Proof that Facebook fans are worth more to brands

by Josh Bernoff

The debate about the value of Facebook fans continues to rage on. I hate raging arguments in the absence of solid evidence. So I was delighted to see that analyst Gina Sverdlov of Forrester Research had applied actual statistical modeling to address the question, in a new report called "The Facebook Factor."

Gina's technique is simple to understand. Using a statistical technique called logistical regression, she examined a large number of factors that potentially contribute to whether a consumer will purchase, consider, or recommend a brand. The technique could work for any brand; the report specifically analyzes Best Buy, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Blackberry.

The results are very suggestive.

Here are some facts from the report.

• For all four brands, being a Facebook fan of the brand boosts purchase, consideration, and recommendation. For example, 79% of Best Buy Facebook fans bought there in the last 12 months vs. 41% of non-fans. And 74% of them recommend Best Buy vs. 38% of non-fans.
• Of all the questions we asked (and there were many), being a Facebook fan had more influence over these behaviors than any other factor. Being a Facebook fan of Best Buy increases the odds that a customer will purchase by 5.3 times; the next closest influence factor is having researched consumer electronics, which only increases the odds of purchase by 1.4 times. The pattern is repeated for every single behavior and every single brand. For example, having a Walmart nearby doubles the odds that you'll consider buying there, but being a Facebook fan of Walmart increases those odds by more than a factor of four.

Does this mean you should pour your budget into building fans for your brand? No! While there is a strong correlation between these positive behaviors for your brand and being a fan, there's no proof that being a fan causes people to buy, consider, or recommend your brand. If you boost your fan base artificially, those fans will be less avid on average.

What this analysis does show is that fandom is worth something. Your Facebook fans are more likely to buy from you, consider you, and of course, recommend you. 

This means that cultivating them with content and interaction on your Facebook brand page is well worth it, because this is where your most enthusiastic customers are. You have the opportunity to supercharge them, not just to buy, but to spread your message. For companies that don't provide these fans what they want -- interaction, content, things to share -- this is a wakeup call. And if your brand doesn't have a Facebook page, this report is proof you're stuck in marketing thinking from the previous century. Use this analysis to justify putting your marketing budget and effort into a Facebook page and the staff to keep it lively.

 

Do people care about the data you collect? Now, more than ever, they do.

by Josh Bernoff

Today Forrester published survey results intended to answer the questions "Do people care if companies collect their data, and does it affect their decisions about the companies?"

The short answer to both questions is, yes.

In a survey of 37,000 US and Canadian online adults, we first asked how concerned people were with companies accessing their personal information. More than 70% were concerned about social security numbers and credit cards. Less than half cared about their phone number, and only 19% were concerned about their online reviews. This proves people are at least thoughtful, and distinguish between extremely sensitive information and other information.

The second big conclusion is that age matters, and young people are more open. For example, 47% of 55-64 year-olds were concerned about access to their behavioral data, compared to only 33% of those 18-24. Young people were also far more willing to give up information in exchange for discounts.

Finally, 44% of consumers say they have not completed an online transaction because of something they read in a privacy policy. Again, this is far more likely to happen to older consumers, and the percentage has increased since 2008.

Marketers -- especially direct marketers -- love data. But now, over 15 years into the Web, consumers are becoming far more aware of how data collection can go awry, and are voting with their pocketbooks. You can collect and use this data broadly and hope you don't run afoul of an angry consumer with a lot of Twitter followers ready to destroy your brand with your own behavior. You can exploit young people's willingness to part with data -- they have so much less to protect, after all. Or you can adjust your policies based on this rising level of awarness. It's up to you.

The report, by Forrester Customer Intelligence analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo, is available here. (Non-Forrester-clients will see an excerpt.)

The Global Social Takeover

by Josh Bernoff

I recently pointed out that Social 2012 is Web 2000 -- in the hype that surrounds it, and the reality that social interactivity, like the Web, is becoming embedded in everything people do.

Forrester Research just published its annual global review (for clients) of participation in social interactivity, and it bears this theme out on a global scale. Even more fascinating are the variations around the world.

If you've read Groundswell, you know that we analyze participation on a ladder, with different consumers reaching different rungs. At the top are activities that demand a lot of participation and creativity, like the Creator group that blogs or uploads video. In the middle are activities that are easier, like reacting to content (Critics) or Joining a social network (Joiners). Near the bottom are the people just consuming the stuff, the Spectators. The Inactives do none of these activities. The groups overlap -- most Creators are also Spectators, for example.

