Category Archives: brand engagement

Aug 13 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media, social networking

Social Personas: implications for social marketers

Social Media Club Sydney’s sponsored event Social Personas: How different is the social media you from the real you? probably achieved the aims that the research set out to do, which was to cause people to question the “acceptable” behaviours related to authenticity versus superficiality in social media in Generation Y. The other speakers, demographer and historian Bernard Salt, and  researcher Dr Rebecca Huntley focused on Facebook and the reported, self described superficiality in Generation Y behaviour in that network.

My presentation was intended as a bit of a tongue in cheek thought starter, rather than fighting the superficiality and behavioural traits, maybe marketers should just play up to it?

It’s not a definitive guide, more a fun piece on how tricky it is to stay relevant and engaging to an audience with a highly developed sense of when they are being “sold” to.

Social Personas:How different is the real you from the social media you? Implications for social marketing

Jul 19 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media, social networking

Australian Election 2010 - social media match fitness

The 2010 Australian Election is going to be an interesting one for social media analysis, because for the first time we will see to be able to see whether social sentiment is going to have an impact on how people vote. I started looking at this on Friday 16 July, the day before the election was called, and left the social media monitoring tool looking at the same keywords over the weekend which included the day of the election announcement.

This analysis is from 1 to 18 July and includes mainstream media as well as strictly “social” media channels. Twitter has by far the largest volume of mentions for both parties.

Australian Labor party mentions by social media channel

Australian Labor party mentions by social media channel

Australian Liberal Party mentions by social media channel

Australian Liberal Party mentions by social media channel

To see the impact social media has on volume, look at the day that Julia Gillard started tweeting. It caused a spike almost as large as the day the election was called when you look at all media, but on Twitter itself, had more interest/volume than the election announcement.

Labor Party social channel mentions over time

Labor Party social channel mentions over time

Impact of Julia Gillard joining Twitter on volume of mentions

Impact of Julia Gillard joining Twitter on volume of mentions

Net Sentiment score: Liberal Party in front

On Friday, the share of  voice was dominated by Labor with 78% of conversations about Labor or  Julia Gillard and 22% was for Liberal or Tony  Abbott (for Australian domains only, I didn’t have enough time to run a US and AU inclusive search).

By the end of Sunday, even though the numbers had spiked massively in terms of the volume of conversation, and even with US domains included in the search, the share of voice had moved only 1%, 77% Labor to 23% Liberal. I also ran a sentiment score analysis on Friday and again post election announcement.

Pre-election announcement:
(1 is positive so both have a negative score)

  • Labor net sentiment 0.67
  • Liberal net sentiment 0.74

Post-election announcement including US domains
(1 is positive so both have a negative score)

  • Labor net sentiment 0.67
  • Liberal net sentiment 0.70

So Liberal sentiment is going down and Labor’s is steady. It will be interesting to keep watching this score to the election. I haven’t looked at the entire “landscape” of the wider election sentiment in this analysis so the Greens and other parties issues are not included here, just the 2 major parties.

Analysis of Liberal & Labor social media efforts

There’s poor form overall from both Liberal and Labor. They’ve both set up social channels but use them to broadcast messages just like they do in traditional media channels, and they let the emergent community monitor itself. Spam is a problem in Facebook for the Liberal Party (not that they do anything about it).

There are huge missed opportunities to respond to issues in social channels. Neither party is responding in any channel to the huge volume of discussion. They may or may not be monitoring the issues, but given the extremely negative sentiment regarding internet filter, and immigration policy and boat people, the Government could at least be pro-actively addressing these issues.

