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14th January, 2010

If there was any doubt about whether social media would play a big part in the forthcoming general election then mydavidcameron.com is proof.

Last week some spoof images of the Tory’s latest campaign posters started appearing on the Go Fourth Labour blog. This led to Clifford Singer – a creative director at Sparkloop graphic design agency and creator of the Other TaxPayer’s Alliance website – to build mydavidcameron.com (itself a play on the myconservatives.com site) to encourage grassroots supporters to create and upload their own spoof posters.

And today, the Labour party has officially adopted some of the posters as part of their election campaigning by posting them on their website.

This move has got some Tory bloggers up in arms, but as Gordon Macmillan points out, they are all largely missing the point!

What this demonstrates is good engagement with the grassroots of the party and driving engagement from the bottom up – a strategy that is very effective in all forms of social media marketing, but in particular in political campaigning as a certain Mr Obama clearly demonstrated.

Yes, it’s pretty negative, but unfortunately that is UK politics for you and at the moment you feel the Labour party has to play hard to even stand any chance of changing the polls…

continue reading: Mydavidcameron.com – the social election starts...

6th January, 2010

I don’t want to write another 2010 prediction type post – I’ve written a few already! But, in the first few days of the New Year, I’m already seeing a lot of noise around a trend that I expect will grow by necessity in 2010 and beyond.

As social media and social networks in particular increase in popularity, there is an increasing information overload. Managing your connections across Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare and the like becomes a full time job in itself.

So services that try and combine this are going to become more and more prevalent.

One example of such a service is Mingly. The product is currently in ‘alpha’, but you can read all about it here.

Now this is my kind of startup – a company that sees a real need and tries hard to solve a problem without borrowing millions of VC money to get started.

Could this be a good example of a brave new wave of post-recession entrepreneurs? I hope so, there are too many useless startups around at the moment.

continue reading: Mingly – a possible solution for social media overload...

19th December, 2009

Social media is a great tool for marketers, no question about it. But what about when things go wrong and the tables are turned?

I’ve argued before that in many ways, PRs are best placed to run social media operations and there are number of reasons why I think this is the case. One of the key reasons is that experienced public relations pros are adept at responding to situations – good and bad – and communicating messages quickly and effectively to a particular audience to inform, whilst taking strides to protect the reputation of the brand or business involved.

Last night, five Eurostar trains stopped working as they entered the Channel Tunnel, leaving the trains and passengers on board trapped. Many were trapped for hours in what must have been a scary and terrifying ordeal for them as well as their families and friends.

This is a nightmare situation for a company like Eurostar. And this is not the place to look at attributing blame. But, I do want to look at how the company approached one of those mainstays of traditional public relations: crisis communications.

Across the board, Eurostar seems to have fallen down on it’s duty to its customers, by failing to adequately transmit information.

And nowhere has this been more evident that on social media and, in particular, on Twitter. Mike Butcher at Techcrunch has covered the unfolding of this story in detail. But, essentially, there were no updates on either the @Little_Break or @Eurostar_Uk Twitter accounts as the crisis unfolded. In a twist to the story, it transpires the latter account wasn’t even an official Eurostar channel – it has now been suspended – and @eurostar is used by someone in Shanghai!

The @Little_Break account wasn’t updated until 11.30 today (Saturday) – a full 16 hours after the first incident happened! WTF!? If we have learned anything about social media, it is that it works best in real-time.

What does this situation teach us about the handling of social media when things go wrong:

  • It doesn’t matter what you want the account to be used for – it looks as though the @Little_Break account was being used for some sort of social media marketing campaign. Which is fine. But the public don’t put brands into boxes like this. If you have a social media channel then the public will see this as your brand on Twitter. So expect them to get in touch with you as they see fit, and not necessarily in the way you would like
  • Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring – it doesn’t matter if it is a Friday night before Christmas, the public will still use social media and will expect companies – if they are using the channel, and increasingly even if they are not – to be listening
  • Social media is real-time – we all know this, so why did it take Eurostar 16 hours to update their Twitter account? There is no excuse, especially as real-time take centre stage with Google transmitting the whole story as it unfolds
  • Social media shouldn’t be an afterthought in crisis comms – as all good PRs know, in an emergency, you need to get clear, transparent and helpful information out to people as quickly as possible. And that means social media too
  • Advanced planning is crucial – when something like this happens, there isn’t time to start putting plans together, it needs to have been thought about in advance. It looks as though this didn’t happen. Having social media as part of your crisis communications action plan is vital
  • When things go wrong, who’s in charge – with this confusion over ‘who is best placed to use social media’ within organisations, it is no surprise that when things go wrong, social media could fall through the cracks. Is it the PR, ‘social media’, SEO, marketing or customer service team that should be in control, pushing the agenda to the fore?

