Despite its title, the article is mainly about Enterprise 2.0 and is well worth a read.  One of the main points made by the author is that the term ‘social’ often has negative connotations, especially for hard-headed, pragmatic managers. For many, Social = Time Wasting.

Social media will be a key focus of attention at SCDI’s Smart Scotland Annual Forum in March of this year.  At a meeting yesterday, Lesley, Jane and I discussed whether this perception of Social = Time Wasting would be a major barrier to wider adoption by the Scottish business community.

Business Benefits

To overcome this ‘Perception Gap’, it is important to be very clear on the potential business benefits of developing and implementing an effective Social Media Strategy.  In the frequent workshops we deliver on this topic, a simplified Balanced Scorecard approach is used to explain why companies should engage with social media.

A key element of the Scorecard approach is the link between ‘Lag’ and ‘Lead’ measures.  ‘Lag’ measures are your ultimate business goals and objectives.  ‘Lead’ measures are the main drivers that help you to achieve your ultimate business goals.  This distinction between ‘Lag’ and ‘Lead’ measures is a very important one in the context of social media.  It helps to differentiate between the ‘social media is cool and funky’ school of thought, on the one hand, and the more hard-headed, pragmatic business-led approach on the other.

Lag Measures

Given that we are firmly rooted in the latter of these camps, there are really only three reasons why companies should invest time, resource and effort in social media, in our view:

• To increase sales

• To reduce costs

• To build a quality customer base – a strong online network of high value, high growth potential customers.  It is the quality of your customer base that provides your company with a strong foundation for achieving sustained growth and profitability.  In a social media era, the quality of your online network becomes critical

Lead Measures

To ensure that social media delivers real business benefits in the above areas, it is useful to categorise the main ‘Lead’ measures (drivers of change) under five main headings:

• Market/Customer Knowledge & Insight – the market knowledge, enhanced customer understanding and actionable insight derived from active Social Media Listening

• Engagement & Reputation Management – benefits derived from active engagement with quality customers and key influencers; enhanced reputation management

• Enhanced Customer Experience and Loyalty – use of social media to improve the customer experience; build brand loyalty, retention, repeat business and advocacy

• Sales/Marketing Effectiveness, Efficiency and ROI – used effectively, social media can deliver high ROI through maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales and marketing effort. A related benefit could be rapid internationalisation by using social media to overcome traditional barriers to exporting

• Operations/ Internal Processes – for example, the use of social media to co-create new products; use of open source and hosted applications to reduce costs and improve internal operational efficiency

Key Questions to Address

 Rather than hiding behind the Social = Time Wasting excuse for doing nothing, it would be more appropriate to address the following questions:

• What can social media contribute to your business?
• What are the main business/marketing communications objectives to be achieved?
• What are your SMART targets for each objective (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound)?
• How will progress towards achieving these targets be measured?
• What Return on Investment (ROI) is required to justify the time, resource and costs involved?
• How can you measure this?

One of the first steps is to agree the core business objectives to be achieved from social media; how these will be measured (Key Performance Indicators); and the specific targets to be achieved for each KPI.  Unfortunately, this has become one of the most overlooked aspects of social media – WHY? Why are you doing it?  Even when the question is addressed, many organisations find it difficult to document their social media objectives, targets and KPIs.

The Template attached below should help your thinking in this area.

Documenting Your Social Media Objectives

Jim, Alan and Vincent

Pinterest is a Social Bookmarking service akin to Reddit, Stumbleupon and Delicious but its focus is on bookmarking or pinning visual media (images and videos).

This is an important distinction, through focusing exclusively on photos, images and video, it is one of the simplest sites around to use. It is this ease-of-use that would appear to be significant in stimulating its rapid rise from relative unknown to Social Media challenger.

