25 posts tagged “social media”

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!

I came across some really interesting information this morning on B2B buyers in the online space that I wanted to share on with you all.

The information firstly appeared in Groundswell - a book by Forrester Research - and was also recently referenced by Marketing Pilgrim in an articled titled 'B2B Buyers Dig Social Media'.

The latest Forrester report is titled 'The Social Technolographics of Business Buyers' and it suggests that B2B buyers have a very high participation in social media such as blogs, social networks and forums.

The main points that Marketing Pilgrim refer to include:

It's truly phenomenal to see B2B increasingly integrate more closely in the social media space! Now it would be great to see more case studies on the succesful use of social media in the B2B sector! Feel free to share any you may know of.

It was only last week that I was talking about the use of social media and viral videos in particular to promote a brand and cause.

I was specifically drawing a comparison between Tourism Queensland's fake viral video that appeared on YouTube with a woman getting a tattoo of the 'dream job' advertisement on her arm and comparing it with the video of Heidi Clarke, the woman with a jacket to return to a mysterious man that she met in the Sydney CBD.

Early last week it hadn't been confirmed whether this last video was a fake but now it has been revealed that it indeed is a spoof. It has also been revealed that this is the work of Australian strategy consultancy, Naked Communications.

This misleading viral campaign has caused major uproar in social media and has captured many negative comments. These comments are mostly around the idea of using social media to mislead consumers in order to promote a particular cause and also particularly negative comments about the agency itself.

You can read some of these comments here.

Was it a clever video? Yes. Did it get people talking? Yes. So much so that this actually caused a stir in both online and offline world. Would it have caused as much of a stir in social media if Tourism QLD hadn't recently admitted to its hoax video? I'm actually doubtful although I don't necessarily agree with these sorts of covert marketing tactics.

Naked Communications has taken a beating because of its actions. This is a mistake that anyone could have made and one that a lot are probably guilty of but yet to be found out about just yet. Although I caveat this by saying that we are likely to see a domino effect here and I'm sure there are many more dominos that will start to fall now.

We can take a lesson from this. Many savvy marketers are talking about the use of covert marketing and tactics in order to raise brand awareness and eyebrows. Many people believe that this is clever marketing and gets consumer excited. We need to be aware that this is clearly not the case. This sort of behaviour on social media is simpe not acceptable.

Perhaps we need to go right bac to social media 101 again. Do we need to retrain people on the core principles that underpin this very medium? It's all about honesty, authenticity and transparency. And you're most certainly damned if you don't!

Just look at the flack that the likes of Vespa and Sony have attracted in this past year for using covert marketing as a means to promote a cause. Vespa - slammed! Sony Fake Tourist campaign - slammed!

I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on misleading viral campaigns. Do you have any other examples you can share. What other big companies are using covert marketing as a means of promotion?

So we've all been hearing and reading a lot about "The Best Job in the World", the destination marketing campaign by Tourism Queensland. In short, Tourism Queensland put out a worldwide call for candidates to apply for a Great Barrier Reef-based job paying $150,000. This has played out quite nicely in social media - in particular on video aggregator sites such as YouTube.

The winner will need to become friendly with the locals and explore the Great Barrier Reef and indulge in activities that make up the island experience - swimming, diving, snorkling and hanging out on the beach. As part of the 'dream' job, the successful applicant will also need to post their adventures on a blog, regularly updating it with the latest photos and video footage.

In order to apply, the candidates have been asked to create and submit a 60-second video of themselves. Part of a $1.7 million global marketing strategy and, according to a report in The Australian, the campaign is expected to generate more than $70 million worth of publicity for Queensland.

This is a great feat given the current financial crisis and particularly now that the heat has turned up in Australia. It was announced yesterday that NSW is officially in recession and this is expected to spread throughout Australia, according to the Access Economics' Business Outlook for December 2008 (although there are still mixed reports about this). This campaign is raising the profile of this holiday destination at a time where people are less inclined to travel. This campaign is putting Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef on the global map.

Although this campaign is attracting widespread attention both locally and across the globe, there has also been a recent flurry of backlash. Yesterday, Tourism Queensland admitted to seeding a fake video of a candidate applying for the 'dream' job. The video is of a girl getting an advertisement for the Great Barrier Reef tattooed on her arm. The spoof video was uncovered by YouTube frequenters who acknowledged the video as a fake as there was no red on her arm immediately after getting the tattoo.

It was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald that this video was intended as an "...example of the creativity Tourism Queensland expected from applicants, and to spur people to post their own videos". 

This comes at a time where there has been a fair bit of scepticism around the use of video sites such as YouTube to promote a cause. The most recent example of self-promotion is the video of Heidi Clarke, a girl who posted a YouTube video about a man that she briefly met and spoke to at a CBD cafe.

The apparent man had left his jacket behind and because she insists she felt a 'connection' between the two, she wanted to use the video site to try and find him. Not only did we see widespread coverage of this on YouTube and online news sites but this extended to traditional news outlets including TV. We are still yet to uncover whether in fact the girl and her cause is genuine but it is widely believed that this, too, is a fake.

Despite the furore of using social media and covert marketing to promote a cause, this has still been a unique and innovative destination marketing campaign. We are still seeing other applicants upload their own 60-second videos to YouTube.

Will it serve the purpose of attracting tourism, adding Queensland to peoples' lists of holiday hot spots or at least getting people excited? I say 'yes'.  

Now this is an interesting look at a case of business use of social media and in particular Web 2.0 tools such as micro-blogging tool, Twitter in order to raise awareness of a specific cause.

The Salvation Army, known for its door knocks and Red Kettles (red donation buckets and collections) during the holiday period and typically targeting the older generation for donations, recently launched an Online Red Kettle campaign and a Red Kettle Twitter channel as a new means to encourage donations.

This online program is allowing the Salvation Army to reach out to a younger generation and engage and recruit younger donors and potential volunteers for the cause. Twitter is proving to be a great news distribution channel allowing the company to send out viral updates and promote the Red Kettle online program. Through this program, donors are even able to donate virtually and encourage friends and family to donate online to the kettle they have set up.

The Salvation Army Twitter Channel already has 557 people actively following its updates as well as being broadcast publicly across the micro-blogging site. The Online Red Kettles campaign has a national goal to raise $1,000,000 and last time I checked it was at $926,634.05.

You can check out more information on the Red Kettle campaign here.

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?