In our latest white paper, Actionable Social Analytics: From Social Media Metrics to Business Insights we unveiled the Social Analytics Framework for Marketing and Sales Effectiveness. Use this framework to determine KPI’s according to marketing objective.

There is a new economic model – one that rewards the consumer for behaving a certain way that has far-reaching repercussions for your brand online. Companies that understand this new method of currency, value, and reward can reap the benefits of higher recall and increased consumer loyalty. Liz Crawford provides an analysis of this new model in The Shopper Economy: The New Way to Achieve Marketplace Success by Turning Behavior into Currency. With 20 years of experience as a brand manager and consultant focused on strategic innovation, Liz is uniquely qualified to identify this new shopper behavior-driven economic phenomenon. In anticipation of our Shopper Economy webinar next week, we sat down with Liz for some Q and A.

Your book, The Shopper Economy, describes an emerging economy where behavior is currency. What led you to investigate this topic?
I thought it was fascinating that digital technology, especially mobile technology, was enabling new kinds of transactions between buyers and sellers.  In addition to shoppers purchasing brands, brands were purchasing shopper behavior.  I believe this is a relatively new phenomenon.

In the book, I try to make clear that I am not referring to a conventional buy-more-get-more promotion.  And I don’t mean a deferred discount, like a cents-off-next-purchase.

Instead, I am pointing out a new dynamic where a shopper can actually earn value in exchange for one of four behaviors: paying attention, participating, advocating, or committing.  None of these behaviors directly involve purchase. The shopper can earn value by simply behaving.

This earned value can come in various forms – Shopkick Kicks, Facebook Credits, miles, points, etc. You will notice that this value is digital scrip (not straightforward fiat currency in most cases). The digital scrip is currency in that it is – 1. recorded,  2. stored and banked, and 3. redeemable at the discretion of the shopper, across channels. Shoppers can aggregate all manner of scrip in a clearinghouse website like www.points.com. This website allows shoppers to exchange hundreds of forms of scrip for fiat currency (dollars and cents), which may be deposited into a Paypal account.

Which industries are leading the way in understanding this new activity-based marketplace?
At this point, I believe that retailers are leading the way, along with financial services.

Retailers who are rewarding behavior are reaping the benefits.  There are various platforms which effectively use shopper participation to drive traffic and conversion.  These platforms include: http://www.scvngr.com/ , www.checkpoints.com/ , http://shopkick.com/ among others. These are platforms, which shoppers download onto their smartphones as apps.

American Express, of course, is a leader in the area. Their points system is both the granddaddy of digital scrip, as well as the continued frontrunner. One of the big reasons for their massive success is their extensive network of partners.  Shoppers who acquire points can redeem them in virtually any way they please, including simply using points to supplement/replace payments at a digital point of sale (www.americanexpress.com). I believe that with Google Wallet or ISIS type technologies, we will see frictionless, fungible exchanges of scrip with fiat currency, for everything. This really opens the door to the Shopper Economy.

How can small businesses take advantage of the concepts in The Shopper Economy?
Many smaller or independent retailers can begin to experiment with incenting behaviors by signing up with one of the platforms already mentioned (Checkpoints, Shopkick, SCVNGR, etc).  These mechanisms are used by hundreds of local merchants to drive traffic. In some cases the rewards are simply deferred discounts, like Foursquare rewards (“free coffee next visit” for example).  In other cases, the earned value is scrip which is redeemable at the discretion of the shopper.

For small business, advocacy is an important behavior to reward. Groupon and Living Social both reward shopper-to-shopper advocacy, and of course are used extensively by local merchants, like salons and restaurants.

In this new economy where shopper behaviors create units of value, how can marketers quantify a specific value to a shopper behavior?
This is a detailed subject.  The book devotes a chapter on valuation for each of the four shopper behaviors.  Some behaviors like Attention and Participation should be evaluated in comparison to more traditional communication and promotional expenditures, respectively.  So, if a shopper is watching an ad in exchange for scrip, does that shopper score higher on recall and persuasion scores?  It is the effectiveness of these efforts that need to be assessed. It is a trade-off of investment dollars.

The same evaluation process can be used to assess Participation programs.  For example, how effective is a SCVNGR game at driving store traffic, in comparison to other efforts?  This will help a business owner optimize marketing investments.  Participation also usually has a conversion component. That will help with understanding the financial return of the program.

The book also cites specific formulae to quantify some behaviors such as Advocacy.