We will explore the key features of Pinterest, discussing its recent performance and the reasons why we believe this channel has enormous potential for many consumer-based businesses. The performance of this nascent network is breaking all kinds of records:

• Pinterest is the fastest growing website of all time reaching 10 million users in only 9 months [1]
• Recent figures suggest Pinterest is rivalling Twitter in terms of referral traffic (3.6% of all referral traffic) [2]

There are 2 important points to make at this juncture:

1. We’ve been here before: Pinterest is not the first platform to be heralded as ‘game-changing’ – we were once awash with foursquare articles. And notably, it still trails Facebook considerably for referral traffic (26% or more of all traffic comes from Facebook) and has no where near the user base of a Twitter, Google+ or Linkedin, never mind Facebook’s 850m users.
2. But don’t overlook some key differentiators: It is precisely because it only has 13m users that makes the referral statistic so exciting. Pinterest’s users appear to be more engaged and more influential. In fact, Pinterest is not only seeing stellar growth but also stellar engagement – users are spending on average 15 minutes and 40 seconds on the site – nearly double the time spent on LinkedIn.com [3].

The Pinterest Community

In the US, the Pinterest user base is predominantly Female, aged 25-54, college-educated and reasonably well-off (with a median-income of $50k/annum) [4]. Importantly, this is not the same early adopter audience of other social networks.  Arguably Pinterest is attracting a wider, less tech-savvy audience [8].

The UK marketplace is far smaller than the US, with an estimated 200,000 users and unlike the US the majority are male, for now anyway [5]. This is important to understand if considering the potential of Pinterest for your UK-based customers.

The sorts of themes that are more popular are unsurprisingly, visual:

• Art | Photography | Restaurants (anything related to food) | Weddings | Vacation Destinations | Tourism | Clothing | Home Décor [6]

And the early adopting companies have very much a US focus and include:

• Whole Foods | Martha Stewart | Better Homes and Garden | Travel Channel | Nordstrom | Gap [7]

Business Benefits

Speaking to a local Scottish textile design company, Pinterest is certainly of interest. Having a platform that can increase the awareness of their niche products amongst a largely female, US audience is attractive. As a design company, the ability to capture ideas (creating mood walls if you like) is also a big plus.

Pinterest has other technical features that make it an attractive proposition for businesses. Links built through images outperform regular text links in terms of click-throughs [9]. The fact that these ‘backlinks’ are automated through Pinterest only increases this phenomenon.

Next Steps

The channel may appear immediately attractive (particularly if you are a brand or business within one of the popular themed areas) and we would advocate getting up the learning curve.

This involves creating an account and getting involved. A few articles are emerging with best practice business advice. Tips such as how to add Follow or Pin It buttons to your site or on Facebook timelines, how to appear in Gift lists or just get found more easily [10].

Pinterest has also lifted some of its workings from other channels such as the use of the @account in much the same way as Twitter. There is a relationship building protocol to understand and one which Pinterest will no doubt develop over time [11].

Ultimately, we would advise a strategic approach to this channel that involves articulating how Pinterest will help you achieve core business objectives. A key aspect, is to confirm that your quality customers are ‘hanging out’ here.

As for Pinterest…

It is all well and good having a popular site but being popular may not pay the bills. For companies like Pinterest it is often a balance between making money without disrupting the user experience (heck they have a formula that works). And with this said:

• It is interesting to note that they are monetizing their referral traffic through affiliate site Skimlinks [12].
• They have also opened up their API for others to develop – no doubt hoping for the same success as Facebook [13]

We are confident that despite the hype that surrounds this site, Pinterest has enough of interest for many businesses out there. One to keep an eye on.

What are your thoughts or experiences of Pinterest? We would love to hear from you.

