The Digital Age and Social Media

Management consulting is often considered the creme de la creme - the best of the best. Well, a recent study of HINGE RESEARCH INSTITUTE shows two things:

Yes, management consulting is the industry with the highest growth rate as well as the leader in terms of profitability. 

But then, the management consulting industry trails other industries in online lead generation - only the architecture, engineering, and construction industry is less effective. Moreover, only 20% of their hires are recruited online - that is just average.

So I am wondering... Does Consulting choose to stay with their offline, relationship-building model or are they simply missing the trend towards online? Maybe they don't know how to generate online leads?! Well, take a lesson from Hubspot in inbound marketing. The company known for its inbound marketing services estimated that companies that blog generate 55% more web traffic (for all, not only consulting industry). The concept is simple. The more you blog, the more pages Google has to index and the more inbound links you have. The more pages and inbound links you have, the higher you rank on search engines such as Google. In addition to search engine management, the more educational content your website features, the more social media traffic you are likely to receive. Moreover, high quality content pieces such as white papers and e-books make great offers to nurture visitors and convert them into leads. The consulting industry does not like neither website traffic nor leads?! And by the way, inbound marketing costs are 62% less than traditional marketing. Well, the management consulting industry is still the most profitable one. I guess they can afford it. 

Innovation can be defined as the application of new ideas to the products, processes, or other aspects of the activities of a firm that lead to increased “value.” What is value? It is in a broad sense higher value added for the firm and also benefits to consumers or other firms. 

As we all know there are two types of innovation: 

Product innovation: the introduction of a new product, or a significant qualitative change in an existing product. 

Process innovation: the introduction of a new process for making or delivering goods and services. 

Sometimes also a third dimension is identified:organizational change within the firm. As former IBMer who worked in the Organization Change Management division, I would like to believe that it is important. And if we think about it, we could define it as the firm's ability to constantly renew itself, quickly respond to market trends, and modifying its organizational structure to execute, or better commercialize, ideas. So I question myself, how good is the idea of a new product or process when it is never released to the market or never implemented in the organization?! Whether organizational change is an innovation category by itself or just part of the execution, I guess we can agree that it is crucial to the entire innovation process. 

So how is a new idea or process developed? Rosegger provided an example of an innovation process in his book The Economics of Production and Innovation: 

It is clearly depicted that stages 1 to 3 happen in the R&D departments where basic research discovers a new idea that are then tested in prototypes. Does that mean companies that spend a lot on R&D are automatically innovators?

Lets look at the Top 15 companies in terms of R&D spending (2009) according to Booz & Company:

In 2009 Roche, a European company in the healthcare sector, is leading in terms of R&D investment. The holding spent $9.1 billion on R&D which equals 20% of their sales. However, according to a survey from Booz & Company the bulk of R&D remains concentrated among American companies ($ 193 billion), closely followed by Europe ($161 billion). With $137 billion, the majority is spent in the computing/electronics industry. Healthcare places second with $112 billion.

Are these companies also perceived as the most innovative ones? Have a look at the results of Booz & Company's survey where they questioned more than 450 innovation executives in more than 400 companies across 10 industries to name the three companies they considered to be the most innovative in the world:

Apple is considered the most innovative company but spent only 3.1% of sales on R&D. If we compare this list to the top 15 R&D spenders, only five names match. 

The results are clear! The Top spenders are not outperforming their industry peers on three different indicators of financial success; the companies that are perceived to be highly innovative are clearly successful in creating new products and bringing them to market. Some spend more than others to accomplish this goal, but the real winners, financially speaking, are those companies, like Apple, Google, and 3M, that can innovate successfully without breaking the bank. Maybe these companies have a better internal structure to execute idea? Maybe they have better or more diverse ideas? Or maybe these companies are organization change innovators that master changing their organizational structure (incl. technology) to generate good ideas, listen to the customer, build a product pipeline by prioritizing the ideas, and then launching successfully.

According to Forbes Magazine, Facebook is planning to launch a job postings board that pulls in jobs from third party providers by the end of this summer. The question arises if "Facebook Jobs" threatens or strengthens its existing partners like Glassdoor in the attempt to access to the career community. What are Glassdoor's options to grow?

What is Glassdoor? 

The website Glassdoor.com provides job seekers, employers and recruiters access to millions of job listings, company reviews, interview questions, details on salary, and the ability to identify who within their Facebook network works at the targeted company. All inside company information is posted anonymously by employees. A new user gets a limited number of reviews but can gain an enhanced membership by completing a quick review of their current or former employer. The data is not gathered scientifically, yet renowned magazines such as CNNMoney cite,for instance, Glassdoor's CEO Approval Ratings which indicates a high degree of reliability. As a concept it is easy to see the real value of this kind of transparent platform, and when you add the Facebook platform in to the mix with close to a billion users globally, we see the real potential.

