Danny Whatmough.com

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Last night I attended a debate on social media and the election hosted by our frenemies, Lewis PR, over at the very flashy Lewis media centre.

Alas it was, I regret to report, mainly a dull affair with the highlights for me being a delightful little montage of ‘thoughts from the general public’ fronted by the very smartly dressed Eb Adeyeri and some entertaining shenanigans with the Twitter wall.

Despite these amusements, in a great example of how not to chair a focused seminar, the event started thirty minutes late, the four speakers (Evening Standard Editor Paul Waugh, Tory MP Jeremy Hunt, Labour ex-minister Tom Watson and Dan Burton from Salesforce who apparently didn’t have a Twitter profile) were given a ludicrous 40 minutes to pitch (it was advertised as 5 minutes each) their pretty mundane and predictable thoughts (including a tedious sales pitch from the sponsor, Dan from Salesforce, on cloud computing of all things! A guy who I hasten to add didn’t then contribute anything further and had to leave halfway through to catch a train! – ouch #whydidyousponsor), leaving very limited time for questions.

The unfocused discussions crawled their way through the predictable traditional versus social media quagmire and much to and froing about whether MPs should be tweeting at all.

The advertised title of can “social media make or break and election” was largely ignored.

So I regret to inform that it therefore falls to me to use the obligatory ‘report on an event I’ve been to’ blog post to give some of my thoughts on the theme of “the impact of social media on the general election”.

TV is going to play a big role

As Tom Watson quite rightly observed, the TV debates will have the biggest effect on this election. Business Zone editor Dan Martin made a good point (on Twitter) when he questioned why it’s taken us so long to even get to this point. And with this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that social media usage by the main political parties is at such a base level.

Social media is not enough on it’s own

Many forget that social media wasn’t really what won the election for Obama. It played a part, but a relatively small one. That’s not to say it couldn’t be a winning formula, but just ‘doing it’ isn’t enough. What Obama did teach us, was that a carefully thought out and executed strategy from day one (take note Mr Cameron) is vital.

Don’t forget Facebook

The debate raged limped around the various merits or not of tweeting and blogging but, as anyone who knows their stuff will tell you, Facebook is where the war can be won or lost. Twitter is the media’s shiny new plaything, but Facebook is where the majority of voters are to be found.

If social media has an impact on the election, it will be from the grassroots

So in the absence of any real strategic planning in terms of social media from any of the main political parties so far (happy to be proved wrong about this), any innovative social media action in terms of the election is likely to come from ‘below’. We’ve already seen Mydavidcameron.com and I expect more grassroots movements like Invincecable before May 6th has been and gone.

If this event taught me anything…

…it’s that the traditional media, despite the valiant efforts of the Paul Waughs and Rory Cellan-Jones of this world, still don’t ‘get’ social media. And similarly, the vast majority of politicians, despite the valiant efforts of the Tom Watsons and Jeremy Hunts of this world, still don’t ‘get’ social media.

If they did, they would realise exactly why spending time using social tools wouldn’t be better spent dreaming up policies that no one knows about.

Winning elections is all about winning the hearts and minds of the punters on the street. And, despite the fact that the Tories are intent spending more of Ashcrofts money on it, billboard ads are no longer cutting the mustard.

What do politicians need to get over the crisis of the expenses scandal?

They need to start engaging with the voters again. And I just wonder whether arming MPs with (cheap) laptops with Tweetdeck (other desktop apps are available) and iPhones, might just be a good starting point and the wake-up call many of them need.

That’s how I’d use social media to win the election. Simple really.

picture credit

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PR Week has today revealed comments from the Daily Telegraph’s assistant editor Neil Midgley who warned journalists and PRs that Facebook shouldn’t be used for work:

‘It’s my network. I won’t post details of my sex life on it, but I can post status updates on there that I wouldn’t post on Twitter. Don’t talk to me about work on it’

These are comments that I’m sure many PRs and journalists – indeed most people – would agree with. I certainly use Facebook very much from a personal standpoint.

But, as you have possibly seen me ranting talking about recently, I think Facebook is changing. And I wonder whether these changes will alter the way we all use the service.

This has appeared on the same day as PR blogger Steve Rubel has launched his own Facebook page. As Steve explains:

“Now I am also adding a Facebook Page that will feature everything that’s posted here plus exclusive content for those of you who opt in and become a fan. It’s very similar to how I approach Twitter – which also features links that I don’t always share elsewhere. The difference is that the new Facebook Page will sit in between what I do here and Twitter and hopefully spark a rich discussion from a broader group of people who don’t necessarily read blogs or use Twitter.”

So is this possibly the way we – as individuals and also possibly as brands – should be going? Are Facebook pages the new ‘public Facebook’?

With Google in the US now showing Facebook updates in Google social search, I’m sure it’s a trend that Facebook is keen to encourage.

