It could use a transcript, but the pictures are nice. And so are the majority of the statements it makes. Have a read.

For more on the same theme, see here, here and here.

Lots of Social Media projects fail. Here’s my opinion on the subject.

In C&M’s experience, failure to deliver value on Social Media projects is 95.769% down to the lack of an initial plan. (In other words, lots of things don’t succeed just because people haven’t thought ahead to what success ought to (or might) look like.)

Why? Because 95.6579% of the time Social Media is seen as free (as in free beer). Free to implement (on Facebook, Twitter, etc) and ostensibly free to run (Dave in marketing, Stephanie in PR, and John in Customer Services… they’ve all been twiddling for six months now but, heck, we’re struggling to make an ROI statement).

(NB: this is the basis of a common brief for us and one that we love – ‘We’ve been experimenting – with and without agency help, can you please help us fix it with an integrated plan…?’)

Plans usually happen because something costs money. If the boss needs persuading, then a list of objectives (aka a ‘business case’) is probably going to get created early on in the piece. And some research. And a plan. And perhaps some management meetings in-between.

Web sites, PR campaigns and lead generation activities succeed when they are well planned, budgeted and executed. If it cost £50,000 to create a Facebook page, most Facebook campaigns would also succeed …because they would need to come with a plan and a rough idea of cost and returns – and all of these things would be held to close scrutiny and consistent measurement by the right people.

So, create some objectives, produce a budget and then an accompanying brief (or – better – a plan). This way you’ll be 95.87645% more likely to succeed.

(NB: things may be a bit more nuanced than this but, hey, it’s a good start.)

Thoughts?

Events are part and parcel of every brands’ marketing calendar. Where possible we like to use traditional activities – press conferences, sponsorship gigs, launches, etc – as the platform for moving branded stories and messages around the network, beyond the walls of the event itself.

In other words, we like to extend the value of bog standard marketing events to Social Media and the wider world.

Here’s our best practise ‘Kit Bag’ for doing it. (NB: includes a nice activity TICK LIST at the back.)

Have a browse, use it, and tell us what you think.

@username

@username is the Twitter way of addressing someone in your tweet, and ensures that it will show up in their “Mentions” feed. Originally started by the community, and then embraced officially by Twitter, @username can be used in loads of different ways.

The most common use is direct replying. This is when your tweet starts with the @ symbol, followed directly by the username of the person you are replying to/addressing. Colloquially, it’s known as “@replying”. A tweet starting with this will show up in your own profile feed (as a sent tweet), the “mentions” stream of the person being replied to (and their home feed if they follow you), and in the home feed of anyone who follows you and the person you are talking to.

Confused? Don’t worry, I’ll try and explain using an example. If I (benjmartin) tweet Roger (rogerwarner), Roger will see the tweet in his home feed (because he follows me), as well as his “Mentions” feed (which shows anytime his username has been used in a tweet). As well as showing on my own personal profile as a sent tweet, it will also show in the David’s (transmitdisrupt) home feed, as he follows both Roger and myself. If, however, David was following me (and come on, why wouldn’t he? I’m great) but not following Roger (or indeed vice-versa), the tweet wouldn’t show up in his home feed.

Things get slightly muddier when @username is used anywhere in a tweet that isn’t the start. Basically, this is the Twitter way to “tag” someone in your tweet – these tweets will show up in the home feed of anyone who is following you, regardless if they are following people tagged in your tweets or not. Similarly, these tweets will show up in the “Mentions” stream of the tagged user (and their home feed if they are following you).

Often this tagging method is used when someone is being referred to in a tweet (e.g. “Just had lunch with @benjmartin. He had a sandwich.”) but can also be used within @reply tweets (e.g. “@rogerwarner Me and @benjmartin are going to the shops, do you want anything?”). A new use for this tagging method has been cropping up recently where people are “CCing” other users in their tweets, where they want to draw their attention to something. Taking things too far? Perhaps a little, but it’s a good way of drawing someone’s attention to something they might not otherwise see, particularly if it’s an @reply to someone that they’re not following.

Retweeting (AKA RTing)

Another convention started by the community, embraced by third-party apps (such as HootSuite and TweetDeck) and eventually becoming another standard Twitter function, albeit in a different form.

Before it was embraced by Twitter officially, retweeting meant copying and pasting another user’s tweet (or clicking a button on a third party app that did it for you), adding their username to the front of the tweet and sticking the letters “RT” to the very start. A straight retweet (as I like to call it) is basically a way of sharing someone else’s tweets with your own followers, for whatever reason. Furthermore, a comment could be added to the beginning of the retweet, or end, offering the retweeting user a chance to air their own views about the content being retweeted.

For example, David could retweet me in the following way “RT @benjmartin I am a handsome man. Yessir”, which would be a straight retweet of my original tweet. He could then add his own comment to that tweet by either putting it at the very start of the retweet, or at the very end, using a delimiter (such as a line, dash, brackets etc. – there is no community standard for this) e.g. “I disagree, sir. RT@benjmartin I am a handsome man. Yessir” or “RT @benjmartin I am a handsome man. Yessir << I disagree, sir”.

Once RTing became so popular that it was hard for Twitter to ignore, they introduced their own method of retweeting. Twitter ignored the manual “RT” method and instead introduced functionality wherein hitting the “retweet” button on Twitter would post the tweet in the home feed of people following you, with a little note at the bottom and modified avatar to show that it had been retweeted by you. This official method of retweeting is often referred to as “new-style” retweeting and the “RT” method referred to as “old-style”, “classic” or “traditional” retweeting.

“New-style” is good if you just want to do a straight retweet of someone else’s content, but useless if you want to add a comment or anything to the original tweet, as it does not allow any editing of the content before it is reposted. There were even rumours that Twitter was trying to kill off traditional retweets by filtering them from search results, but this was soon rescinded.