How is Glassdoor performing?

If we look at Glassdoors website traffic over the last three months, estimated by quantcast, it is clearly visible that the company gains traction within the career community, especially since June. In the last month of June the number of visits peaked 3.7 million, an increased by 30% compared to the previous week. This equals close to 600.000 visits per day. As depicted in the graph below, the traffic increase originated mainly from India. July and August is "the hiring season" in India.  

On a monthly base quantcast estimates an increase of 38% global users that visit Glassdoor.com 1.4 times on average. There is also the website traffic from the United States grew by 8%.  

Who uses Glassdoor?

According to quantcast, the customer profile is a male young adult between the age of 25 and 34 who is out of college but earns less than $100k. 

If the demographics of users that visit Glassdoor.com are related to the overall internet average, we see a disparity in terms of education level and household income. 48% of all Glassdoor visitors have a college degree but they also browse more websites. Grad students (that make up only 20%) visit Glassdoor 1.4 times more compared to their total internet traffic. Consequently, grad students are the real target group. The same phenomenon is visible for household income. The segment with an income above $150k+ is 1.25x more likely to visit Glassdoor. 

What is the perception of Glassdoor among grad students?

As graduate student I personally seem to be the target segment. Consequently, I asked my fellow classmates about their perception of Glassdoor. 9 out of 10 are aware of Glassdoor.com and have used it personally. However, 7 students used the website to check the salary of a company they were about to interview with. Only 2 students knew that Glassdoor offers more features. They frequently consulted Glassdoor for interview questions and company reviews. 

Growth options: 

Focus on global expansion (more global job postings, more international advertisers)  

Target professionals, mainly graduate students, with a household income above $150k - a partnership with LinkedIn could be an option

Raise awareness for services related to earlier steps in the application process as salary check is the last step: identify potential company, check reviews, check job listings, check connections in existing network, apply, check interview questions, check salary for negotiations       

Moreover, Glassdoor provides great value for companies. As discovered during my quick survey, companies use Glassdoor to benchmark themselves in terms of salary but also in terms of where their competitors post jobs and which titles their use. By posting a job on the same search boards with a competitive salary and a job title that they understand immediately they ensure:

Their job postings are visible to qualified personnel

Their salary attracts qualified personnel

It is easy to switch between companies because the career progression is obvious

Is the professional network LinkedIn at danger? According to Forbes Magazine, Facebook is planning to launch a job posting application that pulls in jobs from third party providers. "Facebook Jobs" is said to be available late THIS summer. Facebook already partners with career communities like Glassdoor and has online recruitment applications such as BranchOut. Will Facebook be able to blur the lines between private and professional? Personally, LinkedIn seems much more professional.

I would not welcome the opportunity that future colleagues can check me out even before I started working there. Yes, I know we all have privacy settings but I saw my Facebook picture on a list of participants at my class at Harvard University - how did they get it? I have everything set on private. So how much do we trust that? Would you bet your future job on it?. Or worst, they would not hire me because of a picture they found on Facebook where I hold a glass of alcohol. LinkedIn still appeals much more to the professional world. Yet, any application Facebook promotes has to potential to become viral in a second as Facebook has 900 million users whereas LinkedIn has only 150 million.And yes, Facebook is trendy and contagious.

With Facebook Jobs, our favorite social network will definitely rack up their engagement metrics and might even be able to monetize it. Because as we all know Facebook is actively looking for new revenue sources, always. 

Social Media pays off!

71% plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because:

- low cost marketing

- getting traction

Interested in web analytics?! I would like to share some insights of my Digital Marketing class on this interesting topic. 

The first step is to define your objective. Would you like to measure engagement, a direct response or the strengths of your brand? Here are possible measurements for each objective:

Engagement: CTR, page impressions, sign ups, downloads, play of video

Direct Response: CTR, purchase, registrations

Brand building: CTR, page impressions, lengths of stay, play of video

So which KPIs should we use? Well, again: It depends! On what? It depends on the stage your customers are in the lifecycle. Did we drive them through marketing activities to visit our site for the first time or do they come back regularly and actually spend money. 

The Pirate Metrics (AARRR...)

Acquisition - Did the visit? Did they stay?

Activation - Were they happy? Did they sign up?

Retention - Did they return?

Referral - Did they refer others? Here social media plays a critical role

Revenue - Did the spend money with us?

