The Social Web | Social Marketing & PR 2.0

The Year the Communications Industry Changed Forever

2011-12-15T10:45:00.000Z

We started 2011 walking an economic tightrope and we’re ending it balancing precariously on the precipice of a double-dip recession. On the face of it, it would seem that not a lot has changed over the last twelve months. And yet this year has seen some fundamental changes to the way business operates and communicates with clients, customers, suppliers and peers. The influence of social media has grown further and the world of public relations has finally started to wake up to the fact. But perhaps the biggest change that I’ve observed over the last year has been the incredible increase in the speed of communications, and the resultant stresses this is placing on those working in the industry. Real-time has gone, well, real-time.

Working in a PR or marketing agency has always been fairly pressured. Managing (and balancing) the demands of multiple clients can be tough, but the dynamism this necessitates makes the communications industry an exciting place to work. Responding to the pace of change of the industry, however, and perhaps driven by the expectations of consumers facilitated by the social web, client demands are becoming ever greater. Respond to an email in more than an hour? I don’t think so. Not be on call 24/7? Forget it.

Back in January I made some predictions about what the year ahead might hold, most of which I’m pleased to say, have manifested (social television’s not here yet, but it’s coming!). One of these was about the increasing speed of the way we communicate and the resultant requirement for brevity. Arguably greater than content marketing, the decline of the website, platform consolidation or even mobile computing, it’s this that has had the greatest impact for me personally and for many others in 2011.

Client demands are increasing

The expectations of clients that proposals and strategies can be turned round in (in some cases) hours and that everything is needed in double quick time mean that I’m bloody busy. All the time. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’m busier than I think I’ve ever been in my working life.

And it’s not just me; the PRSA in the USA and the CIPR in the UK have recently joined forces to try and redefine what being a PR practitioner really means in today’s always-on, real-time, digitally-driven world. It’s (to me at least) a redundant exercise that will do little but enable those within the organisations to congratulate each other about their amazing insight while us common folk get on with doing the job. I don't care how PR defines itself, and neither should you. But the main point to take from this is that there’s no going back. When PR dinosaurs start to realise that they need to react to social media and the pace of the industry (even if solely to protect themselves), you know it’s here to stay. The communications industry is evolving right before our eyes. And it’s doing so very, very quickly. Keep up or become extinct.

As I say, I’m now busier than I’ve ever been and seem to spend far too much time fire-fighting and nowhere near enough time strategising, planning and thinking. Five minutes in the shower every morning really shouldn’t be all the time I have for creativity and brain space. And this has impacted on other areas of my professional life; I’m not using Google+ nearly as much as I’d like, and this blog has, I feel, suffered over the last six months.

The evolution of blogging
The blogosphere in general has changed noticeably this year. Some bloggers who I read avidly in January now hardly ever post. Others have started regurgitating the same old content and have become entirely predictable and, yes, dull. The echo chamber within social media and communications has grown ever larger during 2011 and the lack of original and insightful voices of people who are prepared to speak out, challenge and say something different is a little depressing if I’m honest.

A few months ago, the hugely respected and admired Danny Brown published a post titled 'The Mind-Numbing Banality of Sameness' that summarised his own thoughts on what was happening. I have to respect the way that he seemed to recognise a little of this in himself and repositioned his massively successful blog to ensure he wasn’t dragged into the mire. As a result I tapped into a whole new slew of bloggers, mostly from the USA, who thought along the same lines. But after a few months of reading, even these guys have formed something of their own micro echo chamber, just with a different viewpoint. But maybe that’s the way of the blogosphere?

Seeing things from a new perspective
For me personally, the year has been successful in many ways: my agency, BOTTLE, won our first ever social media award in July, followed by another in November. It was also short-listed for others, including Best Digital PR Agency. And then a few weeks ago, the wider agency won Outstanding Consultancy of the Year at the CIPR PRide Awards.

But I can’t help feel that I’ve gone backwards as a blogger over the last few months. This is my 61st post on The Social Web this year; in 2010 I posted 98 times. That's down by over a third. And if I’m being 100% honest, some of those 61 posts have been based on half-baked thoughts and ideas, rushed out without giving the concepts or writing itself time to develop. Not good.

When I look back over a year’s blogging, I started well with original thoughts around developing a model for social communications ROI and openly calling out PR agency heads for being idiots due to their lack of nous about the evolution of the industry. During the summer I carried out a two month experiment where I didn’t use a search engine, and I blogged about the findings from this. I was prepared to challenge, to question and to be original. And then somewhere around August/September, I lost my way and fell into the chasm of the echo chamber. My writing has become predictable, overly critical and, in some cases, pointless.

This is, I feel, in part due to the aforementioned levels of work and pressure I find myself having to deal with. But it’s not an excuse. And when I look at this lack of available time, the need for brevity and the (related?) rise of Tumblr, it gives me a lot of food for thought.

And so over the Christmas holiday period and into January I’m going to be giving serious consideration to how, and indeed if, this blog continues. I need to get back to offering original thought and personal opinion on hot digital, social and technological topics – and on how we as people think about them. Blogging is by people for people – it shouldn’t be about the latest Facebook development or how to use Google+. But at the same time, I want to provide easy access to some key trend data that you, dear reader, may find useful. Chances are, when I come back, it’ll be with something new and different, and I very much hope that you’ll still be interested enough to stay with me in the next stage of my blogging journey.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me in 2011. Merry Christmas to every single person who has read this blog, commented or shared a post with their networks over the last 12 months. Have a wonderful holiday with your family: eat, drink and be merry. Sending the best of season’s greetings to you and yours, from me and mine.

Paul x

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Which are the Most Valuable Digital Media Marketing Books?

2011-12-01T13:36:00.000Z

Much as I love my daily fix of thoughts, opinions and news from across the blogosphere, there are times when you can’t beat spending time sitting down and reading a book to get the brain cells working. But what are the most informative and challenging books covering digital media, PR 2.0, social technology, brand strategy and the evolution of the web currently available?

At the risk of sounding like a complete geek, I’m asking Santa Claus to bring me a few social communications strategy books when he completes his annual round-the-world-in-24-hours trip next month. There are loads of books out there from people I respect, but I thought it’d be a nice idea to get YOUR input to identify the best of the best for the benefit of everyone.

This is my current shortlist, and I’d love to get your opinions on these books if you’ve read them as well as additional options:

Welcome to the Fifth Estate, by Geoff Livingston & Adam Ostrow
Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman
The End of Business as Usual, by Brian Solis
Putting the Public back in Public Relations, by Deidre Breakenridge & Brian Solis
The Now Revolution, by Jay Baer & Amber Naslund
The New Community Rules, by Tamar Weinburg
The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vaynerchuk
Social Media ROI, by Olivier Blanchard
Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith

So what are the best books you’ve read on digital media, PR 2.0 and the social web, and why? What would you recommend to others?

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Is Public Relations as we know it Dead?

2011-11-27T22:02:00.001Z

Lots has been written about how PR is evolving over the last couple of years. As an industry, we’ve been incredibly slow to react to changes in the media landscape, and for every progressive consultant who’s spending time getting to grips with changing consumer behaviour, there’s another who’s five or ten years out of date. But such has been the pace of change during the last twelve months that I feel that PR as a discipline has reached tipping point. Conventional public relations is now heading for extinction.

Things started to evolve a few years ago when MySpace, Bebo and Facebook went mainstream. Blogging had already been causing shifts in focus since the early 2000s, but it was the advent of the social networks that changed the game for good. Suddenly print media consumption started to decrease as our clients’ ‘publics’ spent more and more time on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. And then came Twitter, and PR would never be the same again.

Broadcast media no longer breaks the news; Twitter breaks the news. And by the time the newspapers report it a day later, stories have moved on via microblogging. PR was always a fast moving industry, but the speed at which it now has to operate is incredible. In the face of this pace, the declining influence of print media and new consumer behaviours, traditional public relations is starting to look completely redundant. And with it, the agencies, MDs and consultants who’ve been paying lip service to social media and digital comms are starting to realise that they're rapidly losing touch.

The Engagement Faction

In the last few months, there’s been a distinct and noticeable shift in the way that the more progressive PR agencies are approaching their business. Some have launched specialist social or digital media divisions, others have dropped the PR moniker from their name completely, and others have repositioned as reputation, engagement or even ‘recommendation’ agencies. There seems to be a conscious decision by successful agencies to distance themselves from the term ‘public relations’. And given the general perception of the rest of the backward industry, I can’t say I’m either surprised or in disagreement.

Recently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) announced that it wants to redefine ‘modern PR’. But I’m in total agreement with Danny Whatmough, who wrote on the Econsultancy blog in follow up that “there is immense fear in the PR industry about what it actually means to do PR these days. And I am constantly frustrated by how slow sections of the industry are to reinvent themselves. Apart from a few good agencies and practitioners doing great, pioneering work, there is too much burying of heads in the sand and hoping that the 'same old' will continue to be enough.” Spot on.

Personally, I’d love to see the back of those agencies and consultants who are now starting to panic about brand engagement. And it might not be long coming. Over the next year I can see PR becoming still further integrated with the marketing, SEO and customer service functions; more responsible for managing customer relationships and a wider communications role; significantly more integrated with mobile, web and digital marketing; and starting to finally answer the perpetual question of ROI.

Change is coming, and it’s coming fast. And if that means the death in 2012 of public relations as we know it in order for those doing good work to prosper, then so be it. Only the strong shall survive.

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Is Klout Operating Illegally?

2011-11-21T15:20:00.001Z

Online privacy is a massive issue. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to rile up a whole bunch of people, it’s to what degree their personal data is being scraped, acquired, harvested, analysed, utilised and sold. Facebook and Google have both come under huge fire in the last twelve months over their use of data, and continue to do so. So you’d think other services would watch and learn, wouldn’t you? Well not in the case of Klout, the much-maligned online influence management tool.

I’ve taken the weekly pannings of Klout by social media bloggers with a pinch of salt, and the complete over-reactions of some people to the recent adjustment to the scoring system were laughable. It’s pretty much acknowledged among my own network of peers that Klout is a largely useless measure, with an impenetrable ranking system that seems to bear little relation to what one does on Twitter or Facebook or Google+. But people are ambivalent towards it; they simply don’t feel strongly enough to opt out. And I’ve been the same...until now.

Gaming, Privacy & Lies

In the last few days I’ve read some pretty shocking posts about Klout, online privacy and the company’s motives. The first to catch my eye was a post on Social Media Today by Hollis Tibbetts, who ran an experiment which proved how easy it is to game the system and gain a score. Amusing and pretty mild stuff, but it sowed the seed that led to me read a couple more serious posts that blew things wide open.

When Klout gave its algorithms a makeover and in doing so pissed off many a would-be social media guru, it also made some changes that left the service exposed to significant criticism. By scraping the Facebook friends of Klout users, assigning those friends a Klout score based on public information, and then encouraging the original user to invite their friends to register, Klout did little more than cause serious concerns over privacy. There were stories of mothers being prompted to invite their teenage (and probably under 13 year old) children to join Klout after this trolling activity, and the service faced a backlash. Klout says it has since reversed Facebook scraping...but this appears to be bullshit. Although she no longer has a score, I’m still prompted to invite my wife to Klout, as the screen grab below shows.

Keith Dawson from thecmosite.com discussed these issues in a post last week, in which he asserts that Klout’s problems are “rooted in a serious overreach in the company's attempt to be viral.” This is spot on, and it’s clear that the company has not considered the privacy implications of what it has done, especially shocking when the whole service is based around data scraping.

Is Klout Against the Law?

But the worst was yet to come. Via Dawson’s article, I discovered a superb post by blogger and author Charles Stross. I encourage you to read this one in full for yourself, but to precise it, Stross claims that Klout breaks eight Principles of the 1998 UK Data Protection Act (it operates under American privacy law). In fact, he states in no uncertain terms that Klout is “flagrantly in violation of UK data protection law” and that its business model is “flat-out illegal in the UK and, I believe, throughout the EU”. He outlines in compelling detail the reasons for this, including issues over consent, transparency and verification. In short, if Klout were a UK company, it would but shut down immediately.

Another area Stross discusses is Klout’s raison d’etre. Is it providing a service out of the goodness of its heart? Of course not, it’s in it for money and has investors to satisfy. And yet we don’t think about that. We don’t think about the fact that although it’s presenting itself as “the standard for influence” and providing useful (*cough*) data for us, it’s really gathering as much personal information from us as it can and flogging it to the highest bidder.

Opt Out Now. Or Not...

It really is shocking stuff. So of course, having read all this, I’ve opted out, haven’t I? Well...no. And the reason is that I have an extremely morbid curiosity about Klout, how it works and about why people use it. My network doesn’t value it, and yet they don’t opt out. Why? I asked the question on Twitter. Stuart Witts said: “presumably the fear that it will suddenly become the default measurement of influence”. Joel Hughes said: “sounds like hassle - got a millions other things I need to do”. And so it perpetuates.

So what is it that holds us to a service that could well be illegal, serves little or no value, and has no respect? Is it a case of lemmings, where until one or a few jump off the cliff, the rest will sit tight? Are we seriously that needy? Or is it simply that we don’t care? And if not, does the information in this blog post change your mind in any way, shape or form? What do you think?

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Is it Possible for a Digital Media Pro to Prosper Outside the City?

2011-11-10T13:41:00.001Z

This morning I should have taken my place among the good andthe great of the UK social media scene for a presentation by Adobe on its newanalytics tool. Instead, I’ve been sat at my PC in the office hammering out acredentials document for a pitch, guiding a colleague on a media relationsprogramme for a client, and devising an integrated social/PR outreach programmefor another. The reason? I don’t live or work in London. And it sucks.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to either cancelattendance at a seminar or turn down an invite to a product launch or miss outon a community social because I’m not city-based. In fact, I’ve been given thenickname ‘No Show’. (I haven’t, but I should have.) And it’s extremelyfrustrating as the fact is that most of the time I simply can’t justify thefour hour round trip from Oxfordshire to central London and back again when I havea to-do list that would strike fear into the most devoted of PR consultants.

Keeping up with what happens in the digital world isn’teasy. And the benefits of having like-minded peers with whom you can chew thefat and throw around ideas over an impromptu beer are massive. But in the UK,when you work outside London, or to a lesser extent Manchester, the former iseven more challenging and the latter is virtually impossible. I can only assumeit’s the same in the US with the likes of Chicago, New York and San Francisco,and in other countries too. And it feels extremely isolating. It feels like Iam constantly on the periphery of the industry and the community, no matter howmuch time I spend on Twitter or Facebook engaging with peers and friends (who Irarely see). It feels like I have to work doubly hard just to keep up, letalone to try and get ahead (whether or not that is true, I have no idea).

Take yesterday for example. I needed to be in London for an8.30am breakfast meeting with a digital committee I’m involved with. That meantgetting up at 5.30am and, more importantly, it meant I didn’t get to my desk andstart working in earnest until midday. Even for a meeting at the crack of dawnI missed three hours of desk time. And hence, there was just no way, when I satdown and assessed things at 9pm last night, that I could take another five orsix hours out today.

So what’s the point? Is this post just a bitching session?Well partly, yes. I find myself immensely frustrated that I feel like mylearning, my thoughts and my ideas areconstrained by my own geographical isolation. But it’s more to find out fromyou what you think of this.

If you’re outside the city, whatever city andcountry that may be, do you feel the same? If you’re inside the city, do youhave any sympathy or have any suggestions for me (other than moving)? And from a broader perspective,what does this say about social media in general – does it prove what many ofus say about the need to take online relationships offline, or is it evidenceof someone who is more remote who’s able to build those relationships where hecouldn’t have done so a few years back? Over to you...

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Why Live Event Tweeting is the Spawn of the Devil

2011-10-21T06:00:00.000+01:00

There are currently two significant social media/tech events happening in the UK: Like Minds and LiveTech. Several of the people I’m friends with or follow closely are in attendance at one or other, some speaking and some listening. But they’re all tweeting from them using the #LikeMinds and #LiveTech hashtags. Boy are they tweeting from them! It’s making my Twitter stream as impenetrable as a Leopard 2A6 Battle Tank (Google it).

I know I’m being a miserable sod, but does anyone actually follow these events on Twitter? It’s not like a Twitter chat where you need a hashtag in order to help follow a conversation that lasts maybe an hour. It’s just a constant flow of largely irrelevant and unfiltered junk that has no context and is of no benefit to man nor beast. Especially when there may be several people tweeting the same thing from the same event at the same time. As Julie Howell succinctly put it to me on Twitter: “It fills up your timeline with odious crap”.

Now I can see the benefit (I guess) if you’re not attending but want to. But even then, does anyone sit at their computer watching the hashtag for a day or three? Of course they don’t – chances are, if they wanted to attend but couldn’t it’s because they were too busy and are not going to have the time to wade through mountains of hashtagged rubbish to pick out the nuggets at a later date. Which renders it largely pointless. The odd, really insightful and interesting tweet I think most people welcome, me included. But how many of these type of tweets are truly insightful and interesting? Olly Gosling said to me on Twitter: “When it's interesting and relevant, I quite like it. But if it's ‘social is about people #sm101’ kind of crap, then that grates...”

The fact is that, as a rule, the only people genuinely interested in what you have to tweet from a live event are the people in the room. Who are with you, listening to the same stuff. And so should be taking in what people are saying rather than watching it on their iPhone or furiously typing every sentence onto their iPad.

More to the point, if you pay to attend an event, I’d assume you’re interested in what the speakers have to say. So how about paying those speaking the courtesy of your attention and giving them some eye contact? There’s nothing worse when speaking at an event to look out at a room full of people playing with their mobiles. I know, I’ve done it. They may well have been hanging on my every word and tweeting everything I said, but I felt completely disengaged from them.

Tweetdeck has just introduced the ability to filter out hashtags, and I really hope Hootsuite follows suit very soon. It’s likely to be a very well-used function, in my opinion. So how about we all think twice when we next sit down at a conference? Maybe put the tech down while people are speaking? And if you do feel the need to live event tweet, please, please know your audience and be picky. By all means discuss interesting points using Twitter, but please, there’s absolutely no need to tweet every single word that is said.

What are your feelings about live event tweeting?

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Never Mind the (PR) Bollocks

2011-10-19T06:18:00.000+01:00

Let’s say you have a client who’s not taken your advice. At least, not properly. They’ve commenced PR or marketing activity that is, at best, a half-hearted attempt at what you originally recommended and the reality is a shadow of the grand idea that you proposed. Unsurprising to you, it doesn’t deliver. Then it comes to review time. What do you do: do you skirt around the issue and encourage the client that it’s something to build on? Do you throw yourself under the bus and accept blame? Or do you lay it on the line and tell them exactly why it crashed and burned, recapping your original recommendations?