Hashtags

Hashtags are probably the biggest head-scratcher during training sessions as they are often totally driven by the community and can be used completely at random. Before Twitter search and the trending topics engine became as advanced as they are today, hashtags were a good way of adding ‘meta data’ to a tweet, so that people discussing the same subject could find each other easily. However, because they are community-generated, there can be a number of different hashtags surrounding the same topic. For example, the recent World Cup had #worldcup and #wc2010 as the two most popular hashtags for the topic, but other derivatives such as #worldcupsa and #fifaworldcup were also being used.

Brands with events (such as festivals or conferences) will often announce their “official” event hashtag before the event, in the hope that anyone discussing it will use it, but it is not mandatory (of course), and any user could create their own hashtag and use that instead, hoping it will catch on. The hashtag for this year’s Download Festival for example was #DL2010, used and endorsed by the official Download Festival Twitter profile.

Hashtags are also often used in an esoteric or self-referential way, wherein people create them and use them in their tweets, with no real purpose or reason, just for added humour or context. For example, it was unbearably muggy outside earlier this week, and I tweeted using the hashtag #itsabitstuffyoutthere, which noone else used, at all, but I was just being irreverent in getting my point across, so it didn’t matter.

Because both the Twitter search engine the trending topics algorithm have become more advanced, hashtags aren’t as important to Twitter as they once were, but still very much widely embraced by the community at large, so their level of importance when using Twitter is still high.

So those are my three Twitter conventions that I think you should be paying attention to if you want to use Twitter successfully, but I’d be interest to know if there’s anything you think I’ve left out, or if there’s anything you’re confused about. Let me know.

(CLICK THE IMAGE – NOT AN EMBED!)

I’ve been stalking him researching his work for some time now. I can highly recommend it. He strikes a lovely balance between the exciting promise of tech and Social Media and its cultural limitations.

Check the highlight version of his presentation for a quick two minute roundup of why Social Media ‘truths’ can be good and bad news… (And think about what this means to your brand – the search for your inner truth, mission, value proposition, etc, bla, bla will never be defined by you, but by everyone else: a random ragtag bunch of customers who discuss your brand online.)

And check the full version for a wonderfully funny account of Social Media, content aggregation, important world events and what it is to be an Indian in America.

(For more of his stuff, see here. He’s brilliant. Tune in.)

As the world’s favourite online video sharing site, YouTube is under constant pressure to keep up with the ever more ambitious demands and needs of its users. The latest major development was announced last Friday at VidCon2010 when YouTube revealed that it would be supporting videos shot in 4k. This is good news for the more serious filmmakers out there, as it means videos hosted on YouTube can be viewed on much larger screens without loss of quality.

This playlist demonstrates the power of 4K (select ‘original’ in the video quality dropdown menu), but beware, you’ll need ultra-fast broadband to watch them at full quality. YouTube’s official blog post on the new announcement was also quick to point out that this development won’t really affect your average YouTube user, due to the cost and size of the equipment needed to film in 4K.

You are the Weakest Ad, Goodbye

In an effort to boost its advertising revenues, YouTube is planning to introduce skippable ads later this year. A recent article in The Telegraph revealed that “the new system will permit users to skip the pre-roll adverts that are embedded in videos. Advertisers will not be charged for any adverts which are skipped.” This move will put pressure on advertisers and creative agencies to come up with more appealing and better quality ads in order survive the screening process, which can only be a good thing.

Potential advertisers may also be interested to know that Google is now offering campaign insights for YouTube, making it easier to track their effectiveness with more powerful data beyond the usual click-through and impressions stats. Here’s a little video explaining how it works:

We’ll Make You a Star

In other news, YouTube has announced a grant programme for its partners, which aims to “act as a catalyst by infusing additional funds into the production budgets of a small group of YouTube partners who are at the forefront of innovation”. This could prove fruitful for companies wanting to use YouTube for creative Social Media campaigns. But you’ll need to already be something of a video whizz to qualify; partners are selected on current video views, subscribers, growth rate, audience engagement and production expertise. 

YouTube in the Palm of Your Hand

Three years after launching YouTube Mobile, the online video giant has risen to the growing demands of the iPhone generation for mobile-friendly Social Media with a series of improvements to its mobile platform. These include increased speed, an enhanced user-interface geared towards touchscreen mobile devices, plus additional interactive features such as creating playlists and favouriting videos direct from your device.

Sing with Susan

And if all that juicy YouTube news hasn’t got you rushing to hit the record button on your Flip, this is guaranteed to do the job. Britain’s Got Talent diva Susan Boyle last week launched a YouTube-based talent search, giving one lucky person the chance to record a duet with her on the next album. All you have to do to enter is hit the ‘Audition Now’ on the dedicated Susan’s Search YouTube page and upload a video of you singing Silent Night. Go on, you know you want to.

In a single hit, everyone’s favourite media baron Rupert has stuck two fingers up at Google and those of us who are too tight to pay for his newspaper content.  Nobody can access his stuff anymore, unless they pay for it.

It’s a big move. The standard web marketing and Social Media handbook tells us to give it all away for free – in the name of better indexing, bookmarking, word of mouth, distribution and other good things.

This approach is proven but deeply troubling for most publishers.  Unlike Tescos, Sainsburys and ASOS – who publish free(ish) ‘value-added’ content (magazines, emails, style guides, recipe cards, wotnot) in order to get us moving with more zeal around their freezer sections and web sites – the only thing that traditional publishers have to sell is (by and large) their content.  The concept of ‘free’ does not sit well with them.

Likewise, ‘free’ is a bane for those traditionally responsible for creating content.  Writers, editors, musicians, games developers, etc.  Where goes the pay check?

Yet we’re stuck in a space race for ‘free’ content.  If you’re not currently doing it then you probably soon will be because your competitors are – right now – offering a variety of free and juicy value-added social networking widgets, reviews services, hints and tips and other content-based merchandise for anyone willing to part with a nano second of their attention on the Interwebs.

This movement and its consequences have been already been described by better people than me.  See here for Jaron Lanier on Digital Maoism.  And our good pal Ian Delaney on Valuing Content.

