If you’re going to use social media, make sure you use it to be social!

As you may have picked up already today, we have released our second report investigating how some of the UK’s leading technology companies are using social media. You can download it here.

For the second year in a row, we found that UK technology companies are missing out on the potential of social media by not being social and failing to use these new channels to engage with their audiences.

Only 31% of brands with a Facebook account used it to engage with users and, of those that used Twitter, only 14% of tweets were replies and retweets. When it came to the companies that had a blog, only 20% received comments and only one company took the trouble to reply to comments received.

In the study, we took the 2010 Deloitte Fast Tech 50 – a list of the UK’s 50 fastest growing technology companies and benchmarked their social media activity.

Facebook for B2B is on the rise

One of the most interesting findings this year was that the use of Facebook amongst B2B companies has skyrocketed in the last 12 months with 70% of B2B companies on the platform compared to just 40% previously. Linkedin was still the most popular network used overall (92%), followed by Twitter (80%). YouTube remained the least popular for the second year running (44%). Despite the increase in adoption, most companies were still only using these channels for ‘push’ marketing techniques with 65% of companies with a Facebook page using it for one way communications and 96% of blogs simply broadcasting article and news content without inviting responses.

B2B v B2C

As might be expected, B2C brands in the study were far more likely to engage with users than B2B companies. Of the B2C companies with a Facebook page, 63% used it to engage with consumers compared to just 22% of B2B companies. And, while the percentage of B2B tweets that were replies was only 7%, B2C rated much higher (35%).

Tech companies were also still failing to effectively integrate social media channels with their website. Only 58% of companies in the study had social media links on their homepage despite over 90% of companies having at least one social media site. Half of companies linked Twitter from their homepage, but only 14% linked to a YouTube page or blog.

It’s no longer whether you use it, it’s how you use it

This matches what we’ve found in the last year when speaking to tech companies about social media PR. Whereas a few years ago much of the conversation was about whether tech brands should be using social media. These days, most companies know that they have to get in on the social media act, but are still unsure how to go about it. I predict we’ll see further maturing over the next year, so when version three of the report comes along, maybe we’ll finally see companies using social to be social.

Download ‘How social are you?‘

Originally posted here.

Facebook launches a subscribe button & changes the social game again

I do wonder if the guys at Facebook, Twitter and Google have slept at all in the last few months. Only hours ago, in a blog about Twitter’s new analytics product, I mentioned that we are living through an intriguing battle as the three pretenders to the throne compete for supremacy. And for those of us working in the social media PR space, it is truly fascinating.

So I guess it should come as no surprise to find that, today, Facebook has unveiled another landmark change that could alter the way we all use the social network.

Introducing the subscribe button

At a basic level, Facebook’s new ‘subscribe’ button let’s users follow the public updates of anyone on the network without actually being friends with them. As Facebook states in the blog post announcing the service, in the past, users “couldn’t hear directly from people [they're] interested in but don’t know personally—like journalists, artists and political figures.”

Sound familiar? Yes, that’s right, the subscribe button is essentially the equivalent of the follow button on Twitter; Facebook is moving to a more asynchronous model. And, as with Twitter, the number of people ‘subscribing’ to your feed will be displayed on your profile.

There is additional functionality too. When viewing a friend’s profile, the subscribe button will allow you to set certain preferences which will control the updates you get from that person in your news feed. Settings include ‘all updates’, ‘most updates’ and ‘important updates’.

You can enable the subscribe option here.

Public v. private

When Facebook announced the changes to posting updates last month (the addition of privacy settings and location features), it was clear that it was encouraging users to make more of their posts public. This latest move seems to confirm that.

So on the one hand, this could encourage more people to make more of their posts public, but it could also encourage users to think more carefully about their privacy on the network; an issue that Facebook has struggled with in the past.

What does this mean for brands?

Another important question is whether this will have any effect on the ‘Pages’ feature that Facebook has created for companies or businesses.

The simple answer is no, it won’t.

The subscribe feature won’t be available on Pages and is really designed for individuals such as celebrities, journalists or politicians – individuals that have driven a lot of the success Twitter has achieved in recent years.

Facebook has created a handy little table – see right – that lets you see which feature is most appropriate for what you need.

Overly complex?

However, handy tables aside, I can’t help but think we are being bombarded by new Facebook features at the moment. Only yesterday, Facebook rolled out smart lists (incidentally a really nice feature) and it seems that every time I log onto the service, something has changed.

