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The social media arena has been dominated by the growth of Twitter, Facebook and other networking sites this year. As we’re nearing 2010, there’s chatter about how networks will evolve going forward and one of the key points I’ve seen in almost every trend forecast is filtering out the clutter.

According to Pingdom, Twitter is already closing in on 30 million tweets a day and the latest figures from Facebook reveal that over 45 million status updates are uploaded on the site each day. It’s no surprise that some users are starting to tune out and some still think that Twitter is a waste of time.

David Armano predicts on the Harvard Business Conversation Starter blog that social media will begin to look less social next year - i.e. we will try to get more value out of our networks through filtering messages (hiding from hyperactive updaters etc).

Twitter has already started tackling this with Twitter Lists, but it raises an interesting question - do we actually want to connect with people we don’t know? The majority of people using social media connect almost exclusively with people they already know in the real world. Or is it simply information overload and we need to be able to administer the incoming messages better?

Either way, it emphasises yet again that successful online PR does not equate to a large number of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook. As people start to sift through the clutter (and some will probably do this early next year as everyone jumps on the New Year’s resolutions bandwagon and pledge to tidy up their lives in general), brands which aren’t offering something really valuable are likely to be the first ones to fall off the list. Relevant and trusted content has always been important but more aggressive filters will mean it’s paramount to digital PR success next year.

How do you see 2010 panning out? Will it become more difficult for brands to reach consumers through social networks as people are increasingly being bombarded with marketing messages?

Today’s guest blog comes from Kirsten Mortensen, a marketing communications strategist based in Rochester, N.Y. who - in the cause of investigating social media best practice - has found herself in the pub…

Many businesses today are wondering whether to invest in social media.

Others are pretty sure they need social media-but haven’t quite figured out how to do it.

And then you have people like Joe McBane, who have taken to social media so naturally it’s become a seamless extension of his business.

Granted, McBane is in the hospitality industry-and if any industry is ready-made for social media, this would be it.

McBane owns the Tap & Mallet, a two-year-old pub in Rochester, New York.

Rochester, if you’re unfamiliar, is a community in the United States “rust belt” best known as the hometown of the iconic film company, Eastman Kodak. McBane himself, however, isn’t a Rochester native. He’s a Sheffield, UK transplant who first put down roots as bar manager at The Old Toad, Rochester’s studied version of the authentic British pub. His Tap & Mallet is something altogether different, however: more an American-style neighborhood bar-but with a decidedly upscale and 21^st century focus on craft beers.

McBane’s pub also happens to appeal to a demographic perfectly suited to a social media-based marketing strategy. His customers are students and young professionals-exactly the people who tend to have Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, who follow blogs and reach for Google, not the phone book, when they’re planning their weekends.

And McBane is a natural marketer. He loves his business and loves telling people about it.

These caveats notwithstanding, McBane’s experience proves that social media can pay off richly for business owners who take the time to use it.

His strategy is multi-pronged. He has a website, where he publishes his beer and food menus. Because Tap & Mallet’s selection of draft beers changes continually, the site gives customers an easy way to check what’s on tap.

His website also hosts a blog, where McBane posts short articles on the pub and on any topic that strikes his fancy-any topic, that is, that relates back to beer. The blog serves two purposes. It lets customers stay in touch with McBane and his pub. And it serves up a growing collection of beer-related content. That, in turn, contributes to Tap & Mallet’s respectable Google rank: if you search for “beer + Rochester New York”, the pub’s home page appears within the first five or six results.

But it’s Twitter where McBane most clearly demonstrates the power of social media. A year after opening his Twitter account, McBane has cultivated over 500 followers. He’s also recently launched a Tap & Mallet iPhone app that followers can use to check the pub’s menu and even place orders if they want.

Sometimes his tweets are links to web articles about craft beers. (He uses hash tags on terms like “craft beer” and “Rochester” to help people find his tweets via the software’s search function.)

For the majority of his tweets, however, McBane has one goal in mind: give followers an excuse to drop by for a pint. His selection of draft beers is continually rotating, for instance. So McBane tweets when new beers go on tap. He tweets updates when he’s holding an event-a beer social or a pig roast or a tasting. And he tweets Twitter-only specials.

“People like the exclusivity,” he says.

McBane, for his part, likes the fact that it’s marketing with a clear and tangible effect. He’ll broadcast a secret word that customers can use to get a special price-and within an hour or two, fifteen or twenty people will show up.

