Posts Tagged ‘business’

Facebook or Bust, The Audience Is Listening

Friday, September 9th, 2011

George Lucas was right, 'The audience IS listening'

Facebook has brought together an audience of incredible numbers.  The social networking giant is today a community of people that keeps on growing, creating for businesses an opportunity to reach out directly to consumers.  But here lies the question, why are businesses still looking like ‘rabbits in the headlights’ and failing to truly engage with audiences that can help many survive during these hard economic times?

Today, Facebook has over 750 million users worldwide.  For many businesses that figure is a fantasy, after all, are we going to engage with so many?  So let’s narrow this figure down into more manageable and relevant numbers.  In the US there are over 154 million ‘active’ users, Indonesia comes in second with 40 million and a 16 per cent penetration rate, while in the UK there are 30 million users reaching half of the population. Malaysia has over 11 million users accounting for nearly 1 in 2 residents, while Singapore has a very active 2.5 million with 54% of people being on Facebook.

And the figures don’t stop there.  Here are some more, more than have of Facebook users access the network each day, half of which do so through their mobile phones.  And those that access Facebook through a smartphone or other mobile device are ‘twice as active as Facebook compared to non-mobile users.’

For many companies and organisations, these numbers are very 2-dimensional.  The audience is there, but the history and culture of 20 century business dictates that for many they still broadcast to them through a given Facebook Page.

Audience engagement is much more than a Facebook Page and the apps and tabs that these Pages have.  It is about, well, engagement.  It is about listening and delivering.  In business it is about meeting needs.  And to meet business needs you needs to re-invent itself, spending time speaking an engaging with your various audiences.

Many companies are focused on the comfort of your own structure.  Safe in the knowledge of how they have always delivered their business.  But what about your audience?  Have they been happy in how they have received your business?

As Facebook show’s us, people today are connected online.  For many they check their network, their community first thing in the morning.  People seek input, advice and support from their community that they have before they have spent money.  Today, people are happy to share bad experience, which shapes many companies brands and reputations.

While engagement is certainly not as cheap as business thinks it is, it creates a much more personal relationship than brands have ever had with it’s audiences.  It creates the loyalty, the holy-grail of business relationships that many aspire for.

Think about it this way, how do you like being talked at?

Foursquare Pages, Not Just For Big Brands

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

Foursquare has announced the availability of Foursquare Pages for companies, brands and other organisations.  While still buggy since it was made public yesterday the concept will focus on having a one-stop Page that will allow users to share tips, reach new fans and gain new followers on this location-based social networking platform.

Geo-marketing is a concept that has been around for many years and focuses on using geolocation ‘in the process of planning and delivering marketing activities based and tailored on the location of the audience.’  Foursquare adds the concept of the community to the marketing to enable organisations to tap into and benefit from recommendations that our own social communities share – best table at this restaurant, great shop for vintage, great customer service at this shop, etc.  The problem though is that after over 2 years since Foursquare was unveiled it is still seen as a game and an experiment by many businesses.  It has not been adopted, yet!

The opportunities for businesses though are enormous.  After all, the theory goes that if you reward your customers then they should recommend the business to their own community.  Some brand specific Foursquare campaigns have yielded interesting results, but the use is still restricted to those that are connected, are social networking enthusiasts and have smartphones – not your average consumer.

From my experience, I see that local businesses in South East Asia have taken to geo-marketing with more individuality than in Western European cities.  In London the standard offer is a discount for the Mayor of a venue – bar, restaurant, shop.  That is it.  Rare to see the rewards for ‘checking-in’ that you see in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta, such as discounts and free gifts just for visiting and ‘checking in.’  Perhaps it is a cultural point.

Customer facing businesses will only gain the benefits from geo-marketing if they develop suitable rewards that encourage customers to develop their loyalty.  After all, the technology alone won’t improve the bottom-line, for this you have to look at the business from a consumers perspective.

Foursquare and other services are ideally placed to help small and medium sized businesses (SME’s) because it isn’t just about rewards, but about accessing the recommendations from members of our networks.

Facebook for Business or Google+?

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

Facebook Page | Julio Romo

Last week Facebook unveiled it’s ‘Facebook for Businesses‘ guide to help small and medium sized businesses reach out to the over 750 million users that the social network has globally.  Designed as an easy walkthrough the site has worked to highlight the simplicity of reaching out and building communities around individual business communities.

For many small and medium businesses Google has been the default when it came to online marketing, with many focusing on trying to get their business high-up the search-giant’s rankings.  But shopping is social, focusing and benefiting from social recommendation, something that Google is trying with it’s Google+ offering.

After some time I have set-up a Facebook Page [please like if the content I share are of benefit] – mainly to keep my profile specifically for friends and family.  For those in public relations, journalism and social and digital media I will be using my Page.  And why segregate my Facebook into a Profile and a Page? Well, simple, an email from a friend who said, “dude, going to ‘unfriend’ you, nothing personal but all your chatter/comms is too much! Clearly still proper friends and happy to email etc.

Facebook for Businesses makes some specific recommendations for businesses, including:

  • Setting some goals,
  • Sharing exclusive content and engaging with your community,
  • Checking and updating your followers, and
  • Creating a conversational calendar.

