Forrester has added a rung to its Social Technographics ladder.

Analyzing your customers’ social technology behavior isn’t easy. To a large extent, even for social media consultants and agencies, it’s been a guessing game. Assumptions about social technology behavior, web usage and the frequency of their customers’ engagement has driven a false understanding that’s affected the priorities and strategies of their client’s social media endeavors.

Every customer is different because people are unique. Our adoption of new social technologies will only continue to grow, but our social technology habits and preferences may change. Thus, there is an increasing importance put on understanding our customer information.

Information makes a marketer more powerful. Just ask Facebook. Social technology behavior and customer information, their buying habits and their status in the social sphere will make the organization that is leveraging social media (to connect with that customer) even more likely to retain their business, earn more sales or promote positive word of mouth.

In my opinion, the single most important takeaway Josh Bernoff makes comes inside a set of parenthesis. He says: “Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.”

This refers to the age old, time honored tradition of market segmentation. It never fails, and it’s never been more true: “Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments.”

What do you think?

I haven’t been blogging.

But, I have been reading blogs. Lots of blogs by other PR pros. I’m shocked by what I read, but more by what I see happening in the PR industry (again). I thought we learned our lessons about sending young and inexperienced PR pro’s off to toil in the world of professional brand communications. They got blasted, and some blacklisted, for acting without tact, slinging emails is mass fashion and pitching without sufficient information. But, now… I see the same trend happening again.

I’m shocked that any PR agency would hire someone, right out of college, to handle their clients’ social media endeavors, but I see it happening more and more. It seems to me that there is so much more experience needed to conduct even the lightest breed of social media, and to conduct smart and proper blogger relations.

Before you install the most inexperienced member of the PR team into your client’s social web, off to comment on blogs, tweet with customers and build a community for your brand… ask yourself if you’d trust that rookie quarterback to take you to the Superbowl.

Social media isn’t a job for the inexperienced communicator, however I do believe that any young, capable brand aficionado with a savvy way with words CAN in fact, drive great online brand communications with their role in social media.

I’m going to keep reading these blogs. I’m going to watch young PR pros blossom. But, I’m also going to watch as our clients and their brands lean on experience and expertise.

Risks come with reward. The courage to speak up comes first. Account Planners, for brands both big and small, suffer the trials of big idea strategies. The agency, and the client, want big ideas, huge ideas, viral ideas… but, they also want an escape route, a safe idea… a compromise.

Nothing remarkable has ever come from something boring. Yet I still see small ideas, safe play tactics and traditional thinking applied to brands that claim to want the opposite. Harley-Davidson can’t afford another safe play. I can’t wait to see what H-D does next, because big brands are often forced to make big decisions, and big sacrifices (like the axing of Buell from the H-D corporate bankroll).

PSFK is running a discussion and video series about planning and beyond: http://www.psfk.com/spur

For me, planning has always been about strategically implementing big ideas that stimulate brand activity. The future of planning is exciting, with so many new tools and consumers ready to engage (if they’re given the compelling reason to do so), radical tactics - online and one-on-one - will replace traditional ad agency creativity.

Undoubtedly, somebody has asked you: “How do you know if your social media strategy is working for your business?”

You might have answered: “Because we’ve got more friends, followers and fans than we had before.”

Before what? Before you knew what social media was or how to use it in your marketing mix?

To measure anything, you need to know what you’re starting with. Before you can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you’ve got a social media strategy and that it’s actually creating a positive affect on your business - you need to find and record the benchmarks.

Start with a basic count - on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Digg, and anywhere else your brand mentions (social mentions) matter. Also, don’t forget to record your website traffic. Next, take a rough estimate of how many word-of-mouth referrals you get, what kind of customer service you have (be honest with yourself, be true to your brand) and how many inbound weblinks you have across the web.

Before you can compare social media to traditional media - know your current marketing ROI. How much are you paying to make impressions on consumers? What’s the average cost per customer?

