18 posts tagged “online”
There is a vast amount of research that has been conducted recently regarding the consumers' preferred method of receiving marketing communication. A recent study by Forrester Research, and commissioned by ExactTarget, highlights that the majority of consumers today still have a strong affinity towards email.
The important take out: Consumers prefer email at a rate of three-to-one when compared with any other avenue for marketing communications such as social media, Instant Messaging, phone and SMS!
Despite the abundance of research that all points towards email being the marketing method of choice for consumers, why do marketers continue to ignore this?
Despite the spike of Internet users using social media, for example three quarters of Australian online adults use social technologies (Forrester: Australian Adult Social Technographics Revealed 2008), consumers in general are NOT open to receiving marketing communication via this channel.
As social media continues to boom with new channels for communication being created everyday with new social networking sites and the like popping up, there is an overreliance and tendency to use this medium for all-purposes in order to reach the masses.
Unfortunately we forego the very fundamental principles of Marketing 101. We need to stop, think, plan and go back to basics:
- Who are our customers?
- Where are they?
- What are their preferences for receiving marketing messages?
- What are the right messages for each customer segment?
- What channel do we use to reach them?
A quick Google search and some top line research is enough to reveal where our customers' preferences sit. It's all very simple. Follow the basic principles of marketing and target the appropriate marketing messages to the appropriate consumers based on their preferences using the appropriate channels!
Sadly, we are missing the point! We're frustrating consumers and, ultimately, not getting the outcomes that we desire!
Nate Cochrane pens his rules for social media etiquette on iTNews. And in a style true to the very fundamentals of social media which encourage active sharing and participation, he has made a point to list the rules he outlines as a work in progress and has opened it up for discussion on the site.
One of the rules that he points out is one that we tend to forget: ‘Quality NOT quantity’. Too often PRs get flack for doing a last minute dash to sign up as many people in their network to become friends/ fans on their clients’ Facebook groups and pages or on their Twitter handles.
As PRs, we need to continue to educate our clients that the real value does not lie in the sheer volume of people we sign up but rather in the quality of the people we engage (even if it’s only a handful!).
Consider who your target audience is, where do they frequent and how to reach them. Who is in your fans/ friends extended networks. Are they the right audience to target?
Using Twitter as an example, it’s important to do the analysis and drill down into who the person is that you want to connect with, get to know them, follow them for a while and find out what they write about. Also have a look into who follows that person, are they the appropriate person for your client to be reaching out to or is there someone in their Twitter network that is better?
The following tool can help you determine the most appropriate people to follow:
http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/
If we want to get some real and long lasting results for our clients, the key is to make sure that we’re speaking to the right audiences!
It's been really interesting to see how the terrorist attacks in India, Mumbai, have played out using social media - Twitter and blogging in particular. I am led to believe, in fact, that social media even beat traditional media to the punch with the announcement of this news.
CNN has reported that "...an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets", were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates".
Some Twitter users used the micro-blogging platform to send out calls for blood donors to make their way to Mumbai hospital where existing and anticipated casualties were being sent. It was also used to get news out fast on those that had been injured and killed and information regarding support numbers for those that had friends and family involved in the attacks were also posted on Twitter.
Although this has been a great tool to get information out on what those on the ground were experiencing in instantaneous nature, it has also fuelled a rumour-mill. There are accounts of Twitter users publishing posts exaggerating the number of casualties and generally sensationalising the situation of the attacks.
CNN reported in the article I cite above: "What is clear that although Twitter remains a useful tool for mobilizing efforts and gaining eyewitness accounts during a disaster, the sourcing of most of the news cannot be trusted."
People caught up in the Mumbai attacks, including the hotel hostages, were also using their blogs as a news medium to disseminate information on the situation on the ground in India. Bloggers posted their accounts of the tragedy when it unfolded, as it unfolded.
This is indeed a strong reminder of how powerful social media can be as a disseminator of news - whether this news is entirely factually correct or not. Social media has the power to beat traditional media to the punch due to its instantaneous nature and a force to be reckoned with. It's an online tour de force for distributing instant information to the masses.