It’s marketing with measurable results.

But there’s more to it than that. Social media allows McBane to extend Tap & Mallet into the virtual world. “We’re a beer and food community,” he says-and adds that it’s also a business where you “live or die” on your regulars. By making it easy to stay in touch with his customers, social media helps ensure Tap & Mallet regulars return. Regularly.

And it costs McBane pennies-a couple minutes of phone time, his web hosting fees. Nor does he invest huge amounts of time-maybe 20 minutes a day, on average. Convenience, in fact, is a priority. He recently installed a Facebook app so he can update his Facebook page from his phone. His website beer menu doubles as his on-site beer menu-when he needs new copies of the print menu, he prints them out from the site. That way he only needs to update the menu in one place.

McBane hasn’t abandoned conventional marketing altogether. He generally has one print ad running at any given time in one of Rochester’s local weeklies. That, no doubt, helps him reach people who wouldn’t find him on Twitter or Facebook.

But print is a static media, and McBane understands the lure of variety. Even outside the sphere of social media, he gravitates toward marketing ideas that build on the same kind of novelty afforded by a constantly changing beer menu. His pub doubles as a gallery space for local artists, for instance. This generates good will in the local arts community (most artists sell at least one or two pieces per show). It gives customers something to talk about. But equally important, it ensures that the pub walls are periodically refreshed. “You hang pictures on your wall in your house, and after awhile, you don’t see them any more,” he says. “It’s the same here, for our regulars.” Swapping out the art every few months injects a bit of proverbial spice into the pub’s atmosphere.

McBane also recently purchased a 1956 Austin Princess limousine on EBay. (You can see pictures of him towing it to Rochester from New Hampshire ) “It needs some mechanical work and a re-spray,” he says-a paint job that will include adding the Tap & Mallet logo. “I’ll have it on the road next summer.”

At first glance, using an antique car as a marketing tool might seem a world apart from Twitter.

But it’s not. For McBane, a cool old car is all about personality-or perhaps more precisely personableness: a means of connecting, on a personal level, with customers.

And it works. “We grew our business during a recession,” he says. How much? “I would have been happy with this rate of growth in any economy.”

Yes, social media takes a bit of creative flair. And yes, it helps when your target market is social media-savvy. But as Joe McBane has found, for a relatively small investment of time and money, tools like blogging and Twitter and Facebook can seed genuine word-of-mouth-and deliver a measurable benefit to a business’ bottom line.

Who still hates social media?

Some have been vocal in suggesting that the principles are right but the execution is worth only throwing out and replacing with “something real”.

In Jeremiah Owyang’s recent blog post following the Forbes CMO summit in Florida, the former Forrester analyst and now strategist for the Altimeter Group claimed that this group of chief marketing officers had “elevated” the social media discussion.  Despite the prospect of shrinking marketing spend, he says, the marketeers had seen opportunities to “innovate with inexpensive channels” and not a moment too soon, as they were facing something new: a loss of power to the empowered consumer.

Owyang points out that social media in particular was “on the lips of nearly everyone”, with a focus on how it could apply to changes in influence, reputation management and be integrated with existing activity.  One example he cites from the companies represented at the event is that of Ritz-Carlton hotels, whose hotel managers apparently review online chatter about their hotel before doing anything else of a morning.

Overall, 70% of CMOs polled by Forbes said they’d be doing more work in social media next year, now comfortable that it offers real value, though measurement was still in its infancy.

So how does the picture look in the UK?  There is some caution but big organsiations have been listening and in some cases joining the conversations too.   Retail is one sector where business understands the need for customer dialogue.  It was more of an old fashioned PR stunt but Debenhams used social media to good effect with a twitter assistants day in September.   Habitat was an early adopter but got off to a false start with the hashtags debacle, in which they attempted to piggyback serious stories like the Iran election protests in order to flog lampshades.  ASDA’s new Aisle Spy and Your ASDA blogs are examples of a much more considered approach to long term engagement.

Twelve months ago the attitude of big business to social media ranged from cautious interest to total disregard.  Now, in the UK too, the sound of consumer chatter is gaining an audience in the board room.

In today’s guest blog post Staniforth Manchester intern, Andrew Doyle, checks the scores of UK football clubs when it comes to the Facebook league.

With the season just under a third of the way through, English football’s most successful clubs are battling against each other for domestic dominance. But it is not only within the Premier League that England’s footballing giants are competing for success. Research conducted by Revolution magazine indicates that the country’s top teams are also competing with each other in terms of their popularity on Facebook.

