LEREVEREND Agnès
Mrs CRAIG Lisa
MBA 2A
Mid term exam – MBA Digital Marketing
1. In YOUR own words, what is the difference between traditional word-of-mouth marketing and Influence Marketing? Traditional marketing is more focused on the company, on its products rather than Influence marketing is focused on the customer, on the community. Traditional word-of-mouth marketing is more focused on how to encourage people to talk about products and services, rather than social marketing is focused on how to use your influencers in order to influence positively their communities. In this sense, for me, influence marketing is a technique that employs social media (content created by everyday people using highly accessible and scalable technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts,...) and social influencers (everyday people who have an outsized influence on their peers by virtue of how much content they share online) to achieve an organization’s marketing and business needs. And, for me, traditional word-of-mouth marketing is a whole new marketing approach that essentially involves developing strategies and solutions that result in positive conversations leading to brand advocacy and sales. It is to give people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place. So, word of mouth marketing refers to an oral communication, a message launches by the brand, rather than influence marketing is an online communication, and it is not a message launches by the brand, but messages launch by social influencers which can promote or not the brand. To conclude, the bigger difference between traditional word-of-mouth marketing and influence marketing is in the fact that influence marketing involves the brand (a message of consumers, of influencers) rather than, traditional word-of-mouth marketing is a message launches directly by the brand.
2. Post a link to the article you read, in addition to the Slideshare. Higilight the key quote. How did the article expand your understanding of the assigned presentation? Support contradict? Please be specific. I read some articles and some presentations on Slideshare in addition to the presentation “Social Influence Trends for 2010” read in the class blog. The most interesting article for me is “Social Influence marketing...” in the blog MagnonInternational. The link of this article is http://blog.magnoninternational.com/thesocial-influence-marketing/.
I found this article very interesting; because it explains in more details why social influence marketing is a thing that needs to be integrated in the strategy marketing. The key quote on this article is “Social Influence Marketing basically means targeting the entire community in your social network. It involves using different social platforms to develop healthy relationship between you and your potential audience.” , why is it the key quote for me? Because
this phrase is, for me, a clear and very complete definition of social influence marketing. In this sense, a SIM actions plan is the development of the brand on different social networks, and, the most important goal of SIM is to create and to have a good communication, a good relationship with your customers, your influencers, your potential clients... For me, there is another key quote on this article which is “You need to identify those few customers and use them as your key influencers to create a buzz for your product or service.”,
because this passage explains clearly the importance of influencers, and why it is essential to identify them. This article has expanded my understanding of the assigned presentation because, in my opinion, it is a good complement of the assigned presentation. Indeed, the assigned presentation explains the five trends of social influence marketing for 2010, rather than, this article was published in June 2010, so after this presentation, and thanks to that, reading the article we can see if the five trends given by the assigned presentation were corrected or not. Moreover, the article is most focused on the explanation of what is the Social Influence Marketing, and, after on the impacts that this SIM can have on sales, on brand’s popularity... To conclude, I can say that for me, this article is a good complement to the assigned presentation, and I understood better what Social Influence Marketing is after the reading of this article, because it gives a clear and concise definition of this new type of marketing. On Slideshare, I found another presentation on Social Influence Marketing, its name is Razorfish - Fluent - The Social Influence Marketing Report, it is a very long report but very interesting. It explains many things, and notably, it gives a clear definition of the three types of influencers (before I did not really understand the difference between each), and it gives some explanations of what a brand need to do in order to success with a Social Influence Marketing.
3. What is the relationship between communities and your social brand - give your insights for Slide 23.
For me, the relationship between communities and our social brand is very important, and they are two things which are focused on people. In this sense, according to the assigned presentation, the trend 3 for 2010 is “Putting people before brands”, this trend is very important and its signification is that with Social Influence Marketing, the most important to do is to show at our communities that they are most important for us. Indeed, Social Influence Marketing is focused on people, on the communication between our brand and our communities, our influencers, our customers...So a brand need to listen, respect and communicate with its communities, the product of the brand is a secondly thing, it is not an optional thing that the brand can present to its communities but the brand must to have in spirit that the goal is not to talk about it, about its products, all it is about its communities. So, for me the relationship between communities and our social brand is the fact that they are focused on people, on the communication with people. For Slide 23, I think that the first circle shows that before, the brand was in the center. In this sense, when a brand tries to develop a strong brand voice we are in this case, in this sense, the brand is in the center, all are focused on the brand, the community is a “secondary thing”. In contrary, the second circle shows the Social Influence Marketing. In this sense, for me, when a brand tries to develop a strong SIM voice, the community must be in the center, because everything must be focused on the community, on people, and, the brand is around. So, for me Slide 23 is about the development of a strong brand voice or of a strong SIM voice and the impact of this development, on the place of the brand, and the place of the community.
