Social Media - bringing people together
Social media appears to be growing up. The Financial Times ran a special report on Digital Business this week with a lead headline that said it all, “Business starts to take Web 2.0 tools seriously”. Jessica Twentyman’s article highlighted how, “far from being frivolous distractions, social networking tools can help streamline processes”.
Certainly social media has had an image problem since it was born. Days didn’t go by without reports of people being caught out and embarrassed by what people posted on YouTube, Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. Naturally this only tarnished and held back the potential of social media amongst business decision makers who had the power to harness this new form of communication. Some employers went as far as banning staff from using social media tools in and out of office time. Their concern was that what their employees got up to out of office hours could damage the reputation and image of their business. I know of one top law firm that has banned employees from using social sites.
But while some businesses were paranoid in the early days about the damage to their reputation by the out-of-office activities of their employees others were busy finding ways to use social media to further develop their brands. These businesses were keen to enter into a dialogue with the public, working to make them customers. And this is not an easy exercise as the general public is more cynical than ever before.
Rightly so, business wants to see how “Enterprise 2.0 could deliver real business benefits”. Translating this corporate-speak into plain English, this means finding how social media can help increase sales.
But there is another cultural problem, currently too many companies in Britain and around the world still see the internet as an add-on to their business models. Stubborn scepticism amongst businesses leaders, who do not understand the purpose or reason for entering into a dialogue with the public, prevents them for investing into this not so new communication tool and channel.
The equally sad truth is that too many large communications consultancies also see social media as an add-on to the communications plans that they develop for clients. I have on too many occasions the “we’ll develop a Facebook page for you” only to see nothing new or engaging. Equally, the blogs that have developed for clients lack real dialogue between the business and the consumer, let it be b2b or b2c.
At a recent P2PR meet in London a number of us agreed that there is a lack of upward education from communications consultancies to clients about the potential of social media. Having Facebook, YouTube or MySpace pages just isn’t enough. Even setting up a Twitter account doesn’t make the difference while these are add-ons to clients communication strategies and campaigns.
Social media is about listening to the public and entering into a dialogue with them. And these dialogues have to be regular, refreshing and rewarding. It is about making the client a friend of the consumer and working to helping them become a close friend, who celebrates with you the relationship that you have with them. And how many of us hate it when we don’t hear from friends for some time. The same applies to social media in business, dialogues have to be constant and creative, bringing in your customers into the business and making them feel part of the experience. This is how you develop loyalty, or, saying it in corporate-speak ‘brand-loyalty’, which is what all businesses strive for.
Social media is changing. It is growing up and it needs to be at the centre of communications planning, to develop the brand and protect the company. This obviously has a cost, but the rewards are for the long-term. Businesses decision makers might think that they can only invest in social media if the metrics tell them that their interaction with clients leads to increase sales, the thinking that has driven adverting for decades. Well, social media can be measured and communications consultancies can no longer get away with not offering this service to clients.
Wired
And as social media grows up, we should be aware that the technology is moving our communication thinking forward, ahead of the game. While in Hong Kong in January this year I picked up a copy of Wired magazine, which lead with “Inside the GPS Revolution” an insight into how mobile smart phone technology is transforming how users “make connections and interact with the world.” And these interactions are not just with friends but with businesses as well. One of their reviews was for Shop-Savvy, a tool that will help you scan a barcode with a phonecam ad tells you how much the product not just costs online but in shops nearby. It can also pull up reviews to make sure you are not skimping a little too much.
The technology is here. It is driving business decision-making and driving pricing. Shouldn’t we be bringing in social media into the centre of communications planning? Is having a branded Facebook page enough?
Adidas
I’ll tell you something, I’m on Facebook and I am a fan of Adidas. I signed up to their Facebook page some time ago, hoping to get updates from the company. I didn’t get anything. There was little dialogue from them, until I got a message telling me how they’d had a ‘secret party and I could see the ‘cool’ pictures of what looked like a celebrity bash somewhere. Erm, I signed up online so that I could be one of the first. That message they sent didn’t bring me in to the brand and it did not make me feel closer. It was not the social media experience that consumers should be subjected to. Adidas, in my mind, doesn’t get it right. Will the rest of business understand it?
It is up to us PR and communications consultants to champion social media. Communication helps and in these challenging times we have to be creative and use new tools for us and the benefit of our clients.
Never doubt how Social Media can help develop and drive a brand. To give you an example of its power you need look no further than 
Writing on the wall?
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009Remember when iTunes was released way back in January 2001? Really, do you remember? At it’s launch Steve Jobs was confident. He knew what he was giving us and how it might transform our music listening and buying habits. At the unveiling at Macworld Expo Jobs said: “iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution.” With that straight to the point statement the landscape for the music industry and other associated creative industries changed.
