I’ve been meaning to check out Thorne Anderson’s work for quite some time, so today I started to browse through Unembedded. In comparison to traditional press photography, Anderson’s work movingly provides a grittier view of the war in Iraq.
After flicking through the online gallery, I decided to share the site via a tweet. As is it turns out the Iraqi Government also wants you to see the full picture—from every outlet possible.
There have been several recent write-ups about social media monitoring tools. The majority of the reviews surround flaws and functionality.
I share some of the opinions, yes we do need clearer geographically defined data and the ability to extract more granular information.
My concerns, however, reside with the completeness of data and information. Note I say data and information, information is created from data when knowledge and context is applied to it.
Opinion, feedback and dialogue features are now plumbed into many websites and web services. UGC is everywhere and it exists in many forms:
Lifestreaming services: Friendfeed and Posterous
Social Networks: Facebook
Blogs
Microblogs
Bespoke online communities: Ning
Dedicated review sites
Review panels on websites
Forums
Comments on mixed media
Comments in online national press
Content voting
Product feedback on retail websites (Amazon et al)
The list above could get much longer, but it demonstrates that if people want to “talk†they have the option to do so — in a variety of different ways.
I am yet to find a piece of software or social media monitoring tool that can accurately collate data and produce entirely complete information and analysis. Even the market leaders (who I will leave nameless) seem to generate data which doesn’t provide a truly complete picture.
The reality is that the majority of these tools use old practices such as screen scrapping or the skinning of data from existing API’s.
We need data that can be segmented in more granular ways and information that aids strategy development to cater for each type of persona on the Social Technographs Ladder.
I mention the Social Technographs Ladder because I think the way people create and use their own media, social media, will evolve. Proactively catering for each type of persona on the Social Technographs Ladder will become increasingly important for any brand that is truly working to “earn media”.
What I personally want to see in social media monitoring tools is specific insight into the activities of each persona in relation to specific topics, themes and brands.
Samepoint, the free social media monitoring tool, does a good job of collecting data from various social platforms that each persona may use. It would be good to see one of the larger players in the market build on this work, create visualisations around the data and provide deeper analysis.
I spotted this over @boingboing today, a kid lip syncing over hip-hop tracks in the 5th Avenue Apple Store in NY.
Apparently he’s done this quite a few times, the clips are below:
Of course this wasn’t intentional and I’m sure that Apple didn’t sit in their Bose speaker decked offices fabricating all of this (one hopes not). It does however illustrate what happens when you make lots cool stuff accessible to er…cool kids.
With so many crap viral videos floating about on Youtube, these clips are quite refreshing to see.
Apple invest heavily in their corporate identity, branding and retail experiences. It all seems to have done the trick because their stores have now turned into cool and quick internet stops.
The Kool camp do not just hang out on Youtube. Try doing a Twitter search every now and then:
Marketing Managers if you want your brands to be talked about be cool, create environments that resonate well with your prospects and let people have fun with your toys!
BMW I’m waiting ;p
I was flicking through Vice the other day and I spotted Oakley’s ads for their new range of shades.
At the bottom of their full page ad, I spotted a URL to their youtube channel called armchair sessions.
Whilst there a quite a few brands investing in branded content at the moment, I think armchair sessions is genuinely quite refreshing. The interviews cover a wide range of sports personalities, celebrities and x-gamers.
It’s good to see a brand make a commitment to their content by using offline media to advertise it. I think we’ll see more of this happening, media driving people to interactive brand experiences instead of brochure websites.
Rad.
Most people that know me well know that I have a growing obsession with Japanese stuff. Tumblr have recently re-jigged their search functionality and now you get this lovely digital—and rather square—collage for each and every search result.
We like!
One of my sweet finds are below, it’s a diagram detailing how the smooth criminal shoes were made.
Courtesy of Gizmodo JP
I was reading a good post today on Steve Rubel’s blog about Social Search, and how Twitter Search is gaining a sharp increase in usage.
I’ve written about Social Search on a number of occasions, but Steve’s post got me thinking…
So far Twitter Search ranks information purely on temporal factors; in comparison Google ranks information according to a number of factors, including temporal inbound link information and domain authority.
Whilst it is great to see Twitter usage increasing rapidly, I still question the overall relevancy of search results delivered by Twitter – the most recent information is not always the most accurate.
