Uba Kontrovasie

Digital Freegans

Not too long ago I was watching a TV program about Freeganism and Freegans, it was a Cutting Edge style show, not quite sure what channel it was on. It got me thinking…

The web is turning people into Digital Freegans, people who use the webs’ free resources as alternatives to traditional paid for sources of information, entertainment and applications.
 
People often ask me about the longevity of social media. With so many brands jumping on the bandwagon, will social media end up on the pile of communication methods that people become dismissive of?
 
Brian Solis tweeted one of his findings recently: “Only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs”, stats like these possibly support the sceptical question raised above. There are many brands embracing blogging, social media etc. The problem is they’re probably not “doing it right”, and they’re probably not working to deliver any value to the audiences or communities they wish to interact with.
 
I believe we’re heading towards to the second evolution in social media/marketing, the most helpful brands are the ones that will carry on growing. Everyone in the social media business, at some same stage probably talks to their clients about delivering value exchanges and listening to audiences. I think there’s another magic ingredient that should be added to the mix, it’s called innovation!
 
Not only should brands be working hard to deliver value to the public, they should also be working to deliver value in the most innovative way possible. In time this will mean going beyond blogging and actually delivering personal B2C responses via mediums such as video, and this is where platforms like Seesmic deliver real beneficial functionality.
 
With so much useful content available on the web, the successful brands appear to be the ones that have taken an extra step forward and delivered value in innovative ways.
 
Take for example Gary Vaynerchucks’ Wine library TV, it was one of the first blogs of its kind and even now with so many wine review websites, forms, blogs and TV shows it is still as popular as ever.
 
His success can be accredited to his full length, online TV shows, which are all free to watch (true freegan feast) and secondly his content delivery is innovative in comparison to other wine review shows.
 
He makes wine accessible and easy to understand through his style of presenting. Let’s face it we’re all normally use to out of touch, snoty characters who keep droning on about the South of France, Gary changes all this with informal style of presenting and humour.  

So…whilst it is important to build relationships with key influencers and interest led communities, it is also important to provide something for the growing number “Digital Freegans” who occasionally may require something that a brand could deliver, thus making that initial connection.

The Audio Freegans

  
The music industry and its artists claim that they have been the victims of music piracy and attribute this to declines in financial growth.
 
What they call piracy should be seen as digital freeganism, which empowers the consumer. P2P exchanges and bitorrent websites have given people limitless access to music they have never had.
 
This movement has turned people into more informed music critics, that are more likely to invest further into quality artists. We’re heading towards an era where an artist can no-longer release an album with two good songs and fill the rest of the album up with crap! Sorry to be blunt it’s just the way it is. With so much good music freely accessible, nobody in their right mind will continue to pay for mediocre material.
 
If people are downloading music for free, the next most profitable revenue stream for the music industry resides with live performances, merchandise, special edition TV appearances and guest journalism. In order for these opportunities to arise artists need to turn themselves into brands.
 
This movement will require some give and take, artists and labels and will need to become more lenient towards downloading and see it as a brand building activity, which allows people to become more familiar with them. By feeding the freeganism, or at least not trying to stamp it out, artists can aid efforts of gradually turning themselves into brands with multiple revenue streams.

Tags: content, Digital Music, free content, freeganism, social media

The value of listening

I always notice that when people start talking about Social Media they often refer to it as a new method of talking to audiences, customers and people with shared interests.

I suppose none of this is untrue, however, I rarely hear people refer to Social Media as an alternative method of LISTENING to audiences, customers and people with shared interests.

I always tell clients; if you’re using social media effectively, anything in between 50-60% of your time should be spent on listening to people.

Forums, blogs, Facebook groups and even microblogs hold so many answers in regards to how people feel about a brand and its offerings. For this reason I believe Social Media should be perceived as a valuable quantitative and qualitative research base.

Information derived from social environments can and should be used to influence product development, CRM/after-sales strategy and even marketing and advertising for traditional channels.

Should every brand be utilising Social Media?

