• Facebook Business Pages move to timeline format
• Social Media Channel Updates: April, 2012
• Social Media Channel Updates: 1st May, 2012

One of the most innovative (and at the same time controversial) changes is called frictionless sharing. This has allowed app makers to reach a huge potential audience for their content with relatively little effort. It has generated high volume traffic for many early adopting content providers, propelling some to super-stardom. However, in the last few days this traffic has seemingly ‘fallen off a cliff’.

In this article we explore in more detail frictionless sharing and the related traffic phenomenon whilst trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on and what this means for businesses. 

What is frictionless sharing?

Essentially, Facebook users can configure their much loved applications to share with their Facebook connections; for example, the Guardian app allows you to ‘automatically’ share what you are reading with friends on Facebook.

From a user perspective, this type of app simplifies the sharing process, perhaps generating welcomed discussion or for those of a younger generation, just letting your peer network know what you like or what you are ‘into’.

According to Techcrunch in ‘The Timeline Bump: Khan Academy And Quora Latest To Integrate With Facebook’s Open Graph‘ companies that have been active in creating ‘frictionless’ apps for Facebook have seen enormous benefit in terms of traffic increases.  Well, at least until very recently…

What goes up must come down

According to an E-Consultancy article, recent Facebook changes have sent social reader apps into a nose dive. The Guardian, for instance, has seen its daily active users fall 6-fold to under 100,000 with the Washington Post seeing their monthly active users drop by almost half, from 17.4m to 9.2m in the last 30 days.

This traffic freefall is not restricted to news apps. Socialcam, The ‘Instagram-For-Video’, Just Lost About Half Of Its Daily Users according to the Business Insider.

So what is going on here?

With platforms as large and undeniably changeable as Facebook, there is always the chance that a tweak is made that is quickly reversed.

However, it would be surprising if Facebook has not looked at the benefit that brands like the Washington Post and the Guardian are deriving from their ‘frictionless’ apps and thought….

You are having a bit too much fun, remember whose customers you are courting

And therein lies the rub. In many ways Facebook is a huge opportunity for business. If your valued customers are hanging out on Facebook, it is sensible to engage and energise them through this platform.

But, and this is a big but, there is an inherent risk in building your strategy solely around a third-party platform and aligning your future success too tightly with a platform that may change, be bought over or even cease to exist.

Perhaps you should ask the question, ‘what if’…a bit more often?

The more we, as businesses rely on third-party platforms for our business success, the more we need to adapt to the changing environment. This means listening to our marketplace and our customers.

We should be trying to understand what platform changes will affect our business as well as constantly evaluating where our customers are spending their time. Do you know what other platforms you should be exploring or investing more time in?

These are interesting times – time to be nimble as Facebook has once more shown.

We look forward to your comments.

Alan, Jim and Vincent

The workshop is part of the Euroleague’s on-going strategy of developing sports business professionals, especially the EB Institute’s Masters in Sports Management & Marketing organised jointly with the University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice, Italy. I have been a Visiting Professor at the latter for the last 15 years.

This will be my fourth visit to the Euroleague Final Four, previously Athens, Berlin and Barcelona. I would like to thank Prof. Tiziano Vescovi and the Euroleague for inviting me over.

Slides for the workshop can be found below. The presentation is in two parts. Slides 1 to 47 are our ‘standard’ slides on the Social Media Revolution. From slide 48, the focus is on Sports Marketing 2.0.

I look forward to meeting you all at the workshop on Saturday. Unfortunately, I will not be able to join you for the Final itself on Sunday as i need to be back in Scotland by Saturday night for a family event the following day.

For those readers not familiar with the Final Four, it will be a very exciting event. The TV schedule can be found here.

Take care and I look forward to meeting you all. If you have any questions meantime, please feel free to use the comments box below.

Jim H

Slides below….to download and save, please click the ‘View on Slideshare’ tab and you can download from there.

To download the slides, please click on the ‘view on slideshare’ tab and you can download from there.

I look forward to meeting you all over the next few weeks.

Please use the comments box below if you have any questions.

Take care

Jim H

Slides below

When chatting with company executives, I often hear the same things repeated over and over again during our initial social media discussions. Quite often they will say something like “We have that well taken care of already” or “Oh yes we handle it all ourselves and use (Facebook, Twitter etc) regularly” or “Oh I leave that to so and so to handle” or “We tried social media and it didn’t work”.

