This did the rounds earlier in the week, but I wanted to add my thoughts to the debate as well. New figures out from Social Media God, Brain Solis show that women are dominating the social web, with the exception of Linkedin, YouTube, deviantART, Delicious and Digg.
From my own experience, I’d say that this is spot on. Take Facebook for example, from my experience not only do there tend to be more women engaging with brands through sponsored pages, they are also the most active fans on the page and contribute much more to the conversation.
What could this mean for brands? I think it represents an opportunity to further diversify the way they talk to their audiences, providing the opportunity for near 360 degree engagement, but more importantly a continuous and collaborative conversation. The result – a carefully crafted brand built by people that care the most.
In the land of social media there’s practically an idea a minute, some good, some bad, some crazy and some that are genius. The genius ideas usually speak to our personal and cultural situations, which is why Tweet a London Cab is genius.
Now, having lived in Australia for 4 years and also experienced the taxis in countries around the world, I can tell you that the black cabs of London are second to none. So, when you add a layer of social media over the top of that impeccable service, you’re bringing a British institution bang up to date.
Essentially, the team at Tweet a London Cab offer a service for people to DM their feed with their location, destination and time of pick-up so that drivers in the area can arrange to pick you up via Twitter. Sure, there is a novelty factor to it, but it’s also quite cleverly shifting engagement to more popular, modern means – in this case Twitter
I’m not entirely sure of the business model behind it, but it is still early days for them so I guess it’s watch this space for now….Who knows, it could all be an elaborate publicity hoax. If only then operated in Hertfordshire…..
Once the darling of social media, Facebook now has to battle Twitter to be the first word on excited communicators lips when talking about social media. But in my opinion, it’s between Facebook and YouTube as to who’s done more to attract brands to invest in their platform. If pushed, I’d have to say that it’s Facebook, if for nothing else that the self-serve advertising and awesome analytics it offers.
But still, getting it right on Facebook requires a bit more that setting up a sponsored page. I’ve worked on several Facebook campaigns to date and the one thing that I would say is this – getting it right takes time, effort and commitment, here’s a few tips:
1 – take a look at what’s going on elsewhere on Facebook that relates to what your doing – what are the type of things that your competitors are doing that makes them successful, what kind of pages are your audience interacting with and the big question – is someone already running a page under your brand name and do you want to work with them rather than set-up your own?
2 – talk to people. Ask your audience what they think. Ask them on Facebook, via your website, your blog and other social profiles and get their opinions.
3 – have a content plan. You need to have a steady flow of content in order to keep your audience interested, don’t just launch then twiddle your thumbs
4 – promote your page through all means available to you. Internally, customer emails, traditional advertising, PR, blogger relations and even packaging – check out what Pepsi Raw did
5 – engage with your fans as much as you can, as often as you can. Keep the conversation flowing from both sides.
6 – give them the autonomy to help shape the page by submitting photos, videos and even regulating negative comments
7 – Invest in some social advertising from Facebook. Using this blended results yields some awesome results.
Finally, remember that Facebook is most effective as a long-term marketing tool. As such invest and plan to be active with your page for the long term and you get some superb results
Football fans are a passionate bunch at the best of times and when it comes to the national team, that’s something you really don’t mess with. What I am I talking about? Why is there yet another football post on my social media PR blog? We’ll, if you’re an England fan you’re probably aware by no that you won’t be able to see the England Vs Ukraine World Cup qualifier on TV, instead it’s being streamed live at www.ukrainevengland.com
Now, it may surprise some that I am not going to defend this move, because I actually think it’s bad for everyone. Here is my argument:
Why it’s bad for the fans - Football is a game of the people and when I say that, I mean everyone. Me, my kids, my parents, my grandparents and so on. Everyone should have the right to watch their national side play, but we all know that just isn’t the case in England. If you want to watch England in action, you’ll be able to catch some games on free-to-air channels, but you also have to pay either Sky and until recently the spectacularly useless Setanta.
So, we already have a situation where not everyone can see the national side play and now we’re about to exclude more people – can you honestly tell me your grandparents are going to watch a games streamed live over the web? But, Andrew Croker, executive chairman of Perform who are streaming the game gave this quote to the BBC for its article, ”I think consumers are pretty sophisticated now, particularly in the UK, where we have been in the vanguard of adopting new technology.” So, unless you happen to be at the vanguard of technology, we don’t care…
Why it’s bad for football – I have already tried the online streaming service offered by Sky and it was bloody painful. I’m sure it’s improved in the time since I last tried it, but why on earth am I going to bother when I can watch the game in glorious HD on Sky Sports? The experience I get from Sky is second to none, these guys really do know how to serve up some top-notch sports coverage, but the net experience pales in comparison. I guess what I am saying is all that this is going to do is put people off watching football on the web, we should be adding to the experience. By going ahead with this, we’re probably putting the public appetite for sports streaming back a few years.