Obviously this is a horrid situation for Eurostar and it is easy to sit and criticise from a distance. But the fact is that this has not been handled at all well and their reputation, their PR, has taken a serious knock.

UPDATE: It seems this is a topic that isn’t going to go away any time soon. Already there are some great posts from Dirk, Rachel, Mark and Neville on the subject. As Dirk says, expect this to be coming to a social media case study near you soon…

UPDATE: Eurostar CEO Richard Brown has released a video apology on the Little Breaks blog site – it’s a good effort and sounds pretty sincere.

UPDATE: I was very careful not to mention any agencies associated with Eurostar in the above post. At a time like this, decisions will be made at a senior level within the business. An agency will only be able to sit and advise to their best ability. If this is ignored, there isn’t much to be done. And it seems this is pretty much what happened. In a very honest post, Robin Grant from Wearesocial, a social media agency, has given a very open overview of things from their perspective. It’s worth a read as it perfectly highlights some of the organisational challenges I referred to above.

continue reading: #eurostarfail Social media is for good times AND bad...

17th December, 2009

I like a good prediction post as much as the next person and so I was intrigued to read an article by Augie Ray from Forrester entitled: 2010: The Year Marketing Dies…

In it, Ray asserts that, due to a number of factors (including the demise of traditional media, the growth of technologies like PVRs that are rendering TV advertising obsolete and the growth of social media), marketing as we know it is under going a dramatic sea-change.

And 2010 is guaranteed to be the year when social media has its biggest impact on brands to date. The recent real-time search changes will only quicken this as I’ve already suggested and as Ray states:

The search engine changes mean that 2010 will be the year when brands can run but they cannot hide.  Gone are the days when marketers could carefully craft messaging and then broadcast that message in a few channels to huge portions of their audiences.  Oh, you can still spend money that way if you want to but in our transparent world, no marketing budget can possibly overcome the actual experience consumers have (and share with friends, followers and Google) with the product, service, or organization.  It no longer matters what you say;  in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are!

So actual experience will replace the image that brands want to portray about themselves, especially as we all get more involved in social media and climb up the social technographics ladder (see above). What does this mean in practice?

  • customer service and customer experience becomes vital
  • product development needs to be more user focused
  • marketing and PR teams need to be ready to act and react to issues; crisis management becomes crucial, but harder
  • marketing and PR campaigns need to focus on engagement rather than trying to enforce brand values
  • no part of the business can afford to ignore the audience

Central to all of these is the ability to understand your audience. One line in particular in Ray’s article is fundamental to this too:

“in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are”

It’s a challenge.

continue reading: Will marketing die in 2010?...

26th November, 2009

Yes, I know this has been all over the web in the last 24 hours, but I wanted to mention it here too as I think it’s a brilliant campaign:

If you haven’t come across it, IKEA in Sweden have launched a competition on Facebook. They set up an account for one of their senior employees and posted up some of the displays from their new Malmo store.

They then asked ‘friends’ to tag the furniture in the images, with the first person to tag an item winning it!

They’ve got over 700 friends on the account already, lots of positive (global) media interest and some good social media buzz.

So why it this such a clever campaign and why has it worked so well:

  1. Simplicity – it’s so simple that you could tell anyone about it in a few sentences
  2. Cheap – it’s hardly cost anything for IKEA to set it up and market it
  3. Technology – it uses social tech tools in a new innovative way
  4. Value – it gives something back to social media participants
  5. Creative – it’s a wonderfully creative and innovative idea

continue reading: Value + Simplicity = Social Media Success...

24th November, 2009

I was at a PRCA event last week run by Cristina Hoole, European PR and Marketing manager at Linkedin.

The problem with Linkedin

I’ve always been a bit confused by Linkedin. I can see the potential benefits, but just can’t bring myself to make it a major part of my everyday working life. My profile is kept updated. I often add new contacts. And I’ll use it to look people up. But I just don’t use the site on a regular basis.

Having said that, Linkedin isn’t failing – Hoole reported 50 million users worldwide and 3 million here in the UK – but I wonder how many of these actually visit the site every single day, as they would with Twitter or Facebook?

