Digital Ingredients

This is true for marketing and for communication projects, but also for product research, development and support as well.

My last post was about Sociographics and the way they can be a new kind of approach to the target. Everything in that post derived from a recent experience I had in Scotland. Everything, though, was very much focused on the experience that inspired the reflection about Sociographics (the Scottish trip). Here I'd like to point out more precisely a quick how-to reference to start using it.

If you're a marketer or communicate to a given audience, you know very well how important it is to know and understand the people who are a part of that audience.
Please note: this kind of approach has a lot to do with people and a little with technology: the internet enables a lot of possibilities but it's not the only way to apply the Sociographics approach. It certainly makes it a lot - really, a lot! - easier.

What's the Sociographics approach about?

Sociographics is about integrating more traditional kinds of target study with a deeper insight into people, meaning individuals.
Sociographics is a "third layer" that integrates with two other layers: demographics and psychographics.

• When we talk about demographics, the focus is on general aspects of the target: on the people a certain product refers to, on their age, gender, educational attainment, employment status, location and everything that can define a group of people by general, quantitative data;
• Demographics are integrated then with psychographics: a deeper insight into people behaviour, still based on quantitative studies of groups of people. This allows to define how they usually (note: "usually" is important) react to given inputs and what their general needs, values and attitudes are.
• Sociographics is an approach that must be integrated with more traditional approaches. It's a qualitative way to study the target understanding personal needs, profiles, attitudes and passions. It also allows to understand an individual's social graph (the group of peers connected to the person), giving the possibility to involve a wider range of people.

How can we deal with Sociographics?

Looking at Sociographics under a practical point of view, there are a few important steps that can be taken to study the target with this approach. I would like to hear your opinion: add more suggestion and activities to this list.

• Find influencers and / or relevant people for your brand and product;
• Gain insight about product and brand by: listening to their conversations (observing) or interacting with them. This can also give suggestions to expand, modify or develop a better demographics and psychographics approach;
• Give important people and influencers the right recognition: they can be rewarded for what they've done and what they can do for your brand and for the community around it;
• Boost their brand and product experience, making sure that they perceive the right message and spread it to their audience;
• Motivate them: everyone wants to be recognized for doing a good job. So do your consumer
• Embrace what they're building by themselves: if they're setting up initiatives that are valuable for the community, support them, expand them and let anyone be a part of them;
• Try to be proactive in the conversation, feeding the community with thoughts and ideas and listening to what the community gives you in exchange

Through Sociographics you look at the consumer with a deeper understanding of personal needs. You empower the consumer and build a valuable community around the brand.
What do you think about it?
Have you already implemented this approach in some of your projects?
Have you been a part of a similar approach as a consumer?
What would you add to this checklist?
It would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments.

I've just got back from a vacation in two wonderful places: Scotland and Tuscany. And here's a little postcard for you

I've had the possibility to read three wonderful and inspiring books and would like to tell you about it:

• The Whuffie Factor is a book about how to build communities through the concept of "Whuffie" the currency exchanged in social transactions. It's very bright and Tara Hunt writes very clearly, reling on a lot of examples from her huge personal experience to explain concepts.
  
  
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Chris Anderson wrote this book with the purpose of explaining the world how to use "Free" as a basic element for success in economies where low marginal costs are the most common ones. Want to give 95% of your products for Free and still be successful and thrive with the remaining 5%? This book will tell you how. Great insights for marketing people.
  
  
• Tribes. Seth Godin wrote an excellent book, very remarkable (as usual, for Seth). It helps understanding how change today is fundamental and how much change needs a tribe. And how much a tribe needs a leader. And why this leader... is you. Excellent and quick. Read it, it will change the way you look at your daily tasks. Really.
  
  

And now? What am I ordering from Amazon?
My new read will be Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I'll let you know.
What have you read this summer? Do you have suggestions?

As a few of you might know, I'm back from a one-week trip to Scotland: it was a wonderful "on the road" kind of trip, we visited as much as possible and I advice you to go and see Scotland sometime if you can. Not only the landscapes amazed be, but also the excellent hospitality of people and the warm welcome they give to others (no matter if they're just... tourists).

One night we had the pleasure to stay at the Bank House Bed & Breakfast in Glenlivet and met the owners, Helen and Ruud, who greeted us with the warmest welcome. What impressed me wasn't only the beauty of the place, the outstanding kindness or the attention for detail in service (yes, everything was perfect), but: Ruud and Helen's approach to their customers.

They asked questions, they tried to understand needs and they were able to modify their offerings on-the-go, accordingly to the guest needs. For instance, we were late, Helen spontaneously offered to call restaurants for us and when she saw nothing was available she prepared dinner for us, which is not a standard for a bed & breakfast.

