The balance of power in social media relations

February 6th, 2012

The recent move to force TripAdvisor to change its marketing messages was interesting and a friend’s experience with user reviews has added to that in the past week.

My friend has an on-line passport photo business, Paspic, and he found a review that was damaging. It appeared second in the search results. The review made accusations that were, to his mind, wrong and untruthful but he was unsure of what to do.

The review site was not immediately responsive to his appeals for discussion and removal of the offending text and he had justifiable concerns that his business could be badly damaged by the continued presence of the remarks.

It was a classic case of the “little guy” against the bigger power.

In this case, the little guy won and I hope it shows some rebalancing of social media relations. The big fish can easily bully and ignore the little ones.

My friend emailed and called Google, explained his problem and his view of the legal situation. Within 24 hours the offending post had gone from the search rankings - and the offending text had been deleted from the reviews site.

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Tweet limit impacts Social CRM effectiveness - just ask O2

February 1st, 2012

The development of Social CRM has been well documented over the last few years, and we have written a number of posts on the subject, sharing Liberate Media’s experiences of Social CRM campaigns.

However, a very real issue in the development of Social CRM, at least in terms of Twitter usage, was highlighted last week by O2 who exceeded their daily limit while attempting to respond to a breaking communications crisis. O2 asked Twitter for an extension on the amount of tweets it could send, (Twitter’s daily limit is 250 direct messages a day, and 1,000 tweets) but this was refused.

O2′s PR and social media campaigns manager, James Paterson, confirmed the issue at last week’s 1-2-1 Digital Strategy Summit, run by Marketing Week. In fact, he confirmed that O2 actually accrued the same amount of ‘mentions’ in one day as it does in a normal week.

If you are not familiar with the issue, O2 was attempting to respond to the news that user’s mobile phone numbers were being leaked to websites that they visited.

In the Marketing Week piece, Paterson said it was important that O2 did “not stay quietly in [its] shell” as news circulated about the data leaks and that the company employed a strategy immediately to respond to user questions and communicate that it was investigating the issue.

The mobile operator did utilise other tactics as part of its Social CRM response, i.e. preparing a “Q&A” blog post to explain the technical reasons behind the data leak and to apologise for the concern caused.

Paterson said: “We wanted to respond to as many people as possible with fair answers. In the past we may have just given a Q&A to the well-known media outlets, but our people understand that if you answer queries and communicate to people on social media straight away, problems tend to be resolved more quickly.”

However, although O2 followed a clear strategy for its response, it was hindered by Twitter’s account limit.

Twitter has commented on the limit issue: “Limits alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter, and reduce downtime and error pages. For the sake of reliability, we’ve placed some limits on account actions like following, API requests, direct messages, and updates.”

“The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. Retweets are counted as updates.”

These rules obviously reduce the effectiveness of Social CRM response mechanisms for large brands, although in fairness Twitter was not designed as a CRM channel, therefore it has no responsibility to look out for such problems.

However, as Twitter continually looks towards brands to bolster its revenue strategy, it’s likely that it will not only expand this function, but also charge for it, a charge that i’m sure the majority of brands would be willing to pay.

In this instance O2 responded to a breaking issue well, and tried to be open by answering as many of its customer tweets as possible, but this was quickly curtailed when Twitter would not allow any further tweets that day.

This issue, and the others that are sure to follow, further highlight a real flaw in many social CRM strategies, while also drawing attention to a revenue opportunity for Twitter. If Twitter is not already working on a paid response they are likely to be jumping on it rapidly in the near future.

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Google changes the rules and upsets Twitter, among others

January 12th, 2012

Earlier this week Google announced a number of changes, which apply to the U.S. only at this stage, and are designed to accelerate personal search, and move towards social search.

The three changes fall under the following categories:

First: Personal results, aimed at helping you to find more relevant to…well…you.
Second: Profiles in search, meaning you can more easily identify people you’re close to or want to follow.
Third: People and pages, which focuses on helping you to find profiles and Google+ pages related to memes or topics of interest.

The additions offer more meaningful ways to connect with people around you, straight from the search results.

This all sounds well and good, and personalising and or customising results to be more relevant can only be more positive, can’t it?

Many commentators such as the Guardian and BBC have picked up on the other side effect of these changes which is to make Google+ much more relevant. For example, when you search for information, particularly about individuals, results from the social network will be prominently displayed on the first page of results, assuming you are a member.