Usually the person who tells me it didn’t work is the most honest, because most of the time I am talking to companies using social media ineffectively and no matter what they say I already know they aren’t doing it well.

What’s interesting though is after talking some more I start to unravel the actual reasons why it isn’t working.  I have found that it’s for very similar reasons across the board.

To help you avoid falling into the same ‘trap’ as those believing they are doing social media well, when they are not, I have listed the 10 major social media pitfalls to avoid. Pitfalls 1 to 5 are presented below.  A follow-up post will list 6 to 10.  As usual, comments and feedback are very welcome.

1. Don’t leave it to one person to handle – social media should be company-wide and requires the adoption of a ‘social mindset’.  Without a ‘social’ attitude across the company, one person will ultimately feel too burdened to handle everything (the posts, generating content, customer service enquiries, and complaints). Furthermore, employees often inherit social media duties on top of everything else they do and simply don’t have the time do everything well.
2. Don’t leave it to the wrong person or people – it is critical that responsibility for social media within your company is allocated to individuals with the right skills and experience.  Don’t close the door on leveraging outside expertise.  Avoid the pitfall of delegating responsibility to ‘that young person who you know uses Facebook’. Hybrid skills, combining solid social media and business expertise are required.
3. There is no social media content strategy – in other words, what do we say on the various social media platforms and channels. Many companies are still using messages regurgitated from PR and other broadcast marketing channels. A clear strategy and unique content should be developed for each social media platform. Why? Because each platform allows for different types of communication allowing you to stand out from the crowd.
4. Lack of understanding of social media ROI – most companies still apply old metrics and paradigms of success to their social media ROI.  Many are numbers driven i.e. ‘I have thousands of followers/fans/subscribers on my platforms therefore it’s been a success’. But there’s a lot more to it. You need to think about quality not just quantity. 100 actively engaged fans who love your brand or are highly engaged is more valuable than 10,000 fans who barely respond to your messages. Delighting those 100 fans will mean they actively spread the message for you, both online and offline. You can take that success to the bank.
5. They are on the wrong platforms – like any carefully planned marketing strategy you have to go where your target audience is.  You need to engage where your audience is already hanging-out.  Too many companies still operate on a ‘they will come to our social media channels’ approach. You should undertake Social Media Landscape Research to identify the key ‘hubs’ where your customers (actual and potential) already hang-out.

Feedback and comments are very welcome. Can you identify with the above? What other pitfalls have you experienced trying to push forward social media in your company or with clients?

Pitfalls 6-10 to follow.

Darren

For the last few weeks, the rapid growth of Pinterest continued to be a major focus of attention. Other important articles covered recent changes at Facebook, the growing importance of mobile and an on-going debate on whether corporate blogging is dead.

The 30 links are listed below. Please do let us know if there are other articles that should be added to the list.

Facebook

Facebook Makes Changes to the Changes in Their Privacy Policy
marketingpilgrim.com

Fan Growth Slowed Slightly After Brands Switched To Facebook Timeline [STUDY]
mashable.com

Facebook and Google Do Battle on the Metrics Playing Field
marketingpilgrim.com

Your guide to Facebook’s new ad analytics – Simply Zesty – Simply Zesty
simplyzesty.com

Facebook Ad Images – Tips for Killer Creative – Search Engine Watch (#SEW)
searchenginewatch.com

Facebook Looking At May 17th For IPO Launch
simplyzesty.com

5 Ways to Create Even More Facebook Engagement :: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
ducttapemarketing.com

Anatomy of a Facebook Timeline Page [infographic] | Social Commerce Today
socialcommercetoday.com

5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines | Social Media Examiner
socialmediaexaminer.com

How to Use Facebook Timeline Without Reworking Your Brand’s Strategy
mashable.com

Pinterest

9 brands taking Pinterest by storm - iMediaConnection.com
imediaconnection.com

Pinview Presents Your Facebook Content As A Pinterest Board
simplyzesty.com

37 Ways Teachers Should Use Pinterest | SociableBlog : Social Media Blog
sociableblog.com

Why Pinterest’s drop in users doesn’t mean an awful lot – Simply Zesty – Simply Zesty
simplyzesty.com

5 Brand Campaigns That Use Pinterest To Its Fullest
simplyzesty.com

3 Pinterest Tools That Will Have You #Pinning In No Time
toprankblog.com

Mobile

Brits are twice as likely as Americans to buy on mobile: stats | Econsultancy
econsultancy.com

