Social Media

Last Friday I presented at the NMAlive event* on Online Engagement Demysitified event, running with the hopeful title “How Engagement Measurement Will Change the World” (see slides above).

As ever, it was a good opportunity to revisit the theme of engagement measurement and think about how we talk about it at iCrossing.

We’ve effectively spent the last four years looking at how you quantify and understand the concept of engagement. It’s only with evidence and actionable analysis that the idea of connected brands, organisations in touch and in dialogue with with their customers and stakeholders online becomes real.

Evaluating engagement has become increasing sophisticated. Right now the social media analysts in the UK are re-mixing the whole idea of search and social media data as a research discipline in incredibly exciting ways for clients as diverse as banks and soft drinks brands. Our work in this area has been profiled in two Forrester case studies on our projects for Channel 4 and Toyota.

The technology has moved at an incredible rate too. We started with social network analysis visualisation and a lot of manual work on collating data. Over time the expertise of out technical department, performance insight experts and insights from our journalist team have all been fed into new approaches to using our own tools and those of technology platforms like Brandwatch and Buzzmetrics. We remain open-minded as the the best technology and metrics mix for any particular campaign or brand.

What has remained a constant though for the past two years or so, is the basic framework that we use when developing an evaluation, iCrossing’s Framework for Measuring Evaluation (see diagram).

Three things we have learned about evaluating engagement are: Read more…

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

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

With the recent introduction to Google’s Social Search, brands will need to consider how they will get themselves into people’s social searches in good time before the Google social search becomes more mainstream.

Social search results are just another area of Google’s real estate to aim to be visible in for brands in addition to the standard results.

Google have already mentioned the social sites and resources they will use to identify who is within users social circle, so these exact places are where brands need to be. These include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Gmail Contacts
• Linkedin
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Google Reader
• FriendFeed
• MySpace

Being present in these online social arenas is not purely enough, but brands also need to be active here, using them as an everyday platform to promote their products and sharing their knowledge and expertise in their specialised areas.
Read more…

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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This is a really useful infographic (found via Fast Company blog) mapping the social networking, free marketing ecosystem. Designed by Chris Watson at Visualization Magazine it shows 30 different web 2.0 services offering free sites, feeds or embeds.

It fits nicely into the networked architecture approach, the idea that your brand lives in many more places than simply the domain that you own. There’s now a whole wealth of free content management systems, social networks, bookmarking tools that you can use to promote a brand, product or service. This is something that I believe all companies should map as part of their distributed content strategy.

The map shows places that you can create content, along with icons as to how you can publish (RSS, Print) and the connecting lines show where you could potentially re-publish that content again.

The map also illustrates which of these services provides stats so that you can measure more than your own  on-site analytics.  Stats from the other 3rd party sites  can potentially give clearer insight into the ‘network value’ of your content. For instance; Youtube shows how many times your video has been embedded and shared else-where, other than just views of the video on-site.

People absorb content on the web in more ways than ever, there’s an opportunity for brands/people to produce ultra- shareable content  very cost effectively. The more ways the merrier I think, but keep in mind that its probably better to do fewer well than do lots badly. To simply use many of these platforms as a broadcast medium would not be wise, the true value lies in the engagement and feedback that you can potentially receive from each of the individual audiences around the network.

Image Credit: Flickr User visual think map (If, like me, your a fan of infographs there’s lots there! )

There have been significant developments with Google, Bing and of course Twitter of late that has lead to some questions being delivered to us here at iCrossing. I thought it would be good to share some of these questions with the Connect readers and even try answering some of them…

What significant implications will this have for brands? How will this change their search marketing strategies?

The Twitter channel is another exciting space for people to have conversations and share their experiences with brands and products. As Twitter has grown in terms of usage we have seen users adopt applications such as TweetDeck to enable them to search, group and monitor Twitter activity more affectively where Twitter.com hasn’t so far (though Twitter Lists has now been released).

Bing and Twitter service is yet another platform to allow brands to operate within. With this service however it’s not just about serving the user the most recent tweets about a particular topic but also top links shared about a topic within the Twitter community.

What this means is that Brand will need to have a Twitter voice and search marketing strategies will need to continue to understand what language their customers are using The main variable that will change is the time factor. This will relate to execution of strategy, looking at trending topics and the brands that will win will be the one that knows their market best and what’s coming tomorrow.

What sectors will benefit the most from Google Social?

Google Social Google states that its new service called “‘Google Social Search” helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle”. This search can be described as a form of trusted search much like how Google may view authority sites or immediately give trust to ac.uk and gov.uk sites due to their domain extension. This is a separate service to what Bing is doing with Twitter. Bing is using real time searching and using Twitter as it data source. A search for Brighton only shows tweets within the last 8 minutes:

Read more…

I spoke at a seminar at the World Travel Market last week titled Social Media for Marketers: Unpicking the 2.0 hype.

Click on the deck here to see my presentation. There are detailed notes with the slides.

I shared the platform with Jane Nicholson the Regional Director for PR for Queensland Tourism - who was instrumental in the Best Job in the World campaign which saw Ben Southall win a worldwide competition to be caretaker of a tropical island in Queensland for a year - surely the most successful travel PR campaign of 2009.

In some ways my job was to temper some of the excitement associated with the huge numbers and point out that if you’re planning to make a noise about something it better be worth making a noise about - particularly in social spaces where people will let you (and everyone else) know fast what they think. But there was no need - Jane highlighted the fact that they set out to offer something really, genuinely inspiring as the prize - a really great job.

Increasingly, I’m beginning to believe at least some of the ‘hype’ anyway. The profound influence of social media on all our lives - not just the more geeky of us who work for digital marketing agencies - is becoming more evident by the day.  One stat I quoted in my talk was that 40% of online purchases are incluenced by social media in some way (McKinsey, 2009). That’s very significant.
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The Legatum Institute held The Next Generation Philanthropy Forum in London yesterday (at an intriguiging venue, The Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury). It was an event that exuded the ambition that the title would suggest, full of ideas about how to galvanise philanthropy with market disciplines, measurement and the web.

I was involved in the last session of the day “Advocacy and Philanthropy through New Media” and had the job of doing some scene setting around the social web.

The slides from the presentation are below, but you can also see the session recorded as a very good quality webcast on the Legatum Institute website. My bit is followed by fascinating talks from Invisible Children, Ushahidi and Global Giving.

All are interesting, but for open source and general geeky interest, the Ushahidi presentation from Juliana Rotich (49 minutes into the video) is a must watch. Ushahidi is an open source platform for aggregating text messages, Tweets, emails and blog posts and making sense of them during a crisis, such as a war or natural disaster. It’s also been used for election monitoring and I expect others will find more innovative uses of it soon.
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