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I spent the weekend before last searching the internet for news about the well-being of members of my extended family who live just outside Concepcion - the epicentre of the huge earthquake that rocked Chile on 26 February. I was surprised to find that Google quickly became completely irrelevant to my search for information. It just wasn’t fast, micro or specific enough for my needs. At some point, they’ll get their social search fine tuned and consistent, and they’ll kick the spam merchants out of Google News, but until then Google fails big time when it comes to meeting an immediate, urgent need for micro-level information about something that has just happened. Read on to find out how social media networks succeeded where Google failed.

The urgent need for news

In January I wrote about the way that social media was helping with the aid efforts in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. I had no way of knowing at the time that just a few short weeks later I’d be using my personal social networks to try and track members of my own extended family caught up in an earthquake elsewhere in the world. But on Saturday morning I opened my eyes at about 8am and had a conversation with my husband (who was checking his crackberry - an early morning habit) that went something like this:

Him: “There’s just been a big earthquake in Chile - 8.8 on the Richter scale.”

Me: “Oh no.”

Him: “Epicentre in somewhere called . . . Concepcion?”

Me: “Oh god no. That’s where the family are!”

To cut a long story short, part of my extended family is Chilean: four generations - grandparents, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who all live in Chiguayante, just outside Concepcion. Fourteen family members in total.

I spent the rest of the weekend glued to my computer as I took on the task of “social media monitoring” and quite a lot of “outreach” on Facebook and Twitter on behalf of the family, whilst others desperately tried the “direct marketing” approach of phoning and emailing.
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I recently been noticing some new menu options on Google.com - these don’t appear to be visible to everyone or on other regional Google(s).  So for a search for ‘ipod speakers‘ you are presented with a search results page (SERP) like:

Down the left hand side you will see there are now options to filter the search results to have fewer or more shopping sites.

This filter alters what types of sites are listed and also how (and what) Universal results are positioned amongst the Web listing.

For example when you are researching into a product/holiday/etc you may want fewer shopping results and more informational sites and so you can filter to have fewer shopping sites such as:

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London Fashion Week kicks off on Friday (19th February) and as well as the traditional fashion press and the front row celebrities, fashion bloggers will be among the influencers taking their seats at the top catwalk shows. But while agencies, marketing managers and PRs are climbing over each other to get a piece of the new IT girls, has anyone stopped to ask what fashion bloggers want from brands? Laetitia Wajnapel of top fashion blog MademoiselleRobot.com explains how she sees it working.

I created MademoiselleRobot.com in November 2007 as a personal endeavour. Having worked as a journalist/editor for many years before relocating from Paris to London, I needed an outlet for my writing, and what started off as a hobby has since become my job.

I currently get an average of 150,000 page views a month and in the past two years have been both a witness and a protagonist in the rise of online fashion.

Why should brands reach out to bloggers?

The rise of online fashion means that bloggers are now firmly on people’s radars. User recommendations and reviews are the flavour of the moment. Bloggers can be seen as ’super reviewers’ - they are everyday people talking to an engaged audience.

Blog readers are more likely to go and buy something they have seen on their favourite blog than in a magazine for example. Very often, people will buy something online straight away after seeing it on a blog, because bloggers are trusted by their readers most of the time.

If brands want to boost their online sales, I believe the best way of doing so is through an efficient blogger outreach campaign.
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Like most people, I’ve spent the last week watching the depth of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti reveal itself with an increasing sense of horror and disbelief. And probably like most people, I’ve donated as much as I could afford to the relief effort via the Disasters and Emergency Committee (DEC) website, because, as one colleague put it: “There’s pretty much nothing else that I can practically do to help the people of Haiti.”

The story that has been playing out on our TV screens and newspapers is truly shocking, and there seems to be a battle going on over which story the media wants to tell. What’s going to sell more papers or get more views or viewers? The story of “hope” (the one word headline on the Sun’s front page on Monday) - that people are still being pulled out of the rubble alive nearly a week on from the earthquake? Or the story of “human evil” - that “thugs” (as the Metro’s front page so eloquently described the Haitian earthquake survivors) are “looting, shooting and lynching” (the Telegraph) as a response to humanitarian efforts to provide them with food and water. (The fact that we’ve all donated £25million so far tends to suggest the Sun got it right again!)

Of course, the need of the media to create simplified, exaggerated, panic-driven narratives in order to grab attention from their competitors is nothing new. But as my sister (who works in the digital communications team at the Department for International Development  - DfID) explained to me as she worked a Sunday shift whilst visiting me this weekend - the way that the media tells these kinds of story has had a direct impact on the amount of money raised by DEC in the past.

