Jun 4, 2010 4
If you didn’t think the iPad was life-changing, think again
This is an impressive video showing just how the iPad is indeed a game changer in the relationship we have with our technology.
May 31, 2010 6
You don’t need a social media expert, you need a digital strategist…what crap
Matt had an interesting post about schadenfreude and how easy it is for any and everybody to jump on the “brandwagon” when a brand does something wrong online. Seth said something similar – and I can’t help feeling there is even more of it happening to the social media trade too. Here’s just one recent example saying the same old, same old, but this time about the much-ridiculed social media expert.
I’m proud of Gabba calling ourselves a social media agency. We’re not ashamed to admit we operate a range of services in and around the somewhat ambiguous “social space”, nor I suspect will people like Brian, Chris and Jeremiah. Sure, each has a different spin on what they do, but do they add any less value because of what they call themselves?
May 31, 2010 1
Seth: What have you shipped?
Seth nails it:
But what have you shipped?
Yes, I know you’re a master of the web, that you’ve visited every website written in English, that you’ve been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny. But what have you shipped?
What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?
Go, do that.
May 25, 2010 3
This means such a lot to me tonight
Call me soppy, but after the fantastic night I’ve had with @stevecla and @briansolis, this song resonates with me more than ever. Not sure why, but you’ve brought a few things home tonight guys. Thank You!
Jan 18, 2010 5
We’ve got our own cube grenade!
gabba, my social media agency is all about creating conversation for our clients.exactly the kind of things that cube grenades do. As a social object, they fit the bill perfectly. Nothing creates conversations better than social objects.
But we’re not about the kind of meaningless conversation that SEO agencies create when they advocate that they build a blog for SERP visibility, not the kind of meaningless presences without purposes that digital agencies create as an add-on to their website design, and certainly NOT the kind of tacky pr stunt conversations that pr agencies that don’t even use You Tube and Flickr develop.
No, this is about one thing – developing ways and means for clients to hold sustained, meaningful and mutually beneficial conversations with customers (whomever they may be).
Will the tools that we use to begin and maintain these conversations be the same in two year’s time? Probably not.
Will the description or name of what we do be the same in two year’s time?
Probably not.
Will the need to sustain meaningful conversations with customers exist in two year’s time?
Almost definitely.
So, here’s hoping that we will create many conversations with you in the future!
Check us out here:
http://letsgabba.com
http://twitter.com/letsgabba
Jan 9, 2010 4
Why the Seesmic/Ping.fm deal will cause brands a BIG problem
When Seesmic acquired ping.fm, commentators thought it was great move. A great way for Seesmic (the largely twitter, but emerging dominant Facebook status updater) to reach many, many more people and it become the social media updater of choice.
For consumers, this merger should create a significant, seamless way for them to update to their many active social networks in one quick, fell swoop. Rumour had it that Shozu is also going through some kind of deal to add its one-for-all image updating system to a major publishing platform, so this is clearly a fast-moving area – and one which Tweetdeck is going to have to make some major moves in (it was a given that Tweetdeck dominated the desktop status updater sector, but what deals are left for it now/in the future?).
So what does it mean for consumers?
They can be anywhere, any place and update their status/content. Cynics of social networks/media etc. argue that one cannot effectively manage the volume of connections and content that gets circulated on these networks – but people are doing it – and by people I mean the Gen Y’ers for whom always-on connectivity and omnipresence is commonplace.
But what does it mean for brands? Why the deal puts a nail in brands ‘ comms strategies.
One of the biggest issues I have with brands in social media is the “branded outpost” nature of their presences. I talk a lot to clients of branded outposts on things like twitter, Facebook and You Tube (the de facto “social media strategy”) where brands think they are playing the same game as the consumer, simply by having a presence there.
YET, if they are doing nothing once they have got there, or adding nothing of value to the consumer by being present on these channels, then they are pointless – Presences Without Purposes (which is another of my over-used BS terms!)
Staffing and Knowledge issues – the root of the current (and future) problems
One of the most common reasons brands fail to man these outposts is a lack of direction. Typically this lack of direction is governed by “just taking part” and not doing so in the knowledge that what they embarking upon is relevant, timely and valuable to consumers, where they are. Result? Mis-directed efforts which fail to resonate with the audience (if there are any there) and social media is condemned to the “we tried it but it doesn’t work for us” pile.
The second major failing of brands in social networks is that the staff charged with manning these outposts are typically junior (and use social networks for purely personal reasons) or are sporadically covered by marketing managers whole time is hard-pressed with other tasks.
They start off meaning well after the project steering group decided that social media should be on the agenda, but just can’t find the time to continue it. Result? Positive initial noises and participation which quickly dwindles and dies.