Interested in more details? Check out customer lifecycle / conversion behavior or DigitalDoughnut (New groups according AARRR).

How many people watch the TV series Grey's Anatomy? It is one of the most popular TV series out there right now. But we all know: IT IS FAKE! Imagine you could follow a real operation - on Twitter. Impossible? Not really. 

Social media helped open up an area of healthcare that was previously only available to a few: the operating room. In February, Henry Ford Hospital tweeted an entire procedure from on operating room.

"As Rogers got closer to the tumor, he realized it was far larger than it had appeared on a CT scan, and he wondered out loud whether he would have to remove the entire kidney -- something he'd been trying to avoid."

"Gosh, this is big," he said to his colleagues in the operating room. "Could I have picked a harder case for this?"

Its sounds crazy but generated traction from doctors, medical students and other non-medical personnel that just wanted to follow the surgeons that tweeted updates on a kidney surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. A great success story of a healthcare organization that uses social media tactics to raise public awareness. A smart move because 34% of consumers use social media to search for health information, according to research data from How America Searches: Health and Wellness (summary: here, research paper: here).

But what are the benefits? And how can it be monetized? Well, in the case of the Henry Ford procedure, they definitely managed to engage people; users re-tweeted the messages, added their own thoughts and even gave recommendations. I wonder if some suggestions might have actually improved the outcome of the operation. On the other hand, I find it scary that 1. my surgeon might be distracted tweeting or discussing with others over Twitter (come on, it’s my life) and 2. do I want my personal details out their? We cannot ignore that fact that this event created a buzz that attracted new patients as well as recruit medical personnel, because yes, tweeting an entire surgery is innovative and definitely something new.

While I was researching for this post, I came across a social media disaster: nurses at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California posted pictures of a dying stab victim on their Facebook pages. Needless to say, they were fired immediately. I wonder if this is really a problem of social media or simply ethics. Not the communication tool should be blamed, but the privacy violation itself. Sharing is great, but let’s not forget our personality just because sharing becomes so easy.

Social networks and channels present us social marketers with a wide array of media opportunities to position our brand and engage customers. Each channel offers a unique formula for engagement where brands become stories and people become story tellers. So we better tell an interesting story.

The brand story should connect with customers differently across each medium, creating a deeper, more enriching experience - a transmedia approach. In order to tell the story we can invest in five digital assets:

Paid: Digital advertising, banners, adwords (check out Google AdWords to analyze which words work best and how many companies use the same words)

Owned: Created assets, custom content

Earned: Brand-related conversations and user-generated content

Promoted: In-stream or social paid promotions vehicles

Shared: Open platforms or communities where customers co-create and collaborate with brands 

So social media is becoming bigger and bigger. So I wonder… How does the future look like and how important is it for companies to appoint a “web ambassador”, a term frequently used by Philippa Gamse in her insightful and easy-to-read book 42 Rules for a Web Presence That Wins. According to her author, the web ambassador should be part of the management team which emphasizes the strategic importance that social media should have within organizations. An interesting article I read today on emarketer goes even further. Now, CEOs should tweet. Why? Because the point when CEOs fall on Twitter's adoption curve directly impacts the company's performance. Apparently, Twitter helps executives bond with customers and employees because:

it builds trust

improves communication

improves the brand image

demonstrates transparency

influences buying habits

Well, I would say: it depends - probably the first thing you learn at business school: it all depends. Yet, in this case it really depends. If the executive is a social media alien and the content he or she posts is neither interesting nor relevant to me, how does this motivate me to purchase a product or to become a more productive employee? Doesn't it rather demonstrate that he or she "lives in another world"? So we agree, the content needs to be extremely well-selected due to the fact that a public figure such as the CEO of an influential company automatically gets lots of exposure. In order to leverage all this power effectively within social media channels, it has to be done well. I wonder if Warren Buffet updates his Facebook page by himself or if he has an expert who does it for him...? In order to leverage all the exposure these CEOs have, they should hire a web ambassador. Right now, the majority of CEOs might not have the time or the familiarity required to tweet, blog or Facebook efficiently. But that's exactly what makes it so authentic. Therefore a big challenge of social media is that once there is a separation between a name and the content provided - hence the name Warren Buffet but the tweet is designed by his marketing staff - it looses authenticity and readers will become less interest. Moreover, social media is so successful because it is a 2-way communication. I question myself, does a CEO such as Warren Buffet really logs onto his Twitter account in his lunch break and tells us how his day is going?! And do people comment on that? Highly unlikely. Is social media at that level becoming another one-way communication tool for marketers? 

