Happy to see the Inmar gentleman mention trust, authenticity and relevance. These are key components of the relationship between brand and consumer regardless of the brand. Social media must be an extension of the trust, authenticity and relevance that brands should bake into all aspects of their brand — products, packaging, collateral, marketing, PR, voice, etc. The beauty of social media as a way to elevate and enhance the components of a brand is that a.) it can be a two-way conversation between brand and consumers and b.) it is a channel that can spread a message efficiently.

Social is not just about content, it’s about creating a forum for engagement and conversation with your brand. Social is absolutely critical not only as a channel in and of itself but also to amplify other efforts. One great example was the Levi’s campaign in which they hosted a concert in Brooklyn and the ticket for admission was wearing your favorite Levi’s. This created an opportunity for organic social sharing in a way that was completely authentic and resonated with the customer and the brand. The critical piece is the exchange and the back and forth as a way to foster loyalty — sharing in and of itself is likely not enough.

Social is often used as a marketing magnifier. If a retailer has done its social work and built up a network of followers, then their messaging can propagate through social when it is engaging, interesting and valuable. However, it is always amazing to see some good marketing content that goes back to quote what customers have said about them, their product and their service experience on social. So smart marketers will use it both ways.

The 4 Ps of Marketing were all about the “product.” The 4Ps have been replaced by the 4Cs:

• Choice;
• Convenience;
• Customized;
• Connected.

In order for brands to connect through social media, they need to address the 4Cs, when and where the customer wants to be engaged. The art of social media is not blasting out ads about products and the brand, but rather engaging customers in talking about the brand and how they use products.

Social media = consistent content with communication that connects customers.

Social media is most suited to amplifying a message. In its arm-waving and in-your-face approach, social media is always in telling and talking mode, so brands really benefit when they are in listening mode and at the ready to challenge wrong information, support brand champions and apply correction or improvement to their operations as needed.

Well, this post sounds more like an ad for Inmar/CB services, but the fact remains that influencer marketing is real and important to every brand. I don’t think of influencer marketing as different from traditional marketing. “Traditional” as a descriptor of marketing is outdated. Customer-centricity and shopper-centricity is what every marketing touchpoint should be focused on. The intent can be to deliver brand promise, brand experience or brand offer/USP, as long as it is focused on delivering on an expectation, want, need or even unmet need. That’s where the rubber meets the road — building relationship and trust.

Good for Inmar for assembling the resources to make well-guided decisions that help clients deliver influence that creates behavior change.

I didn’t even bother to read the article on this one, so my apologies to Mr. Alaimo. But I didn’t have to in order to answer the question posed. At least, the one posed by the headline.

No. Word of mouth from trusted influencers is still the key to building brand trial and, combined with delivering the brand promise, the key to brand loyalty as well. Social media is just the new forum for word of mouth. Maybe we could call it “word of text” or “word of Twitter” — but it’s still the same old thing.

Building brand loyalty is as much about creating a personality for the brand as it is about promoting the products. This will come from knowing more about how the company operates from an ethical standpoint, social responsibility commitments, personality of the key people running the business and how they project themselves internally and externally thus affecting employer brand. If a consumer has an impression of a nice company to do business with that treats people with trust and respect then this in turn builds brand loyalty. This is an area that social media can support brilliantly if managed well.

Today, social content is “table stakes” for retailers and brands. Social influencers are critical to driving true loyalty. Manually defining key brand influencers is tedious and unproductive. There are great technologies that can capture the unstructured social sentiment data that can generate fantastic insights for retailers. Employing a dedicated staff for quick responses to influencer content is a great component to an effective marketing strategy.

I couldn’t agree more with this study. As I work with retailers across the world, I’m constantly hearing that their buyers and assortment planners are struggling to keep up with rapidly changing consumer tastes.

Their former perch as curators and tastemakers is at risk as more consumers — especially younger ones — get more of their inspiration and purchase ideas from influencers or friends across a variety of channels (online and offline!).

Authentic engagement and listening (not just talking) on these channels can help retailers tap into what is happening in their segment that they might not otherwise know about. Combine that with quick twitch, even temporal partnerships with inspired and hot manufacturers and retailers suddenly can both listen and respond effectively to what people want.