I’m sure every single consultant reading this has been in this situation, and I’m equally sure that every single consultant reading this is thinking “I tell them the truth”. But I’m also convinced that isn’t the case. Ideas get scaled back all the time due to budgets or resourcing or sometimes a disbelief that ALL of the proposed activity is necessary. More often than not, these water down the impact of a campaign, but not pointing this out to clients largely keeps them on-side and happy. A lot of people in PR hate review meetings: the truth is they’d rather not have them at all. But what we hate even more than review meetings is unhappy clients. ‘Keep ‘em happy’ is the name of the game. And if you tell clients the truth about some of the nonsensical decisions they make, you risk turning a happy (if ignorant) client into an unhappy client. After all the customer is always right, isn't he?

The nature of spin

In PR, we’re very good at what’s become termed as ‘spin’. The word spin has extremely negative connotations: it implies dishonesty and duplicity, and makes you think of Max Clifford and The News of the World newspaper. And PR really is not about spin in that sense. But what it is about is managing reputation, and that implies – no, necessitates – being able to put a positive sheen on events, people, products, services and companies. PR consultants need to be able to ‘polish a turd’. And so when it comes to reviewing activities, it’s second nature to get out the Mr Sheen.

Personally, however, I like to believe (maybe naively) that people aren’t stupid, that they know when something’s not lived up to expectations, and that they’d rather their PR consultants told them the truth to help them to understand and to stop them making the same mistake again. Yes, it might hack them off and yes, you may lose the odd one or two clients as a result. But as a rule, surely the majority would have more respect for a PR consultant who said (politely) if we’d have done X, Y and Z as we initially recommended, we may have seen a better result. Right?

Or maybe not. Sean Fleming, an experienced consultant, says he thinks there’s a bit of a Catch 22 in play: “Most clients will tell you they want you to be honest with them. But they don't mean it. Those clients who do mean it are - probably - the ones you need to do less sugar-coating for. Why? Because they are the more engaged and involved, in my experience. Consequently not only do they already know if something is working or not but they probably have a good idea why. They know what is expected of them in order to make things work and they'll know when they've let the side down. The ones that you have to have the frank conversations with - and again this is my personal perspective - are those that don't get fully involved, treat you like a supplier rather than a consultant, and all too often simply don't get it.”

Is sugar-coating necessary?

So does this mean that I’m personally in a small minority of people who are genuinely prepared to take the ‘truth’ gamble? Maybe it’s my advancing years (middle age is not only knocking on the door, it’s half way through it), the experience that goes along with that and the fact that I’m well passed playing the turd polishing game, or maybe I’m just naive and stupid...and don’t actually own a company and have to pay salaries even if it loses a client. But I’m starting to wonder whether many PR people are so blinded by the ‘spin’ of everyday life that the thought of telling a client the stone-cold truth and potentially upsetting them actually sends them into a tailspin of blind panic, leading them to sugar-coat things that really shouldn’t be delivered with such a sweet taste.

Sean also has a take on this. He says: “There are two motives for sugar-coating. One is that there are some people in PR who are pathologically incapable of dealing with bad news or being honest in the face of failure, and fear losing a client at all costs. The other is the realisation that the person you are talking to will not - no matter how carefully you explain things to them - accept that there are going to be times when things fail because of their lack of involvement, or their over-involvement. They will constantly seek to point the finger of blame at you. Consequently, you have a choice to make - do you risk a confrontation with someone who will never treat you like an equal, or do you suck it up, dress it up and sugar-coat the pill?”

The customer is not always right

Darika Ahrens, another equally successful and experienced consultant, has a different take on things, however. “This is not a ‘customer is always right’ scenario”, she says. “When I worked (many years ago) on a makeup counter it didn’t matter if the client left the store with the blue eye shadow and red lipstick I’d counselled against if it made them happy. Agency work is, however, consultative and involves a lot of time and money. Brand reputations are often at stake. Yet time and time again agencies let their clients head to the ball looking like an extra from Dynasty. If a client doesn’t listen to advice I’d suggest a serious re-examination of your abilities to communicate ideas or even build trusted relationships. If, hand on heart, the client really just refuses to take your recommendations then the relationship has broken down past the point of serving either party. Resign the account. Any agency who bills a client for a half-arsed idea then defends themselves after it’s failed with a weak spirited “I told you so” should plain get out the game.”

But what about you: when it comes to client relationships, what’s honestly more important to you? Is it keeping a client happy and paying the bill, or pointing out when they make decisions that minimise the impact of campaigns? Leave a comment anonymously if you feel more comfortable. And if you work client-side, what’s your take?

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Why An Apple a Day is Making Me Sick

2011-10-17T12:37:00.004+01:00

If I say the word ‘smartphone’, what’s the first thing that comes into your head? What about ‘tablet’? Apple is ubiquitous. iThis, iThat, iEverything. And with the sad death of Steve Jobs a couple of weeks ago, never has it been so in the limelight. But here’s news: Apple isn’t the centre of the universe.

When it landed at number two in the Coolbrands list recently, it wasn’t really a surprise. Apple is immense when it comes not only to being innovative, but in being seen to be innovative. It’s had a tremendous impact on the tech, communications and even product design fields over the last ten years, and it deserves its place in that list. But is it really the be all and end all of the IT and mobile comms industries?

Although I have massive respect for everything that Apple has achieved, the continuous, blind worship of every single piece of product development and, lately, every minor announcement to come out of Cupertino, California, is getting a bit tedious. Twitter becomes practically impenetrable every time there’s an iPhone update, and as for last week’s iOS5 release...don’t get me started: I really don’t need an update on download progress every five minutes. It’s fair to say that Apple can do very little wrong in the eyes of its faithful devotees and, even when things don’t go so well, there is such huge love for the brand that things seem to be forgiven and forgotten very quickly. It’s an envious position, but could the ubiquity and success of the iBrand and the almost blind dedication of iFans be stifling tech elsewhere?

The likes of Samsung and HTC would undoubtedly rebuke that question, with the former reported to have sold 30 million of its superb Galaxy S and Galaxy SII smartphones since launch and the latter having recently introduced the awesome Sensation, in due course set to take over from the Desire as the UK’s most popular Android handset. In the UK, the iPhone holds just 9% of the smartphone market, with Android leading the way at 13% and even BlackBerry having 10%. So why are we so iObsessed?

The one company that sums up this obsession to me is Instagram. I’ve written before about how I feel that Instagram is in real danger of missing the boat if it continues to focus solely on the iPhone and keeps delaying the launch of an Android app, but beyond that it’s a good example of this fixation with everything Apple even when the majority of the UK population prefer other platforms. Crowd Media asked a question on Facebook the other day: "we are massive Apple fans and are loving the newly released iOS5. So come on, let's sort this out. Which type of smartphone really is the best?" Despite the leading nature of the question, the iPhone still only polled only 52% of the vote, with Android on 43% and Palm (?!) on 5%. I just have to question the validity of Apple worship.

But you tell me: why are we so iObsessed? Am I the only one who’s sick of reading about Apple?

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The Day I Hung Out with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu

2011-10-08T14:51:00.000+01:00

This morning, I ‘hung out’ with two of the world’s most awesome individuals on Google+. And I’m not talking Chris Brogan or Brian Solis or any of those other social media 'gurus’, I’m talking two of the planet’s real life, bona fide truly great men. For at 9.30am His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu took to the web’s newest social network for an hour’s live chat from India and South Africa respectively.

I’ve long been an admirer of Buddhist psychology and philosophy, and have read several books written with and about the Dalai Lama, but I tuned in today more out of curiosity than anything else. I wanted to witness how a Google+ hangout could work in practice to connect people around the entire world to a live video-chat event. It was ‘an experience’.

From farce to fantastic

The first ten minutes were a complete farce. The webcam at Archbishop Tutu’s end was pointing to a room of people whom he was addressing at his Peace Lecture in Cape Town and the microphone was picking up ambient noise (see below). So not only could we not see Archbishop Tutu, we couldn’t hear him either. People were commenting in Google+ as the video streamed with questions like ‘is it in English?’. The Dalai Lama sat patiently in India looking completely nonplussed and more than a little bored. Had it not been for my experimental curiosity I’d have tuned out. But I hung in there (no pun intended)...and I’m glad I did.

Once Archbishop Tutu had finished his address, he took a seat with an interviewer and someone had the bright idea to point the webcam at him and connect him up to a microphone. And off we went.

What followed was 45 minutes of genuinely interesting and heart-warming conversation between two elderly gentleman who spoke more sense and wisdom in less than an hour than I’ve heard in the last ten years. The video streaming in from India was at times patchy, but the discussion was such that it really didn’t matter.

Warmth, grace and humour

Archbishop Tutu is a man of great humour and genuine warmth, with a wicked laugh. He poked fun at the Dalai Lama for being “mischievous” and “not even being able to speak English properly”. The Dalai Lama, who I have long wanted to see speak ‘live’, was equally playful and affectionate, and the friendship between the two was obvious for all to see. Both men clearly have a huge capacity for compassion and life-affirming grace.

The standout moment for me was when Archbishop Tutu asked the Dalai Lama: “Do you have an army?” It seemed an odd question, and it clearly took His Holiness by surprise. But he chuckled and replied warmly: “Yes. But I have no weapons. I have wisdom and compassion.” “The reason I ask”, said Archbishop Tutu, “is that I’d like to know why the Chinese government fears you”. It was a fantastic moment full of simple clarity. But it was the Dalai Lama’s response that I will always remember.

“It’s simple”, he said. “Some Chinese officials have described me as a demon. So naturally there is some fear. Hypocrisy and telling lies is part of their lives, so when someone tells the truth, they feel uncomfortable. So they think I’m a demon.” And then, as if to demonstrate the point, he put two fingers to his head as if horns and laughed into the camera.

The image of this resplendent, warm gentleman playfully mimicking a devil seemed to put things totally into context. And I only wish the Chinese people could have seen it. “1.3 billion Chinese people should know the reality and be able to judge for themselves what is right”, he continued. “For this reason, censorship is immoral.”

Do Hangouts have potential?

It seems almost blasé to turn attention back to the technology after that, but the reason I tuned in was, as I say, to see how an organised hangout could work in practice. And aside from the technical issues of the first ten minutes, I have to say this was a complete success. It was immediately obvious that this technology can be adapted and utilised by organisations, brands and companies to get closer to their advocates, supporters, fans and customers. If social communications is all about being open, honest and genuine, what better way is there than to host live Q&A sessions or topic-specific discussions to which anyone (with a Google+ profile, at least) can observe and take part it?

Prior to this morning, I was sceptical about hangouts for anything other than casual video-chats between friends and informal meetings over the web. But now I can see massive potential. And once Google+ business profiles launch and the platform starts to become more embedded in a mainstream audience (which may itself take many, many months or even years), hangouts could become a powerful tool in a company’s armoury. I for one will be watching developments closely.

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Does Digital Media Discourage Creative Thought?

2011-10-05T06:55:00.000+01:00

Renowned thought leader Edward De Bono was reported on an Australian news site this week as stating that “social networks are making people lazy and stupid”. My immediate reaction was the knee-jerk ‘what an ignorant, generalising idiot’ of most of my contemporaries in social media land. But when I stopped to think about it, it occurred to me that we would say that as we’re all heavy users who gain and an awful lot from social networks, right? We’re biased. So could there be something in what he says?

Leaving aside the sensationalist assertions of laziness and stupidity (which look like they may have been paraphrased in any case), the article quotes De Bono as saying that people take the information they receive through social media at face value. It says he feels that people are forgoing decision making and creative thinking in favour of information gleaned online and from social media. It’s hardly news that we live in an increasingly information-rich culture, that we are being encouraged to share more and more details of our lives, from where we’ve been and what we’ve done to what we think, informed or otherwise. So is it therefore such a huge leap to posit that today’s data-led media results in a portion of society who believe most of what they read on Twitter or Facebook and base their choices on this?

Poor phrasing, valid point?

It is undoubtedly a gross generalisation to postulate that society as a whole is becoming incapable of independent thought or rationalisation, or that the ability to research new ideas and opinions is dying. And where De Bono really goes off the rails (in my opinion) is where he says that school, rather than online, is better for creative thinking. Surely the two work best in synergy? And when he admits that he doesn’t actually use social media himself as he doesn’t want to be “bullied by information”, I can feel my ‘ignorant idiot’ hackles start to rise again.

But looking beyond the poorly set out nature of his argument, maybe the underlying message isn’t too far from the truth. Amber Naslund challenged her readers on the same day to forget looking for tools and seeking out endless information. She challenged them to take the initiative, roll up their sleeves and to think through problems by asking questions, creating and being accountable. Her message was very similar to De Bono: use social media for your benefit, but stop taking online information at face value, question what you read, and learn.

It’s easy when you work within social media and are experienced at heavy use and analysis not to see beyond the bubble of other people who work within social media and are experienced at heavy use and analysis. But we really are the minority. Let’s not forget, and this is very important, that social media is only a tool. But it’s a game-changing tool and people use it in different ways. Are social networks making people lazy and stupid? Of course not, and that’s a ridiculous assertion. But they are changing the way in which we find information and make decisions. What do you make of De Bono’s thoughts?

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Warning: Facebook Page Posts Decimated by New Timeline

2011-10-02T08:24:00.000+01:00

I’ve noticed an extremely disturbing affect of the new Facebook newsfeed timeline on scheduled posts, and one that page administrators have no choice but to take extremely seriously. Across the dozen or so Facebook pages on which I’m an administrator, Impressions (the number of times a post is displayed) on posts scheduled via Hootsuite are down by up to 98%. Furthermore, Impressions of non-scheduled posts containing a picture or link are down by up to 78%. And if page owners don’t wise up to this, it could spell disaster for brands and companies across Facebook.

The example below is typical of what I’m seeing since Facebook introduced the new timeline. This particular page has a community that has grown from 130 to 1800 fans in five weeks, driven by extremely high engagement levels that average 1.7% per post. The lower post is normal for this page: 2500 Impressions with 30 Interactions. The upper post is what happens when posts are scheduled using Hootsuite: only 75 Impressions. Recent non-scheduled posts containing pictures (normally considered a great way of encouraging engagement) have typically received only 500 to 700 Impressions.

The affect does seem to vary across pages. Whereas some, such as this example, are suffering immensely, others are seeing a far less pronounced impact. But I’m not the only one noticing a significant decline in brand/page activity on Facebook. Simply Zesty recently wrote about concerns that had been expressed to them from businesses very worried that Impressions are way down and that “business pages are barely showing up in user’s feeds any more”.

What’s going on?

I’m unsure at present whether the scheduling affect is limited to Hootsuite, although from my own recent experiences in the newsfeed, I don’t believe this to be the case. Just this week I noticed that the pages I normally see posts from were disappearing. In one instance, I read a status posted using Argyle Social and noticed that there was a ‘see 4 more posts from Argyle’ link – on clicking it, 4 more posts appeared from different pages using the same application that were hidden and that I would never have seen. So it would appear that Facebook grouping together posts is not limited to links or subject areas. And this could explain the dramatic nosedive in newsfeed Impressions for those using social tools.

Another factor may be Facebook’s new Top Story function, where an algorithm decides what it considers to be the most relevant stories in your newsfeed at any given time and displays these at the top of the feed. With Facebook increasingly focusing on connecting ‘people with people’ rather than ‘people with pages’, posts by brands and organisations don’t score highly. As I write this, I have to scroll through a huge 55 posts by friends before I see the first post by a page. And how often are you going to do that?

The future

Facebook is obviously in a state of flux at present. The newsfeed has changed beyond recognition and the new timeline profiles are being rolled out. And I refuse to believe that Facebook doesn’t have something up its sleeve for brands, organisations and page administrators. But it needs to do something quickly to address these issues, as advertisers simply won’t continue to put their money into a platform where interaction is falling off a cliff.

Monitoring feedback on every post is starting to become essential, while post scheduling has become unviable as an option for page management until something changes dramatically. But when that will be, who knows. Still, there’s always the forthcoming Google+ business pages, right?

Update 6th October: I've been in dialogue with Hootsuite on Twitter to try and get some clarity on this issue, but unfortunately they won't give me a straight answer. If and when they do I'll let you know.

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New Evidence Points to Online Personal Branding Among Children

2011-09-30T09:12:00.000+01:00

The role of the social web in changing not only how we view the world and the people around us, but also in changing society itself has been well-documented and debated. An interesting study by AXA to launch its Ambition Awards seems to add fuel to the fire of the debate, suggesting as it does that nearly nine out of ten of 11 year olds feel that social media has an important role to play in shaping their online brand. By the age of 18, most people deem it as ‘very important’.

As both someone working in social communications and as a father, I find this astounding. The closest thing I got to personal branding at aged 11 was what football team I supported and what sweets I bought with my pocket money. And yet, according to AXA’s study, 18% of this age group use a professional photo as their profile picture, with friending people they don’t know, exaggerating social activities and personal details, and de-tagging unflattering photos all a part of everyday social media life to today’s pre-teens.

When combined with the ever-increasing speed and demands of technological development, there is understandable concern about how our children will grow up. Will their literacy levels be sub-standard due to txt speak and short-format electronic media? Will their real-life social skills be under-developed due to their reliance on Facebook, mobile and instant messaging as a form of communication? Will their ability to determine the difference between well thought-out arguments validated by source data be compromised by skim-reading of sensationalist headlines?

In fact, there is evidence from the likes of South Korea that the decision-making ability of today’s wired youngsters will be far superior to our own and that, actually, their communication skills will be more ‘efficient’. The area that concerns me most as a father is not falling IQs as a result of a reliance on collective intelligence, or online vanity (we all do it, right?), it’s the quality issue.

Social platforms and mobile devices are built around short and sweet snippets of shared information that do not and simply cannot convey context. It’s easy to take a tweet the wrong way, to judge a person’s Facebook update without knowing their mood, to take a blog headline/intro as gospel without reading a full post or checking source data. And over time, surely that will cheapen the very platforms on which these communications take place? Added to this, the very nature of today’s always-on, fast-moving, transient media must surely have an effect on our kids ability to stick at something and their drive to achieve set goals. AXA’s study would also seem to bear this out.

But that’s just my opinion. Are you a mother or a father? How do you feel about the impact that the social web and technology is having on your children? Please leave a comment…

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How to Waste Your Marketing Budget

2011-09-28T09:33:00.000+01:00

I’ve not hidden the fact that I really dislike QR codes in the past. I don’t have an issue with the concept: directing people from an offline ad straight to a website or app with one swipe of a smartphone is great marketing. But what I do have an issue with is that a) the technology is immature, and b) marketers really do not understand how or when to use it.