Final thoughts – the web isn’t about holding you to ransom, it’s about connecting you with who or what you’re looking for when you want it. From a PR perspective, we should be using online tools to enhance the football experience whilst also expanding our audience.
Twitter is a wonderful place, sure there are a load of mundane and mindless comments, but you also get to hear about the cool new things happening in your industry and the resulting conversation this causes. Last week, I saw the news break that Squidoo would be launching a programme called Brand in public, which is essentially brand hubpages or “lenses” that aggregate conversations taking place around that brand. Now, in addition to that (and the bit that is causing all the conversation) is the fact that they will be looking to charge brands $400 a month for the right to add to them and ultimately develop them.
I have to admit, at first I was one of those people that reacted less than favourably to this – you’re effectively charging a brand for the right to reply, aren’t you? Then, after I thought it through I actually think it could be a good thing for the PR industry. This essentially offers a snap shot of the type of conversations taking place around a brand, ultimately allowing us to better do our job.
We already have monitoring tools like Radian6 that help us identify the conversations we want to influence and they can also alert us to potential issues before they develop. Squidoo could actually become both a reason and a proof point for Digital PR. For example, it’s one thing aggregating conversations using third party tools, but if it’s right there in one place on the web for a brand to see, the decision to act becomes a bit of a no-brainer. So, what does PR do? We help brands engage with these conversations in order to shape the Squidoo page – not pay to control it. So, if PR is doing it’s job, that Squidoo page should look pretty good. For more on this, TechCrunch posted a pretty good overview that you can find here
I spend most of my day thinking up new ways to help my clients interact with social media and I have to say, I find that extremely rewarding. I recently had some time with one of the senior team at my agency and she described my current position as “working in the place to be at the place to be” and I think that pretty much sums-up the way I feel about things – I work for an awesome agency in the most cutting edge part of PR.
One of the most interesting challenges at the moment, is figuring out exactly how to get clients involved with Twitter and how we then measure the output. It is the final frontier, in a Captain Kirk sense, we’ve pretty much got a handle on blogging, YouTube, Facebook and so on, but Twitter is still a bit of a tough one.
Sure, I know the same rules as everyone else in terms of engagement, growing followers, becoming a trusted presence, but what about the overall package? Take Facebook and YouTube for example – both have some awesome analytics attached to them, which make it easy to track, measure and analyse your work. Twitter lacks this and while there are 3rd party tools, they lack the sophistication of those on Facebook and YouTube. We’re kind of stuck with numbers like followers, friends and retweets. For those that are interested in working Twitter into their communications mix – here are a few tips :
Use tools like Tweepsearch to help grow your network in a more targeted way
Don’t underestimate the power of the retweet
use bit.ly links to take your Twitter feeds effectiveness
Identify a core set of followers that you really want to retweet your content and focus on them -perhaps consider providing one of pieces that are specific to them
Take a look at tools like Tweetbeep to help your tracking
Identify and use the #hashtags that are most relevant for your industry and use them
The way I view Twitter at the moment is as a part of a wider social media plan, acting as more of a hook than anything else, allowing brands to direct their audiences to content hosted elsewhere. So, for the time being the basic analytics we have kind of do the job, but you have to ask – where to next for Twitter?
I got to thinking about this on the weekend, which is probably the only time I actually read print press. Is print media more about the experience than the content? As a household, we don’t buy newspapers during the week with my partner buying the occational fitness magazine and I do bring home the Metro for her – but hardly ever read it myself.
Sunday is newspaper day in house and while we used to buy two, we’re now down to one because we don’t read them. Yesterday was one of the rare occasions when I actually picked up the newspaper and had a read, after spending the whole weekend DIYing it, a bit of relaxation was in order. And it was then that it struck me, as I sat outside in the sunshine flicking through the paper with a glass of wine – this is an experience.
So, I did a little bit of self analysis on the type of story I was reading and which ones I was flicking past. Interestingly, or not, I was flicking past all the news stories, instead choosing to read the features and interviews – particularly a few features on a famous footballer who has just released an autobiography. So, as I sat there chuckling at said footballer’s antics and sipping my wine as the last of the afternoon sun slipped away, I concluded – I don’t read the newspaper for the content, I read it for the overall experience – the sun, the fresh air, the wine, the end of two days of hard-graft.
All the content in that newspaper was probably around 20 hours old by the time I got to read it, so there’s no value in the news-led pieces as far as I’m concerned. The value for me is in the opinion, features and interviews as they aren’t as heavily linked to timeliness. But that on it’s own still isn’t enough – I still need to have the time to read it and be in the mood to read it, hence why I feel that print media is more about the experience than the content.
So what would I do if I ran a newspaper? Get deals to sell it in the most popular cafes and pubs across the country – go to where that experience is already taking place.