I was fascinated, then, to see that her emergency shift supporting the DfID press office with their communications relating to relief efforts in Haiti wasn’t so she could help with press enquiries. Rather she was working to publish updates on DfID’s own website, and pictures and relief plan details directly to social media places such as Flickr and Twitter and on their blog pages. I watched her upload this Creative Commons map (which she sourced from Wikimedia) showing the exact location of the Leogain to Flickr, a region of Haiti that no one had yet managed to get to, and where DfID co-ordinated rescue teams were planning to travel to next. In a situation like this, providing pictures, updates and information directly to people like you and me - rather than relying on the press to tell the story - means that we are able to make up our own minds whether we think that this is a cause that’s worth our money without the filter of headlines, editors and ad sales targets.

Personally, I find this a very easy decision to make! But for those who might be worried that their money might somehow end up being “looted” by “thugs”, these images and updates tell a pretty clear story.

I’d really recommend adding DfID and other relief co-ordinating agencies to your social media feeds and streams if you are interested in getting a clearer understanding of what is happening in Haiti. With news breaking today that a second earthquake  measuring 6.1 shook the island this morning, the success of social media to help raise awareness about the need for donations could make a big difference to Haitian survivors.

IMAGE CREDIT: Michael Haig / Department for International Development via Creative Commons licence

HEADER IMAGE CREDIT: The U.S. Army

In October 2009, Guardian News and Media launched its online Fashion Store, allowing users to browse from over 300 retailers and once again proving its ability and willingness to evolve. With this have they hit upon a business model which works for advertisers, publishers and users alike?

Cutting out the middle-man

With publishers increasingly looking to advertising and sponsorship deals to replace lost revenue from dwindling newspaper sales, the Guardian has effectively cut out the middle-man to provide a useful service for its readers. Given the choice I, personally, would much rather a dedicated area within which I can browse a number of brands and ’shop the look’ championed in this week’s style section, than sidebars full of promotion boxes for brands I may have no interest in.

Indeed, online retail analysis has suggested that people shop for fashion online in a different way to how they might shop for other products. Most clothes shoppers know what stores and labels stock what they’re looking for. So, rather than searching for a particular item, they would look for their favourite clothing brands and then search for the item within the brand’s site. As the Guardian Fashion Store offers the choice to search by brand, it fits with this shopping model much more snugly than side-bar advertising could.

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Spotify - sounds like a rubbish Harry Potter spell, but is nevertheless among the most wondrous developments of a busy 2009. It gives us the ability to share and extend our love of music in ways that would have been unthinkable before. And the ability, on a moment’s whim, to subject colleagues to the most horrendous and all-but-forgotten 80s hair rock.

So, in the Spotify spirit of enabling both good and evil to flourish, we offer you, without prejudice, the iCrossing UK Christmas Playlist - a collaborative effort of festive proportions.

It features some of the loveliest Christmas (and Christmassy) music ever made, including several tunes I first came across on this gem of a compilation from 2000, Jeepster/XFM’s It’s a cool cool Christmas. These include Low’s ‘Just Like Christmas’, Eels’ ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas’ and El Vez’s ‘Feliz Navidad’ - classics one and all.

There are leftfield corkers (gawd bless you Flaming Lips), perfect wintry pop songs (El Perro del Mar), some frequent fliers (Sufjan Stevens, Vince Guaraldi Trio, Soulsavers), folky tearjerkers (Handsome Family) and a smattering of smooth crooning classics, whose glories refuse to fade despite limitless exposure.

It also includes some tracks that ought, in my opinion, never to be played, anywhere. I initially took out the Paul McCartney track thinking that someone had dropped it in there for a joke; but having heard its heart-felt defence by our head of search innovation Addam Hassan it’s back in. I’m sorry.

Such is the closely intertwined beauty and horror of Spotify. But unlike an inextricable taped compilation of ye olden days, this one’s ready for swift reinterpretation. So, please: stick it on, pluck the bounteous wheat for your own Christmas playlist, and let us know what treasures we’ve missed.

Merry Christmas!

There are also a few tracks that Spotify could not muster which would otherwise have been in there. King among them, Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘It’s cliched to be cynical at Christmas’ (but at least you can go to YouTube for that, thanks Ben).

At iCrossing we often talk to our clients (and prospective clients) about the possible benefits of getting their staff blogging and engaging with customers via a “corporate blog”. Of course, it’s not the right move for every organisation - but for those with an open culture with a high level of trust in their people, blogging can be a very effective way of showing your customers (and anyone who is curious about what your organisation is all about) just exactly who you are and why you’re better than your competitors.

I was struck this week by a sad example of this in an unexpected format when I happened to find the Borders Insider blog on The Bookseller website. This is an unofficial, anonymous blog written by a member of staff about what is happening inside the shops now that they’ve gone into liquidation. At first glance, you might think that the post entitled “Running on empty” is a very good example of why so many organisations are scared stiff of the idea of letting their people connect directly with the world via a corporate blog.  At first sight this might not be the best advert for corporate blogging - for starters it’s hosted by another site altogether, and the quotes like the one below are a PR’s nightmare aren’t they?

