This is the first of two posts showcasing presentations by the wonderfully creative marketer, Joakim Vars Nilsen. It illustrates how companies can harness “people power” on the social web and why that’s crucial.
Joakim Vars Nilsen is one of my favourite new Twitter friends and a valued member of my LinkedIn professional network. He is Creative Advisor at MediaFront, in Oslo, Norway.
Earlier this year, Joakim posted an excellent slide presentation, which I share here, called “Power of the People”. This presentation compellingly illustrates the transformation of the web since the advent of Web 2.0 social networking sites.
A key concept of his presentation is that customers don’t passively consume marketing messages anymore since mass media no longer holds a monopoly on our attention.
Kevin Slavin, he says, articulates this fundamental change in the marketplace and how companies or brands have to adapt.
“It is not about competing for attention against other stories. The attention we are competing for now is the attention of each other.”
One of the biggest changes online, Joakim says, is that ordinary people have “stopped only consuming media and started producing it.”
“The internet is an arena for participation, not for broadcasting”, he says. “We live in a culture that is 99% more complicated, richer, deeper and nuanced than 99% of advertising on TV or (in) print.”
He cites a Microsoft Predictions released a report in June 2008 which shows that internet consumption began surpassing TV consumption in 2008. The group predicts that by 2010, consumers will be spending 11.5 hours per week watch TV and 14.2 hours per week online.
What are these people – your customers – doing online? Many of them are researching products or brands and starting to have conversations on social media platforms about these brands. That is where the “power of people” begins.
A Napa consulting study (2008) showed that 90% of consumers are more likely to trust the opinions of their peers — or even strangers — than the online advertising of brands (14%).
So the challenge for companies is to learn to sell more effectively on a more “social web”.
Companies Need A Social Media Strategy
How can companies better connect with and engage their prospects in the Web 2.0 world? Well, companies need to add value to their customers’ online experiences with them by being more relevant to their lives, Joakim says.
People are bombarded with hundreds of messages daily and they actively seek ways to filter the “signal from the noise”. If companies offer them a chance to have relevant conversations around their products; to ask questions, offer feedback, and create a loyal community around a brand, they will feel more connected to that brand. The sales will follow.
Active social engagement or “conversation marketing” to customers will provide companies with a slightly more untraditional measure of ROI. Rather than measuring return on investment, however, more relevant ROI measurements might be a company’s “return on influence”, a phrase coined by Leesa Barnes, or their “return on insight” , as Joakim says.
Companies must develop social media strategies with measurable objectives, however, before blindly plunging into the world of social media. Joakim offers some tips on how to create such a strategy in his presentation.
So, do advertisers need to choose between traditional and digital marketing? Joakim insists that it isn’t an “either or” situation.
“It’s about optimizing your overall marketing strategy with digital marketing as the hub.”
In February 2009 social media usage exceeded that of email (Neilsen). So if manufacturing companies want to stay in the game, they really can’t afford to be late adopters. As Joakim puts it, this is the “innovation generation” and “speed wins”.
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