These industries didn’t know what lay ahead. Ten months after iTunes was introduced, on October 23rd, Apple released the iPod. Eighteen-months later in April 2003 – while the music industry was doing battle with file-shares, Apple opened it’s iTunes store. And within six years Apple had 70% of worldwide online digital music sales, making iTunes the largest digital music retailer.
Steve Jobs was hailed as a saviour of the music industry. He had a vision and made it work. Today, the news, media and publishing industries are crying out for a saviour that can help rescue them from the catastrophic situation that they find themselves in. Sales down and advertising at an all time low.
Some have tried, amongst them Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who in November 2007 launched the Kindle, a popular eReader that gave Amazon customers in the US access to an initial catalogue of over 88,000 digital titles. Today, there are more than 300,000 titles, including subscriptions to newspapers.
The Kindle has hype. It sold out quickly and had the support of Rupert Murdoch. Yet, the Kindle and it’s successors didn’t have the magic that Apple had, nor the practicality that is designed into every Apple product.
In the background though, Apple and Amazon are facing the monopolistic might of Google – a true online mammoth, which is looking to digitise the world’s books and create a vast online library. With a court hearing in New York next month, Google is hoping to legally confirm a deal signed last year with US authors and publishers. In the deal, Google would set up a Book Rights Registry and position itself as a PRS-style (ASCAP to our US readers) entity for writers and publishers. Some believe that this should not be allowed.
Yet this deal has forced many in the news, media and publishing industries to really have a look at how they operate and how they must make the most of the internet.
Yes, the Google Books deal would allow people to search books through it’s search engine, but it would also set up a model for making money from publishing, possibly through eReaders and the like. It might also create new income streams for the news and media industries, which have been suffering since customers started to switch online, where news has available free for years because publishers wanted a slice of the online advertising pie. Sadly, as I said in my previous post, they set themselves up for a tough time, dependent on advertising income, which plummeted when the current recession hit.
And why is this Google Books deal relevant to news outlets? Well, Google has reached a settlement with book publishers in the US and news and media companies might be hoping that the online giant will hear their talk of paywalls. What they need is for Google to play ball and start paying for listing their headlines and first paragraphs through its very popular Google News aggregator.
And it appears that Google is willing to play. In an eight-page response to the Newspaper Association of America request for paid-content proposals, Google revealed that it was developing a micro-payment system for paid-for-online content.
In the document Google outlines its vision for a “premium content ecosystem” that includes subscriptions across multiple news sites, syndication on third-party sites, accessibility to search and various payment options, including small fees for access to individual pieces of content (known as micropayments).
Google says that: “While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue. In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them.”
It confirms a Google’s vision for “a premium content ecosystem includes the following features:
· Single sign-on capability for users to access content and manage subscriptions
· Ability for publishers to combine subscriptions from different titles together for one price
· Ability for publishers to create multiple payment options and easily include/exclude content behind a paywall
· Multiple tiers of access to search including 1) snippets only with “subscription” label, 2) access to preview pages and 3) “first click free” access
· Advertising systems that offer highly relevant ads for users, such as interest-based advertising”
The payment system, which is described as being in production, would help and confirm News International’s plans to charge for access to it’s content online within the next 12 months. Or at least it gives us a clue of how paywalls might work.
Currently most news outlets only make money online from advertising, while print makes it from both from sales and advertising. The exceptions here being titles such as The FT, The Wall Street Journal, as well as other online subscription based outlets. The industry is starting to see how valuable it could be to have committed subscribers accessing their content.
Publishers meanwhile are starting to stand firm against Google’s News aggregator. In Italy, the Italian association of daily newspaper and periodical publishers, claim “members news sites receive no compensation for the news picked up by Google News Italia and if they do not appear on a Google search they are denied access to thousands of potential ‘visitors’ who generate advertising income. ”Google argues that it helps newspaper websites make money through online advertising and does not misappropriate content.”
And Google is planning to replicate the model that Apple develop with it’s possible initiative with news, and possibly Book. Hidden in the document Google confirms that a revenue split would be comparable to “Apple’s models on iTunes and AppStore and consonant with experiments being currently conducted on YouTube.”
The question is, with rumours of an Apple Tablet, could Jobs undermine what Google might be planning?
Apple has done it before and it has the infrastructure to do it again and be the knight in shining armour for a beleaguered set of industries.
The media landscape is changing, and it’s changing fast.
Tags: aggregator, business, checkout payment, content, google, googlenews, internet, journalism, media, micropayments, news, newspaper, online, pr, publishing, technology
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