Steve Bendt

What is it?

The Windows 7 Social Media Hub was one of the cornerstones of the Launch of Windows 7.  It was an aggregator that pulled any Windows 7 conversation from Twitter, Facebook (Windows Fan Page only), YouTube, Flickr and Blogs.  We wanted people to see real time Windows 7 comments (positive and negative), show the volume and velocity of the conversation, and provide a path for people to learn more.

Why its important?

From a customer/Windows relationship standpoint, we wanted to be transparent,help people get more info, validate that Windows 7 has some chops and build a little trust along the way.

In my view, social media content integrated into the story of a site or campaign can provide tremendous value for customers.  Like ratings and reviews, it provides an independent validation for or against the product.  It also puts pressure on product development by shining a spotlight on what works and what doesn’t.

From a marketing standpoint, brands that use ratings and reviews benefit from higher trust and customer satisfaction (about an 11% lift on both metrics according to Forrester).  I’d argue that social media content can produce the same benefits.

What do you need to consider?

The trick is, finding the right balance of how to feature that content.  Social media content is really good in aggregate (what are the mass trends) and in relation to your network (what are your people saying).

For the Windows 7 launch, we had a strong indication that the buzz on launch day would be positive.  We knew that based on our interaction with our customers for 18 months leading up to the launch.  We were actively listening leading up to and after the release of every version of Window 7 (BETA, Release Candidate, and General Availability on 10/22).

Knowing that, we decided to feature the Windows 7 conversation in aggregate.  As referenced above, as a way to see real time comments (good and bad), show the volume, and provide a path for people to learn more.

Results

It worked.  You can see more detail in the Windows 7 Case Study here.  Within the first two weeks of launch the Hub had over 300K visits, 50% coming from Facebook. The hub drove a click-through rate of over 2.5% to Windows.com. End action analysis showed that active preference (likelihood to purchase within 6 months) for users who visited the Hub were 5-10% higher than any other end action on Windows.com.  The active preference number reinforces that independent validation of a product through social media can lead to an increase in purchase intent- much like ratings and reviews.

How it all Worked

The Hub was built with some modifications to some emerging Microsoft Technology.  We built a moderator application on top of a product called Looking Glass.  Looking Glass is a social media aggregation tool similar in concept to Radian6 or TruCast.

See more about Looking Glass here:

Demo
Looking Glass Announcement on Marketing Vox

The moderator application we built on top of Looking Glass allowed us to:

1. Remove spam and people gaming the system for promotion
2. Block obscenities (so we could pull the content into Windows.com- its a family site so the F-bomb doesn’t fly)
3. Provide some structure or organization to the data so its easier to consume

The moderation layer let us manually tag content coming through so we could help categorize it and add some structure to the unstructured data.  The theory was, by tagging it, we could then organize it into trends and display it in a way that’s more valuable for customers.  To be blunt, the approach didn’t work for launch.  Volume of content was too high to manually tag and for the first month and a half, customers weren’t talking about product details.  There was just a general “I Got It, “Its on its way” tone in the marketplace.

Where do we go from here

The conversation has shifted.  Now people are talking about what’s working, what’s not, where they need help, things they like.  For the last 3 months, we’ve been updating the moderator application to address this change and fix what didn’t work for launch.  We’ve built programmatic tagging functionality.  As content is pulled into the moderation application, we ID trends within the Windows 7 conversations.  We also auto-tag content based on search query strings representative of the conversation in the market.

With the tagged content, our options to organize content in useful ways increases greatly.  We’re moving beyond the ticker tape user interface we featured at launch and create a user interface that shows clusters of conversations relevant to Windows 7.  Clusters that customers can dig into to learn more about Windows 7 from other users.  We’ll also provide editorial content if users choose to search for more info.

The goal is to continue our transparency, let the product speak for itself through our customers, and to continue to build trust where we can.

The revised moderator application I mentioned is undergoing testing now.  We’ll have it in place in the next two weeks. We’ll begin exploring ways to update the user interface as mentioned above shortly.  When I have some updates to share, I’ll post.

Ping me with questions or comments…

Thursday morning I left Minneapolis for the move to Seattle.   Overall it was a great trip- lots of time to think,, some good podcasts, and a little time to relax.

On Thurs- I drove to Billings- about 12 hours.  By far the most boring part of the trip.  North Dakota and Eastern Montana is insanely mundane- and straight.

But on Friday, things got better.  I drove from Billings to Big Sky to get some biking in.  I went up on the mountain to do some downhilling.  First time I’ve done that- it was pretty intense.  It rained all morning so it was really slimy.  That along with the steepness, the rocks and the tight turns, I spent some good time off my two wheels.  With the helmet, the arm, and shin guards they make you wear it was all good.  Definitely want to do it again soon.

After biking, I drove to Missoula to crash for the night.

On Sat, I went on to Seattle, checked in to my corporate housing and went and watched the USA Mens National team beat up on Grenada 4-0.  One of the advantages of soccer being unpopular in the US is the ability to get awesome seats day of the game.  2nd row.

Tomorrow is my first day at Microsoft.  Orientation followed by happy hour with my new boss- Marty Collins.

More to come…

On March 3rd, Gary Koelling and I are presenting at Computer World’s Premier IT Leaders Conference.  When they first contacted us, it didn’t feel like a good fit for the work we’ve done.  After all, the event is the “only executive conference where you can hear from—and network with—Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders and Alumni.”  Not the  crowd we typically roll with:)  But they were interested in our story and thought others might be too.   Here’s a first draft of the presentation we’ll be giving.  Based on the agenda I think it’ll be different.

If you’re going to be attending, swing over and say “hey.”