Take the example here that I discovered on the London Underground today. Yes, the Underground. Which, last time I checked, was ‘under the ground’. Which means there’s no mobile signal. Which means even the most brilliant piece of QR code marketing will not work. Which means that the chances of me ‘finding my perfect job’ are, I’d say, quite limited. And I’m just guessing here, but I reckon that Success Appointments’ ad campaign won’t be that, well, successful.

It’s naive and nonsensical marketing; using technology for the sake of using technology. In this instance, even despite the fact that the poster is underground, I had to stand in the tunnel like a lemon for a few minutes waiting for people to pass just so I could take this picture. Would I have waited there and then bent double to actually scan the code? No. Not today, not ever.

And this is compounded by the code itself. Look at it: how complex is that?! Anyone who’s produced a QR code in anger will know that you need to make it as simple as possible for a QR reader to identify, and that there are certain techniques you use to optimise it and ensure this. I didn’t try it for the aforementioned citrus-related reasons, but I reckon it’d would’ve taken a great degree of dexterity and an even greater degree of patience to get that code working.

So come on marketers, isn’t it about time we wised up? If you’re thinking about using a QR code, please think about the context in which it will be displayed and whether or not anyone’s likely to scan it. If they’re not, you’re wasting valuable advertising real estate and your brand’s money in equal measure.

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First Direct and the Big Secret of Facebook Marketing

2011-09-15T12:01:00.000+01:00

Brands and organisations are all clamouring to create an effective Facebook presence. 750 million users, 2.6 million minutes spent on the site every day, 2/3 of brands have acquired a new customer through the site - you’ve heard all the compelling statistics. So what’s the big enigma about making it work for you: content strategy? Creative campaigns? Optimum rate and timing of posts? No, the secret is the feel-good factor.

The big thing that Facebook has going for it more than any other marketing channel (and I include Twitter and other social media in that too) is that, if done well, it can create a genuine and positive ongoing emotional response. And if social communications’ major impact is on attitudes and beliefs in order to positively influence the decision making process, then the holy grail of Facebook marketing is to generate warmth, affection and conviviality in how customers and potential customers feel about and perceive a brand. The good news is that this can work in any industry, from FMCG through to professional services. And there’s currently a fantastic example of this principle in action from an unlikely source.

First Direct, the UK internet bank, was relatively late to the Facebook party, only launching its page on 30th June this year. And yet in just two months it has demonstrated a total understanding of the mindset of social communications, it has built and harnessed a 3400-strong community of loyal and vocal brand advocates, and it has done what few others have got anywhere near on Facebook: it has created an overwhelmingly positive, upbeat and warm feeling on its page. The first status update the bank posted said: “...we’re constantly looking for new ways to have conversations with our fans. Not just about banking, but about all the other fabulous things in life...” And it has done just what it set out to do, seamlessly blending posts about its services and corporate updates (always written in a chatty and conversational manner) with competitions and general interest chatter about the Wimbledon tennis championships, the arrival of summer, charities, the new Harry Potter film and The X Factor, among others.

First Direct’s Facebook page is a fantastic example to any organisation in any sector of how to build an online community and how to create brand warmth. I have attempted on many occasions to explain to companies that in order to be successful on Facebook they must talk how friends talk and about topics that friends talk about. Sometimes that has been met with success but sometimes with abject failure. It simply does not fit into most marketers’ comprehension that talking to their fans about The X Factor can have any benefit. But First Direct proves the point beyond any doubt. Tap into the mindset of your Facebook fans, create a feel-good factor and the platform will come alive for you.

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Tribal Boogie: Do the Social Media Dance

2011-09-11T08:10:00.000+01:00

The social web’s a bit like a wedding reception. You get all sorts of people on the dance floor, from those who love it and to whom it’s a second home, to those who are clearly not enjoying themselves and are only dancing because everyone else is. And the different types of people are fairly easy to spot. Which one are you?

The wallflower – they like to watch more than to take part. Maybe they’re shy or unconfident, maybe they’re just taking it all in, listening to the beat and observing others. When they do get on the dance floor, however, they can be rather groovy.

The show off – they’re the most noticeable across the social web, throwing shapes and attracting awe from many but derision from those who know better. Less the life and soul of the party, more the embarrassing uncle.

The shuffler – you don’t know why they’re doing it and, more to the point, neither do they. They go along with whatever the crowd does, whether it’s Bon Jovi, Sister Sledge or the Macarena, but their approach doesn’t change no matter what the tune. The social web is full of them.

The dad dancer – they’re having a good time ‘getting involved with the kids’, but they clearly have no idea. You can’t really knock them for having a go, but you’re kind of grateful when they disappear off to go and chat to Great Aunt Matilda. Facebook’s just not the same when the dad dancer is online.

The clubber – the cool kids who do this week in, week out. They display total confidence, they’re on top of the beat, they pick and choose when to get involved, and they look great whatever they do. But they don’t make a show of it, it’s just who they are.

Are there some wedding guests I've forgotten? Let me know in the comments...

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Why We Have to Start Listening

2011-09-01T13:29:00.000+01:00

This is a guest post by Julie Howell

In the aftermath of the recent UK riots, fingers of blame pointed in various directions. Some clearly feel that ‘rioter-enabling technologies’ (social networks, SmartPhones, etc.) are in some way responsible for facilitating the rioting and believe that the appropriate way to deal with anti-social uses of social technologies is to give the police the means and the authority to take control of ‘our’(?) networks when it is deemed to be in the ‘our’(?) interest.

I have a problem with this. Partly, it’s to do with perspective: clearly, not everyone using a social network is a ‘rioter-enabler’. Partly, it’s to do with the apportioning of blame onto technical infrastructure (where exactly are Goldie Lookin Chain when our industry really needs them? “Twitter doesn’t loot high streets, robbers do”).

Mostly, it’s to do with the interests of those who suffer the most when draconian measures result in the control or closure – even temporarily – of social networks (digital or otherwise).

Social isolation

In 1995, I (albeit unintentionally) established one of the early online communities for people with the disabling neurological condition multiple sclerosis. I have MS myself, so can tell you with some degree of credibility that while MS comes with myriad unpleasant symptoms (sight loss, speech problems, difficulty walking) one of the real and constant challenges that we have to counter every day is the potential for social isolation.

This doesn’t just apply to the 100,000 of us with MS. Add to our number the tens of millions of people who find it difficult to get around because of physical, emotional, mental, social, learning, vision, hearing and cognitive impairments, plus all those affected in one way or another by encroaching age and we’re talking about millions of people. Millions and millions, in fact.

For many (millions) of us, one political party’s ‘rioter-enabling technology’ is our lifeline: our social life, our comfort and our company. Break or restrict our access to it, even for a short amount of time, and for many of us the world really does come to an end. This is not the same as having a day away from Facebook because you’re convinced it’s distracting you from your real life. For an awful lot of people, online social networks truly are our only real life.

Privacy v self expression

The riots (and the reporting of the riots, specifically) also moved me to consider whether or not I believe people who use social networks to incite hatred, violence, mischief, etc. are entitled to privacy or is it only right and proper for social network owners to hand over details about users and their activities when the police request it.

From my soap box (PR, disabled person, technophile, former librarian), the gut feeling is 'yes, they broke the law, social networks should cooperate with the police as fully as possible’. At the same time, however, the part of me that wants to strive for positive social change feels uncomfortable about saying it’s okay to stifle anyone's right to express themselves. After all, didn't what happened a couple of weeks ago happen in part because some (young?) people feel disenfranchised? Not listened to? Unable to express how they feel?

My malaise doesn’t stop there as I also feel caught in the headlights of the monster truck of unmet expectation that my generation – indeed my industry – has apparently created (through advertising, PR, etc.), and when I look to see who is behind the wheel my eyes are met by those of my children’s generation. And they are angry. Perhaps rightly so. Ignoring them, locking them up, taking away their means of expression doesn’t feel quite right unless we want what happen in August to happen again and again.

Some reports on the BBC, featured masked (and in some cases unmasked) teens telling us why they were looting (not rioting, looting, stealing). Although they may not have deployed the language of marketing I interpreted what they were saying as a very damning indictment of the (my) generation of marketers and PRs that work on behalf of companies that promote as desirable and achievable a lifestyle that is completely unrealistic an unattainable for most ordinary people.

Either we listen or we lose

So I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I’m very proud to be part of a generation that invented social media and all the social good (and economic opportunity) that has come about as a result of that. On the other, I feel despair if what we have done has to any degree contributed to the social unrest that we witnessed in August 2011.

Perhaps we can start to address both situations through the very simple act of listening more. Any online community moderator will tell you how many lessons they have learned through listening to the voices of community members. They’ll also undoubtedly tell you that banning people or otherwise trying to control anti-social behaviour by excluding the trouble-makers rarely works. People break rule often for complex reasons. If we banned them all, after a while there could be no community left.

If we were as good at facilitating the act of listening as we are at providing platforms for talking, maybe we could herald a new revolution that could bring about positive social change that has real meaning for disaffected kids, indeed, for anyone who feels disenfranchised from arguably the most connected society there has ever been.

Sometimes it takes a revolution.

Julie Howell is an independent PR and communicationsconsultant. Voted winner of New Media Age’s Greatest Individual Contribution toNew Media Award in 2005, she is best known for her efforts to make the web amore user-friendly place for disabled people. In her spare time, she runs anonline community for people with multiple sclerosis and also blogs abouttechnology for BBC WebWise.

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On Turning the Other Cheek

2011-08-18T00:20:00.004+01:00

I’m writing this perched on the floor of a hospital room. Just across from me, my beautiful wife is dozing peacefully in a post- operative slumber. As procedures go, it was what the surgeon referred to as “routine”, but as with all operations there were risks – in this case of paralysis. So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been very on edge about it, all the while trying not to let on to my wife my increasing nerves. If I'm being more honest, I’ve been scared.

I knew the risks of something going wrong were very small. The consultant explained everything to us very clearly and calmly, and left little room for misinterpretation or doubt. But while this should have assuaged my fears as it did those of my wife, as the surgery came closer so did my paranoias and trepidations. With them, however, came rare clarity.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in things that, at the end of the day, just aren’t important. The riots around the UK last week brought shame to a proud nation; like many, they left me personally feeling deeply saddened and justifiably angry. But the perverse spite, intense vitriol and extreme opinions I saw voiced on Facebook from friends who I thought were more intelligent and reasoned left me almost as dismayed as the riots themselves.

A couple of days later, I stumbled across a blog post in the comments of which all-out war seemed to be raging. A well-known blogger gave a strong viewpoint, someone disagreed, someone else backed them up, the blogger got defensive and all hell broke loose with every man and his dog wanting to have their say. It was neither constructive or necessary. And then I heard a story of someone getting absurdly upset because a colleague didn’t wear a tie to a client meeting. It’s all nonsensical. And I have to ask: where does all this aggravated posturing come from?

Having spent the last couple of weeks worrying about my wife and daughter, and the last couple of days surrounded by surgeons and nurses, there’s no shadow of a doubt to me that blog posts, status updates and tweets are really not important in life. I could have responded to the Facebook posts about the riots that upset me or joined in with the blog fight. But how would that possibly have benefited me?

The point is that YOU HAVE A CHOICE.

You have the choice whether or not to feed the comment troll, whether or not to read provocative Facebook posts, whether or not to get involved. The world would be boring if we all had the same opinions, and we’d never learn anything if we didn’t have debates that challenged our beliefs. But you can pick and choose where to have those, when they’re valuable and when they’re not, and how to react if you do.

There’s massive value in having the wisdom to know the difference between constructive debate that leads to learning and self-improvement, and getting involved in a scrap simply because someone has offended your sensibilities. In most cases, turning the other cheek is not only dignified and brave, but it’s also far more beneficial and far less stressful.

So here's a question for you: what really matters to you?

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Social Search, SEO and the Psychology of the Web

2011-08-08T11:39:00.007+01:00

This post is the third in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine.

Search engines have great power over how we perceive the world. Friends, contacts, me, you – we generally use Google or Bing or Yahoo! as one of our first ports of call when we need to know something. And as a result of this, the way we think as human beings is evolving, facilitated by search. A psychologist from Columbia University in New York recently carried out a study which found that, due to the availability of information on the web, we tend to easily forget things that we know we can find again. We're rewiring our brains to remember where we can retrieve information online, rather than remembering the information itself.

It sounds a little far-fetched, right? But as my two months without search engines progressed, I realised that I was adapting to life without Google pretty easily. I found myself asking fewer questions of my networks as time went on and my recall of information and facts improved. And that’s in just a few weeks.

Psychologists believe that the internet has become part of our 'transactive memory', information that we don't recall but know where to retrieve if we need it. Think about URLs for example. One of the biggest challenges I faced at the start of the project was finding websites without typing their name into Google. Could I remember specific URLs? Could I heck! Google’s auto-suggest feature makes remembering website addresses completely unnecessary. URLs are like phone numbers – they’re all plugged into a piece of tech that means we don’t need to remember then anymore. And that itself has huge implications for SEO and digital marketers.

When it comes to SEO, times they are a-changin’. As I said in my last post, social media is taking some of the shine off SEO strategy, and when you throw social search into the mix, the SEO industry is going to have to evolve very fast. I read just last week that around 20% of search results are now social media-driven and/or contain social signals. The fact is that standard search results can be gamed by artificially generating and optimising backlinks, keyword stuffing and the like. But if Google can add a social layer to its results then it’s taking search to a whole new level, and one that’s far more difficult to game. Enter Google+...

Launched smack bang in the middle of the #NoSearch project, Google+ is as much about social search as it is about owning the cloud, and far more important than beating Facebook or Twitter. As Sean McGinnis said in a recent post: “When we use Google+, we are creating data, all of which is within the Google network. It is critical that Google get social right...because social is where the data action is. It’s where we freely give up information about ourselves; where we create the connection nodes that Google can learn from and serve up a better search experience.”

This is spot on. Suddenly the +1 button and displaying social profiles from your friends and contacts with Google accounts on search results make sense. In the near future, Googling won’t return robot-generate results. It’ll return robot-generated results filtered through your own social network. So if you’re interested in SEO, you’d better start sussing out the synergy between search and social and working out how online behaviour is changing, as search is about to get a whole load more personal.

Part four of this series will compare and contrast the responsiveness of the top social networks as information sources.

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How Powerful is Your Personal Search Engine?

2011-08-04T10:56:00.004+01:00

This post is the second in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine.

Social networks enable us to share and find information like never before. We can research, ask friends and carry out polls in minutes. It’s a tangible demonstration of the direction in which society is headed due to the evolution of the web; a form of collective intelligence where we become better informed and make better choices as a result. At least, that’s the theory – whether or not this is the case is probably open to debate. But what I can say having completed the #NoSearch project, is that those using social media effectively have learned how to harness collective intelligence and community.

In fact, without realising it, what these people have done is to build their own 'personal search engine'. And rather than relying on software algorithms, spiders and SEO gaming, it relies on human knowledge, experience, intellect and context. That’s something that no search engine will ever replicate, whether or not the semantic web ever truly becomes reality. When I took a step back from search for a few weeks, what I started to see astounded me. We have absolute blind faith in search engine results and we virtually never question whether what Bing or Yahoo! is showing us is most relevant to what we want. We quite simply trust that search engines give us back the best results. Google has become something of a cult to which we have unquestioning devotion. And this gives it immense power over you and me and the way we perceive the world. And, arguably, responsibility.

One of my key learnings from #NoSearch is that, despite the frustration of the time it takes to look information up without Google or ask questions of your network, the quality of the information that you find when you put that time in is often far superior. And for me, how I find out information has probably changed for good. For expediency, geographic or personal issues, search engines do the job well. But for queries where I don’t need an instant answer, where intricate local knowledge is necessary or where it’s not just too personal, I’ll be continuing, at least in part, to use my personal network as a search engine. And I’m far from alone. A recent McKinsey study suggested that one in three people now use social media to help navigate the web.

Despite what you may initially feel, the key to building an effective personal search engine and harnessing community intelligence is not to garner a large network of connections. From my experience of this issue, everyone has a tolerance level above which the larger your network becomes, the less value you gain from it. Rather, the key is to focus in on the Dunbar’s number of people who you trust and respect; those people from whom you gain maximum value. As with much else in life, relevance is all-important. Do this and you’ll build a community of people around you that gives you access to information on the web like no search engine ever could.

Part three of this series will look at how search engines are changing human behaviour and at the potential impact of social search on SEO.

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The Bigger a Personal Network, the Less Useful it Becomes

2011-08-02T09:42:00.002+01:00

This post is the first in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine.

Do you think internet friendship and being hyper-connected is all it’s cracked up to be?
There have been several posts recently by well-respected bloggers covering the subject of social media fatigue: the feeling of being overwhelmed by the constant demands of your Facebook friends, blogging community and Twitter followers, and that you’re getting little back for the time you’re putting in. And in a recent Observer column by the extremely insightful Aleks Krotoski, she explains that she too feels that “the online world has become increasingly empty”. Having just completed the #NoSearch project, where I’ve been very reliant on my social networks, this is thought-provoking stuff.

Aleks says that as the number of connections she’s made through social networks has grown, she’s started to suffer from what she terms “social network emotional anaemia”, where she’s “no longer receiving the same degree of closeness I feel I need” from the online communities she once loved, and that “my online world is full of strangers with whom I’m too scared to interact”. This description of ultimately meaningless online connections is classic social media fatigue, and it’s something that I personally recognise. Maybe because of #NoSearch and my dependence on social networks over the last nine weeks, maybe just coincidentally, I’ve been experiencing my own social media angst recently. I’ve been growing a little tired of the self-righteous and sycophantic nature of some blogging communities and, conversely, the argumentative and aggressive nature of others. I know, I know...I’m contradicting myself and essentially it’s my problem, not theirs. Suck it up, Sutton.

But from a less gloomy and more constructive perspective, what #NoSearch has taught me is that what Aleks is describing is correct: when it comes to social networks, bigger isn’t better. When I started the experiment, I fully believed that I needed to further expand my networks in order to help me out, with the theory that the larger my number of connections, the greater the collective intelligence and the greater the number and quality of responses I’d receive to any given question. But it’s not true. When you’re using social media as a search engine, it becomes very apparent that the social web is extremely fragmented, and that makes developing closer friendships and finding relevant information far more difficult than it should be when the concept of the web in the first place was to connect us all. So I’d theorise that, beyond a certain level, there’s an inverse relationship between the size of a personal network and its value/usefulness.