I’m torn.  At heart, C&M is a content marketing outfit.  We know that the best way to generate a righteous storm of fans, followings, and traffic is to create great content – and then to give it all away for free.  Most of our clients are, however, more than a little hesitant when we begin this discussion.  Content is, after all, their IP – whether they’re a content business or not.  It takes time to plan and produce.

So why give it away if it’s good?

The Times – and News Corp – has the answer.

Free content in the context of an iPhone > iPad > iSofa scenario isn’t ‘free’ as we might know it.  Our relationship with content is changing fast, and – subsequently – so is content’s relationship with our wallets.

News is now free.  This is old news.  Check the classic Clay Shirky for this one (The price of information has fallen…). Other forms of content, however, don’t need to be all free, all of the time.  Here’s how the Times Online’s strategy is unfolding….

Firstly, they’re part of a network. News Corp does (Sky) sports, Caitlin Moran (on Saturdays), and lots of other bits and pieces.  News Corp describes the Times Online brand proposition as follows:

Essentially, this is a (customised) chocolate box approach.  I love lots of News Corp ‘properties’: Ms Moran, Mike Atheton and Soccer AM; but I find the Times Weekend glossy magazines kind of obnoxious.  In other words, I have a relationship with bits and pieces, but I’m not a big fan of the mothership brand and I won’t pay for it.  But, hey, I’ll happily pick and mix if Rupert is kind enough to carve it up for me.  I’ll also pay for some parts of it – so long as I can avoid paying a ‘one size fits all’ bill and the coconut creams at the back.

If you subscribe to the new Times Online, this is what you see on the other side of the wall…

A variety of subscriptions, apps and services ready for use.  Access to some will depend on your subscription level – e.g. I can (soon) get the Sunday Times on my iPad if I go for the super-sized rate.  Some will be free ‘value-adds,’ others will be one-off paid for events and activities.

My hope is that I’ll soon be able to subscribe to Soccer AM (perhaps paid-for).  And a widget for the Soccer AM YouTube channel and Boston Goals (free).  Or a podcast from just one of the Boston Goals commentary team (free, probably).  This kind of thing is happening now.

When News Corp starts to understand my content patterns and usage preferences (and when they start to cut up their content assets accordingly), they have my attention and my wallet.  Call it narrowcasting, personalisation or whatever you like, the progression is logical.  New content channels and consumption experiences are here to stay – iPad > YouTube > Twitter > TEN SNEAKY MINUTES ON THE SOFA WATCHING EASTENDERS BUT HECK THE WIFE ISN’T WATCHING > WOW FREEEEEBEEEES > SOME PAID BITS > UH, WELL, OK > BAM! ……so let’s divvy up our content catalogue (and our brand assets) to match.  Some free, some paid for, but all mixed up into different versions, formats and channels.

The same is happening in TV and broadcasting.  Anyone for a spot of Project Canvas?

The value of content is shifting

In both TV and newsprint, the value of content – and our relationship with it – is shifting from the network provider to the individual asset (the Caitlin Moran column is more appealing to me than the Times on Saturday / the News Corp brand) or the author / producer (Caitlin Moran)… and prices are moving around in step.  Smaller payments for smaller slices.  This I like.  And I’ll probably end up spending more.

The challenge for publishers (and other brands that now publish) is to figure out where the most valuable pieces are in their catalogues and how to make money from them.  Bits need to be distributed for free (in the name of Google, ‘findability’ and great (Social) marketing) and bits need to be kept closer to hand and charged for (in the shape of £ pound notes and/or email addresses).

This I also like. It’s my business to help brands figure out what content goes where and how. In fact C&M has been doing a rather good job of this for brands such as Hackett for some time now.  Same challenge (get me noticed, get me distribution, drive traffic / revenue, but don’t give away the crown jewels), only with different content collateral (branded content, not ‘media’ content).

Beyond content serving, the challenge for the Times Online is, of course, acquisition.  They now have a catalogue and a set of services that speak to the Google generation (iPad in hand on sofa).  But fully appeasing Google will be hard because they are hiding a lot of their stash.  Social Media represents an opportunity to do acquisition and awareness effectively – but they don’t seem to be really embracing it right now.  (See here for a list of Times columnists that they’re hawking on Twitter.  A step in the right direction, I feel – get me access to the bits that I like best, and quickly.)

Having mentioned her a few times, I’ll let Caitlin Moran sign off.  She summed things up quite nicely in her column last week (yes, behind the paywall!):

“I don’t think journalism should be free, because, tbh, bitch got to make rent. I’ve spent 20 years clawing my way out of a council house in Wolverhampton to reach a point where I can now afford a Nigella Lawson breadbin. If I have to start blogging everything for free, I am simply going to have to fall back on Plan B, and go and hang about in a red-light district somewhere. Meanwhile, the only journalists left will be posh people who can afford to do it as a hobby, in between skiing or renovating a folly. This column would be written by Lady Helen “Melons” Windsor or George Osborne [….] As a society, we now charge for essential dental work, but somehow found a way to throw in HD spit-roasts for free. What does that say about us? And when someone works out what that says about us, will they get paid for explaining it?”

(She likes paywalls, by the way. She also has a huge Twitter following for lots of mini slices of Caitlin Moran content …every day, for FREE.)

Further Reading

Check out Chris Applegate’s review of the new Times Online service.  Soup to nuts good stuff – including a great commentary on design and user experience.

Check out this book – Information Rules – by Carl Shapiro. He called all of this before the last Interweb bubble popped in 1998. (And I’ll be forever grateful to my mate Doug Kessler for making me read it.)

Be Timely

How many times have you said to someone “I tried calling them but was kept on hold for ages so I just gave up”, or something to that effect? I’m willing to bet that you thought negatively of that brand after that experience and told other people about it. The same thing happens in Social Media, only faster. People need to think very little before firing off a 140-character tirade about a bad customer service experience, so make sure you attend to them quickly, and concisely. Even if it is initially just an acknowledgement of their request for help, before seeking the information you need to answer their enquiry in full, this initial engagement will see you right, as it placates the customer and will offer a much more positive experience overall.