The third major factor in failure is one of simple resource – over-stretching of resource, to be perfectly honest. Which is what takes us back to the Seesmic/ping.fm issue.
Brands who do not commit properly to social media channels find it difficult to spend the appropriate amount of time on that channel. Comments come in thick and fast, subscription and friend requests need to be responded to, friends’ content needs rating, commenting upon etc..
As such, the outposts die.
Multiple consumer identities – multiple brand outposts?
Now, multiply the numbers of updateable networks up by about 10-fold (which ping.fm’s reach could do) and you as a brand are faced with a major dilemma – if you can’t manage your FB, YT, Twitter and Blog content NOW (if indeed you are doing any of them), how the hell can you possibly do this with potentially 10 times as many channels?
Even the likes of Ford, GM, Dell and Coca Cola would struggle with this level of engagement. So is the answer to sod them all and bring everyone to YOUR domain/location? I guess that depends on the nature and extent of conversations, but isn’t the idea of taking people away from their familiar territory against best practice? After all, these are social networks where people “socialise” – not convenient locations for brands to earwig and jump in.
The answer is conversation monitoring
My solution to this fragmentation would be to look at the most popular domains – where are the places that most people are doing the talking? Sophisticated monitoring tools do this kind of evaluation as a matter of course – and are much cheaper than an editoral team of 5 people (or more!) to achieve the same thing with marginal benefits.
Starting out? Only be active in the top 3 channels (which may account for 60%+ of conversations anyway), but, with such varying volume of conversations and diversification of networks, you’d be foolish to think that one hat fits all.
Listen, watch, maybe even partake on a personal level if that helps you become familiar with unknown territory, but be aware that now that consumers can update 50+ social networks, you should at the very least be thinking about how you can manage the ones you know about already!
Don’t be scared that you need to be all things to all people in all places. You don’t!
You want to talk some more about this? Mail me at p (dot) fabretti (at) letsgabba (dot) com (my social media agency)!
Dec 17, 2009 1
Clay Shirky telling it like it is. You need to listen to this guy
Clay Shirky is one of those guys that you might never have heard of before, but will never forget once you have heard him speak.
For the uninitiated, Clay is one of the world’s most respected commentators on the societal changes that are taking place on the web today. He is a writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies NYU and author of “Here Comes Everybody”. He also speaks at TED, one video of which is below.
Clay approaches social media from a background of science which helps him make one of the most compelling cases for social media you will ever hear.
In fact, one of my favourite quotes from Clay is this:
“A revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviours…”
In the video, he also touches on something also very interesting, the idea that society doesn’t change its habits until the technology becomes boring enough to take for granted – which is why the Obama campaign did so well. The barriers to entry to getting people to use MMS, Video and the Web are now so low that everyday people can genuinely make a noise online.
Some interesting lessons here:
Dec 16, 2009 8
Who says brands can only talk about success?
…or rather “why we should actually beging to start trusting agencies a bit more now”.
OK, so this is a bit of a schizophrenic post – it goes all over the place, but stick with it for a while! Hopefully the comments will be more interesting!!
So, reading through one of e-consultancy’s latest (again, quality) blog posts, they covered 16 social media guidelines issued by brands who are already pretty well known for their social media initiatives.
I have no issue with any of the recommendations – they are all sound, considered and safe…and that’s pretty much it – they are bloody obvious.
The comments were gushing “best post I’ve seen in a while”, “this post just became mandatory reading”…but for god’s sake…most of this is just COMMON SENSE.
Imagine if you, as an agency bod, stood in front of a Board of Director’s trying to explain what or how the company should adopt social media and the best you could come up with is:
- Don’t “broadcast” messages to users.
- Try to add value.
- It’s a conversation.
Why does everybody seem so damn gushing about these dull statements of the obvious, JUST because they come from a brand?
Do guidelines from brands make their activities any more successful than an agency’s activities? No. Brands have as many failures in social media as agencies (perhaps more), and are widely lambasted for not having “got it” or “done it properly” when they do get it wrong.
So why then don’t agencies, many of whom DO “get” social media” and who ALSO practice what they preach and who also have HEAPS of experience, and who KNOW how to integrate social media into a wider digital strategy and who HAVE got case studies from other clients, get a fair crack of the whip too?
The Flip Side
Perhaps the failings of agencies though, is that they are always trying to sell stuff – show me a seminar and you’ll see endless rows of agencies talking about case studies they have done.
Why can’t they talk about what they KNOW, or give an opinion about what they think, show where their heads are, what trends they think are emerging instead of spouting off about the one case study that has (to their surprise!), been a success.
What do you think? Are agencies hindered by the way they have always worked – the need to shout about their work being the only thing that gets them noticed? Do brands have that credibility that comes when they have no commercial benefit to gain from talking about their work or are they as susceptible to failure (and therefore as deserving of a hammering) as any agency?