Here are the breakdowns

Australian Labor Party

Website

Newly relaunched site has 2 places for social engagement

- it’s a public forum – the main barrier to entry is that people must register

- can’t login with Facebook, Twitter OpenID or any other “social identity”

- people can give ideas for policy

- Blog is more an article feed – users can’t comment

- Interactive game – “Tony Abbott Hospital Cuts” game

Twitter

Australian Labor

http://twitter.com/AustralianLabor

1,680 Following 1,638 Followers

Joined 10 December 2009

Ratio:

Good following to followers ratio - they are making an effort to follow back everyone who follows them – best practice

Hashtags:

  • ALP Use of hashtags is not as smart as it should be. Inconsistently used, inconsistent naming, and too generic.
  • For example, tweets marked with #news and #blogs too generic and does not enable people to search for specific ALP topics relevant to them
  • Only started using specific hashtags Friday 16 July related to their 2 community forums #Thinktank and #LaborConnect
  • Again #ThinkTank could be anyone’s think tank and does not identify it as ALP. Should be #ALPThinkTank to make it work harder for them
  • Use Twitter lists as a way to track MPs but only one list

Content:

Not conversational at all – use it to broadcast blog article links, official announcements.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard

http://twitter.com/juliagillard

9,389 Following 20,752 Followers

Joined 27 October 2009 but only tweeting since July 4, 2010

Ratio:

Decent follower to following ratio, would say that since she’s been PM that it’s difficult to get the auto-follow to keep up with the amount of people following her each day

Content:

Strictly broadcast

Tweet content is partly first person, partly third person. Inconsistent tone suggests her account is managed by different people but there’s no transparency on who’s tweeting on her behalf.

Facebook

Julia Gillard

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Gillard/161674172327

32,651 People Like

Australian Labor

http://www.facebook.com/LaborConnect

1,620 People Like

Facebook commentary is raging on every article or status posted in Facebook on Julia’s page but no official voice is responding.

The community is talking to itself here, on the wall, discussion board, but there is no input from the people running Julia’s page.

The community is left to run and moderate itself – not best practice

Minimal/no spam so the pages seems to be monitored but no responses back from anyone running the pages.

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/australianlabor

Subscribers 1504

72 Videos

Channel Views: 185,685

Total Upload Views: 765,591

Style: Broadcaster

Joined: June 10, 2007

Australian Liberal Party

Website

  • has “support”, “comment” and “like” social interaction features on the “Our Ideas” section of their website
  • “Our Ideas” as a name for this section does not suggest that feedback is elicited (i.e. they are Liberal Party ideas and they aren’t interested in your ideas) or wanted and as a consequence doesn’t have a lot of responses

Twitter

Liberal Party

http://twitter.com/LiberalAus/

3,801 Following 4,261 Followers

Good following/followers ratio

Joined 4 April 2009

Content:

  • Strictly broadcast but well written tweets
  • Links to news content articles on Liberal website

Hashtags:

  • Easily identifiable and consistent use of hashtags
  • #myliberal and #ausvotes on every tweet.
Tony Abbott

http://twitter.com/TonyAbbottMHR

20 Following 10,950 Followers

Joined

Poor following ratio – doesn’t follow people back

Content:

Broadcast. Not conversational

Personal content with photos and descriptions, mixed in with jabs at the government and then also Liberal policy announcements.

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/LiberalPartyAustralia

6,751 People Like This

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tony-Abbott/216342268645

7,920 People Like This

Both these pages have Facebook spam (people linking to off topic or personal pages) suggesting its not viewed or monitored very well.

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/liberalpartytv

74 Videos

Subscribers: 6

Channel Views: 20,985

Total Upload Views: 230,283

Joined: September 28, 2008

Summary

Neither Liberal nor Labor parties are responding in any of the social channels - they are too busy “broadcasting” messages and leaving the communities to manage and moderate themselves. The debates are raging (on and off topic) in Facebook and Twitter, but with no official responding voices in any party channels. The only minor benefit is that the parties are taking the political messages into the social spaces where the voting public spend the majority of their time online.

What do you think? Would the political party that addressed the issues in social spaces get any brownie points going into this election?

Apr 19 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, collaboration, mash-ups, social media

Who owns social content?

Rubik's cube

Creative Commons License photo credit: Mecookie

How quickly the social landscape changes. A year ago, I was working on a digital campaign that featured user generated content at its core - the majority of the content for the site was going to be photo uploads from individual users, mashed up with the clients’ products to create a hybrid UGC/product site. It wasn’t called a “social” campaign because it was being run on a microsite, (rather than social channels) but the issues it faced are symptomatic all user generated content/mashup/crowdsourced [social content] campaigns. The legal issues centred around using other brands’ logos or other brands’ products in association with the campaign brand. The client was very nervous around getting sued by Apple, say, if an iPhone was uploaded by a user. The site is not live anymore, and didn’t get much traction -a combination of death by a thousand lawyers’ cuts and “Flashsturbation”

A year later,  most clients are now active in social media - they are asking for Facebook apps, one of them has even replaced their corporate website with a Facebook Page and many of them are even using Twitter, personally if not for their brands. The legal/creative issues for user generated content have not gone away - the clients lawyers are still saying “no” to many creative, social content campaign ideas.

