Category Archives: social networking

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?

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?

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.

Sep 02 Comments comments
social media, social networking

Honesty is the best social media policy

russell farm
Creative Commons License photo credit: ex animø

When considering your personal or a company or a corporate social media policy, one of the key cornerstones should be honesty.

Why?

  • Because so much advertising, marketing and PR involves spin, stretches of truth, hyperbole and wild claims.
  • Because in social media, authenticity and honesty are valuable commodities.
  • Because you can’t “buy” honesty.
  • Because an honest, personal voice can’t please all of the people, all of the time. Which makes it untenable for those looking for the bland and inoffensive.
  • Because it takes time to build the credibility to be considered “honest”
  • Because honesty is rewarded through followers/fans/subscriptions

So how do you talk about things that are negative, bad, disastrous, compromising or just plain bad? Honesty still counts. Just stick to the facts. Don’t lie.

Its that simple.

Aug 03 Comments comments
advertising, social media, social networking

How Facebook privacy is being eroded for advertising

Facebook signup continues to grow at exponential rates across the globe. In three months since April 2009, they’ve added another 50 million users If you’re looking for stats on Facebook’s infiltration into individual countries, the CheckFacebook site provides these revealing stats about Australia:

  • More than 6 million users
  • 36.65% of Australian internet users are on Facebook
  • Slightly more females to males
  • 18-24 year olds still the largest demographic
  • 25-34 year olds second largest demographic
Australian Facebook statistics

Australian Facebook statistics

With advertisers hungry to target internet users by demographic, Facebook is now busy cashing in on its rich rivers of private data. At the same time as growing the user base exponentially, Facebook globally is heading to make $500 million dollars on advertising in 2009, and are fast tracking their ad APIs.

Allfacebook.com reports:

the API is expected to allow advertisers to calculate expected CPMs and CPCs on advertisements as well as make changes to ads on the fly. Facebook hadn’t let advertisers modify ads until recently but it’s a highly demanded feature especially from those advertisers that are running large ad campaigns.

It’s the 3rd Party APIs that have caused Facebook to serve up a photo of a married woman in a singles ad. A few weeks ago Facebooks privacy policy stated:

Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. These respect all privacy rules.

Most Facebook users would not know where to change the settings so they don’t turn up in ads. I changed my own privacy settings a couple of weeks ago, but when I went back tonight, this is what greeted me

Privacy pop-up trying to address Facebook photo ad serving issues

Privacy pop-up trying to address Facebook photo ad serving issues

The Facebook blog covers the “rumors” of the issue with the 3rd party ad serving, and the Facebook ads privacy policy has been re-written to cover the changes.

Probably not enough transparency about what’s really going on. So what does this mean for users and advertisers?

  • Everyone prefers targeted ads that are more relevant to them, but using people’s faces in cheap ads is a big no-no.
  • Facebook should admit to misuses of the 3rd party advertising API rather than deny them as “misleading rumours”.
  • Facebook is likely to be fast-tracking the advertising API, but at the same time should ensure the advertisers don’t abuse the platform, as they’ve admitted had been done previously.
  • Facebook should look after their users. Because their revenue is dependent on the incredibly private and powerful demographic data which enables precise ad targeting, probably not seen since the early days of the web. If users abandon the platform, there goes the revenue.
  • Facebook Users need to stay aware of the constant changes to the platform, and read the fine print carefully to make sure they are comfortable with what they are sharing, particularly with their own photos.

The question is whether the sheer size of Facebook’s user base will protect it from any issue. The tell will be whether the rate of signup of new users will slow down, or whether Facebook will continue to take over the world.

Either way, here’s hoping the ad targeting gets better in the long run. There are just so many home liposuction ads I can give the “thumbs down” to.

Update:

“Unless authorized by us, your ads may not display user data — such as users’ names or profile photos — whether that data was obtained from Facebook or otherwise.“

Hopefully, the self-policing policy will stop these issues. It’s worth monitoring to see how effective it is.

Jul 01 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media, social networking

Qantas Travel Insider on building a social community

At the Social Media Club Sydney June event panel discussion Do you need an agency to run effective social media campaigns? Karla Courtney - Online Editor Qantas Travel Insider, and @qftravelinsider - represented the client perspective. Karla works client-side and has built a community around the @qftravelinsider Twitter account by engaging in conversations around travel.

Qantas Travel Insider is an editorial product that is hosted/owned/branded by Qantas/qantas.com The general idea from an editorial perspective is to provide quality/independent/well-researched travel content that caters to the same market as the inflight magazine. Here’s a short excerpt from the discussion:

Karla points out that people perceive Qantas as an all encompassing brand, so even though she is doing travel editorial, she is representing Qantas on Twitter. What’s great with  @qftravelinsider is that its not just repeating content that’s already on the website, its about connecting travel information with passionate travelers.

For Karla and Qantas Travel Insider, social engagement is not campaign based, but rather part of a long term brand strategy. Karla’s even started a section of the travel blog devoted to tips from twitterers and regularly asked questions, so the great content she sources on Twitter is available to everyone. Its great to see an iconic Australian brand like Qantas using social media for brand engagement.

Watch the entire  panel discussion on the Social Media Club Sydney Vimeo channel

What other brands do you think are doing well building a social community around conversations?