Alan, Jim and Vincent

References
1. 10 Pinterest ‘Pinboards’ You Absolutely Need To Follow
2. Pinterest Rivals Twitter in Referral Traffic
3. If LinkedIn.com Fails in the Social Network Forest, Will It Make a Sound?
4. Pinterest demographic data
5. Pinterest In UK Very Different [Infographic]
6. Pinterest for Businesses and Brands
7. Pinterest Part V: 100+ Brands on Pinterest
8. Why Pinterest is so popular
9. Pinterest and Technology: Not Just for Women Anymore
10. Top tips for brands on Pinterest
11. Pinterest Part IV: Making the Most of Pinterest – Tips and Tricks
12. Pinterest Partner: Yes, They’re Making Money from Pins
13. Pinterest API Release Promises To Be Big Business

This is a guest post from Darren Healy, Director and founder of Uber Social Media, a young company specialising in Social Media Management and Development mainly for SME’s in Scotland.

A lot of people talk about the hype surrounding social media. Some say that the hype is well founded, others think social media is hyped-up beyond what it should be. Regardless of stance, discussions of hype are usually focused on specific social platforms e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Path, LinkedIn, YouTube etc.

What we all need to remember is this:

The real hype of social media is not platform specific. The game changer of the Social Media Revolution is customer empowerment; the shift of power from brands and corporates to social customers. Never before has consumer power…no, people power…..been so important. Don’t mix up the hype surrounding social platforms with the real hype of customers being in control. Accepting the power shift to customers is the starting point in developing a successful social media strategy. The key question to ask is how can we best use the various social platforms to build strong customer relationships?

Do your research. Find out what similar companies are doing in this space. Does it look like it’s working? What platforms have they been using? What could I realistically do here? What would I use it for? How does it relate to where I am and where I want to be? Think more strategically, go through each of the main social platforms, weigh them up and use some common sense!

Social media is evolving more and more. The hype is there for a reason, but make sure your involvement in social media is planned and fully aligned with company goals. Otherwise you’ll just get lost in the hype. Ensure that your social media efforts are fully coordinated with more ‘traditional’ forms of marketing communications and customer management. Come at it from a balanced viewpoint, coordinate efforts, link goals, see what happens and then measure the results.

Feedback and comment very welcome. What are your thoughts? Is social media over-hyped and over-sold? Are you ready for the challenge presented by customer empowerment?

Darren

For those of you unfamiliar with Prezi, it is a zooming presentation tool – think Powerpoint but for the ‘net gen’. Click the ‘>’ button below for a regular view or alternatively click ‘>’, ‘More’ and then Fullscreen. Please note, for those using Apple iOS you may not be able to see this flash file.

From a slow start, many football clubs are now actively engaging with social media. The year 2011, in particular, was one of very rapid progress.

In such a fast moving environment, it is often very difficult to keep up-to-date with developments. Readers who share our passion in this area will find the following links to be extremely useful.

Digital Football
Excellent site. Run by Sean Walsh, the site contains many very interesting articles on the football/social media interface.

Football and Social Media
Claims to be the ‘authority on football and social media’. Some good blog posts with the key part of the site being the updated Social Media League Tables covering teams’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, also leading players on twitter.

Football Marketing
Excellent site covering all aspects of football marketing. The social media section of the site is mainly the Monthly League Tables covering the world’s leading clubs, not just in Europe.

Energise 2-0: Sports Marketing
A list of our own blog posts on social media, sports marketing and football can be found at the above link.

Football and Social Media in Belgium
Interesting Slideshare presentation on Football and Social Media in Belgium based on interviews with most clubs. A White Paper from the research can be downloaded here.

Marseille and Adidas Let Fans Pick Kit Design
Could see a lot more of this, but why stop at just choosing the kit? Why doesn’t the crowd design it?

Arsenal’s 360 degree panoramic ‘tag yourself’ ground photo
Interesting use from the Gunners.

Bayern Munich’s Infamous Social Media Own Goal
The importance of getting it right.

Man city and the Social Media Stadium
Man City becoming widely recognised as one of the leaders in their use of social media

Social Media Poisoning Football
Commentary on Neil Warnock’s parting shot at Twitter

Football Production Summit
Could be an interesting Summit in Paris at the end of February
“Clubs have more ways of engaging with their fans than ever, with a spectrum of possibilities that run from social networking initiatives all the way up to running their own TV channels. What are the perils and pitfalls of joining the broadcasting business? How much does the equipment cost? What is the minimum technical spec that should be considered? And how do clubs monetise one of the most precious assets that they have; their archive?”