Mobile is where online travel growth takes place
hotelmarketing.com

Mobile marketers are most in-demand staff in digital industry | Econsultancy
econsultancy.com

The future of m-commerce - iMediaConnection.com
imediaconnection.com

YouTube

How Johnson & Johnson Uses YouTube to Create Awareness | Social Media Examiner
socialmediaexaminer.com

Twitter

Twitter Is Not Easier Than Blogging | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image
twistimage.com

Can Twitter Tell Us What We’re Feeling? [VIDEO]
mashable.com

Blogs

Corporate Blogging Hits the Skids
marketingpilgrim.com

The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers
toprankblog.com

How to turn blog readers into brand advocates
businessesgrow.com

Linkedin

LinkedIn’s Biggest Competitor Is a Facebook App That Just Hit 25 Million Users
mashable.com

LinkedIn And Your Small Business | CustomerThink
customerthink.com

LinkedIn 4 Times Better Than Facebook & Twitter For B2B Leads
simplyzesty.com

Google +

8 New Google+ Changes and How They Impact Your Business | Social Media Examiner
socialmediaexaminer.com

Hope you have found the above useful.

Please feel free to add your own links in the comments section below.

Take care

Jim, Alan, Vincent

Key issues covered include:

• Overview of social media – what is it?
• How important has it become? – social media size and growth
• Features and characteristics – the key things to remember about social media
• The new ‘mindset’ and performance measures required
• Potential business benefits of social media
• Social media in action – case examples
• ‘Social media planning pays’ – an overview of the key steps involved in social media strategy development, implementation and performance management using a Balanced Scorecard approach

Using the ‘Social Media Toolkit’, participating companies will complete three foundation exercises:

Exercise 1:

Undertake a detailed external analysis of the social media landscape for your company, identifying where the major opportunities/threats exist.

The starting point in developing a social media engagement strategy is to monitor and evaluate the social media landscape for your business. Social media landscaping will help you decide the best generic strategy to follow and should be undertaken at five main levels:

• Applications – what social media applications are the most relevant to your business?
• Impact – what impact is social media having on your industry, how important has it become?
• Customers – how are your customers using social media? What impact is it having on customer behaviour?
• Conversations – what online conversations are taking place relevant to your business; who is saying what about your brand where on the Internet and how should you respond?
• Features and characteristics – what are the key features and characteristics of social media that you need to understand to be successful i.e. social media culture?

A previous post covers some of these issues in more detail – Social Media Strategy Development: Step 1 – Evaluate Your Social Media Landscape.

Exercise 2:

Undertake an Internal Social Media Audit evaluating progress made benchmarked against agreed criteria. Key questions to address include:

• What progress have we made?
• What social media channels do we already use?
• What is the level of engagement with each channel?
• What positive business benefits have we derived from our social media activities?
• Where are the main areas for future improvement?

Benchmarking is a key element of the Internal Audit and should be undertaken at five main levels:

• Social Media Landscape – what progress has been made benchmarked against the opportunities presented by your social media landscape?
• Generic Strategy – the level of progress made benchmarked against your generic social media strategy
• Industry ‘Best Practice’ – the level of progress made benchmarked against industry ‘best practice’. How does your current level of SM engagement compare with the industry average? What lessons can be learned from industry ‘mavens’?
• KPIs – what progress has been made benchmarked against agreed KPIs?
• Strategic Gap Analysis – based on the above, what is the ‘Strategic Gap’ that exists between the ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ scenarios; between where you are and where you should be? The ‘Strategic Gap’ provides a very strong basis for future social media strategy development

See previous blog post on this topic – Internal Social Media Audit.

Exercise 3:

Evaluate your ‘readiness to engage’.

Your Internal Social Media Audit (Exercise 2) should be followed by an evaluation of your organisation’s readiness or preparedness to engage with social media.

Evaluating your Readiness to Engage involves identifying the relevant Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for your organisation. You should look to answer the following 4 questions:

• How will we leverage our STRENGTHS?
• How will we overcome our WEAKNESSES?
• How will we realise our OPPORTUNITIES?
• How will we alleviate our THREATS?

Working through these exercises will provide you with a very strong foundation for Social Media Strategy Development – covered in Workshop 2 to follow.

Slides for Session 1 are available (to Programme participants only) in the password protected Mastering SM section of this site.

The session will also provide very practical advice on how to set up a free Social Media Listening System – see previous post on this topic here – Social Media Listening.
Take care.

Jim, Alan, Vincent

To support the Workshops, and to open up part of the content to those unable to attend, we will post updates over the three week duration of Programme 4.

