Social Networking

The original Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens published in 1843 was written when social observances were in a time of decay. 
As a reader of this post you already know that advertising and marketing has experienced rapid decay in its relevance to consumers in recent times and that social media is proving to be a vital catalyst for building trust and loyalty between a brand and its consumers. 

Advertisers and marketers worldwide are currently going through a period of redemption based on their past activities of mass media ‘push’ but coming out the other end with campaigns that embody the true spirit of social media employing one to one communication and engagement marketing.

As we look forward to 2009 we should encourage and educate the ‘Ebenezer Scrooges’ of our world to get with the times and understand that social media is here to stay and there’s no running away from it.

So take heed Mr Scrooge!  If you are a brand that has devoted your life to the accumulation of wealth at the expense of building trusted relationships and at the same time doing social injustice you should be worried. Those who still do not understand the importance of social media within the workplace, throughout their business practices and beyond will be haunted by their competitors who do – and if they do not change their ways, the business will end up dead and buried.

OK, let’s take a brief look at the three successive Social Media spirits this Christmas and please feel free to comment at the end of the post…

Social Media Past
John McCain will be reflecting on his electoral loss by overlooking the potential of social media and the value of tapping into the Groundswell. You can read more about the use of Obama’s use of social media.
McCain should be the poster child for all those businesses that have ignored social media within industries where others have adopted and seen growth.  I hope they will now be looking to place importance on social media within their marketing mix, focusing their efforts on consumers, not the brand’s love for money.

Social Media Present
Again the Obama campaign has to be the most publicised example of social media success in 2008.  We can also identify that the campaign had a measurable ROI as Barack’s seat in the white house speaks for itself! 
Here in the UK, the Conservative Party has recently announced the appointment of a digital spokesperson in hope of replicating the same success in the forthcoming UK elections. This is good news as social media will filter through the establishment.

Throughout 2008 we have seen many great campaigns this year and the most successful were recognised through industry awards, for example the Interactive Media Awards in the UK and the Forrester Groundswell awards in the US.

With regard to formal research and a blatant plug for my own work.  In October I personally issued a detailed report outlining how brands can engage with social network consumers.  This was well received by the industry.  Thank you to those who requested the free report and if you would like a copy drop me an e-mail: info [at] socialnetworkmarketinguk [dot] com.

Social Media Yet to Come
Even though we will experience tough times for the next 12-18 months based on the fragile state of the world economy. For social media there are some fantastic developments and countless opportunities to look forward to.

Below is a brief list of articles/posts featuring the opinions of industry experts on what brands and social media can look forward to in ‘09 and beyond.

• Cheerful news for UK digital agencies as UK firms are to spend more on social media in 2009 – Brand Republic
• 8 experts including Charlene Li and Chris Brogan predict how Web 2.0 will evolve In 2009 – Fast Company
• Predicting the future of social media from a social media marketing perspective – Jason Falls

Overall my personal hope is that the Ebenezer Scrooge’s we all know will have an awakening over this Christmas period.  C-level executives from all business units need to listen, learn and understand the fundamental media shift that is already happening and, as a result become more willing to adopt a new social media persona and mindset.

Have a so so so, social media marketing Christmas everyone.

Tagged as: brand republic, charlene li, fast company, groundswell, ima, jason falls, obama, Social Media, social media marketing, social network marketing, Tom Chapman

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I have just finished reading: ‘Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom‘ by Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta.  This book provides a fascinating chronicle of social media to date that is heavily influenced by history and social anthropology.

One chapter in particular fired my rockets which was all about social capital.

Social capital
From a marketer’s perspective social capital by definition is no different from economic capital that is invested in order to deliver a return.  This means that when brands use social media, they are essentially investing social time and effort with the overall aim of achieving a return on that investment.  The same applies to consumers use of social media too.

Brands increasing social capital via their social graph
When putting together a social media strategy, brands are looking to increase their social capital through increasing the number of friend/fans/followers on social network platforms.  

Brands also use blogging outreach programmes targeting key professional bloggers who have great influence over a brand’s target audience in hope of improving the quality of their social graph.

At the same time brands are also building social relationships with advocates and consumers via campaigns, communities, outreach programmes, widgets, wikis, social games, building in engagement marketing in hope of achieving trust and loyalty, again increasing the quality of the social graph.  

This social graph can then be leveraged by the brand through promotions, offers, market research, crowd sourcing and collaboration to hopefully deliver a return on the original social investment that adds value to a brand’s bottom line.

Individuals increasing social capital through building a quality social graph
For individuals looking to increase their social capital through social media, marketer Jim Connolly recently put together a fantastic post ‘How I attracted 8000 followers in 14 weeks! illustrating how to increase your own social capital through selectively following Twitter consumers who add value to your social graph.  Jim’s strategy in his post can also be applied to brands as well as other social media tools and platforms.

As with all strategies, campaigns and activities the more time and effort you put into something, the greater return on that investment you will achieve, but you must have a goal in mind: prestige, recognition, loyalty, value, information, influence etc… Savvy brands know that through engagement marketing and one-to-one communications they can increase their social capital but they must invest time, money and effort with long term goals in order to experience a significant return - it’s all out there!