Linkedin is great for linking together your business community, but it doesn’t have that everyday application that other networks have. This is potentially a problem: two of three of its revenue sources – advertising and premium accounts – are mainly focused ‘on-site’ (the third being software packages for recruitment agents).

Linkedin Outlook Integration

But Cristina revealed an interesting new feature for Linkedin – Outlook Integration. And it makes total sense.

Where do most ‘business people’ spend most of their time? In Outlook.

Outlook integration therefore seems like a great idea. I now don’t need to visit the Linkedin site every single day, but I can still harness the usefulness of the tool through Outlook – something I use for long stretches of time every single day. Obviously monetising this will be a challenge, but at least it could begin to make Linkedin an everyday, business critical tool.

Twitter has had unbelievable success with third party applications and increasingly Facebook is entering and finding traction here. As we start using more and more networks, bringing together more and more friends and followers, these third party apps are crucial to helping us keep on top of everything.

And I think this could be the key to future success for Linkedin too.

Footnote…

I actually wrote most of this post last week, but only got round to finishing now. And, by sheer coincidence, Linkedin has today announced a brand new API for third party developers. Tweetdeck is reportedly releasing an integration later this week.

Could there possibly be ray of sunshine round the corner for Linkedin?

picture credit

continue reading: Will integration save Linkedin?...

13th October, 2009

This is brilliant. Simple. Clear. Astonishing.

Credit to Gary Hayes and thanks to Dirk for the link.

continue reading: Watch this: social media in numbers. Real-time....

28th September, 2009

Via Robin Grant, I came across the above diagram from Nick Burcher and the accompanying blog post. It’s brilliant and is well worth a read.

What Nick manages to encapsulate is essentially the quite simple concept of how social media marketing works and takes place. It’s so simply conveyed however and with such clarity that it makes immediate sense (though the accompanying blog post really is worth a read).

As Nick explains, the diagram centres around two distinct areas – the destination:

“Traditionally marketing efforts have focussed around ‘The Destination.’ Ad space is bought to push people to a main site / microsite and this could be anything from Paid Search to TV to Print. It’s all about ‘go here now!’ There is a direct correlation between ad spend and ‘Destination’ traffic… This is changing though. New ‘Destinations’ are being created, it’s no longer just a main site or a microsite. Facebook Fan Pages are being used as an activity hub with paid ads driving traffic … Alternatively the Destination could be a YouTube channel … or other social platform.” (my emphasis)

…and the conversation:

“The democratisation of tools of production and distribution mean anyone can create and publish. The emergence of social platforms means anyone can get an audience for their thoughts and content. The Conversation is therefore about the mechanics of sharing.

“If advertisers can successfully participate in the Conversation then it becomes less about paid pushing. The Conversation is about engaging rather than broadcasting, and if done successfully it changes the equation. Instead of having to pay to recruit every visit, consumers can be co-opted as brand ambassadors who then will freely relay the advertiser message with consequent Destination traffic the result. Thus when people talk about ‘going viral’ what they actually mean is ‘successfully harnessing The Conversation to drive incremental attention / site traffic.’”

Nick goes on to explain how social media marketing depends on creating the content that can “kickstart” and drive the conversation that will in turn drive traffic to the destination.

Of course, the reality is never quite as straightforward as these models suggest, but this is still a welcome and much needed visualised representation of what many agencies, brands and businesses are trying to get to grips with.

continue reading: The destination and the conversation – the social media diagram...

28th September, 2009

One of the problems about writing a personal blogs is that you don’t have any deadlines to force you into writing! I wrote this a week or so ago and meant to return to refine it, but I’ve only just got round to it. Excuses over! Here’s the (belated) post…

I’ve been closely following a debate that initially stemmed from an article in Research, where the IAB’s Amy Kean and Nielsen’s Brad Little locked horns.

I’ve been meaning to blog about it, but have failed to do so until now, when a thoughtful post from Michael Litman stirred me into action!

I can see what Amy is saying: that measurement for measurement’s sake is meaningless. And she is right. Whereas measurement tied directly to business value (could be) meaningful. And again, she is right. Amy concludes:

“If your social media activity generates 100,000 views on YouTube, gets you 40,000 Facebook friends and 20,000 positive blog mentions over the period of a month and your net promoter score rises, this may show incredible brand engagement. But what are we to measure it against for the campaign to be deemed a success?”