As usual, comments and feedback are very welcome.

Please feel free to add your own links in the Comments Box below.

Take care.

Jim, Alan, Vincent

Keynote speakers at the Forum include Dr. Lesley Sawers, Chief Executive, SCDI; Prof. Stephane Garelli, World Competitiveness Forum; Gerald Holtham, Chair, Holtham Commission; Donald MacRae OBE, Chief Economist, Lloyds Banking Group Scotland; Michael Moore, Secretary of State for Scotland and others.

Our main contribution to the event will be to facilitate a group discussion with 30 to 40 young people (reporting back to the main Forum) around the theme of ‘Engage and Empower’. Not surprisingly, the focus will be on the role of new technology, especially social media; how it can be used to involve, engage and empower young people in Scotland’s political and economic agenda.

A brief overview of our session is reprinted below.

Engage and Empower

The active involvement of our young people is critical to achieving the goals and objectives of a SMART Successful Scotland. They can be a very powerful source for positive political change and rapid economic/business development. To leverage this potential, we need to maximise the use of new technology, especially social media, to engage and empower.

This Parallel Session will focus on the exciting opportunities presented by social media to engage with and empower our young people, ensuring that they can make a very positive contribution to the political, economic, business and social development of a SMART Successful Scotland.

Rather than talking AT them, the session (to be facilitated by Dr. Jim Hamill and Alan Stevenson of Energise 2.0) will involve ‘crowdsourcing’ innovative ideas from a group of 40 young people covering the following areas:

1. How new technology and social media can be used to better involve, engage and empower our young people in Scotland’s emerging political agenda

2. What role can new technology and social media play in generating rapid economic and business growth in Scotland? How can Scottish business best leverage the social media skills and experience of our young people to generate sustained growth and competitiveness? Can social media provide quality job and career opportunities? What needs to be done to support this?

3. Do we have the skills and expertise to establish Scotland as an International Centre of Excellence in Digital Marketing and Social Media?

Feedback and comment from readers of the Energise Blog are very welcome. We will be more than happy to communicate your thoughts to the main Forum. What do you think? Does social media provide exciting new job opportunities for our young people? Do companies need the social media skills and experience that our young people already have? Do we have the skills and experience to build an internationally recognised Centre of Excellence in Digital Marketing/Social Media in Scotland?

An Agenda for the two day event is attached. Further information can be found on the Forum web site at www.scdiforum.co.uk

The young people attending will be mainly by invite. However, a limited number of sponsored places may also be available.

We will keep you posted on new developments in the run up to the Forum.

Take care.

4MyGenProgramme (1)

Jim, Alan, Vincent

The traditional University is being disrupted by digital technology, social media and the net generation:

• How Students Use Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]
• The State of Digital Education [INFOGRAPHIC]

Universities must embrace social media (and some are making good progress) despite the challenges:

• How Higher Education Uses Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
• 7 Ways Universities Are Using Facebook as a Marketing Tool
• Social media presents challenge to universities

The market is getting tougher as new places of learning are invented and new competitors emerge:

• 15 Education And Learning Startups You Need To Know
• Academic Earth Aggregates Lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Others [Education]
• New Service From Harvard Aims to Replace Classroom Lectures
• Apple: iBooks 2 will ‘reinvent texbooks’

These companies and university initiatives are of particular interest:

• Khan Academy
• Academic Earth
• MIT Open Courseware
• Stanford Engineering Everywhere
• University of the People
• General Assembly
• Knowmads

Just as there are huge opportunities for those Universities and Colleges that “get it” and begin to plan their social media strategies, we suspect the future is less bright for those slow to act.

As always your comments are welcome.

