RFID bracelets and "Like?"

Facebook’s “Like” functionality arrived in the real world this past month in Israel when Coke added RFID bracelets (Radio Frequency Identification) to the company’s Coca-Cola Village summer resort event, making it easy for high school attendees to share their experiences instantly on Facebook.  Throughout the Village’s 40+ experiences teens simply placed their RFID bracelets on “Like” placards to update their Facebook feed with a “Like” about a pool, spa, extreme sports, food and more all found at the Coca-Cola Village.  Also, if teens were photographed by one of the event’s official photographers the RFID technology automatically tagged everyone in the photo and uploaded it to each relevant Facebook profile.

Every day the Village was open up to 650 people attended.  Those 650 people each posted on average 54 pieces of Coke branded content on their Facebook profile, driving 35,000 Coca-Cola Facebook messages each day.  Talk about amplifying an event!

Check out the video to see how it all worked.  Huge “WOOHOO” to Coca-Cola Israel!

And, LATISM (Latinos in Social Media), a non-profit organization that groups Latinos who actively participate online, has performed an invaluable survey of over 900 Latina bloggers and has shared these incredible insights with all of us.

Thank you, LATISM!!!

Perhaps reflecting the makeup of the larger Latino population, the great majority of participants were born in Mexico and the US

This is an excerpt from the LATISM survey on Latina bloggers (July 2010):

The world has certainly changed a lot since our “abuelitas” (grandmas) used to keep a secret dairy. Today’s Latinas are open-minded, opinionated and love to share their innermost  thoughts online… in two different languages!

At the same time, while they have shed certain traditions, these independent heads of households have managed to tap into the gregarious aspect of our culture: the sense of community,  which earned high marks as a main motivator to start posting.

They have succeeded at planting themselves right at the epicenter of merging worlds: between tradition and modernity, between English and Spanish, between American and Latino cultures.

The intrinsic characteristics of blogging, where the private becomes public and communities rally together around common interests, make it the perfect platform for the Latina Passion.

• The number of blogueras has been climbing steadily for the past 10 years but the numbers really skyrocketed last year: 63% started blogging in 2009 and it’s expected to continue climbing.
• Most feel being a Latina has helped them find sponsorships and readers but in general feel they get less opportunities compared to non-Latinas
  • Young: The largest group is between 30 and 39
  • Mothers: 83% has between 2 and 4 kids
  • Heads of household:  70% is either single, divorced or separated
• Commitment:
  • 75% blog two or more times a week
  • 77% have invested in their own domain
• 98% plus are active in social media
• A surprising 72% blog primarily in English
• Mobile:
  • 81% use their phone to tweet
  • 90% use it for FB
  • 93% use apps

You can access the full report here

Source: LATISM

Top 10 Social Networking Websites & Forums - June 2010

Note: The Hitwise data featured is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. The market share of visits percentage does not include traffic for all sub-domains of certain websites that could be reported on separately.

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw significant growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.

Mobile Content Usage

65.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in May, up 1.4 percentage points versus the prior three month period, while browsers were used by 31.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points). Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 30.0 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw significant growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.

____________________________________________________________________________

Mobile Content Usage

3 Month Avg. Ending May 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Feb. 2010

Total U.S. Age 13+

____________________________________________________________________________

Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers

Feb-10    May-10    Point Change

Total Mobile Subscribers                            100.0%    100.0%        N/A

Sent text message to another phone           63.8%       65.2%          1.4

Used browser                                                     29.6%       31.9%          2.3

Used downloaded apps                                   27.9%       30.0%         2.1

Played games                                                      21.8%       22.5%        0.7

Accessed social networking site or blog     18.2%       20.8%        2.6

Listened to music on mobile phone             13.1%       14.3%          1.2

____________________________________________________________________________

Source: comscore

In a posting at the Brazen Careerist Web site, Jason Warner, Google’s head of staffing for online sales and operations, contends that this trend “will become a non-issue as this phase of the Internet Age plays itself out.”

It’s not just what you say that can be held against you when you’re looking for a job. It’s also what you post on MySpace, write in your blog and broadcast on YouTube.

That’s because if a potential employer uncovers salacious or otherwise unflattering material about you online, that job offer you were expecting could vaporize. With 77 percent of employers Googling and otherwise researching applicants, you never know what your future bosses may think about those times you ranted about your coworkers or got sloshed at a party. They may simply decide to avoid your questionable past and move on to the next candidate.