B1 has been using a Greasemonkey script for Firefox, which has been allowing her to see Twitter search results embedded above Google search results. I quite like the dynamics of the information you receive; you can see news pulled in from Google/Google News and reactions/tweets from Twitter Search at the same time:
I can see this complimentary use of Twitter search gain more popularity overtime as it provides a simultaneous overview of authoritative news, and real-time Twitter reactions via keyword search.
I’m not sure if Twitter Search will become a serious rival for Google; however, I do think it will become a staple complimentary search tool for news, making it a fairer rival to Google News.
So…I’m a bit late to air my thoughts about this debate, however, I felt I needed to understand the debate before I made any comments.
Traditional PR agencies vs. Digital Shops, SEO houses and Social Media Agencies—who’s better equipped at utilising new methods of Online PR and leading clients into digital?
A rather tough question to answer and I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to be honest (I’m from the school of digital/search). It’s fair to say that there are valid reasons for selecting both types of agency, but I believe the best option is tactical integration between the two.
Clients now require online marketing that encompasses a variety of skills, disciplines and practices—not to mention integration with other types of marketing and reporting.
SEO is also an ever-changing field as end-to-end projects require strategy and consultancy, which cover the following areas (in no particular order):
- Copywriting
- Usability
- Information Architecture / Accessibility
- Business and market intelligence
- Keyword research
- Technical consulting
- Applying emerging semantic mark-up
- Utilising web analytics
- Understanding and visualising social networks
- Content planning
- Asset optimisation
- Developing social media strategies for the brand
- Online PR to aid SEO and increase WOM influence between key online communities
- Managing, interpreting and visualising large quantities of data
Now it is clear to see that the list above is rather long and it includes online PR as a function to support other aspects of digital marketing and optimisation.
In most cases the nature of online PR generated by a Digital Shop is grassroots online PR, publicity from bloggers and influential people using a variety of self-publishing tools and social networking platforms on the web.
In comparison, traditional PR agencies have always been more proficient with managing media and investor relations, reputation management, crisis management and establishing mainstream media contacts.
It is therefore evident that both schools of thought provide two very different types of PR, and both have gradually evolved in different ways.
Digital shops have been adept at quickly honing their online PR skills to support integrated online marketing, whilst the traditional PR agencies still seem to be behind with integrating their offerings with digital practices such as SEO.
Do traditional PR agencies need to adapt rapidly?
I’m not so sure; to some extent traditional PR practices do affect the aforementioned digital practices—whilst simultaneously delivering value in their own right. I say this because traditional media (newspapers and print publications) are progressively moving from offline to online; the press coverage generated by a traditional PR agency—in mainstream online media— does affect a brand’s community positioning and share of voice within search engines.
It is therefore important for digital shops—as they manage certain aspects of online PR—to collaboratively work with traditional PR agencies in order to align traditional PR practices with new methods of online PR and marketing.
I believe both types of agency have their strengths, and on a case-by-case basis one outfit may be more suitable for a certain brand than the other—this of course depends on the nature of the PR and marketing required to meet a client’s objectives.
The “Us vs. Them†debates seem rather exhaustive to me and I think both sides of the battlefield need to stop worrying about who’s eating who’s lunch and focus on forming agile, multi-agency, and multi-discipline business webs that provide more effective marketing.
So there we are, that was my two pennies worth. I’m not a PR expert by any means so please forgive me if you’re a PR bod and I’ve made you cringe.
Just an excellent presso from Faris Yakob, it just had to be shared.
I was just playing about with my analytics account and I started to look at my top 10 referrers in a bit more detail. What has happened to Yahoo? Last.fm, Flickr, Twitter and LinkedIn all drive more traffic to my blog than Yahoo does.
A report by Search Engine Land discusses how Yahoo and Microsoft saw a decrease and stabilisation in search market share last year, however, I do not believe decreases in market share can entirely be attributed to more people using Google.
People are becoming savvy browsers and utilities such as Last.fm, Flickr and LinkedIn are, in many respects, social search platforms that provide more than just search results.
Flickr, Last.Fm and LinkedIn all provide extra associative information in addition to search results and I believe people find this information really useful.