Google+’s offering is looking good, I can be found at gplus.to/JulioRomo.

These top tips are making Facebook fleet of foot in capturing business from hard-working sme’s.  Google+ is meanwhile delaying it’s businesses offering until the end of the year and even deleting companies that have set themselves up on it’s ‘Plus’ platform.

Google has a long way to go to deliver a simple solution that reengages businesses offering them solutions that allow communities to engage with their recommendations.

There are plenty of offerings for businesses. The best way to promoting yourself is by trialing Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and even integrating these into your site.  Simply said, it is about being seen.

Online Reputation Management PR – Don’t Use In Isolation

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

The Times ran a story this week on how celebrities were using PR agencies to drive bad news that is circulated online away from public’s view – burying it away in pages people rarely visit.  Times reporter Billy Kenber followed up his initial piece with further insight on how some agencies work.  There is a problem with his piece though, that being the insinuation that it’s solely PR agencies that are behind these shady practices.

Reputation management as we know is not a new discipline within public relations.  The skills needed have been around for many, many years.  That said, since today we are influenced by what we read online and what our friends and peers share with us the need and demand for online reputation management (ORM) has dramatically increased.

Reputation is at the core of any business. It shapes our trust with brands and individuals.  If that trust is challenged we take our business elsewhere, which is why in today’s real-time and connected world it is essential to keep track of how communities can build or break reputations.

Kenber gave the example of Woburn Safari Park who allegedly paid an agency to bury news stories about a critical report from the Department for Environment , Food and Rural Affairs  (DEFRA) on the conditions of the animals in its care.  Weeks after stories were published The Times reported that the park hired the services of an online reputation management agency.  If this is all it did then rightly so one can be critical of how it acted given DEFRA’s findings.  Certainly not a way of repairing a reputation.

Online reputation management agencies are not public relations agencies.  There is a need for their services, but these should be used as part of a much more strategic campaign.  Burying bad news and the associated debate that takes place online is not going job is not going to serve a company good in the long-term.  In fact it is likely to do further damage.

Public Relations is about reputation.  It is as the CIPR states about ‘the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.’  Key words here are planned and sustained.  Making a sustained effort is much more that just burying news, much more that negative briefings.  It is in today’s business and consumer environment about real-time decisions that can humanise a brand and assist it in gaining support and the much needed understanding.

There is a need for the skills that Kenber highlights.  We have seen plenty of examples of how small businesses have suffered because of critical online reviews that have either been wide of the mark or libellous.  We should remember that people have different standards and can quickly mount negative online assaults, often without realising how they are opening themselves up to a legal dispute.

PR agencies do use whatever is needed help organisations protect their reputation.  But, it is these PR agencies that use these tools in proportion to what is needed to achieve.  If a client or employer has messed up the damage has been done.  Doing what Kenber talks about only makes matters worse.  A professional communications agency would have advised to stay clear of burying bad online news.  Agencies that would do this kind of work, do it without understanding the bigger picture.

Facebook Credits: The Currency Of Choice?

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Facebook Credits

Facebook Credits came out of beta in January this year.  Since it was launched in May 2009 in alpha it was believed that Credits would be used solely by people playing social games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars.  Virtual currency would give gamers that added experience when competing with their friends on Facebook.  Those thinking that might have missed the whole point about Facebook having it’s own currency and the opportunity that it presents to companies and causes.

During the last two years Facebook has been rolling out a series of offerings such as Facebook Connect that have enabled users to log-in to third party sites with their Facebook account.  This made the social networking site into an aggregator, allowing users to not just publish, but see what people within their network like online – based on websites that adopted Facebook Connect.

More recently Facebook has been rolling out it’s Questions and Comments applications.  The latter has been received plenty of views from the social media community.  Techcrunch’s Jon Evans says that Comments epitomizes everything that he hates about Facebook, before adding that because it is so simple he might end up using it.  Comments allows Facebook to further plough into third party sites.  It is becoming the platform of choice for websites.  Why?  Well because everyone appears to be on it.  In the UK there are now 30 million individual users, 35 million in Indonesia and many million more in the US.

I came back from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and what I learnt is how quickly they started to trade on Facebook.  E-commerce is being replaced by f-commerce.  Businesses are realising than rather that spending money to get people to spend money on their sites, perhaps they should be investing to get the business of people on Facebook – cross the road to sell to your audience rather than get the audience to cross the road.  Sounds simple, yet for many businesses a step too far.

Today you can buy airline tickets, clothes, tickets, just about anything.  Business is slowly realising that Facebook is also a site through which you can sell.

Facebook Credits might in the future be another extension that can be implanted onto third party sites.  The days though have passed when the cashier used to ask if “sir would be paying by cash or credit?”  PayPal is now looking over its shoulders at the over 500 million account mammoth that is bearing down.  “Will that be with PayPal or Facebook Credits sir?”

Who knows, perhaps one day we will all pull up a paywall that will charge Facebook Credits, which we can then redeem on other people’s sites.  Crazy idea, but you heard it here first!

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About me

Hello. I'm Julio Romo. I'm a London-based independent PR, communications consultant and digital strategist. I am also a freelance journalist and trainer, providing insight and consultancy on how to secure better engagement through the changing media and digital landscape. 

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