Ten Degree of Spread

Facebook, the most popular social media platform, is based on “Six Degree of Separation”. “Six Degree of Separation” is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away from any other person in the world so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. This theory will help you to know the whole world.

However, what most people or brands want to get is making the world to know them rather than making them to know the world. So I think that “Six Degree of Separation” cannot meet the modern people and brands’ needs now. And we may need a new theory about making the world to know us. I want to name this new theory as “Ten Degree of Spread”. In my opinion, every person may influence more than ten people in their life so that every good message posted on social media or said to others by a person will be spread to more than ten people. 10² is 100. 10³ is 1000. 10⁴ is 10000. … 10ⁿ is 100…000. The power of ten is so huge that ten people will spread the message through the whole world. So “Ten Degree of Spread” is the theory that every message can be spread through the whole world by less ten people.

Well, where can we use this new theory? The answer is EVERYWHERE! We should use this new theory on both people and brands.

For brands, no matter how good the products or campaigns are, it was nothing if nobody knew them. So most brands paid more attention on marketing promotion. Ten years ago, it was impossible to make the world knew you just by traditional medias like print and TV. But now, it was much easier to promote your products or campaigns to the world by digital medias, because people can just spread your products or campaigns by a simple click. So the main question is how to push people to click. In other words, what a brand needs to do is just to push 10 people to spread its products or campaigns based on “ Ten Degree of Spread”.

For individual person, his/her product is just himself/herself while his/her campaign is about career. Although a person doesn’t need to make the whole world to know him/her, it will bring him/her more opportunities if there are more people knowing him/her. When I worked in Baidu as an intern, for instance, I founded a social network website with five other talents from Microsoft and Yahoo. And the reason I knew these five guys is through one of my boss’s friends. My boss talked about me with her friend, and then her friend share my information with a Microsoft guy that is one of the founders. Finally he invited me to work with them. You see, just two people’s spread gave me an opportunity. What about ten people, or 100 people?

Based on “ Ten Degree of Spread”, it is easy to touch the whole world if we have good message. So we should focus on the message that we want to spread instead of the form. In addition, we have to pay more attention on preventing bad message from spreading because of the power of tens.

Finally, I want to say: 

 “ Ten Degree of Spread”

                                   -- let the world know you!

Link:

http://www.powersof10.com/film

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130418212809-10842349-the-power-of-the-powers-of-ten?trk=eml-mktg-condig-0108-p1

http://www.amazon.com/World-Wide-Rave-Creating-Triggers-ebook/dp/B001UUJ640/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385396384&sr=8-1&keywords=world%20wide%20rave

Not Survive, But Victory

As a traditional industry, newspaper had to face so many troubles when digital times was coming. But it is both an opportunity and a threat as the article said. The threat is losing some print subscription, while the opportunity is attracting more new digital generation’s attention by a perfect digital revolution. In my own opinion, digital times should be an opportunity rather than a threat for newspaper. So are pay walls good digital strategies? Is the Times a good model? Before analyze the pay walls strategies and Times model, I first need to put customers into two categories—Traditional & New-fashioned.

Traditional customers will keep subscripting print newspaper even they are in a digital world. They are not “antique” who are not accepted new things. They just would like to stick to the original habits like traditional paper books and CDs. In their minds, although new digital substitutes are more convenient and easy-to-use, traditional goods have their own idiosyncrasy that the digital substitutes cannot replace them. I have to say that I am a definitely traditional customer. I would like to read paper books rather than eBooks. But I also would like to play games, watch videos and use apps on PC, iPad and iPhone.

New-fashioned customers are the customers that newspaper industry had lost for print subscription. When digital times came, new-fashioned customers were actively enjoying digital world. If possible, they would like to use digital products to replace everything. They can spend whole-day time on digital. So what newspaper company should do now is improving the digital newspaper to attract new-fashioned customers. The digital newspaper should use more video news, connect with social medias and add more interaction functions.

After the analysis of customers, I will look into the pay wall strategy. I think it is a good strategy for digital newspaper. On one hand, for traditional customers, they can get more benefit (both print newspaper and digital newspaper) by paying the same price so that they will continue subscripting print newspaper. On the other hand, for new-fashioned customers, if the digital newspaper is user friendly enough for them, they’d glad to paying for digital subscription. Pay wall will not only protect digital news property, but also provide a high quality and more personalized service. So I think most news seekers will accept pay wall.

At the same time, I think NY Times was a good model for the whole newspaper industry. First, metered system (free the first 20 articles per month) can get steady subscription from loyal customer while not drive away casual visitors who made up the vast majority of the site’s traffic. Second, device-specific will give different device users different experiences and benefits, because each device has its own characteristics and limits. I think NY Times’ model will set a good example for newspaper industry in the future.

In addition, pay wall strategy is not only used in newspaper industry. This strategy can be found in paper resource web, music web and so on. So it should be an appropriate strategy for the industries that are changing from traditional model to digital model.

In my opinion, digital does not mean free, it just provide a more quickly way to get information. So I want to say that 

"the pay wall strategy will not just save newspaper industry, it will bring newspaper industry another prosperity."