If you do an image search on Google or Yahoo you get delivered standard image search results, however, if you carry out the same searches in Flickr you receive lots of images in various sizes, all with exif data.
I think there is real value in improving specialist search functionality, I would love to see another search engine crack this before Google.
Yahoo wake up and export Flickr technology into your image search results.
An inflated number of voluntary and community organisations find themselves dependant now more than ever in recession on funding from individuals. In the profitable online sphere, the volume of potential donors for which these VCOs are competing appears to be slowly dwindling. This trend, compounded with the loyalty of individual donors in recession places the relationship between the individual and the VCO at the heart of third sector fundraising. Social media is ‘relationship media’, and as such it has a natural and vital role to play here; but by social media’s special nature, its importance to third sector fundraising in a recession has commercial implications for the digital agency with third sector clients.
Fundraising in Recession
The role in public services for voluntary and community organisations has grown under the new Labour government, as the opportunity to provide those services has been opened up to the private and voluntary sectors.1 The Financial Times reported back in 2007 that, “private and voluntary organisations now supply at least £44bn worth of public servicesâ€.2
The related increase in government funding available to VCOs has seen the number of registered charities in the UK grow dramatically, and at an increasing rate: as visualised in the chart below, there were 120,000 registered charities in England and Wales in 1994/95, 164,195 in 2006, and there are 189,009 today.3
The main sources of income for VCOs can be identified by four categories. These are government funding, corporate funding, funding from investments and legacies, and funding from individuals.
It is an abundance of government funding that has grown the third sector in recent years, but we find ourselves now in a recession, in which this source of income for VCOs, as well as another two out of the main four, is in decline.
In recession, the budgets of both central and local governments are pressurized and funding for (both private and) third sector service initiatives is cut. Similarly, corporate funding dries up, as smaller corporate profits, which are related to economic performance, result in a reduction in corporate giving. Investment and legacy income also begins to decline, as assets (equities, bank deposits, and property) become less valuable and susceptible to lower interest rates.4
We have a situation now, in recession, then, where an increasing number of competing charities are left increasingly at the mercy of the fourth and final category of income: funding from individuals.
When it comes to fundraising from individuals, next to the canvassing of high net worth donors, online fundraising is on average the second best method for return on investment.5 Maximising online fundraising then should be a focus for VCOs during recession.
Examining the UK market for online donation, and even, more generally, examining UK online interest in charities, however, uncovers some worrying trends. As the following graph shows, interest on Google in the search terms charity or sponsor or donation or “online donation†in the UK has declined consistently year-on-year since 2005.
One might suggest that perhaps VCO brands, rather than generic terms, have grown in the online space since 2005, but looking at the entire charitable and non-profits category of Google searches, which includes brand terms, a similar trend is revealed: consistent decline year-on-year since 2005.6
We can conclude from these trends of decline in online interest in donation and charities that the base level volume of online donation from individuals is declining. It is important, then, for VCOs in their online fundraising efforts to attempt to secure higher value or repeat donation from the same individuals.
The pressure to achieve this is compounded by the current climate of recession. Evidence from other recessions is that individuals are less promiscuous with their giving during a downturn: they focus on causes that they already support.7
Right now, then, more VCOs than ever have fewer than ever potential donors; and of those potential donors that are available, fewer of them are new donors. Moreover, from those donors that have been secured, VCOs increasingly must squeeze more value.
This situation puts emphasis on one thing: the relationship between the VCO and the individual donor. It’s not a new relationship, not one that has to be won; it’s an existing relationship, one that has to be preserved. More than preserved, this existing relationship has to be developed into an increasingly lucrative one for the VCO.
The Role of Social Media
Social media has an important role to play here, as fundamentally it is the expression and cultivation of the relationships that exist between individuals, and between individuals, brands, products, and services.
There is a stronger relationship between an individual and an organisation when the communication between that individual and organisation is a dialogue, rather than a one-way broadcast from organisation to individual. Social media, which has at its core user-generated content, gives voice to the individual, thus facilitating dialogue back and forth between individuals and organisations. It should be embraced as part of any strategy that seeks to promote strong relationships between those parties.