Alan, Jim and Vincent

You may find slides 24 to 44 to be of particular interest.  These present a short summary of Chapter 8 (‘Rethinking the University: Collaborative Learning’) from Don Tapscott’s excellent Macrowikinomics book (with some additions from ourselves).

As usual, comments and feedback are very welcome.  Is there a need for change?  How well have Universities adapted?  What progress has your own University made?

Slides below – take care

Jim, Alan, Vincent

Following a meeting earlier this week, we are delighted to be working with the excellent team at INSP in helping to map out their Digital/Social Media Action Plan.

INSP is the International Network of Street Papers, a coordinating body based in Glasgow, providing help and support to street newspapers in 40 countries around the world. The INSP strap line says it all:

118 street papers ● 40 countries ● 6 continents ● 1 united voice against poverty

It goes without saying that the only remuneration we will derive from this project is the satisfaction of contributing, in our own small way, in helping to tackle the problem of world homelessness and poverty. I think this is going to be a very humbling experience.

We would ask all readers of the Energise blog and our friends on twitter to support the excellent work being done by INSP and their street partners around the world. The organisation has already made some excellent progress on the digital/social media front as below:

Web site: www.street-papers.org
Twitter: @_INSP
FB: www.facebook.com/inspstreetpapers

There is also an excellent Street News Service at www.streetnewsservice.org

Like all other ‘media’ related organisations, social media presents major opportunities for INSP. The organisation is already starting to experiment with some exciting new applications. We would very much welcome other innovative thoughts from the ‘crowd’. Given your social media expertise, why not get involved in helping them to help others? All innovative thoughts and ideas more than welcome using the comments box below.

Thank you and take care.

Jim, Alan, Vincent

The essence of Jillian’s (@jillney) excellent post was the need for constant self-appraisal of why we are doing this? Why do we need a social media strategy? Why are we using this specific media? Why are we posting this particular content? and so on. Constantly asking why, according to Jillian, will prevent you jumping on the ‘we need to do this because everyone else is doing it’ bandwagon. It will ensure that your social media strategy is customised to the specific needs of your own organisation, rather than following a ‘me too’ road to nowhere.

Jillian’s post reminded me of another excellent article, published last July, by Brian Solis (@briansolis) entitled The Number One Least Asked Question in Social Media Why. Brian addressed the why question from a customer-led perspective – ‘Like us on Facebook’, why should I? ‘Follow us on Twitter, why should I? Why should I connect with your brand? Why should I tell people about you? and so on. In a social media era characterised by customer empowerment, these are critical questions to ask. Too many companies still adopt an ‘inside-out’ rather than an ‘outside-in’ customer led approach to social media. With the rise of the social customer, this is a dangerous strategy to follow.

Like Jillian and Brian, we too have our own list of questions to be addressed. These have been developed to encourage organisations to undertake a detailed Social Media Strategy Audit. A Balanced Scorecard approach is used to ensure that future social media activities are fully aligned with and supportive of core business goals and objectives.

Social Media Strategy Audit

As we move into 2012, there is general agreement that companies and organisations, of all sizes and across all sectors, should be moving to a deeper level of engagement with social media. The best way to move forward in this area is to take a brief step back from day-to-day social media issues, undertake a strategic audit of progress made benchmarked against accepted ‘best practice’. The resulting ‘Gap Analysis’ i.e. the ‘Gap’ that exists between where your organisation is and where it should be provides a solid foundation for future Social Media Strategy Development.

Attached to this post, you will find our recommended questions for undertaking a ‘Social Media Strategy Audit’. This is best done through a senior management ‘brainstorming’ session. However, to get a quick feel for what’s involved, work through the attached ten questions giving your organisation a quick score out of 10 for each one (0 – very poor performance in this area; 10 – excellent performance).

Once you have completed the exercise, tally up your percentage score. Be sure to let us know how well you performed overall? What areas are you performing very well or very poorly in? Where are the major areas for improvement?

Hope you find this useful.

Social Media Strategy Audit

As usual, comments and feedback very welcome.

Take care.

Jim, Alan, Vincent