Be Personal

This is something American Express does very well on its Ask Amex and Ask Amex UK Twitter accounts. The profile bio for these accounts include the names of the people who deal with the enquiries to that account and where space is available, each tweet is signed off with the name or initial of the person responsible. This is great because, as well as making the account more human and less Mr Roboto, the customer knows who is dealing with their enquiry, should they need to follow up with any information or indeed congratulate the company on a good customer service experience.

Be Positive

Sometimes it is hard to be positive and friendly with people who are relentless in their tirade of abuse but it is imperative that you do, or risk being further chastised and talked about in a very negative light. One of the many benefits that Social Media has over telephone customer service is the ability to take a step back, have a breather, gather your thoughts and respond pragmatically. There are of course some people who will just complain continually for the sake of being awkward, but just continue to offer as much advice and help as you can and they will eventually move on.

Be Aware

You shouldn’t expect your customers to necessarily be seeking you out in the first instance when they need help or assistance with a particular problem. They’re more likely to fire off a general tweet or status message, aimed at nobody in particular, hoping that someone sees their cries for help and jumps in with assistance. It would reflect well if your brand is the one that answers that distress call, without the customer having to approach you first. There are plenty of free tools (such as Hootsuite and Netvibes) that let you monitor what is being said about your brand on Social Media channels, so set up the relevant filters and engage (quickly and responsibly) with customers who need your help!

Be In The Right Place

It is absolutely pointless offering a dedicated customer service channel through Twitter if it turns out that the majority of your customers don’t use it and are on another channel instead. Combine your own market research with readily available stats and reports on Social Media demographics (and there is plenty around) to determine where your customers (existing or potential) spend their time online and where they are likely to talk about your brand. That’s not to say you shouldn’t invest in a multi-channel approach, because there will always be some of your customers on any particular channel, but take the time in finding out where your time is best spent.

I think it wise to say that although Social Media does offer fantastic opportunities for customer service, you should keep your existing channels open as well (e.g. email or phone), because Social Media, like these other channels, is not a fully comprehensive solution. This is a point made by PR consultant Danny Whatmough on his blog regarding his recent experience with Vodafone.

There’s plenty more I could say on the subject, but hopefully these tips will start you off on the road to offering good customer service through social channels. Do let me know if you have any thoughts on the subject, or have had any negative or positive experiences of customer service via Social Media.

While there will always be a place for traditional customer service (telephone lines, in-store help desks, snail mail etc), social tools such as Twitter and Facebook are fast becoming a vital part of the customer service mix. This doesn’t just apply on an ad hoc basis (e.g. a small business answering the occasional inquisitive tweet) as several multi-national corporations are investing heavily in dedicated teams whose job it is to offer customer service through social and other online channels.

Take Dell for example, whose use of Twitter as a customer service tool is well documented across the web. Several dedicated channels on Twitter allow customers to tweet their problems or requests for help. These accounts are monitored using Dell’s CRM system (Salesforce) and each tweet is then given its own case or ticket. The support rep then searches the Dell knowledge base and provides the customer with a link to the article and the case closed (unless of course the customer needs more help).

As well as the customer approaching the brand directly (using @replies or a post on a Facebook page’s wall), a lot of brands are also monitoring conversations on social networks, jumping in and helping out any disgruntled customers in distress, before the customer has the chance to contact the brand themselves. In theory, and mostly in practice, this is a great idea as it puts the fire out before it has time to spread. But it has the potential to backfire, with certain (possibly paranoid) parties declaring such actions to be an invasion of privacy.

Interestingly, it seems that Dell has changed tactic somewhat. Instead of the easy method of using the @askdell channel (which seems to have been scrapped altogether), the company has since segregated its Twitter presence into a staggering 30+ profiles. Although they have broken it down into categories, it’s still not clear (to me anyway) where I’d go if my PC was playing up. It seems Dell’s priority for social media is now sales, rather than customer service. Annoying for the customer, but a logical move after they claimed that Twitter and Facebook generated sales of $9 million in 2009. Dell is clearly acting on the mantra of “go hard or go home”.

It would be a great shame if this sales-focus becomes the norm. Getting straight to the point and giving the customer what they need is crucial, especially as budgets are being slashed all over the place. This doesn’t only apply to B2C, its B2B as well, as Roger pointed out in his latest blog post.

If you’re a business, you have to remember, customers are no longer content with waiting in a hold queue until their call is answered. Social has such a huge potential for customer satisfaction because it cuts the crap and puts the customer back in control of a relationship in which they haven’t worn the trousers since the telephone helpline became standard practice. You can bet if your competitors are offering more direct ways to get in touch with them across multiple channels and you aren’t, you’ll get left behind. I am customer, hear me roar!

The first is from Antony Mayfield‘s Me and My Web Shadow (buy here now). The second is from Brian Solis’ Engage (buy here now). Both extracts describe aspects of Twitter (the ability to answer to ‘What’s the point of Twitter?’ being a common requirement for most digital folks nowadays).

Here’s Antony:

Here’s Brian:

There’s plenty to admire in Antony’s book. It’s pithy. It states the real, obvious and tangible. It’s written for the guy on the street, but – word for word – it’s a super primer for any brand manager. What applies to the individual applies to the corporate as well. And, most importantly for me, it passes Einstein’s good old ‘explain it to a six year old‘ maxim. There’s enough information to get to grips with the subject and move forward.

Meantime, Brian appears to have been up on a Pro Plus all-nighter to finish his manuscript. And his editor has clearly gone AWOL.

We’re all guilty of this kind of prose. The Social Media generation – thirty something, greying slightly, inclined to wear Camper shoes – grew up feeding on some very abstract ideas on campus: various kinds of post-isms and futurologies. That’s you, me and all the others.

