Social Media Technology Thought Leader Interview Series
Ivan Fernandes, MediaCom Global Director, Social Media Technology, interviews Joshua Graff,
Director of Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Welcome to the third Social Media Thought Leader Interview, a series of regular interviews with some of
the world’s best and brightest innovators, conducted by Ivan Fernandes, MediaCom’s Global Head of
Social Media Technology. These conversations will contain numerous ideas and insights that brands
may be able to use to enhance their social media development strategies.
Every two weeks, we will take a look at key changes in the social media technology landscape and
implications on the way brands engage with their customers. Read what's on global thought leaders'
minds.
In line with our philosophy of “People first, better results”, Ivan works to reinforce MediaCom’s position
as the agency that best understands consumers in the digital sphere. Ivan oversees work around digital
measurement and social media technology to inspire our clients to make the most out of paid, owned
and earned media.
If you are a thought leader that wishes to participate in a future interview, please contact Ivan at
ivan.fernandes@mediacom.com.
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In our fourth interview, I speak with Joshua Graff, Director of
Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Joshua joined LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network,
in 2011 and is responsible for leading the growth of LinkedIn´s
Marketing Solutions business across the region, helping
marketers to identify, target and engage with the world's most
influential professionals (http://marketing.linkedin.com).
Before joining LinkedIn, Joshua ran EMEA/APAC Media Sales and Business Development at
Electronics Arts (EA), overseeing EA's media sales relationships with sports leagues including the NFL,
NBA and NHL and securing key partnerships with European brands such as Renault, Vodafone and
Adidas.
Joshua has also worked at Microsoft as part of the Massive Incorporated acquisition, where he was
leading business development for Europe & Asia, driving partnerships with key European and Japanese
game developers.
Prior to this, Joshua founded the world’s first in-game advertising agency JAM International, which was
acquired by Massive Inc. in February 2005.
Joshua started his career in television production at TWI, the interactive division of IMG. He lives in
London and, outside work, is an avid scuba diver, skier and traveller.
Some of the key takeaways from our interview with Joshua include:
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If he could give one piece of advice, it would be: One caution is to not do social for social sake. Plan
it carefully, be strategic, and be in it for the long term.
Business owners should test and learn to find out where to direct their efforts. They should allocate
5%+ of your budget to testing new platforms and see which one works best for you.
The future is mobile. Everything will be optimised for mobile, everything will be accessed through a
mobile device and m-commerce will be the norm, not the exception
Ivan Fernandes, Global Director, Social Media Technology, MediaCom Worldwide
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Background
1. Tell us about LinkedIn in 140 characters or less.
LinkedIn helps you manage your professional identity, build and engage your professional network
and access knowledge and opportunities.
2. How and why did you get into social media business? Tell me about LinkedIn – how it was
created and what you do. What makes LinkedIn different from your competitors?
I joined LinkedIn because I love what it does, believe it’s really changing the way people network
and work and because it has huge potential as a business. I became a LinkedIn member in 2005
however the tipping point really came in 2009 when I found myself logging on several times a day,
making more use of my network and taking part in groups and I saw similar behaviour amongst
those in my network. I also joined because I saw the opportunity to help build an exciting, scalable
and profitable advertising business in EMEA. My role is to lead the EMEA Marketing Solutions team
and help brands build sustainable relationships with our members. LinkedIn’s key competitive
difference is the context – LinkedIn is about professionals who are in the mindset to do business –
context matters. As we say in the office, you don’t want your Saturday night to meet your Monday
morning.
3. Can you tell me a little bit about how your technology works? What are some of the more
important new business strategies being deployed at LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social platform that enables professionals and companies to build and maintain their
online presence. It enables people and companies to connect, find and be found as well as share
knowledge, information and ideas to ultimately help them be as successful as they aspire to be. Our
goal is to help marketers communicate in the most effective way with their customers. We have
developed what we call the follower ecosystem. This enables brands to communicate and engage
with professionals on the web. For me, one of the most exciting developments (entering beta early
April) is Targeted Updates. This allows them to segment their followers and send targeted
messages to different groups, ensuring a far greater degree of relevance. For example, if
MediaCom have 10,000 followers, they have the ability to send one message to their C-Suite
followers, one to Directors and one to potential employees.
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Technology
1. How is social media technology affecting the marketing landscape today?
Social media technologies are forcing marketers to move away from the traditional broadcast or
monologue approach to building meaningful conversations with their customers. Marketers are
increasingly recognising that the relationship is more important than the transaction. They are no
longer just asking themselves ‘when’ and ‘how much’ but ‘who’ and ‘how engaged’. In many cases,
people are already having discussions about your brand somewhere online; a marketer’s role is to
deliver such engaging and relevant content that they are actively invited into that conversation.
Social media technology has also enabled brands looking to engage professionals to truly build an
emotional connection with their audiences for the first time through LinkedIn features such as
Groups, Company Pages and Polls. Research shows that when you establish that emotional
connection, you see a faster call to action and greater brand loyalty. If you consider that the average
consumer mentions (both online and offline) 90 brands per week in conversation with friends, family
and co-workers but only 20% of people trust advertising, social media enables brands to tap into the
80% of people who put their trust in those personal recommendations.