Facebook pages don’t have the same ‘conversational’ element that Twitter has, but could be an effective way to have a publicly available presence on Facebook that doesn’t encroach on your personal space.

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A report today in TechCrunch reveals that the Associated Press is using their Twitter account to push followers to their Facebook page. Rather than linking directly to news pages on their website, they are linking to pages on their Facebook profile which also features the news.

Techcrunch critises this move: “maybe they think that by hosting the content on Facebook, they’re being impartial with the tweets. But again, why not just use their own site?”

But, I think Techcrunch misses the point here. This isn’t about impartiality. It’s about building communities and it’s a smart move. I’ve written recently about the war that is brewing between Facebook and Google as both networks seek to become the social media (and email/messaging) dashboard.

Facebook is moving from the ‘walled garden’ network to the more open, ‘first port of call’ that, in many ways, Google has been to date. And with its user base soaring, it is perfectly poised to capitalise.

Facebook is also envious of the success that Twitter has had by embracing businesses and news outlets and has taken big steps recently to mirror this. It is a move that seems to be working, with recent research showing that Facebook is becoming a major driver to news networks. Outlets like the NYT has realised this and AP seems to be catching up on the action now too.

AP should be able to make the most of this, open digital world that media organisations now find themselves in. They are all about content. Monetising this content is a challenge. But embracing and building communities and new distribution networks is vital. By distributing their content directly to an engaged user base on Facebook (and Twitter), AP has much more control of how it uses this audience.

The traditional ‘website as a destination’ is beginning to decline. Fast forward to the ’site-less’ web where rather than engaging with audiences on a corporate site, media outlets (and indeed brands) need to go to where the audience is. This is a big challenge for Murdoch et al but is already happening and is happening big-style.

As Steve Rubel says: “The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation there and – above all build relationships.”

Monetisation is certainly an issue, but if AP can build up a significant user base on Facebook, the money will come.

As the power of Google News dimishes, can Facebook take over as the web’s news curator? AP seems to think it can…

hat tip to Ben, picture credit

I wrote last week about the battle between Google and Facebook. Now there is more interesting research out which adds yet another subplot: according to Compete, Facebook has passed Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is amongst the leaders for other types of sites too.

This follows news earlier this month that Facebook is now the 4th driver of traffic to major news sites.

Whilst for many businesses, Twitter is seen as the social network to use, it would be foolish to ignore the power of Facebook.

This preference towards Twitter was well founded. Twitter has a very open doors policy to brands, unlike Facebook – at least in the early days – when the emphasis was social networking between friends that you actually know.

This ‘walled garden’ was a scary place for brands (and the media) that didn’t want to experience a backlash from consumers.

But it is perhaps exactly this walled garden approach that makes Facebook such a hotbed of social media (and traditional media) sharing. Facebook networks are tighter, more controlled than the often sprawling connections that are made on Twitter.

Sharing on Facebook is perhaps less frequent than retweets on Twitter, but when it does happen, the effect can be significant, allowing brands to reach targeted and carefully curated networks of like-minded individuals.

And it’s not the no-go area for B2B companies that it was in the past. To my mind, social media blurs the boundaries between work and home, between professional and personal.

With 400m users worldwide, ignoring something this powerful is ludicrous.

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Last Friday, Vodafone UK joined the likes of Habitat, Motrin, Walmart and Eurostar in the list of social media fails.

If you missed the story, a slightly inappropriate message appeared on the company’s Twitter account on Friday afternoon:

“VodafoneUK is fed up of dealing with dirty homo’s (sic) and is going after beaver”

The initial reaction from the twittersphere was that the message was the result of someone hacking the account. However, a few minutes later, another tweet confirmed the real cause of the offending article:

“A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We’re very sorry”

The company then set about a mammoth task of apologising individually to all its followers that complained about or mentioned the sorry affair.

It transpires that the tweet in question had been composed and issued by one of the company’s call centre operatives in Stoke. The agent in question has now been suspended.

Here are my random thoughts about this whole incident:

• The customer service problem – I think the issue of ‘how to deal with customer service on social media is a really interesting one and is yet to be dealt with really effectively by many brands. I’ve actually often thought that Vodafone does a pretty good job on Twitter, they reply quickly and informatively to those that tweet. But to do this, you need a big team and this does pose problems
• Putting social media in the hands of your employees – this is always going to be a risk for a brand, but it is impossible for big companies to manage this in any other way. Just make sure the right policies are in place
• Does it really matter? – Yes, a mistake has been made, but it’s not really the end of the world is it? All of the social media analyst crowd (and I include myself here) were delighted by the ‘new case study’ material, but for your average Twitter user, this whole incident is probably of little interest.
• If things go wrong, deal with it and deal with it quickly – Vodafone rectified the issue pretty well. The responded quickly and very transparently. The constant tweeting of the same message looked a bit odd, but as Mark says, probably worked very well in terms of reaching out directly to those that were concerned enough to complain or mention it.