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.

Stephen Fry (Steve Forrest for The New York Times)

I’m really liking StephenFry.com, he has turned into a celebrity Social Media Evangelist.

The only thing that I question about his whole concept is the use of his own video content? Why is it not being hosted on a platform like Vimeo, Revver or Viddler? If people could embed his video content onto their own blogs and websites it would travel so much further, enabling him to gain more attention from the blogosphere and social video websites such as the ones that I have mentioned above.

I keep seeing various websites self hosting video content, personally think this is an expensive solution in comparison to all the free, community enabled, social video websites that are available.

In addition to cost the efficiencies of using social video websites, the marketing and distribution benefits exceed what can be achieved through self hosting.

I saw this interview live whilst I was eating my supper, other friends who also saw it said they cringed.

I’ve got all of Dizzees’ albums and I know for a fact he’s not stupid, some of his lyrics are quick witted and quite clever. Part of me thinks was he playing up to the camera?

Judging by the comments on youtube his views, combined with Jeremy Paxman selecting him for the interview did not go down too well with the public.

Did Obama win because of hip-hop? Er…No!

I do however think that rap superstars and I mean real rap superstars like Jay-Z and Puffy endorsing Obama definitely worked in his favour. Obamas’ political campaign was executed in a close to perfect manner, endorsements from key celebrities showed that he understood or at least was trying to understand youth culture and I believe this helped him secure a lot of crucial votes from younger 18-25 year old voters.

Who did McCain get backing from? Arnold “Hum-Vee” Schwarzenegger (I can’t believe I spelt that right the first time) and Sly Stallone, hmm…who do you think made the smart the move?

Either way if you were ever looking for a good example of word of mouth marketing try Jay-Z bigging up Barack Obama at a packed Glastonbury headline performance.

Soo every other brand or website is dying to be on-trend in regards to “social media” and “web2”. This has sparked a number of webmasters and developers to add “add this” or “tell a friend” buttons to their blogs or websites.

It’s a good move, and a quick win that I would certainly recommend, however, brand owners fail to realise that adding the little social bookmarking widget to their webpages only equates to half a job being done.

Social media evangelists and Brand Marketers should use social bookmarking websites to build social relations, I will illustrate how to do this with an example:

If I owned say…a shoe website and I added a social bookmarking widget to it, I would be sure to have people “digging” some of my pages. Aside from a few Digg’s and traffic from Digg itself I wouldn’t receive any other significant gains as result of adding the widget.

So…how do would I utilise Digg more effectively?

Well if my own website is all about shoes and fashion, I would scour the web for good content on these very topics and submit them to my very own branded Digg account.

This activity serves two purposes it would allow me, the brand owner to find out more about my trade and industry and it would also make my brands presence on Digg legitimate.

With this in mind I would be able to build relationships and communicate with other people who have shared interests. The good thing about using this approach to social bookmarking is that it is completely transparent and although my account would be branded, people would still engage with me as I have been harvesting information which is of a shared interest.

It’s not rocket science really, it’s merely using a platform for its intended purpose, however, the early days of “social media optimisation” saw a rise in spammer’s trying to game the system with alias accounts etc.

Like other types social engagement activity, if it’s done the right way and by this we mean the ethical way, it will work!

What’s the key ingredient? Just a little bit of graft

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.

I received an invite today on Facebook asking me to join a group for a company, my first reactions? Who and what the hell is this? I pretty much rejected it straight away.

There are lot’s of different types of groups on Facebook, fan based groups, interest groups and yes even brand groups.

Brand groups are often just set-up by normal people who are fans of brands or people who work for brands (brand evangelists).

There is a real need for social media marketers to understand how to use Facebook properly, there is no reason to spam people by sending invites to your brand group.

Social Media is all about permission marketing, if people like what you have to offer they will become a member of your Facebook group without any spammy requests.

LG have done good job of plugging their Facebook group on their social media hub (blog).

This allows people to join their group if they want to, in many respects a Facebook group should be seen as a brands own micro-social network.

Wake up people! Stop knocking on doors, provide people what they want by means of content and information, in time you will find people join your brand group automatically.

Twist:

Twitter Spectrum:

TwitStat:

Sorry about the doom and gloom but each of tools provide interesting findings and different ways to analyse the “twitosphere” (sorry I had to get that one in).

Here comes another buzz word “Halo effect”, it is clear in the tables above that over the last few months tweets have increased as result of heightened media coverage (and banks collapsing).

The main point to take away from my experiment is that these tools should be used as part of social media measurement tool kits, overlaying trend lines from other tools and charts could help to paint more complete and comprehensive picture of social media activity as a whole.

I’ve been watching Jamie’s Ministry of Food for a couple of weeks and I think it’s brilliant! A real life example of a social experiment that encourages people to cook, eat well and pass on their learnings.

In the show Jamie drives around Rotherham, knocking on peoples doors, holding cooking classes and getting people to “pass it on” that’s real WOM in effect!

The show covers all the ups and downs of his campaign and the effects it had on the community he had been working with.

Not many people in Rotherham cared about cooking or eating healthily, Jamie (probably without knowing it) has followed some of the best practice recommendations we pass onto clients in order to make their social initiatives work effectively:

> Create a value exchange – Jamie got involved himself and passed on his knowledge

> Encourage advocacy and WOM – His slogan and concept “pass it on” was designed to get people to teach each other how to cook and take part in the greater initiative

> Aggregation – He organised branded events and set up a Ministry of Food, both were tools or hubs, which bought his communities and advocates together along with new followers

> Taking a personal approach to managing negative commentary and PR – He addressed any cynicism or criticism about his concept personally by converting skeptics through providing examples of proven successes

We often tell clients that utilising social media is graft, it’s hard work and this is especially true if your brand or offering has no equity with your prospective audience.

Jamie really grafted in order to get his concept to work and as a result of his efforts the followers and advocates he gained became loyal, helping him to make his concept a success.

This show is a must see for any Brand Evangelist or Social Media Practitioner.

When I was a kid I used to get taken to asian fabric shops by my parents every other Saturday. As my parents were regular customers they used to have a bit of banter with the shop keepers who used to serve them complimentary chai and food.

You don’t exactly see this happening in John Lewis, but we may not be too far away from it now.

Brand owners are definitely trying to get closer to their clients as they’re understanding the benefits of WOM and client retention. WOM, Social Media and advanced CRM techniques seem to be at the top of every brief I see at the moment.

I believe we’re seeing this trend for a couple reasons, firstly the credit crunch! The cost of acquiring a new customer and educating them about your brand’s product offering is expensive in comparison to up-selling to existing customers.

Secondly brand owners are understanding the effectiveness of WOM coupled with good CRM. Good CRM = happy and loyal customers > happy and loyal customers tell their friends about good brands (the WOM bit) > friends end up buying from a brand they partially trust due to WOM recommendations.