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Social Media
The kindness of strangers – marketing through recommendations
Feb 16th
When it comes to social media, personal recommendations are a valuable commodity. The power of ‘like’, ‘share’, ‘retweet’ and +one is that these recommendations mean more when they come from others. People outside the organisation can become our most powerful and influential advocates.
The challenge for information professionals is that there are so many social media tools around. Which ones should we focus on? Do we really need a presence on Facebook, in Google+, on Twitter, in the blogosphere, on LinkedIn etc. The answer is that we must be active on any tool where relevant conversations are happening.
Sometimes relevant conversations can happen face to face. Having heard about Pinterest first through a Facebook friend, and second at the recent NetIKX social media event, it was a real world conversation with Phil Bradley that alerted me to the value of this new social tool. Pinterest provides social bookmarking with images. Although still in beta form, information professionals should be alert to its potential – Pinterest is already driving more traffic to retail sites than Google+.
On Pinterest, users create folders for images, describing their contents using freetext tagging. This is something which information professionals are very good at. You can use Pinterest to search images and to find experts and interested people. It is also an excellent marketing tool, and can draw people onto your website. It has enormous potential to market what it is that we do to a wide audience.
So if someone invites you to join Pinterest, you should accept the invitation and explore its potential as a potentially powerful marketing tool for library and information services.
A blog post about the decline of blogging
Feb 2nd
For the last five years the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research has been conducting a study about the use of social media in the 500 fastest growing organisations in the US (The Inc. 500.) The first study, conducted in 2007, found that these companies were much more likely to have adopted blogs than those in the ‘traditional’ Fortune 500.
The latest findings show that the use of blogging in the Inc. 500 companies is declining for the first time. Blogging had declined to 37% from 50% in 2010. Advertising, Marketing and Media companies were the most likely to maintain blogs (72%) and Government Services companies the least likely.
However, as blogging reaches maturity in these organisations, the use of other social media, including Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Mobile apps, texting, Twitter and YouTube, is growing. 74% of responding companies were using Facebook, and 73% using LinkedIn.
90% of respondents report that social media tools are important for maintaining company reputation and raising brand awareness. Slightly fewer see the tools as vital for generating web traffic and lead generation. 73% say the tools are important for customer support programmes.
When asked if the use of social media has been successful for their business, the overwhelming response was that it had been. Respondents mentioned raising brand awareness, networking, thought leadership and the tools’ ability to give the company a ‘personality’.
25% of respondents plan to maintain their organisation’s investment in social media, and 71% plan to increase it.
The report is data rich and interesting reading. It shows that the use of social media in organisations is evolving, with some mature tools being dropped in favour of newer ones. A recognition of their value in supporting networking, and new ways of communicating, means that many organisations are planning to increase their investment in social tools.
Everyone is talking but is anyone listening? Using social media to promote info services
Dec 9th
There’s no doubt that, in some quarters at least, social media are replacing more traditional methods of communication. Earlier this week it was widely reported that French IT services giant Atos which employs 80,000 people is planning to ban the use of internal emails in favour of communication via other channels such as social networks, instant messaging and microblogging.
A panel in the European Librarians Theatre at this year’s Online Information show, organised under the auspices of SLA, debated how to use social media tools to promote library services. The international panel featured Jo Alcock from Birmingham City University, Dennie Heye from Shell Information Technology International in the Netherlands, and Katrin Weller from Heinrich-Heine University in Germany.
Jo had carried out an informal survey to find out how librarians in the UK were putting social media to work, and found a trend towards consolidating accounts and tools in order to streamline the wide variety of tools and services on offer.
The panellists agreed that were a number of obstacles that could impede the implementation of social media tools. Jo noted that senior management could be cautious, particularly given the experimental nature of some social media initiatives. Implementation can be time consuming, and this problem is exacerbated when staff don’t see the importance of the project. And in some settings, access to social media is banned altogether.
Katrin echoed the focus on experimentation and trial and error – a willingness to try things out and learn as you go is key to success in social media. There isn’t a manual!
From Dennie’s point of view, making the business case to senior management was all important. At Shell, they have introduced enterprise social network Yammer to enable communication between people working in different teams and offices. By focusing on its use as an IT support tool, they were able to make a strong business case by showing that using Yammer freed up time for IT support staff.
Jo pointed out that librarians will need to exercise professional judgement in choosing the right tool for the job – for example public libraries will want to communicate with their patrons in specific ways which will be very different to the approach taken by a corporate information service; and there will be a difference between internal and external communications.
The panellists agreed that flexibility and personality were both key to the successful implementation of a social media strategy. Jo pointed out that you need to be able to adapt to changing expectations. Dennie recommended being yourself – an authentic, ‘human’ voice is much more effective than a personality-free corporate voice. For those wanting to take the plunge, Katrin suggested that you start by asking yourself ‘what will success look like’ so that further down the line you have something to measure against. This will also provide a touchstone to use when faced with choosing between the enormous range of social media tools out there.
McKinsey’s social technology survey
Nov 21st
McKinsey Quarterly has just published its fifth annual survey on the ways in which organisations are using social tools and technologies. There were over 4,200 executive level respondents to the global survey representing a wide range of business sectors and organisational size.
The report suggests that social tools (social networking; blogs; video sharing; RSS feeds; wikis; podcasts; microblogging) have now reached a critical mass. 72% of respondents reported that at least one social technology had been deployed in their organisations. Although the rates of adoption vary between sectors, 62% of respondents in the lowest performing sector (energy) reported that they were deploying at least one social technology tool.