It goes like this:

  1. Creative team pitch in a cool, engaging user generated/social content,  game/application/tactical campaign
  2. Client loves it
  3. Digital producers spec it out, and it all looks like its all systems go.
  4. Then it gets run past the lawyers
  5. Lawyers say no
  6. Campaign gets killed or its “Back to the drawing board”

Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) event on Monday 19th April 2010 will be exploring this very topical issue, what constitutes “ownership” in the era of the social web. I’m really interested to hear from Professor Brian Fitzgerald - Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology. He will be representing Creative Commons Australia (ccAustralia) is the Australian derivative project of the international Creative Commons project. There have been a some notable Australian success stories with Creative Commons, for example the Flickr crowd source tagging project by the Powerhouse Museum.

Representing the lawyers (and IP holders and brands!) will be Stephen von Muenster – principal, vonMuenster solicitors & attorneys, advisor on copyright and content ownership issues to advertising agencies and brands. He’ll be answering the tough questions like “How do you avoid getting sued in another country?”

Of course what’s a fate worse than getting sued in another country? No-one being interested enough in the brand or the user generated competition to be bothered putting in hours of effort for a prize. So instead, the agencies make “fake user generated content” e.g. Doritos e.g. Best Job in the World to start the ball rolling, or in the case of the Toyota Yaris social campaign, put the nails in the coffin. [where Saatchi & Saatchi asked their supplier to create an ad to pump up lacklustre entries, so they could be assured of winning]

Spammers it seems are into this social content piece to artificially boost Google rankings. Ars Technica reported recently that UGC has even become a spamming technique, saying that 95% of user generated content is spam or malware or both.

Given the cavalier attitude to copyright and intellectual property on the web, and the trendiness of mashups and UGC, the era of social content is proving to be a fairly treacherous minefield for the brands or agencies who are naive or  insular.

UPDATE: Read Jye Smith’s summary of the event, which includes the very informative Slideshare presentations

Mar 26 Comments comments
blogs, brand engagement, change management, collaboration, social media, social networking

Introducing the authors of Age of Conversation 3

I am very excited to be part of a new book, Age of Conversation 3: It’s time to get busy!. It’s going to be a physical book, available directly from Amazon and other online book stores. The new cover, was designed by Chris Wilson. And the website, was designed and built by my friend, Craig Wilson and the hard working team at Sticky Advertising.

The editors, Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan have done an amazing job pulling it together.

There are some very high calibre writers, who chose one of the following themes as their contribution. At the Coalface, Conversational Branding, Influence, Getting to work, Corporate Conversations, Measurement, In the boardroom, Pitching social media, Innovation and Execution, Identities, friends and trusted strangers. Stay tuned, I’ll let you know when the book will be available.

The authors who have contributed to this year’s edition are:

Adam Joseph Priyanka Sachar Mark Earls
Cory Coley-Christakos Stefan Erschwendner Paul Hebert
Jeff De Cagna Thomas Clifford Phil Gerbyshak
Jon Burg Toby Bloomberg Shambhu Neil Vineberg
Joseph Jaffe Uwe Hook Steve Roesler
Michael E. Rubin anibal casso Steve Woodruff
Steve Sponder Becky Carroll Tim Tyler
Chris Wilson Beth Harte Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Dan Schawbel Carol Bodensteiner Trey Pennington
David Weinfeld Dan Sitter Vanessa DiMauro
Ed Brenegar David Zinger Brett T. T. Macfarlane
Efrain Mendicuti Deb Brown Brian Reich
Gaurav Mishra Dennis Deery C.B. Whittemore
Gordon Whitehead Heather Rast Cam Beck
Hajj E. Flemings Joan Endicott Cathryn Hrudicka
Jeroen Verkroost Karen D. Swim Christopher Morris
Joe Pulizzi Leah Otto Corentin Monot
Karalee Evans Leigh Durst David Berkowitz
Kevin Jessop Lesley Lambert Duane Brown
Peter Korchnak Mark Price Dustin Jacobsen
Piet Wulleman Mike Maddaloni Ernie Mosteller
Scott Townsend Nick Burcher Frank Stiefler
Steve Olenski Rich Nadworny John Rosen
Tim Jackson Suzanne Hull Len Kendall
Amber Naslund Wayne Buckhanan Mark McGuinness
Caroline Melberg Andy Drish Oleksandr Skorokhod
Claire Grinton Angela Maiers Paul Williams
Gary Cohen Armando Alves Sam Ismail
Gautam Ramdurai B.J. Smith Tamera Kremer
Eaon Pritchard Brendan Tripp Adelino de Almeida
Jacob Morgan Casey Hibbard Andy Hunter
Julian Cole Debra Helwig Anjali Ramachandran
Jye Smith Drew McLellan Craig Wilson
Karin Hermans Emily Reed David Petherick
Katie Harris Gavin Heaton Dennis Price
Mark Levy George Jenkins Doug Mitchell
Mark W. Schaefer Helge Tenno Douglas Hanna
Marshall Sponder James Stevens Ian Lurie
Ryan Hanser Jenny Meade Jeff Larche
Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher David Svet Jessica Hagy
Simon Payn Joanne Austin-Olsen Mark Avnet
Stanley Johnson Marilyn Pratt Mark Hancock
Steve Kellogg Michelle Beckham-Corbin Michelle Chmielewski
Amy Mengel Veronique Rabuteau Peter Komendowski
Andrea Vascellari Timothy L Johnson Phil Osborne
Beth Wampler Amy Jussel Rick Liebling
Eric Brody Arun Rajagopal Dr Letitia Wright
Hugh de Winton David Koopmans Aki Spicer
Jeff Wallace Don Frederiksen Charles Sipe
Katie McIntyre James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw David Reich
Lynae Johnson Jasmin Tragas Deborah Chaddock Brown
Mike O’Toole Jeanne Dininni Iqbal Mohammed
Morriss M. Partee Katie Chatfield Jeff Cutler
Pete Jones Riku Vassinen Jeff Garrison
Kevin Dugan Tiphereth Gloria Mike Sansone
Lori Magno Valerie Simon Nettie Hartsock
Mark Goren Peter Salvitti
Mar 15 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, mobile, social media, social networking

Australians increasing social media use is led by Facebook

Australias most popular social media websites March 2010

Australia's most popular social media websites March 2010

Nielsen reports today via Nielsen’s 2010 Social Media Report, that there are now 9 million Australians interacting on regularly on social networking sites with Facebook dominating - more than 83% of social networkers naming Facebook as their main social networking platform, up from 72% in 2008 and 34% in 2007.

Overall, Facebook is Australia’s most popular social network with 75% of online Australians having ever visited, and via time spent per month (more than 8 hours per month which is seven and a half more hours than its closest rival site YouTube)

Nielsen see the growth in Smartphone ownership in Australia to 43% of online Australians assisting the growth in mobile social networking. Of the pool of social networkers, 26% are participating via mobile.

Twitter is used increasingly a mobile social network in Australia, with half of its mobile users visiting the site daily. In comparison, Facebook saw 36% of its mobile users visit the site, whilst 22 percent of MySpace users and 16 percent of YouTube users were making daily visits. Twitter’s usage in Australia grew more than 400% in 2009 and 14% of Australians have followed companies or organisations on Twitter (up from 5% in 2008)

The chart below shows the fastest growing social media activities from 2009.

Fastest growing social media activities in Australia 2009

Fastest growing social media activities in Australia 2009

Interacting with brands in social networks overall is at 38% in 2009 up 15 points year on year. This translates to nearly two in five online Australians are now interacting with companies via social sites, and shows Australians are open to engaging with brands and companies online.