This year's numbers from the US and Europe are very similar to last year's, because social has stabilized and saturated. Now 73% of Americans and 69% of Europeans are in the Spectator group. Only the Joiner category grew significantly, reinforcing the idea that Facebook has replaced the Web as the center of online attention for many.

But the really spectacular numbers in this year's results came out of Asia. Among the people we survey in metropolitan areas in China, 96% are Spectators and 76% are Creators, people who actually generate social content. In metropolitan India, 96% are Spectators, and 80% are creators. Can you imagine living in a society where eight out ten online adults were blogging, publishing Web pages, or uploading video?

What can you learn from this? A few reflections:

• Online social activity reflects a universal human connection. We are all social. Facebook and its regional comparables, like Sina Weibo in China, are now part of the social connective tissue everywhere there is Internet (or smartphones).
• Strategies aren't the same everywhere. The more active social consumers in India demand a different strategy than the more passive ones in, say, Germany, where only one in three online consumers is in a social network. Creative approaches treat these cultures differently or even connect across borders, like Smirnoff's Nightlife Exchange Project.
• Look to Asia for innovation. The next big social trend -- the next bend in the road after Twitter and Facebook -- may be emerging from those Chinese consumers. Watch for it.

 

 

 

Social growth takes a breather

My colleagues have taken over the analysis of social participation, but if you read this blog you're most likely still interested. Briefly, here's the 2010 update of the ladder of social participation in the US.

Compared to our previous update, Joiners (social network participants) continue to grow rapidly. The rest of the categories are stable or declining. For the first time, Spectators are down and Inactives are up. The declines are small and data is subject to margins of error, but it's clear that we've at least reached a plateau.

It is too soon to predict that social activity has peaked, but it's clearly taking a breather. The key now is to look, not just at how many people participate, but how frequently -- and more specifically, their interaction with brands.

For more detail, please see posts by Jackie Rousseau-Anderson, our data expert, and Augie Ray, who helps interactive marketers with social technologies. Clients should take a look at the report this data comes from, which includes a global update.

Introducing Peer Influence Analysis: 500 billion peer impressions per year

When we published Groundswell, we included a statistical tool called the Social Technographics Profile. This has been one of the most popular elements of the book, since it puts a survey-based framework on people's intuition about social technologies.

Empowered, much more than Groundswell, focuses on the power of individuals and word of mouth. The question is, can you quantify that? Yes, you can. And since Empowered won't be out for months, we're releasing the word-of-mouth analysis tool from it now. It's called Peer Influence Analysis.

Here's how it works. Start by counting every instance in which a person influences another person online about a product or service. (We model this from Forrester’s 10,000 person survey, which asks how frequently they post, in what places, how many followers they have, and what products and services they post about.)

This influence comes in two types.

First, there is influence from people posting within social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on. We call these instances influence impressions. Based on our surveys, we estimate people in the US create 256 billion influence impression on each other in social networks every year. (Has anyone ever measured this number before?) Of these influence impressions, 62% come from Facebook.

Second, there is influence created by posts: blog posts, blog comments, discussion forum posts, and ratings and reviews. We call these influence posts. We estimate that people in the US create 1.64 billion influence posts every year. If around 150 people view each of these posts (a conservative estimate, based on our research), that’s another 250 billion-plus impressions. Blog posts and blog comments account for about 40% of these posts.

Add the impressions from both social networks and posts together and you get more than 500 billion impressions about products and services a year. Impressions made by people on their peers.

Once you start analyzing this huge pool of influence, you can draw some very interesting conclusions. Here are a few.

• People's influence on each other rivals online advertising. For comparison, for a 12-month period ending September 30 last year, Nielsen Online estimates advertisers created 1.974 trillion online advertising impressions, compared to the 500 billion impressions people make on each other about products and services. So people's online impressions on each other about products and services are about one fourth of the online advertising impression. And peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends. Take those number into your next budget meeting!

• A minority of people generate 80% of the impressions. Take a look at the graphic below. 6.2% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence impressions. 13.4% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence posts. We call two groups Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens (if you've read "The Tipping Point" you know where we got the names.). If you're a marketer, you probably want to know who these people are (demographics, where they share, that kind of thing). We've got a lot more detail about just that in the report that Augie Ray and I just released about them.

• You can do peer influencer analysis for any type of product or service. For example, Augie and I analyzed consumer electronics mass influencers. They're far more concentrated, somewhat more affluent, and quite a bit more male than the general mass influencers. You can build a word of mouth strategy right off of this data, and we show how to do that in the report.