I'm interested to get your thoughts on this. Do you think social media played too large a part to play in telling the stories surrounding these tragic circumstances? Do you think it levels the playing field between traditional media and citizen journalists and social media? Feel free to contribute other parts of the discussion that are missing in this post.
I’m curious to explore whether it is possible that social media and new technologies can be directly linked to today’s growing emo culture. Before I get into this, let’s first take a look at the latest statistics from eMarketer regarding teens and their online consumption.
Although these statistics are based on research with U.S teens, I am highly inclined to say it’s indicative of what we are seeing in this part of the world.
- 19% of active Internet users in July this year (32.4 million people) were under 18
- 82% of US teens (12-17 years old) will use Internet monthly next year
- Nearly 2/3 of all teens have a mobile phone
- They navigate between different options for communication (text messaging, IM, social networking, email) – and expect the transition between these options to be seamless
- Teens DO NOT care about nor distinguish between ‘online’, ‘offline’ and ‘mobile’ communications – it’s purely about ‘COMMUNICATION’
- The tools they use to interact with one another are less important than how simple the actual interaction is, how seamlessly they can move across devices and how engaging the actual experience is
These teens don’t care about the mobile devices they use nor do they consider how it is made possible that they can jump online from anywhere. They are only actively thinking about the conversations they are having with their friends online – I can chat with my friends via IM, email, we can connect on Facebook and MySpace, we can text message, we can even catch up in cool virtual worlds. Today’s 'digital natives' expect to be able to communicate online from anywhere and at anytime.
I have plenty of questions. Will there be dire implications with the fact that teens make no distinction between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ communication? Is social media creating the Great Social Divide? Is this audience highly sociable online but less attentive in real life? Will we see a growing number of social media junkies turn real life recluse?
As Jack Sargeant put it in The Australian last year: “Youth subcultures emerge, vanish and mutate continually. Often this happens beneath the radar of the news media and is of interest only to the adherents of the trend and perhaps their peers. When these subcultures do enter the spotlight it is almost invariably because of a perceived crisis; traditionally, narcotic and sexual abandon, crime and suicide.”
This is indicative of what we have seen with the rise of the emo on the likes of MySpace. Is social media responsible for the emo-generation? I had never even heard of the term ‘emo’ until social networking site, MySpace, was launched.
Last year, two girls committed a double suicide. Unfortunately, this is a tragedy that could have been avoided. A message was even posted on their MySpace profiles - "RIP Jodie and Steph" - a day before the girls went missing.
Are teens breeding unhealthy habits online? When I was a kid, my parents told me to play outside and get some sunshine. There’s something to be said about the amount of time teens spend online today.
Really interested to hear your thoughts? Is social media playing a part in the growing emo subculture? Should we be monitoring the online activities and rituals of those that are under 18? Penny for your thoughts!
A colleague recently asked me how her clients can integrate social media and web 2.0 into their organisations in order to more effectively work on collaborative projects across mobile workforces. What tools help close geographical borders within organisations? Are there easier ways to communicate other than back-and-forth email, telephone and IM that helps employees share work internally? I figured I would address these questions in a public forum.
As we all know and have heard time and time again, the use of web 2.0 tools in the enterprise is becoming more important and increasingly evident. It facilitates an environment where workers are less constrained by geographic borders, allowing them to communicate and collaborate across dispersed workforces (whether it be different offices, states, countries with relative ease).
There are particular tools that give employees have access to content that helps them be more productive in their job function. Tools such as wikis are helping organisations promote and share talent, IP, experience, case studies, learnings and so forth.
I would make the suggestion for organisations wishing to foster a culture of sharing and collaboration that they take a plunge by implementing an internal Wiki. A wiki is a site that allows you to create, edit and share content easily with one another. A great example is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia created and edited by citizen journalists (you and me).