Melanie Ingrey, Research Director for Nielsen’s online business, sees social networks having big impact on brands:

“The opportunities for brands and companies to tap into the social media phenomenon are really just beginning to emerge and to date we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. Incredibly, nearly nine in ten Australian Internet users (86%) are looking to their fellow Internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands, and Australians’ engagement with online word of mouth communication is going to increase in coming years as social media plays an increasingly important role in consumer decision making.”

I find these stats support what we see everyday as social media marketers - that consumers are looking to make two-way connections to brands. Consumers are looking for brand interaction, in the places they spend the most amount of time, which increasingly is in social spaces. The challenge for marketers in the coming era of social commerce is in becoming a genuine social brand, and to be open to conversation, feedback, and to integrate social marketing into all the other marketing channels.

What do you see as the coming challenges for social brands?

Jan 10 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, mash-ups, social media, television

Social mashup goes mainstream: Pepsi Hit Refresh

Pepsi Australia Hit Refresh social mashup

Pepsi Australia Hit Refresh social mashup

Earlier this week, Pepsi Australia’s Hit Refresh social media and heavyweight outdoor campaign started it’s promotions activation phase, via a Twitter treasure hunt and the engagement so far has been extremely high. This is a campaign I’ve been working on since late 2009, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing social brand advocacy in action at a grass roots level in the Gen Y and Gen Z demographic. Particularly on Facebook, Fans of the page are spontaneously sharing their love of Pepsi, requesting the treasure hunt come to their city, and enjoying the MTV TV spots.

There are a few points about this campaign that makes it distinctive in both the social media and advertising landscape in Australia:

  1. The Hit Refresh site acts as a social aggregator so removes any barriers to entry. Being on Twitter is not a requirement to follow or participate in the treasure hunt (winners get a $250 Refresh card to spend as they choose). Instead, they can watch the clues turn up on the Twitter section of the website, or watch the clues turn up on the Tweets tab of the PepsiAustralia Facebook Page
  2. The site is a mashup of social APIs. It uses the Twitter API  but filters it via specific hashtags to only show treasure hunt clues. Hit Refresh site also uses Twitpic’s API, filtered via hashtag to show only those tagged as #refreshwin. It makes it easy to follow only clues, and winners. The Google Maps API displays the region for each of the daily hunts.
  3. There is a hashtag structure related to the geography of the Twitter treasure hunt, so those who are advanced Twitter users can set up a search specific to the city they’re wanting to follow clues on, e.g #refreshsyd, related to Sydney specific clues #refreshmelb, on the days the hunt is on in Melbourne
  4. The Twitter followers are a range of those who follow because of the treasure hunt and those who are interested in the campaign from a social marketing point of view.
  5. Twitter’s being seen/used as the channel for the clues and treasure hunt specific interactions, whilst Facebook is being seen/used as a more general brand engagement, conversational channel.

A lot of overall campaign feedback, some negative some positive, can be read on the comments on the mUmbrella and Campaign Brief posts, most of them focus on either the creative, or the mechanic. What’s been missed is the bigger picture: that we finally have the Australian region of a global brand embracing social media, for one of the heaviest weight outdoor campaigns in Australia’s history. It’s one of the first times a multi-channel social media campaign has hit the advertising mainstream in Australia.

Australia is the first PepsiCo International market to launch the new look Pepsi trademark across the four Pepsi brand, but the Hit Refresh campaign is a year behind the US in terms of re-brand launch. In the US, the new look Pepsi was launched a year ago during the American Presidential inauguration. A year on, the latest US campaign - Pepsi Refresh Project launches 1 February 2010. It’s already generating huge interest and buzz, by allocating funds normally earmarked for Superbowl advertising to giving away millions of dollars in grants each month to fund great ideas. The Refresh Project concept may or may not be used in the Australian market, but either way Hit Refresh is a significant step forward for the maturity of social media in the region.

Pepsi Australia has chosen its social channel names carefully: PepsiAustralia is used on Facebook and Twitter, a recognition of the benefits of social media not just being short-term tactical campaign support, but as part of a long-term “always on” brand strategy.

I’m interested to hear your opinions of the social aspect of the campaign, please share your thoughts.

Dec 06 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, film, social media, television

Why filmmakers should care about social media

Why should you care about social?

