pr-media-blog.co.uk

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.

Wordpress, the leading blog platform, suffered a major outage at around 21.40 GMT today taking around 10 million blogs with it.  Twitter has been awash with commentary, many quoting the figure of 9.2 million blogs but this is a significant underestimate.  It is the number that appears on Wikipedia but this is almost four months out of date - the true figure is around 10 million based on an extrapolation of the published rate of growth.

Although PR Media Blog uses Wordpress it is independently hosted so therefore not affected by the current crisis.  No reason has been given for the service interruption but Matt Mullenweg the 26 year old founding developer at Wordpress tweeted in the last few minutes “we’re investigating the source & most expedient fix. I hope to have everyone’s blogs back & running as soon as possible”.

It remains unclear as to whether this is the result of a denial of service attack similar to that suffered by twitter last August or perhaps a technical problem caused by the volume of users.  Whatever the explanation 10 million blogs represents a huge volume of information and the pressure on the team at Automattic, Inc. the web development company that runs WordPress must be immense. 

Tens of thousands of music fans were left enraged after seetickets, the only website on which fans were able to enter the draw for the free Rage Against the Machine concert, apparently crashed. The error left many fans staring at a loading screen or frantically refreshing the page for the three hours it took for all the tickets to be allocated. 

The free gig in London’s Finsbury Park was announced by the US anti-establishment rap-rock band earlier in the year as a thank you to British fans who helped the band’s expletive-ridden 1992 single, Killing in the Name to reach this year’s Christmas number one slot.  

The band achieved the feat after a social media-driven campaign - urging music fans to shun the latest X-Factor offering -caught the imagination of a large part of the British public. As the campaign’s website proclaims: “You spread the word, you swayed the outcome, you made music history”.

Over the weekend, tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands, went to seetickets.com to pre-register for the draw. Fans were then told to log on to the website at 9:00am on the 17^th February to enter the draw for tickets.  

However it appeared that, despite knowing how many people were likely to visit the site, seetickets could simply not handle the numbers. Many have now taken to social media – the very platform which brought the gig into existence – to vent their frustration and lambast seetickets for its poor foresight and lack of preparation. 

From a PR perspective, this was a golden opportunity for seetickets to achieve some money-can’t-buy brand awareness. The only thing most music fans are aware of now, however, is the site’s ineptitude. Do a Twitter search for seetickets and you will struggle to see a positive comment, with many stating they will never use the site again. 

Seetickets? Just seeing the homepage would have been nice.

PR Media Blog, when it comes to religion, is at the very least agnostic and certainly non-denominational.

But when the venerable institution of BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day talks social media, quotes Mark Zuckerberg and namechecks YouTube, we simply have to listen.

There’s no doubt that TFTD has divided opinion, with Christians championing the need for religious broadcasting while humanists and atheists urging the broadcaster to do less, if any, God at all.

But, sometimes, the chosen TFTD speaker manages to harness the zeitgeist and build a meaningful connection between faith and a modern, technological world, seemingly indifferent to the church.

Read here or listen to here what the Rev Dr David Wilkinson says about social media and the importance of relationships.

Could social media be the saviour of religion or, ultimately, become its replacement? To paraphrase Karl Marx, could social media be the new opium of the people?

In a live press conference broadcast through YouTube, Google today announced the launch of Google Buzz a social networking application built onto Google Mail.   Todd Jackson, Gmail Project Manager explained how it uses Gmail contacts to create a ready made friend list but then allows users to pull in contacts from other social networks.    

It borrows a lot of the ideas born out of twitter but adds a new level of sophistication.  For example the recommendation engine will over time filter ‘good buzz’ from ‘bad buzz’ - if you like an intelligent retweet system.

Google Buzz has some stunning features that set it apart from other social platforms, particular when it comes to smartphones.  It uses GPS to locate where you are and integrates with a new version of Google mobile maps.  Posts from mobiles including pictures will be automatically geo-tagged (or located to place) which will allow you to broadcast and recieve the buzz around shops, restaurants or visitor attractions, nearby.

Perhaps the biggest new feature is the inclusion of voice to text.  This means that you can speak directly into your mobile phone and it will appear automatically as a text in your Buzz profile.   In one fell swoop Google is taking on Friendfeed, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook and, oh yes, the iPhone.  The mobile features of Buzz will be available on the Google Nexus One and other Android handsets but not (at least for now) on Apple’s market leading smartphone.  When will Buzz be available?  It launches now.

Return on investment from social media?

Step forward, please, the social media alchemist who has struck gold…

The leading voices in social media practice and debate are certainly giving it their best shot: Brian Solis’ recent guest post on Mashable paints a daunting picture of senior executives’ views on ROI from social media, including the bar chart below lifted from a study by Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club.

In short, the marketing decision makers remain unconvinced; so, if selling social media is the way you’re aiming to pay for dinner tonight, be prepared for a light salad rather than roast beef.

Solis suggests that measuring social media ROI in 2010 will hinge on real business metrics, such as revenue, rather than the nebulous numbers offered by volumes of followers on Twitter.