An internal wiki would allow employees to manage work documents efficiently. Allows one to create, edit and link documents that they’re working on. This allows you to track a history of changes to documents and the people that made particular changes. It's a much more efficient and user-friendly system - and is definitely easier than storing down multiple versions of the same document.
This about the documents that you have saved to your work folders. I guarantee if you're anything like me that you have versions titled .final, .FINALFINAL, .v2, .v3, .v3LK_edits and the list goes on. Every Tom, Dick and Harry adds their flavour to a press release (for example) and all of a sudden you are stretched to figure out which is the 'REAL' final document.
From my knowledge as well, a company intranet can be hosted on a wiki - although I look to my blogging community to back me up or knock me down on this one.
Another fabulous Web 2.0 tool is RSS or 'Real Simple Syndication'. I would have to say that this is one of the most underestimated tools to date. It complements other Web 2.0 tools. For example, using an internal wiki, all employees would be able to subscribe to an RSS feed - which is basically a web feeds. This means if changes are made to the wiki, the new content would be sent directly to the employee (can be in the form of an email update) with a link and possibly even a summary of the content changes. This enables employees to decide whether they want to click through to the site. This means that employees do not have to manually log on to the wiki every so often to check whether amends to internal documents have made been made.
I’d like to build a list of wiki software that exists in Australia (and costs). If anyone has any insight, I invite you to share them with me.
I've been curious to get a better understanding of companies in Australia that are using social media in some way, shape or form as part of an overarching business strategy. I'm not really seeing too many brands using consistent and long-term social media as a vehicle for communication with their audiences.
This is not to say that there aren't companies operating in this space. However, I am finding that companies in Oz are mainly using social or new media in short-term campaigns to meet short-term objectives. For example, there are companies using social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to launch products or make announcements. What we need to keep in mind here is that once we create a network such as this, it really needs to be maintained. You need to be in it for the long haul.
This thinking sparked after a conversation I had with a journalist earlier this week. I think [and emphasis on 'think'] we both came to the conclusion that there is more that we can be doing in this space in Australia. We need to see more companies here using long-term social media activities such as corporate blogging for long-term gain.
Social media can be a successful tool when it is used as a long-term vehicle. Most importantly, it lets you listen to what conversations are happening online around your brand. Once you have a listening strategy in place it provides you with an opportunity to build relationships with those influencers that are having those conversations - and finally, it provides you with the platform to directly engage with them.
And in the wise words of The Cluetrain Manifesto - "markets are conversations". Today is about building and maintaining relationships with your audiences and the best method to do this is by engaging in direct and ongoing conversations with them.
An excellent example is Telstra's nowwearetalking. The site is a platform for open and direct dialogue between Telstra and its audiences. It lets the public have its say and voice any concerns on issues affecting Australians and the telecommunications industry. This site is a long-term tool that has been implemented to increase Telstra's transparency, ultimately enhancing its public perception, reputability and credibility in Australia.
The other great aspect of this site that seems to be working in Telstra's favour is that it provides a vehicle for Telstra to tell its own stories and announce its own news first. Thanks to this site, Telstra is able bypass the gatekeepers and rather than relying on the media to communicate the news, Telstra is able to do this itself. In fact I think Australian journalists' even regularly frequent the nowwearetalking site to collect research for their own stories.
I also recently read about what Nestle is doing with social media in Australia. Nestle will be solely relying on social media advertising to launch a new character for the Kit Kat Chunky. According to Lara Sinclair, "Nestle confectionary will not use any traditional media to promote the brand."
The reason for this - social and new media allows you generate fast word of mouth and peer-to-peer recommendation. Furthermore, it allows you to act local and reach global! And as we know, statistics these days tend to be tipping in favour of peer-to-peer recommendations as trust in traditional advertising and corporations is on the decline.
I'll be tuned in to this space. If you have any case studies that you can share with me of Aussie companies using social media for long-term benefits - please let me know. Also - are there any tangible results that you can share? Examples of companies that have used social media and it has positively impacted on the bottom line?