I gave this presentation at the 17th Annual World Congress for Science and Factual Producers in Melbourne on 4th December. The audience was mainly documentary and science filmmakers from around the world who came to find out about social media and what it could do for them. The majority of the story/speech is in the Slideshare notes so have a good look if you’re interested in

Many thanks to Daryl Karp from Film Australia for giving me the opportunity to speak at such a prestigious event, along with fellow panelists, Guy Gadney from the Project Factory and Simon Goodrich from Portable Content The audience seemed to get a lot out of the session which was called “What the Hell is Social Media (and Why You Should Care?)”

The common theme from questions? How can busy filmmakers find the time to socialize their content? My answer: its important enough to sacrifice other activity, and 1 -2 hours a day is a fairly small commitment that can be shared between a few people.

Nov 11 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media

Radical Authenticity: MC Hammer at Social Media Club Sydney

MC Hammer at Social Media Club Sydney

MC Hammer at Social Media Club Sydney

Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) was transformed last night, 10th November 2009, spellbound by one unique individual, the one and only MC Hammer. As programming director I was the one of the first to find out that MC Hammer was coming to Sydney thanks to Iain McDonald and his Twitter relationship with Hammer, which again shows the power of connections made in social spaces. We moved venue to the University of Technology Sydney to accommodate the format that Hammer had used with the Harvard Business School, and it gave the talk the gravity it deserved.

Hammer, listed as one of the top social media users on WeFollow is passionate about social media and entrepreneurship. What makes him so engaging is his deeply personal point of view: everything was related to his own experience with Twitter his blog, and the people he interacts with online.

Hammer’s insights are related to what he’s gained transforming his personal brand into a social personal brand

  • wanting to engage directly with the audience and he tweets for himself - “never let anyone else tell your story”
  • he’s a “supergeek” and is connected all the time - “I have this phone and that phone and this device and that computer”
  • Likes to be at “the centre of the flow of information”
  • he uses Twitter to address any issues as they arise because “perception is most important”
  • if people are negative - “you block ‘em”
  • what you can’t touch - “you can’t touch the concept Hammer time”
  • transparency is paramount, its important to be yourself
  • the way he’d reinvented himself more than once from rapper > social media advocate > Harvard Business School lecturer
  • the power of social media to transform the world

Hammer also spoke a lot about being an entrepreneur and music and the people he’d met and become friends with like @Ev. He did have some advice for brands not to run and hide from social but to embrace and own the space Sure, it may have been stuff we knew from our own experience or had heard before, but not like this. Hammer was transformative because he had lived every moment of it - none of it was theory, it was all personal truth.

What made it complete for me was to watch him live his personal brand, to the last degree, to talk individually to all the people who waited for photos and autographs. He responded to questions, engaged genuinely, one-on-one.

I’ll finish with a story he shared with us when commenting that he really liked my husband Mal Damkar’s tie. He told us the story of how he went to an upmarket restaurant in NYC with Ev from Twitter, and it was the kind of place that they wouldn’t let you in unless you wore a tie. Ev, being the casual kind of guy, had to go out and buy a tie to get into the restaurant. Hammer (immaculately dressed for SMCSYD in a suit, tie, shirt and cufflinks) thought this was hilarious, so he took a photo of Ev and tweeted it out.

Hammer, to me, represents the new type of social brand: radical authenticity, when social persona and reality are one.

Oct 12 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media, social networking

what are the rules of social media?

Parking Public Tour, Brooklyn, NY
Creative Commons License photo credit: grifray

Its so easy to get caught up in “shoulds” especially with social media. I firmly believe that social is what you make it - the only rules of social media are conversation and participation.

UPDATE: One can extrapolate that there are rules of polite conversation and participation,  social media accountability is one way of putting it. As Anne McCrossan commented, its about “‘blatant integrity’. The social web is a great opportunity for us to up our game about social behaviour.  [link here]

So it bothers me when people try to tell others what to do - without any understanding of how social media works at either a social media marketing level or a personal relationship level.  A friend who runs a very successful business was contacted via email recently as he’d been held up as a “How not to use twitter” case study at a marketing event.

The person who emailed said this:

I’m sitting in an Internet Marketing seminar in Sydney at the moment, and you and your business have just been presented as an example of what NOT to do online.