Tagged as: IAM, Individual as Medium, marketing, SCVA, SoCap&Brand, Social Capital, Social Capital Value Add, Social Graph, strategy, throwing sheep in the boardroom, Tom Chapman, Twitter

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Mobile social networking is increasing in popularity.  This is due not only to the introduction of smart phones such as the iPhone, Nokia N96 and Google Android, but also because mobile broadband is now a popular bolt-on for mobile contracts.  Mobile broadband providers such as Vodafone for example offer free access to the Facebook mobile operators platform.

On-deck social networks
In the UK, mainstream social networks such as Facebook available on-deck are most popular due to the critical mass of their online platforms that have migrated to mobile.  I know from first hand experience how popular Facebook mobile is, from the amount of use by staff and friends and when logged into my Facebook account I can see the large number of profile updates made via phone.

Off-deck social networks
Other ‘off-deck’ social networks are available as a software download to phone that allow users to set up group networks once installed.  One popular example is German based mobile social network platform Aka-Aki.
Aka-Aki is a location based social network and was founded by the students at the University of Arts Berlin in 2006 and has since achieved great success in terms of member numbers throughout its backyard of Berlin city.

Location-based social networking offered by Aka-Aki allows its community members to share their location using bluetooth. Members can add comments about a restaurant, inform friends that they’re going to a gig in town or just find out if anyone they know using the network happens to be nearby so weak-tie relationships form.
Aka-Aki is looking to introduce its location based mobile social network to the UK in 2009 and in my opinion it will easily achieve brand recognition through their cool ‘elk‘ icon, but the network faces tough competition from already established social network platforms available on-deck.

Chinwag MoSo Rising event 
Two weeks ago I attended the Chinwag event MoSo Rising in London to get the skinny on mobile social networks going forward into 2009.

MoSo Rising’s focus was predominantly a technology and software based discussion – I personally wanted to learn how brands can successfully use mobile social networks to engage with consumers as opposed to the technology behind the user experience. 
My key takeout from the event is that the mobile itself should not be seen as the ‘web in your pocket’ but as an extension to online activities and to assist in continuing the engagement with consumers around mobile activities and communities.  This is an obvious point and one that is important because the behaviour of mobile and web use is totally different.  MoSo content should be adapted and targeted to mobile use and applications.  For example developers and content providers should be looking to target those consumers that cannot access the web from their workplace but who want to engage and stay connected with their group networks.  So we’re looking at taxi drivers, nurses, building contractors, basically anyone away from a fixed line connection that have a phone they can use to network with.  
There is a great deal of potential for MoSo as pretty much everyone has a mobile phone, although not everyone has a smart phone and mobile handsets in the UK have reached saturation point.  Still it will be interesting to see if 2009 will finally be the year for mobile marketing, social media and social networks in particular.

Tagged as: Aka-Aki, Chinwag, facebook, marketing blog, mobile social networking, mobile social networks, MoSo, Tom Chapman

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Over the past couple of days I have been tinkering around with LinkedIn’s applications, in particular Huddle’s cloud based collaboration app.

Huddle Workspaces is a cloud based software-as-a-service product (SaaS) that is currently free to use for small collaborative projects - so if you do not use Google apps and have a LinkedIn profile it is well worth a look.

The great advantage of bundling collaborative tools with social networks as LinkedIn have done, is that it allows users to quickly set-up discussions that are private and secure, at the same time offering functionality and control which is what all businesses demand.

From a marketing perspective social networks and cloud based collaboration tools offer huge potential.
For example I was thinking that LinkedIn and Huddle is a useful way for barcamps to engage further with its attendees.
Picture the following scenario: You rock up to a barcamp discussion. As part of the entry requirements you register with your LinkedIn profile and you are automatically assigned to the event group on Huddle. Any notes you make during the discussion can later be uploaded to the event’s collaborative workspace and further discussions can take place beyond the meeting, extending the engagement far beyond the physical event. All presentation slides from the event are also uploaded and shared amongst the attendees. That way a repository of information around a particular subject can be built up and possibly even a wiki can be formed from tagging content and ideas contributed by all members.
All this collaborative information held within the cloud, could eventually lead to developing best practice and industry standards around certain issues that may well be pushed out into the mainstream.
The next up-and-coming barcamp will be promoted via LinkedIn announcing a new discussion topic and pre-event info and slides will be shared via Huddle and mashed up by attendees to discuss at the physical event. The whole process is then repeated – true engagement.

I personally think as I am sure many others do, that 2009 will see SME’s utilize SaaS tools more. I know from experience that traditional collaborative tools such as Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange are extremely useful for sales and marketing team use and coupled with social networks it opens this type of collaborative working wide open for all, as they are very easy-to-use.

Many companies if they have not done so already will shell out for enterprise social network platforms with collaborative tools (IBM BlueHouse, Trampoline and Huddle Enterprise). They will encourage all business units to plug into them – corporate Web 2.0 will become the norm and the wikinomics mantra (openness, peering, sharing and global) will become mainstream business practice. The opportunities that SaaS, the cloud and social networks combined are endless, as are the financial opportunities for data centres!

Tagged as: Cloud Computing, Collaboration software, Huddle, LinkedIn, marketing blog, SaaS, Tom Chapman

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