“Who wants to be the person in HR who brings in the kid who has bong hits all over his page?” says Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender, a services company that helps job seekers clean up their online reputations.

A 2006 survey of 100 executive recruiters by job search and recruiting network ExecuNet found that 77 percent use search engines to learn about candidates. Of those researching candidates online, 35 percent eliminated a candidate from consideration based on information they uncovered online — up from 26 percent in 2005. ExecuNet predicts that the number of job seekers prejudged or eliminated due to this “digital dirt” will climb.

Is Ignorance Bliss?

Others say the trend may not be as widespread or as likely to accelerate. “I never run them through Google,” says recruiter Michael Kelemen of his candidates. “I call their references for background.”

“I think a lot of the stuff we read about recruiters doing background checks on their candidates online is more rumor than anything else,” adds Kelemen, who runs the Recruiting Animal blog.

Recruiters use Internet searches “to avoid major red flags, but it is just another assessment of a person,” says the anonymous blogger known as Your HR Guy. He adds, “My general view on Internet searches is that, for most positions, ignorance is bliss. Most of what is online for a majority of workers is personal, and most workers’ personal stuff [doesn’t play a role at work].”

But If Everyone Has an Online Past…

Others say the pervasiveness of social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, and the way young people virtually live online mean employers won’t be able to judge candidates based on their digital dirt. If they do, the thinking goes, they will miss out on top-notch employees, given that just about everyone will have some incriminating information online.

In a posting at the Brazen Careerist Web site, Jason Warner, Google’s head of staffing for online sales and operations, contends that this trend “will become a non-issue as this phase of the Internet Age plays itself out.” He suggests five reasons employers won’t spend time worrying about “unfortunate online photos” and “other embarrassing antics”:

• College students have always behaved in this manner.
• More details about everyone will be online.
• Searching for photos won’t be worth recruiters’ time.
• The information is irrelevant.
• It’s a slippery slope, especially if employers start to research existing employees’ outside behaviors.

Warner acknowledged the risks of having “those photos” online, and in a subsequent online discussion about his views at Brazen Careerist, others noted how interviewers and hiring managers may find it impossible to disregard what they learn online about candidates, even if the material falls into the category of forgivable indiscretions.

Clean Up Your Act or Stay True?

Certainly the possibility that a prospective employer can uncover things about your past can create anxiety about whether you should clean up your online image by revising Facebook pages, requesting that videos and blog posts about you be removed, or by hiring ReputationDefender or a similar service.

In a Brazen Careerist article titled “Twentysomething: Raunchy Old Photos Will Be Part of the Revolution,” Ryan Healy, cofounder of Employee Evolution, a Web site for Millennials entering the workforce, said he knows people who have removed materials “to save some face in the real world,” but has never considered doing so himself. “Why should I pretend to be one person for eight hours a day and someone else entirely the rest?” he writes.

And consider this: The generation moving into the workforce may not want to work for an employer that wouldn’t hire a talented 20-something for having a drunken photo on Facebook, suggests Scott Allen, coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online. “The standards are going to radically change,” he says.

Source: Allan Hoffman, Monster Tech Jobs Expert

BOONTON, N.J., June 28 — Over the next five years, US Hispanic communities will spend $257 billion on telecommunications services, accounting for 17 percent of all

The US Latino market tends to over-index in mobile content and US Hispanics are accessing the Internet through more and varied devices than non-Hispanics. Are you monitoring what they say about their Telecom services?

residential telecom expenditures, according to a new market research study from The Insight Research Corporation. Early analysis of Census 2010 data suggests that Hispanics will surpass the 50 million mark and that they will command over $1 trillion in buying power. Hispanics are the youngest race/ethnicity segment and, more importantly, have the largest percentage of people under the age of 18, a market demographic that the study says will be crucial to the survival of telecommunications providers over the next five years.

Insight Research’s market analysis study, “US Hispanic Use of Telecommunications Services 2010-2015,” takes a close look at the purchasing habits and telecommunications usage patterns of the Hispanic segment of the US population, as well as other ethnic communities in the US. The study emphasizes that the US Latino market tends to over-index in mobile content and also notes that US Hispanics are accessing the Internet through more and varied devices than non-Hispanics.