In an age of austerity – when budgets are being cut, mixed around and passed on to others – this style of thinking, writing and talking looks increasingly out of place. And I have to say it irks me because the more time we spend filling people’s heads with hot air, the harder it is to get down to earth and do some proper work. (And, yes, hard as I try, I’m also sometimes guilty as charged.)

So I think, in a meeting situation sat opposite a brand manager, we should make like Mayfield. Save the philosophy for the pub, be more pragmatic and just move things forward.

Or maybe I’m just being a grumpy old pedant? You tell me.

YahooPulse apes Google Buzz, but has Facebook integration, too

This week Yahoo has announced its developing connection with Facebook in the form of an imaginatively titled new update service: YahooPulse. It’s in a similar vein to Google Buzz, but with added Facebook aggregation. It also allows integration with Facebook News feeds on Yahoo pages and has improved privacy settings. Will it revive Yahoo’s fortunes? Probably not, but it might help.

Yelp and OpenTable join forces for booking and reviews integration

Yelp (the user review and recommendation service) and OpenTable (a handy tool for booking restaurants) have collaborated to create a service which could reshape the way that we book tables when eating out.

The system, which allows users to effortlessly jump between reviews and then make a reservation, was even covered by The New York Times on Thursday. And to make things even better, OpenTable’s existing points reward system will be honoured by Yelp, allowing you to accumulate reward points.

The new feature will be made available in 11,000 North American restaurants and the service should roll out to international venues at a later date. Both services currently have UK counterparts so it’s only a matter of time until we can use it – I can’t wait.

Find jobs through Facebook

On the recruitment front, job search engine Simply Hired has integrated with Facebook, offering the ability to find more relevant positions by using data from job seekers’ social networks. To do this, Simply Hired will pull information from your Facebook friends, as well as profile data about current and previous work titles, locations and interests.

When conducting a job search you now have the option to search your Facebook friends’ companies for vacancies and send private messages from the site to find out about openings. Very useful, if a little nepotistic.

This integration helps Simply Hired make a strategic move towards the services provided by LinkedIn and could in the future assist Facebook in providing the professional networking services that it currently lacks.

Google Ads to include Twitter?

The Google/Twitter association continues and an integration between Google Ads and Twitter is almost certainly in the making, with Google inviting advertisers to surreptitiously test new display-ad integration with Twitter.

While not much information has been released by Twitter – and there’s been no official word from Google itself – a post from Clickz informs us that several Twitter-linked Google Ads have recently appeared with the ability to follow the advertiser without leaving the page, by clicking a ‘follow on Twitter’ button – positioned to the right of the display advert.

While this is not the first time live Twitter feeds have been incorporated into display-ads, it could allow for a method of generating revenue, something that has eluded Twitter thus far.

Tell us what you think

We’re keen to know your thoughts – is Social Media integration the way forward? Should everything have built-in Twitter and Facebook functionality? Is there anything wrong with Twitter’s increasing propensity to try and monetise through advertising?

• “…trying to find the big influencer with big audience is really just old mass marketing in a cheap dress. Old mass marketing (go with the largest numbers … and breasts) isn’t economical; neither, it turns out, is marketing to just one or a few powerful people — the mythical influencer.“

and…

• “Is there more influence in the tail than in the head? If you talk to 100k people who talk to 10 people each, do you get more bang than talking to one person who has 1m followers?“

This line of enquiry asks all the right questions. The hunt for a mythical Social influencer is likely to be a) time-consuming and uneconomical (there’s a lot of effort/expense in trying to do broad marketing on a 1:1 basis); b) unscientific (no matter how many network-y flow charts and scatter patterns that get thrown around, this plan of attack will always be based on hunch-work); and c) a waste of time in the context of anything/everything else that you might be doing instead…

Yes, the hunt for the influencer (or a gaggle of them) really is another mis-guided quasi-targeting exercise by Marketeers passing themselves off as Quants (in a cheap dress).

It sounds superb: who resist doubt the pull of a Twitterer who has 35 zillion followers? But is the hunt really worth it and what’s attainable? I say this having sat through numerous identi-kit whiteboard sessions seeking to create programs around ideal user targets, their online social activity, media diets, favourite colours and inside leg measurements…. all of which tend to lead to a (financially large) exercise in designing a ‘user-centric’ web marketing experience (or, in common parlance – another goddam microsite, a fluffy PR stunt and/or another all-singing and dancing brand-based Facebook page/group).

This, frankly, is crap. The hunt for mythical Social influence is more often an excuse to build new stuff than to acquire new customers. In my book, when it comes to acquisition and awareness, our time and money would be better spent on attacking wider audiences via content- and conversation-based programs …i.e. simply rolling up our sleeves and diving in with good old fashioned content, and dealing with the dialogue once we’ve struck a chord.

My bet is that one analyst locked in a room could take your brief and target your market in less than a day based purely on an analysis of LANGUAGE and CONTENT and search and Social discussion trends.

Think about it. Chasing ‘influencers’ is (as Buzzmachine says) like hunting snipe – elusive and abstract to say the least. Identifying audience behaviours and creating a program around content trends is, by contrast, a rather exact science. Our most effective analytics tools help us to identify language, not people. Armed with a keyword (or hashtag) or five I can tell you exactly what and where your potential audience is, what content they care for and what you will need to do to engage with them…

A content-based approach leads to programs that can be implemented quickly and directly. Identify content trends/patterns > create content > strike! This is our method. Tell me if you know a more direct and measurable one. And good luck with the ‘influencer’ / snipe hunt meantime…

The Econsultancy piece deconstructs things nicely…. Essentially Gawker is making a deeper analysis of the traffic that either hits their sites directly (without the aid of search engine or other referral sources – i.e. by keying in www.gizmodo.com to start a browsing session) or uses branded search terms to navigate their way to their sites (i.e. taps ‘gizmodo’ into Google and goes from there).

