blending the mix

Debbie Weil (if you don’t know who she is, I haven’t got enough time to tell you but go here and here to find out more!) posted the following question which has really resonated with me:

Is Corporate Blogging the Hub of Social Media Marketing?

Debbie’s question is a really pertinent one as we see more and more casual, almost meaningless social gestures creeping into our online world. Friending, poking, liking, rating, status updates and even Twitter with its 140 characters are all quick and simple ways for us to communicate but do any of them add any real value to interactions with customers?

Whilst many firms set out with the very best of intentions of engaging customers with their social media strategy, where is the real “meat” in the conversation.

As I often do, ask yourself, how would you interact with someone if they only spoke in 140 characters or sentences with limited meaning, or who simply gave you a thumbs up or down in response to a question you may ask?

Out of principle, we in “the profession” are obliged (and 99% of the time are correct) to say that no social media strategy should proceed without beforehand, monitoring the landscape. That seems to be the “proper” and sometimes obvious way to get things moving. We then move to discuss the idea that no channel has the right to be used without evidence that there is a need for the brand to communicate in that way to customers.

The reality is though (and this is through a lot of experience!) that at the heart of any good social media strategy DOES lie a blog - whether with a corporate hat on or a marketing-led branding/engagement one.

The blog, for me, is the way to get to the heart of what social media is all about - people. It is the only way of giving the brand a voice, a means to communicate in a way that the stuffy website or social channels will not let them and a way to to show consumers that the brand really does give a sh1t.

Many have postulated that blogging is dead with the growth of the status update and twitter, but I’m utterly unconvinced.

What are your thoughts? Can you think of other ways that brands can engage in meaningful conversations with customers yet still make it a quick and easy thing to do?

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)!

I spent ages writing the usual considered analysis of the Eurostar debacle, only to find that someone had beaten me to it – so be it, but good piece anyway. It’s well worth a read. (one question though – why the hell use posterous to publish such a lengthy blog post…)

To any business out there considering social media – this is your wake up call. Let Eurostar get a kicking for this and learn from their mistakes.

YOU on the other hand can do it the right way. You cannot get involved in social media if you don’t:

1. Know who is already talking about you – for god’s sake if you do NOTHING else, listen to conversations taking place about you.
2. Have your assets protected – make sure you own your brand name on all the places you need to use
3. Get your back office sorted:

• Assign people – Know who is going to do the listening, where and with what.
• Triage comments – deal with the most important/dangerous/
• Define the information flow – know how information will get from the end user to the person capable of answering it.

As much as We Are Social annoyingly name drop work they have done into every comment they leave on the web EVER, they have some bloody smart people working there and I do think they have been unfairly criticised for their role in this – they have gone beyond the call of duty to manage a problem that is not of their doing, nor their brief to sort.

Eurostar it seems, just didn’t want to do it properly (although I’m not sure I would have said as much on my company blog) which is a fundamental problem and one which ties up my previous post about clients needing to place more trust in the agencies they appoint – that they are doing this properly.

Sure, the problems would not have gone away, but Eurostar would have been much wiser to listen to the people they appointed to run Little Break, Big Difference – after all that is a great piece of work requiring a major budget. If they can trust we are social to implement an initiative of this size, then SURELY they must trust them to help them manage their comms in the same channels too?

Emma Harris, Eurostar’s Sales and Marketing Director shows the problem:

“We’re the commercial department and we were kind of ready for social media but the business wasn’t. To start involving crisis communication and disruption messages into social media, we just weren’t ready for it. “

Again, as per my last piece, perhaps there are so many snake oil agencies out there that clients have come to distrust every agency they meet, or perhaps the comms team see social media as a marketing thing…or perhaps marketing see this as a comms thing…whatever, if you learn one thing from this post and the whole debacle:

Customers are platform and stature-neutral – they don’t care about who you are. Find ways to deal with them in their playing field how they want to play.

WAS – good job folks. I think you’ve delivered above the call of duty and given a good account of yourselves.

Update: please read Andrew’s post for an incredibly balanced, considered view! Your life will be better for it!

thanks to my man Steve for the heads-up…

Ok, as a proud Yorkshireman, it (kind of!) pains me to write this, but it is for a really good cause.