What differentiated Helen and Ruud? They tried to focus on the guest, on the single guest (personally, knowing his / her single first name). They read all the comments on their guestbook, trying to learn from them. They didn't set up a service as if we were "a generic target": demographic (men and women between 25 and 34) or psychographics (young people with a passion for traveling, generally enjoying rural routes).

Sociographics and the Scottish marketing lesson

What really works in any business that has some degree of "social" is to approach is to have different degrees of detail:

• it's great to start from demographics, because they allow you to generally know who you're talking to and where you can reach her (but that's not enough)
• it's important to put psychographics in place, so you'll have a good understanding of the general activities, attitudes and values that can be related to your target (but even this is not enough

Why can't we really start thinking about a single person? It was very difficult just a few years ago. Today it can be done by a little bed & breakfast and it can scale even to large corporations. Big brands can start small, from top contributors, top - relevant advocates and evangelists in their community (both digital and off-line): they can start to call them by name, not in the old-fashioned way "Dear (NAME SURNAME)", but in a direct relationship where brands have conversations with their customers and know their customer tastes.

As soon as brands and companies start to ask the right questions, just like Helen and Ruud did with me, they'll be able to leverage on-line conversations much more, turning them into relationships.

Somebody calls it sociographics: I think it's a deeper level of detail that brands can no longer ignore.

Operatively, when analyzing targets it gets everyday more important to consider demographics, psychographics and to have a detail about sociographics, too: by listening to what relevant consumers (and stakeholders in general, including prospect) say about the theme the brand is working on.

This is true for marketing and for communication projects, but also for product research, development and support as well.

If you're curious about the Helen and Ruud's bed & breakfast, you can book a stay at their wonderful place: the Bank House.

This blog - and myself - will go on holiday for a few days. Thanks to everyone who interacted and / or connected so far, you give meaning to this place. If you write a comment and I don't answer immediately, don't be mad: I'll get back to you later.
Hope you're unplugging a little bit, too: in any case at work, at home or on vacation have fun and recharge. If possible, learn something new everyday and tell. Me, if you want.

See you someplace, sometime

On July 28th Twitter released a new homepage, with a graphic redesign and much more importance to the search function. The most significant change, anyway, is in the welcome text.
This is the old Twitter welcome text:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

It was focused on the user and on what he/she is doing.
As Twitter released the new copy for the bnwelcome text, it focused a lot more on what the world is saying. Here's the new Twitter welcome message:

Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world

This indicates a shift of attention: from "you" to the "world".
Obviously the page reflects this way of thinking: the layout gives much space to popular topics, words, and themes that help the user to see what's going on. To give them the pulse of the world.

Zeitgeist is not just "seeing what's going on"

As we move on, we can expect more and more solutions that help people understand what's going on with the world (take FriendFeed's best of - for instance).
But that's not all of it. The main peculiarity of Zeitgeist is not to allow you to see "what the world is saying": it's about customizing your experience accordingly. You probably won't even have to read keywords and hashtags, but they will simply influence what you see, read and interact with.
Think about it as more freedom in deciding what you can give your attention to.
The Zeitgeist can also be referred and limited to your group of connections (like in the FriendFeed case), to a group of people with common characteristics (of localization, of topics, of context in general).

Zeitgeist for brands

Zeitgeist offer a huge set of possibilities for brands, too. Here are only some of them, I'd really like if you could help make this list grow.
Here's how the usage of Zeitgeist as "spirit of the time" can help brands delivering effective experiences:

• Tracking what's being said and done can help finding out what's important for the consumer, in terms of communication, of marketing and of product as well.
• The world's pulse can also help crafting product offers according to what's the global need for something (and content generated by users is often a good signal for it)
• It can help finding out what are the main areas in which the brand might want to interact. As soon as a brand finds our the world is talking about a topic, it can be very valuable for the brand to join the conversation and to add value to it
• Product can be improved, too. Based on what people are saying and what they pay attention

Many of this points refers to something that goes beyond communication and market, but in this particular time it's important to think how digital marketing can be both relevant and useful for the consumer.
Also, you might notice some of the points above refer to the "listening" part of a social media activity (like the one you power with listening platform like Radian6, Nielsen or Cymfony). And if you think about it it makes sense: real time listening is the first step for brands that want to deal with Zeitgeist. Many are already doing it now.
What will really make the difference and boost Zeitgeist importance? Probably activities that are real time and offer value to the user directly, by customizing his / her digital (and non-digital) experience.

Back to basics

Why "Zeitgeist"? I'll let Wikipedia answer:

The word zeitgeist describes the intellectual, cultural, ethical and political climate, ambience and morals of an era (similar to the English word "mainstream") or also a trend.

What do you think? What are your experience with Zeitgeist so far?

Note:

In a recent post, I've written about Zeitgeist relating it also to context and experience personalization. I think both elements must work together to make user experience unique. Though, I think there's a huge potential for Zeigeist to grow: this is why I wanted to point this out in a dedicated post.

Word cloud of this blog made with Wordle