“If the future of mobile carriers depends on their getting consumers to buy their data plans, then the US Hispanic community is right in the sweet spot, and will be receiving increasing attention from both wireline and wireless carriers’ marketing departments,” says Robert Rosenberg, Insight Research. “Our study demonstrates that Hispanics are one of the most social groups online, and given the youth-orientated demographic of the US Hispanic community, they become a prime target for the newer 3G and 4G cellular services,” Rosenberg concluded.

“US Hispanic Use of Telecommunication Services 2010-2015″ examines spending and usage patterns of US Hispanics for wireline, cellular, and pre-paid cellular services, and compares these spending patterns to those of the general population aswell as other minority segments, including Asian-Americans and African-Americans.

An excerpt of this Hispanic market research report, table of contents, and ordering information are online at www.insight-corp.com/reports/hisp10.asp .

NEWS SOURCE: Insight Research Corporation

In this post, I would like to discuss how to use online monitoring tools to aid in product development and market research.

There are many steps to developing a successful product. But the first step is always concept creation. Here we are thinking about broad-based ideas. Using social media monitoring at this step can help form a direction and scope for the rest of the development process. For example, if we want to develop a product focused on online video, we might monitor such terms as “video”, “video sharing”, or “video rating”. During this first stage of monitoring, we will want to focus on what aspects of online video people are talking about most.

How To Use Social Media Monitoring Tools To Aid Product Development

Sniffing user needs out of social media

Identifying trends and audiences is extremely important to defining the scope and direction of your product. With our example, we might find that the largest demographic for video consumption are young adults and predominately focus on music and entertainment.

After we have used our monitoring tools to identify trends and audiences, we now begin to monitor scope and direction. Understanding how your target audience is using products is important in your planning process. With our example above, we might monitor conversations to determine where and when video content is being viewed the most. Questions such as “are the users using handheld devices or traditional desktop machines?” can be helpful when determining the scope and direction of your product.

While observing how the market uses similar products, you can begin to make a potential features list. For example, you might observe some users prefer video playlist and some prefer video sharing. Making a features list based on actual user conversations/engagement can be extremely powerful when deciding how to delegate resources during the development process.

Prepare your competitive position

After you’ve completed your features list, research other companies and products that meet the needs of your target audience. Use this list of companies and products to begin brand monitoring to aid in competitive analysis. Here, we will be looking at users reactions and sentiment towards competitors in your marketplace. Pay attention to any gaps between your target’s dialog and what your competitors are offering understanding these gaps can help develop a strong point of difference with your product.

At this point, you should now have a direction, feature list, and definitive point of difference that is all reflective of your marketplace. Now its time to send your ideas off to the engineers! But wait, don’t stop monitoring social media! After you have launched your new product, you are going to want to continue to monitor social media to identify flaws and improve with extended feature sets that are now more apparent after you have launched.

Understanding your marketplace and target audiences are important to product development. Whether it is concept creation or refining your feature list social media monitoring can help with the necessary research in building the perfect product.

Source: www.theseohelpblog.com

Companies face a very real need not just to acknowledge the impact of unstructured social media on brand and product perception, but to understand and filter it sensibly, and to integrate it with structured customer data and get it into the hands of the right people to make it actionable.

But the sheer volume of the customer choir in the Web 2.0 age often leaves companies scrambling to keep up. Publishing is now in the hands of the public, who have a vexing tendency to post with blunt honesty in unstructured formats via blogs, tweets, e-mails and forums about products and services that delight or disappoint them. And those opinions hold weight. A 2007 study by Jupiter Research (since acquired by Forrester), called “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” found that 30 percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, compared to the 10 percent who trust advertisements.

As Andreas Wiegend, former chief scientist of Amazon.com, predicted in a blog post for the Monitor Talent Group, “In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008.” Companies face a very real need not just to acknowledge the impact of unstructured social media on brand and product perception, but to understand and filter it sensibly, and to integrate it with structured customer data and get it into the hands of the right people to make it actionable.

For many companies, the burgeoning text analytics approach of sentiment analysis is becoming a critical component of their overall strategy, giving them a much-needed assist to stay responsive to customers, market opportunities and trends.

What is it?

In his white paper “Text Analytics 2009,” Seth Grimes, analytics strategist at Alta Plana, describes text analytics as “the software and the transformational steps that discover business value in ‘unstructured’ text.”

There’s special business value in discerning opinion, sentiment and subjectivity—the “voice of the customer”—in text as varied as blogs, forum postings, articles, e-mail and survey responses. That field of “customer experience analysis” applies sentiment analysis and other techniques to understand and help predict consumer behavior via text analysis coupled with analysis of customer transactions, profiles and demographics.