That makes Google+ a much more attractive social network, as users will see fewer results from outside it when they search for information.

As you might expect, Twitter has offered its opinion on the issue, as it has perhaps the most to lose. Twitter’s lead lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, called it a “bad day for the internet“, and suggested - as a former Google employee - that there would have been dissent internally “at search being warped this way“.

Twitter later made a formal statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet.

“As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users.”

Others have also criticised the change, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land commented: “Search engines are supposed to send you away to the best information, even if they don’t have their own in stock. Google has previously been excellent at providing links to the most suitable information.

“Today’s change is one of the few times where I’m thinking ‘What the hell are you doing, Google?’”

Getting to the heart of the matter, Google was always going to find a way to move its social network, which is so far behind the game, to the front. Its best strategy to achieve this is to link its social network more closely to its search engine, which is after all the most popular in the U.S and Europe. But is that fair?

Google’s decision to favour Google+ posts which would not rank highly by its normal criteria (defined by the number of “authoritative” pages on the web linking to it) could suggest that it is favouring its own product in order to grow it more quickly. That in turn could breach antitrust (or competition) laws.

Twitter and Facebook content does not generally appear in Google search results because neither site provides Google with unlimited access to their content.

Twitter formerly had an agreement in which Google paid for access to index its database directly, but Twitter chose not to renew the agreement, according to a statement placed on Google+ by an official Google account, which said it was “a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments” because “they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer“.

Although these changes are likely to head to Europe eventually, the Guardian piece suggests Google may have to think twice about introducing the changes over here because it has a greater share of search in European countries, meaning a ruling on it affecting the market is more likely, and also if the changes extend to results on Android phones, then it may face more urgent calls for an antitrust investigation.

This wouldn’t be the first time that there has been a call for Google to be investigated on such grounds, but if these changes do come to Europe as expected, we could be on the verge of a few interesting legal actions.

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Do you own your social profile?

January 5th, 2012

Recently the issue of social profile ownership has come to the fore with the very public case
of Noah Kravitz, a blogger based in California who is being sued by his former employer, PhoneDog,  which is seeking damages because he failed to relinquish his Twitter account when he left the company to work for a rival.

This probably sounds ridiculous, but we have already experienced a similar case in the UK as far back as 2008, when a recruitment consultant working for Hays,  Mark Ions, was ordered to give the rights to his LinkedIn account to his former employer. The court ruled that information of a confidential nature was collected during his work and that the company deserved to have full access to his account. Conversely, last year the BBC’s chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg moved from the BBC to ITV and took her Twitter account, which had 58,000 followers with her. The BBC did not seek legal ownership of her account, although there was discussion of the issue elsewhere.

You may think this is a crazy conversation considering the social profiles were in the individual’s name, but the employers have a good argument if the profiles were used solely, or at least for the majority of time, for work purposes, contain work-based contacts and in effect represent the individual’s record of work-based conversations.

That’s not to say I agree with the ruling, far from it, but we need to be aware of the slow moving legal response to fast moving technologies. In other words, the law doesn’t move as quickly as social media, so expect rulings to be based on the most sensible work-based comparison, which generally would have remained the property of the employer after the employee left, e.g. customer files and or contact books. That being said, one would hope that in most cases our social profiles represent a mixture of personal and work-based discussion, so we should not see ownership battles ongoing between employers and employees, and of course this issue could have been avoided if relevant social media guidelines were in place.

It would be interesting to see the outcome of a similar case in a PR, digital or social agency, and how that might affect future norms between employers and employees across the sector. However, so far it seems common sense has prevailed, or perhaps policy has won the day.

In the current PhoneDog case, the company has said that it is taking the action because it had invested in growing the number of followers that Mr Kravitz had on Twitter and the account was its property, alleging that those followers are, in effect, a customer list and PhoneDog’s property. The company wants Kravitz to pay $340,000: $2.50 per follower per month for 18 months.

PhoneDog was quoted in the New York Times saying: “We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”

Jon Rettinger, President, TechnoBuffalo (Noah’s current employer) responded with the following statement: “I have remained silent on the issue, privately supporting Noah, hoping that this issue would be resolved. However, further reflection and consultation has made me realize the time for silence is over. TechnoBuffalo is a news outlet, and this situation quite clearly has become news. We stand firmly behind Noah, disagree with the frivolous suit PhoneDog has filed, and hope swift justice will be served. This equates to school yard bullying, and should be met with disgust by the world. We stand behind our employees as we would family. Noah has the full support of the Herd. I urge you all to speak up!”