Leading the pack with over one million fans signed up to the club’s official Facebook group is Liverpool, while Manchester United are just behind their studded heels with 955,377 followers. Also making it into the top ten, although trailing some way behind are Arsenal and Chelsea, with Stoke

The growing presence of football clubs within the social media network is not, perhaps, something to be surprised by.

Before the investment of wealth through the BSkyB revolution, it was easy to see how football clubs regarded their fans as one of the main reason for their existence. Compare that to the initial changes stimulated by BSkyB’s involvement and the subsequent affluence it generated, it is possible to see how football clubs came to see fans less in this way and more as customers, each of whom is a potential stakeholder in a commercial transaction.

Thus it comes as no shock to me that football clubs are using sites such as Facebook in an attempt to ‘get back in touch’ and communicate with fans and the community in an effort to bridge the divide that has been created. However could this be regarded as something of a two-edged sword? This leads to the question: what are the motives for clubs having a presence on such sites? Is this altruism and benevolence or a shrewd and cynical attempt to raise the profile of clubs across the world in a business still dominated by global markets and financial opportunism?

While the banks, collectively, may be short of friends right now, one bank is stashing away praise for its foray into social media.

First Direct - pioneers of the UK’s first telephone bank - launched its “live” site  a month ago to resounding welcomes in online places such as here and here.

So, I think we can agree that a bank providing a forum for both good and bad comments from its customers is a bold move and one to be applauded.

But another interesting dimension to this is raised in First Direct CEO, Matt Colebrook’s customer message a month on from the launch.

While he describes the social media initiative (or is it a culture change?) as “a new voice for customers”, “the right thing to do” and “overwhelming” in the response it’s generated, he’s careful to qualify this with “Clearly we can’t be all things to all people” and “we won’t be able to offer everything that’s been suggested”.

And that’s fair enough. What social media gives customers is the chance to be heard and taken, perhaps, more seriously than before as their views are not kept behind closed doors or on a private phone call but in the visible, searchable online arena. But, for businesses, there will always be a limit, as Colebrook suggests, on what’s possible and customers have the choice to live within those limits, or not.

And maybe it’s this dilemma that causes social media anxiety for some organisations: “If we engage openly in an online forum with customers, will they criticise us or ask for things we can’t possibly provide, so disappointing them and harming our brand?”

Well, if they’re unhappy, they’ll talk about your brand whether you choose to engage with them or not. So, opting for the conversation provides an opportunity to turn the detractor around. And, to paraphrase Colebrook again, you won’t please all of the people all of the time. But if can demonstrate that you’ve listened and are taking the time to explain, publicly, what you can and can’t deliver, it places you ahead of the brand that says: “This is what we sell, are you havin’ it or what?”

So well done to First Direct and let other businesses take heart: social media shouldn’t be seen as the “lynch mob online”, but an ongoing discussion between company and customer that could even - gasp - be a win-win.

Following on from my recent blog, Lily is Logging Off, in which I considered the rather cynical reasons why Lily Allen has had enough of the social networking space, I am now most intrigued about the recent goings-on of a certain Stephen Fry.

He quit Twitter, then changed his mind; blamed it on feeling very low and depressed, a symptom of his bipolar disorder.

It was a disagreement between Fry and another tweeter who described Fry’s tweets as “a bit…boring” which lead him to temporarily quit the site.

But for me it’s not the fact that Fry, rather impulsively it seems, announced he was retiring from Twitter, it’s the astonishing coverage it received and the unquestionable candour that Fry has displayed.

The Sunday Times (front page), Guardian, Telegraph, Sun… they’ve all harvested a good story out of it which in itself is quite incredible. Twitter is not a stand-alone community and any mildly contentious or salacious tweet, particularly by a celebrity, will make the national press.

Let’s face it, unless your tweets are protected they are open to everyone - and that goes for journalists looking for a good scoop.

Clearly, as one of the first celebrities to embrace Twitter - and now having a massive 945,000 followers - Fry’s announcement to retire was bound to cause a stir. But, in the grand scale of things, and particularly in light of his rather quick retraction, this really is a tornado in a teacup.

Not only that but if you consider the person that is Stephen Fry - a highly intelligent, slightly ungainly, old fashioned eccentric who will in no way appeal to everyone - he is bound to be described as boring from time to time!

