Jan 14, 2010

Webinar: Socialgraphics Provides a Customer-Centric Approach to Social Strategy.



Categories: AltimeterSocialgraphics

Posted on January 11th, 2010

Left: In the past, marketers have relied on tried and true demographics to understand customers. Now, as consumers adopt social technologies, marketers must measure socialgraphics, which indicates how they interact with each other.
Charlene Li and I, Jeremiah Owyang, of The Altimeter Group are hosting a free webinar to understand how companies can understand their customers through socialgraphics.
Beware of plans or proposals that start with “Twitter Strategy” or “Facebook Strategy” Instead, they should have a “Customer Strategy” that focuses in on how customers behave –not on the ever-changing toolset. As a result, companies should first understand how their customers use social technologies before they choose the tools. Socialgraphics is how to measure how customers use social technologies, where they are online, and how it influence them in the context of the customer lifecylce.
This upcoming free webinar, suited for corporations who want to develop plans in social with confidence, will answer how to apply socialgraphics. Like demographics or psychographics, companies must now understand socialgraphics, which answers five key questions:
Socialgraphics answers five key questions:
  1. Where are your customers online? First, find out where your customers are online, knowing which websites they are particiating at, this will reduce guessing.How to make this data actionable: Don’t aimlessly approach social networks without knowing if they are there, if they are in Hyves, Mixii, or Facebook, go there. Fish where the fish are.
  2. What are your customers’ social behaviors online? How do they use social technologies? Do they share? Comment? Create their own content?How to make this data actionable: Which social features should you deploy. Example: if they frequently like to comment on websites, allow them to leave their comments.
  3. What social information or people do your customers rely on? How to make this data actionable: If they rely on their friends, facilitate a marketing program that encourages customers to share with friends, this data helps with determining resource allocation on advocacy programs.
  4. What is your customers’ social influence? Who trusts them?How to make this data actionable: If your customers are trusted by others, highlight your customers in front of their community. For example, teens may share information with each other, spreading their influence to others.  Example: Walmart’s 11 Moms blogger program is a platform for customer voices.
  5. How do customers use social in context of your products? How do customers use social technologies to learn, make decisions, and support your products and services? How to make this data actionable: Be confident in your resource allocation by understanding when customers rely on social tools or their peers in pre-sales, awareness, decision making, implementation, or support of a product.
When properly deployed, Socialgraphics, helps companies, their agency partners, and business units be more effective in their planning and deployment –reducing risk from deploying without having knowledge.
In the spirit of open research, we will make this webinar, the slides, and the overall methodology available for the public to use, under creative commons license. We hope you’ll join us.  Stay tuned as we have other webinars coming soon.

Socialgraphics: The Engagement Pyramid Offers An Understanding of Customer Behaviors
Above: The Engagement Pyramid makes it easy to understand the specific behaviors of socialgraphics, making it simple to decide which technologies to deploy. Having customer understanding makes go-to-market strategy more effective.