Yes! With so many social platforms available to the public, every brand should be utilising Social Media in order to listen to relevant online communities and key influences at the very least.

For years brand owners have spent millions of pounds on product and market research. Whilst these processes are all still necessary, it is also important to realise that the foundations for these types of research can be laid with insight from social spaces and assessment of online conversations.

Tags: listening, research, social media, social media measurement

IAB Social Media Handbook

For the past 3 months I have been working with the recently formed IAB Social Media Council. The council has been set-up to help both agencies and marketer’s gain a better understanding of social media and some of its components.

It has been great collaborating with fellow council members, who have all provided unique and insightful views on managing social media effectively. 

Over the next few months the council will work to produce a number of supplements, seminars and information packs about social media to serve the very purpose of informing agencies and brands. 

The first completed resource is the Social Media Handbook, which can be found be on the IAB Social Media Council webpage.

Tags: IAB, social media, social media council, social media strategies

Bring on the trumpets!

God I love this ad! Stupid, pointless and just plain funny! I hope these guys play on the characters throughout the rest of their offline/online comms. Possibilities are endless and I expect to see more of the same humour in other channels and formats.

Genius!

Tags: Advertising, Digital Planning, funny tv ad, offline advertising, Offline Media, tv ad

Thinking about who reads your content

I remember studying an e-learning module at University during my final year, it involved learning about different learning styles and the psychology behind learning.

One of the learning theories we covered was called VARK learning styles by Flemming and Mills.

The theory outlined four main types of learning style/persona:

- Visual
People who are visually stimulated learn more effectively through images and videos
- Auditory
Learning through sound based mediums such as lectures, music etc
- Read/Write
People who learn most effectively through reading and writing
- Kinesthetic
Learning via vocation or “doing”

Some of my day to day work involves content consulting and advising clients how, what and where to place content on their websites. One key person I always keep in mind is the reader.

If we refer back to VARK we can see four distinct personalities, it is therefore important to identify how your website and its content will cater for these personalities.

Some will argue that a lot of this is hard to determine without quantitive and qualitative research, however, stepping back and using a common sense approach can sometimes be quite effective.

Take an insurance company for example: they could publish online information about their policies in so many ways, some people (including me admittedly) are lazy about the reading the small print so why not publish it onto a video as an alternative?

A couple of years ago I was working on a project with the Beeb for children, it allowed me to gain an insight into how they were teaching children in a Kinesthetic manner, through games and learning tools. The project seemed to take into account the attention spans of their audiences (children) and then provide them with learning tools, which kept them engaged through participation.

So what’s the moral of my story? People absorb information in different ways, the Read/Write types just want the facts and the text, whilst others will prefer different mediums. It is important to make sure the core pieces of content on your website cater all types of learning style/persona.

The easier you make it for people to learn about your brand and it’s offerings, the faster they will understand what your brand has to offer.

(Just chucking it out there… I’m no UE expert, just thinking aloud)

Tags: content optimisation, content planning, elearning, VARK

Kids and Kom-pu-ters

I was with family on Sunday, my little nephew (aged 9) went into his bedroom came back out with his laptop. Not just any old laptop my I add, a state of the art Dell Inspiron. 

As he was loading up Roxio photo software to show me a slideshow of their holiday (which he compiled and edited) he continued to tell me the spec including; clock speed, hard drive capacity and other particulars.

Coming from a big family all my nieces and nephews from the age of 9+ seem to be on Facebook and they all have fast computers and broadband at home. 

Noticing all of this was quite a fortunate coincidence as I had to recently cook up some research ideas for a project centered around children. 

Naturally the project would require understanding digital natives and carrying out qualitative and quantitative research. However, without doing a single piece of work I learned a lot from just watching the kids play with their gadgetry at our family get together. 

I sound like my Dad but when I was their age I used to word process my homework on a hand me down IBM DOS based machine, using Wordstar and a dot matrix printer, which was basically a typewriter with a printer cable. 

I got my first all singing and dancing “multimedia” PC in year 9 of upper school, oh how things have changed!

Tags: children, digital natives, elearning, kids, research