Personally, I admire his honesty and thought his retrospective tweet which read: “l feel more sheepish than a sheep and more twattish than a twat” was exceptional and I’m sure his “twitter quitter” moment will only enhance his national treasure status.

So, I was hacked by a spammer…and social media saved me.

A fellow PR professional described the experience of having one’s Twitter account invaded in more technicolour (and unrepeatable) terms but it added up to the same thing: a mini, online crisis isn’t nice.

Why a crisis? I’m not a multinational brand with millions of customers who could, so easily, be turned off me and onto a competitor by a faux pas, I’m an individual, with nothing to lose, right?

Maybe. But when your Twitter followers are being bombarded - in your name - by the spammer’s bogus tweets that may put their own online security at risk, they could be forgiven for being a bit miffed. And if a migration of followers away from your account ensues, who could blame them?

But that’s where the power of social media comes into play: within minutes of the first illicit tweet leaving my Twitter account, people in the network were alerting me that something was wrong and sharing advice on what to do next. Nobody was offended and everyone was sympathetic to the downright inconvenience a hacker causes all round. After I’d apologised to those who’d been spammed, the messages back showed the patience and understanding of, well, a community rallying round.

Given that I’ve never actually met the majority of people in my online network and our mutual connection is by virtue of  social networking platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn, this is a reassuring example of human interaction at its best.

Now take that and apply it to a company faced with a crisis; but a company that has - through its people - built up a community through engagement, conversation, sharing of knowledge and being neighbourly. Just as my online network extended a helping hand to me, why shouldn’t the same loyalty be given to a brand in need?

Some say social media is being sold as “snake oil”. But trust me, it’s good to know you’ve got friends when you’ve been bitten.

Today’s guest blog post from Vanessa Buendia, journalism graduate and recent intern at Staniforth London, deals with her nocturnal social media habit: StumbleUpon.

For an insomniac like me sleepless nights used to be incredibly boring. However, for more than two years now they’ve become something of a delight.

As soon as I notice that Mr Sandman has once again forgotten my address, I reach out for my computer. Once I’ve opened my Mozilla Firefox I go ahead and click on that little green and blue button on the left hand corner of my browser and travel to the exhilarating universe that is StumbleUpon.

Whatever happens next is totally out of my control; it’s all in the hands of algorithms and more than 7.5 million of my peers. With that little button, instead of surfing the net in the calm waters of a traditional search engine, I ride a Tsunami-sized wave of information and interesting pages. All I have to do in return is vote whether or not I’ve liked the visited site and hence help my fellow surfers experience the same internet quality.

There’s been quite a number of webpages which have bought traffic from StumbleUpon and similar bookmarking services and made a success of themselves. With SU rates as low as just $0.05 per visitor it’s definitely worth a try. So how is it then that an industry as avant-garde as PR has almost completely ignored them?

Well I’m sure many have tried but failed. The thing with SU is that you are not sending out a press release to a newspaper. You are not selling your story to a journalist. You are talking directly to your audience and if you do not fulfil their expectations they have the power to vote you out of the system and leave you to die in the arid wasteland of oblivion (you know where that is, it’s the resting place for brilliant ideas such as the New Coke and Green Ketchup).

As a result, when you’ve finished your campaign you’ll know exactly how much impact you’ve had and you’ll have an exact number of how many people liked it or not.

So how does one become a successful bookmark? Well first of all you should try the service yourself. As soon as you start using it you’ll learn the first and most important rule in bookmarking: it’s all about the content!

The real challenge of SU is that you’re audience has to like you and their taste is much more sophisticated than you could have ever imagined. So if you don’t target your audience correctly and entice them with exciting visual aids or multimedia, chances are they are going to vote you out soon. It’s all about being the popular guy on campus.

A good thing about SU is that you can buy small amounts of traffic and start test driving your campaign. Then with the results obtained you can optimise it until you get it just right.

However, the biggest perk that bookmarking sites have is the fact that you can cut out the middle man and directly impact your audience. You will get to start a bilateral relationship with them and you get to learn exactly what they need from you.

One thing is for sure, after trying the service you’ll be surprised with the feedback you get.

The World Wide Web has radically shaped the way we do business, in particular that of the fashion retail sector.

Estimated to be worth over £4.1bn by the end of 2009*, the sector is booming, with no self respecting high street retailer now without a transactional website. 

The savvy aren’t, however, solely using the web as a sales platform.

