It’s official: the job of handling conversations online is a REAL JOB!
Social media guru, Jeremiah Owyang has started a list showing the emergence of people filling the roles of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers in the larger corporations.
And ok, it may look US and tech industry-centric now, but the Web knows no geographical boundaries (erm, well maybe China) and the conversations about you and your business can be happening online anytime, anywhere.
The trick is knowing a) they’re out there and b) how to handle it.
The sun has shined in the UK for at least two days, so I thought I would post on a holiday theme!
Spotted something that fits the bill on Edelman Authenticities. Con Frantzeskos refers to a recent Greek holiday where the tour guides etc, instead of passing the hat round for loose change at the end, asked for people to post on TripAdvisor about their experiences.
They strike me as more savvy than the average multi-national!
Con describes the rationale perfectly….
The groups that provided services and tours concluded our experiences with a request for a review on TripAdvisor.com or a mention on travel forums.
The only way these businesses can build awareness and trust is via the referrals of their users. In the old days, the primary means would have been travel media - a “pray for space”, rare option.
Now, it seems to be TripAdvisor - a democratised, trust building information source where anyone can review and rank their travel experiences, and anyone can find the reviews easily.
A post by Victor Godinez questions whether Apple is transforming into Microsoft considering all the recent problems customers of the technology company have had to face recently.
To counter the problems with their new MobileMe service, Apple has launched a Status Blog at the request of Steve Jobs.
The fact that Apple has finally discovered blogging is remarkable and long overdue but it does make sense that they’ve chosen to do it at a time of need, when they need to keep customers, who are relying on thie service for both personal and professional reasons, updated.
First, a declaration of interest - I am a fan of The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade. That aside, his comments on the uneasy relationship between journalists and bloggers articulate exactly the dilemma of journalists pre-internet: writing for an invisible body of readers whose views on what you’re writing remain largely unknown. Not so now. With bloggers and, well, anyone with broadband, able to interact with the news and pass comment, the monopoly on the message no longer lies with the “fourth estate”. With the abundance of online channels and social media to participate in, the conversation is gaining currency.
An interesting insight into online professional networks can be found here with an audio discussion between FT management writer, Adam Jones, and LinkedIn’s Kevin Eyres. LinkedIn positions itself as a professional - as distinct from social - networking community in which business people can build contacts, get expert advice and manage their careers. Strictly no biting zombie applications or virtual sheep being hurled at one another here, methinks.
I’ve spent the last few years envisaging an application that would allow me to know what my journalist contacts were up to, minute-by-minute. I’ve thought about a messenger-based system that would allow me to drop a quick note to them to see if it’s a convenient time to chat about a possible news angle on behalf of my client because there’s nothing worse than calling when they’re on deadline.
Well it’s arrived and it’s growing in popularity. If Facebook is the new Second Life, then Twitter is the new Facebook. It’s the tool us PRs have been waiting for.
For those of you who haven’t come across Twitter, I encourage you to watch this video courtesy of Commoncraft.
Exploring Twitter from a PR perspective has been interesting and has shown initial potential but it needs to be accepted by the masses to make it truely useful. Here are my thoughts on potential future uses of Twitter for PRs:
- Online Research: Drawing on a pool of social media enthusiasts (why else would they have Twitter accounts?) has turned Twitter into a great resource for research. Answers to questions are incredibly quick and offer great insight into areas you might not be familiar with. Working on adventure sports for one of my clients, I had to wade through media databases and avoid the much-hyped but low traffic websites. After requested help on Twitter, within minutes I had reached a community of adventure sports enthusiats who offered guidance on forums where extreme sports fans actually interact. Thanks everyone!
- Contacts: I wonder how many journalists out there would sign up for Twitter if they knew it would put an end to calls and emails from PRs at inappropriate times? Well only 27 so far following a search for “UK” and “journalist”. They’re obviously all too shy to put on their real profession. If newsdesks had Twitter at their disposal, the relationship between hacks and flacks could change dramatically. From instant updates like “Don’t bother me. I’m on deadline!” through to “Looking for urgent case study about….” journalists should be using Twitter as a tool to interact with PRs. If newsdesks are evolving into 24-hour bodies, maybe it’s time for their journalists to move away from resources like ResponseSource to a more immediate communication tool.
- Driver to website or blog: Driving interested audiences to a particular website is a regular occurance on the application. Most of the people I follow are comentators in the social media field and so links on Twitter to new posts on their blog make it easy for me to make a snap judgement on whether I’m interested in the topic or not. As previously noted, Gordon Brown, or rather Number 10, uses Twitter to publicise the PM’s current activities and highlights press releases from their press office. I have no doubt I’m one of the first to read these releases and I like to think journalists are using this as a resource to follow the PMs movements.
- Listen to the conversation: Using tools such as Tweetscan, PRs can search for who is talking about their brand and in what context. (Thanks for that one Jon!)
It wouldn’t surprise me if companies with busy press offices set up their own Twitter feeds to announce press releases, but don’t bank on having masses of followers. Brands with a strong online following and dedicated brand advocates, such as Apple, will benefit highly from this but it will be interesting to see which companies experiment with this tool as it gains popularity online and with mainstream media.
I agree with James Horton that the key to Twitter for PRs is to experiment - the same philosophy behind any new media tool - but don’t forget that this is a community. Don’t see this solely as a resource. Ultimately, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out.
