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31st July, 2012

Last week, Apple released the latest version of Mountain Lion. I was in two minds about whether to buy it. So I hopped onto Google, did a bit of research, read some reviews and asked my followers on Twitter. On the basis of this five or ten minutes of investigation, I took the plunge and purchased.

Does this process sound familiar?

We recently released new consumer research that looks at the different ways UK consumers are influenced before they make a technology purchase.

Just think back to the last time you invested in a new TV, mobile or laptop. What steps did you take? Chances are you didn’t just pop into PC World and grab the first piece of shiny tech on offer.

Chances are you talked to friends, searched the web and read reviews. If our research is correct, you probably did all this and a lot more. Friends and family play an important role, cited by 52% of those polled. However, there appears to be increasing significance of user-generated content, with 51% saying they trust user and consumer reviews 44% flock to expert reviews. Social media features too, but did not have as much of an impact as you might expect.

In a recent ebook, Google calls this moment ZMOT or Zero Moment of Truth. It’s the time before making a purchase that you spend researching and investigating:

“It’s a new decision-making moment that takes place a hundred million times a day on mobile phones, laptops and wired devices of all kinds. It’s a moment where marketing happens, where information happens, and where consumers make choices that affect the success and failure of nearly every brand in the world.”

For PR professionals this is a consumer trend that needs to be carefully assessed. Our report also found that only 12% cited brand loyalty as an influence on their buying habits. Loyalty goes out the window if a close friend tells you that XYZ brand sucks.

And, if that is not enough, the really scary thing is that you could invest significant budget trying to get someone to commit to buying a new product, only for them to then research and then potentially buy from one of your competitors.

So what can brands do to succeed in this world of the savvy consumer?

1. Understand your buyer – where do they go to get information? What sources do they trust? We found, for example, that different age demographics were influenced in different ways.
2. Be helpful – don’t make information hard to find. Realise that research is very important for the modern consumer. You might even want to think about spec sheets that make comparisons with the competition.
3. Don’t ignore traditional media – expert reviews were still an important source of information.
Reward and encourage advocates and evangelists – time and time again our research revealed the importance of word of mouth when making purchasing decisions. It will come as no shock to learn that we trust our friends and family. So an evangelist won’t just be a committed customer for life (in fact, with brand loyalty at an all time low, they definitely won’t be!), they will become a very powerful, unpaid salesperson for your brand.
4. Don’t ignore search – it’s no coincidence that Google wrote ZMOT. Search lies at the heart of much of this. Check now to see how your brand comes over when you go to Google and type in *your product area* plus the word ‘review’.
5. Content is key – related to the last point, content and the distribution of content is more important than ever; on your site, on social channels, on media or blogger websites and even offline.

Originally published at http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/07/26/the-rise-of-the-savvy-consumer/#ixzz22EZqCPpT

continue reading: The rise of the savvy consumer...

3rd July, 2012

I’ve been thinking a lot about Enterprise Social Networks recently, and so should you if the figures about the potential size of the market over the next few years are to be believed ($6.4bn by 2016).

The news that Yammer has been acquired by Microsoft for $1.2bn therefore shouldn’t come as any surprise. Sure, it is a big sum, but I think this is a smart move by Microsoft. Whether the same can be said for Yammer is another question. Can Microsoft harness the power of ESNing? Time will tell and it is a subject for another post.

That’s because, long before the deal went through, I was thinking about the potential of a Twitter/Yammer tie up. It might seem strange at first but bear with me.

Is the idea of one unified profile to join work and personal social networking that ridiculous?

As a big user of Twitter and working for a company that uses Yammer, I often find myself dithering between whether to post on Twitter or Yammer or both. Sure, sometimes posts are clearly more appropriate or relevant for public or private-work but surely there would be some benefit in having a unified experience for both?

Clearly Yammer and Twitter won’t happen. But there are plenty of other options out there should Twitter consider this a wise move and, given its ‘finding a business model’ difficulties, maybe getting enterprises on board (and paying) through ESN, especially given the sums mentioned above, isn’t such a bad idea?

continue reading: Twitter + Yammer? What could have been…...

23rd June, 2012

First of all, a giant disclosure. I’ve had a large amount of involvement with Econsultancy over the last few years. Econsultancy is a client, I’m one of its guest bloggers, I’ve been to Econsultancy events, parties, training sessions and have worked with them in partnership with several of my former and current clients. I know a number of the guys that work there very well.