Of course, the subscribe button is totally optional. Facebook will function in exactly the same way that it always has. And one of my concerns with subscribe and with some of the other features that Facebook has introduced recently is that they risk over complicating the network. One of the reasons I believe Twitter has been so successful is that it is so simple to use. Facebook could potentially do with bearing this in mind.

But if Facebook gets it right and if users start embracing these new features, then it could be a good strategic move for the network. Whatever happens, those of us involved in social media PR will be watching how these changes are used very closely. I wonder what tomorrow will bring…

Finally! Twitter unveils analytics tool

Could this be the moment socially-enabled companies and agencies of all types have been waiting for? Very possibly.

Twitter has finally unveiled an official analytics tool – Twitter Web Analytics.

As I have blogged about on many occasions, an official analytics product from Twitter makes so much sense and surely could/will be a key part of the long-promised corporate or paid for accounts the social network has hinted at on many occasions.

So what has Twitter actually revealed? According to the official blog post:

Today we’re announcing Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites. Twitter Web Analytics was driven by the acquisition of BackType, which we announced in July.

Twitter reveals that the product – which will be rolled out to a select few this week – will incorporate the following features:

  • See how Twitter content is being shared around the web
  • Track the amount of traffic from Twitter to a company’s website – including clicks per tweets
  • Measure the effectiveness of ‘official’ Twitter buttons
  • An API allowing third party analytics tools to incorporate this data

Interestingly, the focus here isn’t on content you share through a Twitter account, it’s on how content on your website has been shared, whether or not you share it through your account. It also provides you with a stream of tweets that reference your content, allowing you to easily reply to or take action based on activity.

The blog post reveals that the rest of us should have access to this feature in the “next few weeks”.

Generally, this is a move that should be welcomed. As a tech PR, I have been hoping for some sort of analytics product for ages. Sure, there have been third party tools that claim to do this to differing levels or success and/or accuracy and there are also various different Google analytics hacks that can help provide certain insights. But an official product that can make the most of the entire Twitter firehose is very exciting.

The product was announced at Techcrunch’s Disrupt conference and the publisher has some interesting detail to add on how Twitter analytics will actually work:

When you log in to your designated account, you’ll see a number of metrics including how many Tweets (this includes Tweets of all kinds), across the network include links to your publisher site as well as the number of clicks. You’ll also be able to see the weekly, daily and monthly number of clicks from any Tweet sent from the site via a Tweet button.

…Twitter will also show you all the Tweets that were sent from the Tweet button on your site, as well as any Tweet that was sent with an inbound link to your site. From the analytics platform you can retweet these Tweets as well as respond to these users.Another extremely useful feature is the ability to see the top links by day, week and month by Tweets and clicks. Users can also add more than one website to a dashboard, and sub-domains as well. Additionally, Twitter will show users what the average number of clicks Tweets received within given time periods and well as the percent of Tweets that were generated using the Tweet button.

You can see the full video of the announcement below.

The social media battle is on?

We’re going through an interesting phase in the whole social media sphere at the moment. The launch of Google+ has put the cat amongst the pigeons with Facebook rolling out a series of ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ features over the last few weeks. And Twitter itself announced some impressive user figures this week too.

We are reaching a point at which these social media giants realise now is the time for them to push for supremacy and, while I believe there is plenty of space for co-habitation, that doesn’t stop these networks from competing for users and column inches.

The fact that Facebook has provided an insight/analytics product for some time is a case in point here. Again, as I have blogged about on several occasions, businesses remain the golden bullet for many social networks when it comes to monetisation. The rumours that Twitter was languishing in no-mans’s land for a time seems to hold some sway. But since Dick Costolo took over late last year, the company seems to have assumed greater commercial, marketing and product savvy.

So is this the start of a greater focus on providing the millions of businesses that use Twitter on a daily basis with greater tools to help them succeed on social media? As a tech PR, I hope so.

 

Originally posted at EML Wildfire Tech PR

What the UK government could learn about using social media in times of crisis

As I’ve argued twice already in the last few weeks, the UK government attacks on the role social media played in the recent riots is scandalous.

In my mind, the government would do well to focus its attention on looking into the very real and serious problems that caused the riots and, if it does want to look more into social media, should focus on ways the emergency services could use networks like Twitter and Facebook to better inform citizens.

So, following the earthquake in the US yesterday, I was intrigued to see this tweet from the US Department of Homeland Security:

It’s good to see that at least some in positions of power see the potential of social media…

[hat-tip]

Google+ musings; great product, three years too late?