Link:

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41513

http://www.nytimes.com/

“RRR” Principle

If every marketing campaign is a battle, every marketer should be a strategist that needs to gather all information from internal and external, analyze intelligence, develop tactics and monitor battlefield to strive for a perfect victory. In the marketing campaign, there are many types of battles like TV commercial, SEO, SoLoMo and newsjacking. Newsjacking is a new valuable tool for brands to stay relevant to their consumers, but marketers must create the best content about the brand immediately for hot news or holiday. 

As Thanksgiving is coming, more and more brands want to use newsjacking to get more customers’ attention. So how can you win this battle? Sun Bin, a famous ancient Chinese military strategist, said,” Good timing, geographical convenience and popular support lead success”. In other words, for marketing campaign, it should be “Right time, Right content and Right support will lead success”. So you need “RRR” to get your success in Thanksgiving newsjacking.

Well, I will use “RRR” to analyze Godiva’s Thanksgiving tweet for newsjacking (as below shown).

Right time: Bad!

Godiva posted this tweet on November 8 that is about 20 days before Thanksgiving. But the content of the tweet is about after Thanksgiving. So the time is wrong. I think the best post time should be November 29 or 30 that is 1 or 2 days after Thanksgiving.

Right content: Good!

The content is “After the Turkey, head for the bar (the chocolate one)”. Although Godiva had no direct correlation to the holiday, it still managed to inspire people to buy its chocolate through the witty tweet. After I read this tweet, I would like to buy some Godiva chocolate to share with my friends after Thanksgiving. So I think its content is good for newsjacking.

Right support: Bad!

This tweet only got 3 retweets and 6 favorites that mean it got few supports. The fewer supports it got, the less people it touched. So Godiva did a real bad work on the support.

In summary, I think this newsjacking campaign is fail because it only had good content so that it cannot touch enough customers to achieve its goal. I think there are 4 reasons lead its failure. 

The first one is wrong time. Godiva should post this tweet after Thanksgiving. If it creates a new holiday like after-thanksgiving day, it may get a big success. 

The second one is lacking of call-to-action. Godiva should add a QR code that customers can buy chocolate for themselves or their friends by scanning the code. I think a call-to-action button will motive more customers to support this tweet.

The third one is bad picture. The picture is not relevant with the content. There is a just a chocolate bar in the picture that cannot attract customers to share it or buy it. Godiva should design a picture about Thanksgiving chocolate bar. 

The last one is few earn media. Based on its few retweets and favorites, it also cannot get more earn media. After all, Godiva’s newsjacking is a real failure. But I think it will do a better job if it can get “RRR” in next newsjacking.

In addition, I believe that it has become overused since Oreo’s famous Super Bowl newsjack. Because nowadays every brand want to do newsjacking on every holiday or hot news. And customers are feeling numb from more and more newsjacking. So a smart brand should find a new way to attract customers.

Link: 

https://twitter.com/GODIVA

http://www.godiva.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c4S0wUgugI

As A Loyal Customer…

As we all known, loyal customer bring much more value than normal customer. So every brand needs to pay more attention on retain loyal customers than new customers. Well, what are the characters of loyal customers? They should own the brand’s membership card, make purchase continually, share brand’s good image with friends and follow the brand’s new information. I believe that everyone must be loyal to at least one brand. Of course, I am also some brands’ loyal customer like Starbucks. If I fall in love with a brand or build a relationship with a brand, I will be their loyal customer for a long long time. In other words, I am a “senior” loyal customer. As a loyal customer, I want to share the tips about the ways that I would like to build relationship with a brand.

Tip1: Give me benefits.

There are many kinds of benefits like discount, coupon, credit and emotional benefits. Discount is the most common benefit. We can get information that customers’ top reason for connecting brands is to get discount from the HBS article. So giving customers some benefits may be the first step to build relationship with them.

Tip2: Push me appropriate information that I really want to know.

Every morning, when I wake up, I will see more than 50 unread emails from brands. And my usually approach is to select all and mark them as read that means I will never read them. I hate to receive email from brands everyday. Moreover, I may move the brand to my black list because of its too much information. On the contrast, I will expect a brand’s email or other information if they just send me once a week or once a month. So the second step to keep the relationship is to control your speed of pushing information.

Tip3: Make me different from others.

As more and more brands provide personalized products, personalized service should be more important for most potential loyal customers. I will keep my loyalty to the brand if it give me some special service like a membership event or just an email with my name. For example, I will make purchase if a brand gives me a 10% off that is only for me instead of a 20% off that is for everyone.

From my tips, we can see that the best way to build and keep relationship with customers is give them what they want. And what a normal loyal customer want is always simple—benefit and personalized service. So what we should do is to focus on benefits and personalized service and simplify them to customers. Then you will get more and more loyal customers.

At the end, I want to share a book named <Positioning> with you. The book tells me that in our overcommunicated society, the only hope to get success is to be selective, to concentrate on narrow targets, to practice segmentation. 

So we need to keep “small” and keep “simple”. 

And then customers will accept us.

Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/technology/riding-the-hashtag-in-social-media-marketing.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1&

http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-The-Battle-Your-Mind/dp/0071373586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384058758&sr=8-1&keywords=positioning