Clearly this ‘branded traffic‘ is motivated. From a publisher/advertiser perspective it’s also more valuable. It sticks around on Gawker sites longer than the average bear. (In Pettigrew’s words “Branded traffic visitors spend more time on our properties (1 minute and 31 seconds more than average) and view more pages of our content (nearly 4 pages per visit at mutiple visits per day).)

The goal here is to create a new metric for selling display ads to advertisers. Gawker knows that a proportion of its traffic is very motivated to stick around and devour its content – therefore page impressions become easier to sell. This is good thinking – common sense and easy to grasp. I’ll buy it. But I’m also really interested in this statement from Pettigrew:

“While distributing content across the web is essential for attracting the interest of Internet passersby, courting these wanderers, massaging them into occasional visitors, and finally gaining their affection as daily readers is far more important. This core audience — borne of a compounding of word of mouth, search referrals, article recommendations, and successive enjoyed visits that result in regular readership — drives our rich site cultures and premium advertising products.”

This is in many ways an anti-Social (Media) play. When more brands fling their ad budgets at Social (dropping classic micro site / display ad combos in favour of ‘distributing content across the web’), publishers need to work harder for their ad dollar.

Meantime, Social Media generally struggles for a hands-down (meaningful) ROI metric that sets it aside from ad measurements – in order to better woo an advertising spend.

I’m struck by the fact that this is all becoming one large soup… A circular power play for metrics, ownership and budgets. Ultimately, every brand wants what Gawker talks of: successive visits (or at least visits that have people do the things they want them to…. read, buy, sign up, discuss, etc.) Publishers will deliver these types of visits by giving brands access to their ‘core audience’ via display ads / impressions – but data shows that this is happening in dwindling numbers. Social Media will deliver them via different (brand-owned) channels – such as dialogues on other platforms like Facebook.

Brands and publishers are now competing on the same terms for the same people. We’re all publishers now. We’re (mostly) aware of the need to ‘attract the interest of passersby’ through syndicated content and services. And naturally we all want to ‘gain affection’ and drive successive visits.

Alongside new metrics for audience engagement, I see situations where publishers give up some of their display-ad-cash-cows in order to work harder with brands on co-created content… because a brand’s Interweb destinations are everywhere – and they’re owned by lots of different folks…. the brand, the publisher, Facebook, me (the blogger), wotnot. Consequently, what brands really need right now is better content – across every property within their ‘traffic acquisition portfolio.’

In the meantime, though, ‘branded traffic’ makes sense – we should all be thinking about the difference between a motivated audience and the great (random) unwashed that might StumbleUpon us in a lunch break…

In terms of Alexa rankings, it’s one of the biggest stand-alone social networks on the web after Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr. The total registered users is also nothing to sniffed at, with over 50,000,000 members and rising.

By far the biggest and most interesting of all the improvements to the LinkedIn platform is LinkedIn Groups. Ostensibly a place for like-minded professionals to come together over a subject or interest, it can be a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website and online marketing if you know how to use it.

LinkedIn Marketing: How and Why?

Groups has some startling similarities to Facebook’s Pages functionality: members can become ‘fans’, group sections are sorted along the top of the screen in tabs, updates can be sent out to members of the group via e-mail, etc. As is also the case with Facebook, a group on LinkedIn gives you the ability to import RSS feeds, meaning that all updates for a given feed can be distributed inside a group, broadening the reach of your content to influential and like-minded people.

Of course, the above actions will only work if you’ve got a lot of members in your group. If you don’t feel like setting up your own group or don’t have many group members, you can always join one set up by someone else. The concept works in much the same way: join a group, join in discussions with other people and link them to your content (remember: hard sell is doomed to fail nine times out of ten in the context of Social Media – if you can’t add anything worthwhile to a discussion then it’s best not to bother.)

LinkedIn Polls also offers a way to perform quick and easy market research. Polls within your network (i.e. your connections only) are free. However, should you want to ask a different group of professionals (such as small business owners, software engineers, etc.) that you can target by industry, a pricing option of $50 (minimum) per response comes into play. In a similar vein, LinkedIn Answers works in much the same way as Yahoo! Answers, except the subject matter and responses are actually useful.

They key advantage of LinkedIn for the above activities as opposed to, say, Facebook Pages is the audience type. LinkedIn is targeted towards a more professional, business-minded user base, therefore reaching individuals with the same goals and interests on a professional level is far easier than on Facebook, despite the platforms being equally as ‘closed’ as one another.

Joining The Dots: LinkedIn Integration

It’s important to note that LinkedIn should be used in tandem with your existing Social Media content and marketing set-up. As useful as the various services such as Groups are, LinkedIn could never hope to replace the immediacy or openness of Twitter or the sheer size and popularity of Facebook.

In terms of platforms, Twitter and LinkedIn are currently the most friendly with each other, offering synchronisation between the two: if you make an update on LinkedIn, you’ll be presented with the opportunity to tweet it, and if you tweet using the #li or #in hashtags your tweet will appear in LinkedIn. There are also numerous apps available for Facebook, offering similar integration.

You can also integrate your WordPress blog with LinkedIn. By installing a couple of free plugins (the WordPress app on LinkedIn and the GD LinkedIn Badge or LinkedIn Resume on your WordPress install) you can pull through your most recent blog posts onto your LinkedIn profile, and display a badge to your LinkedIn profile or small feed of your CV on your WordPress blog. Other blog platforms can be imported using the RSS feed feature.

What are your experiences with LinkedIn? Have you found it a useful platform to work with for promoting your business or content? Feel free to leave a comment on this article and let us know all about it. If you’re a regular reader of our blog, we’d love you to join our very own LinkedIn Group, Pals of C&M.

In a nut, we’re winning. In a bigger nut, we’re winning together in a tough, competitive business environment (property!).

Here’s what we did, why we did it and what we achieved as a result…

If you like what you see, then do let us know. We’re mighty proud of this one. And thanks meantime to the team at EOG – a superb client to work with… plus the team at Catch Digital, who are responsible for all elements of web design and implementation – again, a super talented team.