I’ve been having a play with Google+, the new social network that launched this week.

And, to be honest, there is a lot to like! It’s a really well put together app and, while many of the features and functionality are very similar to those found on Facebook (and Twitter to a lesser extent), they are still executed very well and, in many cases, in a better way than on already existing platforms.

My main issue with Google+ in terms of whether it can succeed, is whether the USP is strong enough. Are there enough plus points to encourage people to move from Facebook and/or Twitter to use Google+ as their main social network? I’m not sure there is.

The only other possibility is that people will use Google+ alongside existing networks but, for me, there seems to be too much overlap to make this likely.

Here are the pros and cons of Google+ as I see it at this (albeit very early) stage:

Strong UI

Google has revamped its entire look and feel this week to coincide with the Google+ launch. This in itself demonstrates the importance the web giant is placing on this new service.  It’s very clean, modern and slick with a lot of HTML5 tricks to simplify the user interface.

It’s also very intuitive. Part of this might be down to the fact it takes much of its functioanlity from existing networks that we are already familiar with, but even so, it is executed very impressively.

The (integrated) power of Google

While Facebook clearly has the user numbers already and Google+ doesn’t, it would be wrong to underestimate the potential power Google has. It is still by far the most dominant force on the web today with the majority of people still starting any browsing session.

If Google+ is pimped out far and wide across the Google network (which I have no doubt it will) then awareness levels could rise pretty quickly.

If Facebook was built today, it would look like this

The concept of ‘circles’ is very, very strong. To my mind, this is social 2.0 in action. The online social framework we have at the moment in networks like Twitter and Facebook is unnatural. Lumping all our friends, contacts etc. doesn’t sit well with how we interact offline.

In ‘real life’, we all have different social circles that we mix in and we behave in different ways with each. We share different information, gossip, thoughts etc. Google+ brings this natural sophistication online in a very clever way.

The key question is whether this USP is enough…

The Facebook (and Twitter) problem

And the reason this might not be enough is that Facebook and Twitter are so much further down the line, it’s going to be difficult for Google to catch up.

Facebook has already hinted at backlash moves to come next week and, with Google+ so heavily based on the Facebook model, it surely won’t be too difficult for Zuckerberg to match anything Google+ throws into the mix.

Venture Beat hints that, because of this, Google’s real target with all this is Twitter, but I’m yet to be convinced.

If only Google had launched this three years ago. What might have been…

My chat with Alastair Campbell; will the PM ever engage social media?

I had an interesting chat with Alastair Campbell yesterday. Yes, that’s right, THE Alastair Campbell.

Ok, it was on Twitter and was part of #commschat (the weekly Twitter chat session for the PR industry), but was still a fascinating chance to speak with one of the infamous communication professionals of the last 10 years.

Can digital and politics mix?

The session kicked off by asking whether, in the light of the Coulson affair, we’d seen the last of journalists getting top comms jobs in major organisations. Campbell thought we hadn’t and I asked whether he thought digital might change that.

We had a bit of back and forth where we discussed whether politicians could every truly engage on social channels or whether their tweets and status updates would always been glossed with spin and PR.

Campbell thought this wasn’t the case. I’m not so sure.

The social opportunity?

I’m pretty fascinated by both politics and social media, but I think the way political parties (and some politicians) do (or don’t) use social media is pretty depressing.

The current Government’s attempts to crowd-source policy is merely a limp wristed attempt to seem ‘down with the hoodies kids’ and, for me at least, feels vapid and insincere.

Brands have been (and still are) struggling with the fact social media challenges them to actually talk to their customers in open public forums and even answer the questions they wish weren’t asked.

But forward looking brands are seeing this as an opportunity. An opportunity to answer the critics, to debate and to create positive communities of likeminded individuals that produce advocates and evangelists. It’s not too much of a stretch to see how this could be appealing for politicians too.

Grassroots advocacy

Of course, political diehards will point to websites like ConservativeHome and LabourList to show social media activism at work. And No.10 will point to the PM’s blog, Twitter account and even the Flickr stream. But this ‘arms length’ approach to engagement doesn’t do it for me.

Others will point to the recent so-called social elections in the US and here last May. But, social media didn’t elect Barack Obama and, in the last general election, it didn’t really have that much of an impact. And again, any impact it did have didn’t come from the top, but from grass-roots support.