What does the future look like in the shopper economy?
Shoppers will become increasingly sophisticated in understanding the worth of their labor.  This means that they will evaluate transactions with brands and retailers with a sharper eye to their own advantage.

For more insights from Liz Crawford, be sure to attend next week’s free Awareness webinar: The Shopper Economy. You can also download chapter 1 of The Shopper Economy: The New Way to Achieve Marketplace Success by Turning Behavior into Currency.

It’s time marketers stop collecting data for data’s sake and start it for culling insights. That’s where social analytics comes in. Social analytics is the evolving business discipline that studies social media metrics to help marketers use the findings to drive business intelligence. If you’re new to this, have no fear. Look to the 15 influencers listed below for guidance on the topic. They can help you get started or finesse your approach. Here are the Top Social and Web Analytics Experts to follow (in alphabetical order):

Gary Angel, president of Semphonic.  Recipient of the Digital Analytics Association’s Award for Excellence as the Most Influential Industry Contributor.

Don’t miss: 3 Paths to Digital Optimization: Zen and the Art of Enterprise Analytics

Key Takeaway: To get the greatest value from analytics, you need an integrated approach.

Connie Bensen, Senior digital strategist at Dell

Don’t miss: Best Practices for Social Media Monitoring ROI

Key Takeaway: Great tips on how to avoid spam and noise: add exclusion criteria to your searches.

Keith Burtis, co-founder of MeasureMob

Don’t miss: Getting Started in Analytics From Tape Measure to #Measure

Key Takeaway: Three resources to get you started with analytics.

Alistair Croll, principal analyst for Bitcurrent, contributing author to Web Operations, Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth.

Don’t miss: Writings: December 2011/January 2012

Key Takeaway: A sampling of Alistair’s thinking, including 2012 trends and how companies should think about big data.

Susan Etlinger, industry analyst at Altimeter Group

Don’t miss: Research Report: A Framework for Social Analytics

Key Takeaway: Measure your company’s performance against the Social Media Measurement Compass.

Nathan Gilliatt, principal at Social Target, co-founder at AnalyticsCamp, founder at SocialMediaAnalysis.com

Don’t miss: Applying Intelligence and Analytics to Online Statements

Key Takeaway: Insightful matrix of Intelligence/Analytics plotted against Fact/ Opinion

Taulbee Jackson, CEO and president of Raidious

Don’t miss: Social Media Analytics – AMA Michiana

Key Takeaway: At the end of the day, you are trying to determine ‘how good is the content?’

Avinash Kaushik, digital marketing evangelist at Google and author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

Don’t miss: Beginner’s Guide to Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps to Love & Success

Key Takeaway: An excellent getting started guide to web analytics.

John Lovett, senior partner at Web Analytics Demystified Inc, author of Social Media Metrics Secrets

Don’t miss: You’re Using the Wrong Social Media Metrics

Key Takeaway: Understand corporate goals, align business objectives, tie metrics to measures of success and then define operational tactics.

Jonas Klit Nielsen, CEO and founder of Mindjumpers

Don’t miss: Executive Series: Listening on Social Media is about Insight Management and Analyzing Data

Key Takeaway: Listen first to relevant conversations, then break down the data to relevant insights.

Katie D. Paine, CEO & founder of KD Paine & Partners; author of Measure What Matters

Don’t miss: KDPaine’s How-To-Get-Good-Data Checklist

Key Takeaways: Both humans and computers make mistakes, so check your data regularly.

Eric Peterson, CEO and founder of Web Analytics Demystified Inc., author of Web Analytics Demystified, Web Site Measurement Hacks and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators

Don’t miss: Finally! Standards Come to Web Analytics

Key Takeaway: Google Analytics has become the de facto standard for web analytics.

Sean Power, data scientist at Cheezburger; contributing author to Web Operations, and Complete Web Monitoring

Don’t miss: Complete Web Monitoring, (O’Reilly, 2009)

Key Takeaway: Learn everything from why, what and how to implement measurement in your organization.

Jim Sterne, founder of eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and the Digital Analytics Association and author of Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment

Don’t miss: eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits

Takeaway: Learn from Jim in person at a summit near you.

Marshall Sponder, senior analyst and founder of WebmetricsGuru.com and author of Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics

Don’t miss: Lack of Processes (or the Wrong Processes) biggest problem in Social Media Reporting and ROI

Key Takeaway: You need a standard process for measurement.

To learn more about what social analytics and how you can approach it, consult with our new position paper Social Analytics for Marketing and Sales Effectiveness.