Going back to a post I wrote a few weeks ago, there was a fantastic quote I’d read that stands out for me: “When everything’s social, nothing is”. The more details of our lives we share across ever-more platforms, the less impact each ‘share’ has. All the information from all the people merely becomes white noise. And that’s why I love Google+ so much; the effortless ability to filter what you see and hear using Circles. So for me at least, I’ve started to pair down the networks I’m using (goodbye LinkedIn) and started to concentrate more on the people with whom I have friendships and whom I can truly learn from on the social web. #NoSearch tells me that being slightly less social is actually the key to developing meaningful connections.

Part two of this series will look at the power of social networks as ‘personal search engines’.

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What's the Big Idea?

2011-07-27T16:02:00.003+01:00

I’ve recently had conversations with a couple of clients and potential clients about the viability of creative ideas. And it’s been playing on my mind that there are PR and marketing agencies out there who sell on their ability to come up with fantastically creative and wacky ideas that, ultimately, deliver very little in the way of real business return barring one splash of coverage. So here’s a question for you: how important do you think creativity is when it comes to online PR and social media marketing?

The thing is, it’s actually pretty easy to come up with brilliantly weird and wonderful ideas, many of which look great on paper. I’ve written before (in an inventive manner) about how to unleash one’s inner creativity, and a quick company brainstorm can throw up some great stuff. But I maintain that most brands or companies simply don’t need the wacky stuff. What they need is solid, grounded, day-to-day activity, stuff that at BOTTLE we call ‘the fundamentals’. The creative concept is important as an overriding layer, but it’s these disciplines that deliver results to the bottom line over the course of any given financial year.

Don’t get me wrong - the big ideas are great for delivering a splash of coverage or a hit of publicity at an opportune time; a product launch or the introduction of a new service, for example. But then what? Coverage dies, and so do enquiries. Most companies don’t have the budget of Skittles to roll out one big idea after another, and so this is simply not a viable option. And yet it’s oh-so-easy to be lured by The Big Idea and the promises that go along with it, rather than a more grounded and, admittedly, less exciting approach. The hare can very easily beat the tortoise.

The skill in both digital and traditional PR is engaging people with creativity while focusing on core business objectives. It’s a slower-burn, but it’s one that reaps great rewards. There’s a time and a place for massive creativity and stunts, and we’ve come up with some corkers at BOTTLE. But the balance has to be right between creativity and implementation and, for some companies, implementation is more important. So over to you: how important do you think creativity is?

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The Art of Redirection: Why Microsoft Should Be Terrified of Google+

2011-07-19T21:28:00.007+01:00

There's been an incredible amount of online commentary about Google+, the latest and greatest social platform, over the last few weeks. The vast majority has focused on comparisons to Facebook or Twitter or both, how Circles compares to lists, why it won't work or why it will work. But I think we've all missed the point: for Google, there's an awful lot more at stake than social networks. And it could be that Google is performing a smoke and mirrors trick with G+.

Take a step back from social media for a moment and view Google+ as just one element of Google's strategy. What do you see? GMail, arguably the leading email solution available that works from the cloud. Google Docs, increasingly being used as a collaboration tool and again, stored in the cloud. The Chrome web browser. Android, the fastest growing mobile OS that is likely to take over from Apple within the next 12 months. YouTube, Picassa, Reader and Blogger, all of which work from, guess where? The cloud. Add in Google+ and you now have social networking, photo storage and sharing direct from a mobile device, and video messaging. And that's what G+ is really about: integration and collaboration.

A few weeks before Google+ was launched, the company announced something else that seemed to slip through the net of public/blogger consciousness: the Chromebook. The concept behind this is of a new type of computer unlike a laptop or a tablet that is solely designed to connect to the web. It does nothing else except browse the internet, so it's very cheap and it's very fast. And it's built on Google's Chrome OS, which has been two years in development. Does Google want to compete with Facebook? Sure it does, but what it really wants to do is to own the cloud. And Android, paired with this suite of cloud-based products, is one hell of a convincing argument.

So who should really be worried about Google? Facebook has 750 million users; it would take an awful lot of traction to get that moving to Google+ and I think Google knows that. Facebook has time to tweak its system and its security, copy a few G+ features and improve its mobile offering. Twitter and LinkedIn, while not quite as secure, also have loyal user bases and have developed their own niches. Twitter breaks the news, LinkedIn is viewed as the ruling business network. Again, they should be safe if they adapt and improve, at least in the short to mid-term. Long-term, all three need to up their game. And the much-hyped diaspora would seem to be dead in the water.

But what of Apple and Microsoft? Well Apple is notorious for continued innovation and is already in the running for ownership of at least part of the cloud with the iCloud solution. The name might be predictable but Apple is highly regarded by hoards of loyal users and it’s difficult to see it coming unstuck just yet. But Microsoft…well, that’s a different story. Despite the step forward with Windows 7, the system is widely loathed. Microsoft hasn’t made any significant innovations in many years and, chiefly, is falling a long way behind in the race for mobile supremacy. The Windows OS is pretty horrible compared to Android and the iOS, and Microsoft is starting to feel like a dinosaur when compared with cool Apple and innovative Google.

If I were Bill Gates, I’d be investing some of my $56 billion fortune back into my company pretty sharp. What do you think?

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The Age of the Self-Righteous Community

2011-07-18T16:37:00.007+01:00

There’s been a noticeable shift in the blogosphere over the last few weeks, and I’m really not sure I like it. We (and I use the term loosely) seem to be reversing up our own bottoms at a rate of knots. Whether it’s the MD of a PR agency sulking after he gave up his blog because he “rarely had anything to say and couldn’t find an audience” or whether it’s a hugely respected blogger listing out seven blogging heroes who don’t care what you think, it’s all getting a bit holier-than-thou. And it sucks.

With the former, said MD goes as far as to conclude that writing a blog probably isn’t worth the effort for PRs. What a load of absolute cobblers. Blogging teaches any PR an awful lot about social communications and is a major part of the modern PR arsenal. How out of touch do you have to be to think that a PR can’t learn anything about social networking, SEO, writing styles, engagement, Twitter, relationship building, analytics or numerous other facets of modern PR by learning to blog? As Steve Earl said in response to me on Twitter: “PRs are communicators. Blogging is part of communication.” It’s quite simply shockingly bad advice.

That all said, it’s the latter (the bloggers who don’t care what you think), posts of this ilk and more specifically, the comments that go along with them, that’s really starting to annoy and to disappoint me. I don’t think anyone would argue that there are an awful lot of duplicitous and superfluous social media/PR blogs out there (this one probably included). But does that mean we shouldn’t bother or voice our own opinions? Of course not. Rebecca Woodhead said within the comments of a post on SpinSucks: “ I'm a bit peeved about the narkiness of the network. Can't people stop being snarky and just be interested in each other?” And, though I've used that comment slightly out of context here, I couldn’t agree more.

No matter how it’s evolved, blogging is essentially all about sharing personal ideas, opinions and beliefs. Sure, some are better than others at doing so and some do seem to regurgitate what others have written with little original input, or to write about the same old topics. But whatever happened to tolerance? Why do we feel the need to put down what others are doing? If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Simple.

With specific regard to not caring what others think, I sincerely hope that isn’t the case. I have a lot of respect for some of the people on that list and am friends with a couple, but if I thought they didn’t care what their readers thought of them I’d unsubscribe right now (although ironically of course, they wouldn’t care). Being bold, controversial, challenging and original is one thing, but being arrogant would be quite another. Aside from this, however, posts such as that one (and there are several others recently) together with the LiveFyre plugin that tweets or Facebooks everyone to know that X has mentioned Y in a comment are a little unnecessary and self-congratulatory. It smacks of a high school in-crowd that’s exclusionary to the other kids. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why guys like the PR agency MD I mentioned beforehand develop such poor opinions about blogging and pass those on to juniors.

So how about we cut the pious and sanctimonious rubbish before it changes the blogosphere for good, and focus on making what we write relevant, interesting and original, rather than putting down others or blowing smoke up the arses of our peers?

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Why You Are Part of the Biggest Cult in History

2011-07-15T10:11:00.002+01:00

What a load of rubbish, right? Like you wouldn’t know if you were part of a cult. Well I’m telling you now that every single day of your life you display behavioural traits that put you firmly in the land of Heaven’s Gate, the Order of the Solar Temple and Scientology. I’m aware that this is a challenging statement, but hear me out.

The word ‘cult’ refers to a group of people who are unquestioningly devoted to an idea or a practice. It implies blind faith, an unbroken ritual that you’re probably not even aware of or wouldn’t consider remotely as out of the ordinary. And I’m saying that you’re a part of such a group. So what do you do that qualifies you? You use internet search engines.

Assuming you haven’t dismissed me as a deluded loon and you’re still reading this, give it some thought for a moment. What do you do if you want to find out about a product or service? You Google it. What about if you need directions? You Google it. And what if you want to know what time a movie’s on? You Google it.

Prior to undertaking the #NoSearch project, I did some research among my friends, colleagues and networks, and two thirds of the people I asked said that, on average, they use a search engine more than ten times per day. They don’t think about it, they just do it, and they have 100% trust in the results that they get back when they click the search button. Now do you see where I’m coming from? Ritualistic practices...blind faith...unquestioning devotion...

The upshot is that Google, Yahoo! and Bing have immense power over you and me and the way we perceive the world. You can even argue that SEO professionals and advertisers alike seek to exploit our reliance and complete trust in search engines by manipulating what we see via the organic SERPs and PPC adverts alike. If Google is Waco’s Davidians, the multi-million dollar SEO industry is its David Koresh, seeking to subvert our thinking, behaviour and decision making.

#NoSearch is (thankfully) nearing an end now, and in a couple of weeks time I’ll be back in the world of the search engine. But there’s been something quite invigorating and inspiring about stepping away from searching the interwebs for a couple of months. I’ll be revealing more of my learnings here from both a personal and professional perspective over the next few weeks. One of which being that virtually every single person I’ve encountered has totally missed what Google’s doing with G+. But more of that next week.

So, search engines: cult or no cult?

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How to Use the Google+ Circles Approach in Facebook

2011-07-04T11:31:00.005+01:00

One of the major criticisms of Facebook over the last twelve months has been the lack of privacy. Or, more accurately, the fact that the platform insists on an opt-out policy rather than an opt-in policy. Facebook is built around the assumption that you want to share everything with everyone, and if you don’t adjust your settings, that’s exactly what happens. Google+, on the other hand, takes the polar opposite tack and focuses on building relationships with user-defined groups of people with similar interests. You choose who you want to share any given update with and, as such, the Circles feature is the bedrock of the new platform.

Barry Furby runs a digital recruitment agency and succinctly explains the objections that many have to Facebook: "Like most people I know, I have been struggling with the collision of my social networks, where my personal and professional connections are becoming a bit too close, particularly on Facebook. It’s not that what I’m sharing or being tagged in is inappropriate, but due to the nature of the work I do I am very conscious that I want to remain in charge of what goes where. The privacy settings are just too confusing and subject to continual change.”

This leads to many people breaking Facebook regulations and setting up two accounts: one for business, one for pleasure. With its new product, Google has watched this happening, listened to the objections and come up with a simple concept that tackles the issue head-on. Circles enables you to build groups of friends, colleagues and acquaintances, segmented however you wish. Want to post specific updates just to your foody friends? Done. Want to update your family but no-one else? Done. Want to filter out your work colleagues? Done. More relevance, less noise. It’s simple and intuitive, and the interface is beautifully conceived and executed. But it’s not unique. Facebook has had this feature for many, many months.

The thing is, Facebook Lists is not only badly-designed, but it also makes little sense and is hidden away so that the vast majority of people don’t use it. And the reason for this is because, if used properly, it completely goes against Facebook’s ‘share everything with the world’ policy. At the end of the day, Facebook doesn’t want you to be private as it feels that this would undermine what the network is all about.

But with a little thought, you can use Facebook Lists to keep different groups of people completely separate. It’s very counter-intuitive as it involves choosing who you want NOT to see an update rather than choosing who you DO want to see something, as with Google+. But if you can get your head around that, it is possible to use one Facebook profile for business and pleasure, and to present a personalised profile to each different one of your friends depending on their interests, your relationship with them and what you want them to see (and not to see). And here’s how...

To get started, watch the short video clip below on how to create lists of friends in Facebook. You can create as many lists as you like, from simply one for ‘friends’ and one for ‘work’ as in my video example, to multiple lists. Importantly if you’re going to get very targeted with it, any friend can belong to more than one list.

Now you’ve got your lists set up, you can set about personalising your profile, which you do using the Hide option within Facebook’s posting function. Facebook gives you the ability to hide anything you share from anyone else, and you can use this to choose who you do want to see an update by removing those you don’t. The video clip below shows you how to do this, and can be employed whenever you post anything to your page, be it a shared article hidden from work colleagues such as my example, or a simple status update hidden from another of your lists. You can also hide more than once list for any update.

Let me know how you get on. I’ve been using this method successfully for the best part of a year and, once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Or you could just wait for Facebook to introduce their own version of Circles, which probably won't be too long coming!

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Google’s Stroke of Genius

2011-06-29T10:56:00.007+01:00

So the behemoth that is Google is having another stab at the social web. Despite the abject failures that have been Wave and the ‘bull in a china shop’ noise of Buzz, Google+ seems to be, at first glance at least, a genuinely interesting and exciting development. Largely because it’s focused on useful features and social tools rather than creating yet another social network that, let’s face it, we don’t need or even want. But the real genius behind Google+, if it pans out as it looks, is the fact that it’s focused heavily on mobile.

When Google announced and then launched its +1 button a while back, I thought it was yet another pointless and rather pathetic attempt by the company to grab a slice of the social media action. I disliked it almost as much as I hated Buzz from the day that launched, despite the hype surrounding it at the time. The contradictions inherent in the +1 button are too numerous to mention now, and in fact, I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about this. But I’m glad I never got round to it now. I said to my colleagues at BOTTLE that the +1 was surely the start of something bigger, as it makes absolutely no sense (to me) in isolation. And it looks like I was right on that count.

Google+ gives the +1 button some context, and positions it as just one of an array of new social tools that link to your Google account. It’s very apparent from the initial Google+ announcement that Google+ is an attempt to pull together search, mobile and social media – something that Facebook has so far struggled with and shows little sign of overcoming. It looks as if Google has finally FINALLY abandoned its mission to ensure that the world and his wife ditches Facebook in favour of a much more holistic approach that provides genuine user benefit via mobile handsets. And that is a big and important move. In fact, it represents a complete change in mindset and strategy from Google.

It’s no secret that the Android operating system has been making huge inroads into the smartphone market over the last couple of years. I’m a huge Droid advocate and wouldn’t even consider switching to the iPhone or the (snigger) Blackberry. One of the major benefits, aside from the swish OS, open developer platform and altogether more user-friendly approach, is how everything syncs seamlessly with my Google account in the cloud. I don’t even have to think about it. And so what I find particularly exciting about Google+ is that it will feature several tools that add extra life to a mobile – and especially Google’s own Android platform. It’ll further tie up all of Google’s services into one neat, central online hub, equally as accessible by computer or mobile. And THAT is genius.

This whole approach is actually summarised in the amazing new advertisement for another of the company’s top products, Chrome (below). It’s a beautiful ad concept, and highlights what Google is really all about nowadays. And it’s NOT about being another Facebook which, as I say, is I sincerely hope something that the Google top brass have now accepted and given up on. What it IS about is sharing among small groups of related friends.

With this ‘hub of the web’, mobile-enabled strategy in mind, Google+ has some great tools. Instant Upload, whereby any picture or video taken on an enabled mobile automatically syncs to a private area on Google+ with no uploading is a fantastic idea. Huddle, a tool that looks to stream group texts into an timeline akin to instant messaging is a lovely development. And Hangouts, billed as ‘unplanned meet ups’ that utilise video, is another advance that Facebook can’t compete with.

Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on the currently limited Google+ to give it a test drive. And whether or not it works, you’ve got to give Google credit for its relentless pursuit of a slice of the social action. And for its apparent strategic shift with this latest project.

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Why the CC Button is the Devil in Email Form

2011-06-27T10:29:00.005+01:00

There’s one thing I absolutely love about social media: you can’t CC people. Tweet someone, or even two or three people, and you’re communicating direct with them because it’s relevant to that person/those people. Send someone a Facebook message and you’re in the land of one-to-one contact. Unlike email, what there is not in social media is a culture of copying in people ‘because they might need to know’. It’s something I have grown to despise.

I recently took a week’s holiday. On my return I had in excess of 750 emails in five days. And you know how many of those were actually properly relevant to me? Eight. Out of nearly 800 messages, there were only eight that I needed to respond to or act on. The rest I deleted immediately.

CCing is nothing more than acceptable spam.

All the CC option does is to fill email inboxes with inordinate amounts of irrelevant junk that wastes time and slows email servers down. Much of it is predictable and trite, and contains information that isn't even helpful to the recipient. People use it largely to cover their asses, to avoid taking full responsibility or to inform others of personal achievements that those 'others' don't care about. It’s lazy, its pusillanimous (new word that I shall be using more often) and its borne of a culture of fear. And yet we tolerate it and, in some cases, encourage and facilitate it because it’s ‘standard practice’. Well personally I’d love to see us all rethinking our use and motivations for using the CC option and heavily limiting it – do I really need to know what you’re emailing someone else about? One thing I do know is that Twitter wouldn’t stand for it. But maybe that's a different mindset?

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A Message to Gurus: The End is Nigh

2011-06-17T10:43:00.003+01:00

Over the last few weeks I’ve been undergoing something of a personal social media revolution. Or revelation. Not sure. But either way, I’m starting to see and to use the social web in a different way. It’s an iterative process, but I’m starting to filter out the dross that exists in social media land. And it appears that it’s not just me.

Danny Brown wrote a great post yesterday that spoke about what he’s seeing happening online, that being that “people are beginning to see through crap and filter out inane”. He outlined how the blog reader, the Twitter follower and the loyal fan is starting to rise up against the so-called experts, openly calling them out on whether they’re really all they’re stacked up to be. Are they adding value or are they simply pushing their own agenda?

From a personal perspective, this has been eating away at me for a while now. But it wasn’t until the always eloquent Mr Brown laid it out so clearly that it clicked what I’ve been thinking/feeling and why. I’ve spent the last few weeks assessing all the blogs I have faithfully subscribed to and read over the last year, looking at the people I follow on Twitter, and evaluating the numerous social media tools and platforms that I’ve got sucked into. And for the most part, I’ve ditched the lot (or at least, marginalised them). I started to feel recently that things are getting out of control, and I’ve taken it upon myself to seek out new bloggers who write the sort of insightful and thought-provoking stuff that challenges me, and to trim down the social networks I’ve become a part of and the tools I use or try.

