Social media revolution! So what’s next?

Social networking websites have seen unprecedented growth with communications professionals quick to adopt social media as a new platform for conversations about their brands. However, initiating online conversations with target audiences is often not enough when it comes to raising brand awareness. Identifying social media influencers among these audiences and encouraging them to talk about the brand is as important as participating in online discussions and putting up corporate messages on social networking websites.

The US baseball team Cleveland Indians has successfully used this strategy to build a strong relationship with their fans by becoming the first sports team to have a social media suite in their stadium. The idea encourages social media savvy fans to tweet and blog about their experiences from watching the games and to help raise brand awareness.

Another interesting example of emerging trends in social media use comes from the finance sector. Hedge funds and other investors are considering embracing sites like Twitter and Facebook to rally support for their industry and reach out to small shareholders and potential allies. Small investors are already using social networks to increase their influence versus big shareholders on boards. Websites such as MoxyVote.com allow small shareholders to vote on corporate issues independently or as part of a broader group and strengthen their role in corporate decision making.

As online activism becomes increasingly important for NGOs and private organisations, its potential to move groups of shareholders from passive administrators to active participants should not be underestimated. Engaging audiences as brand ambassadors or cause advocates is a great way of strengthening brand loyalty and encouraging a two-way model of communication. However, this area still has to be explored. As different industries adopt social media at different pace, there is plenty of space for experiment and innovation.

Communications today is about relevance say Brodeur

A great blog from Andy Colville and our friends at Brodeur on the changing world of communications and how ‘relevance‘ now sits at the core of their agency’s mission. Brodeur is committed to helping clients become—and remain—relevant in an increasingly noisy and turbulent environment. Relevance moves people from passive to involved and actually gets them to act. As we know, simply shouting louder does not make you relevant. For communications to succeed in today’s rapidly changing communications world – campaigns have to be ‘relevant’. Here in Europe, onechocolate is doing something similar – listening to each client’s particular communications challenges and then delivering campaigns that have them joining the important conversations and getting them talked about in all the right places. Like the blog Andy and good luck with the new vision, it’s very exciting.

New era, new job titles

I love Brian Solis – whenever you wonder whether your social media thoughts and experiences are going in the right direction– you can always count on Brian and his industry friends to put some perspective on it.

His latest piece is well worth a read as he talks about the ‘beginning of the end of business as usual and the socialization of business’. He argues that there is a new business  role model that is currently unwritten. This reminded me of something my son’s headmaster said at prize day recently, that our children are being educated for roles that don’t currently exist!

In Brian’s latest thought piece, he talks about the need for a corporate social media strategist who is neutral and can change the business and drive social media through every aspect of the organisation – without that – social media is all a bit tactical and piecemeal – a bit of blogging here, a bit of tweeting there but it’s not really making a real difference to the business and the way it performs long-term. 

This is definitely the beginning of an era of a new phase in business. Without someone driving it from the top – it just won’t happen in a way that will impact the performance of any business.

So in five years time will the job title of coporate social media strategist be in every organisation and not just the ones who have embraced social media as part of their business strategy’. What will their skills be made up of  – consultancy thinking, digital skills and marketing knowledge?

Embracing social media – different paces abound

We have all embraced social media in a big way – particularly in PR where it is such a natural fit for us – it’s pretty much second nature after all, we are so used to having dialogues with journalists, sharing stories and having on-going conversations with all types of people.

So it’s easy to forget, perhaps, that social media is still evolving at a rapid rate and that businesses aren’t all embracing it at the same pace.

Just in the past few days, I’ve heard of two global brands who are way behind the curve. One has flatly refused to have anything to do with social media and the other, is ‘way behind’ in their social media conversations according to an inhouse marketeer. For those kind of brands struggling to persuade directors to embrace social media – here’s a useful post from an interesting US online publication, ‘the social media examiner’, ‘9 ways to sell social media to your boss’.

And then of course, there’s the other problem that businesses are online but don’t know what the guidelines are. The rules are still evolving and changing, again at a pretty rapid rate. Twitter is still largely unregulated and businesses are still learning and experimenting with it. Here’s some latest guidelines that have come out of oatmeal.com. They are not necessarily right, in fact I would question many on the list, but it’s interesting to see guidelines attempted to be set.

And then of course, there’s the fact that Facebook is only just starting to be used as a valuable marketing tool for businesses. The largest social media tool on the planet provides a huge opportunity to businesses – the social media examiner has lots of ideas on how to maximise your Facebook profile to generate interest among customers and prospects as well as some great recent campaigns that have really worked for brands.

So as we all move at different paces, and standards and guidelines continue to evolve as time passes, once the revolution is over, it’ll be great to see what transpires.

Net Neutrality – what it means for PR?

Recently there has been a wave of stories around the issue of net neutrality and its wider implications. Such as the release of a “joint policy proposal” by Google and Verizon concerning hardline and wireless net neutrality .

This is a concern for many – and especially communications professionals
Net neutrality keeps the internet fair. It provides a medium through which any of our clients can, with a relatively small amount of capital and the right skills, make their voice heard.

This being challenged with some network operators rumoured to be advocating (again) the prioritising of certain types of traffic for a charge. If this happened, a domino effect could ensue with charging creeping into business models across the net. So pay walls could pop up everywhere as big content carriers or blogging platforms seek to claw back network charges. The impact on online media and bloggers could be immense and strike at the heart of why the Internet has flourished as a source of information for all, rather than the few.

Resistance to ending net neutrality is huge so any shake-ups of this magnitude are going to be difficult to progress. But the issue does keep on returning to the agendas of both network operators and content players. As communication professionals we have interest here too and we need to be vigilant about where this debate is going.