A hearing in the case, PhoneDog LLC v. Kravitz, is scheduled for January 26 in San Francisco and I expect some interesting responses from organisations across the world, in terms of tightening up policies, whatever the outcome.

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Why take the Google+ page plunge?

November 18th, 2011

Google+ launched Google+ pages last week, in direct competition with Facebook, and the evidence shows that many brands have set up a page over the first week of activity, at least according to research by SEO firm BrightEdge, who confirmed ‘61 percent of world’s top 100 brands have already created Google+ pages‘, which is pretty impressive considering the time frame.

The question that keeps coming up is: ‘Why do I need a Facebook page and a Google+ page?’ Many of those brands that have taken the plunge already will have grabbed their Google+ page, simply to secure it, which is reason enough at least in the short term. Some may be surprised to hear though that it’s easy to set up fake pages so look for the verified badge when you visit the site.

So why does a brand need a Google+ page? Well, there are many reasons, 18.5 of which are defined in Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp’s piece on the Drum last week, and as he suggested, the integration of Analytics, YouTube, Adwords, Picassa offers an advantage over Facebook, and perhaps an insight into the longer term strategy.

Obviously Facebook is the prime motivation for the Google+ launch, and many feel Google+ is too far behind to mount an effective challenge, but the issue here is not so much about the stand alone effectiveness of Google+ vs Facebook, but the sheer scale of Google products that Google + already integrates, and will undoubtedly increase in the future. Let’s also not forget Google’s strength, its search engine, which has led to its Google+ pages already out ranking Facebook brand pages, which is reason enough for some brands to get involved.

The BrightEdge analysis showed Google+ pages on average appeared in the top 12 Google search results for the corresponding brand, while the brand’s Facebook pages on average appeared in the top 13 or 14 listed results.

The flexibility in connectedness, and search, gives Google the long term edge in terms of synching with its full range of services. Of course many services also synch with Facebook, but Google’s vision seems to take this to another level. We’re not talking about beating Facebook, Google is simply building around it and making it less relevant.

The reality is we’re a long way away from that today as 94 percent of the Top 100 brands analysed by BrightEdge have a presence on Facebook, and in terms of the big brands, like Coke, McDonalds and Verizon each only has dozens of fans on Google+, but millions of Facebook fans. The review of Facebook and Google+ properties for the top 100 brands showed a collective total of almost 300 million Facebook fans, compared to approximately 148,000 Google+ followers for these same brands.

Looking at the figures today, the task ahead of Google+ seems insurmountable, but i suspect the gulf between Facebook and Google+ will fall as the connected battle gets into second gear, and Google has already announced a pilot program that will allow businesses and brands to manage their Google+ Pages using a number of third-party applications, including Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue.

The issue is not so much about Google+ catching Facebook, but about offering a viable and useful reason to have a Google+ page as well. We may see different verticals opting for different networks based on reach and audience in the future, but with these options brands have ever more increasing routes to listening and engaging with their communities.

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61% of Britons do not want to engage with brands on social networks

November 10th, 2011

The findings of TNS’s Digital Life study, A global survey that is billed as the most comprehensive view of how more than 72,000 consumers in 60 countries behave online and why they do what they do, were revealed today.

The full details on the research can be seen here and in brief the survey found that 57 per cent of people in developed markets* do not want to engage with brands via social media - rising to 60 per cent in the US and 61 per cent in the UK. Of the 72,000 surveyed between June and September 2011, 2,093 were Britons.

However, the research also shows 47 per cent of digital consumers now comment about brands online, and 54 per cent of people admit social networks are a good place to learn about products, which shows a willingness to get involved where there is relevancy or a reward for doing so, proved by the following stat: 61 per cent of consumers are driven to engage with brands online by a promotion or special offer.

The figures are a little more encouraging in Fast growth markets** , which were found to be far more open to brands on social networks. Just 33 per cent of Colombians and 37 per cent of Mexicans said they don’t want to be bothered by brands online, while 59 per cent of people across fast-growing countries see social networks as a good place to learn about brands.