But hey, so what, right? Who cares what I’m doing? Well, if this is a trend that, although in its infancy, is starting to happen across the web, then we as marketers need to get our shit together. Because given six months or a year, people may well start to ditch your self-serving company blog, your product-focused Facebook page and your promotional YouTube channel if you’re not adding anything to their lives. They’ll get bored and they’ll start to migrate to places where they can gain that value. They'll look for people, brands and companies who really are experts. And maybe, just maybe, that will be your competitors. Think about it. Seriously, think about it...

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A Lesson in Listening to Your Inner Voice

2011-06-15T09:04:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I screwed up. Not in a major, life-changing way, but I chose to ignore a doubt and it could have come back to bite me on the butt. Is it just me that finds it so difficult to follow my instinct, or is it now a basic part of the human condition that means we don’t trust what our gut tells us?

This particular incident revolved around a post on the BOTTLE blog, which I moderate. I approve all posts that we publish and, as such, it’s my self-imposed responsibility to ensure that nothing that compromises BOTTLE’s core principals makes its way online. That necessitates a good sense of balance as I want each and every member of the BOTTLE team who contributes a post to feel comfortable voicing their opinions about relevant media and social media issues. So I maintain a very open editorial policy; write what you want to write. It makes for a very varied blog and, more importantly, it affords every consultant the opportunity to get involved and to learn.

Over the weekend one of my less senior colleagues wrote a post pushing the idea that we shouldn’t alienate those who haven’t yet embraced the digital world. It’s a good, well-written post, prompted by a real-life event (tick!) and drawing on personal experience (tick!) that goes against the grain (tick!) to offer a balanced opinion (tick!) and a firm conclusion (tick!). But when I read it, a couple of sentences rang little bells largely due to a phrase I have personally come to despise: “I don’t get it”. It was used in relation to personal circumstances rather than professional, but what I should have done was to ask the author to edit it, as I know only too well that ‘not getting it’ in relation to social media is an all too common topic for PR bashing. Things like this post on SpinSucks make my blood boil. What I did, however, was ignore my instinct and publish verbatim, choosing to overlook one tiny phrase for the overall message of the post.

I was wrong. Towards the end of the day, the post received a negative comment from someone who I know and whose opinion I respect. It’s a comment that, if I’m totally honest, I could have seen myself leaving (or at least thinking) had I read the post. A tiny storm in a large teacup, sure. But what my decision to publish unedited did was to open the author up to criticism and to affect her confidence. And, on my part, that’s not right.

So what is it with not listening to what your instincts tell you? Psychologists have long debated what counts as instinct, whether it’s repetitive behavioural patterns that are innate rather than learned, or whether it refers to motivational drives. Either way, we’ve evolved to the point now where Abraham Maslow argued that we no longer even have true instinct because we have the ability to override it. And maybe that’s the point? Do we ignore our gut feel because our mind now overrides our innate feelings? I don’t know the answer to that, obviously – I’m no psychologist. But I do know that I’m beating myself up today for not listening to my intuition. I’m curious as to how often you listen to yours?

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Are We Over-Connected?

2011-06-07T21:42:00.009+01:00

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had something nagging at me: is the ever-increasing number of social platforms becoming too much? Every week there seems to be a new tool, or a new button, or a new method of connecting being launched. And I can’t help but feel that it’s getting silly, that it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down on us.

Take this last couple of weeks: Google +1, the new Twitter follow button, Twitter photo sharing, Sprout Social, the spectacular growth of Tumblr, the rise and rise of Instagram...I’m sure I’ve missed some important stuff there. The pace of development is insane and, quite simply, isn’t sustainable. And it appears I’m not alone in this view. Yesterday I read a great post by Marc Meyer that highlighted a brilliant quote from an MSNBC article: “When everything’s social, nothing is”. In other words, when something new and exciting and original and interesting becomes the norm, it’s no longer new and exciting and original and interesting. As Marc himself asks: “Is there a tipping point looming here where eventually everyone tires of being so social?”

I agree with Marc. It makes total sense. Back in January I predicted that social media is reaching saturation point and that 2011 would see consolidation across platforms. Remember the hype surrounding Diaspora last year? Remember Path? Well, I have may have been a little ahead of the game on that one as there are no signs yet that the expansion is slowing or that Marc’s ‘tipping point’ is on the horizon. But whether in 2011 or 2012 or even 2013, it’s coming. It has to.

This viewpoint would seem to go completely against another area of my thinking at the present time; that which has led to the #NoSearch project. This experiment relies on social networks and being connected to their collective knowledge and opinions. And it doesn’t really add up to state in one breath that there’s a crash coming where we get sick of sharing our photos, locations and thoughts together with what music we’re listening to, films we’re watching and articles we’re reading, and in the next breath talk about how social platforms could replace search engines. But maybe that’s the point? Maybe this social over-exposure is, in fact, the crux of the whole issue? Is it about time we all fine-tuned which platforms we use, who we connect with and what we share?

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Why The QR Code Must Die a Painful Death

2011-06-03T07:57:00.002+01:00

I carried out my first ever QR code download yesterday. And it was a totally underwhelming experience that bordered on the humiliating. Prior to this event I've suspected that QR codes are technology for the sake of technology. You know, the 'why do it? Because we can' scenario. I no longer suspect that. I KNOW that.

I've had a QR code app on my Droid for a while now, but never had a reason to use it (which maybe says something in itself). And then yesterday, while in the village store of all places, I saw it gleaming at me like a beacon among the bread, beer and frozen pizzas. It was a QR code advertising a pollen count app on a display of hayfever tablets. Being the sniffly type, it sounded good, so I whipped out my mobile and fired up the QR scanner. And that's just about all I have to say that's positive.

What followed was a farcical scene where I had to bend almost double to get my mobile close enough for the reader to pick up the code, and then squat there while I waived the phone back and forth over the code to try and get it recognised. And what made it worse was that I was standing in a queue of people at the time, each of whom had to scoot around me with a look of either disdain or disbelief to get to the till. The whole experience left me feeling grubby.

Now this may be an extreme example of a QR #fail, but I've heard similar stories from elsewhere: codes that don't work or are inaccessible. QR is an idea in the same bracket as the Betamax, the mini disc and, can we now admit it, Google Buzz. It's ill-conceived nonsense and should be consigned to the scrap heap as soon as possible. It should be hung, drawn and quartered, and then burned at the stake. While being eaten alive by starving boar. Slowly.
With this in mind, the news that posters in London avertising the new X-Men movie are utilising the QR code's nemesis, NFC (near field communication), comes as something of a welcome development. NFC quite simply allows anyone with an NFC enabled mobile (spot the current stumbling block) to tap their device to a special chip to transfer information, in this case a film trailer and Facebook page prompt. Google has announced that it is to introduce an NFC payment system, for example. Imagine THAT with a QR code...

NFC is still a new and developing technology and clearly still has some way to go before it can be picked up in the mainstream. But the sooner, the better, so that we can forget that QR codes ever existed. As for my pollen count app, I'm very impressed: nice work, Piriton. Just a shame it's tainted by my experiences of getting hold of it.

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#NoSearch: Two Months, One Experiment, Zero Search Engines...

2011-06-01T06:15:00.005+01:00

Ask yourself a question: how long could you go without using an internet search engine? It occurred to me a few weeks back that the internet has become such an integral and vital part of everyday life that we no longer consider how much, why or how we use it. Want to find out about a product? Google it. Need directions? Google it. Want to know what time a movie’s on? Google it. The web has 25 billion indexed pages, and in order to make sense of it, we’ve become totally reliant on search engines.

Think about it: how often to you search the web? Five times per day? Ten times per day? Twenty? Well, for the next two months I’m going to try not to use a search engine. At all. Instead, I’m going to depend on my friends, colleagues and online networks to find out the things I need to know. Want to find out about a product? Ask my friends. Need directions? Call someone. Want to know what time a movie’s on? Use an app.

#NoSearch is an experiment into the power or social networks and collective intelligence. I’m under no illusions that it’s going to be easy. I don’t even know if it’s possible to go two days without using search engines given the fact that I work in digital media, let alone two months. But I’m going to give it a shot in the hope that I’ll uncover some real insight into the power of Google.

And I need your help. I’ve set up the #NoSearch Posterous blog with more detail on the idea and the rules I’ve got to stick by, and I’ll be recording developments as I go, both positive and negative. Please subscribe! But more than that, please follow @No_Search on Twitter and/or become my friend on Facebook and/or follow me on Quora. I’m going to be asking lots of questions and relying on my network to help me out. Please get involved.

And if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them...

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Carpe Diem, Instagram

2011-05-31T13:16:00.003+01:00

Instagram has been creating a fair bit of buzz since it launched back in October. I’ve seen it popping up more and more in my Twitter and Facebook streams recently, and just over the last week or two it seems to have reached a point where every man and his dog is using it. Except me. For I have an Android mobile and Instagram is only available for the iPhone. Still.

My first photo on PicPlz

Over the weekend I cleared out my RSS reader, leaving only a handful of blogs to which I’m still subscribed (but more on that another time). The relevance? Well, this morning I had four new posts in my reader, and two of them were about Instagram. Dirk Singer posted a great guide to the service today, equally useful for anyone who hasn’t heard of it and anyone who wants to know more. It was further evidence to me that the demand for Instagram is about to go ballistic.

And yet only this weekend I finally gave up on my rather long and patient wait for the Android Instagram app after many 'it's coming soon' promises and downloaded a competitor, PicPlz. PicPlz is essentially the same thing; you can apply artistic filters to photos on your mobile and share them across Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Posterous and Tumblr, as well as send them to Dropbox. You can follow people and people can follow you back. You can tag photos with titles and your location. And it works on both Android and the iPhone. If anything, it looks superior (although it doesn’t have as nice a name, admittedly).

The thing is, it’s very early days for me with PicPlz. But assuming I like it and start building a network (which is already 30 strong and I’ve only posted one photo), would I bother switching to Instagram if and when it gets round to launching its Android app? Probably not. So the fact that it’s taking so long to roll this out is a huge missed opportunity when Android now accounts for somewhere around one in five smartphones.

With the service starting to pick up coverage, recommendations from influential bloggers and chatter-a-plenty via social media channels, Instagram is in danger of that old problem where something takes off and demand exceeds supply. My understanding is that it has a very small team, but knowing that doesn’t stop me from being frustrated and signing up with a competitor, and I wonder how many other Android users have or will do the same. Now’s the time to capitalise on all the hype and goodwill out there for your brand, Instagram – don’t miss the boat...

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When is Link Bait not Link Bait?

2011-05-26T08:01:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post entitled “One in Three PR Agency Heads is an Idiot”. The much-too-honest Catriona Oldershaw accused me of link baiting (in a nice way, if there is a nice way of doing so). Link baiting, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is the practice of writing blog and web page titles specifically designed to catch people’s attention and encourage them to share links to that content. It’s normally used in a derogatory context as the implication is that the actual content itself isn’t as interesting as the title.

Shortly after I wrote that post, which I’m happy to say was read, shared and commented upon many, many times (link bait success?) I saw a post by Gini Dietrich entitled “Doucheblogs and Spin Doctors”. I read it. Last week Dino Dogan guest blogged for Danny Brown with the subject of “F**king and Punching: The Moody Side of Business”. I read that too. Jay Dolan’s arguably the master of such titles on his Anti-Social Media blog, with a regular “F**k You Friday” post and the word ‘crap’ featuring remarkably often in his post titles. I read a lot of them as well.

Link bait can take many forms, from the ultra-helpful (ahem...) ‘Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Excel on Twitter’ to the inciting ‘Everyone Who Works in Social Media is a Moron’. But do the posts from Gini, Danny, Dino and Jay qualify as link bait? The answer: no. These guys write interesting, thought-provoking blogs that contain genuine opinion and passion. Sure, some of their post titles are written to catch attention, but isn’t that the point? What these guys do is to write from the heart and I genuinely believe that they’re not that bothered whether they receive five tweets or five hundred for any one post. And therein lies the difference, as link bait is written purely to drive traffic and sharing. There’s a lot of shit out there on the social web and one hell of a lot of link bait. But this isn’t it. What looks like link bait isn’t always link bait.

So back to my original “One in Three PR Agency Heads is an Idiot” post. Link bait or not link bait? It was in response to news that a third of UK PR agencies don’t even have a digital strategy, which hacked me off. Big time. Hence the fervour in the title. Did I want people to read that post and to share it? Sure, of course I did. But writing with passion, genuine feeling and personal input is what I try to do and am trying to do more of, as I hope that the people reading this blog will find it interesting, challenging and provocative. So I’m going to go out on a limb and state that I don’t think that post was link bait. But then hey, I wrote it, so you’re a better judge than me...

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Super Injunctions: You Can Run But You Can’t Hide

2011-05-22T21:38:00.006+01:00

So a ‘mystery’ top class UK footballer is suing Twitter. How utterly ludicrous. Having been granted a privacy injunction that gags the print and broadcast media from stating his name in accordance with an alleged adulterous affair with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas, said player has now started legal proceedings against the microblogging network to silence that as well. He, or at least his misguided lawyers, consider that it has broken the original injunction. What a load of bullshit.

First, can Twitter really be held accountable for what I or anyone else posts? Second, why on earth would it disclose the names of all the people who have mentioned the affair as the lawyers want – it’d kill the network stone dead. Third, even if it did so, what then? Will the lawyers go after the tens of thousands of people individually; would each of them be sued for contempt of court? Hardly realistic is it. And fourth, how can Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, possibly come under the jurisdiction of the British courts? None of it makes any sense whatsoever.

The thing that makes this situation so laughable to me, however, is that everyone now knows far more about the player’s personal life and the alleged affair simply BECAUSE he is trying to sue Twitter. Talk about digging yourself a hole. That’s a FAR bigger story than some overpaid footballer unable to keep his 'striker' in his pants which, let’s face it, most of the world really couldn’t give a toss about.

While the original injunction stood, sure there was speculation on Twitter as to the identity of the player. But it was confined within Twitter. Now the story is all over the papers, the radio and the TV. I'm blogging about it when I really didn't care before. The media can’t name him, but we all know his identity anyway as the speculation has spread far and wide simply due to the fact that people outside of Twitter are asking each other. Taking legal action against Twitter is quite possibly one of the worst PR decisions I’ve ever seen.

Maybe the whole preposterous situation demonstrates one thing about the power of social media: hiding the truth is no longer quite as easy as throwing money at it. Lord Judge, the most senior judge in England, said: “Modern technology is totally out of control. I’m not giving up hope on the possibility that people...may one day be brought under control, maybe through damages, very substantial damages, maybe even injunctions.” 1984 anyone?

The original concept of the web was as a leveller, a tool to empower ordinary people to gain access to knowledge and to share it with others. It was supposed to be about freedom of speech. And I can’t see the world at large letting society fall into an Orwellian future under the threat of the Thought Police. So Mr Footballer: suing Twitter? Pur-lease...

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Inspiration from Isobel, Aged 1 3/4

2011-05-18T05:30:00.003+01:00

Us creative types, whether we’re in PR, marketing, advertising or social communications, are always on the hunt for insight and stimulation. I love nothing better than feeling that ‘eureka’ moment, when all the fuzz falls away from a client brief and clarity strikes me square in the face. The little buzz of excitement, the realisation that something good is brewing... the desperate need to get the idea down on paper or into Evernote before I forget it!

I wrote recently about how you can actually learn to tap into the right temporal lobe (your creative brain, where you experience insight) by changing what you’re doing and occupying your left, logical brain with simple tasks. But it occurred to me this week that another key to creative thinking is to try and unlearn what you know, to shed yourself of your preconceptions. I learned this from my 20 month old daughter. Take a look at the picture below – what would you call this item?

Chances are you’d call it a pet carrier or a cat basket or something similar. But my daughter Isobel calls it a ‘rabbit bucket’. (Actually, she calls it a 'shabbits bucket', as she can’t yet pronounce 'rabbit'.) I know I’m biased, but I think this is sheer genius! From Izzy’s perspective, it’s something to do with our rabbits. And it’s something they go into, just like pebbles go into her play bucket. Would you ever have thought of a pet carrier as a rabbit bucket? Me neither, but that change of perspective is what we’re all searching for when we talk about lateral thinking. Imagine the creativity that could flow if you were able to harness the imagination of someone who has a limited vocabulary and experience of life on your team.

I’m of course not suggesting we all start employing two year old kids in our creative departments. But I AM suggesting that we try and learn from the way they think and let go of what we know in order to see things from a different viewpoint. And until I achieve that, Izzy’s coming to work with me; she’s got to start earning her keep sometime...

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Do We Finally "Get It"?

2011-05-17T17:28:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday I had the honour of taking part in the judging panel for the CorpComms magazine Digi Awards. During a well-earned break I had a chat to James Poulter, Adam Vincenzini and Chris Reed about how things were going in their respective agencies and roles, and we all reported the same thing: being insanely busy since the new year. And so I wonder: has the penny finally dropped among the UK’s companies and brands that social and digital media isn’t going away?

I don’t know whether it’s partly down to the role of social media director in a comms agency, but it does seem that such individuals are all under a serious amount of pressure and stress just at the moment. The demands of juggling tactical client work, strategic consulting, proposal advice and new business input, internal training, reading and research, and agency marketing on social networks are becoming harder and harder to manage. And I think it’s because more clients are asking about social media and/or being more receptive to ideas and/or releasing more budgets towards this type of work. It may be different in the States (interested in your opinion, US folk...), but in the UK at least companies have been loathe to release significant money to fund digital media activity. Now it feels like we’re on the tipping point.

I don’t want to sound like I’m bitching about the amount of work I have on – I’d far rather be stupidly busy than sitting at my desk picking my nose to pass the time. But something, somewhere has to give, and it seems to be the agency profiling and marketing part that’s faltering. I’ve seen a very noticeable trend on Twitter this year where once highly active people are now pretty quiet. Me included. Blogging’s not so prevalent and resource sharing isn’t as high on the agenda.

So have these guys grown tired of Twitter and bored of blogging? I don’t think so; I think they’re all working their asses off. What about you? Have you noticed any changes in 2011? Do you think companies are finally catching on?

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Why Paid Traffic and Fans to Facebook Pages Beats Organic Traffic and Contests

2011-05-05T07:41:00.003+01:00

This is a guest post by Brian Carter. I was intrigued by his assertion that paid Facebook fan growth trumps organic fan growth, so asked him to sum his approach up in a blog post for TheSocialWeb.