Dec 14, 2009 5
Customer Service should be everybody’s goal
One of the reason i’ve not posted quite so often is that we’ve been lucky enough to be working on major social media strategies two clients these past few weeks and I can’t get the idea of customer service as the new marketing out of my head. If social media does anything, it is to put representatives on social channels right in front of where customers are. This has led me to ponder:
Is good customer service the ONLY objective when engaging with social media?
When we develop a strategy, having digested the brief or once we have defined it, one of the things we allow ourselves to do it spend a bit of mad time to get the silliness and excitement out of the way.
As is typically the case, we end up going around the houses, considering the mad, wrong and downright ridiculous, talking tactically rather than strategically – “we could do this”, “what would be brilliant is if we could do that”. “How would we use Facebook, what would a Twitter account look like, how could we “…and breathe…you get the idea. You probably do it yourself 
BUT, once we have the daft stuff out of the way, we bring it right back down to earth and always end up asking ourselves this one question :
How will this activity add value to the person being exposed to it?
The easy route is very much to say we will have a blog, but what value would the blog bring to a customer? What would we say in it that adds value to a customer? Do we talk about the issues that they are talking about and respond accordingly, do we talk about our product development in a way our website cannot, do we share the experiences and problems other customers are having?
If we are going to consider Twitter, do we use it to stem a flow if dissatisfaction before it becomes a flood, or do we jump into conversations that we feel we can help someone out?
What about Facebook – the great “fish where the fish are” social network. Do we invite feedback on our products, give exclusive previews to customers because they have joined our Page – or do we send targeted messages through an application simply because we have access to that person’s profile information.
In almost every case, there is a strong element to customer service in this, disguised as a social technology. Problem solving, receiving and providing feedback, offering help, providing information of interest etc.
Which takes me back to my original point. If social media is anything, surely it is about customer service.
Considering our clients, one (Client A) has legendary customer service as a major selling point, the other (Client B) has innovation in technology as a major selling point.
Now, for Client A, it is obvious that social media allows an extension to their existing customer service strategy. Social technologies would allow us to be there as soon as problems arise, provide channels to convey important and timely messages to customers, provide support, guidance and advice around technical issues when we have understood that this is what they are talking about.
A very smart colleague calls this “customer service amplification” using social technologies to provide exactly the type of customer service the customer expects, but in a far wider reaching way.
But what of the company that prides itself on technical innovation? Surely the best way they can use social media is to tell people of its genius? Why wouldn’t they use social technologies from a customer services perspective to help people understand why their technology is different/better?
To consider why customer service should be everybody’s social media goal, wikipedia (no surprise), has an interesting summary:
Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after purchasing a product
Now, let’s consider how social media can achieve all these goals:
BEFORE: Pre-sales
Brands could provide multiple touch points to help customers understand what the product is, does, why it is different – help them make the choice where they want to look for it instead of making them come to you.
Why not include many more shareable product videos and images than the standard catalogue shots – if you have nothing to be ashamed of, let people see more of the product and let them share it with others to ask for their peer’s opinions. Integrate user-reviews at your multiple touch points to help potential buyers understand what it looks/sounds and feels like, where is it stored from existing customer’s points of view. Use brand advocates as trusted, honest and neutral advice providers.
DURING: Active product use
Again, brands need to provide multiple ways to help existing customers reach them. Has the brand provided a way for that customer to derive maximum utility from the product? Why not publish recipe ideas for your new blender and invite people to add their own recipes, show people how best to use the vacuum cleaner on hard floors…facilitating collaboration and involvement and making the content portable allows customers to show others, it also means that you are not taking people away from their “places of play” to help them.
AFTER: buying is only the beginning
Are we there when things go wrong? Do we have multiple, customer-convenient ways for the customer to contact us and report problems? Are we there to help continue a customer’s pleasure from our product? Do we have multiple means that would allow the customer a way to tell us how they would like us to improve or change the product, what did we do well, poorly…social media channels at this stage are all about feedback, being seen to be listening and ensuring that the purchase of the product is only the start of our relationship.
So, albeit briefly, we have considered a few way that social technologies can be used in wikipedia’s definition of customer service, but, irrelevant of definitions, tactics and tools…when it comes to customer service, owe should focus on 3 things:
1. How can our social channels help us better inform the potential customer in the most convenient way for them?
2. How can our social channels help customers use our products to their full potential?
3. How can our social channels continue to provide benefit for our customers once the purchase has been made?
Buying a product is the best excuse in the world to have a conversation with customers, so make sure you ask yourself this one question about anything you decide to do:
How will this activity add value to the person being exposed to it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is customer service the only real way to describe what social technologies are about?
