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Is social media now a mainstay of mainstream marketing?

In more than two years since PR Media Blog began - when commercial, social media activity in the UK was more rooted in theory than practice - the online engagement revolution seems to have gained enough momentum to pose a serious challenge to the marketing hegemony.

Whereas, at one time,  it was a struggle to get arrested for talking social media with in-house marketing teams, now they are positively dragging you to the table, eager to open up and peer inside the latest “Ark of the Covenant” for business. 

Some organisations, more accustomed to adopting relatively conservative communications methods, are now even choosing to lead campaigns with social media activity. And then there’s the likes of Asda, immersing itself and its customers in social media and even thinking of itself as more than just a retailer - i.e., a content generator.

Why is this?

As Scott Liewehr, senior consultant and lead analyst at Gilbane Group, said in a highly informative webinar yesterday: “Social media is the web…and consumers are shaping your brand.”

He went on to explain how social media, in influencing purchasing choices, means that “customers are trusting complete strangers more than household brands” and that “brands should be viewing this as an opportunity rather than a threat”.

Liewehr describes the “superbrands” as embracing online customer participation and engagement as the social web allows companies to listen, understand and respond. At first look, this isn’t easy, as the social media landscape is more (in his word) the “Splinternet” - with conversations and activity happening simultaneously in disparate online locations.

With this in mind, he offers a checklist for the modern digital marketeer:

1. Be open

2. Be a good listener

3. Be prepared - you need to have something to say in response to a customer comment, and quickly!

4. Be knowledgeable and add value

5. Be consistent

But for those organisations and marketeers still cautious about balancing the threat and opportunity of social media - and wondering how to keep up with the latest gizmo - Liewehr cousels calm! “It’s mostly NOT about technology,” he says, suggesting the skills needed for online engagement aren’t new, but that the delivery channels have changed.

Getting started with social media should include modest expectations in the early days, focusing on small wins and learnings with an eye on building long-term impact.

But, he adds, firms shouldn’t underestimate the transformational power of one person - the right person, doing the right things - representing a brand online.

The net gain should be better brand awareness, increased sales and customer loyalty.  

Funny that; sounds a bit like marketing.

A guest post from Dr. Tia C. M. Tyree, Assistant Professor within the Department of Journalism at Howard University, Washington, D.C.

In August 2009, I was quoted in a PRWeek article titled “Lessons for the Future,” which dealt with how professors across the country were “grappling” with social media. Today, I am confident there isn’t much grappling being done. Those who were on the proverbial fence have probably hopped it and jumped on the bandwagon like everyone else. Over the last few years, most of us were trying to figure out how we could incorporate social media into our course. Now, I think most of us have built or are building social media PR courses. Mine will debut in Spring 2011.

I was convinced I needed the course after attending Edelman’s New Media Academic Summit last month. Educators from across the globe converged in New York, New York to hear from some of the top viral and public relations professionals who are changing the landscape of social media. Presenters included the Group President of Conde Nast, Main Presenter from BBC (Nik Gowing), Co-Founder & CEO of MeetUp, SVP of PepsiCo and Director of Worldwide Communications from Pfizer Global Manufacturing, and each shared their opinions, hopes, desires, stories and lessons learned from the social media landscape. From successes with “Tweetups and Meetups” and the great debate surrounding paywalls and journalists, which raged this weekend with Gannett’s test, the flow of information, ideas and advice was overwhelming. Ultimately, it’s clear PR professionals are still learning exactly how to best use the right mix of social media to obtain success within the media and marketplace.

The summit taught me there is a great benefit in still having a strong mix of online and offline tactics, and it was really a caution not to abandon those practices that are fundamentally successful to try the new online tactics that have not proven successful to a specific company. In essence, it takes time to earn trust, develop relationships and build an online community. PR professionals must learn the new techniques, master them and fold them into their overall strategic plans, because when consumers can participate (i.e., engage with the company through social media) in a brand, than the return on investment and impact is much higher.

How this relates to me and other educators is important. We train the next generation of PR professionals. If we don’t learn social media and teach students how to strategically use social media, than we will graduate thousands of young entry level professionals who are clueless about how social media impacts a company and how they can harness its potential for the benefit a company’s greater good or bottom line.

With social media, the traditional media landscape is continuing to change. The idea that “every company is a media company” was frequently tossed around at the summit. With social media tools, the ability to reach customers, teach customers, inform customers and interact with customers is no longer tied to earned or paid media. Instead, it’s based on the marketing, sales and public relations professionals within a company and their ability to utilize social media tools. I am committed to helping my students use these tools, and I hope other educators are willing to do it, too.

As you may imagine, PR Media Blog spends much of its time soaking up PR and social media knowledge from around the web.

It’s not novel by any means, but sharing some of the more interesting and useful links seems like a socially-inclined service to our readers. So, here goes for round up #1…

Enjoy!

