Key is to create balance:

This throws up a problem that any company operating in the social media space can potentially come across; the issue of creating a balance between not biting the hand that feeds you on two fronts! On the one hand, you need users to get advertisers interested, and on the other, the more you can offer advertisers in terms of presence, the more appealing your space will become. But potentially at the cost of your users..the loyal folk that got you to this charmed position in the first instance!

Treading on the toes of Google+ and Facebook

Twitter intend to offer “brand pages”. Users will still have the option to decide whether they want to visit a brand page or not. So it should not be too intrusive. Furthermore, an enhancement of the “hashtag” system will result in users being able to view content based on their interests and location.

The redesign of the company pages will essentially allow for more customisation from the brands. It will give brands more control over the look and feel of their page, and give them the ability to show embedded multimedia.

Brands signed up already:

Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Disney are just some of the companies that are already signed up. However, it will not be available to companies in the UK until some time in 2012. The objective in social media is to engage in innovative ways with in the desired audience. All you tweeters out there, be sure to let us know if these companies succeed in achieving that through these new channels!

You need two websites nowadays:

One thing that this should flag up for businesses, is that a social media presence, has become, at the very least, as important as your web site. Any product-focused operation needs to be where its customers are. Social media’s power to engage an interested audience, and to enable customers and prospects to advocate your brand for free only strengthens this argument.

But there has been a backlash among the Internet population about the control online behemoths such as Facebook and Google seem to have over us. These brands are much maligned in the media..we are constantly told that these people cannot be trusted.

Facebook and Google: Friends or foes??

People have a choice. There are plenty of search engines aside from Google. There are numerous other ways to organise and enhance social lives, or to promote your brand in a positive way, other than Facebook. These are just two of the best at what they do. We use them for convenience and for the quality of their service if nothing else.

If Google started to give erroneous and irrelevant results on a regular basis, we would soon turn away. And the same with Facebook..if it was really that intrusive and “Big-brother”like, we would soon delete accounts…and the population would fall at a much faster rate than Facebook users are currently jumping ship.

Friends for sure:

Rather than being perceived as dominant and oppressive control freaks in the online space, these two brands should be embraced and appreciated for the great things they are. There are very few people reading this, who will not have benefited from either brands myriad of great services. If that wasn’t the case, we would soon be off to use someone who could give us what we want!

On a negative note, Twitter served as a mobilising tool to encourage further mindless vandalism. Indeed, it has even faciliated a co-ordinated looting strategy. By posting on Twitter, where these vandals were heading, others rushed to get a slice of the loot. It helped to inflict further criminal damage upon our society, and to foment an already tense stand-off between police and the looters.

It has manifested itself as tool for good and bad citizen journalism. With everyone posting tweets, it has been nigh on impossible for authorities to decipher real intelligence from red herrings. How can an already stretched police force manage this? This is the equivalent of 100,000 prank 999 calls all coming in simultaneously. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of China’s book and not be afraid to turn websites off in they compromise national security. Extreme I know, but we are dealing with peoples’ lives and livelihoods here.

On the flipside, for every false tweet, there have been many that have used it to vent their frustration and anger at these criminals, and to take a stand against it. #riotcleanup has already generated over 100,000 tweets,and is clearly a force for good amidst all this. Social media can now bring networks and communities together for the rebuilding process.

Social media takes away the control that was the norm for traditional advertising. Now you need to tell a story, and not sell one. And it is those with PR experience, who you should look to as your first port of call. They are the ones that are well versed in persuasion and conversation. When you initiate a social media campaign, you are embarking upon a relationship with a consumer.

Social media eliminates the boundaries between brands, consumers and media. It empowers the consumer to choose whether they engage with, ignore or even campaign against the brands vying for their attention. It’s not about your campaign budget.

Gauge the mood of the people:

To make it work, you need to capture the mood of the people at any one time. Ascertain this, and then give people interesting content, which they will want to share and discuss. This will propel your brand in the social media space.

Be creative and you will go far:

The best looking Facebook page means nothing without great content to inspire conversations. You need the technology to deliver the message, but it is the ideas in content that can have the most measurable impact, and deliver the best ROI.

Create content with “talkability” – something that will kick-start a conversation and make your message stand-out. Always have this in mind: anything your create should always be worth sharing.

So success in our social media strategies is not contingent upon money or staff. Many have succeeded without either of the above.

One of the main challenges social media staff face is get their colleagues and bosses to come on board with them. To give them the support and encouragement they need to make their efforts count. There are so many conflicting forces at work within an organisation, that politics and human nature can provide formidable stumbling blocks.

You, as the new kid on the block, may threaten the long-standing budgets of the marketing department or corporate communications, or of IT, depending upon how your company makes its budgeting decisions.

And what if your early efforts show signs of working? It may result in you making some of your colleagues look bad. They may get resentful of your success.

Your top priority as the in-house social media expert is to educate your colleagues and bosses. Your company, possibly for the first time in it’s history, now has to be open, transparent and communicative. Some of the older members will need to be convinced! This will take time, patience, and also some useful metrics that show how your efforts are working. The key thing to remember is that if “it’s not well understood, it’s not going to be well-funded! “

It is this suite of measuring tools that, in my mind, make Adwords, a much more powerful marketing tool than traditional advertising methods. If you sell trainers, it would make sense to advertise in Running Weekly. The media company that owns the magazine will tell you the demographic of their readership.  But they won’t be able to follow the conversion process or give you any details on user behaviour. What was the reaction of readers to the ad? Did it influence a purchasing decision? Did readers like the ad?