If you want Facebook traffic or a Facebook fan base that actually makes your company money, read this post to ensure you don't make the same mistakes many are making.

Organic v Paid Fans and Traffic
Many companies try to avoid spending money on Facebook ads. That's understandable if:

they're in the PR department and there's no budget for it, or
if they aren't skilled at digital advertising, or
if they don't know you can get fans and clicks as low as $0.05 apiece.

But if you can get an budget and a little bit of Facebook advertising training, you can use the incredible targeting power of Facebook advertising to get traffic and fans that are much more likely to buy than organic traffic.

The weakness of organic traffic is that usually it's either:

Word of Mouth: unfortunately, friends of friends may only share one interest or trait, they're not clones of the person who passed you on. Or it's
Contest-Incentivized Traffic: usually contest prizes aren't chosen to qualify the entrants, but just to excite them. An iPad prize leads to unqualified fans who are less likely to buy from you than targeted fans from advertising are. So either choose better Facebook contest prizes, or start using Facebook ads.

Facebook Profits and ROI
If you’ve been in Social Media for the last three to four years, you’re well acquainted with the controversy and skepticism surrounding Social Media ROI: lots of debate about what it is, does it exist, etc. Skeptical business owners say things like, “It’s fine for Dell or Ford to make money from Social Media, but what about my small or medium sized business? Who has succeeded besides Fortune 1000 companies?” And though we’ve seen Twitter ROI case studies, there hasn’t been much reported from the Facebook realm.

Here are three examples of positive ROI from Facebook marketing that I presented for the first time in February 2011 in Boston. What I like about them is that they’re all small businesses.

Baseball Rose: 400% ROI
Mark Ellingson runs a website call Baseball Rose that offers artificial roses made from real baseballs and softballs. He spent $200.00 to grow his fan base, and has made $1,000 in Facebook revenue from that investment.

Vamplets: 300% ROI
Jaryl LaMort spearheads the Vamplets website which markets and distributes baby vampire dolls. He is spending $250.00 per month on Facebook ads (direct to the website, not a fan acquisition play) and bringing in $1,000.00 revenue per month from Facebook.

Rosehall Kennel: 6500% ROI
Eliot and Emily Roberts of Rosehall Kennel breed German Shepherds. They spent just $61.00 growing their fan base before they sold three puppies. Each puppy goes for $1,350.

What do these companies have in common?

They're all students in my FanReach course
They all spent money to get actual prospects via Facebook ads
They all made profits on those ad spends

How to Get Positive Facebook ROI
How did they do it? Some of it may have been beginner’s luck. Some of it is the right audience for the right offering. In FanReach, we taught them:

How to get cheap Facebook ad CPC, cheap clicks, and target the right prospects while doing that; then…
How to engage those fans and keep your Facebook posts visible to a high percentage of your fans.

Doing just those two things well has led to positive ROI for some businesses. Engaging your fans well on the fan page while using fan acquisition ads also leads to a percentage of free fans. I've seen as much as 60% of fans gained come from word of mouth during an advertising and engagement campaign.

So don't fear the ads! Get a budget for them, get some training and give it a go!

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One in Three PR Agency Heads is an Idiot

2011-04-19T22:11:00.003+01:00

I was somewhat downhearted this week to read that the UK PR industry is coming under question yet again for its backward approach to digital and social media. Maybe it's because I work for an agency that's forward-thinking when it comes to online PR, or perhaps it’s because I have a network of like-minded peers, but the fact that 34% of PR agencies don't have a digital strategy and that, astoundingly, 6% don't even think it's relevant to their business, is mind-blowing.

What world do the MDs and CEOs of these companies live in? And what do they tell their clients when they ask about blogging or Facebook or LinkedIn? Do they still go down the 'Twitter's just people tweeting what they had for breakfast and is irrelevant' route? Do they think Foursquare is the new country dancing craze? Or that Quora is edible mycoprotein?

Vikki Chowney from Reputation Online summed it up nicely, saying: "Although I'm an avid believer that you can't be completely structured when it comes to new technologies...this doesn't mean digital can be added to the 'too hard to define at the moment' pile." I thought we were beyond this, I really did. And I thought the days when well-respected figures like Vikki were forced to question whether "the UK PR industry is roughly three years behind that of digital specialists when it comes to working with social media" were finally starting to fade into the past. But clearly not.

As Vikki goes on to point out, training budgets for digital fluency within PR agencies are small and "those with the skills required to lead and formalise a digital strategy within PR agencies are few and far between". The result of this potent combination? The pool of true senior digital PR talent is small and will only become smaller.

So I'm coming round to an opinion about those PR agencies that are holding the industry back that is, admittedly, both unconstructive and defeatist: sod them! Let them die an ignorant death, and the sooner, the better. Leave those of us who don't live in 1995 and who actually understand changing consumer behaviours and decision making habits to do what we do best without dragging our reputation through the mud. If you're one of them (although clearly you're not as you don't understand or value blogs), the agency I work for grew over 40% in 2010. What about yours?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

2011-04-13T07:10:00.004+01:00

Guru. Ninja. Expert. They’re all the kings of their own social domain. I stumbled across another one the other day; an almighty, self-proclaimed “Twitter expert” who goes by the name of @[username withheld] and who introduced himself to a new client as the man who could make them a gazillion dollars from the Twitter without so much as breaking a sweat. They fell for it. Oh, the shame of it all...

This particular Social Media Overlord has over 3700 followers. That’s more than me, so fair play. Although on closer inspection his follower/following numbers are remarkably similar; but far be it from to whisper the words ‘auto follow’ in this giant’s presence. Oh, and he has a Klout score of only 36 and a lowly PeerIndex score of just 17. Which isn’t very guru-like, is it? Oh yeah, and before I forget, his last 25 tweets consist of 20 broadcast tweets, 1 retweet and 4 @messages, two of which are to Chris Moyles. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

Then there’s this, brought to my attention by Rebecca Hollis: a training course entitled ‘Become a Social Media Expert in 1 Day’. Woah! A training school for gurus, ninjas and experts!

Did I read that right? Learn everything there is to know about social media in just five hours once you’ve taken out lunch? That’s frickin’ AWESOME! It says that they will train us “to utilize the new media marketing tools of blogs, online videos, photos, social networks and other social media related websites in online marketing, customer relations and PR efforts.” All of that in just FIVE HOURS! They must have some Matrix-style equipment that downloads data direct into the brain. And it’s only £110. That’s a frickin’ bargain! Isn’t it?

Unfortunately, the land of the blind is a very big country. And that means the one-eyed man, no matter how dubious, self-interested and deceptive, is very powerful.

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Can PR and Social Media Really Convert Sales?

2011-04-07T05:35:00.016+01:00

We’ve all had discussions about the benefits of social media marketing; what it can do for brand awareness, for word of mouth and brand perception, and for driving traffic to websites via direct routes, referrals and through search engines. But here’s a question for you: what CAN’T social communications do?

What prompts this post is an ongoing debate I’ve been having with a new client about, you guessed it, the value/ROI of social media. To put this into context, BOTTLE is carrying out a full PR programme for this particular client, which is an online retailer on a very tight budget. Social communications forms part of this campaign, but I’m coming under heavy scrutiny for how the social media element of the programme is performing...despite it being only three months old.

So I’ve carried out some analysis not only of the social metrics (the campaign is largely Facebook-based) but also of the business metrics using the client’s Google Analytics figures. Here’s what they reveal:

The Facebook page is growing at an average of 4.1% per month. Econsultancy states that “good growth for a Facebook page is typically 3-5% on a monthly basis”. Of the top UK brands on Facebook, Skittles (UK) has grown 3.2% in the last month, Creme Egg by 4.4% and Starbucks (UK) by 2.5%.

The average engagement rate for the page is 0.5% per post. Econsultancy states that “a good average engagement rate is above 0.1%, a great engagement rate is above 0.3-0.5%”.

In a direct comparison for Q1 for the last three years:

Website visits have increased by 12.0% year-on-year in Q1 2011 from Q1 2010. The increase from 2009 to 2010 was just 2.2% year-on-year.

Referral traffic has increased by 196.3% year-on-year in Q1 2011 from Q1 2010. Referral traffic FELL by 7.0% year-on-year between 2009 and 2010.

Direct traffic has increased by 36.6% year-on-year in Q1 2011 from Q1 2010. Direct traffic FELL by 27.5% year-on-year between 2009 and 2010.

Organic search traffic has increased by 30.6% year-on-year in Q1 2011 from Q1 2010. The increase from 2009 to 2010 was only 11.8% year-on-year.

Now maybe I’m biased, but if those statistics don’t prove how influential PR and social media marketing can be, I don’t know what does. Overall website visits and traffic from search engines up significantly on the same period last year; a significant decline in direct traffic not only arrested but now showing healthy growth; and perhaps most telling of all, falling referral traffic now nearly three times that of last year. And yet...the client isn’t particularly happy.

And that leads to a question that I’d love your thoughts and opinions on with regard to whether or not you feel that social media can have an impact. The client is heavily focused on conversion rates which, by all accounts are fairly static. The argument goes something like: "yes we’ve got all this extra traffic, but the percentage of people buying hasn’t increased". Now there are three main ways to increase revenue from an e-commerce website: you can get more of your existing visitors to buy (increase the conversion rate), you can increase the volume of traffic to your site, or you can increase the average transaction value (get people to buy more). So conversions are important. But how much can a PR firm do? Where is the line drawn?

In the long term, I feel that social media marketing can and absolutely should influence conversion rates by enhancing brand perception and brand affinity. But my questions to you are, talking generically: how much of the conversion factor is down to brand perception, and how much is down to the seller’s ability to ‘close the deal’, whether in person or on a website? In the short term, how much can PR and/or social communications influence a customer’s willingness to purchase? And is it reasonable that our clients measure us by this metric?

I’d dearly love to hear your thoughts in the comments below...

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Wax On, Wax Off: Mr Miyagi’s Guide to Creative Comms

2011-04-06T03:06:00.007+01:00

Ever tried to come up with a creative strategy only to stare at a blank computer screen for hours or even days on end? Ever sat down to write a blog post and come up with absolutely nothing...nada...zilch...? You’re not alone. Trying to step away from a situation, change perspective and think laterally is something that we get hung up on and see as difficult essentially because we go about it the wrong way. Creative thinking isn’t something that you can turn on and off just because you have a deadline, and it can’t really be taught. But understanding how to tap into your creative brain can be learned.

In the film Karate Kid, Daniel-san expects to learn how to kick and to punch, and yet Mr Miyagi insists on teaching him precise methods for menial tasks like painting a house and waxing a car. Daniel-san soon becomes disillusioned with seemingly pointless exercises and is about to quit...until Mr Miyagi reveals that he has been learning all along, in this case how to perform particular movements that form the basis of karate.

Creative thought, whether for social communications, PR or creative marketing, is the same. The brain is split into two halves; the left hemisphere is more logical and structured, while the right hemisphere is more creative and spontaneous. The key to creative thinking and to experiencing creative ‘insight’ is to tap into the right temporal lobe, an area of the brain that scientists have proved increases in neural activity when insight occurs. And how do you tap into that? Do something else...

The theory goes that if you consciously occupy the left side of your brain with a simple task, the right side of your brain is freed up to work unconsciously on your problem. Which is why people say that their best ideas come to them when they’re in the shower, or when they’re cooking a meal, or when they’re driving. Very rarely will you get someone shouting “eureka!” after sitting in front of a blank PC for an hour.

So what does all this mean? It means, if you’re struggling with getting ideas, give up! Go and do something physical to occupy your pesky left brain and give your right brain some space. Chances are, half way into painting that garden gate enlightenment will come your way (guess what I did this weekend?). Just make sure you’ve got your mobile in your pocket with the superb Evernote app downloaded to record your light bulb moments.

And remember, Reader-san, like Mr Miyagi says: "wax on, wax off..."

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The Cool Kids Play on Twitter, but the Masses Play on Facebook

2011-03-30T22:00:00.005+01:00

I have a confession to make: I prefer Facebook to Twitter. There, I said it.

A couple of days back, amidst the stream of dross that has invaded my Facebook newsfeed as everyone and his dog jumps on the Facebook Questions bandwagon and gives it a test drive, there were a few people asking ‘do you prefer Facebook or Twitter?’. It shouldn’t come as a great surprise that Facebook was leading all of these polls. But what I did find interesting was that, of my friends, virtually all of them had selected the ‘Twitter’ option.

Obviously that says something about many of the people I’m now friends with on Facebook; they’re social comms pros. And social comms people LOVE Twitter. Admitting you prefer Facebook over Twitter is the social media equivalent of preferring Coldplay over Elbow. One’s music for the masses, while the other’s cool and grungy. But you know what, I like Coldplay. I liked them way back before Parachutes was even released, and I like them now. I like Elbow too, but I prefer Coldplay. I suspect however, that among the social media fraternity, Elbow’s the band of choice in that scenario. I was never cool and I never will be.

Anyway, I digress. Two things have come to light this week that have made me think about this situation. First, eConsultancy reported a study by Yahoo Research which suggested that 50% of all content consumed on Twitter is generated by just 0.05% of users; a paltry 20,000 people. So if you ever get the feeling on Twitter that you bump into the same people all of the time no matter who you follow, that’s probably why. The report also suggests that on Twitter we’re an anti-social bunch; organising ourselves into groups of bloggers, celebrities or whatever; Twitter is fragmented.

Second, Radian6 made an announcement this week that saw #Radian6 trend worldwide. As my pal Adam Vincenzini succinctly pointed out, this “doesn't do much for the myth that non-media folk use Twitter” and, as Mazher Abidi followed up: “Social media people love Twitter more, but consumers – people you want to reach - exist on Facebook more. Gotta respect that”.

So if I had to choose just one social network tomorrow, why would it be Facebook? On Twitter I’ve connected with far, far more people, some brilliant with whom I now have solid relationships. And that wouldn’t have happened on Facebook. But if I get to know someone well, I try and transfer that relationship across (if they’ll have me as a friend!). I feel that I get to know someone better through the more open, diverse and expansive updates of Facebook than through tweets, even if they’re far less frequent. I see a more personable side to them, whether that’s through the type of content they share or the mere fact that I can actually SEE them in the photos they post. On Twitter, I can’t help but feel that the real self is hidden behind 140 character text updates.

I also love the fact that, on Facebook, I can seamlessly blend my work and personal lives. I can go from commenting on a blog post immediately to posting an update about my daughter to a completely different audience by tailoring who sees what. As an example of this ‘switching’ behaviour, only this week one of my Facebook friends switched from posting pictures of his new flat to a link to a corporate website in a heartbeat. One minute I’m looking at his new flat and he’s viewing a video of my daughter, the next we’re interacting with one another on a professional level. In the same way I can switch in seconds from conversing with someone I met and know on a more professional level to someone I’ve known for years who doesn’t even care what I do for a living. That’s a power that Facebook has which, arguably at least, Twitter doesn’t (at least to the same level). Facebook is far less fragmented and far less exclusive. There's no in-crowd.

On the subject of blog posts, yet another reason I prefer Facebook is that by following a blog or blog writer’s Facebook page/profile, I can keep track of blog posts in a more engaging way than by either RSS or Twitter. I can get a better taste of a blog post from the short summary that Facebook presents me with than a title and bit.ly link. I can even engage with the writer on Facebook rather than the blog itself, should I wish. Yes, I can do that on Twitter, but Facebook has less limitations.

And finally, from a marketing perspective, Facebook offers far more opportunities. Far more people use Facebook, and they use if for different reasons. We can be more creative, more visual and more engaging on Facebook than we will ever be able to be on Twitter. Twitter for meeting people in your field; great. But for more personal relationships and greater opportunities, it has to be Facebook.

But what’s your opinion? Tick the relevant box (ironically a Twitter app) and leave a comment below to tell me why. Please.
As for Coldplay or Elbow, maybe I’ll ask my friends using Facebook Questions? Oh, and if you'd like to connect on Facebook, I'm here.

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Brand Website Traffic Down by a Quarter: Still Need Convincing About Social Media?

2011-03-28T11:14:00.002+01:00

Two things happened to me last week that have given me further belief were it needed (it wasn’t, by the way) that social communications is the way forward for marketers. First, I read a fascinating study by Webtrends which revealed that 68% of the websites of the Fortune 100 companies are experiencing a significant decline in traffic. And second, I carried out an experiment in a client seminar that turned sceptics into believers.

At a time when the web has come to dominate the world we live in, the figures revealed by Webtrends are nothing short of astounding: some companies’ web traffic is down by over 70% in 12 months, while the average decline is 24%! And yet, I’m really not surprised. I’ve been preaching the fact that websites as we know them are declining to clients for several months now, with reactions typically varying from blank stares to outright incredulity. So it’s a bit of a relief to finally have some evidence to back this up to be honest, for my own sanity if nothing else.

The simple fact is that social media is changing the entire way the web operates. Going back a few years, if you wanted to know something about a product or service prior to making a purchase you’d read a few ads and articles, and you’d visit a couple of company/product websites. That was pretty much it. But now you’re more likely to ask your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers or your LinkedIn connections what they recommend as you are to take notice of ads or articles. Then you’ll Google for further opinions of your shortlist, which will inevitably take you to blogs, forums and review sites – more social collateral. And at no point do you end up at a brand website.

So if we’re not visiting brand websites, where are we spending our time online? It will come as no surprise to most people reading this that it’s on social media. And if that’s where people are, that’s where we need to market. Common sense, right? So why is there still so much reluctance to do so? My own belief is that it’s not been clearly spelled out and, that doing so, goes a long way as a convincer.

I decided to take a gamble and test this theory live in front of a room full of people at a seminar I was speaking at last week. It was during a seminar about the value of social communications to an audience comprised mostly of sceptics (tough crowd, huh?). Before I started, I asked each of them to imagine they wanted to find out about a product or service, and to write down their actions in order: would they a) read direct mail, b) ask their friends, c) read a magazine article, d) Google it, or e) watch/read TV/magazine ads. The responses were collated while I spoke and, at the very end, I returned to the question, making a Derren Brown style prediction on the big screen behind me that the group consensus would be d), b), c), e), a).

To my relief, the prediction was spot on. And when I explained that if they themselves Google for information and/or ask for recommendations, and that social media creates relationships, connects people and affects search engine rankings, I could see lightbulbs turning on behind the eyes of some of the most staunch cynics. It was a beautiful moment.

Let’s be clear about this – I’m NOT saying that social communications is a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s clearly not and must be viewed within the wider context of strategic marketing and the business as a whole. But if website traffic is declining, people are gravitating towards the social web and online behaviour is evolving, what more evidence do you need to start taking social media seriously?