2. Are there any social media technologies that have caught your eye recently?
Something I’m having a lot of fun with at the moment is DrawSomething – an amazingly simple
game with an incredibly addictive social component. The company was just acquired by Zynga.
Love it.
3. What are some of the most exciting breakthroughs that you are seeing in the technology or
methodologies related to social media?
Data – social media platforms are underpinned by truly incredible data which provides marketers
with actionable insights they cannot access on any other platform. Imagine you’re Cathay Pacific
wanting to target business customers who regularly fly between the US and Asia – at LinkedIn, we
have the ability on an aggregate basis to look at, for example, everyone in the US who has a
significant number of connection to key cities in Asia, segment them by industry and seniority (e.g.
Director+ or C-Suite) and target them with specific Cathay business-class promotion, assuming that
if you are a certain seniority with a large number of connections, you will have a higher propensity to
travel between the two continents. The company would also have the ability to poll that audience to
understand what the key factors in choosing an airline carrier are.
4. Here we are in April 2012, what do you see as the biggest challenges facing social media
technologies/platforms in the coming year? What's currently missing?
I would argue that the biggest challenge isn’t one facing the platform itself but facing businesses
who recognise that they need to embrace social but are slow to put social at the centre of the
broader business strategy. Social doesn’t just touch marketing, it’s critical to Customer Relations,
Product Development, Research & Insights and Sales.
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Social Media
1. What are the possibilities? What would be your top tip for a brand looking to start
harnessing social media?
The ultimate opportunity is for marketers to leverage the power of ‘word of mouth’. Social media has
transformed marketing from an activity based solely on targeting ads to specific communities of
customers/potential customers to one which also integrates conversations. In this new
communication model, targeting is also the first step --- but then we take it a step further to engage,
interact, and build genuine relationships with the people who show an interest in our brands. These
relationships are long term and not limited to a binary exchange of value between a brand and a
consumer, but also create and distribute value beyond the immediate relationship. My top tip for a
brand looking to harness the power of social media is pretty simple; ‘test and learn’. You cannot
afford not to be engaging with your customers in the social sphere – they are all online. They expect
you to be there as well. Embrace the socialization of your business.
2. Which verticals are most affected or benefited by social media? Do you recommend different
social media strategies for different types of companies (like retail versus business-tobusiness), and can you give some examples?
Context is key – we’re a professional network. At LinkedIn, we’re in the business of helping
marketers and brands connect with professionals. Our key verticals include Finance, Technology,
Telco, Consulting, Energy, Travel, Education and Automotive.
We understand our strengths. Our members expect us to deliver them relevant messages and
content which helps them be great at what they do. Recently, HP approached us to help them shift
perceptions amongst the SMB community who still perceived them as an IT hardware vendor
serving large corporations, not as an advisor to small business. They wanted to raise awareness of
HP’s services amongst this key audience, create a community of advocates and increase SMB
recommendation for HP. We helped them launch an HP Business Answers Group on LinkedIn,
enabling them to talk directly to their customers, ignite discussions with guest experts and value
added content, solicit feedback and drive traffic to other social media channels. To-date, the group
has over 6,700 members who are twice as likely to rate HP as excellent at listening to their
customers and are 20% more likely to recommend the brand. HP also saw much greater traffic
across all their social channels as a result of their presence on LinkedIn
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUvETDjsS38).
Another great but different example is the small business Wild Apricot who recognised the power of
‘word of mouth’ marketing, established a Company Page and encouraged their customers who had
provided positive feedback to recommend them on LinkedIn. Showcasing these recommendations
on their homepage increased conversion by 15%. Jay Moonah, VP of Marketing said “LinkedIn is a
recognised and respected brand. Our audience knows that it’s the social network for professionals,
not the place where people share wild-weekend pictures”. Other case studies can be found at
http://marketing.linkedin.com/success-stories.
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3. Do you think social media metrics are important for brands and businesses? What do you
think are the most important metrics to track?
Absolutely. Understanding how you are engaging with your customers, what they are saying, the
size of the community, the influence of that community, what and who influences them, the
seniority/function/industry of consumers clicking on your Company Page, Advert, Poll or Group is
vital. The more you know about your customer base, the better you can engage them. At LinkedIn,
we have a rich suite of tools and analytics which allow marketers to track all of the above in addition
to the engagement and reach of social media actions such as shares, comments and likes.
4. How should brands organize for social media success? Are there any hard and fast social
media guidelines to follow?
To simplify the process, my advice for a client would be:
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Build a presence (owned media/Company Page)
Attract followers (paid media)
Engage followers (targeted updates)
Amplify message (earned media)
Through our follower ecosystem, companies can develop lasting relationships with the highest
concentration of affluent professionals and business decision makers on the social web. With
targeted updates, the most robust targeted offering available on any social platform, companies can
now deliver highly relevant content to their target audiences to drive increased engagement and
brand loyalty. Examples have shown a 66%+ increase in audience engagement as the result of
targeted updates
Why you should be using LinkedIn:
Promote your professional profile - The more complete your profile, the better the chance that
your next opportunity will find you. In addition, a complete and active LinkedIn profile will come high,
if not at the top of search engine results.