Andrew Maiden from Telstra made a comment at this morning's Frocomm session on CEO perspectives regarding the importance of new media. The comment was around how it is no longer about 'work life balance' but that it is about 'work life integration' these days - and I couldn't agree more.
We are noticing this shift more and more thanks to new technologies such as smartphones and the plethora of other mobile devices that provide you with the capabilities to access email, IM, social media applications such as Twitter, social networking sites and other emerging technologies that are making it easier than ever to connect with work and friends from pretty much any environment.
Ultra-portable, ultra-light notebooks such as the Toshiba Portégé R500 or MacBook Air are also making it easier to take your work with you. The exciting thing here is that technology is actually keeping up with the changes of today's lifestyle. The iPhone and other MIDs are perfect examples of this.
I could spend time going into the debate about whether or not these devices and technologies are infringing on our personal lives and making it impossible to balance work and life but I’m not going to. Reason being – I don’t think this is a relevant debate anymore, at least not entirely. Thanks Andrew for point this out.
I’m not sure that people are still seeking work life balance these days. It’s idealistic and rather utopian if you ask me. By the way, feel free to slam me here if you completely disagree but I am more inclined to believe that today’s workers are happy to tip the scales one way or another from time to time. Let me put this point to life using me as an example:
I wake up early in the morning and check my email when I’m still in my pyjamas or house clothes (call it what you will). I then drive into work, get a coffee, read the Fin Review, the technology headlines and log on to my PC at the same time. I tend to emails mostly, action the important ones, talk to my teams regarding priorities, and then I review and respond to emails some more. It’s then on to client meetings, conference calls, internal and/or external WIP meetings and that will quite safely take me to the end of the day when I head home. Sometimes I go home and log on to email after dinner to do a quick check to see the emails that have hit my inbox from the APAC countries that I work with – but sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and tend to emails before heading to work. Once at work I check my emails and do more of the stuff I talk about above. I then have lunch for an hour, come back and do some work and then leave at 3pm to take my grandma to the doctor – and no, I don’t come back to work and sometimes I don’t even log back on to work emails from home.
I’m a good example of a worker that integrates work with life. I don’t try and squeeze or build my life around work instead I make sure that both complement one another. Some days I may work longer hours but such is the nature of work or responsibility, and any responsibility for that. A relationship takes time and effort – you have to put in the hard yards in these too.
I have the flexibility at my workplace to do these things and I think we are starting to see this happen across more organisations and industries.
Anyway, this is my rant. I’d love to get your thoughts on the shift from work life balance to work life integration. Do you agree/ disagree?
Andrew Maiden from Telstra made a comment at this morning's Frocomm session on CEO perspectives regarding the importance of new media. The comment was around how it is no longer about 'work life balance' but that it is about 'work life integration' these days - and I couldn't agree more.
We are noticing this shift more and more thanks to new technologies such as smartphones and the plethora of other mobile devices that provide you with the capabilities to access email, IM, social media applications such as Twitter, social networking sites and other emerging technologies that are making it easier than ever to connect with work and friends from pretty much any environment.
Ultra-portable, ultra-light notebooks such as the Toshiba Portégé R500 or MacBook Air are also making it easier to take your work with you. The exciting thing here is that technology is actually keeping up with the changes of today's lifestyle. The iPhone and other MIDs are perfect examples of this.
I could spend time going into the debate about whether or not these devices and technologies are infringing on our personal lives and making it impossible to balance work and life but I’m not going to. Reason being – I don’t think this is a relevant debate anymore, at least not entirely. Thanks Andrew for point this out.