Meantime, here’s what they’ve been up to lately…

This is another way of asking the ‘why bother building another micro site?’ question – but from a different perspective. Micro sites can be great. They can allow brands to do wonderful acquisition/relationship/SEO/etc things. To my mind, we don’t necessarily need to stop building them, we just need to build them differently so that they can be more productive in the context of any given campaign effort.

In a nut, as we all know, the value is not usually in the property itself but in the things it allows you/your customers to do… and the starting point for realising this value is getting people to turn up in the first place. So, to this end, dear Mr/Ms Brand Manager, here’s some questions to ask… If the agency who builds your micro site is also responsible for the engagement/PR/etc part of the job, then…

• Would you build your own social network to service it or use someone else’s (e.g. Facebook)?

• Would you host and serve the video yourself or would you use another platform (e.g. YouTube)?

• Would you deliver your own functional services (e.g. maps) or use a public platform (e.g. Google Maps)

…and so on.

Another way of looking at this is to ask ‘whose fee is it?’ and where do I need to spend the money in order to make this brave new property connect with the world.

My general advice is to use public (Social) services wherever you can – this will help your initial acquisition / awareness / distribution efforts …and then save some cash to spend on content and engagement.

What do you say? This probably moves somebody’s cheese/fees….

(NB: it’s a year or so old… and we’re still, collectively, light years from realising what it really means and putting it into practice.)

Points I like:

• Search and find is everything / free is normal, right? (Slide 24)
• “…once we’ve realised the important thing is our content and not where it’s consumed, we should find it easier to let go.” (Slide 54)
• On the web our whole emotional attachment to content changes – it gets reduced. Content is easier to find, we pay/work less to get it. Therefore our relationship with it shifts to other dimensions. (Utility more than brand? Free-ness and immediacy more than accuracy? TBD : ) (Slide 25)

And for those who don’t agree with ‘free,’ a footnote:

We no longer own our collective content archive. In fact we haven’t for a long time. Google does. And anyone that values SEO (ie, all of us) has forgone the right of ownership, for all the right reasons. When it comes to search and discovery, it’s Google who makes your brand ‘presentation’ choices, not you. Google is one big old custodian of your brand. If you don’t like the fact that Google presents content A instead of content B to your hard fought customers, then tough – you just need to create different (better?) content. And If you want ownership back, then say goodbye to Google (as Mr Murdoch may well choose to do).

Oh, and ditto for our good friend Social Media – only now it’s other people who own the presentation of your brand, the circulation of your content (and the choices therein), rather than you.

So… best to just get with the program and let it all hang out. Your job is to ensure that all of your content is brilliant, all of the time – so that even that old blog post from the 2007 can be remembered and re-read lovingly.

Anyways – your thoughts? If you’re in the business of publishing like Mr M, then you probably see things a little different. (And you’re probably a bit miffed with the rest of the world becoming publishers too….)

You can check out more of our work with Plain Lazy here.

(This last link is worth a look if you want to see how good my Parkour skills are. Hint: I’m hot / they’re good.)

And, I recommend you follow Larry (pictured above), Plain Lazy’s super-slack (meaning very, very good) Marketing Honcho on Twitter via @lazbash. He’s an interesting chap. Designer, creative and tip top marketeer rolled into one.

A more balanced view of what I’m driving at comes from our very own @rowstar. Says she in a comment on the original post:

I’m not sure I entirely agree that there is no place for beard stroking in all of this. The idea of running analytics in a vacuum and leaving creative until last worries me. I’d like to see a marriage of data and instinct – beard-strokers and number-crunchers working together from the start to come up with meaningful, apposite and intelligence-informed strategies. I agree that lightbulb campaigns are outmoded, but as I said in this blog post last year, the more brains involved, the better. Get the analysts doing their thing, but give the creatives a chance to lend their instincts to that stage of the process, too. I think both camps could learn a lot from each other – everyone hold hands with everyone else, in other words.

Today, sat in a client meeting, Rowan coined the exact phrase I was searching for. We need to do work based on…

Informed Creativity

As opposed to…

Creative Twaddle

Thank you Rowan. Smart call : )

For those not present, here’s that thought in a simple slide deck…

The alternate view is that all of this data and new-fangled toolset-ness is making the birth of brilliant ideas impossible. Here’s a super opinion on the role of the creative via the Ad Contrarian (great blog – check it out… as recommended by @lazbash)…

Put a straightforward idea like this into the hands of today’s advertising professional, however, and he will quickly turn it into a dog’s breakfast. You’ll wind up with planners and analysts and strategists and managers and global chief something-or-others of all types.

He believes that we are living in the…

Age of the Complicator

So – what do you think? Are analysts in or out? Are they essential in the world of Social Media?

Or, have we simply all become a slave to…

Twankernomics

For the record, my point is that Social Media is simply different to traditional marketing/advertising. I’m not saying we don’t need creatives, I’m saying that our creatives need to understand Social Media if their ideas are to work effectively. This means using people with sound experience in this field and great creative ideas, backed up by some proper analysis that makes a case for setting sail.

Having said that – better a ‘Creative’ than a Twanker : )

Social updates within email is not a new concept – Yahoo has been running Yahoo Updates since 2008, Microsoft mail offers integration with other services and even AOL just announced a similar service that unlike Google Buzz also includes Facebook integration. All these other email services currently have more users than Gmail, so why would people suddenly turn to Google for their online socialising, especially when Twitter and Facebook (with its 400 million users) are already doing such a great job?

As Mashable rightly puts it: “Facebook is threatening Google, but Google isn’t threatening Facebook because it doesn’t offer any features so great that they incentivize people to leave behind their existing networks or spend their time updating and following yet another one when their friends are already all on Facebook or Twitter.

One place where Google Buzz could really take off, though, is with smartphone users. The mobile version of Buzz will allow users to see posts from in their vicinity using geo-location technology. Gizmodo agrees: “Google Buzz is slightly more insane on Android phones and iPhone than the desktop: There’s a revamped, Buzzier Google homepage; you can post entirely using your voice; and a new version of Google Maps eats Yelp’s lunch.”