Interestingly, the findings showed that more people like to praise than complain online (13 per cent vs. 10 per cent), which goes against the old understanding that people are more likely to complain, if only just.

So does this mean that brands are wasting their time and money by developing social campaigns? Well, if they are doing it just to tick a box, or simply to say to the MD ‘we have a Facebook profile’, then yes, they are. This is not a new learning, bad social campaigns do more harm than good, and taking a broadcast methodology online will only serve to highlight the lack of understanding of the brand, and return little in the way of results.

Although there are many social commentators banging on about the importance of the theory of social communications and the importance of listening to a community, understanding its needs and holding a two-way conversation, none of which is new or exciting, the message doesn’t seem to be getting through.

There are many more bad examples of social brand campaigns than good ones, and research such as this only goes to prove that education isn’t getting through to those that hold the budgets, and perhaps also a reflection to those that the brands trust to carry out social campaigns.

There is no doubt that individuals as a whole do not particularly wish to engage with a brand online for no reason, unless of course they have an offer or reward, why would they?

However, if a brand, individual or charity is truly engaged with its community, offers relevant and useful content, understands the platform on which they are communicating and actually listens to its audience, the likelihood of engagement will be higher. Not because it’s a brand, but because the individual believes the engagement is worthwhile.

So, should we all go away and give up on social communications, or should we just start being social in our communications?

*TNS defines developed markets as: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.

** Fast growth markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Columbia, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam.

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Social Media adoption stagnates among Fortune 500

October 27th, 2011

Interesting research from the University of Massachusetts shows that for the first time in 4 years there has been virtually no change in Fortune 500 companies adopting Facebook, Twitter or Blogging, which is a surprise to say the least.

According to the research by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, Senior Fellow, Society for New Communications Research & Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, nearly one third of Fortune 500 are without either a Twitter or Facebook account. While the percent of companies blogging remains at 23%, that number now represents 114 companies with blogs instead of the 116 recorded last year.

Dr Barnes, suggests: “These results may signal a levelling off and possibly retrenchment when it comes to the adoption of social media among the 2011 Fortune 500. There is also evidence of change in the adoption of these tools by industry and a clear sign from some companies that these are not part of their communications strategy. Given that the Fortune 500 are the titans of American business, we may be seeing the slowdown in business adoption of social media. At the very least, this group appears to have slowed or stopped its adoption of the three most prominent tools - Blogging, Facebook and Twitter.”

The full research can be downloaded here and key findings include:

• 23% (114) of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog. This represents a levelling off since 2010 and only a 1% increase over the 2009 study.

• Fortune 500 companies are blogging at a lower rate than other business groups, specifically the Inc. 500. In 2010, 50% of the Inc. 500 had corporate blogs and in 2009 45% had externally-facing corporate blogs.

• 62% (308) of Fortune 500 primary companies have corporate Twitter accounts. This is an increase of only 2% over the 2010 Fortune 500.

• 58% (289) of the 2010 Fortune 500 have a Facebook presence. There is an increase of only 2% over the 2010 Fortune 500.

• Specialty Retail stores are most likely to have a blog. These include Home Depot, Best Buy, Toys-R-Us and BJ’s Wholesale.

• 31% of the 2011 Fortune 500 do not have a Twitter account or a Facebook presence.

The figures are interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, does this really show a slow down in social adoption among the biggest organisations in the U.S? Or simply a reflection of the vertical structure of the Fortune 500, which at this (still) relatively early stage of adoption means those outside of the key sectors (Retail, Auto, Finance, Travel for example) are unlikely to adopt as yet.

Could this slowdown be linked to a pull back on budgets as a direct result of the economic slow down, and a more sustained focus on traditional and boardroom-accepted communications / marketing focuses?

However, whatever potential excuses we put forward, it’s clear that there is still much to be done in terms of educating large corporates in social media adoption, and more specifically its potential benefit. We also need to put more focus on making social relevant to vertical organisations / sectors, by highlighting specific approaches such as Social CRM, and Social Business.

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Turkey offers third most engaged online audience in Europe

October 19th, 2011

Comscore has released an overview of internet usage in Europe and Turkey, ahead of its slot at Webrazzi in Turkey today, where comScore Managing Director Mike Read will be presenting on the future of online measurement in Turkey, as well as an overview of the internet, globally.