1. Who owns social media? - a view on how responsibility for social media criss-crosses several departments in an organisation, c/o @mashable and @smmguide.

2. Facebook facts - both useful and mind blowing, rendered in a cheat sheet infographic, c/o @PRwise.

3. Foursquare and Starbucks cosy up over coffee - there’s profit in them, there online geolocation services, as shown in the tie up between Foursquare and Starbucks (via @SocialMedia411)

4.  Nestlé, Kit Kat and the Orang Utans - was it social media that saved the rainforest? (via @PRwise)

5. “What will social media do to us?” - how ready is your business to tackle the social media revolution? (via Forrester)

Does PR have a role to play in social media?

Sorry, was that a chorus of PR agencies and professionals I heard screaming in unison “Duh, of course it does!”?

Well, people, you might be right. But - more often than not - it’s good to stop and think.

That’s what I was asking a group of nominated company spokespeople to do during media training this week. For while engaging with the media is an opportunity, it’s also a risk. And whether you’re a CEO, engineer or on the shop floor, opening your mouth on the company’s behalf means you are entering new territory; you’re now in the business of public relations and reputation management.

Which is why media training shouldn’t be about soundbites or spin, but taking a carefully considered and methodical approach to the impact of what you say in a public domain.

Which brings us neatly back to social media.

Blogging technology has torn down the barriers to publishing and this is a good thing for both PR agencies and their clients, so long beholden to the media’s permission for their story to be heard. The turnout at a CIPR social media learning event in Preston last night suggests there’s an insatiable appetite for PR consultants to get involved in the brave new(ish) world online.

But as anyone who’s been through journalistic training will tell you, the privilege of publishing also comes with a high degree of responsibility. Get it wrong and you could end up in court facing the full force of the law. British defamation law may leave something to be desired, but for now it remains the law. Which is why the checks and balances of an editorial hierarchy are essential.

PR agencies and their clients are neither professional publishers nor editors. And yet the button marked “publish” on the blogging software enables them to be so. Which takes us back to “stop and think”.

One of the lazy, get-out clauses of making an editorial mistake in the bygone days of print-only publishing was that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper. But this is not so online. Not only does your online content or comment not end up wrapping fast food, it is potentially one click away from Google’s homepage.

Knowing how to respond in the event of a client’s potential reputation meltdown should be the meat and drink for PR practitioners. But even better is working to ensure it doesn’t happen at all.

That’s why the passion to publish online needs, sometimes, to take a cold shower first.

This blog has charted decline of newspapers for the last two years but the sale today of The Independent for just £1 is proof if any were needed that the value has gone out of print.  Less than ten years after the New York Times paid over a billion dollars for a city paper (the Boston Globe), a UK national title changes hands for small change.

The Independent has been bought by the Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, who acquired the London Evening Standard last year, and has been in the market to secure for the Independent for some months.  The deal includes the Independent on Sunday and follows a year in which the Independent titles lost £12.4m.

Even though the titles have been snapped up for close to nothing there must remain a question mark as to whether the ex KGB man has actually got a good deal.  Earlier today at the AGM of the North West Creative & Media Industries, Sara Wilde-McKeowan the Regional Managing Director of Trinity Mirror who acquired the Manchester Evening News a few weeks ago decribed being in the newspaper business as “like skiing downhill unsure as to whether there will be a soft landing”.

It’s an odd and sobering thought to think that for the price you paid for a single copy of the Independent at your local newsagents this morning you could have bought the whole shebang. 
 

Google has made global headlines today with the revelation that it is redirecting users in mainland China to its unrestricted Hong Kong site in order to avoid complying with the Chinese laws that direct the search engine to censor results.  Chinese firewalls however mean that results for searches such as ‘Tiananmen Square’ still come back censored.

For those who want to delve behind the headlines you can replicate the experience of one of the half a billion Chinese internet users.  Internet browser Firefox has a plug-in that simulates the great firewall of China.  Users who add the Firefox China Channel to their browser can experience what it is like to surf the internet from inside the republic. 

You may have heard the factoid that if Facebook were a country it would be the world’s third largest behind China and India.  The web is seen as the borderless, global and free but it isn’t.  States like China filter and block content that they don’t want citizens to access. The so-called Golden Shield Project is policed in China by an estimated 30,000 strong task force who deny access to politically sensitive or regime critical content.  

The battle between Google and the Chinese government is symbolic of the rise of web communities and the decline of the power of the nation state.  Challenging censorship is an honourable aim but before we celebrate the rise of the web community too much we should spare a thought for the fact that the leaders at Google aren’t elected either.

Update: social specialist, Jeremiah Owyang, has provided some useful tips for brands venturing into social media, based on the Nestle example.

At approximately 3pm today, the Nestlé Facebook page status update read: “Social media: as you can see we’re learning as we go.”

This was, perhaps, the most profound show of humility that the company had mustered on a day - I’m sure - the guardians of the Nestlé brand would hope ends very soon indeed.