Now, you might be ready to answer the question. Consider these 5 facets of measuring the positive effects of social media:

1. Traffic: Quality will beat quantity. Get quality visitors to spread the word and organically build even more (now you can start to think about quantity) traffic. Record your site’s traffic, measure the difference between now, during, and after your social media campaign.
2. Interaction: Participation is the key to engaged customers. Create conversations, user actions, and clicks that matter to the success of your business. Record your interaction and measure the mentions before, during and after your social media activity.
3. Search marketing: The SEO factor shouldn’t be underestimated. Whether you’re running a paid search marketing campaign or you’re concentrating on SEO techniques, record your inbound links and measure their click through.
4. PR: The story matters. The nature of public relations has changed forever. Everyone is part of what we consider great PR, your story can be told and shared easier than ever before. Focus on your story, because your story matters. Record your story, distribute to the relevant channels and measure the story by it’s reach.
5. Leads: Before you can sell better, you need better sales leads. Track the data input and activity of enquiries about your products and services. Record how many leads you’re getting through your site now and then measure after you’ve run a social media engagement tactic.

Your customers are talking. They’re already exchanging ideas about Halloween costumes. While #Halloween is a top trending topic (and will be for weeks to come), this Christmas Holiday shopping season will be a social flurry of gift-sharing excitement.

Don’t forget, come early December, your customers will also be using both conventional and unconventional means of web searching - through Google, Bing and social search engines - for information about gifting and their special Holiday purchases.

If you need help ensuring your brand marketing gets a strong return on investment, start talking to a brand consultant to start putting a Holiday search strategy and a content development plan in place.

It’s good to see common sense isn’t forgotten. Dave Fleet, social media training buff, has created a corporate social media policies ebook. Not without a good dose of common sense for corporate staff who have access to and use of company blogs and social media platforms, Fleet’s ebook is a great start for building your company’s social media policy.

I will be the first to say that policies (especially for the corporate world) are the handcuffs of creativity and expression. But, I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that your company and your brand need the right policies in place to be successful, and the “right policy” will help positively shape and control your brand.

Harley-Davidson killed the Buell brand.

With Harley-Davidson’s 3rd quarter earnings announcement, also came the news that Buell will be shut down. Parts and warranties will continue to be serviced, but the sport bike brand is no more. The report also stated that Harley-Davidson will sell off the high-end, Italian sport bike brand, MV Augusta, to focus solely on the Harley-Davidson brand and its products. Are these smart moves?

Yes. Harley-Davidson is pretty far removed from the world of sport bikes.

Buell started to publicize itself as an underdog. Specifically in regards to its racing, with competition from superior race-bred machines from the Japanese contingent. Oddly enough, Buell won the AMA’s SportBike championship after a long summer of ups and downs – the first for an American motorcycle manufacturer since the 1980s. (As its been said by bike racing fans, the “NASBIKE” rulebook heavily favored Buell bikes in their respective category).

Will sacrificing Buell be a smart move to help turn things around for Harley-Davidson? The core Harley customer doesn’t care. However, if this move helps bring costs in line, then it will prove an advantage for potential H-D buyers.

The core audience for Harley has become a nebulous demographic. As the HOG moves forward, it will focus efforts on learning who’s going to be buying the next years’ bikes. The market has corrected itself — because there isn’t much need for a new bike every two or three years.

Stimulate the aftermarket, broaden the options for new ownership, narrow the gap to exclusivity and individuality.

Harley-Davidson has one choice: re-establish leadership and become the pinnacle of the motorcycle industry. My advice: refocus efforts on the production of cutting-edge bike designs. This will be attractive to existing Harley-Davidson owners while still attracting new riders. Harley has proven they can market themselves, so marketing a cutting-edge bike shouldn’t be hard for the 105 year-old brand that’s known for being first.

I took a call yesterday from a young entrepreneur with a small budget and a big idea. After 30 minutes on the phone, I realized that I wasn’t talking in terms of anything spectacular or groundbreaking or overly complicated. Mostly, it was common sense — and while I might have been able to suggest a few tactics that would have otherwise earned InsertCopyHere and my colleagues a couple of big-buck jobs… I thought about what would truly be his BEST course of action for launching a new brand. Our conversation went a little like this…

You’ve got a new business. Let’s assume that you’ve got a brand that nobody knows about yet. You can look at this two ways: 1) nobody knows your brand, or 2) the people that MATTER don’t know your brand.

Go with the people that matter and forget about everyone else. But, before you talking to anyone, start laying some brand groundwork.

1. Create your brand story. Base your story on the truth - do this by asking yourself ‘why’ - why did I start this business, why am I here, why does my business really matter to people?