Vendors generally use a combination of statistical analysis of wordfrequency and co-occurrences with linguistics (involving lexicons, dictionaries and language rules) in an algorithmic approach to understanding exactly what the consumer is saying. Grimes says, “The narrower you can frame the problem and the data you collect, the better, because you can then adjust your approach to match specific business requirements and information sources.”

The technological challenges are not for the faint-hearted or the linguistically timid. Suresh Vittal, analyst at Forrester, says, “For a long time, text analytics was a technology in search of a business need. Now, thanks to social media, the need is there; the question is whether the technology can ramp up fast enough to be commercial.” Early adoption by government agencies, which sought to apply text mining to mountains of classified documents, is giving way to more mainstream commercial demand from industries for whom customer perception is critical: hospitality, consumer brands and high-tech, among them.

Classifying the messy middle

Ours is a world in which online consumer reviews of hotels that might include the phrase “the lobby is baaaaad!” meant in a positive way, or a review of a holiday toy saying, “I would give this to all the children in my life, if I were Scrooge,” meant to disparage. Throw in slang, language evolution and socio-cultural gradations in word use, and you have a mammoth challenge for accurate computational treatment of opinion.

Levy says accuracy remains a challenge in the industry. “The sentiment side is good at the two poles, positive and negative. But the neutrals are difficult. If you give four people in a room 100 neutral opinions and ask them to classify, even they will only agree 55 to 60 percent of the time.”

The level of granularity can also be important. If sentiment is assigned at a document level—that is, each tweet or blog post is assigned a positive, neutral or negative sentiment—how does the hypothetical tweet “I love Marriott’s bathrooms but the beds are lumpy” get classified? A chief executive officer cautions, “Ratings need to be assigned on a subject level at a minimum; a solution that assigns them at a document level is going to miss something.”

Whose opinion is it?

Even if a sentiment analysis tool were always accurate, the opinions don’t necessarily carry equal weight.  Dell has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 online conversations about its brand each day, which span the spectrum of positive to negative; the company needs to understand whose opinion actually has the power to move brand perception, and keep close tabs on those. Sentiment analysis needs to be connected to social metrics and influence analysis to make sense.

Levy agrees, saying companies understand that listening to social media is important but now need help in filtering. “There is no longer the notion that trusted information only comes from The New York Times,” he says. “Once you get a handle on who is influencing your brand, that becomes actionable.” Influence analysis, analyzing digital breadcrumbs to see which individuals have the highest credibility and widest reach, should be a part of the overall text analytics strategy. By knowing in advance who the influencers are for your brand, you’ll be better prepared to manage crisis and opportunity effectively, reaching out to 20 key contacts instead of 10,000 questionable ones.

Taking sentiment out of the silo

There’s widespread agreement among vendors and analysts that text analysis is only as valuable as the actions it prompts. In a Forrester report from February 2009, called “Obstacles To Customer Experience Success,” a survey of 90 customer experience decision-makers from large North American firms found that 89 percent said that customer experience would be either very important or critical to their 2009 efforts, but a lack of cooperation across organizations remains a major obstacle.

When it comes to sentiment analysis, different functions are listening for different answers. A customer service manager needs insight into customer experience, a product manager wants to hear complaints or praise for features as well as product design ideas, and brand managers may be looking for competitive intelligence.

For customers of online monitoring solutions, acting on the feed of information is the hardest part of the equation. You must have an environment where people are culturally attuned to action.

The challenge to the enterprise is to combine analysis of what is being said, by whom, with more structured customer intelligence data  in order to develop a robust customer engagement strategy. Forrester’s Vittal says that to break sentiment analysis out of the silo, “The platforms must be open and integratable. Customer intelligence data is still siloed, and there is a complexity gap that must be overcome.”

Companies should combine unstructured data from opinions about their brands and products, posted on social media and other traditional online sites, with public opinion as measured through structured survey research, to paint a richer picture of consumers’ emotions and decision factors.

Getting started

For companies that are just getting started with sentiment analysis, the first step is to listen to what’s being said, analyze the information and identify possible root causes behind it—a company can truly begin to capitalize on the promise of text analytics- and use it as input to their marketing strategy.

The joint study from iVillage and SheSpeaks highlights that interaction between women through online community Web sites, forums and message boards have a “dramatic” influence on driving product preference, loyalty, and purchase.