Maybe it will always be thus. Maybe there is no room in politics for people to be people and to properly engage with others in two way dialogue (except that is when they retire or sit on the backbenches).

Will any senior politician be brave enough to take the plunge or will the modern day Alastair Campbells continue to exert their iron fisted control?

Changes to Pages signal yet another change in Facebook’s attitude to brands

I’ve blogged before about the differences between Twitter and Facebook.

The former is a very open platform where everyone is encouraged to see everything. Twitter is a blank canvas where individuals and brands (and fictional characters, animals etc. etc.) can decide how they want to use the tool (and the user generated creation of things like RTs, hashtags and even follow Fridays demonstrates this nicely).

Facebook on the other hand has, from the start, approached things from the opposite direction. Everything is more closed and individuals are encouraged to be themselves and only interact with those they know.

Are brands welcome on social networks?

There is a clear and understandable reason for this. Facebook, as anyone that has seen The Social Network will know, was created as a ‘private networking club’. A place where individuals can meet and engage with friends. The purest form of social networking.

But Twitter changed all of this. It welcomed (and encouraged) brands and they flocked to it in their millions.

For some time then, Facebook has been introducing more openness and, crucially, has been embracing the inclusion of brands.

Money, money, money

There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is clear: money! Facebook and Twitter’s monetisation strategies depend on brands using the networks and using them to generate revenue from the user base.

The recent changes to Facebook Pages demonstrates the biggest move Facebook has taken towards bringing brands more fully into the site.

The inclusion of features like “Use Facebook as a Page” and the ability to “Like” other Pages is the clearest sign yet that Facebook is allowing companies to operate more like individuals on the site.

Personalising brands

Clearly there are still barriers to what can be done. Pages cannot ‘Like’ individuals or comment on their wall, for example. But, surely it is possible to see this as a potential next step.

Marketers will welcome this move, though as figures from Econsultancy show, brands still have work to do to convince users of the site to “Like” and interact with them.

picture credit

Even Scoble agrees with me that Quora is all hype!

On Thursday, I wrote a blog about how I was amazed at the amount of hype Quora was receiving.

One of the main perpetrators of this hype has been tech blogger extraordinare, Robert Scoble.

A month ago, he was full of praise for the service:

“Thanks Quora for providing a great community and way for people to communicate about what’s interesting in their lives in a new way. That’s innovation in blogging.”

And yet, today we get this:

“Turns out I was totally wrong [about it being a good service for blogging]. It’s a horrid service for blogging, where you want to put some personality into answers. It’s just fine for a QA site, but we already have lots of those and, in fact, the competitors in this space are starting to react… Even worse, I’m getting dozens of emails from people pissed that their questions have been changed, their answers marked “not helpful,” or that they got kicked off the service altogether. Admittedly one of the things I really love about the service is there is very little, if any, spam and everyone is forced to use their real name, but lots of people want to talk about their business or not use their real names.”

Hyperventilating nerds

Scoble is part of the problem. He is the embodiment of the problems the technology industry (and the media) has when it comes to overhyping the latest thing.

Those of us who class ourselves as geeks are always running around hypervenilating over the next ‘new thing’. If you’ve seen any of Scoble’s videos with new tech CEOs you’ll know what I mean. The sycophantic idol-worship he emits as he runs around demoing every new piece of software like a hamster on steroids is quite laughable really.

To be fair to Scoble, he’s pretty honest when he’s made a mistake and judged something unfairly as this post shows

And maybe we need people like Scoble. He pushes things into the limelight for the crowd to decide. Some succeed, most fail.

Services like Quora become victims of their own hype (or Scoble and Techcrunch’s hype). Victims of their own PR.

All PR isn’t good PR

Is this a bad thing? Maybe services like Quora that try very hard are just never deemed to succeed, or at least not on the scale some might think. They won’t be the next Twitter or Facebook or Google, but then the vast majority of businesses never will be.

In the comments in Scoble’s piece, some are comparing Quora to Digg. The latter is a service that, although has often promised much, it never reached the heights some predicted. Instead it is a pleasure ground for geeks. Not that this is a bad thing. Digg is a very successful operation with a healthy revenue stream. Quora could do worse.

The wisdom of the crowd

At the end of the day, the wisdom of the crowd will prevail.

While some of us geeks would love everything we see to become super brilliant, with Scoble at the front as some larger than life cheerleader, most of them never will.

The market and the crowd will always decide.

And that’s what makes this roulette wheel of the tech start up world so utterly addictive!

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Shut up about Quora already!

