social media Archives - Page 2 of 2 - dancingmango

Personal branding is more than stoking your ego

Thursday, 26 March, 2009
By: marc

It is easy to knock social media and building a prescence and profile on the web as little more than stoking the ego. “I’ve got more Twitter followers than you”, “I’ve got more facebook friends, more subscribers to my blog, more linkedin contacts…” But there is more to it than that. The way you use social media should be about building you as a brand.

Take a look at David Armano’s excellent presentation on Brand U.0. Celebrities have brand, and with that comes influence. Similalry people like you or me who develop their brand start to have influence. And that influence gets you places. At ThoughtWorks we are recruiting for a new Information Architect role. Rather than describing the role in terms of skills and competencies, the starting point has been ‘we need a person “like that”‘, pointing to to both particular people within ThoughtWorks, and also on the broader web, looking at LinkedIn profiles, blogs etc. If you have a brand you have already made yourself stand out. In these challenging times your profile is not about your ego, it is about your future.

The application is irrelvent

Monday, 23 February, 2009
By: marc

We get confused when building applications; the technology should be incidental to delivering the experience, it should be the means rather than the end. Sadly both IT and marketeers usually don’t see it this way.

I was recently working with a telco who were running a campaign for a single application that sits on a Symbian phone and gives the user access to all their mobile services (rather than having to access them individually via the mobile web). This is not unusual, organisations marketing the technology rather than the benefit or the experience. The technology should be incidental to what you are selling.

It is hard to put it better than what Duncan Cragg writes

“What most people want on their mobiles is not the applications, but the stuff they animate.

People only accept the concept of applications (whether a native app or a Web app) because that’s all they’ve been offered, and it’s largely good enough. But no-one actually wants to download and launch and register and log in to a local find-your-friends application – they just want to find their friends in the area – now! And they shouldn’t then have to flip between the find-your-friends map owned by that application and the restaurant review map owned by another.

They don’t want Facebook videos and YouTube videos and phone videos. They just want to share videos. They shouldn’t have to think about whether to send a picture by MMS or to use an upload app, after remembering the login. They don’t want multiple ways of sending messages: IM, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. They shouldn’t have to think about how to tell their friends about some news item – whether to post a TinyURL link on Twitter or copy the text manually into Facebook.

They only want one shared calendar, not the phone calendar and a Google calendar and events on Upcoming.org, that need two more logins. They shouldn’t have to think about how to synchronise music or contacts lists on the phone, the iPod, the PC, some memory card and online. “

He goes on to introduce the ‘U-Web’ Mobile 2.0 platform. This is exciting stuff and well worth a read. The challenge is not just about the IT industry getting excited about U-Web, the drive needs to also come from marketeers focussing upon “what” experience they want the customer to enjoy rather than “how” it will be delivered. They shouldn’t be distracted by the application that the experience will be delivered through, they should focus on delighting the customer and driving value to the organisation.

Web 2.0 is far from dead

Tuesday, 17 February, 2009
By: marc

Web 2.0 is anything but dead. The term is no longer necessary as its concepts become ubiquitous.

So Web 2.0 is in terminal decline according to this TechCrunch article. The basis of this statement is anecdotal and from Google Trends which show a declining use of the term ‘Web 2.0’ in google searches. This tells us nothing, indeed I’d almost suggest that it is an indication of the health of Web 2.0. As it becomes ubiquitous people no-longer need to use the term. Do a similar trend search for ‘eCommerce’ and you will see a similar decline in that term and no-one is suggesting that business on the internet is in decline.

Web 2.0 was always a catch-all term for a number of concepts. If you look at ‘social media ‘ in Google Insights you will see that term on an upward trajectory (interestingly the area that is driving the greatest worldwide search traffic for that term is Singapore – anything to do with the Power of Influence?) Web2.0 as a term may be in decline, but everything it stands for – community, rich interactivity, new business models – I don’t see these things dying.

Are you listening to your customers?

Monday, 16 February, 2009
By: marc

Dear CxO,

Looking for free market research and customer intelligence? Look no further than Twitter.