Facebook and Twitter fall to the bottom of the list. Only 19% believe that posts from friends influence them to make a purchase, and 11% cite posts from brands.

Online coupons and customer reviews continue to influence purchases. Women are 77% more likely to look for products and 67% more likely to purchase them in a store after reading online reviews on a community forum or message board.

The study reveals that while social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are valuable communications channels, with 51% of women actively following brands and retailers online, these channels are relatively less — 19% — influential in prompting purchases. Other forms of marketing that prove influential include online coupons at 68%; online product reviews by consumers, 61%; emails from companies or brands, 45%; and articles read online, 41%.

About half of the women responding to the survey spend between six and 30 minutes preparing for a shopping trip, and two-thirds spend between six and 60 minutes. They search for product information online and offline, looking for coupons in multiple channels, and reading email newsletters. Although the research channels used most vary by product category like food and beverage versus health and beauty, it is clear that brand marketers need to understand the most influential digital channels for their specific product.

“Women want advice from other shoppers, but they also want to share their experiences and look for validation before making a purchase,” says Jodi Kahn, executive vice president at iVillage. “They become much more loyal to a brand if you give them the tools to make the correct buying decision. Coupons and programs increase brand loyalty.”

A parenting Web site, along with a beauty Web site — both from iVillage.com, scheduled to launch Thursday — will make it easier for women to search for information and product reviews.

Women typically control the purchasing decisions in the home, Kahn says. Knowing the brands that communicate with women can have a greater impact on a variety of purchase behaviors. Seventy-four percent of the women who participated in the survey said recommendations gave them a more favorable view of the product while shopping, and 70% said they were more likely to choose the brand or product over others.

Online channels influence women differently. Coupons and opinions influence women most when it comes to the purchase of food and beverage, health and beauty and household products. Online coupons at 68%, store coupons at 66%, consumer reviews on shopping sites at 61%, and online recommendations from friends at 59% are the top influencers. Sixty percent also say online coupons are more influential on their purchases now than one year ago, and 51% say consumer recommendations on Web sites are more influential.

Although 51% of women are fans or followers of grocery, health and beauty or household products brands and the stores that carry them, consumer reviews on shopping sites are a top influence for 61% of respondents. Online articles, by comparison, are a top influence with 35% of respondents saying that reading online content or articles is more influential now than one year ago. Blogs were also identified as an influence by 33% of respondents.

Facebook and Twitter fall to the bottom of the list. Only 19% believe that posts from friends influence them to make a purchase, and 11% cite posts from brands.

Source: MediaPost News

Target Latino has introduced a Multicultural Social Media Monitoring tool, SMX Echo, in the United States.

Atlanta, GA March 24, 2010  — Target Latino, a multicultural and Latino consumer specialist marketing firm, has introduced a Multicultural Social Media Monitoring tool, SMX Echo, in the United States.

SMX Echo is a Multicultural Market Intelligence Solution that scans for relevant results and automatically analyzes sentiment in English, Spanish and Portuguese and has been named ” a tool of choice — especially when it comes to multicultural marketing and public relations campaigns” by the Huffington Post.

“I have evaluated many well-known social media monitoring tools available and what impressed me the most about SMX Echo was its ability to sort through results and bring in the relevant ones without my team’s constant intervention,” said Claudia Goffan, CEO of Target Latino. “One of the finest examples of these incredible results was the use of SMX Echo by the PAN, a political party in Mexico, whose acronym means bread in Spanish and could have brought in an unbelievable amount of non-relevant results with any other tool. Not with SMX Echo.”

SMX Echo has premium setup and support, a multitude of outstanding reports and features and it is highly cost effective. Monitoring social networks and online traditional media for key conversations can be overwhelming, but SMX Echo simplifies the task. The service provides a complete list of relevant results, including a permalink for each entry to the original post, a short snippet of the entry found and source, supporters and detractor’s popularity score. SMX Echo enables clients to perform full current and historical analysis of the buzz about key figures, political parties, companies, brands and competitors.

To see all these features and more, email the Target Latino team at contact@targetlatino.com or visit our page on the web at http://www.targetlatino.com/onlinemonitoring.

About Target Latino

Atlanta-based Target Latino understands and applies the power of connectedness between the brand and the market to develop more effective and innovative multicultural marketing strategies. Hispanic marketing strategies, social media, market research, SEO/SEM. Visit Target Latino at http://www.targetlatino.com