With that out of the way, I can say – with a clear conscience – that I was absolutely delighted to learn yesterday that the company has been purchased by Centaur for £50m.

I’ve argued for years that anyone wanting to see whether publishers could make any money out of the web (especially when it came to trade titles) should look no further than Econsultancy for a shining example. I’ve also argued that, in the digital marketing space, Econsultancy is exactly what NMA should have become years ago (Econsultancy was founded in 1999).

The model is fantastically simple. First of all, create great, free content. Don’t regurgitate news that you can get elsewhere, but provide value-add analysis and editorial that meets the needs of the target audience. The Econsultancy blog has become one of the most powerful mouthpieces in the digital industry (and I have the stats to back up that claim) and drives significant, relevant traffic. It also works very well for organic search and helps build a community (the Econsultancy Twitter account hit 100,000 followers this week (NMA has 37,000).

Secondly, create awesome research, training and events that, because it is awesome and proven, companies will be more than happy to pay for.

And there’s your business model.

I’m fascinated by this deal. Fascinated to see if Centaur can leave Econsultancy alone and allow it to do what it does best. Fascinated to see what will become of NMA. Fascinated to see whether the Econsultancy model will be adopted (successfully) by other titles in the Centaur stable.

It’s a big gamble. It’s a lot of money and Centaur have been forced to take out a sizeable loan to see it through.

But if Centaur can retain everything that is great about Econsultancy, enhance it and learn from it then £50m could look like a snip.

continue reading: In praise of Econsultancy; a publishing model that works...

12th February, 2012

“If the mainstream media are unable to address news stories that are freely available elsewhere, we will look increasingly irrelevant”

Paul Dacre, Mail Editor at the Leveson Inquiry

This week, the FA sacked their manager Fabio Capello. Pretty big news.

And, when browsing some of the coverage, I was suddenly struck by the role that Twitter played in the reporting of the story. It was as though every article or news broadcast pulled in comments that someone football-related had made on Twitter upon hearing the resignation.

I know this is nothing new, the number of news articles that are almost entirely based on a tweet is soaring by the day. It’s a fascinating change to the status quo.

In the pre-Twitter days, journalists would get comments directly from sources and they would then reveal these comments to their audiences through articles or VTs.

Today, these comments are made directly to the public with the ‘celebrity’ in question often having a audience of tens of thousands themselves. The traditional media are therefore left to report on the tweet itself, even though many readers might have already already seen it.

It’s not hard to see how this marginalises traditional media.

And again, yes, none of this is new.

Twitter – the enemy or the solution?

But it is perhaps more interesting in light of some of the leaks this week from Sky and the BBC concerning the way their journalists use social services like Twitter.

Now, despite the extent of the fascist enforcement you believe these two media corporations are engaging in, these reports seems to be pretty telling.

There is not but a little irony hidden away here. For these are not easy times for traditional media outlets. Journalists with swathes of Twitter followers and enthusiastic communities can be a massive benefit. But it is not hard to see how the money-people and those who live and breathe on page views might think differently.

For those of us that work in PR, this dichotomy is nothing new. It’s perfectly conceivable now for a brand to have a bigger social community that the journalists that it has sought to influence over the last however-many-years.

And that’s a pretty liberating possibility.

I’m off to an event tomorrow at Social Media Week London entitled “Twitter, the Butterfly Effect and the Future of Journalism” and I’m sure it will touch on some of these themes.

It’s a tough time for traditional media. But I can’t help thinking that laying down rules isn’t necessarily the answer. The status quo won’t work IMHO.

picture credit

continue reading: Twitter + the media = the beginning of the end?...

27th October, 2011

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.

continue reading: If you’re going to use social media, make sure you use it to be social!...

16th September, 2011

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…

continue reading: Facebook launches a subscribe button & changes the social game again...

14th September, 2011

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

continue reading: Finally! Twitter unveils analytics tool...

24th August, 2011

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]

continue reading: What the UK government could learn about using social media in times of crisis...

1st July, 2011

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…

continue reading: Google+ musings; great product, three years too late?...

15th March, 2011

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?

continue reading: My chat with Alastair Campbell; will the PM ever engage social media?...