Let’s hear it from you, marketers: Did we list all your top analytics gurus? Did we miss anyone who deserves to be included? Sound off on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and on Pinterest.

We are excited to share our annual report on the State of Social Media Marketing – Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012. The team at Awareness connected with 320 marketers from a cross-section of industries, company sizes and levels of social marketing experience.  Our annual State of Social Media Marketing report comes with insights from those leading the efforts at the C-level and those who manage the social marketing function within their organizations, as well as a number of business leaders who are helping to bridge the social gap within their enterprises.

Here are some interesting findings and insights that are contained in this report from our CEO, Brian Zanghi.

2012: The Year of Growing Social Marketing Maturity

Social marketing is entering a stage of maturity and with it, savvy, socially-oriented businesses are starting to embrace social as part of their companies’ DNA.  This transition comes with an understanding that siloed approaches to social marketing are not effective, and a realization that scale with social marketing comes with the adoption of new organizational structures, processes and technology infrastructure that can help the enterprise scale and optimize in a continuous fashion. Expect that in 2012 focus will shift to active social media management for increased lead generation and sales.

C-level Involvement with Social Marketing

We were excited with the response levels from C-level executives (39% of respondents) and the information they shared.  Top-of-mind for executives and senior managers is ROI, integration of social with lead generation and sales, and expansion of social presence and reach. It is clear that the C-level wants more proof before they allocate additional organizational resources to social marketing.  This is why only 8% of our respondents reported 2011 budgets of over $50,000 per year, with 12% of the organizations reporting teams of 5+ social marketers.  At the same time, executives need to realize that to give their social marketing initiatives a chance, they need to invest accordingly in the effort.  Our prediction is that to resolve the cost-benefit conundrum in 2012, executives will start to adopt new processes and technologies that will not only help them scale the effort, but get the data that clearly links to ROI.

The Right Social Marketing Infrastructure

Social marketing maturity will increasingly be defined next year as the practice of adopting new processes and technologies that will help the enterprise scale their initiatives.  2012 will see savvy social businesses moving beyond the “let’s allocate a few people resources to social” mentality to incorporating robust social media management platforms. These platform will provide the ability to monitor and analyze social conversations, while creating effective response and content mechanisms to increase customer engagement and ultimately sales. Our industry is reaching this maturity tipping point – 78% of marketers reported monitoring social media channels for mentions of their brand at least a few times a week, while 62% reported monitoring industry conversations with the same frequency. Although 19% of surveyed marketers reported using a social media management platform, these are the leaders who will be reaping the most benefit from their efforts.

Expanded Use of New Social Marketing Platforms

Experienced social marketers report that they plan increased usage of social marketing platforms beyond the Big Three (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) to include: Blogs (91%) YouTube (86%), foursquare (59%), SlideShare (43%), Flickr (50%), and Tumblr (30%). Driven by increasingly fragmented user consumption habits, companies clearly see the need to expanded social presence that will allow them to follow and engage their prospects and customers on multiple channels and networks.  This proliferation of channels and the corresponding need to successfully engage in all of them will make the job of social marketers increasingly more complex. This, in turn, will necessitate the adoption of robust tools to manage presence, monitor and report on activity, and tie efforts to the organizational bottom line.

The State of Social Media Marketing report contains additional insights on top social marketing investment areas, top challenges for 2012, top social media platforms used today, the role of LinkedIn in reaching the C-suite, along with a fun section on the top news and analysis resources marketers use to stay on top of the latest and greatest in our industry. For full, free access to the State of Social Media Marketing report, click here. If you would like to be included in the survey for next year’s report, click here. You can also access the 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions, to hear from marketing strategists David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Erik Qualman, Paul Gillin, CC Chapman, and Steve Rubel what 2012 has in store for us.

We welcome your thoughts, reactions and feedback.  Let us know how the insights and findings presented in the State of Social Media Marketing report will help shape your thinking in 2012.  Don’t hesitate to ask us the tough questions – as we embark on 2012, we promise to continue to provide deeper dives into best practices, successes, and notable trends to help you, social marketers, do more and do better.