Moreover, with the growth of social media, there has come to be an expectation on the part of the individual of opportunities for dialogue with brands and product and service providers. Not to fulfil this expectation would be to jeopardise the strength of the relationship that exists between the organisation and the individual. Oliver Westmancott puts it simply: “If you present your content in a way that doesn’t make it easy for people to respond to they just won’t, they’ll engage with other issues and organisations.â€8 Those “other issues and organisations†will be the ones that do provide a platform for dialogue.
Another effect the growth of social media has had on the attitudes of the individual is the trend, as Rachel Beer describes it, for people to use social media “to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporationsâ€, or indeed VCOs.9 Increasingly, individuals value the opinions of other individuals more than those expressed by the organisation. Organisations should therefore seek to provide a platform on which individuals can be evangelists for the organisation’s cause.
Not only does social media then both facilitate and demand conversation, it can be used to strengthen relationships in other ways: through the opportunity for organisations to grant individuals privileges, such as membership of a community whose shared interest is the work of the organisation, and personalised information about the individual’s role in that work. These things add value to that which the potential donor gets in return for his or her donation.
Social media can be used to achieve specific goals in third sector fundraising. For one, it can allow organisations to connect donors with recipients. By demonstrating more vividly the impact of a donor's 'investment', this connection will reinforce and augment the value of donation in the mind of the donor.
Social media can also be used to improve transparency and legitimacy in an organisation's work. The communications that constitute a social media environment are by their nature “open and equitable, and require […] the transparent sharing of information, honest discussion of […] successes and failures, highs and lows – warts and all – rather than the polished diplomacy of PR, the hard sell of advertising or the push of marketing.â€9 As well as rendering communications transparent, dialogue about the work of an organisation can also have the effect of democratising that organisation. It gives a donor the opportunity to question, criticise, and approve the work of the organisation. More to the point, it gives the organisation the opportunity to respond to those questions, and to act on that criticism or approval. A more transparent and legitimate organisation is a more attractive one to donors, and more attractive to donors means more likely to receive support.10
The Implications for the Digital Agency of the Value of Social Media
Social media then has a valuable role to play in third sector fundraising, especially during recession when the relationship between the VCO and the individual is paramount. Apart from anything else, the expectation on the part of the individual of opportunity for dialogue with the organisation, and the need on the part of the organisation to provide a platform for individuals to be evangelists, mean that VCOs cannot now afford not to invest in social media: they risk damaging their relationships with their donors if they do not.
Any agency that describes itself as a ‘full-service’ one must therefore be able to provide comprehensive social media services. Investment will be required in the agency’s capacity to provide these services, and in their marketing of them; at the same time though, these services should be increasingly easy to sell to third sector clients.
That said, when it comes to selling social media services, agencies will still have to consider carefully how they’re going to prove the return on investment in social media to their clients. Some forms of social media, exemplified by the Dogs Trust’s Facebook application (http://apps.facebook.com/dogstrust/), promote direct donation, and there are opportunities to monetise social media and track the revenue it generates. An organisation can turn social media content into advertising inventory, and it would be easy to put tracked links to donation pages in a twitter feed, for example. However social media is not particularly suited to this kind of advertising. As has been discussed, it is honest conversational communication; and sales (or even fundraising) is not generally at home with honest conversation, or at least not with the honest conversation that is conducted between individuals. It would in most cases be a counterproductive misuse of social media to attempt to advertise with it.
One solution to the problem for the agency of proving return on investment in social media, when that return is rarely direct, is for the agency to establish with the client more qualitative objectives and measures of success for social media investment. All VCOs value their relationships with individual donors. Success with social media can therefore be attributed where it leads organisations to “build better relationshipsâ€, to “participate in conversations where†they “hadn’t previously had a voiceâ€, and to “move from a running monologue to a meaningful dialogue†with potential donors.11 These successes all involve participation on the part of the organisation; the organisation will know for itself when they have been achieved. When asked, “How successful has it [social media, specifically twitter] been in terms of raising awareness, attracting donations and finding homes for dogs?†Alex Goldstein of Dogs Trust responded:
The answer to this all depends on how you measure success. To us, it’s been very valuable. People are increasingly coming to us for advice on obtaining or caring for dogs and we’re able to give that or direct them to where they can find it; that’s certainly part of our job description.
We are also able to build enthusiasm in new supporters who hadn’t heard of us before. And, best of all, we were able to rehome a dog.12