Tom Watson, the first blogging MP, has announced the setting up of a ‘Power of Information Task Force’. No, don’t have nightmares, this isn’t Tom, George Orwell and Blofeld all sat round a table in Room 101, this is potentially empowering for citizens!
Tom was seen as radical when he started a blog five years ago. He says…
“People couldn’t believe that I had opened myself up to such scrutiny and occasional daily abuse. But the blog broke down the walls between legislators and electors in a way that interested me. So I persevered. Today I’m no longer a pioneer. There are thousands of political bloggers. And politicians can no longer set to default broadcast mode. They have to engage.”
Social media is always viewed as a tech-geek solution when in actual fact it’s really simple and old fashioned. People being able to talk to each other and connect in a way that has become lost in a television/call centre world. Here’s how Tom describes it….
“The 19th century co-operative movements had their roots in people pooling resources to make, buy or distribute physical goods. Modern online communities are the new co-operatives. Mrs Watson is a regular user of Netmums. It’s a great site. Parents chat, and offer, I’ve been there, advice on everything from baby whispering to school admissions. Except it’s not just a handful of mums and dads, it’s thousands of them, available in your living room, 24 hours a day.Sounds like hell well, it’s a lifeline when your baby’s screaming at four in the morning, you have no idea why and you just need to know you’re not alone. But my point is, imagine if quarter of a million mums decided to meet at Wembley Stadium to discuss the best way to bring up their kids. Midwives would be there dispensing advice. Health visitors, nursery teachers, welfare rights advisers would be there. Even politicians would try and get in on the act. But when twice this number chooses to meet together in the same place online, we just ignore them. That’s going to have to change.”
There are already good examples of government putting this into practice….
“And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode. And in the week where the digital world went crazy over Mystarbucksidea.com (I’ve already voted for free Wifi), NHS choices launched a blog about diabetes, bringing together the people who treat the illness and the people who receive treatment. It’s a brilliant idea and hopefully will foster a new information community who can work together to improve things.“Let me give you and example of this by naming a public servant that I think should have his desk moved into Number 10. Peter Jordan works at DirectGov. His job is to assess how people find the DirectGov site, what pages they look at and what they do when they get there. Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.”
Full version of Tom’s speech here. Good discussion on politicians using social media at Wadds in the last couple of days
Last night we attended a highly informative presentation by Blake Chandlee, commercial director of Facebook hosted by TBWA\Manchester. The presentation to prospective clients, media and account handlers gave an insight into the company that can only be described as a social media success story.
He addressed some interesting issues including recent media claims that ‘Facebook fatigue’ has kicked in and active user numbers are dwindling. Blake claims quite the opposite citing the rise in users following the recent launch of the social utility across other European countries. He explained the ambitious system of translating the huge network into different languages with the support of the community through the ‘Translation’ application. What astonished me more than anything was the speed with which the translations took place within the community- just 8 hours for one of the languages!
He covered numerous topics including polls (”Don’t ever pay for one”), Beacon (”Didn’t go down well”), Apps (”Some work but a lot fail”), taking on HSBC and even Mark Zuckerberg (”He looks about 12!”). The most interesting aspect was Facebook’s perception of itself as an altruistic company, seeing themselves as a social utility rather than a network - a tool to connect people and extend relationships rather than a social space. There’s conversation at the moment about the sharing of information and applications across multiple user spaces as encouraged by Google Open Social. Blake explained that Facebook is excited about this development and has no goal to keep users locked into using the site.
All this relates to the user experience. Something that Facebook are trying to make as enjoyable as possible. In relation to marketing, this means you’re likely to see the flashy side bar ads disappear in the near future and clients investing more in social advertising. Currently appearing in the newsfeed section of the site, these are likely to develop although Blake did note that personal information would always be kept secure and never given out to third party advertisers despite the adverts becoming more personalised.
As for the continual barrage of app spam we receive every day from so-called friends? Well Facebook has banned ‘force invites’ in apps - something I wasn’t aware but probably only because it was publicised to the developer community. As Blake commented, if an app is forcing you to invite friends, just report them and they’ll be kicked out.
He did also comment afterwards that their business plan is constantly changing so who knows what we can really expect from Facebook in the future? Only Mark Zuckerberg really knows and so let’s hope he really is one of those rare individuals who “think different“.
Technology has been leading the way in social media for some time. I’m not talking about your PC, Mac or handheld device that allows you to poke your friends any time of the day or night. I’m referring to the way big tech brands, such as Dell and Nokia, have invested in social media marketing campaigns.
This is, no doubt, due to the incredible growth in tech bloggers during the early days of web 2.0. Where it’s usually the automotive industry who receives great acclaim for pushing the boundaries of marketing, tech was in there first this time. Of course they had an unfair advantage by playing on their own, familar ground without even having to move from their desks.
Despite the incredible growth of this area, some have risen to the dizzy heights of what could be classed as mainstream. Blogs such as Boing Boing or Gizmodo attract huge audiences along with recognised authority in the blogosphere. So what happens when you make one mad? They tend to be quite vocal about it as 118 118 have just discovered following the recent ’padded lamposts’ PR stunt. Ok, maybe not mad. More embarrassed for falling for such a stunt. But don’t worry TechDigesters, you weren’t alone. Even ITN thought it was 1st April.