Post 1 provides a brief overview of Programme Objectives, Content, Structure etc. Post 2, to follow, will cover the content of Workshop 1 (to be held this week).

As usual, feedback and comment are always welcome.

Programme Rationale

The basic rationale underlying the Mastering Programme is two-fold:

• The opportunities (and threats) presented to all companies by the Social Media (SM) revolution, but especially to those companies wishing to expand geographically
• The need for a ‘business first’ approach to fully leverage these emerging opportunities

Programme Objectives

The core objective of ‘Mastering Social Media’ is to ensure that the future social media activities of participating companies are fully aligned with and supportive of agreed business goals and objectives – a ‘business first’ approach. Using a Balanced Scorecard approach to Social Media Strategy Development, Implementation and Performance Measurement, the knowledge and skills gained from the Programme will ensure that social media produces real business benefits and high Return on Investment (ROI).

On completion of the programme, participating companies will have:

• Developed a clear social media vision and strategy
• Agreed the key business objectives, goals and targets to be achieved from social media
• Identified the key social media actions and initiatives required for ‘getting there’
• Developed ‘Action Plans’ for high priority social media channels
• Fully aligned social media strategy to support core business goals and objectives
• Agreed the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), metrics and analytics to be used in measuring social media performance, business impact and ROI
• Ensured that all key success factors have been considered, especially the organisation, people and resource aspects critical to successful Social Media implementation

Structure

The core structure of ‘Mastering Social Media’ comprises four key elements:

• Three one-day workshops (1 per week over the next three weeks)
• Use of our innovative ‘Social Media Toolkit’ to develop, implement and performance manage a successful social media strategy
• ‘1-to-1’ advice and support from the Programme Experts delivered electronically
• An informal follow-up session 3 months after Programme end to ensure successful implementation and ROI

Content

Core content of the three Workshops is summarized below. Future posts will cover each Workshop in more detail.

Workshop 1 – ‘The Foundations’

Overview of social media, growth, size, features, characteristics, do’s and dont’s; the new ‘mindset’ and performance measures required; business benefits of social media; case examples of successful practice; ‘social media planning pays’

Using the ‘Social Media Toolkit’, participating companies will undertake a detailed external analysis of their social media landscape identifying where the major opportunities exist, an internal analysis of progress made and ‘readiness to engage’.

Practical advice will also be given on how to set up a Social Media Listening System.

Workshop 2 ‘Strategy Development’

Using the ‘Toolkit’, participants will agree the social media vision and strategy for their company; the key objectives and targets to be achieved; KPIs; customer segmentation; the key social media actions and initiatives to take; organisation, people and resource issues.

Workshop 3 ‘Implementation and Performance Measurement’

Using the ‘Toolkit’, Strategic Action Plans will be developed for high priority social media channels (e.g. facebook, linkedin, twitter, youtube etc) and an agreed performance measurement system for monitoring on-going business impact and ROI

Full details of the Mastering Programme can be found at http://mastering-socialmedia-spring.eventbrite.com/

Feedback and comments always welcome.

Jim, Alan, Vincent

As we move into the era of ‘Connected Customers’, this is a source of major concern.

A recent Infographic published on the eConsultancy web site and reprinted below allows some additional comparisons to be made with US Fortune 500 companies.

• Blogs: our estimate is that fewer than 5 per cent of Scottish PLCs have a well developed corporate blog.  The comparable figure for Fortune 500 companies is 23 per cent
• Twitter: our initial research suggests that only 17 per cent of Scottish PLCs are active on Twitter. For Fortune 500 companies the figure is 62 per cent
• Facebook: Similarly, less than 10 per cent of Scottish PLCs have a strong Facebook presence. For Fortune 500 companies the comparable figure is 58%

As stated in the previous post, we do not claim that our preliminary research in this area is in any way comprehensive or scientific.  We are also fully aware that social media is much wider than blogging, Twitter and Facebook. These early findings do suggest, however, that ‘Scotland PLC’ may be a world ‘laggard’ rather than ‘leader’ in the use of social media for building sustained customer and competitive advantage.

We are conducting more detailed research in this area and will report back asap.

In the meantime, all comments and feedback are very welcome. Do you agree that Scotland PLC is a social media ‘laggard’? Why is this the case? If your company is making good strategic use of social media, please do let us know.

Take care.

