10 WOMMA 2011 Highlights

Two members of the Digital Engagement team (Caitlin Campbell and I) attended WOMMA Summit 2011 earlier this month.  WOMMA is the Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Association that is "the leading voice for ethical and effective Word of Mouth and Social Media Marketing."  I also spoke on a Mobile Marketing/Apps session with our Pizza Hut client (download the apps here).  Below are some of the key learnings and insights from the various sessions that we attended.

1) Fascinate or Lose Them Forever: A person’s average retention rate used to be 20 seconds.  Today it is nine seconds.   Brands now have less than 10 seconds to capture a consumer’s interest and fascinate them.

– Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate and opening WOMMA keynote speaker, discussing the importance of standing out (find your Fascination score here)

 2) Community Manager Certification: WOMMA is introducing an official certification program for Community Managers – launching in January 2012.  The online training program will set industry standards for: Community Specialist, Community Manager, and Community Strategist.  More info: WOMMA’s Community Management certification program

 3) Be Likeable: A brand’s Facebook strategy is simple – be likeable!  Post higher quality content, with an emphasis on links, photos and videos – and don’t be afraid to ask your Community for help or ask them directly: why do you like this page?

- Dave Kerpen, co-Founder and CEO of Likeable Media and author of Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (And Other Social Networks)

 4) Go-Go-Go-Governance:  Implementing social media within the enterprise?  Governance, including development of guidelines and an engagement playbook; as well as employee training and orientation, is a full-time job.  Listen, measure and adapt – constantly.  And when your efforts go global and you attempt to scale … you open a whole new set of governance needs.

- Christine Cea, Brand PR Director, Unilever, and Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Strategist, Intel

 5) How to Friend the Class of 2015:  Students graduating in four years are much different than today’s graduates.  They have a need to innovate and create things, and they are not about a giant logo across their chest or celebrities.  Five practical points on how to engage this group (report: Meet 2015):

1. Help them express their personal brand and they will be likely to like yours

2. Integrate organically into their world

3. Get in good with their friends

4. Become an on-demand brand

5. Get to know them before assuming what they want

- Matt Britton, CEO, Mr. Youth

6) Advocate vs. Influencer: An advocate has emotional equity for a brand and talks about it without having to be incentivized.  Most brands look to engage influencers.  Think about developing advocates.

- Michael Brito, SVP, Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital

 7) The Most Powerful Tool We Had Was Social Media: The turning point in saving the NFL season was getting people see that it was a lockout from the owners rather than a strike from the players.  It changed the dynamic of negotiations.  Twitter was the best way to communicate with players and fans, and our tweets were used in media coverage.  We no longer needed to defend ourselves.

- George Attallah, Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs, NFL Players Association and Dominique Foxworth, President Elect, NFL Players Association and Cornerback, Baltimore Ravens

 8) The Science of Engagement: The lifetime value of a customer acquired via social is worth 2-3x the worth of a customer acquired through search. Six key lessons to improve engagement:

1. Determine what it takes to win

2. Segment your audience

3. Create a social laboratory (go for volume of experiments – reward people based on volume, reward failure)

4. Create content your audience loves

5. Test and measure everything (it’s a dynamic algorithm and will be different for everyone – have to figure it out for yourself)

6. Institutionalize It (write it down)

- Ben Elowitz, Founder, Wetpaint

 9) Mobile Is The Future: Pizza Hut’s Robyn Harman discussed the success of the company’s mobile apps and delivered some hot stats on mobile:

- U.S. mobile commerce is expected to grow from $6 billion this year to $31 billion by 2016 [Source: Forrester]

- 78% of users surveyed claimed one of the motivations for mobile shopping was “I’m bored and looking for ways to pass the time.” [Source: Smith-Geiger eBay survey]

- 60% of mobile buyers make mobile purchases at home [Source:  PayPal & Ipsos Mobile Usage & Attitude Research, October 2011]

 10) What will WOMMA do in 2012?  The five pillars of word-of-mouth-marketing: credible, respectful, social, measurable and repeatable.  2012 will focus on offline WOM, social media, policy, ethics, privacy, influencers and social media (listed twice to emphasize its importance).  Brand advocacy and brand advocates are the new buzzwords – next year, we’ll focus on teaching how to develop this.

- David Witt, WOMMA Chair

 More info: http://womma.org/summit

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