In short, whoever is responsible for managing the company’s communications on its Facebook page was simply not able to deal appropriately with the grass roots invasion by users changing their profile pictures to either Orang Utans or the ”Killer” logo Greenpeace has twisted Kit-Kat into. 

Not only has today been a masterclass in mishandling a social media disaster, it’s managed to bring the central issue - the company’s connection to deforestation in Indonesia and its effect on indigenous people and Orang Utans - to more eyeballs than even Greenpeace could have imagined.

And the virtual worlds of Twitterville and the blogosphere like nothing more than spreading the word about some eye-wateringly bad online behaviour by a brand in a state of apoplexy.

Barefoot Media’s blog describes the handling of the crisis like “David Brent in a paper merchants” while Intelligence in Social Media points out: “It’s not every day that a brand turns its most loyal followers into angry protesters”.

And just follow the literal torrent of Tweets via Twitterfall.

So, what’s a brand to do? Strikes me the principles are clear whether on or offline:

1. Recognise that - whether through sabotage by activists or not - allegations against you and the way you respond to them within your social media back yard is visible to all your followers. Rudeness and sarcasm are inexcusable, however tight a corner you’ve been painted into.

2. History is littered with humiliation and vilification for those who try to censor and ban the views of others in a democracy. And, unless you live in China, the internet is a democracy.

3. Don’t believe your own spin and if your organisation has a skeleton in the cupboard, don’t just ignore it. You’re going to need a plausible answer when someone pulls it out and rattles its bones.

4. Show some humility. And quickly. In the case of social media, if you can convince your fans - and even some of your detractors - that you are human and recognise their right to protest and be upset with you, you stand a better chance of being defended by the community, even if you don’t deserve it.

You’ll find this hard to swallow but former young turk of British cuisine is set to sign a deal with the architect of the turkey twizzler, Bernard Matthews.  Given that we are just 12 days away from April Fools it feels like an excitable PR executive has forgotten to put the April 1st embargo on their spoof press release. 

But, no. “Ever since I was a young boy I’ve been an admirer of turkey and particularly Bernard Matthews, because he is without question one of the great farmers of the last five decades” effuses the bad-boy chef.  

I can understand that both Delia and Heston feel that an association with the Waitrose brand won’t dent their image and we are well used to Jamie’s deal with Sainsbury’s but is Marco really the man to put the boot in ‘bootiful’?   The benefit to Bernard is easy to see but what amount of cash could make this a good deal for Pierre White?  His brand equity is unlikely ever to recover.  Move over Michelin, make way for MarcoDonalds.  

No doubt there are many out there who would scoff at the fact that today’s politicians, in the run up to the general election, are making a beeline for women’s mags and daytime TV.

Ok, so being questioned by Kate Garraway might not be quite the same as being grilled by Paxman but, argues Mike Girling, Nick Clegg’s press officer: “Those interviews can be quite tough in their own way.” And Martin Frizell, former editor of GMTV, agrees that being asked left-field questions about X Factor or what they’re doing for their wives on Valentine’s Day can be “shit scary”.

It’s strange to think that a “comfort zone” could include the likes of Paxman or Frost, but for steely politicians, an interview about emotions, mainstream culture and even favourite biscuits, as recently demonstrated by Gordon Brown, can be way more harrowing than being quizzed on the state of Iraq.

Women’s glossy magazine, Red, is currently gearing up for an election special for its May edition featuring interviews with Brown, Cameron and Clegg. According to research carried out by the magazine, nine out of 10 of Red’s 225,000 readers will vote in the general election yet 48% say they haven’t decided who they’ll be supporting.

And it’s not just the party leaders who are being advised to focus on women’s media. Sarah Brown guest edited Fabulous, the News of the World’s female-focused supplement, last year but reviews were mixed.

MediaGuardian deputy editor Vicky Frost, commented that there was too much of Wellbeing for Women, of which Brown is patron, and too little of Brown’s life:

“I’m not saying she needed to star in the fashion shoot - although that really would have been fabulous - but what about a one-pager about life with her own kids, or healthy dinners she cooks,” Frost said.

Perhaps Brown and Cameron should sit tight in their comfort zones and let their wives spill some election winning gossip. With neither Sarah Brown or Samantha Cameron having ever given an interview, they could well clinch it for their steely loved ones…

In the brave new world of social media we are told that content is king and if the content is good enough it will find an audience.  We don’t often use this blog to talk about projects that Staniforth is involved in but this Nissan campaign is an exception - incidentally the creative work here was delivered by another agency.

Advertising is changing and this is a great example of how and why.   What we have here is an innovative three dimensional installation (I won’t spoil the ending of the clip by saying any more).  We also have a really engaging short film that takes the installation out to a whole new audience, it also tells a story with a twist (quite literally) in the tail .   Car manufacturers are not always known for breaking the mould, but this is a great example of how to do things differently.  Fasten your seatbelts.