You may not care about social networking, you may think that Web 2.0 is not relevant to your business. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care what your customers are saying. You may choose to ignore it, but people are out there talking about you; praising you, foul-mouthing you. Go to Twitter Search, type in your company name and see what your customers really think of you.

Twitter will be bigger than porn

Sunday, 8 February, 2009
By: marc

I started using the internet in 1991, I returned home from my first term at university buzzing about this thing that allowed me to talk to people the other side of the world in open conversations and to send ‘electronic’ mail to folk who were also connected. And it was all free. My friends back home weren’t convinced or impressed, “Yeah but someone’s got to pay for it… I don’t see the point of it… whatever”. So I buzzed on Usenet news and ELM and Gopher in my university bubble and the nascent growth of the internet largely passed these guys by. Until 1998 when I returned home from Ghana and a particular friend had got a computer, and the internet, and he was hooked. The internet had finally reached him. And for him the internet was porn.

If the internet was briefly kidnapped by ‘eCommerce’, it is finally reclaiming it’s roots as tool for connecting people. This is the social age and this is where I return to the above mentioned friend. Email and mySpace and Facebook have largely passed him by. He recently connected with me, but not by any of the more established social networking tools, but by Twitter. And I think that is significant. People who have “not seen the point” will start to get it, the traditional media right now is full of Twitter. Facebook have realised this and have opened up their status as a challenge. Maybe not bigger than porn, but this year will certainly be the year of Twitter.

What’s your social strategy?

Wednesday, 28 January, 2009
By: marc

Last year Twitter grew by an incredible 752%. That is something too large to ignore. It’s not just individuals who are twittering, corporates are getting in on the act. But do they think before taking the plunge?

The tools for getting a social presence on the web are easy. Twitter is free, there’s little effort to setting up a blog, it is simple to plug in reviews and ratings with BazaarVoice. But with the tools comes commitment; you need to start listening and have a strategy for responding.

Listening

You can start listening by setting up Google News Alerts. You will be alerted whenever someone is talking about you (or your competitors, or anyone or anything you like). It can deliver alerts as a digest or as they happen. This gives you a fundamental tool to find out who is talking about you and where they are doing it.

Responding

Knowing people are talking about you is one thing, knowing what to do about it is another. Making a decision to start engaging in social media is the right thing to do, but with that decision comes responsibilities. This is where having a clearly thought-out strategy is essential.

The strategy starts with a role, someone responsible for the conversation. Jeremiah Owyang lists a number of oganisations who have a dedicated role for social computing and community management – Dell has a VP Communities & Conversations. This is not a PR role, it is not something that will have messages crafted by committee with formal sign-off before speaking. It is about having an authentic voice, speaking with honesty and personality. Using Twitter to broadcast your traditional press releases is more likely to alienate than win you friends and lovers (you want people to love your brand right?).

Your customers want to help

“But why?” is a question I’ve often heard asked when talking about social media. “Why would anyone want to comment, or write advice, or be bothered to ‘get social’ with us?” Good experiences and (especially) bad experiences bring out the passion in people. And then there are the people who just like to have their voice heard. There’s an often used ratio, 1:9:90 – for every one regular contributer there are 9 occasional contributers (commenter’s) and 90 ‘lurkers’ – see Jakob Neilsen’s post on this.

Even if they don’t engage in the conversation themselves, most people listen to the contributer – it is (usually) an authentic voice, and that authenticity is priceless. Word of mouth is more valuable than any advertising, it is by far the most trusted source for purchase ideas and information (funny how so many organisations when they ask that question, “how did you hear about us, they list their channels- TV, Radio, Press, but often leave out recommendation from a friend, or heard about you from an acquaintances, or even “I just know you”). The challenge is to harness the conversation that others are having and where appropriate engage in it in a natural and honest way.

Rather than questioning why someone wants to talk about your brand, or offer support to the community on your products for free, build a relationship with that person. They will feel all the better for being listened to. Invite them to customer panels, tell them about your ideas, and let them generate buzz about your product.

Some listening anecdotes

Here are three brief anecdotes of organisations who have started by listening and then engaged in conversation. To be contrasted with doing it the other way round.

