach out to friends and family members on social networking sites for advice before purchasing products
• Authority: 77% of online shoppers use reviews to make purchase decisions
• Scarcity: 77% of people like getting exclusive offers that they can redeem via Facebook. We assign more value to products that are less available
• Like: 50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on the recommendation of the people they follow(and like) on social networks. We follow those we like and do the things they do
• Consistency: Purchases made from the brands we trust reinforce our future shopping patterns
• Reciprocity: We have an innate desire to repay favors in order to maintain social fairness, whether those favors are invited or not

(via).

Research shows that getting consumers to like a fan page has some positive effect on conversion rates. In fact, where commerce is concerned, Facebook could replace the thumbs up icon with a foot – as in “foot in the door” – because that’s what brands are getting with the like. It’s a social gesture that potentially manifests in the consistency rule kicking in (yes, pun intended).

Social commerce platform provider 8thBridge wondered just what effect the “like” had on purchase behavior, so the company conducted a survey to find out.

The above graphs are what they found.

Do you encourage “small steps, big steps ” approach in your strategy?

Talent.

Finding staff with suitable digital skills topped the list in a recent survey by E-Consultancy.

We asked participants in the survey about the specific skill areas that they perceived to be the most difficult to recruit for.

Web analytics and data topped the list, followed by social media, and content marketing, indicating that there is already a potential skills shortage in these areas.

When respondents were asked which digital marketing disciplines they anticipated would be the key areas of growth in the coming year, the top answers were social media, content marketing, and web analytics and data.

The fact that those areas of predicted growth in resourcing were the same as those that are already listed as being the most difficult to recruit for means one thing: a looming talent time bomb.

In May this year McKinsey released a report (Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity) that brought sharp focus to this talent crisis in one key area: data.

The exponential growth in data it said,  driven by a growth in data-rich and real-time environments such as social and mobile, embedded internet (the so-called ‘internet of things’) and the increasing focus on analytics and owned media, will mean that the capability of analysing large data sets will become “a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus”.

…

Not far further down the list of areas that are challenging for companies to recruit for came web design and build. This was also notable in being identified as the most challenging area in which to retain staff.

And this doesn’t look like a problem that is going away anytime soon. A campaign to boost the teaching of computer skills and coding is gathering momentum, supported by large technology companies including Google and Microsoft.

What is your company doing to retain top talent in the digital space?

General Mills has creates a portal, called G-WIN Digital, for the public’s ideas on its digital initiatives, including applications and games. Consumers with digital-product ideas can use G-WIN to send their concepts directly to the company’s marketing team.

So, consumers with digital-product ideas can use G-WIN to send their concepts directly to the company’s marketing team. Here’s how it works:

Those just bursting with ideas for a game involving Cheerios or a mobile app for Betty Crocker–or any of the multitude of General Mills brands, including Green Giant, Pillsbury, and Häagen-Dazs–are directed to the innovation portal to share their non-confidential idea, product, company, or technology. Once submitted, GM’s digital marketing group vets the ideas, and status updates are promised within three weeks. From there, a dedicated review team is at the ready to quickly hand intriguing ideas right over to the digital marketing operations. Specific ideas they choose to engage in will likely start out small and experimental with lessons and experiences applied on a broader scale.

Being first in the digital marketing space is important to General Mills:

This past April, it was the first consumer packaged goods company to use a daily deals service, offering consumers in Minneapolis and San Francisco a sampler pack of GM goodies for $20 on Groupon, a 50% discount. Also, in October the company announced an ambitious initiative called Trail View that creates a first-person, street-view style experience of national parks such as the Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon.

And General Mills is trying to act more like a lean start-up than a massive CPG corporation:

Addicks offers the mantra “create, iterate, learn, and scale,” which, he says, means becoming an agile, learning organization. “I don’t think that’s a small thing; I think that’s a big thing for organizations like ours. There’s a big cultural change that has to happen–you have to be very agile, ready to move super fast and you have to be in the moment. You have to learn. We call it ‘market while we research, research while we market.’ Those used to be discreet functions. Today, it’s finding partners, trying something on the brand and really watching and learning as we go and continuing to iterate.”