Earned Media: Is No Chatter Worse Than Negative Chatter?

The Importance of Listening, Reiterated

Posted by Craig Daitch on 07.02.09 @ 10:30 AM

Craig Daitch

While we discuss how earned media is an output of the combination of paid media and owned media, I think the simplification of the three terms has made a mess out of the expectations of clients everywhere.

Earned media isn't an easy acquisition metric like a click. You can't outbid a brand for earned media. It's a continuous, it's laborious, and it requires a large percentage of human engagement to be considered effective.

When you take earned media for granted, or treat it as if it were paid media, your results will almost always end in catastrophe.

Take, for example, a recent conversation with a friend of mine who works in the marketing department of a once-popular clothing company. After largely avoiding digital media for the past half a decade (for fear e-commerce would cannibalize brick-and-mortar locations), he finally gained enough in-house momentum to launch campaigns on Twitter and Facebook to help spark conversation and interest and ultimately drive sales.

While there was nothing wrong with his tactics, he never once followed the advice he read so diligently about. The concept of "after the flight" was impossible for key stakeholders in his organization to grasp. I could almost hear his CMO ask him, "So when does this social-media campaign end?"

After minimal engagement, my friend quickly realized that the tactics his brand implemented weren't delivering on the desired results originally sold in by his advertising agency and the words "pull the plug" were just around the corner.

So before he could point a finger, I asked him: When was the last time his brand went through a digital audit of relevance? This was bigger than an OTX or Dynamic Logic study (both excellent research companies in their own rights). It was even bigger than the Net Promoter Score. This was about using real-time human scoring as a means of understanding how relevant his brand was to his audience.

The blank stare back was enough for me to know he hadn't a clue as to what I was talking about. So I showed him the light version -- a few free online resources such as TweetDeck and Social Mention that he could use to gauge the level of value his brand carried online by following conversations where his brand was referenced, both positively and negatively.

Being relatively intuitive, he picked up quickly on the power of the online services I mentioned. While he was able to find his audience discussing fashion, his brand was never the centerpiece of conversation, referenced less than a handful of times in the past few months.

Later that night we met up. I found him sulking in a coffeehouse, depressed over his discovery. His wife had a different take on it: "At least you didn't find negative comments!"

"Right," he said, "but I'd rather have seen 1,000 negative posts than nothing at all. At least with the negative sentiment, I could conclude that I have an audience who cares enough to talk about us. I don't even think we're relevant."

Look, social media isn't going to be the sole driver of ROI. But what social media will do is act as an indicator of where your brand stands in the eyes of your audience, getting you closer to ROI. It's your gateway to a live focus group. But unlike a roundtable in some offshoot mirrored room outside the Forum Shops in Las Vegas, where moderators have to pull responses and people may fake warmth toward your product or service, social media is live and unfiltered.

Finding zero conversation specific to my friend's brand indicated a much more dire issue than the one he originally intended to research. In this instance, social media acted as the directional indicator of zero engagement between audience and product. That meant his paid media, both offline as well as online, was not effective.

While it's a requirement that, if your brand participates in social media, trust and honesty have to be key tenets, you also need to work exceedingly hard to identify and engage your audience with the proper incentives in order to spark relevant dialogue. Tracking meaningful conversations through social media will provide insights for all facets of your company, from your messaging to the products you may decide to feature.

The trick is to realize that it's never too late to get started. Even if the outlook seems discouraging, once you begin to seek, identify and engage your audience, you'll ultimately end up with a group of advocates willing to speak to you and with each other.

Maybe this earned media thing isn't as hard as I thought.

9 Comments

By craigcooper | craigcooper.com, NY July 2, 2009 12:43:37 pm:

And, of course, some products are just inherently more interesting to talk about than others.

He should be more concerned if his direct competitors are generating much more chatter than his brand.

If the whole category is quiet then he has an opportunity but not a concern.

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By sirnoze | AUSTIN, TX July 2, 2009 02:01:07 pm:

Good piece Craig. It's amazing to see reluctant marketers discover the conversations that are taking place online about the brand(s) they manage. Just recently I was having a beer with a marketing friend and she was amazed to learn people were talking about the brand she was managing. So amazed she immediately signed up on Twitter and began sending thank you tweets to people saying nice things about Paciugo gelato.

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By deanna Harms | Wichita, KS July 2, 2009 03:09:26 pm:

Dead-on insights. Thank you for sharing them. The bad news is that the social-media campaign never ends. That's the good news, too.

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By GRNickElliott | London, LO July 2, 2009 03:31:58 pm:

Agree with a lot of what's being said here. We are currently facing a lot of resistance from the graduate recruitment community in the UK exactly for this reason! I like the idea of a 'live focus group' for your brands. We have a lot more interest in 'inbound marketing' and would be interested to hear what people think about that as a solution? www.thegradroom.com/recruiter

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By jlefevere | Indpls, IN July 2, 2009 03:43:35 pm:

great insight and info. I had not heard os socialmetion.com specifically. Keep up the good work.

Jim Lefevere
www.theinteractivemarketer.com

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By jeffcrab | coppell, TX July 2, 2009 05:59:38 pm:

Great article, Craig. As frustrating as it is to have to continually explain and re-explain the realities of the on-going nature of the various social media networks - it also presents a rather strong degree of job security for those of us working the field.

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By mgchildr | Athens, GA July 2, 2009 10:12:21 pm:

Great article! The good news is that consumers make purchase decisions from within a web of social conversation, which can effectively take place online. As consumers share their experiences with a particular brand with their social networks, brand advocacy increases. The effect of brand advocacy is geometrical, not arithmetical, with word of mouth carrying the most weight in a consumer's purchasing decision.

Interesting clip detailing how social media can do this for brands:

http://bit.ly/szW0U

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By brianvandeputte | Macomb, MI July 2, 2009 10:37:09 pm:

After reading this post, I immediately thought to the book I've been reading titled "The New Rules of Marketing & PR" by David Meerman Scott. He lists some key points to generate consumer attention on a company's Web site...

First, focus your complete attention on the buyers of your products.

Next is to get with the leaders of your organization and determine the business' goals.

After the goals have been identified, building buyer personas is the first step and probably the single most important thing in creating the new marketing and PR plan.

It's crucial to segment buyer personas so you can then develop marketing programs to reach each one. Some questions to ask are:

~What are there problems? ~What media do they rely on for answers to problems? ~How can we reach them?

The important thing is that you will use this buyer persona information to create specific marketing and PR programs to reach each buyer persona, and therefore you need to have segmentation in fine enough detail that when they encounter your Web site, your buyers will say: "Yes!"

Adding on, an effective Web marketing plan requires an understanding of the ways your buyers speak and the real words and phrases they use. Check out blogs in your buyers' space, frequent conference and seminars they attend. Read what they read.

Listen. What do you want your buyers to believe about your organization?

Specialize the content according to each individual buyer persona, creating appropriate links to these pages, and leaving the rest of the site alone

http://twitter.com/brianvandeputte
http://brianvandeputte.wordpress.com/

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By traffichoney | San Francisco, CA July 6, 2009 11:37:48 pm:

This is even more important for startups early in the development process for a social media listening strategy will not only allow them to develop a product customers want but also create more effective messaging and voice that resonates with customer concerns and fulfills customer needs. Check out my post on some of these ideas http://bit.ly/8Pg2D

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