Though it’s been around for a while, Oliver Blanchard’s take on the ROI question (presentation below) still hits the spot, although the influence of other elements in the marketing mix make it difficult to evaluate the effect of social media in isolation.

Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi

View more presentations from Olivier Blanchard.

In our experience as a business using social media for our own purposes, as well as advising clients on theirs, there is a significant investment of time in order to make it work. Equally, the definition of a “return” has not been limited to pounds and pence, though that is the ultimate objective.

So what has been our return from social media? In its purest, measurable form of generating income, we have developed an ongoing relationship with a blue chip company that began with an exchange of views on this blog. But there have been other returns too, that oil the wheels towards our destination.

This has included using social networks to develop new contacts in a range of fields whose knowledge we have been able to call upon when pitching for new business. Through listening to networks such as LinkedIn, we’ve been asked to quote for work, opened doors with decision makers where they otherwise may have remained shut and we’ve fostered true partnerships with our suppliers by providing recommendations and referring them to opportunities spotted online. Monitoring Twitter has helped us to protect and enhance client reputation, especially when influential people on the network have a grievance.

Granted, none of this is a guarantee of instant, financial success. But would we rather have it or not have it? In tough times (and, let’s face it, one measly tenth of a percentage point growth doesn’t make for a recovery) every tool in the new business box has to be sharpened, and social media is now one of them.

To borrow from Solis again, “Defining the “R” in ROI is where we need to focus, as it relates to our business goals and performance indicators specifically”.

In business, the “R” is beefing up the bottom line. But there’s more than one way of getting there and building a presence within social media can mean you leveraging a little help from your friends.

Today’s guest blog post by Ben Furber, a design and communications professional based in Manchester who specialises in political and non-profit organisations, and who has worked on new media campaigns for Labour, focuses on how politicians are working hard to win over she who knows best: Mum…

Every week one columnist or another is hypothesising about what the general election will be about. So when, in November, Rachel Sylvester wrote that the ‘election will be won at the school gate’ and cited the Biscuitgate affair on Mumsnet, I paid the column little attention.Why wouldn’t I? I’m a young single male with no plans for or interest in having dependents any time soon. But now, once again, Mumsnet is on my radar. On Friday, with exclamation marks and many profanities, I was emailed a link to a Mumsnet forum thread — 35 pages then (and 38 pages now) of its readers’ very own David Cameron billboards. Clearly not all of the 140,000 plus attempts have been generated by political activists!

Luckily for me I was in the same room as a young mother, so I asked her: ‘What’s with Mumsnet?’ She told me: “When you have a question, it’s where you go. When you’re concerned about something, it’s where you go. When you need support, it’s where you go.”

This was when it clicked. Mumsnet isn’t just a website, it is a community — just like the coffee mornings that go on all over the country on a daily basis in community centres and local churches, but virtual and available twenty-four hours a day. It’s Mums and Dads meeting, talking and providing each other with support.

Many candidates are prepared to sell their right arms to talk to these community groups, explaining their party’s family and child policies. No wonder the parties centrally are doing the same with Mumsnet.

The perceived wisdom is based on a fine communications model: senior party officers flood the lobby with targeted policies and spin, hoping the national media will write about it and those that glance at a paper the next day read the headline. At the same time the well connected candidates talk to those local community groups that they can blag their way into. But as Mumsnet (as well as others) show, there is a new way of connecting, a better way of connecting.

Local campaigning is working for Labour this year - that return to the fundamentals of what it is to ask someone for their vote. In many places this is being done effortlessly. The street endorser and direct mail models are working wonders. But at the other end we have a hostile national and mainstream media which continues to try to convince the public that the election has already happened and Cameron has won with a landslide.

What Number 10 seem to have understood with Mumsnet is that instead of relying on journalists with their clear editorial focus, specific groups can be talked to direct. So politicians have started talking straight to engaged groups at a national level, just like they do in community centres,  but they are now doing so online.

But more is needed.

It could be the tip of the iceberg: the parties could start talking about the benefits of community campaigning versus local campaigning, not because it’s fundamentally difficult  - it isn’t - but because it increases the scope and provides the additional focus of new and social media.

So we all know about Mumsnet now, great. But there are others, too, and time needs to be put into finding those groups and communicating with their users.

It is scary for a lot of people, accepting and understanding that certain websites have the potential to engage - just as we do on the doorstep. But everyone needs to. Mumsnet provides all the data needed. There are interested groups online with diverse interests that are becoming communities. With over 350 Cameron billboards submitted on Mumsnet, these communities are clearly engaged and each one, each Mum, is a constituent.

Postrank’s top blogs of 2009 has just placed PR Media Blog at number 15 among our peers, based on a level of engagement and influence.

Aside from creating regular content (our job), the engagement factor is down to you, the reader; so, we must thank you heartily for that.

To receive such an accolade makes one wonder whether we have, in a small way, created a brand of our own. If a brand is something that has built trust and influence among a group of people, then PR Media Blog might just be that. But if it possesses any semblance of brand values, these have not been created in isolation. Though we do the legwork in creating something for you to read, it has been the comments on posts, the feedback and retweets on Twitter and the trackbacks from other blogs that have helped us to refine and shape the blog. Equally, our guest bloggers are entitled to part-ownership of our micro-brand.