We’ve just bought a record shop right next to Urbis thanks to the good folks at Forever Manchester. Fo those of you who don’t know, this is an institution which aims to help local and really grass-roots projects that might not otherwise, get funding. They do this with donations by local people who have done well enough to be able to give something back “local people helping local people” if you like.

Anyway, we’ve just bought our lovely little record shop right next to Urbis…check US out, we’re almost cool…

You can get deckchairs, advertising boards, fashion shops…I think you can even buy the massive Beetham Tower for a tenner…well there is a recession…

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:

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?

So, those lovely, lovely guys at LG have turned up trumps again to allow me to offer you a fantastic prize.

I’ve been lucky enough to use a 23″ LG Flatron W2353v HD monitor for the last few weeks and have ANOTHER one to give away to you, the lucky reader(s) of blendingthemix.com

For the uninitiated, like I was, the screen is widescreen, (i.e. huge), incredibly bright (in a good way!) but above all 1080p compatible - perfect for playing blueray (that’s mine below).

The gem of it is that it has a censor which optimises the brightness and other settings to ensure that your eyes are not unduly strained over prolonged periods.

Anyway…so you get that bit - it’s a bloody great piece of kit and a BRAND NEW ONE could be winging it’s way to you if you do any of the following:

Simply leave a comment below, making sure you leave your name and a contact email address and tell people on Twitter about it by clicking HERE.

So:

1. Leave a comment (and an email address)

2. Bookmark THIS POST using the tag “blendingthemixlghdmonitor”

3. Re-tweet/use the link above

I will then make a random draw PRECISELY 1 WEEK FROM NOW (1:30pm Tuesday 27th October) and will announce the winner on this blog post. You might want to bookmark this post to delicious as I will be updating THIS post, not creating another one.

UPDATE: I am pleased to announce that the winner of the LG 23″ HD monitor is Guy Clapperton who has now been notified of the prize which will be arriving shortly!

Yesterday, Seth Godin announced the launch of Squidoo’s latest venture “Brands in Public” – a way for brands to quickly, cheaply and easily see what is being said in the majority of the social web. E-consultancy make a good summary of it.

Squidoo decide which brand’s conversation they are going to “hijack” and create a page which pulls in mentions of that brand as well as provide various on-page means for the public to respond to polls and questions about specific aspects of that brand.

For only $400, brands can then buy that page off Squidoo to grant them ownership of it and ensure that they can respond and better manage the content on that page (and, one assumes, customise, the on-page questions etc.)

Good? Hmm. Hardly.

The premise of the tools is that many brands who may be monitoring their reputation are not publicly handling the impact of the monitoring. I think that’s fair enough. Many brands are taking small, manageable steps into social media (understandably) and may not yet be ready to embark on a full-scale strategy, yet almost every single brand they have created a page for is a major multinational/multi-million £/$ company who already has at the very least one active social channel as part of their engagement strategy.

As a brand already in this space, you already know WHERE the conversation is taking place, you already know what is being said, and there is a good chance you know who the people are saying it and the sentiment of the comments being said. Why on earth would you need a BiP Page?

Which begs the question to whom IS the service aimed?

The good old Snake Oil salesman will walk into a client meeting to talk social media and inevitably pulls out a load of negative comments about that client’s brand and say “we can manage this for you…blah, blah, blah…” and strike fear into the client to make them think they need to do something about it and quick. The snake oil comes out and the client ends up buying all sorts of services they neither understand or even understand if they need.

One might argue that as we move forward with the social web, that it will become brand’s responsibility to aggregate conversation about them, but NOT an organisation who will benefit commercially from it.

Brands in Public is just a public version of this and it’s not even that good. You could import a load of RSS feeds into Friendfeed and achieve the same thing. And who are Squidoo to determine what poll topics to put into a page?

Seth Godin hit on a great idea with Squidoo and few would question his ability to apply sound logic and common sense to your marketing, but I am genuinely surprised he is putting his name to this.

Sure, there is *some” sense to this but it is otherwise just a cheap stunt with little value to anyone other than Squidoo.