I am fully prepared for a whole heap of disagreements on what I am about the write, but after sharing a link on Twitter about the so-called “battle for social media”, I thought I’d actually get my thoughts down. The article in question was by Andrew Girdwood and can be found here.
As I said the first time I read the article, I think that it’s an interesting take on the situation and I agree with it for the most. One part that I do disagree with is that “online PR” and “social media PR” are separate entities – they aren’t, they are part of the whole PR mix. Yes, there’s a different level of understanding required, yes there are different approaches, but it’s still PR.
Throughout my career, a few things have always stuck with me and one was an old MD of mine who used to say “the best skills for the job”. As such, she never looked at her agency as the consumer team, the technology team or the online team – she actually used to think in terms of “who’s my best radio person”, or “who gets killer pieces in the tabloids” and so on. I think that it’s the same for any client today – the best skills for the job.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that clients require a whole host of skills to get the job done. For instance, the launch of a new product might involve messaging developed by corporate PR, seeding by digital/social media PR and execution by consumer PR all backed up by a solid SEO programe. It’s not just one thing. Which kind of leads me on to the bit where I agree with Andrew – It’s about working together within the wider marketing mix. Solid marketing programmes need “the best skills” and that means PR, advertising, SEO, experiencial and so on….whatever the client’s needs are.
Where I see the difference from a PR point of view is the actual conversation. We’re not SEO specialists, sure, I understand SEO and I integrate it into the work I do where I can. Ultimately, I’d love to work more closely with SEO peeps to get my content and conversations working harder. But that’s what we’re about, the conversation…. that’s out Kung Fu if you will. And that’s where I might upset people, I don’t SEO fulfilling that role, I see that as purely PR.
My closing thoughts – I just go back to what my old MD said – “the best skills for the job”
This post was eventually going to happen, mainly because I’ve been trying to think of a way to get the following topics in one post: Social media, football, Aston Villa.
As someone that gets almost 100 per cent of his Aston Villa/football info from the web, I’m an avid reader of several blogs relating to my beloved Aston Villa. I also dip in and out of the forums from time to time, but I hardly ever read the papers anymore.
For me, if you’re a football fan of any club, you should be regularly checking the likes of Football Spy with Darren Lewis, Sky Sports and a decent blog about your team. Probably the last place you’ll hear any decent news is your club site.
Take my club, Aston Villa if you will. There of a decent size, owned by a fairly savvy American Billionaire in the form of Randy Leaner, but are they social. Well, no…. Randy’s right hand man, “The General” was sitting in a few forums for a while and famously got himself into trouble with the “pig” comment. But, that’s about it.
The site has what they call a “blog”, but you can’t comment on it, they are also on twitter, but don’t answer back. They have a YouTube channel, but just seem to put footage from AVTV on there. They one thing that they did do that was kind of interesting was the Bullring to Bullring feature, which you can check out here:
But, where the official site lets us down, the fan-based blogs give us what we want. Here’s probably one of the best examples if you’re a Villa fan. They have a main blogger, but also have several other contributors and recently asked their readers to submit their own posts. In addition, they also have a Twitter stream which they use to provide feeds from the matches – great for people like me that hardly ever make a game.
How come the club isn’t paying attention? Well, as someone that works in this space it’s usually the classic fear of exposure/lack of control issue that is (yes, it is) totally irrational. And, to be fair to the staff at Villa – it’s probably a time and staffing issue. But, what could they do? Well, here’s a few ideas:
Offer a live Twitter feed from the games, complete with Tweet pics
Have a few of the players run the Twitter feed, or perhaps a few guest spots – i.e. tonight at 6pm, John Carew takes over the AVFC Twitter feed
Make the blog a blog – add a comments section and get a bit more interactive
Get the fans involved in your output – ask for thier pictures, clips, thoughts and so-on. Everyone takes their mobiles to the game – there’s a whole bunch of UGC right there
Use the YouTube channel for something interesting – get the players to do a few videos behind the scenes, perhaps offer fans the chance to come in and film some interviews
There’s just a few thoughts and I’m sure others will have a few more thoughts. But whether your a Villa fan, Man U fan or whatever – is your club social? And, if you’re a club – Being social is free to very cheap, get involved.
I love it when I come across awesome web experiences, when a brand or agency produce something that is amazing to look at. I remember meeting a creative director for a sister ad agency and chatting about social media to him.
It was all a bit new to him, but he really wanted to understand more about it. One thing he said really stuck in my mind – “When I started in this industry, it was all about creating something so f**king beautiful that the audience not only didn’t mind that you were interrupting their TV, they actually thanked you for it.”
Not a lot has changed as far as that sentiment goes, except nowadays the audience is much larger and you need to engage with your audience. Which is why I love this new site from IKEA called Come into the closet.
First off, it’s absolutely beautiful, second it’s quirky and fun, thirdly it’s engaging. OK, there might not be too much depth to that engagement, but in this instance perhaps there doesn’t need to be