As we embark on 2012, the team at Awareness, Inc. consulted with the best and the brightest in marketing, strategy, technology, business and social media marketing to help us identify the top news, analysis and trends resources for social marketing and social technology.  Our industry is among the most dynamic, with many voices reporting, analyzing and advising on social technology, social media developments, successes, and best practices. To help you navigate the active social news space, we compiled this Ultimate Guide to the Top Marketing, Technology and Social Media Resources.  This guide aggregates resources quoted by leading strategists such as David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Erik Qualman, Jason Falls, and Jay Bear, top analysts and influencers Jeremiah Owyang, Debi Kleiman, Laura Fitton, David Berkowitz, brand leaders such as Ekaterina Walter, Michael Pace, and Pam Johnston, and agency visionaries Steve Rubel, Mike Troiano, and Jonas Klit Nielsen in our free report on 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions, to name just a few.  The Ultimate News Resource Guide also contains the collective input from over 300 marketers from a cross-section of industries, company sizes and levels of social marketing experience (we recently polled these marketers for our upcoming annual report on the State of Social Media Marketing to be published in mid January) and asked them about their top information resources and their sources of inspiration.

Here it is – the 55 Top Marketing, Technology and Social Media Marketing News, Analysis and Trends Resources in alphabetical order:

1.   AdAge @adage

2.   AgencySpy @agencyspy

3.   All Things Digital @allthingsd 

4.   Altimeter Group @altimetergroup

5.   Around the Net in Online Media

6.   Around the Net @aroundthedotnet

7.   Awareness, Inc. @awarenessinc

8.   Big Think @bigthink

9.   BoingBoing @BoingBoing

10.  Brian Solis’ Blog @briansolis

11.  Bull Dog Daily Reporter @BulldogReporter

12.  Business Insider @SAI

13.  Chris Brogan’s Blog @chrisbrogan

14.  Convince & Convert @jaybaer

15.  Customer Collective @yourcustomers

16.  Darwin Awareness Engine Blog @darwineco

17.  Direct Marketing Association @DMASocialMedia

18.  Editors and Publishers @EditorPublisher

19.  eMarketer @eMarketer

20.  Exploring Social Media @JasonFalls

21.  FastCompany @FastCompany

22.  Forrester @Forrester

23.  Gartner @Gartner_inc

24.  Harvard Business Review @HarvardBiz

25.  Jeremiah Oywang  @jowyang

26.  Lifehacker @lifehacker

27.  Mari Smith @MariSmith

28.  MarketingProfs @MarketingProfs

29.  MarketingSherpa @MarketingSherpa

30.  Mashable  @mashsocialmedia

31.  Media Post @MediaPost

32.  MediaGazer @mediagazer

33.  Newsmap @Newsmap

34.  Pulse @pulsepad

35.  ReadWriteWeb @RWW 

36.  Robert Scroble @Scobleizer

37.  SmartBlog on Social Media @SBoSM

38.  SmartBrief on Social Media @SmartBrief

39.  Social Commerce Today @marsattacks

40.  Social Media & Marketing Daily

41.  Social Media Examiner @smexaminer

42.  Social Media Times @socialtimes

43.  Social Media Today @socialmedia2day

44.  SocialMediaMakerting.com @socialROI

45.  Socialnomics @equalman

46.  Summify @summify

47.  TechCrunch.com @techcrunch

48.  Techmeme @Techmeme

49.  The Next Web @TheNextWeb

50.  Trendsmap @Trendsmap

51.  Venture Beat @VentureBeat

52.  WSJ Media Marketing @WSJMedia

53.  WSJ Tech @WSJTech

54.  Wired @wired

55.  Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) @womma

Besides these top resources, today’s marketers heavily rely on their Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook feeds to get to the top news and developments in our industry.  You can follow these Twitter lists to easily get the latest from some of the top experts, and from our top resources, listed here. If you are looking for the top CMOs using Twitter, then look no further than this list of Top CMOs on Twitter.  You can also read about how CMOs are engaging with Twitter. And one final Twitter tip – if you want to know when your top journalists are tweeting about your brand or relevant industry terms, use this new handy tool from Muck Rack.

And as David Meerman Scott reminds us, some marketers also get their insights from their peers – they make it a conscious effort to attend industry events and conferences where they get first -hands insights from their colleagues on what works and what’s in store next.

Don’t be shy – let us know if we missed some of your favorite resources. Experts and marketing leaders you follow not on this list? You have our word – we will update this top list based on your feedback. You can also download our free report 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions, containing insights and predictions from 34 business strategy and marketing experts. Connect with us on Twitter #AwarenessSMM on Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices and Social Media Marketing Mavens Pages or LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

Photo Credit: webtreats  154 Blue Chrome Rain Social Media Icons Used Under a Creative Commons License

A few weeks back we released an eBook explaining the benefits of the Social Marketing Funnel (a recent slideshow summarizing the eBook is available here).  As part of the research for that book we had the chance to speak with several social media practitioners and I have been featuring those interviews in a series of blog posts over the past few weeks.  So far we have featured interviews David Meerman Scott & Paul Gillin,Erik Qualman, and Nathaniel Perez, with several more planned in the next few weeks.