It’s time to start analyzing peer influence with the same discipline we apply to media. And it’s time word of mouth got a budget that reflects the amount of influence people have, and who has it.

We are just at the beginning of understanding the best uses for this tool. If you're interested in following up, you could . . .

Read the report about Peer Influence Analysis (available free to Forrester clients).

Contact our data and consulting team to analyze the data for your own products and services. (We've asked about 39 different categories or products.)

Read how these mass influencers fit in with other categories of people in Augie Ray's "Influence Pyramid".

Come hear Augie and me talk about this in public for the first time at the Forrester Marketing Forum.

I can't wait to read your reaction.

Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder

by Josh Bernoff

Two and a half years ago, Charlene Li and I introduced Social Technographics, a way to analyze your market's social technology behavior. Social Technographics was carefully constructed, not as a segmentation, but as a profile (that is, the groups overlap). That's because the actual data told me that people participate in multiple behaviors, and not everyone at a higher level on the ladder actually does everything in the lower rungs.

Well, it worked. Despite the rapid pace of technology adoption, the rungs on the ladder have shown steady growth, with some (like Joiners) growing faster than others (like Creators). We have analyzed data for 13 countries, for business buyers, and even for voters. My colleagues and I have done profiles for over a hundred clients, profiling Walmart shoppers, non-profit donors, and doctors.

In all that time, only one thing has been bugging me: there was no place for Twitter.

We fixed that today.

As you can see from the graphic, we added a new rung, "Conversationalists". Conversationalists reflects two changes. First, it includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). And second, we include only people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn't much of a conversation.

Conversationalists intrigue me. They're 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they're among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.

The data from this survey continues the trends from the last two years -- Spectators are maxing out at around 70%, Joiners are still growing rapidly, and Creators are still growing slowly.

As in any social environment, people have found lots of uses for this data, some of which make sense to me, and some which don't. Here are three ways you can use it:

1. Convince your boss this stuff is for real, and that if you haven't jumped on it, you're late.

2. Profile your customer base, and see what they're ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them. (After all, People is the first step in the POST process.)

3. Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)

How will you use it?

Note: For Forrester clients, full access to the research is available here.

New Data: Canadians embrace social technology

by Josh Bernoff

Since we published our 2009 Social Technographics Profile update, Canadians have been hounding me. Why did we leave Canada out? Simply because the Canadian data comes from a different survey, which was not completed in time.

Thanks for waiting, Canada.

We just published Nate Elliott's 2009 Social Technographics Profile of Canadian consumers (full text and data available to clients). Here's what we found:

• With 79% of online Canadians connecting with social content in some way at least once a month, Canadians are among the most active consumers in any country we survey.
• Well over half of online Canadians connect with social networks.
• As in other countries, young Canadians use social technology more than older Canadians, but Gen X Canadians are still very active, with 85% using some form of social technology at least monthly.

Based on this level of activity, Canadian companies like the Vancity credit union, TELUS Mobility, and Molson have leveraged social applications from Facebook to YouTube to blogs to connect with consumers. Not to mention the NHL, which has great success with fan tweetups; it isn't a Canadian organization but it might as well be given the enthusiastic response from Canadian tweeters.

As we've seen in other countries with high levels of participation and relatively smaller populations, Canada will continue to be fertile ground for people to connect socially. Already, Canadian social-media agencies like Wunderman's Blast Radius and Currency Marketing are creating impressive applications.

By the way, if you want to see how Canadians stack up with online consumers in other countries, see our Social Technographics Profile Tool.

Note: Nate's own post on this includes some interesting data about Canadians' profiles based on political party.

In Japan and Korea, consumers embrace social technology faster than marketers

By Josh Bernoff

I'm just back from three and a half days in Tokyo and two and a half in Seoul. I am always struck, like all travelers, by both what’s similar in other cultures and what’s different. I want to be careful about making generalizations from such a short exposure, but I’d also like to share some impressions with those who might want to look at Asia through my eyes. If you’re Japanese or Korean, or feel you have a good understanding of what’s really going on those countries, I’d welcome your perspective.

I spent my days in Japan speaking with reporters, working with companies, and giving a speech at Ad:Tech’s inaugural Tokyo event (1000 people) and an smaller executive event for Google Japan. As you can see from our recently published data, Japanese consumers are active in social networks and in creating social content, so I expected to see a lot of activity among Japanese companies as well. But in truth, I saw very little corporate activity on these networks. (If you have examples, by all means share them, because I have very few.)