2. Be different. Make your brand different from your competition. No two brands are alike. Argue all you want, but great truly brands separate themselves from everyone else. Don’t get mad when another brand tries to copy you - that means you’re doing something right.

3. Establish expertise. Act like an expert, work like an expert. Think in terms of benefits, not features. The benefit you bring to people will help prove what expertise you and your brand have. The people that matter will buy from you because you’ve earned their trust, they like your story, they like that you’re different (you’re a better option than what they’re used to), and they see you as an expert in the marketplace.

4. Be honest. Make no excuses for being new to the market, embrace your small size, boldly communicate why you LOVE the business you’re in, appreciate criticism, never hide the facts and never forget to thank your constituents.

Still, at this point you’ve done a ton of work and you’ve got a lot of insight, but you’re still starring down your fledgling brand without any recognition, no accolades and virtually no public awareness. But, you’re on solid ground. Let there be NO DOUBT that it’s going to take some devilishly clever marketing to encourage people to choose your brand as you begin your launch.

After going through all that, I’m left with this piece of advice: Launch a new brand with PR. You’ve just established excellent brand groundwork, now leverage these assets and start to identify the people that matter to your brand. Don’t think “customers” — think: who will help me create demand? Communicate your brand story with a strong public relations effort. Don’t be afraid to start small. Even if you have small distributorship or small retail presence, launching with targeted PR to create demand will be more effective than advertising by mass means.

With thousands of new products that get launched each year, still I can’t definitively tell you why some become a raging success and some die a horrible death. There are some product marketing cases that can’t pinpoint what made success so grand or death so awful. But, more often that not, successful product launches are more concentrated on creating demand than by pushing supply. What do you think, do you agree?

You need a social media strategy.

Not a presence. Not a fan page. Not a Twitter account. Not just a blog. You need a strategy. Start with a strategy first… ALWAYS.

You want people to see your people as the experts. You want engaged customers. You want to grow awareness. You want better customer service. You need a social media strategy.

Today, a friend asked me: What part comes first: the “thinking about it” or the going out and just “doing it”? We all know how important it is to Just Do It, but even Phil Knight would agree that you can’t do a damn thing if you don’t know what you’re doing to begin with.

I realize that you don’t have any real limits here. You’re absolutely free to go out and register for a Twitter account and a Facebook profile right now and you’ll be gangbusters in the social spaces in no time. You might even pay someone to help you put that all together. But, you’d be wrong to do any of that. What you need is to sit down and ask yourself: “Where do I need my brand to be and what do I ultimately want to have happen?”

The best tip I can give on anything slightly related to social media is to NOT focus on the social media tools. Focus on the reason for why you want to engage in social media.

If you’ve already jumped out of the gates or onto the ‘follow me’ bandwagon and you’re seeing that you’ve got multiple active conversation venues without any ‘real’ conversations, then you’re also probably already out of blog topics and ideas to generate great content. You’re also probably scrambling to figure out what you’re even doing there and how it’s even going to help grow your business. Don’t worry because it’s never too late to strategize. Ask yourself the simple questions like: “What kind of customers do I have and what can I do better to communicate with them?” Social media is all about common sense, so no question is too simple - in fact, those are the smart questions.

So, don’t get a blog and start posting. Get a strategy and let that help guide your blog. After you’ve developed a great social media strategy, then you can decide on the infinite number of social media tactics and the many wonderful tools that will help you execute your strategy.

Sometimes, we find ourselves doing exactly what interactive advertisers want us to do: Share.
On social networks, we can be sharing ad content without any reward. That seems silly, shouldn’t we be rewarded for generating brand buzz while we annoy our friends with more digital fun? Peer Squared thinks so. Peer Squared is a new online marketing platform that will reward you for promoting their brands and products across the web.

The platform is a widget, all set and ready to be embedded anywhere you’re able to spread their seeds: on your Facebook pages, your Blog or your favorite niche social network. This ad might be an interactive game, a contest or a video that will (if it gets passed along) earn you points.

At a time when interactive marketing means creating unique experiences online, advertisers are always looking for easier techniques to earn engagement and ultimately turn impressions into user actions. Earning page views and mouse clicks has turned into a rewards-based pursuit of your name and other personal data. None of that sounds very groundbreaking, it’s just that advertising just because a bit more enticing for users who love to share. The more things change, the more they stay the same.