I had a bit of a rant on Twitter this morning.

It was prompted by a big multi-page feature in the lastest issue of PR Week on Quora. The headline asked whether this new network could become the “new Twitter” and included a range of comments from the great and the good of the online PR industry giving their thoughts on what it means for brands and PR strategies.

All well and good; Quora’s been getting a lot of attention recently.

It’s all just hot air

But, if we step back a bit and think about this objectively, it all suddenly becomes rather absurd.

Quora, despite having launched about a year ago, has only really been on most people’s radars for a few weeks maximum. And when I say “most people”, I mean the techy, social mediaites on Twitter. In terms of user numbers and general awareness, it is nowhere.

There is a real danger in the social media echo chamber in which many of us live our lives, that we gravitate towards the new and sparkly just because someone posts a blog post saying it might be a good thing.

As Vivek Wadhwa says:

“Silicon Valley is again drinking its own Kool-Aid; it is looking at the world through its own prism. This is a common problem here, where we jump from one fad to another; where venture capitalists start investing in similar technologies and drive company valuations through the roof; where TechCrunch hypes the technology du jour and causes entrepreneurs all over the world to drop what they are doing in favor of building copycat technologies.”

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at new things, play with them or keep half an eye on them. Of course, we should. I’m also not saying that Quora won’t be successful (though I do have reservations and agree with much of what is said in this New York Times review).

Second guessing the next big thing!

But, rather than just jumping on the bandwagon, we need carefully assess the service it in a responsible, considered way. It’s pretty telling that the most popular topic on Quora right now is social media! Go figure…

I think Adam Timworth gets it spot on when he says: “…my gut feeling…is that the Next Big Thing, whatever it turns out to be, won’t be this hyped. And Quora is really hyped right now. Every previous Next Big Thing, from blogging, through Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and more has gone through an extended period of quiet use by a small, but steadily growing pool of users and evangelists, before the real mainstream growth kicks in. I’ve never seen a major Next Big Thing on the web go from zero to hero in about 10 days.”

Most of the ‘big things’ in tech at the moment were game changers and I don’t think Quora is different enough from what has come before to allow it to have massive mainstream adoption.

So while I wish Quora well, I think those of us that are already dreaming up PR strategies around how it should/could be used need to give it time.

Jon Collins kindly emailed me with some of his thoughts:

“From a PR perspective, what’s needed more than an understanding of the latest, greatest thing, is a model/mechanism which can quickly evaluate the potential of all such tools. If Quora shines like a star for a week before it’s gone, for example, then the smart PR executive may be able to make the most of it. That is a very different mindset than, say, thinking ’do we need a Quora strategy’.”

Give it time

My advice to PRs looking at Quora? By all means look at it, play with it (as you should with all the new shiny tools that come alone), but don’t waste your or your clients time just yet time trying to work out how it might or might not influence what we do in the near or even distant future.

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Is the PR agency model broken?

I kicked off a bit of a debate in the office today, which then moved on Twitter (as these things usually do!).

The motion is this:

Has the growth of digital rendered the current PR agency model broken?

PR practitioners, especially in agencies, need to be jacks-of-all-trades – strategic, creative, tactical, client-facing…

I’ve often wondered whether the current model is flawed and whether we should be looking at a set up similar to what you would find in adland, with client facing account people supported by creatives, planners and producers etc.

With PRs increasingly having to deal with multiple specialisms, from SEO and social to traditional media, bloggers and analysts, is it just too much to expect everyone to be proficient in everything? Do they even need to be?

I have no answers as yet, but I’m keen to get a bit of a debate going.

If you had to start an agency from scratch tomorrow, how would you structure it?

What do you think? Do you know PR agencies that have a slightly different model? Does it work? Can we all be specialists in everything in these days of media fragmentation?

UPDATE: James Poulter has posted his thoughts here

UPDATE 2: There’s a small get together happening next week to discuss this further – find out more here

UPDATE 3: The PRCA have offered to host a (offline) debate about this in March. Ping me if you’re interested

About

This is my story. I've always been fascinated by the internet. My first passion was music and I studied a music degree at Birmingham University. But once graduated I quickly went back to the web working as a digital marketer. I also ran a web startup for a few years. In the need of a new challenge, I turned to the world of PR and now work as an Account Director at EML Wildfire. My interest is primarily looking at how PR professionals can make the most of the web and digital marketing. This blog contains my thoughts and things I find inspirational.

© 2012 Danny Whatmough - Made by me