Adwords can do all of this, and therefore enable you to be responsive to your target market’s activity. Tracking how customers come on to your website and what they do there, can help influence the layout and design of your landing page to ultimately increase conversions.

You can also use landing pages to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. You can design landing pages around the social media campaign, and then use Google Analytics to track traffic and conversions.

Social media for companies is not about being social; it is about growing our business. So the best way to measure your efforts is to see how many customers your efforts generate. If you know a direct mail campaign at a cost of £5000, generates 50 customers, then you can spend £5000 on social media. If it generates more than 50, then it is clear that social media returns a better ROI than direct mail for your business.

Conversions are the key metric; not twitter followers or facebook friends. If your social media campaign can exceed your existing marketing efforts, then it can be considered a success.

From a marketing perspective, large companies have the budgets to take out big ads in leading publications, and on TV channels. That closes the small guy out. But the customer or prospect in social media is primarily concerned with something of interest to them. Give the person content and engage with them in a meaningful manner, and they will not care whether how big your company is. Solve a need and they will advocate your brand for you.

More good news is that vast armies of staff are not required for you to take the social media space by storm. The average dedicated social media team for companies between 1000-5000 employees comprises  3 members.

You have another distinct advantage compared to the large organisation. You are nimbler, more personal, more attentive to your client’s needs. You are a speedboat that can change course at the flick of a switch. Large frigates have to have endless committee meetings before budgets are altered and courses replotted.

Large frigates are cumbersome. Change is hard and invariably ruffles feathers; delaying it further. If you have a huge advertising budget to play with, you will not want to give any of it away to those upstarts in the new “social media” team. Then when you get the funds, company politics will dictate that you spend swathes of time justifying being given said funds.

So embrace the fact that you are a small fish in a large ocean. Keep your eyes open for what the other fish want. Steaming over them in the form of traditional marketing is over in any case. Listen to your fellow fish and they will swim with you, and get others to also. They no longer want to be told which direction they have to swim in…they are looking to companies like you for guidance.

Social Media is a gift for companies

For those who vehemently disagree, I did not mean to offend. It is frustrating sometimes when you talk to businesses with a lot of potential, who don’t want to embrace social media. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get your customers to advocate your brand, product/service to their social networks in a meaningful manner. And at a much lower cost, than traditional advertising methods.

Fail to prepare; prepare to fail

A strategist plots a strategy. He/she creates a formalised programme with a long-term direction. They will focus on the business objectives, and align their programme as closely to them as possible. Meeting the objectives takes precedence over the latest technologies. All being well, the company strategy is much more constant than the different technologies that come and go.

A social media strategist is the business decision maker for the company’s social media strategy. He/she provides leadership, a clear roadmap and assumes ongoing governance of the programme. They will directly influence the spending on the technology and initiatives in the social media space going forward.

Social Media strategist: It could be you:

You need to decide who is going to take this role on within your organisation. To do it successfully, the person will need a good knowledge of the social media space and the technologies available to achieve the goals laid out in the strategic plan. Creating the plan will require input from across the company. What are our goals? Implementation of pilot launches, measuring the RoI of each initiative. They will need to have the confidence (and the freedom) from management to be able to take risks. Not all efforts will be a success. As with anything worth while, it will take time..and some failures.

Editiorial content...getting people to write about you can be done as well. Journalists, editors and so on. But the problem here is that there are no guarantees that these people will say what you want them to. They may have the audacity not to be in awe of your company and its products, and could even have the front to criticise you.

So social media. If I have a big advertising budget, then why can’t I just buy the engagement and the buzz, that people rave on about. I am used to control. Why doesn’t social media play ball?

Because the opposite is true in social media. Listening and not telling. Then creating content and products that fit your audience’s needs; not doing what suits you best.

Why should people talk about you? It will hurt when I say this, but people are busy..your product or service is not at the centre of their universe. As far as they are concerned, they have far more interesting things to chat about with their friends.

So give them something to talk about or share? Some interesting content..a funny video? A good deal..a product that they actually want, and not what you think they want..then the buzz will be ringing in your ears.

UK Uncut has risen to prominence in a short space of time, and has used the social media platforms to great effect. Publicising its own work, as well as inviting guest blog posts. Regular tweets also ensure that they are never too far from their engaged audience minds.

People are upset. From the Winter Fuel Allowance to the increased petrol costs, an already straitened set of circumstances is being squeezed more for many. To the point of bursting. The economic uncertainty is undoubtedly breeding fear among the people; as well as anger. And people clearly care not just about their own pockets; but for the more vulnerable in society too. This was very much in evidence at the weekend on the streets of London (mindless violence and looting aside)

Social Media gives people who want to be heard, numerous platforms to spread their message fast. And people choose which tweets to follow, blog posts to read etc; so you know there is a fish at the end of the hook you cast in. That is what we mean by an engaged audience.

From a protesters perspective, Egypt and the violence in London last week, has shown that Twitter can inform people where to be and what is going on in real-time. Gone are the days when messengers were dispatched along the front-line one or two at a time. We have come on a long way since then. Instant communication can mobilise people fast and en masse.

This has major implications for police and governments moving forward. Put in the wrong hands, social media can be a powerful, and destructive tool. And authorities need to invest heavily in policing the social media space effectively, and ensuring their employees have a complete understanding of social media platforms and their potential.