A client we’ve been working with had been ignoring the conversation in technical forums. There was a wealth of discussion about issues with their hardware, fixes and work-arounds. Much of the comment, whilst positive about the brand overall, was negative about certain aspects of the product and customer service. They took the plunge and engaged in the conversation. A regular poster who was being particularly vocal (and getting a lot of response) was directly connected. His issue was simply addressed. He then posted to the forum how he had been listened to, and the negative experience was transformed into a positive experience. Inviting him to customer panels makes him feel even more valued.

A while back I posted about a negative experience with Norwich Union. I blogged about the experience – a few days later I had a comment from their Head of Customer Experience. I was listened to. NU had a face, we spoke and I will now sing the praises of Norwich Union (I’m still a customer). I’ve forgotten what the problem I has was all about.

Another blog was about a poor experience with the Fedex website. Their Application Development Team left a comment thanking me for the feedback, again I was listened to. This has erased the memory of the bad experience I had.

Speaking, not listening

I don’t know anything about confused.com internal operations, but my experience suggests the following. Someone suggested they get a Twitter account and they started tweeting. Only their tweets were for PR messages. They were not ready for inbound Tweets from customers about them.

I heard about confused.com from a friend as a good site to get a home insurance quote from. I tried it and had a far from satisfactory experience. I persevered (because of the personal recommendations) but after a bunch of techinical problems with the site I gave up.

I then actively sought out confused.com on Twitter, my thinking if they have an account I can give them my feedback direct (I am one of the 1 of the 1:9:90 who so many business people don’t understand. I also have almost 17 years of usability experience behind me which I would be happy to share with them – as a customer, not professionally). So I did a search for confused.com on Twitter and found them. I was pleased to see they had an account and wrote a tweet to @confused_com. But it seems twitter was just a mouth piece for their PR and all I was greeted with was silence. I heard nothing back.

I returned back to their website a few days later and tried again to get a quote, this time I had an even worse experience, the site failed to return any results to me. Again, I Twittered about it. I was creating some negative feedback, and feeling doubly annoyed. Not only was I having a crappy experience but they weren’t listening to me on a channel I expect to be heard. Now I am a small fish in the big ocean and easily ignored, but look at Motrin and you can see the consequences of not engaging in the Twitter conversation.

To their credit, Confused.com have recently sent me a private message on Twitter informing me they are going to start “more interactive twittering soon”. I look forward to that. If there is a lesson in this it is when getting onto Twitter you have to be ready to engage in the conversation that is likely to ensue. Have a strategy before playing with the tools.

Meosphere. The Next Big Thing?

Thursday, 26 July, 2007
By: marc

Michael Klynstra writes enthusiastically about Meosphere. My first impression is that I’m not so sure. It may be a cool and compelling proposition but it is not obvious to the visitor what it is all about. Needing a large call to action “Click here to see how it works” should set the alarm bells ringing. The target audience (I assume) are typically time poor and have limited patience or attention span. Why should they invest time into learning how to use the site, let alone actually interacting with it? This is where Facebook is so good. Blindingly simple home page:

Facebook is a social utility that connects
you with the people around you.

Clearly expressing the site’s value proposition from the outset…

It’ll be interersting to see how Meosphere get on. Good luck to them, but I wonder if they could have made the home page slightly more compelling and inviting to an unitiated user… Having said that, once they’ve got a community and people are emailing links, is that so important after all? When I signed up to Facebook, it was on the basis of an invitation rather than a visit to the homepage. So maybe if Meosphere get critical mass of community then homepage design isn’t so important and indeed Michael’s words will come true; web 2.0 at its best.

(Oh, and I drove a 1967 Volkswagen Microbus at “highschool”).

Buy my bus to learn about community!

Thursday, 5 July, 2007
By: marc

When VW beetles, kombi vans, or any Volkswagen air-cooled motor pass each other, their owner’s wave. There’s an unofficial community around the product. How cool is that to have people passionate about product?

Do your customers wave each other? Do your products inspire a bond, knowingness amongst their owners, a community?

Maybe you’d like to experience that VW passion. Look no further than the baddest bus in town; my head-turning 15 window is for sale on ebay!