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Why Social Media News Releases Aren’t a Waste of Time

2011-03-23T09:52:00.002Z

Thisis a guest post by Adam Parker, Chiefexec of RealWire in response to my last post, 'Isthe Social Media News Release a Waste of Time?'

First off, a disclosure. RealWire has a vested interest in this debate given that we provide a Social Media News Release (SMNR) option within our service. However with four years’ experience of this area we also think we have some knowledge that might be of value too.On reading Paul’s post and the comments made yesterday four main issues came out for me. These were:

Nomenclature
Format
Distribution
SEO

Nomenclature – what’s in a name?
As I am sure many of you are aware the name 'Social Media News Release' was first coined by Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications five years ago. At the time I believe Todd was trying to get across the importance of the need for evolution in the format and content of PR announcements to stay relevant in an increasingly social online world.

It is worth bearing in mind though that at that time Twitter didn’t even exist, Facebook was barely a year old and YouTube was still independent. 'Social Media' was therefore pretty much all about bloggers and bookmarking and so was limited to a, relatively (in today's terms), small online community that was seen as quite distinct.

Well the world has changed a lot since then and perhaps the name itself needs to change too. At RealWire we have stuck to SMNR because people have an understanding of what 'it' is but IMHO we should now just have 'News Releases' or 'Media Releases'. The 'Press Release' was designed in an age where the press WAS the media, but after all how many “press releases” these days will be potentially read by someone who is not a member of the 'press'? Surely it is just about releasing news to all relevant and interested media?

Format
As Kerry Gaffney, who commented on Paul’s post in very grey terms :-) rightly pointed out in her post in 2008, a social media news release is ultimately "just a web page”. The issue is that creating a good web page is not the same as typing words into a Word doc (or previously on a typewriter) which is where most 'press releases' start. Is it rocket science? Of course not. Can companies build their own? Of course. Does it take a degree of time and money like any other asset? Yes. So the usual questions of DIY against outsourcing apply – nothing more.

Does the format itself make a story interesting? No. But does the investment of building a web page that has impact potentially lead to the creation of more interesting news releases? Perhaps - I did some analysis that raised this very question 18 months ago and by complete coincidence - honest! - I have just updated this here. These exercises showed that SMNRs distributed by RealWire achieve more coverage than 'traditional' releases – three times more in fact in the most recent analysis.

Distribution - do I find it or does it find me?
I was not surprised that the vast majority of recipients of pushed releases told Paul they still want them as straight text in an email with no, I repeat no, attachments (the 11% confused me too). This is because of the nature of how we work with email - the need to keep the level of data transferred down (especially in a mobile world) and make it really easy for the journalist or blogger to establish if the story is of interest.

Then as he suggested direct them to the web page that has all relevant related content. (You could go one stage further, as we do, and provide direct links to individual assets or relevant links within the body of the email as well.) As without this web page other interested parties won’t be able to find or share your story, which leads onto…

Search Engine Optimisation
Is it better that people find and link to the story on the company’s own website and that any SEO benefit goes to them? Almost certainly yes. Is that always practical and cost effective? No. For instance a lot of smaller companies (and many larger ones) will not have news to announce very frequently. Google will therefore not be visiting their site very often and so when they post news it could be a while before it shows up in search.

Of course you could improve this situation by making your site more dynamic with content updated more frequently and that’s potentially a good idea from a SEO perspective, but it’s still going to have a cost in time or money terms. At the risk of a RealWire plug here that is why for years now we have offered clients who care about retaining the 'ownership' of the story the ability to map releases to their own domain and even brand the CSS.

Conclusions
IMHO the name shouldn’t be the thing we focus on. We should just be trying to announce news via releases that take advantage of the tools the online media world gives us to tell more interesting stories to more interested people.

Push distribution should be in a form that fits a recipient’s needs.And whether companies do this themselves and/or host the content on their own sites or use third parties or service providers is a question of balancing the commercial costs and benefits.No different to deciding to use an outside PR consultant to assist with a social media project for instance :-)

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Is the Social Media News Release a Waste of Time?

2011-03-21T13:22:00.003Z

The Social Media News Release (SMNR) has significant benefits over the standard press release format. For companies there’s the SEO factor, the ease of distribution, the ability to embed high resolution images and video, and the potential for sharing across the social web. And for journalists there’s the potential to gain additional information quickly and easily through embedded links, and the ability to download supporting multimedia files without having to request them. So I was somewhat amazed to discover recently that as many as seven in ten journalists and bloggers prefer to receive news releases simply via text in an email.

I carried out some research via Twitter that asked how writers prefer to receive written information from agencies and organisations. And the results were conclusive: a press release as text in an email is preferred by 73% of respondents. Only 16% preferred the SMNR format, with the remaining 11% preferring a word document (a figure I find equally as astounding). The figures are even more surprising when you consider that 80% of the 89 respondents qualified themselves as “primarily a blogger or an online journalist” rather than a print journalist, which is a group I would have expected to have been more ‘enlightened’.

So where does that leave those of us working in PR? Having evangelised the benefits of the SMNR both within the agency and to clients over the last year or so, am I left with egg on my face?

I still totally believe in SMNRs. The benefits of correctly formatted, properly keyword-targeted and ALT tag optimised online news are significant to search engine optimisation. And it allows easy sharing and bookmarking across the social web. It’s something that adds a further, valuable layer to a conventional news release. But the research can’t be ignored: if writers want information in email format, then that’s what we have to give them. So, for now at least, we’re combining the two approaches at BOTTLE. We’re formatting news releases as SMNRs and uploading them to the web, but we’re copying the main body text into an email and sending that with a link to the full SMNR. It seems a little backward to me, but so be it...

[UPDATE: Read a response to this post by Adam Parker from RealWire]

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How to Optimise Your Blog's Name for Google

2011-03-08T16:25:00.004Z

Naming a blog is more important than naming a child. Believe me, I’ve done both and only one is any good at driving web traffic and business my way. Isobel’s hopeless at SEO and can’t even say SERP let alone explain to me how to use keyword optimisation to affect my Google ranking. Bloody kids...

Naming a blog is a branding exercise. It’s often the first point of call between yourself and your readers/potential customers and, as such, has great power. The name should be catchy, memorable and meaningful; it has to sound good and have a ring to it, and it should also ideally communicate something about your subject matter. There’s also a rule of thumb I’ve seen quoted that says keep your blog name to four syllables or less, the reason being that it becomes a pain to repeat it if it’s any longer.

It’s easy (fairly) to come up with weird, wonderful and creative blog names, but if they mean nothing it’s harder to get traction. Case in point: my first blog was called ‘Tribal Boogie’, which I loved. But it meant little (other than to me) and I always remember one guy on Twitter saying “Love the article, but I can’t bring myself to follow a blog called Tribal Boogie.” He may have been joking, but many a true word spoken in jest. What credibility did I have with that name? On the flip side, a corporate blog name that I think works on all levels is deBugged, the blog of my client Rentokil (which, I hasten to add, I did not name).

But there’s more to it. A great blog name is born with SEO in mind, as that’s where a lot of traffic will come from. So without being an SEO geek, where do you start when naming a blog? Try this process:

Brainstorm relevant keywords and phrases within the topics you write about that people might search for. Make a list. A long list. Don’t discount anything at this stage.
Use Google’s keyword tool to first add to this list with relevant phrases, and to then review everything on your list in terms of a) how many searches are carried out on a monthly basis (the more the better) and b) how much competition there is for that phrase (the less the better). Identify the keyword phrases that have the best balance between these two factors.
Brainstorm potential names that incorporate these keyword phrases.
Check out whether the domains are available for your favourites. If they are, job done. If they’re not, back to stage three.
Having identified a name and purchased your URL, write a meta-title and a meta-description. The meta-title is the text that appears as your title in the SERPs (see below). The meta-description will sometimes appear as the text under that title in a search (depending on the search carried out; it doesn’t in this example) and so needs to make sense, but importantly tells Google what the blog is about. Incorporate as many of your keywords into the title and description as you can without destroying the legibility or flow.

It’s not rocket science, but it is important to undertake this process fully. When it came to naming The Social Web, I thought long and hard about it, but as a result I now appear high up the Google rankings for several target keywords. In the example above, I’m sandwiched between Brian Solis and Deidre Breakenridge on page one of a Google search for ‘PR 2.0’. Which is not a bad place to be sandwiched, let’s face it! And I feature second behind Wikipedia but ahead of Mashable, ZDNet and The Economist in a Google search for ‘social web’, a phrase that gains over 60,000 monthly global searches.

There's a hell of a lot more to optimising a blog, but this forms a great start. So, any questions? Anyone got any more tips and tricks?

(Oh, and naming Isobel was far more important than naming my blog, just in case you're wondering if I actually meant that...)

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Somebody Needs a Hug...

2011-03-07T10:07:00.002Z

Last week I published a post entitled ‘Why Tuesdays Suck for Social Marketers’. It seemed to catch the imagination of the people who read The Social Web and has since gained a lot of traction on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There have been a lot of comments on the blog and on Twitter, most of which seemed to agree with the ideas put forward but all of which have been polite. Until yesterday...

Yesterday afternoon, someone left this comment:
“What a load of complete crap. Tuesday is by far the best day to get traction for any kind of Internet based media. And it has been for over 12 straight years and it still is.

Looking over the post, I see nothing but you Paul Sutton, saying looking over your own profiles that you see little interaction. You even admittedly say "and it is just an unproven theory based on educated guesswork" so why give people a blanket statement like this when you even admit it's just guesswork? I also noticed you said you were about 20 years old when most professionals started in this business so I doubt you have had all that much time to see a long tail snapshot. Also looking at your Twitter account Paul, you have 2,092 followers. That is not exactly a very large demographic unit to be handing out advice from. Facebook friends, 129, same thing. If you had any idea what you were doing in social you would be linking to your fanpage.

ONE last thought, you included launching YouTube videos on Tuesday, yet I don't even see you have a YouTube channel. The last promotion we did on Tuesday was "Chicago Blizzard 2011" and it pulled over 2000 views the first day, 17,000 in the first week. So, before I really insult you, can I ask you Paul? Have you ever been front page on Digg? StubleUpon? YouTube? Have you ever marketed a product via social marketing? Have you ever driven 250,000 to 500,000 visitors to a blog in a month thru a social media promotion?

I would love to hear your qualifications and answers to these questions and I will gladly eat my words need be...... I see advice metered out like this all the time by people that no idea what they are doing, in the future I suggest you get more than 2,092 Twitter followers before you start handing out hand grenades for advice.”

Now leaving aside the absurd argument of how old I am (que?!), the reasons why I choose to use my Facebook profile instead of a fan page (what?!) and the fact that I ‘only’ have 2000 followers on Twitter, I could have written a defensive follow up post stating my credentials – the brands I have and do work with, the projects I’ve worked on and the results I’ve achieved. But as I said in my reply to the comment yesterday, what’s the point? I don’t actually feel the need to justify my opinions to someone I’ve never met or heard from before.

What depresses me more than being accused of being a snake oil salesman however (that was in his answer to my response), is the aggressiveness and arrogance of the attitude displayed here. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this attitude on the social web, and I doubt it’ll be the last. But why do some people feel the need to go on the attack if they don’t agree with an opinion, rather than challenge it in an open and rational manner?

Those who actually KNOW me in the social marketing field will know I’m the first to say that I’m no expert or to admit that I don’t have the answers. I pose more questions than I have a right to on this blog! Had this person said “Actually, I don’t agree and here’s why...” rather than “What a load of complete crap, I’m a god and you’re an idiot...” I would have been very interested in their opinion. But, you know, whatever. As the kids say: meh...

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Why Tuesdays Suck for Social Marketers

2011-03-02T09:20:00.003Z

In 1979, long before I was born (not true), Bob Geldof's Boomtown Rats sang about not liking Mondays. In 2005 I had the huge pleasure of listening to Sir Bob speak about entrepreneurship at an event, and the even greater pleasure of interviewing him afterwards. So what does this have to do with the social web or PR? Not much admittedly, except that a) the guy is a stone cold motivational genius, and b) my own hate is not for Mondays but for Tuesdays.

In the world of social media marketing, Tuesdays suck big time. At least, that's my experience. A while back I wrote a blog post that I was sure would tick all the right boxes, raise a few hackles and hit all the sweet spots along the way. This was to be my ticket to the big time; the day when Solis would come knocking at my door for guest slots. Now maybe the post just sucked, but I prefer to blame this particular failure on the fact that I published on a Tuesday. And I never have since.

OK, so that in itself is not much evidence for stating that Tuesdays are the social media equivalent of a beach party in Skegness in the middle of December, ie, dead. But week after week, across blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, it seems to be that Tuesday is just a bad day to get engagement. Publish identical posts on a Monday and a Tuesday and I guarantee that the Monday post will get more shares, reads, likes or tweets. Same for the other days of the week. Try it yourself.

So why is this?My theory (and it is just an unproven theory based on educated guesswork) is that Tuesday is the day when people get their heads down in the office. On a Monday we get into the office wanting to get back up to speed. We devour information in blog posts and tweets to ensure we didn't miss anything over the weekend. The following day, we get down to work. We don't have time to read anything in any depth and so social media information, unless truly outstanding, is wasted. By Wednesday, we're regaining interest and this stays with us as we approach the weekend, when we naturally become more social.

So my advice is quite simply to avoid announcing anything significant on a social network on a Tuesday. Don't publish your best blog posts, don't launch anything on Facebook, don't upload your latest and greatest YouTube video. Just ride the day out, accept that people aren't feeling that social and move on. Anyone else had similar experiences?

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Breaking News: Stella Artois Launches Film Star Search

2011-02-25T11:56:00.003Z

The word on the street is that Stella Artois is about to launch a big offensive on social media next week along the lines of a huge ‘casting call’. I’ve heard that my favourite beer brand is going to audition men via webcams to play ‘the King of Cannes’, Jacques d’Azur, in a film that will be premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Men will be able to audition online opposite the leading lady, and will then get their audition scene uploaded to a Cannes Casting Call website finished to cinema quality. How brilliant is that?! They can then share the film with their friends across the likes of Facebook and Twitter as well as being judged by peers and a panel of cinema experts. The best budding actor will star in a final film made by Stella Artois and screened at Cannes.

Happy with that? Well, it goes further! The winner will be invited to attend the film premier in Cannes at a Jacques d’Azur mansion recreated on the Ritz Carlton’s private beach, complete with his open air cinema screen and 40 person hot tub. Now THAT’s what I call reassuringly expensive.

It’s a brilliant idea, honouring as it does a man considered the coolest man in the world at the time; Frank Sinatra used to call him 'Sammy Davis Senior'. Look out for details from Stella Artois next week. And that reminds me, I must stop at the off licence on the way home to pick some up...

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Twitter for Business: Are You Sure?!

2011-02-23T20:47:00.004Z

A couple of weeks back I had the great pleasure of being invited to take part in a round table event hosted by leading web hosting business UKFast. The event, held during social media week, was focused on drawing out advice from six 'experts' (well, five experts and me...) on what businesses should do to get a foothold in the Twittersphere, and I met some fantastic people who said some very wise and insightful things.

Having had time to reflect, what strikes me about the UKFast event is the amount of agreement there was in the room. Did we collectively come up with some good advice for those new to or struggling with Twitter? Yes, and you can get a taster of that in the video clip below, and more detail on the blog of one of my partners-in-crime Leanne Forshaw Jones and on the UKFast website. But did we break new ground? No. Maybe as it wasn't necessarily the time or place, what we didn't do was question whether businesses even SHOULD be using Twitter. And that, to me, is the pertinent question.

Now I'm a huge Twitter advocate. It is largely through the information shared via my amazing network of friends and peers on Twitter that I find myself as Head of Social Communications at one of the fastest growing PR agencies in the UK and working with global brands such as HISTORY and Rentokil. Without Twitter there is simply no way that I would have learned as much as I have over the past couple of years, or have been invited to take part in a social media round table or onto the judging panel of a major digital awards scheme. But I'm far from convinced that Twitter produces a good return for most brands, and it's quite rare that I recommend it to clients.

There are three reasons for this. The first is measurability, or lack of it, but as I've written about this recently I won't bore you again. The second is time. To be effective, Twitter is demanding of time and attention. It gets easier once you become established, but that first six to nine months is hard, hard work and extremely time intensive. It can be frustrating and, sometimes, downright depressing as you try and find your niche and build up a following. Talking to no-one isn't fun, after all.

Leading on from this, the third reason is culture. Business, or more accurately The Boardroom, isn't conditioned for marketing on Twitter. Management wants fast results; it wants statistics to justify every pound it spends. And quite right too. But unless you're a big brand with a big budget, instant results simply don't occur with Twitter. With Twitter you have to be open, transparent, honest, creative, inventive, casual. Pretty much any form of selling doesn't work. And here's the thing: what you start out doing on Twitter may not/probably won't work.

It takes a lot of patience to get the formula right and, therefore, not inconsiderable foresight plus a leap of faith to pay someone to spend an hour a day chatting away online with very little, or indeed any, return for six months.

So by all means watch the videos that resulted from the UKFast round table - the guys know what they're talking about. But please don't plunge into Twitter without first honestly and very carefully considering whether you have the time, the money, the company culture and the patience to make it work. In my opinion, very few brands and organisations do.

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Will HISTORY Tie Up See Foursquare Hit the UK Mainstream?

2011-02-17T15:55:00.002Z

Following the success of a similar initiative in New York, TV channel HISTORY today launched a partnership with Foursquare that gives users of the geo-tagging service access to over 600 unique and quirky location tips, discounted deals across London and a brand new HISTORY ♥ London badge (pictured below). It's the first partnership between Foursquare and a TV channel in the UK and gives the service instant access to millions of HISTORY viewers. So what does this mean for geo-tagging and Foursquare in particular?

For HISTORY, the tie up marks the repositioning of the brand toward a more tech-savvy, brand conscious consumer group. New shows such as Mud Men and the forthcoming The Kennedys appeal to a younger demographic, and HISTORY sees social media as a key method of reaching them. Its strategy is based around accessing groups of people who wouldn't be traditional HISTORY viewers, and the Foursquare initiative certainly casts the brand in a new light as it utilises a platform that is, arguably, still the domain of early adopters. Within the next six months, however, this may not be the case if other big brands follow HISTORY's pioneering example.

At the launch of the partnership, Tom Davidson, managing director of HISTORY’s parent company AETN UK, said: "Our goal is to reach people who have not traditionally been interested in or engaged with history. We want a wider audience to enjoy it and this innovation is intended to make the HISTORY brand as well as the subject matter itself more accessible. We aim to connect with completely different people."