Stay connected with your professional contacts - Connect with previous colleagues, classmates
and acquaintances to keep in touch for future opportunities.
Prepare for an interview or meeting - Search LinkedIn for profiles of the people you meet,
especially ahead of a job interview, and check if you have anything in common or shared
connections that you can use as ice breakers.
Learn about your customers, competitors or partners - A Company Page provides you with an
accurate description of the activity of the company, its products and services and employees. You
can find a more detailed demographic and geographic breakdown of the people who work there,
including the most popular roles, seniority, geographical location or the people hired most recently.
Identify what’s important to your connections with Signal - Signal makes it easy to filter only
the most relevant insights from your LinkedIn network’s status and news updates. Get an auto
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updated real-time stream with rich content and find the hottest trending links across any relevant
topic on LinkedIn.
Focus your areas for skills development - The new LinkedIn Skills tool lets you see the skills that
are in high demand, and which are declining in popularity, allowing you to identify future trends in
skills requirements for your industry.
Stay up to speed with companies you’re interested in - The ‘Follow Company’ tool allows you to
keep up to speed with the changes and new openings in companies you might want to work for or
partner with.
Draw from the experience of your peers - Join one of the hundreds of thousands of LinkedIn
group’s http://www.linkedin.com/groups to discuss topics that interest you or simply put your
question to experts with LinkedIn Answers.
Increase your social capital - Share your content, comment on the news, network with experts to
expand your circle of influence. You can update your status and share news stories directly, or
connect your Twitter account.
Benefit from the largest business ecosystem world - LinkedIn gives you access to a full range of
applications allowing you to enrich your profile: share files on box.net or Huddle and Slideshare,
integrate your social applications via WordPress, Blog Link or Twitter, and manage your travel with
TripIt.
5. If you could give just one piece of advice to someone starting social media for the first time,
what would it be?
One caution is to not do social for social sake. Plan it carefully, be strategic, and be in it for the long
term. Understand the benefits for your business and remember context matters – use the right
channel for the right audience. Over 80% of our members tell us they want to maintain two discrete
ecosystems; one for personal, one for professional. Context really matters.
6. It seems like every day there is a new network being launched. And they are becoming much
more specific. How can a business owner know where to direct their efforts?
Test and Learn. Allocate 5%+ of your budget to testing new platforms and see which one works
best for you. This is exactly what early adopter marketers were doing 3 years ago with LinkedIn &
Facebook. According to recent YouGov data, social media is ‘growing up’ and people are using
platforms more thoughtfully with a specific purpose in mind - context really matters – again, make
sure you use the right channel for the right purpose.
7. How do you measure the ROI of social media? Is there an effective way to marketing
success?
We’ve had 60 years to get measurement right for TV, 12 years so far to work out how to measure
digital and just 3 short years to work this all out for social. It’s still early days but you can measure
success on social media using traditional metrics such as brand recall, purchase intent and Net
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Promote Scores to tracking social actions such as the number of shares, follows, recommends and
likes. As investment in social media grows and starts to touch finance and procurement teams,
measurement will become even more critical.
Future
1. This week, LinkedIn announced Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics. What are the
implications for brands, audiences and agencies?
Targeted Updates (TUs) make it easier for brands to connect with their customers by sharing only
the most relevant information that really matters to them. Companies can create hyper-focused
follower lists based on categories such as Industry, Seniority, Job Function & Company size. This
robust targeting enables marketers to build direct and long-lasting relationships with their
customers, drives increased engagement and generates media efficiencies as members share and
engage with their extensive network and group affiliations on LinkedIn. In addition, the new statistics
delivered through these updates mean brands can continually fine tune their communications and
improve their customer relationships.
At LinkedIn, our members come first – Targeted Updates ensure our members receive messages
they want and expect.
For an agency, the benefit is two-fold. Firstly, if they have a Company Page, they can engage with
their employees, clients and potential clients in a highly targeted way. Secondly, they can deliver
their clients even more compelling solutions to engage with their customer base.
2. What does the future of digital innovation look like in the next five years? Finally, what does
2012 hold for you and LinkedIn?
The future is mobile. Everything will be optimised for mobile, everything will be accessed through a
mobile device and m-commerce will be the norm, not the exception. Consumers will simply not
accept what is today a relatively clunky mobile experience from most retailers.
Secondly, the war for talent (notably in the digital space) will also become increasingly prevalent as
the web continues to disintermediate and internet companies continue to attract the world’s top
talent.
We will continue to challenge ourselves to provide marketers with unique and innovative ways to
establish, build and maintain long-term and meaningful relationships with professionals around the
globe. When I joined LinkedIn in March 2010, we had 90M professionals, 12 months later we have
150M+. I can’t wait to see where we are in 12 months’ time!
Thank you very much, Joshua!
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Next time, we’ll interview Benjamin Faes, Managing Director Media & Platforms (Northern & Central
Europe), YouTube.
Ivan Fernandes,
Global Director, Social Media Technology at MediaCom Worldwide
@MediaComSMM
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/ivan-fernandes/2/a7/833
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