From talking to executives and the 30 or so social media enthusiasts who braved a typhoon to meet me at a Tweetup, I have a theory on why the level of activity is low. Japanese companies are famous for their tendency to look for strong agreement before moving forward, but social applications generate a fair amount of discomfort for companies. In other words, social activity by companies includes risk, and the individuals in Japan who are comfortable with these risks – mostly younger individuals – don’t have much power.

One exception came from Coca-Cola Japan's Shoko Suzuki, a senior marketer who spoke along with me at the Google Japan event. Suzuki-san’s description of Coca-Cola’s online and mobile activities in Japan demonstrated a willingness to try new interactive marketing strategies. Some at the Tweetup suggested that challenges from companies based outside Japan, like Coca-Cola, may get the Japanese marketing executives moving in the social world.

In Seoul, my Forrester colleagues crammed my two days in Seoul with meetings, including my first-ever Groundswell workshop with a non-English speaking group. I was delighted to see such innovation from this Korean company, whose staff included some enthusiastic young women (I saw far more women in positions of influence in Korea than in Japan). These workers embraced the concepts of the groundswell and generated some great ideas – just as I have seen in many workshops in the US and the UK. In my meetings with other Korean companies I saw a real willingness to embrace social applications for business goals, and in my speech to 300 mostly young and enthusiastic Koreans I got some excellent questions about social technologies in non-profits, sponsored conversation, and how to hire social media experts.

Why the embrace of these ideas in South Korea? This nation has the highest rates of broadband penetration anywhere in the world, and an extremely active online population, as you can see from our profile of online South Koreans. The CyWorld online community is the dominant social network, and Naver, the leading Korean search engine, has social elements. I saw many Korean businesspeople willing to challenge authority, and open to taking risks. (Many also speak good English – one young guy said “like” every other sentence; and sure enough, he had spent a couple years in high school in California.) Even in a breakfast talk to a more senior bunch of Korean executives, I saw heads nodding and fielded some excellent questions that indicated real interest.

One other trend I saw in both places: people are discouraged from using the Internet for personal purposes at work. And job-hopping isn’t common, especially in Japan. As a result, work-based social activities (like LinkedIn) just haven’t caught on in these locations. In talking to companies about B2B social networking, I got looks that revealed that they wondered if I came from another planet. This aspect of social applications, at least, is going to get started faster in the US and Europe.

At the last minute, I was invited to spend part of Saturday morning with Kim Hee-Jung the President and CEO of KISA, the Korean government agency in charge of promoting and protecting its Internet infrastructure. I was once again impressed that a woman in her thirties, clearly bright and inquisitive, had risen to such an important government position. As we spoke about social networks, mobile services, and IT in Korea, I extended my favorable impression. Korea’s internet experience is not the same one we have in the US – for one thing, large sites have to verify people’s real names to allow them to participate – but it continues to evolve in a social and mobile direction that may presage the types of changes we’ll see in the US.

The continued high levels of social participation in this part of the world tell me that corporate social innovation won’t be far behind. Even in Japan, once executives see how it’s done, they’re likely to move in a bunch. For companies based elsewhere that do business in Asia, I’d recommend trying new social technology projects in Korea or Japan, where the social world isn’t quite a crowded with corporate social applications ads it’s getting in America. You just might learn something that’s not available anywhere else.

Social technology growth marches on in 2009, led by social network sites

by Josh Bernoff

We just published our third annual Social Technographics Profile in a document called "The Broad Reach of Social Technologies" . The author is Sean Corcoran, with help from out data expert Cynthia Pflaum. The data across North America, Europe, and Asia will be available later today.is now available.

Starting with the book "Groundswell" and continuing now for three years running, we've analyzed consumers' participation in social technologies around the world with a tool called the "Social Technographics Profile." The profile puts online people into overlapping groups based on their participation (at least once a month) in the behaviors shown in the ladder. We've kept the ladder categories consistent to allow us to make comparisons year-to-year, across ages and genders, and across geographies. This provides something that's often sorely lacking in analysis of online social phenomena: perspective.

The headline: in 2009, more than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month. In a bit more detail:

• In the US, social technology Creators and Collectors grew slowly, and Critics didn't grow at all. Creator activity appeals only to those who like to create or upload content, and regardless of the ease of blogging and YouTube uploading, this doesn't apply to everybody. If you believe in the future that everybody will be creating or organizing content, we disagree -- it's a matter of temperament, not technology. As for Critics, those who react to content, this group hasn't grown at all. Looking deeper into the data, this is a result of a small but actual decrease in the number of people contributing to discussion forums. Why? Probably because much of this activity has been sucked into social network sites like Facebook.