So, is our humble example emblematic of a shift in the evolution of a brand and who owns it?

Naomi Klein’s seminal book and examination of brand power, No Logo, is 10 years old and gets an update to be published later this month. The author’s latest article describes how, at the height of her fame, “megabrands and advertising agencies…wanted me to give them seminars on why they were so hated…a kind of anti-corporate dominatrix making overpaid executives feel good by telling them what bad, bad brands they were.”

To her credit, Klein never donned the metaphorical leather and whips. But, today, organisations don’t need to call upon Klein for such flagellation. Social media has amassed an army of brand critics only too happy to share their disappointment with the performance of companies. However, happy customers share their praise too.

In providing positive and negative sentiment online, they are giving organisations the opportunity to improve on their failings while interacting with a community of - well - fans. But to harness this wealth of management information, there has, first, to be a willingness to listen.

Listening to and acting on customer feedback is the essential precursor to worrying about brand. Klein illustrates this with the example of Price Floyd, erstwhile media relations direction at the US State Department. When, during the reviled Bush presidency, his colleagues urged more media activity and more messaging in an attempt to turn around “brand America”, Floyd nailed the problem: “It’s not the packaging, it’s the substance that’s giving us trouble”.

If organisations believe they can create a brand in isolation and simply tell the world what it stands for, they may be disappointed. As Tamsen McMahon says in a recent guest post on the Conversation Agent blog: “A brand is the collective impression people gain not only from you and your marketing efforts, but from all of their interactions with you-and the interactions others have as well (newly amplified through social media).”

Football fans were devastated by rumours appearing on Twitter last weekend that football star John Barnes had died of a heart attack. Thankfully, the former midfielder is alive and well; no doubt blissfully unaware of the thousands of die-hard football fans lamenting the sad loss of a legend.   

As the news first reached me on the way home from a party on Saturday night, Twitter users were already tweeting “John Barnes died tonight, just a rumour at the mo” and “you heard about John Barnes rumour? Heart attack? Someone at Arrow Park leaked”, even a local journalist at the Liverpool Echo was tweeting for clarification.  

Naturally, those first to hear the whispers spent Sunday morning checking online and broadcast media for official news. As Twitter emerged as the sole online source of the rumour, Liverpool Supporters’ Twitter feed Empire of the Kop quite rightly tweeted to its 57,000 followers: “The John Barnes rumour first appeared 4 hours ago, if it was true it would be all over the media by now.”

The tweet: “John Barnes is fine. Heard from someone who has spoken 2 him this morning. Whoever started the rumour should b ashamed” put the final nail in the coffin for the rumours. Empire of the Kop confirmed on Twitter: “John Barnes dead rumour started by a Leeds fan” and identified his user name for all football fans who had been duped to vent their anger directly.

Although Twitter can be a fantastic source of breaking news, the micro-blogging site can be used by anyone and is not always accurate. To say someone is dead may not be defamatory but if inaccurate reports such as these were published in a newspaper, there would be a clear breach of the PCC Code of Conduct. 

Twitter is not devoid of defamation and privacy laws but if the ‘tw-eath’ of John Barnes proves one thing, it’s the frightening speed at which inaccurate rumours can spread online, whether they’re about people, businesses or organisations.

Another reason why brands need to be more aware than ever of what is being said about them online. Mis-information needs to be identified and corrected at the earliest opportunity, before people begin to treat what they read as fact, by which time, the damage to company reputation is already done.

Long live John Barnes!   

It’s the first working day of a new decade and there is a lot to do but I thought it was worth pausing for a few moments to reflect on just how much the media and public relations have changed in the last ten years.  

When the sun pulled up on the new millenium we didn’t give much thought to creating video content to support PR campaigns, it was just too expensive in most cases.  Oh, and there was no Youtube, it didn’t launch until 2005.  Podcasts were still a thing of the future; the term “podcasting” wouldn’t be coined for another four years.  It was first used by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian in a February 2004 article.    The debate on the ethics of editing Wikipedia articles hadn’t begun because, well there was no Wikipedia until 2001.   Even Google had only been around for 18 months when the ‘noughties’ began.

More recently we have seen the beginning of the end for many newspapers but new and exciting channels are emerging.  The Guardian iPhone app launched last month may be the clearest indication yet as to the way forward for newspaper brands.  The impending launch of the Apple tablet (iPad or iSlate, take your pick) may be the saviour of the newspaper albeit in a modern guise.

There is a lot to contend with for the PR practitioner in the coming decade; media fragmentation, the continued rise of the user as publisher and the convergence of marketing disciplines to name a few of the challenges.  The ubiquity of iPhones, Google phones, tablets, slates or pads will mean that location based communication will become a powerful and empowering reality.

Oh and for those celebrating the end of the decade with the silliest moniker in history it looks like another daft description of a decade is in play as the ‘noughties’ make way for the ‘teenies’.  We only have ourselves to blame.