Social Media seems to be the new buzz word. The term is often associated with the digital age or the rising importance of mobile devices. In fact, by 2008 Social Media is used more frequently in books digitalized by Google than traditional marketing terms such as customer segmentation (red line) or competitive analysis (green line). 

Google Ngram Viewer: an analytics tool, which graphically depicts the frequency of words used in e-books.

So we question ourselves: What exactly is social media? According to the definition given by the Oxford Dictionaries it is composed of “websites and applications used for social networking”. But isn’t it much more than technology-enabled networking? If we break it down into its parts and define media as an instrument on communication, then it would be a social instrument of communication. One key characteristic of social media is its focus on communication where both sides share instead of just one conversation partner providing content. This interactive feature changes the landscape of “old” marketing as described by David Meerman Scott in his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. I would like to elaborate on the great opportunities of social media, its challenges and some insights from David’s fascinating book.

Isn’t social media the greatest invention for corporations?! Now, there have all these more creative choices to attract customers besides costly TV spots or print advertising. We can simply create a corporate page on facebook or announce a new product launch via twitter in order to drive traffic to our corporate website. According to David this is only the first of seven categories to express opinions online. Social media consists of:

Social Networking Sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.); used to nurture a community of friends,

 Blogs (such as Tumblr); used to express a passion and connect to a community of people with the same passion,

 Video and Photo Sharing (YouTube, Flickr); facilitate sharing of data-intensive mediums,

Chat Rooms and Message Boards; online meeting places to discuss topics of interest,

Listservs (similar to chat rooms); used to send a message via mail to registered members,

Wikis; shared information that can be updates by anyone,

Social Bookmarking (Digg and Delicious); used to rate and suggest content to others.

As social media marketers, we have a great variety of tools available which enable us to directly communicate with our potential buyers. Should we be active in all of them? David says: No! The first step in creating a successful social media strategy is to identify buyer personas which are a representative of a type of buyer who is interested in our organization or our products in order to satisfy a certain need. Then, we should find out as much as possible about them by analyzing secondary data as well as by reading the publications they read and interviewing them. Among other things, we will find out the type of social media that they use. As, per the definition of social media, the communication should be two-sided, we need to become familiar with the language our buyers speak, the “voice of content” as David calls it. Once we have a solid understanding of our buyer personas, we can define our ownonline personality which should be appealing to our target audience but also be aligned with the overall, corporate brand identity of our corporation. Then we are ready to dive into social media!

Here are my key take-aways from David’s books regarding a successful online presence:

use photos to tell a story

include interactive tools, make feedback loops available

provide ways for your customers to interact with each other and 

create content with pass-along value that could go viral.

If we follow David’s suggestions, we have the means to create a compelling online presence because in the end “social media is like going to a large party. Put on your best outfit, try to be entertaining, and don’t put your foot in your mouth.”

Hello my dear readers,

I am thrilled that you show interest in reading my blog. The first thing I would want to know as a reader is: Who is this person Yonna Hardt. So let me take this opportunity to quickly present myself. I am a female in my mid-twenties that is passionate about digital marketing, social media in particular. I worked as a business analyst in the marketing department of a former Siemens Medical company. What did I do? Basically, I gathered, analyzed (as the job description might indicate) and developed healthcare markets with regards to marketing activities. Lots of customer segmentation, competitive analysis, bench marking, branding strategies, etc. The greatest part of my job was to actually execute the strategies I proposed which meant that I could travel to Colombia, Argentina, Chile, China, Germany, Austria, and the UK. Travelling and getting paid for it?! One word to describe it: AWESOME!

Yet, I realized that technology is advancing so quickly, and I wanted to be one step ahead as new things, particularly new technologies, fascinate. That’s why I joined IBM where I used my marketing and strategy knowledge to consult multinational organizations. More recently, as part of my master studies in Boston, I intern again with IBM. My team and I create a global communication channel strategy based on social media to promote IBM’s new vision called Smarter Planet.

What else…? I am crazy about sports. I love running. I played soccer for over 10 years and ran four half-marathons. My most recent discover is KITESURFING. I would like to call myself a kite-surfer but that would not be quite true. I still have problems getting out of the water. My brother is already way better than me. Both of us started kitesufing during our backpacking trip through Vietnam. Yes, I love travelling, getting to know people from different places, and the smell. I think every environment has a distinct smell - sometimes it is not pleasant but it is a distinct smell, right?!

I would like to use this blog to share some insights from my classes (Digital Marketing and Management of New Technologies are very interesting), my work experiences, or simply state my opinion as a user of social media applications.

I hope my blog will be interested for you and convey some valuable information. Please feel free to comment or share your opinion if you don’t agree with something I stated.