• At the same time, Joiner activity exploded and Spectators became nearly universal. The explosion in Joiners from 35% to 51% of online Americans reflects the appeal of Facebook, as both press coverage and invitations from friends suck more of us into social networks. Meanwhile, Spectators -- those consuming social content -- reached all the way to 73% of online Americans, which should end any remaining skepticism about whether this social thing is real. Soon, with the level of social content being put out there, it will be virtually impossible for an online consumer not to be a Spectator. Marketers, if you're not doing social technology applications now, you're officially behind. We expect a wave of Web site reorgs and redesigns to include social activity.

Looking at the data by age, we now see that participation among those under 35 is nearly universal (less than 10% Inactives) and even among those 55 and over, about two-thirds are participating. The trend is clear, soon, if you're online, you'll almost certainly be consuming social technologies.

We are now releasing international data at the same time as this US data. A few highlights: Europeans continue to adopt these technologies more slowly than in the US, with about 40% Inactives in the countries where we do surveys. The Netherlands and Sweden have the most participation, Italy has the most Creators, and social networks are most popular in the UK. For more details see the summary of Rebecca Jennings' report on social technologies in Europe.

Asian social participation is typically as high as or higher than in the US. For example South Korea, where I'm going next week, has only 9% Inactives and 48% Joiners, as a result of the popular CyWorld social network site.

The international data by country, age, and gender is here. will be available later today. You can even put the data on your own site -- we've made it embeddable. In my travels, I've found that marketers have a variety of attitudes about social technologies, ranging from "it's obvious that they're growing" to "it's a flash in the pan". The point of data like this is to provide a real, solid, objective basis for planning and discussion that goes beyond personal experience. No matter who you market to, and in what country, you need to know what your customers are doing. These surveys can help you take that first step+.

Added: Since the embeddable widget with the new data is now available, I've posted it below:

New research: B2B buyers have very high social participation

by Josh Bernoff

Today we are publishing our research on one of the most active groups of people I've ever seen when it comes to social participation -- buyers in the business-to-business sector.

This research report, "The Social Technographics of Business Buyers," was published by Laura Ramos and Oliver Young in our Technology Industry/B2B group; you can access the full report if you're a Forrester client. Or anyone can register to hear the replay of Laura's Webinar on the topic.

Just as we survey consumers, Forrester also surveys business buyers. We use the POST method and the same Social Technographics Profile to review buyers' behavior -- in this case it's over 1200 buyers in American and European countries. But the difference here is, we can ask, not just how people participate in these social technologies, but whether they use them to make buying decisions.

The results were startling, to say the least.

Some highlights from this research (start by looking at the right two columns):

• 91% of these technology decision-makers were Spectators -- the highest number I've ever seen in a Social Technographics Profile. This means you can count on the fact that your buyers are reading blogs, watching user generated video, and participating in other social media. Note that 69% of them said they were using this technology for business purposes.
• Only 5% are non-participants (Inactives).
• 55% of these decision-makers were in social networks (Joiners) -- despite as mature businesspeople and not college students, you'd think they'd be participating a lot less.
• 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.) and 58% are Critics, reacting to content they see in social formats. Again the numbers are very high compared to other groups we've surveyed, and again the level of participation for business purposes is also very high.

What does this mean for you? If you're a B2B marketer and you're not using social technologies in your marketing, it means you're late. We've seen a lot of excellent activity here from the likes of Dell and National Instruments (both won Forrester Groundswell awards) but a lot of the blogs, communities, and other social outreach from business to business companies is less than mature, to say the least. This is your chance to stand out. Take this report and show it to your boss to convince her that it's time to get started.

The report includes some good recommendations for B2B buyers, including the following:

• Note that buyers use social technology but don't rate it highly in terms of its influence on their buying decisions. This, despite the fact that count on peers' opinions to make decisions. I think this reflects that people haven't gotten used to this sort of information as a key input in buying decisions. This will change, especially as better applications come on line.
• Social applications should be integrated into other marketing. For example, National Instruments makes technical content from its customer community central in its marketing activity -- this is a model other B2B sellers should follow.
• Reach out to people by role -- people with the same job description form natural communities. This is a technique IBM SOA marketer Sandy Carter has described in her book "The Language of Marketing 2.0"

There's a lot more in the report, and you can also find B2B social insights from thinkers like Paul Gillin and Chris Herbert. Given the high degree of participation, I think B2B marketers will continue to lead in social media marketing.