Social Media

I am mightily impressed by a recent presentation from Paul Adams, a senior user experience researcher at Google. Entitled ‘The real life social network’, it examines how people connect, relate and communicate with each other, and what this means for experience designers online.

As someone who works agency-side I started thinking specifically about what the implications of Paul’s observations of human social behaviour are for brands, especially those taking part in the social web. Intriguingly, it suggests that social media is a customer retention, not a customer acquisition, game.

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* * Updated / corrected with thank to @johnniemoore * *

One of the recurring themes for us at iCrossing and our clients over the past year or so has been the way that the social web is should be thought of as a business issue first and marketing issue second.

An article about libel on The Lawyer website called “Virtual veractity” reinforces the importance of thinking outside of the marketing box when it comes to social media. It outlines the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association and how in a number of important ways social media influenced the trial, from scrutiny and public discussion of the details by a significant online community of interest to the fact that “those following the case on the internet were able to demolish the central element of the British Chiropractic Association’s (BCA’s) case long before it was able to reach the courtroom.”

Image: If social media is re-writing the law, what does it mean for business? ((cc) Eflon)

We have seen the social web begin to change the way that politicians campaign and make laws, how the fourth estate, the media operates, and recently, with this case and in the de facto destruction of super-injunctions we are seeing the influence of a connected citizenry having a direct influence on how our legal system works.
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The latest news this week was that Nine Inch Nails will score David Fincher’s upcoming film,” The Social Network” – A movie about the founding of Facebook. As Trent Reznor (the man behind Nine Inch Nails) truly understands the value of Social Media and how to engage in it, he’s a perfect match.

A while ago he wrote a post in the official forum, which describes the three iCrossing Social Media principles (Understand, be useful, be live) pretty well:

“I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.”

And further:

“What you’ve seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There’s no handlers or PR people here, it’s me and my guys – that’s it.”
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One of my duties as a social media analyst is to stay on top of the latest developments in the digital realm. Naturally I am especially interested in those developments that have an impact upon social media and directly influence my day to day work. This means following my favourite writers who cover technology, social media (specifically), as well as a wide array of subjects that aren’t contextually related but often touch upon the aforementioned topics.

One of my favourite sectors to glean up to the minute information from is the music industry. That may sound like a barren pit to mine as the music biz’s archaic approach to digital is well documented and in the main considered to be one of the key factors in the fall of that industry of recent years.

This conception holds weight, but only if you consider the music industry to be limited to a small pool of corporations. The music industry is fractured and should not be grouped into one single entity when it comes to digital.

Yes, there are the giant monolithic majors that on the face of it appear to be laggards when it comes to digital (although I’m sure behind the scenes it is not so clear cut), but then there are also independents and unsigned artists who consistently impress me with their rapid uptake and integration of the latest digital developments. I often see practical implications of the newest platforms and customisations of existing ones first in this sector. It has always been a great resource for me as an analyst and a superb observation point / testing ground for learning how users react to and engage with the latest developments.

I personally regularly test developments through music related content as it is a topic that recurrently stimulates participation (enabling a test with real people). These learnings give me the confidence to advise clients how it may play out for them with a degree of practical experience under my belt (for example Facebook Pages iterations and Twitter best practice).

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This article entitled Why I Sold Zappos had an interesting comment towards the end about observing employee relationships within the online shoe retailer:

“When employees log in to their computers, we ask them to look at a picture of a random employee and then ask them how well they know that person — the options include “say hi in the halls,” “hang out outside of work,” and “we’re going to be longtime friends.” We’re starting to keep track of the number and strength of cross-departmental relationships — and we’re planning a class on the topic. My hope is that we can have more employees who plan to be close friends.”

Setting aside how sharing this personal information may make you feel this is a very interesting exercise in revealing the implicit social network that exists in a business. Wherever you work there is generally some sort of organogram or chart that shows who manages who and explains how the business is structured in theory. Practical experience tells us that this isn’t actually a map that enables us to understand how to get things done. Personal relationships exist alongside implicit knowledge of who is the ‘right’ person to speak to in a given situation, regardless of explicit job title or status.

Tony Hsieh describes one approach in the quote above but we could try and go further by mapping this network, to give us an insight into the strength of relationships between individuals. I’d suggest setting up a means to record this information along the lines of the illustration below:

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As the selection of social media platforms grow, it’s becoming harder and harder to know what’s worth investing time in and where to focus efforts. Platform priorities may change  dependent on the main marketing objectives/motivations of the company.

An interesting study by Burson Marsteller based on some of the world’s larger brands (in this case  Fortune 100 companies) reveals the social media platform selection and useage types that these brands are currently active in. Here’s the key takeaways (via i-Strategy)…

• 79% of the Fortune 100 are present and listening, using at least of one of the main social platforms to communicate with their customers.
• 20% of Companies are using all four of the main social technologies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs)
• 82% of the Fortune 100 update and engage with customers on their Twitter account
• Fortune 100 Companies on average post 3.6 wall posts to their Facebook page per week
• 50% of the Fortune 100 have a YouTube account and upload 10 videos on average a month

What we don’t get as part of this study though are the marketing objectives for why each of these brands may be using each social media platform.
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Back in January I wrote a post suggesting that social media would soon overtake search. In March Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site in the US and now after months of waiting Social Media has finally overtaken Search in the UK.

Social media is growing quickly in popularity and shows no sign of slowing down. Facebook the biggest social property in the UK currently has 400 million users worldwide and is growing quickly.
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If you haven’t created a Facebook Page you need to do so now. The urgency is due to Facebook launching Community Pages. If you don’t have a Page of your own then these Pages will appear top of searches on Facebook for your brand terms.

Community Pages are “dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it”. Right now there is no ‘community’ to directly contribute to these Pages so they’re being generated in part by running a search query on public posts related to the term in question. Say I’m looking for ODEON’s presence on Facebook and do a search by this brand term. The top result is not a property owned by ODEON but a Community Page that pulls in Wikipedia’s entry as a description followed by a list of the most recent posts featuring this term. This is the top post as I write this:

With no brand-developed Page to compete with, visitors to this Page are going to leave having had no opportunity to engage with ODEON itself. They may even ‘Like’ this page which represents a further missed opportunity to start building an all-important network of followers tied to an official presence. ODEON are losing the chance to be useful and relevant to people who’ve expressed an active preference in finding something out about them. These people are highly likely to be engaging in social activity around a film release, perhaps trying to find out what’s showing and arranging to go and see something with friends.
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There is a lot of research around the happiness topic and which is the country that holds the highest index of happiness. I have read different research studies which normally provide different results and obviously different rankings.

Facebook has published a Gross National Happiness Index where you can track levels of happiness across different countries. Users rate their happiness as positive or negative. I found this at least interesting but of doubtful methodology although 400 million of Facebook users is a fair sample.

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On Wednesday this week, iCrossing hosted a brief talk on Social Media and the Law. The main speaker was Tom Cowling from media law specialists Swan Turton, but he was ably backed up by our own Antony Mayfield, and – probably somewhat less ably – by myself.

Photo credit: CC Flickr user no3rdw

Thanks to Tom for condensing so much information into his short speaking slot, and for sticking around to answer questions afterwards. Thanks also to Wired Sussex, and to everyone who turned up – we hope you all found it useful.

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