She answers this last question with ‘case studies’. And yes, case studies are certainly a useful self-improvement vehicle. But I can’t help but think she misses the point here.

What is really missing from the example given is a concrete business aim or objective that has been put in place from the start.

And this aim can be different from campaign to campaign or from company to company (and/or both).

For me, there are three questions that need to be asked – the why, what and how of social media measurement.

The answers are not straightforward and will change from case to case and even within projects or campaigns, but are in my mind a good starting point. It is worth also stating that these aren’t mutually exclusive for social media, but the answers often will be.

Why?

This first question – why? – seems straightforward; why are we doing this? It’s crucial though and so often neglected. Why do we need/have/want a Twitter/Facebook/Myspace account or blog? Is this right for our business?

So much of this stems from proper audience insight. Social media is dependent on conversation amongst communities, either already in existence or that are created or nurtured by the brand or business. So the question here is, will social media work for your target audience (or their influencers)? Are they where you think they are, and if so, where is that?

This is one of the reasons why I think there is much value in having a non-specialist agency (or an internal department) at least initially in control of social media strategy. It’s sometimes tough to say: “no, social media isn’t right for us/this business objective”.

So how does this affect measurement? Well, if you don’t know why you are doing something, then you won’t be able to measure it. And if you don’t have a sound business reason for doing something, then it probably isn’t worth doing.

What?

Intrinsically linked to the previous question is the decision about what to measure. A brand looking to increase brand awareness in a community will likely be looking to measure something different that a brand looking to maximise web sales.

How?

There are many different ways to measure things. There is no right or wrong here necessarily. Social media is still a (relatively) new thing and an agency that tells you they have all the answers is worth dumping.

Again, we come back to the previous two questions – what do you want to achieve and what will indicate success. Then they question is: how will you measure this success?

No golden bullet

There is no shortcut to success here, but it’s worth trying and worth persevering with. If we don’t measure what we are doing, then we have no way to demonstrate success and no way to improve.

Amy doesn’t really mean measurement is meaningless, she means that meaningless measurement is meaningless. And this is spot on.

As Michael states:

“It may not be in the traditional marketing sense of what ‘value’ is but for me, social media requires new metrics and benchmarks than to what has been tried and tested in years previous. Success now looks different. Instead of looking purely from a numbers perspective and at additional sales, is there value in increased levels of brand perception and awareness, along with the conversations and connections made because of the company activity?”

Just as social media is a new and emerging discipline, so is the way we measure it. But measure it we must, even if the way we go about it needs us to ask more and more questions – the why, what and how…


picture credit

continue reading: The why, what and how of social media measurement...

7th May, 2009

Ah FriendFeed. Loved by Scoble, ignored by many in favour of its leaner, easier, prettier social-media-cousin Twitter.

I can’t help thinking it’s just slightly ahead of its time.

Twitter itself took a while to go mainstream, despite its simplicity, but I fear it will take a while for FriendFeed to reach the same heights.

Interest has peaked again in some circles recently with the redesign (a big improvement cosmetically) and the ability to add subcriptions based on your Twitter followers. But its problems lie deeper. And they aren’t solely to do with the service itself.

FriendFeed is a great concept. A one-stop-shop for all your social mediaryness. Fed up of keeping track of your delicious feed, Twitter and Facebook accounts, Linkedin profile, Flickr friends etc.? FriendFeed solves that by combining everything into one place.

Trouble is, for me, at the moment 90% of updates on FriendFeed are from Twitter.

And that just makes me think, why don’t I just use Twitter (or Seesmic Desktop – my agent of choice).

Maybe the problem is that we aren’t really social enough yet. Is the pain point really there yet?

If I feel like checking some interesting links, I go to Delicious (although Twitter is actually dimisihing my use of Delicious…but that’s for another post). Friend updates? I’m off to Facebook. Linkedin for professional contact information, Flickr for photos… The list goes on.

As soon as I try to put everything in one place, I get information overload. And I’ve yet to really get my head around sorting my ‘friends’ into groups on FriendFeed.

Jeremiah Owyang speaks of the future when we will have social elements everywhere. Just thinking about this gives me a bit of a headache to be honest, but maybe then there will be a greater need for some sort of ‘social dashboard’ and maybe FF will fill the gap.

Until then, I’ll keep an eye on it, but I don’t think I’ll become a 24/7 convert anytime soon. Or am I just not doing it properly? (You can subscribe to me on FF here!)

picture credit

continue reading: The problem with FriendFeed...