Responding to the rise in popularity of social media, a new culture is emerging, labelled by industry leaders as “democratic consumerism”.

Pioneering the move towards the new culture is Asda Chief Executive, Andy Bond, who recently announced plans to open up the workings of the business to scrutiny from customers in a move to build greater trust and long-term loyalty amongst shoppers. 

Among the range of initiatives to be introduced by the retailer is Asda’s new blog, http://www.aislespyblog.com/, which invites customers to participate in the buying process - voting on their favourite styles and colour ways.

Still in its infancy, the blog is already enjoying a positive response.  Speaking on it its launch Beth Somi, George Marketing and PR Manager, said: “http://www.aislespyblog.com/ is a great way for our customers to understand more about what goes on behind the scenes at Asda and to know more about our colleagues who work here.

“I enjoy talking to people about my job, so this is a great opportunity to do it while I’m at work. There is so much to talk about, we have new ranges launching in store every week so there is always something going on. The tough decision is knowing what to blog about so that I don’t bore everyone!

“I love the fact that I can ask for feedback on my blog and that the readers respond in such a positive way. It’s a great way for us to get instant ideas on our new ranges. As I speak to the teams here at George House, they are excited about what we can ask for comments on in the future.”

An example of an entirely web-based retailer epitomising democratic fashion is http://www.styleshake.com/.  Possibly one of the most ingenious fashion websites to launch in recent years, StyleShake.com puts the customer at the heart of the proposition, allowing the user to design a garment from scratch choosing fabric, colour style and trim.

The site goes against the typical nature of the fashion industry with trends that ‘trickle-down’ from the catwalk to the high street, asking the user to vote and design exactly what they want to wear.

It is also a fashion community with users rating and commenting on one another’s designs. Recent celebrity fans include Duffy and Holly Branson.

Not only good news for fashion addicts looking to create an individual look, StyleShake.com is a pretty good business model.  The retailer only produces what its users order so there is never over-supply; good for the environment and for the businesses overheads.

Chief Executive Officer of StyleShake.com, Iris Ben-David, comments: “StyleShake is all about empowering the user, providing them with the means to express themselves and celebrate their creativity. We are delighted to offer new ways of collaboration”.

The retailer’s vision is to become a leading online resource that revolutionises the way we consume fashion by making it much more personal and individual. 

A design obsessive from a tender age and regularly frustrated shopper, I personally, am delighted by what looks to be a customer-empowered future.  But what does democratic consumerism mean for the future of retail?

Its potential to impact on the overall business model is huge.  Armed with increased customer insight, the risk of costly, unpopular bulk buys will undoubtedly be lessened, reducing retailers’ need to discount and perhaps marking the beginning of the end of the January sale.  The retailer/supplier relationship will also inevitably see a change.   The potential for collections to be further tailored by store in response to regional demand an increasing reality.

Democratic consumerism, it’s an interesting one to watch, one I will certainly be following with a close eye.  

* Taken from Mintel’s Fashion Online report, August 2009

So Lily Allen is officially a neo-Luddite.

She’s quit Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and email, ditched her Macbook and BlackBerry and apparently, according to numerous newspaper reports, her only means of communication with the outside world is a home phone and an old mobile.

Putting aside for a moment the underlying message that Lily Allen is to become a recluse, her reason behind such a decision could well be deeper than we’re led to believe.

We all know that the Internet made Lily Allen (in a very real sense) but as a notoriously outspoken and sometimes angry user of social networking sites, has she laid herself bare, torn down every personal barrier and let the world see her for exactly what she is and what she believes in?

In celebrity world this can surely be dangerous. We all love a sense of mystery but with Lily, we’ve seen it, heard it and she’s probably worn a T shirt with it emblazoned across it.

But it works both ways. She’s encouraged opinion and some of it will have undoubtedly been hard to swallow. Random strangers calling you fat, ugly, brattish, vulgar must surely instil a sense of fear… which is likely to lead to silence.

Reports suggest that her boyfriend asked her to choose between him or Twitter, but could this in fact be a shrewd move by her management: “Ditch Twitter, keep your opinions to yourself for a while, be seen to disappear into obscurity, oh and let’s get a press release out …”

As for the effects this may have on her personal life, she’s hardly going to become a recluse. With A-list friends like Kate Moss and Agyness Dean, whilst gigging at some of London’s coolest venues, I very much doubt that her decision to log off will leave her short of party invites.