Coverage of this session by Bridgette Cude of SocialMedia.org. Connect with him by following him on Twitter.

11:40 — SocialMedia.org’s Don Vanderslice introduces ShareThis’ Andy Stevens.

11:41 — Andy: Over the last ten years, there’s been an explosion of social networks in social networks for diff purposes as well as adoption. What do all of these tools have in common? They’re all tools for people to share things with one another.

11:42 — It’s change the way we shop. The New York Times 73% of people process info more deeply and thoroughly online. We know this has value. But can we put a dollar value to what that sharing’s worth.

11:43 — Measure the impact of sharing on the purchase process:

• Purchase intent
• Price
• Brand: Premium, Luxury, Economy, etc.
• Recommendation: Stranger, professional, friend, etc.

11:44 — How do we find this out? Do we ask them? There’s a problem with that. People answer differently from how they actually feel.

11:45 — So we used the Conjoint Methodology: Uses statistical modeling to determine the relative importance of various factors affecting the consumer purchase decision.

11:46 — Recommendations are more important to the consumer purchase decision that brand and price together.

• Recommendation 57%
• Brand 15%
• Price 28%

11:47 — There was a very similar pattern across different verticals for CPGs, electronics, and auto industries.

Online shares are nearly as valuable as an in-person recommendation. A person is about 9.5% more likely to buy a product based on an online recommendation. 10% for in-person recommendation. That’s only a .5% difference.

11:48 — But what about a negative recommendation? The negative recommendation of a product online is over 10% less likely to buy a product. For CPGs across the board, people were particularly influenced by the negative content.

11:49 — One of the differences between an in-person and online recommendation is the proximity of that person to you: stranger, friend, family member, acquaintance, and professionals.

A professional review trumps everything in autos and electronics.

11:50 — What about the monetary value? We can ask how much more people are willing to pay based on an excellent share.

Auto: An excellent share is worth about $3,708.
Electronics (For example, a wifi only tablet): $25
CPG (the average supermarket product): $0.92

11:53 — What does it all mean?

• The first step: View current customers as marketing partners.
• Enable customer evangelism wherever possible.
• Monitor your online presence through sharing.
• Address negative reviewss openly and honestly. By addressing it openly and honestly, you can turn the sentiment around.

11:54 — How do we do this?

• Unlock the potential for sharing with paid media
• Use social data to identify users who shared relevant content: align messaging with sharers’ interests
• Use social signals to determine where and when to spend media.

11:57 — It’s a virtuous circle of sharing

• People share
• We get insights
• We optimize for those uses
• We earn more media
• People share

Q & A

Q: What are some of the specifics about sharing? Is it a comment, a Yelp review, liking, or retweeting?

A: We looked specifically at comments on posts. Any comment or shared piece of content on a social network.

Q: Was your monitoring CPG specific?

A: First we qualified people for what they are in the market for, if they’re the primary shopper for the family, and then described the products they’d be interested in buying. Then we asked what are the factors that drive that purpose?

Q: How do you get to the number for the CPG cost per share?

A: The Conjoint methodology allows us to get the the percentage impact because we look at all of the different factors that go into the decision making process (isolating it and assuming all of the other factors are equal). Price, Brand, etc. We compare the difference between that phenomenon compared with a positive recommendation and negative.

Q: Were you able to see a correlation between a brand value and an employee value?

A: The main thing I would take from the employer sector is people really care about what other people think of that brand. They’re looking at forums, online conversations, and reviews. It’s incredibly important for an employer to have a good handle on that. The value of those recommendations is really high.

Q: Did you find in your research that the value of the source varied by channel?

A: We didn’t look at the source in this study. In other studies, we saw that the channel did have an affect.

Q: Did you only look at recommendations where there was a certain volume to weed out insiders?

A: We asked people if they’d seen a recommendation. In order to count for a recommendation, there just needed to be on. “Did you see this content? Where did it come from? Who did it come from? The main thing is proximity of that person to you.

Q: What about a generational impact>

A: We didn’t look at age. We took a cross-section of age. But from a number of other studies, millennials share at twice the rate of any other population. They’re not only more prolific sharers, but they’re more likely to influence their friends. You can find those studies on blog.osharethis.com