We took the most important quotes from that series of interviews and compilled them into the inforgraphic below.  Hope you enjoy!

Download as a PDF.

Social Media Marketing by the Numbers.  Infographic via Mashable

For our recent eBook “The Social Marketing Funnel: Driving Business Value with Social Marketing“, we interviewed a number of leading marketing strategists and experts in social media. Many of their insights are in the eBook, but we weren’t able to use everything they shared with us. Beginning with this blogpost and continuing over the next several weeks, I’ll share some additional pearls of wisdom from those interviews.

B2B marketers often ask how they can apply principles of social media marketing to their business. Two of the experts we interviewed for the eBook offered advice specifically for B2B companies, so I thought that would be a good place to start. In this installment, Paul Gillin, a veteran technology journalist who advises marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize use of social media and online channels, and David Meerman Scott, an internationally recognized marketing strategist, seminar leader, keynote speaker and author, offer advice to B2B marketers.

If B2B companies do nothing else in the social realm, they should focus on search engine optimization, advises Gillin, who recently co-authored a book about B2B social media marketing. “There is a limited domain of keywords that people use when they’re looking for solutions, so if you optimize through various channels for those keywords, that’s the low-hanging fruit of lead generation.” He recommends not only a search-optimized web site, but also a blog for its power to attract buyers. Blogs are “the closest thing to a no-brainer for B2B in social media terms because of their excellent search engine performance.”

Similarly, search rank is the first social media metric that comes to mind for David. “Smart companies understand what it is that their potential customers are searching on because they’ve actually interviewed their potential customers,” he says. That deep understanding allows companies to develop salient social media content that incorporates the terms and phrases used by customers. “Create content not for your own ego, but for the people that you’re trying to reach. The biggest failure I see are companies that just create content about their products and services in an egotistical way. They don’t understand the people they’re trying to reach.”

Gillin suggests a couple of examples of the benefits of thinking like a customer. A maker of portable computers might prefer to describe its products as “notebook” computers, but a far larger volume of search queries use the term “laptop.” Walmart calls its people “associates,” but that term won’t do it much good in reaching searchers who use the far more common term “employee.”

There are myriad resources for marketers at B2B companies to identify the specific terms customers care about. Gillin suggests marketers turn to the people inside their organization who are closest to the customers: the engineers, the service people, product designers and product support teams. The idea is “not necessarily for you to be that source, but for you as the marketer to translate that expertise” with a goal to “speak in the language of the customer.”

“You are part of a team,” says David, “and your part in that team is to be able to create really interesting content.”

Social marketing presents a number of other opportunities for B2B marketers. For instance, interaction in the social realm can help identify new customers. Gillin recommends monitoring social platforms such as LinkedIn, as well as highly specialized vertical platforms, where individuals are asking questions relevant to your company’s products and services.

Social marketing is also helpful to the sales process. “The more you know about the customer, the more time you save the customer, the more individualized the solution you can offer the customer, the better the chance of getting the sale,” says Gillin, who observes that social customer relationship management is “getting traction as a way of simply building better customer profiles.”

Another means of driving sales through social marketing is multichannel syndication of content, a ” big trend over the last couple of years,” says Gillin. Multichannel syndication employs multiple social media platforms, and often multiple accounts on each platform, to achieve a broader reach and drive engagement. “It’s hard work,” says Gillin. “It’s easy to have your blog entries go out as RSS feeds and be posted to Twitter and Facebook, but you’re not going to have success if that’s all you do. You’ve got to go out and engage with people in the medium.”

For marketers just getting started, resist the temptation to take on more than you can realistically support. “Focus on a limited number of tools and learn how to use them well. It’s better to do a few things well than a lot of things poorly,” advises Gillin. Once you’ve learned to do something well, determine its value. If it’s working, continue to invest in it. “You don’t need a social media strategy. You need to understand the value of social media and you need to apply it to your business strategy.”

For specific advice on how to employ social media monitoring and search engine optimization, download our free eBook: “The Social Marketing Funnel: Driving Business Value with Social Marketing“