Despite its opinion that Google is suffering from “Facebook envy”, Gigaom was swift to highlight some of Google Buzz’s useful features: “It borrows the best elements of sites like Twitter (status updates, following), Flickr (a nice photo viewer), Friendfeed (condensed real-time information), Tumblr (encouraging commenting on followed friends), …Oh, and Facebook (private and public sharing controls, in-line media, etc., etc.).

The trouble is that we already have tools for all of that elsewhere. Perhaps a better functionality from Google would be to offer aggregation of all our existing networks and tools in one place – outbound updates from us, and inbound – those of our friends.

The Official Google Buzz launch video

One area where Google could potentially score over Twitter, at least from a business persecptive, is advertising. Twitter has yet to monetise their network, but Google won’t have such qualms, and they have the ad system in place to do smart things with it immediately. This will make it a more appealing platform for brands, but perhaps less so for users, who appreciate Twitter being an ad-free haven.

As with any major Social Media developments, the launch of Google Buzz caused something of a debate here in the C&M office. When asked for his initial reactions, our resident whippersnapper, Jake, said “I think it’s harder to build a social network into an email client, than it is to do it the other way round like Facebook, who are in a much stronger position. That said, I think Buzz may be the incentive to connect socially via Gmail, something that I only really use for admin stuff. It would be pretty useful for me, as I heavily use other Google apps like Reader and Picasa.”

Whereas Claire – like me an early Twitter adopter – had a slightly different take: “I see Buzz as competing more with Twitter, but why? Twitter’s great, it allows me to connect with people I find interesting but don’t necessarily have a personal relationship with. I like that. I don’t want to only connect with my existing friends (I have Facebook for that) or invite people I don’t know into my personal email (which is why I like Twitter). Conundrum.”

She has a valid point. As someone who uses Yahoo as my main personal email service, and has very few friends currently using Gmail, I can’t see Google Buzz taking off for me any time soon, either. The general feeling is that to become a serious contender to the Facebooks and Twitters of this world, Google Buzz would have to offer something completely new that would revolutionise the way we talk to each other, in the way that Facebook squashed MySpace with its advanced networking features.

No sign of such a revolution just yet, but I will be interested to see how it pans out – and would certainly like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

For the complete lowdown on Google Buzz, visit the official Google blog.

A virus is an illness – much like a Social Media plan without a stack of analytics to back it up and a deep understanding of how Social tools actually work and why people use them.

Your goal ought to be to gain strong, low-friction distribution of your messages (i.e. lots of ‘impressions,’ ‘interactions’ and ‘referrals’ – i.e. discussions, comments, Tweets, bookmarks, etc). To get there, strong tactics are far more important than ‘creative’ (i.e. fun, whacky, humorous) ideas. Research is essential. Sitting around in a brainstorm session with dry wipe markers and anecdotal evidence from ‘my cousin Sarah who’s really into YouTube’ isn’t.

My beef is this… Much advertising agency-led Social Media consulting is a step back in time to 1980-something. Don’t buy me? Check this out:

In the 80s, advertising was hot, hot, hot. Everyone was in on it. Noel Edmonds was on payola for Austin Rover. And Ridley Scott was winning Nobel Peace prizes for deranged hallucinations like this and this. The standard rubric was: find a hot subject (i.e. a viral, a meme) and do a spot of ‘brand association.’ Hence, Abbey National becomes synonymous with motor racing, Maltesers get a Flash Dance makeover, Rover gets the golfer/Noel Edmonds treatment and Chanel allows people in housing estates to live life like the cast of Dynasty. All in all pretty naff.

Social Media Consulting Gone Very Wrong

Today, we have bright sparks aligning Habitat with Iran on Twitter, and Toyota suggesting that everyone should go create a YouTube video about its products in return for very little at all. We get it: Social is hot… but just because it is doesn’t mean a whacky punt of an idea on Social Media channel X is going to get you any traction. This is 80s thinking. If you’re with it, then go find that DeLorean and go home.

Social Media Consulting Done Right

To do this stuff well, you need:

• A strong understanding of the target channels: Twitter, etc
• A strong understanding of publishing platforms: Wordpress, Disqus, tubemogul. etc
• A strong understanding of our audience targets and their ‘Social’ behaviour (i.e. how they use these things)
• A strong understanding of content, topics, formats and trends

None of the above is particularly ‘creative’ in a beard-stroking way.

In fact, experience tells us that the kind of campaigns that work well on Social Media have more to do with ‘utility’ than ‘creativity.’ For example, everyone’s fave, Dell:

In this respect, good ‘Social Media consulting‘ isn’t Marketing at all. Or, more to the point, the campaigns and content that work best aren’t Marketing with a capital ‘M.’ They’re support pieces, tools, widgets, and direct conversations with customers – things that genuinely HELP people or provide interest other than ‘Oh WOW, isn’t that wonderful / funny / creative / thought provoking’.

Not much of this list requires a man in a black roll neck to figure it out. It does, however, require an understanding of how and why people are using Social Media in the first place… and then baking it in to some other business or marketing / communications processes.

In other words, Social isn’t real Marketing / Advertising – but it becomes marketing / advertising once it’s out there in the public domain on the big bad web. (An ‘@’ reply on Twitter may not be a Marketing-driven thought, but it’s definitely a Branding result.)

My feeling is that the next time you sit down to do some Social Media consulting / planning / Online PR / whatnot, then STOP. Go call for an analyst. Ask him/her to get deep into some trending tools and your site analytics and then come back to you with recommendations on where to start. Next, give this research to someone who knows how your customers are using Social Media, and ask them to suggest some tactical plans. Then get the ‘Creatives’ in.

Social Media Consulting for ad agencies/brands, in a Nut

If nothing else, just remember this: don’t go do an ‘ad’ and expect it to go ‘viral’ just because you shove it on YouTube.

Your thoughts…?