“We are running on empty, all we do is tidy. Everyday we feel less and less like booksellers and more and more like caretakers. The massive jolt that is administration, which was at first in a strange way energising, feels more and more like a dead weight. There’s only so many times you can explain the gift card redemption rule to angry people, without it getting extremely wearying.”

And yet, if you read a bit further, and then go on to read the comments below this post, what you’re left with is a very strong impression of the knowledge and passion of the Borders’ staff. And the very strong connection they had with their loyal customers.

“Please remember the peope who are treating you so poorly are not your customers. We are still here, devastated by what has happened, and what is happening, but you will see less of us now and more of the bargain hunters only dimly aware that this was once a book shop. My famiy and I have been going to Borders nearly every week since it opened. My wife and I found and decided on our childrens names, planned our wedding and rewarded our children at Borders. The failures have not been yours. If you were to think from scratch of how to compete with Supermarkets and the internet, you would come up with Borders. All the events, especially for children, and your enthusiasm contributed to an overall positive experience with books. You are not booksellers but ambassadors for literature. There are a lot of children who will never forget you and will benefit from your efforts.”

And this isn’t just limited to the store that this commentator frequented. I went into the Brighton branch of Borders this morning and was able to witness for myself the dedicated team of staff there still helping their customers find what they want amongst the jumble sale piles of books. That’s the kind of genuine customer advocacy that no PR stunt or press release can fake. And that’s why, I would argue, if you think your organisation has a special kind of chemistry with its customers and stakeholders, and a unique kind of engagement amongst its employees, a corporate blog is an excellent way of sharing it with the world.

IMAGE by Flickr user markhillary published under CC licence

It’s possible that the internet is going to keep me and many others in a permanent state of mental adolescence.

2009’s been a bad year for it – first there was Spotify, which instantly transformed my music listening and sharing habits. Then there was Twitter, which woke up after a year snoozing and ate my blog.

And now my world’s been realigned again: this time by Posterous.

I was alerted to it by Antony’s recent presentation, which gave it a special mention among things to watch out for in 2010. Since then I’ve gone slightly nuts for it.

Pre-Posterous printing press, 1930, from Seattle Municipal Archive

Others have done the hard work of describing what Posterous does: in short, it’s a tool that makes it absurdly easy to publish text/audio/images/video and push it to wherever else you’d like it go.
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I’m currently researching some data for a budgeting and savings planning calculator for one of our clients, and during the course of my research, I’ve been struck once again by the wealth of free data that is available to every citizen in the UK at the click of a few links.

As digital marketers I’m sure none of us need to be told about the power that intelligently analysed and appropriately presented data hold. After all, where would our businesses be without web analytics? But did you know that there are huge, shimmering pools of astoundingly robust and statistically accurate data sitting on government servers just waiting for intelligent minds to dive in? And all for free?

Here are my two top sources of free, public data - so why not hold your nose and take the plunge?
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I was introduced this week - for the first time - to the world of political blogging. A post on LabourList.org by Paul Richards (thanks to @stuartbruce) caught my attention; not because I’m interested [enough] in politics but because it contained a nugget of gleaming goodness that I have been able to churn out as my own at least twice since.

Richards’ tips for writing a great party conference speech (for the season is apparently upon us) contained this:

“5. Ask: what do I want to achieve? If you write a speech asking ‘what do I want to say?’ you’ll simply fill the time with words. Start by identifying what you want the speech to achieve. Is it to build the reputation of the minister, or take on a difficult argument, or explain a new policy, or attack the Tories, or garner a headline in tomorrow’s Mirror? If you don’t know what you want your speech to do, it won’t do it.”

Since I’d been only hours previously seeking to re-engineer the thinking around a web-site so that we began with not ‘what we do want it to look like?’ but ‘what content do we need to be on it’, it helped sum up (and take further) my main point - that is not to jump to any kind of ‘execution’ before you’ve decided on what the execution is supposed to be ‘doing’ - as opposed to ’saying’.

Often, particularly in my role, we ask ‘what do we want to say?’ We do this believing we already have a firm grasp on what our communications are supposed to be achieving. But, actually, I was reminded to apply some ‘what are we trying to achieve?’ vigour to every single piece of communication we undertake, from a new web site to any presentation to every Tweet.

Stating the bleeding obvious is a necessary evil, like making sure that somebody has, actually, called the ambulance. So, just in case anyone else - like me - had gotten a little lazy about where marketing execution, as well as planning, should begin, I thought I’d send out this little reminder.

That’s what I’m trying to achieve with this particular blog post…