I’m not sure that people are still seeking work life balance these days. It’s idealistic and rather utopian if you ask me. By the way, feel free to slam me here if you completely disagree but I am more inclined to believe that today’s workers are happy to tip the scales one way or another from time to time. Let me put this point to life using me as an example:
I wake up early in the morning and check my email when I’m still in my pyjamas or house clothes (call it what you will). I then drive into work, get a coffee, read the Fin Review, the technology headlines and log on to my PC at the same time. I tend to emails mostly, action the important ones, talk to my teams regarding priorities, and then I review and respond to emails some more. It’s then on to client meetings, conference calls, internal and/or external WIP meetings and that will quite safely take me to the end of the day when I head home. Sometimes I go home and log on to email after dinner to do a quick check to see the emails that have hit my inbox from the APAC countries that I work with – but sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and tend to emails before heading to work. Once at work I check my emails and do more of the stuff I talk about above. I then have lunch for an hour, come back and do some work and then leave at 3pm to take my grandma to the doctor – and no, I don’t come back to work and sometimes I don’t even log back on to work emails from home.
I’m a good example of a worker that integrates work with life. I don’t try and squeeze or build my life around work instead I make sure that both complement one another. Some days I may work longer hours but such is the nature of work or responsibility, and any responsibility for that. A relationship takes time and effort – you have to put in the hard yards in these too.
I have the flexibility at my workplace to do these things and I think we are starting to see this happen across more organisations and industries.
Anyway, this is my rant. I’d love to get your thoughts on the shift from work life balance to work life integration. Do you agree/ disagree?
I read a really interesting article on the emerging social media trend of ‘dark marketing’ which takes a very much ‘covert’ approach. It provides examples of companies that have implemented stealth tactics in order to reach and sway influencers and potential influencers without engaging them directly with a brand.
Dark Marketing was defined as “…discretely sponsored online and real world entertainment intended to reach hipster audiences that would ordinarily shun corporate shilling” by Tom Edwards in this article.
In order to give a balanced account of this marketing approach, I have provided a couple of positive and negative examples. Sony recently launched a ‘Fake Tourist’ campaign in which it seeded Sony camera users in a central location and asked them to engage with people to take their picture with the desired goal to lead to a ‘pseudo-pitch’ around the product. This approach faced widespread criticism as it was considered a sly tactic to try and drive up sales of Sony’s latest camera product.
Another example is Vespa in the U.S. (which isn’t listed in this particular article I am referring to). Vespa actually hired attractive models to ride around on its scooters and up to bystanders in order to lure them, with their looks, into asking for their phone number. At this point, the Vespa driver would hand out a phone number and ride off (kind of like what you would expect to see in a movie). The catch? When the bystanders called the number, they were actually directly connected to a Vespa dealership!
Don’t be disillusioned. There are examples of this sort of activity that can work – but importantly, the activity needs to be ‘smart’ and cannot offend consumers.
An example used in the article of where this stealth tactic has worked is McDonalds and its recent ‘Lost Ring’ campaign. The Lost Ring was a virtual reality viral game targeted at youth and aimed at subtly promoting the McDonald’s brand and its partnership with the Olympics. It was in fact so discrete that it was almost (and still is) impossible to attribute this back to the McDonald's brand. Not one single instance of a golden arch. The interesting thing here is that even post-campaign period – the site has a really simple survey mechanism to solicit feedback from site visitors – and still subtle in its branding.
Marketers are getting smarter – and so they must – especially if they (and we) want to be able to reach out to and make an impact on relevant brand influencers both online and offline.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on covert/ stealth marketing. Do you think it's right/ wrong?
One of my fellow neighbours shared a presentation that that I absolutely love and want to continue sharing with the rest of the world. The presentation simply conveys what social media is all about.
It takes all the fabulous thinking from Cluetrain Manifesto and culminates it into an easy-to-understand representation of what this online space is all about. The thinking is around how markets are conversations and business as we know it is no longer. It is the end of ''business as usual".
"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than most companies."
I'm not too sure if it is something you could package up and use to sell to all your clients but for those that are not easily offended, it makes sense of 'social media' - which has previously been something that was considered uncertain terrain - something that people have been reluctant to explore.
If you want a more insightful read, please get a copy of Cluetrain - you would think I wrote the book with how I am promoting it - you'd never tell I'm in PR!
Enjoy!