Jim, Alan, Vincent

Not surprisingly, the rapid growth of Pinterest continues to be a major focus of attention. Other important developments include a major redesign of Google+; Linkedin’s update of its people recommendation feature and follower statistics; YouTube’s paid livestream service; the rapid growth of m-commerce; and various developments at Facebook, including rumours of a long overdue improvement of the FB search engine.

The 22 links are listed below:

Google+
Google+ gets a major design overhaul
econsultancy.com
14 Google+ Business Pages After New Design
sociableblog.com
Is Google+ the No. 3 Social Network? Depends How You Measure It
mashable.com
Google+ Redesigned With New Navigation, Profile Pages
searchenginewatch.com

Twitter
4 Ways to Use Twitter for Customer Service and Support
socialmediaexaminer.com

Pinterest
Pinterest: An Introductory Guide for Marketers
searchenginewatch.com
Is Pinterest’s Exponential Traffic Growth Slowing?
mashable.com
Getting More Out of Pinterest [Infographic]
marketingpilgrim.com
Pinterest Now Third Most Popular Social Site; Beats Google+ & LinkedIn
simplyzesty.com
Pinterest Becoming ‘Goto’ Site for Brands; Future of Social Commerce?
socialcommercetoday.com

Linkedin
LinkedIn Bring Targeted Updates & Follower Statistics For Marketers
simplyzesty.com
LinkedIn Adds Ability to Target Follower Updates
marketingpilgrim.com
LinkedIn Making Connections Easier With ‘People You May Know’ Update
simplyzesty.com
LinkedIn Updates People Recommendation Feature
marketingpilgrim.com

YouTube
YouTube Lets Partners Make Money from Paid Livestream
mashable.com

Mobile
Mobile commerce to increase by 97% over the next 3 years
simplyzesty.com

Facebook Logo

Please feel free to post other interesting links in the comments section below.

Take care.

Jim, Alan, Vincent

Given the topic of the workshops, one of the key issues discussed was the emergence of the ‘Social Customer’.  As argued by Brian Solis in his recent book The End of Business as Usual, social consumers are fundamentally different from traditional consumers.  They place much greater emphasis on the shared experiences of those they trust on social networks rather than corporate driven brand messages. They expect brands to respond to their socialized questions.  According to the author, this will require businesses to rethink their traditional approach to sales, service, marketing and customer relationship management. ‘Being Social’ will become the new key to consumer connection and success.

Brian has further developed this argument in a more recent article entitled Meet Generation C: The Connected Customer.  This is a ‘must read’ article for everyone interested in the revolutionary changes being brought about by social media and related technologies.

The article starts by summarising the digital habits of Gen Y (Millennials).  In the words of Don Tapscott, this is the first generation to have Grown Up Digital.  They are the Net Generation. Their digital lifestyles have become well known.

Brian extends this argument by stating clearly that it is no longer an age thing.  It is how people embrace technology, from social networks to smartphones to intelligent appliances, that defines Gen C (the Connected Customer), not age.  As a fully paid up ‘50 something’ proactive member of Gen C I would totally agree with this

The remainder of the article presents some very interesting and comprehensive statistics about Gen C covering the following:

• Time spent on social network sites/blogs etc
• Use of mobile phones and tablets
• The extension of Gen C to every demographic group, including females and older people e.g. 72% of ‘baby bommers’ and 79% of Gen X are now active users of social network sites
• Cross platforms being used to engage, create, connect, consume, communicate and contribute e.g. PCs,tablets, smartphones, connected TVs etc
• Multitasking

Please take a few minutes to read the full article here.

The rise of Gen C raises very important implications for all aspects of life – for marketers, educators, politicians etc.

• Marketers – how relevant are ‘traditional’ approaches to sales and marketing in an increasingly digital world.  Do we need to ‘unlearn’ everything we know about marketing?

• Education – is our education system ‘fit for purpose’ in a digital era?  Is a new pedagogy required?

• Politicians – how can digital technology be used to better involve and engage with Gen Y and Gen C in the wider political/economic agenda?

Perhaps there is one other group worth mentioning – the Lost Generation.  With youth unemployment/underemployment in many developed countries running at 20 to 40%, are we creating a lost generation?  Yet does this group not possess the digital ‘mindsets’ and social networking skills critical to our business/economic success in an increasingly connected world?  Should we be developing a ‘match maker’ service ensuring that our companies fully leverage the digital skills of Gen Y and Gen C?

As usual comments and feedback are very welcome. Gen Y, Gen C or Gen Lost?

Jim