A small group of respondents reported high levels of benefit, whether they were using the tools for internal communication or for external communication with stakeholders. For some organisations, the use of social technologies in customer and partner outreach was so sophisticated that the boundaries of the organisation itself were becoming blurred. McKinsey calls these ‘extended enterprises’. However, the survey also suggests that it is hard for organisations to ‘move upwards’ on levels of adoption and it is quite easy to ‘slide backwards’.
The tools are being used to support a range of business processes, including scanning the external environment; project management; finding new ideas and allocating resources. When it comes to the predicting the ways in which the tools could be used in the future, the respondents thought that, with fewer constraints on social technologies, boundaries between employees, vendors, customers and other stakeholders would blur. Other predicted changes included the flattening of organisational hierarchies, improved financial transparency and an increase in self organised teams.
McKinsey concludes that organisations need to be prepared for further technological disruption and be prepared to create change rather than being led by it.
Twitter: learning from the bad and the good
Sep 29th
We have all read inspirational quotes encouraging us to learn from our mistakes. How much more fun, though, to learn from other people’s mistakes. Chris Brogan (always worth reading) writes about badly managed or abandoned corporate ‘grocery goods’ Twitter accounts and the lessons are clear.
- An abandoned Twitter account is worse than no official Twitter account.
- Many companies and brands still don’t ‘get’ social media and are simply broadcasting press releases
- Spamming is just wrong – don’t do it!
- Tone of voice is everything – don’t be a Twitter braggard
Chris also gives examples of great Twitter usage if you are that way inclined.
There are also positive Twitter lessons to be learned from the Top 50 ‘most followed magazines’. Speaking to Folio Magazine, representatives from four of the top 50 share ideas on growing readership via Twitter. Key lessons include:
- provide useful information
- reply to all questions
- use hashtags consistently
- be willing to entertain – and challenge
- above all – be human. It should be clear to your community that you are speaking with your ‘true voice’
Social media and rioters
Aug 16th
The “free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill”. This is what British Prime Minister David Cameron said in the aftermath of the riots that spread across England last week. He went on to state that “we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”
In the aftermath of the riots and the debate about causes and solutions, it is the use of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) that has featured highly in the debate about the use of social media by rioters to communicate. BBM offers free texting, via the internet, for its users and is growing in popularity especially among young people while SMS usage is declining. The network is not ‘public’ and is therefore more difficult to monitor in real time. The messages are also encrypted, and unintelligible to casual observers.
As can be imagined, the statement by the Prime Minister has been received with some consternation by observers from across the political spectrum. Who would decide what consititues ‘criminal’ usage of social media?
Knee-jerk politicians would do well to read Phil Bradley’s post in which he likens the banning of social media to the banning of roads. And let’s not forget that communities have used social media to regroup after the riots. The ‘broom armies’, for example, were mobilised to action by a simple Twitter campaign @riotcleanup.
The gamification of content – what marketers are saying
Jul 19th
Gamification means that content need no longer remain ‘passive’. Gamification techniques can help ensure your content will work harder for you, for longer.
Two recent articles in the professional magazine Marketing Week summarise the ways in which gamification is being used to enhance brand awareness and to support customer loyalty programmes. It is an approach that has already been adopted by such brands as Kellog, Disney and (as featured here) Marriott International. Future developments mentioned look set to help customers manage their household energy and petrol consumption.
And of course gamification techniques have already been used successfully by libraries. Finland’s National Library, for example, has used gamification techniques to enhance the crowdsourced, collaborative nature of its archive digitisation project. We can look forward to hearing of more gamification-based library projects in the months to come.
Conducting a Twitter audit
Jun 21st
We all know how important it is to measure the impact of our professional activities. Chris Brogan’s article on how to conduct a Twitter audit shares simple, valuable advice – the number of comments, tweets and Facebook mentions shows that many others found it valuable too.
Twitter is a conversational tool not a broadcasting channel. Looking at your most recent 20 Tweets, count how many were @replies (conversational) and how many were broadcasting/marketing yourself.
Most importantly of all, now is the time to create a plan for your Twitter account – exactly what is its purpose, and how will you measure its effectiveness?
More uses for Twitter
Apr 29th
Jason Miller, writing on Social Media Today,gives some insights into using Twitter as a tool for crowdsourcing market research.
Although not a replacement for more formal market research, Twitter does enable you to gather insight into your customers’ genuine thoughts and desires. You can interact directly with respondents without intermediaries and use your followers to help you by retweeting.
Don’t forget the value of incentives either!
Creation or curation?
Mar 21st
Rory Cellan-Jones (the BBC’s Technology Correspondent) was speaking on BBC Radio this morning about Twitter. He called it ‘the most important innovation for journalists in recent years’.
As he was speaking, I was reading this article by Steven Rosenbaum on Mashable who describes how social media has enabled a personal web publishing boom. Now that publishing tools have been opened up, the key challenge lies in getting value from this ‘information flood’. This includes ensuring that content creators gain access to appropriate audiences. As it’s got easier to talk, it’s becoming harder to be heard!
This is where content curation comes into its own. ”Data will be created with staggering speed, and systems will need to evolve to find, gather, and package data so that you can get what you need, when you need it, in coherent and useful bundles”.
This sounds like a job for the information professional!