4. What is the relationship between Klout scores and Influence Marketing? Is a Klout score meaningful? Klout Score is a tool to measure your influence online. For example, Justin Bierber has a big influence online... There are different people who influence different market segments, different community, different target customers... The algorithms used to determine your Klout score are based on many parameters (networking, amplification,...), that permits to identify your real influencers. Klout scores is a measure tool of your influence online, so of your influence marketing online.
The relationship between Klout scores and Influence Marketing is in the fact that Klout socres permits to identify the influencers of the brand, that it is necessary in order to do a success influence marketing strategy. In this sense, influencers are the most powerful, you have to find you monitor who is influential and have them. It is essential to use digital marketing, digital services in your marketing strategy, and, in order to use very well these services, you need to know who are your influencers. When we find someone with a meaningful Klout score, like Loic Le Meur who has a significant Klout Score, you can offer some advantages to this person. For example, if he comes in your hotel, you want to know about him and make him talk about your hotel = thanks to Klout Score, he becomes a VIP on your hotel.
5. Choose one of the two hotels below: I choose the Aloft Hotel Brussels.
Create a SIM action plan
I propose a SIM action plan with several points, steps: Develop the presence of the Aloft Hotel Brussels on social media Make a partnership with Klout Scores to identify easier our influencers. Develop and maintain good relationship with our influencers Create the Aloft Hotel VIP’s club (the members will be our influencers, or our important customers) Create and develop some contests for identify our best influencer Develop promotion and special offers on our social medias (only for our communities) => partnership with foursquare for example Develop our presence on Google places They are the first steps for a successful SIM action plan according to me. Other steps will be developed after, in order to maintain and develop constantly our social influence marketing. It is essential to be online, and to develop constantly our strategy because everything change on internet (for example, SEO are dead now, and are replaced by Google Places...).
Clearly state your objectives
Our principal objectives are: To be really present on social media => We must to be present on several social networks, and this presence must be active. In this sense, to have several social networks accounts are goods only if we post and update all our accounts regularly (at least once by day). To attract our communities => We must be interesting and diversified in our posts and in our online presence in order to attract and interest our communities. To identify and to reach our influencers => For that, I propose a partnership with Klout Scores, in order to facilitate their identifications. When a person makes a reservation, with Klout Socres, we can identify if it is an influencer or not. Maintain a good relationship with our influencers => If we want that these persons encourage and influence their communities to come in our hotel, we need to communicate with them, to propose them some special offers and some promotions (free wifi, free breakfast when they come at the hotel...). Influence quality of comments => If we take care to our influencers, but also to our customers, we can influence the quality of their comments, their reviews. Indeed, if a person comes at the Aloft Hotel Brussels, because it was influenced by one of our influencers, but, it was a bad surprise (bad welcoming, technical problems in the room, ...) and its stay was horrible, it can have a bad influence on our influencer. So, we need to take care of our influencers but also of our customers and clients.
Select at least 3 Social Media as tactics (no points for Facebook)
I think that Aloft Hotel Brussels need to be present at least on : Foursquare (a location social media) Twitter YouTube (for videos, promotional videos, videos of special events made for our influencers...) Why on these three Social Media? Because I think it is essential to be present in diversified Social networks. With these three social media, we can touch and communicate with more types of communities, different targets.
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Show how the selected Social Media have synergies
The selected Social Media have synergies because each of these social media touches a specific community, and give a specific way to communicate with them. So, with these Social Media we can reach a larger community, and we can communicate easier with all our influencers and their communities. 
Explain why you selected these specific media
I selected these specific media because I think it is essential to reach a large social media targets. YouTube is a great social media with many users, and users different than the users of Foursquare and of Twitter. For me these three social media are very interesting, and, complete. We can reach more different targets, different communities with the use of these specific media, and we can communicate with all these communities. Finally, with the these three specific media, we have an online presence more diversified and bigger.
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How will you measure the results of the Influence Marketing
I think that Klout Scores is essential to measure our influence online, to know who our influencers are and to communicate with them. We can also use others tools like PeerIndex ans Twitteranalyser. But, for me, the best tool to measure our Influence Marketing is Klout Scores. It analyses the influence of a person according to many cretiria and for me it is very interesting and more complete to understand who our influencers are, the level of their influence. In addition, I think that this tool can be used to impact revenue, because we can reach a target more important influencers and their community, we can communicate with them and to get more influencers. Finally, I think that this hotel can create a service differentiation for its influencers thanks to a partnership with Klout Scores: by offering some special offers, some special amenities...