What is interesting about HISTORY's approach is that it hasn't set specific metrics for the project. To me this demonstrates a real understanding of the benefits of social media, targeting as it does brand awareness and positioning rather than meaningless number crunching. On this subject, Davidson said: "As a brand we're extremely innovative, so it's a natural step to be involved in new technologies [such as Foursquare]. Part of how we measure the success of the project is therefore simply being the first brand to do this in the UK. It's a project that will evolve over the next six months."

Foursquare has been somewhat overshadowed in the UK in recent months by Facebook Places, if not in users then certainly in awareness and talk. But the HISTORY partnership could give the platform a significant boost among London's 7.6 million residents and 1 million commuting workers. When it comes to mass marketing and brand exposure, TV still does, and perhaps always will, rule the roost over other media. TV coverage and link ups are somewhat of a Holy Grail for brands...and Foursquare just got that. So could this tie up be the thing that gives geo-tagging the push it needs for the UK to go check-in crazy? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

[disclosure: HISTORY is a BOTTLE PR client]

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If Twitter Breaks the News, Where Does That Leave PR?

2011-02-16T20:32:00.002Z

It’s no great secret that the social web is impacting the PR industry. You’d have had to have lived on the moon not to know that (although I suspect that given astronauts can now tweet from the International Space Station, even the moon may not be far enough to escape news and trends from planet Earth). But I think there’s more to it than simply evolving skill sets or the changing tools of the job. The decline of newspapers and the way that news now spreads online within minutes of an event occurring means that PR’s entire raison d’etre is altering.

Back in December , FIFA announced the host countries for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup Finals. The event was broadcast live on TV and radio across the globe. While I sat at my desk in the office, I tuned in to BBC radio to listen to the announcement through my PC. And then, about 20 minutes before the official declaration even took place, news started to spread through Twitter that England had failed in their bid to land the world’s biggest sporting event and that Russia and Qatar would host the competitions. I took these rumours with a pinch of salt at the time but, low and behold, they turned out to be spot on. What this proves is that Twitter doesn’t report the news: Twitter IS the news.

And if Twitter breaks news before any other source anywhere, where does that leave online news sites and, even worse, newspapers? It’s no wonder that paper circulations are in decline: at one time the morning papers broke the news, then TV broke the news but papers followed it up pretty closely. Now, however, Twitter breaks the news before it even IS news – papers seem positively prehistoric when they report it 24 hours later.

As for PR, our job used to be to provide newspapers, magazines and broadcast media with stories; facts and comments about client projects that managed or created reputation and demand. But is our job now to feed Twitter? Do we try to create news ‘breaks’ through seeding news to Twitter sources and journalists? Is that the way to create a real buzz? What do you think?

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Evaluating Social Communications: A New Model

2011-02-10T22:43:00.003Z

This is the second part of a three-part series on social media evaluation tools and techniques. You can read the first part here.

Social media is about branding: it builds awareness, it builds profile and it's a brilliant positioning tool. What it is not, at least most of the time, is a direct lead or sales-driving activity. And as I asserted in part one of this series of posts, if the impact of social media is on human behaviour, the direct ROI is very difficult to measure. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. In fact, our clients and directors demand it. So my big question is: how can we use an understanding of online human behaviour to measure social media marketing?

The key, I believe, lies in psychology and in developing a detailed understanding of how social media affects the decision making process. Only by doing this can we understand the true value of social media throughout the buying cycle, learn how to engage with and influence consumers effectively and measure the true outcomes of social marketing activity. The rest of the social media evaluation chatter is irrelevant.

Yesterday I attended the TechMAP seminar in London as part of Social Media Week, and was thrilled to hear a fantastic presentation by Benjamin Ellis on this very topic (note: other than this one paragraph, the rest of this post was written prior to this presentation). Benjamin presented many ideas that go against the social media grain, at times to a hushed room; ideas that echo the first post I wrote in this series (did i mention that you should read that?!). These included the assertion that the reason we're all so set on measuring social media is because business makes it necessary: someone has to pay for us to do it! He stated that numbers fit into the management paradigm, and so we end up taking ambiguous online conversations and trying to turn them into neat metrics to take to the boardroom, comparing this to the early days of the internet when we were forced to measure largely irrelevant website metrics.

I couldn't agree more with Benjamin's thinking and it gives me a little more confidence to reveal a model that I've adopted and am developing further to (hopefully) enable me to demonstrate the true value of social media to business owners. So here it is:

Influencing the Buying Process Through Social Media

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If followed correctly, this intentionally simple model enables brands to effectively engage consumers online throughout the entire buying process, no matter at what stage in that process they may be. But now it's over to you; I'm crowdsourcing this mother!

In the final part of this series I want to look at how we might use tracking tools to gauge highly relevant, people-centric performance indicators at each stage of the process in order to gain a realistic idea of ROI with none of the bullshit. But I believe in the wisdom of the crowd and I want YOUR help and input to develop this model further.

So please, tell me what you think of the model I've suggested here, both good and bad: how it can be improved and what specific evaluation tools, metrics and techniques are relevant to each stage. Leave a comment below, tweet me or email me: any and ALL input is very, very welcome and will be fully credited. If we collaborate, I'm convinced we can come up with something we can all use and benefit from. Over to you...

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The Death of the Written Word?

2011-02-09T07:44:00.001Z

This weekend saw numerous organised demonstrations across the UK in response to plans to close around 450 public libraries due to spending cuts caused by the recession. In my own quiet, leafy Oxfordshire village, where the most exciting thing to happen all year is when Morris Dancers come to town in May, over 200 people turned out to protest against the potential closure of the village library, led by TV presenter and local resident Kirsty Young. The ‘back off’ message to the country’s councils has been loud and clear. But it’s led me to wonder whether there actually is a future for libraries in an increasingly digital world?

Consider the facts. Electronic books for the Kindle now outsell paperbacks, having surpassed hardbacks six months ago and now selling more by a factor of three times. And e-readers have really only been around in any serious form for a year or so. Publisher Harper Collins reports that 25% of its sales are ebooks, up from only 6% a year ago. High street chain Waterstones, the last bastion of bookshops, lost nearly £10 million in the last six months. Under this sort of pressure, what sort of future exists for books as we’ve all grown up with them?

At first glance, this technological advance seems awful to most people: the death of the paperback?! But behind the statistics, some great things are happening. Kindles are fashionable...teen fiction is hot...children are suddenly enthusiastic about stories rather than video games. Reading is cool again. And how often do you think that a teenager goes to a library or reads an actual book?

So although I supported the Save Our Libraries campaign (in mind if not in body; someone’s got to babysit!) I can’t help but feel that the initiative and the hundreds of people who demonstrated (including my good wife) overlooked the huge grey elephant in the dusty and old-fashioned reading room: that of technology. Technology, as with the music industry, has changed our reading habits. The digital word on tablets, e-readers and smartphones is taking the place of the written word in books. Is this is a bad thing? No, not really, not if it encourages kids to read again. But what it means for the already museum-like public libraries, I’m not sure. Maybe county councils are right?

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The Fallacy of Social Media Evaluation

2011-01-28T07:16:00.001Z

This is the first part of a three-part series on social media evaluation tools and techniques.

There’s a lot of talk around social media and return on investment; how do we measure it, what are the most relevant metrics, what counts as good ROI, and on and on and on. But what the vast majority of this chatter fails to take into account is one thing: human behaviour. And so I’m just going to throw something out there...social media ROI is mostly bullshit.

Over the last few months I’ve been giving the subject of ROI a lot of thought. There are conventionally two spheres of social media evaluation; social metrics and business metrics. Social metrics are ‘soft’ metrics, things like follower numbers, retweets, impressions, subscribers, shares and comments. I use them visibly on this blog in the form of the tweet, recommend and share buttons. Business metrics are altogether harder, looking at website visits and source data, URL click-thros, conversion rates and average spend; they're about sales and the bottom line. That’s your Google or website analytics data. They’re all intertwined, as one set doesn’t mean much without the other in social media evaluation terms.

And yet neither sphere adequately demonstrates what’s really going on and, in my opinion, that’s why there’s so much hullabaloo about social media ROI. The last 18 months have seen a plethora of new monitoring tools being launched, but no-one’s really come up with a decent way of measuring the impact of social media yet. And why? Because the impact of social media is on human behaviour, and that is very difficult to measure.

Going back a few years, if I wanted a new TV I’d see ads, read a few reports and make a decision based on that information. Nowadays, however, if I want a new TV I’ll Google for suggestions, ask my networks on Twitter or Facebook for recommendations, read online product reviews, research websites, go back to my networks for opinions on my shortlist and only then, once I’ve chosen a product, will I research the best price I can find. So how on earth do you actually MEASURE what role social media played in all that? CAN you even measure it? I’d argue not. I'd argue that both social and business metrics are a load of tosh when you're trying to measure attitudes and opinions.

The closest we’ve come so far is sentiment analysis. But this either relies on automated programs that can’t possibly evaluate the nuances of the English language (show me a computer that understands sarcasm) or relies on human input that is extremely time-consuming and expensive. So where does that leave us? How can we possibly understand what’s going on in the minds of consumers?

In part two of this series I’ll take a look at the buying process and suggest a model in which brands can influence consumers before, during and after purchase to create an ongoing ripple effect throughout the social web.

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5 Reasons Your Facebook Page Has No Traction

2011-01-26T05:15:00.004Z

Facebook is increasingly becoming the centre of the known universe. Fact. It’s getting so big it’s developing its own gravitational field, and the entire planet could soon be turned inside out and swallowed inside a black hole (multi-dimensional physics permitting). With well over half a billion users, Facebook is prime for the marketers’ picking. And yet many businesses, large and small, struggle to gain a following and end up abandoning their pages or punting information to people who simply aren’t listening. This is down to fundamental errors in the way pages are put together and managed, and often comes down to a lack of understanding of Facebook as a social channel. There are a few common mistakes that I often see on Facebook that either stop me clicking the Like button or cause me to click the Unlike button.

1. You Only Display Posts by Page
When you first set up a Facebook page you’re given the option of what to display on your Wall – only your own posts, or posts by anyone who wishes to contribute. If you leave the default of ‘Only Posts by Page’ you’re effectively saying to me “I’m not interested in what you’ve got to say so I’m going to hide it away where no-one will see it”. Well gee, thanks, and excuse me if I never visit your page again then. Unless you’re Skittles and have 14 million fans that clutter up your wall, please change it. This is such a basic error that I see time and time again, and yet it takes only a few seconds to fix. Watch the short video clip below to see how...

2. There’s No Customisation
Making a Facebook page your own is dead simple now. It doesn’t take any great knowledge of html to implement a customised landing page and most of the Facebook apps to import blogs, Twitter feeds, video, polls and competitions are so simple a monkey could use them. So why aren’t you? If you make no effort to make your profile picture exciting (a simple corporate logo really doesn’t cut it), to welcome me to your page with a customised landing tab or to add content to your page with customised tabs, why would I bother hanging around? Answer: I won’t. Take a look here for more information on how to create a custom Facebook welcome tab.

3. Your Page Has Unused Tabs
Another very, very common mistake is to leave the default tabs on the page even if they’re blank. These will typically be Events, Discussions and Boxes. I find it really frustrating when I click on Discussions (for example) and find that there aren’t any, or that someone posted something six months ago that got one response. If you’re not using it, remove it (go to Edit Page/Apps, click on Edit Settings under the relevant tab and then click Remove). You wouldn’t have a blank page on your website would you? The same applies to Facebook pages. Leaving inactive tabs displays the fact that you really can’t be bothered.

4. Your Content Isn’t Social
Imagine picking up a copy of The Times and, rather than reading news and articles that interest you, it’s full of advertisements. That’s what some Facebook pages are like; narcissistic, self-absorbed push marketing that is entirely focused on what it sells. The admins of these pages only ever post salesy content about products and promotions and company developments. They never ask the opinions of their fans. They never even respond to comments (which are normally few and far between). Social media is called ‘social’ media for a reason, and there’s nothing duller than a company brochure in Facebook form. The most engaging pages post content that is quirky, interesting and intended to generate conversation. Yes, it’s important to publicise the brand and important developments; people want that as much as you do. But mix it up, make it interesting, post videos, pictures and jokes, throw in some random stuff. Vary your content and with everything you post, think ‘would I share this with my friends?’

5. Your Haven’t Sussed Out When to Post
You can post not enough content on Facebook. Or you can post too much content. Or you can post it at the wrong time of day. If I visit a page that’s updated once a week, I’ll generally leave immediately. That weekly post is going to have to be one pretty darned outstanding post to have me noticing it! But equally, I’ve followed pages before that post three, four of five times a day or, worse still, stream in their tweets. They don’t last long before either being hidden from my newsfeed or Unliked. I, typically, like to see at least one interesting update per day and generally recommend two, each at different times of the day. That in itself is a minefield, but experimenting with different times to find when your posts are most effective is important. Customise your page, vary your content and get your post frequency right and your page just might not suck!

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Divide and Conquer: How to Follow Numerous Blogs Effectively

2011-01-21T07:09:00.001Z

Towards the back end of last year I was following too many blogs. Getting 300 posts in your RSS reader every day is daunting, trust me. I found myself skimming titles and deleting most posts without even considering them, regardless of how useful they may have been. I couldn’t see what was good and what was bad, and it made the whole thing a bit pointless. But when it came down to taking blogs off my reading list, I found it extremely difficult; if they were on it, they were there for a reason.

So I’ve come up with a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a fox. A couple of months back, I wrote about the beneficial features of the new RockMelt social web browser, and it’s RockMelt that is at the centre of my new blog-following plan. Rather than using one source for reading blogs, I’m now using three: Google Reader, Facebook and RockMelt. Sounds complicated, but it's not. To initiate this sneaky plan I first divided the list of blogs I wanted to follow into three tiers:

Tier 1: those who publish less frequently but the content of which I highly value
Tier 2: those that publish multiple times per day and need some picking through to identify the juicy nuggets
Tier 3: the rest, who I like to keep an eye on

As tier 3 is less important to me, I deleted them from my RSS reader and started following via their Facebook pages so they’d appear in my newsfeed. I might not see all of their posts this way, but I can keep an eye on what they’re writing without it being too in my face. With tier 2, I again deleted them from my RSS reader and signed up to their feeds using RockMelt, placing the feeds in the right hand sidebar (for more on how to use RockMelt, see my previous post). Now, every time I’m on the web, I can see whether there are new posts from these blogs, and the easy to read pop-out window means that I can skim titles and summaries in double quick time without the numerous updates swamping the most important tier 1 posts I want to read.

The effect on Google Reader of this organisation is huge. Massive. I can’t stress enough what a revelation this has been to me. I’m now left with 20 or so blogs written by people I highly respect and ALL OF THEIR POSTS ARE VISIBLE. When I login to Reader I now have maybe 10 posts to sift through rather than 100. And that means that I give every single one more time and attention. As a result, I’m reading more relevant information, more challenging opinion and more useful stuff than I ever have before. In fact, I may well INCREASE the number of blogs I follow in Reader as a result.

That’s what I’m doing and I encourage you to try out RockMelt (if you need an invite, let me know) and get yourself organised. I hope you find it useful. But what do you do to keep your blog reading in check?

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Why PR Has to Chill Out and Accept Online Criticism

2011-01-19T07:20:00.002Z

PR is essentially about reputation management. Which makes us all, ever-so-slightly, control freaks. We like to be in charge of our brands and what people say about them. We like to steer the conversation. And we like to be able to positively influence what people think of them. That was all lovely and wonderful until recently. And then along came blogging. And Twitter. And Trip Adviser. And Facebook. And numerous other social channels where people could say what they like, when they like, how they like. And as PRs, we don’t like that. At all.

Gap and Starbucks have both recently come under fire in social media circles for having the audacity to alter their own, hard-earned brand equity and unveil new logos to their devoted fans. With the former, Gap in fact reversed its decision and stuck with its old/current logo. By why? Why did marketers and brand managers allow a spate of online criticism to completely change corporate strategy and waste (probably) tens of thousands of pounds? Did they seriously believe the Gap brand would be damaged by simply changing their logo, and that people would stop shopping with them as a result? In my view, backing down made things far, far worse. It made Gap look indecisive and stupid, rather than responsive.

From a PR perspective, we’re used to jumping on criticism and addressing it before it becomes a ‘crisis’. It’s all part of the job. But when it comes to online criticism, we can easily spend our entire working lives running around like headless chickens getting all worked up about the latest social media disapproval if we don’t just chill the hell out! What some forget (or perhaps don’t understand) is that it takes seconds to tweet something negative or post a comment on Facebook, and even less to click the Like button. It’s so easy a monkey could do it. But do the dissenting clicks of a few hundred monkeys really mean anything or hold any weight?

I’m all for crowd-sourcing; involving online communities in creative decisions at an early stage and gaining their input. But once a decision has been taken and announced, then surely we have to relax and expect some criticism. I’m not talking about being complacent and I totally advocate listening to what’s being said and acknowledging people’s feelings. Hell, apologise if appropriate. But people don’t like change and some will rise up against anything, especially when it comes to creative input. What’s more important is the big picture: does it really impact someone’s life that Starbucks changes its logo? Of course it doesn’t! People like Starbucks because of the coffee, not the logo! So Starbucks was right to stand firm, take the abuse and move on. Good for them.

For everyone working in PR and marketing, how about we learn to take a deep breath, sit back and really evaluate things before jumping in online? By all means involve your communities in the decision making process, listen to them and thank them. But once you decide on a course of action, stick with it and don’t get freaked out just because not everyone likes it. You’ll never please all of the people all of the time. Fact.

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Social Media ROI Turns Psychological as it Impacts the Buying Phase

2011-01-14T07:35:00.001Z

You may think I'm a little late on this, given that we're now two weeks into the new year. But I've been waiting. And watching. And listening. And reading. And as a result of that process, I'm now in a position to publish what I believe are ten of the most pragmatic insights into what the social web has in store for us in 2011.

For me, the next year is about benefits. It sounds obvious, but if there's no benefit to a marketing activity on a particular platform, then don't do it. End of story. 2010 was very experimental as we trialled and researched and learned. But the time has come, like a confirmed bachelor getting married, to settle down and make things work.

So network consolidation, mobile, content focus and a couple of more random predictions such as psychological ROI and the extension of decision making; they're all here. Enjoy!

Digital & Social Media Trends for 2011

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Research credits for this presentation: Katy Howell, Paul Harrison, Social Collective, EConsultancy, Gorkana, Chris Hall, Gemma Went, Mashable and CNN.

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