The headline grabber is that of Europe’s 372 million unique visitors, Turkey accounted for 23.1 million unique visitors during August 2011, and is apparently the third most engaged online audience in Europe. Turkey’s connected population spent 45.3 billion minutes on the internet.

As for specific sites in Turkey, unsurprisingly, Facebook was the most engaging site, with 13.1 billion minutes spent on the site, accounting for 28.8 percent of all time spent online during the month. International sites Facebook, Microsoft Sites (4 billion minutes) and Google Sites (3.9 billion minutes) took the top 3 spots with the remainder made up of local Turkish sites.

As for the rest of Europe, The UK showed the highest engagement with users spending an average of nearly 35 hours online, up 1.5 hours from the previous month. The Netherlands ranked second (32.8 hours per month), closely followed by Turkey, where the average internet user spent 32.7 hours online consuming 3,706 pages per month, the highest consumption amongst all countries reported.

Germany still leads the way in terms of users with 50.4m, ahead of the Russian Federation, at just under 50m, 42.2m in France and 37.3m in the UK.

In terms of specific destinations, Google’s various sites, including its search engine, Gmail and YouTube - attracted 372m visitors, beating the 256m posted by Microsoft’s online properties.

VKontakte, a Russian equivalent of Facebook, has a user base of 51m people, who were active on its site for an average of 430 minutes.

Overall, web users were exposed to 989m pages in August, with Facebook on 163m.

Data sourced from comScore

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MySpace to relaunch again?

September 20th, 2011

Is MySpace set to rise from the jaws of defeat again? Apparently so, according to this report.

MySpace had planned a summer press event to showcase its music-led platform, but was cancelled. The new plan to release an updated platform, including a Justin Timberlake (investor) concert, which has been planned for the Advertising Week event in New York next month.

MySpace had 33 million visitors to the site in August, but at its peak it had 100 million users. A 44 percent decline compared to a year ago (comScore).

It will certainly be interesting to see what sort of innovations are planned to help combat its decline, the last relaunch was cleaner, with a new design that puts content centre stage. It was also smarter, providing you with a personalised experience by recommending content based on your interests.

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Facebook introduces a subscription button, while Twitter launches analytics

September 15th, 2011

The giants of social networking have been busy this week with the launch of new features which will prove useful, and change the focus and reporting for digital campaigns.

First to Facebook, which announced the Subscription button yesterday. This allows users to choose exactly what they see in their news feed, both in terms of narrowing the noise from friends and expanding subscriptions beyond friends to include contacts of interest, e.g. journalists, political figures, bloggers etc.

From a marketing perspective it will place further emphasis (if any was needed) on quality and useful content that can be subscribed to, even if pages are not liked and individuals followed.

The total number of people subscribing to posts and the number of people you’re subscribed to will appear on your profile. Facebook has also confirmed that the subscribers tab will replace ‘likes’ as the most accurate engagement indicator, which will change the focus of many Facebook campaigns and again reflects the push towards being useful rather than just popular.

You can read the full update from Zach Rait who posted on the Facebook blog yesterday and Mashable has also posted on the launch.

In brief, Facebook says: “In the next few days, you’ll start seeing this button (the Subscribe button) on friends’ and others’ profiles. You can use it to:”
1. Choose what you see from people in News Feed
2. Hear from people, even if you’re not friends
3. Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends

Over to Twitter, where Twitter Web Analytics is now being introduced.

Christopher Golda at Twitter posted about the launch on Tuesday, confirming:

“Today we’re announcing Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites. Twitter Web Analytics was driven by the acquisition of BackType, which we announced in July.”

The product provides three key benefits:
• Understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
• See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site
• Measure the effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration

The tool will allow brands to understand how website content is being shared across the Twitter network and view the amount of traffic Twitter sends to a site.

Golda continued:“People have struggled to accurately measure the amount of traffic Twitter is sending to their websites, in part because web analytics software hasn’t evolved as quickly as online sharing and social signals.

“Twitter Web Analytics will be rolled out this week to a small pilot group of partners, and will be made available to all website owners within the next few weeks. We’re also committed to releasing a Twitter Web Analytics API for developers interested in incorporating Twitter data in their products.”

This will be a hugely useful tool for the digital marketing industry as it offers a standardised, if basic, insight into Twitter analytics for all. Twitter has also recognised that it must open up to existing analytics providers to be successful.

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