I’ll keep this short and do hope you get the point:

If you have people decide to follow you on Twitter from your [business] website, they are probably looking forward to receiving tips [on your business services].  Chances are pretty good they are not interested in hearing about football or “pregnant chicks at Ikea” or “hiding the sausage”.

Thought you would want to know you have just been held up to ridicule in front of some 300 people at this event.  (The event is being repeated tomorrow in Sydney and twice this week in Melbourne.)  Guess the good news is there’s 300 people who have heard of you and your business who probably didn’t know of you til now.  Bad news is, it wasn’t a good news story.

Here’s a suggestion:  Get a separate Twitter account for your business.

While the person who emails this may or may not have had good intentions, there are a bunch of reasons why they are just completely wrong and inappropriate in judging at all. I’ll start with their Twitter profile:

  1. The person who wrote the email lists themselves as “guru”. They’ve tweeted a total of 30 times. Their Mr Tweet statistics really show up how little they use the channel they are a so called expert on. Their Twitter stream is full of the same plug for their website - over and over. There is no conversation at all. No surprises that the “guru” has so few followers.
  2. There have been countless blog posts on the way Twitter is cutting down the barriers to creating conversation and injecting personality into faceless corporates. Yet this self-proclaimed “guru” is telling my friend not to have any personality at all, and not to be a conversationalist, be human, and crack jokes.
  3. The marketing presentation that held up my friend’s Twitter stream for ridicule also took the tweets completely out of context. They only showed one side of the conversation - they did not show what the @replies were replies to. And they did not clarify that @replies are only seen by those who also follow those who are being conversed with, that the tweets would never be seen by everyone.
  4. Its great how these professional speaker circuit type seem to forget, when it suits their argument, that twitter is an opt in social medium. So the people who follow my friend, are his clients and peers, and if they don’t like what they are presented with, its a very simple thing to unfollow him.
  5. In my friends business, he deals with and talks to people on a very personal level -  for up to two hours at a time. If his clients don’t like him, same deal as Twitter - they don’t go back. In fact, Twitter allows for people to see who he is and the type of personality that he has and has done a lot to build his business since its inception. So his twitter account represents him and his business - faithfully. My friend, also believes in honesty in communication, rather than some corporate, bland sanitised push marketing message.
  6. My friend has picked up a lot of business by being himself on Twitter. He’s had blog posts written about his inimitable style and great busines. He’s picked up a lot of followers who love his fun attitude to life, his jokes and he’s become a real Twitter personality. That same personality has translated to genuine brand authenticity, both online and offline, and he’s built significant relationships using social media by being real. I could write a detailed post on how he’s used social media effectively to build a social brand and social business. In fact - using the same examples given by the emailer, I could write the exact opposite case study about how my friend  -  “How to use Twitter effectively to build a social brand”
  7. And to finish, I’d like to compare and contrast the “gurus” 30 tweets to my friends 10,000 plus tweets and my friends Mr Tweet statistics

I like to say there are no failures in social media - only failure to participate. And for all those so called “gurus” who say Twitter is not for marketing or not for being yourself or not for being honest, or not for being human - they are clearly wrong. Because there are millions of people on Twitter who are using it the way they want and making Twitter what they want it and need it to be.

Oct 05 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media

the cornerstones of social strategy

DSC_2605.JPG
Creative Commons License photo credit: imgdive

I’ve been working on a number of social media campaigns lately, some really long term and some short term. What do they have in common?

  • Defining social objectives
  • Social media monitoring
  • Channel strategy
  • Content strategy

The combination varies from client to client but its really important to have these cornerstones to help build a  social media conversation.

What I’d like to add to this list is a retention strategy. Particularly for the short term campaigns. What happens to the Fans of the neglected Facebook Pages? They find out their brand is just not that into them. I wonder about the effort that goes into building up a community if you’re just going to leave it behind.

This is intended an introduction to social strategy, I’m going to cover off each of the cornerstones in the following posts so stay tuned. In the meantime, is there any time you’ve been let down by a social media campaign that left you in the lurch when it ended abruptly? Did you feel differently toward the brand as a consequence?