Google+ pages toujours dans les starting blocks

Depuis une semaine Google a annoncé la sortie de Google + pages. Une façon pour les entreprises, les marques et les organisations d’utiliser officiellement Google + pour se connecter avec les consommateurs. Bravo ! Avons-nous envie de dire, mais dommage : ce n’est pas encore prêt pour les entreprises.

Facebook nous a déjà montré la voie depuis plusieurs années : un outil stable, puissant avec des fonctionnalités progressant régulièrement et relativement cohérentes. Les défauts ne manquent pas mais c’est devenu un outil majeur, qu’aucun professionnel de la communication visant le grand public ne peut se permettre de ne pas considérer. Google, très fort pour copier ce qui se fait de mieux dans le domaine, semble lui s’être arrêté au milieu du gué.

Voyons rapidement les éléments manquants :

Google ne permet pas à plusieurs administrateurs de gérer une page, ce qui signifie qu’une seule personne peut gérer une entreprise ou une marque sur Google +. C’est le défaut le plus rédhibitoire à mes yeux et qui n’est pas prêt d’être résolu car  les plans de Google d’après Carter Gibson n’incluent la possibilité d’inclure cette fonctionnalité qu’à partir du 1er trimestre 2012. Certes il existe tout de même une possibilité pour contourner cela : créer une adresse email dédiée et partager les identifiants avec ses collègues. Pas très pratique tout de même et cela demande de gérer encore une adresse email supplémentaire.

La possibilité d’organiser des concours ou des promotions est interdite. On peut tout de même mentionner l’existence du concours mais son organisation doit être hébergée sur un site dédié tierce. Je ne comprends toujours pas ce que craignent Facebook et Google en permettant cette option.

Passons outre le fait que Google n’ait même pas pris la peine d’intégrer ses propre outils que ce soit d’analyse comme Google Analytics, de blog (Blogger) sans même parler de YouTube. Ce qui est encore plus gênant c’est l’absence de l’audience. Plus de 23 millions d’internautes français sur Facebook, combien sur G+ ? Les chiffres ne sont pas encore là mais cela ne doit certainement pas dépasser le million, sans doute beaucoup moins.

Attention mon propos n’est pas de dire que Google+ n’apportes rien, loin de là. Je constate juste que l’outil n’est pas encore prêt pour être intégré dans nos stratégies de communication. Evidement le monde tournant à la vitesse que l’on sait, l’histoire ne sera pas la même dans 3 mois. Du moins je l’espère !

Is Britain fed up with Facebook?

With roughly half the UK population signed up to Facebook, there is no question that the social networking phenomenon has taken the country by storm. But with reports of a notable decline in user numbers in the UK as well as in the US, it would seem that our fascination is starting to fade. So what is potentially fuelling the decline?

Some people believe that Facebook has simply reached the natural limit of people who want to be engaged with social networking in the UK. Others seem to think that the eagerly anticipated Facebook iPad app will put user numbers back on track when launched. I would suggest that some of the main contributing factors to ‘Facebook fatigue’ could include the following:

• Worthwhile new features need to be added to keep users engaged
• Some people are beginning to reject the notion of giving up their privacy in exchange for non-stop communication
• Social networking can be addictive and waste too much of our time
• Facebook has been spending too much time focusing on developing countries, and neglecting established user bases in the process

Whether it reaches its goal of one billion users, or goes the way of Myspace over the next few years, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the World’s biggest social networking service. Or will the Chinese buy it first?

Going for gold with Olympic campaigns

With just under 400 days to go until the London Olympics Games kick-off, marketing activity by the official sponsors have stepped up a gear. Though the majority of us will have to watch the games from the sofa having failed to secure tickets, this hasn’t stopped the marketing machine ramping things up with numerous events and announcements hitting the press in the last few weeks. Here are some campaigns that caught my eye:

Boasting that this will be the most ‘content rich’, and ‘connected’ Olympic games in history, Samsung  has set its sights on making 2012 the ‘Smart Games’. The tech firm is on the hunt for 60 Samsung Mobile Explorers. Each will be given  smartphones and tasked with sharing their own experiences of the Olympics through social media as online ambassadors for the brand.

Similarly, Coca-Cola  is in search of young and inspiring torchbearers for their Future Flames competition. If you have a burning passion and a life-changing story, the judging panel – which includes rapper Dizzee Rascal – can get you on the torch relay.  BA on the other hand are after not one, but three great Britons. Create a pieces of art, film or a menu using the games as inspiration and you can get mentored by Tracey Emin, Heston Blumenthal or Richard E Grant. Not bad.

Given the lead time, it’s understandable that the majority of activity to date has been competition-based.  As we near the opening ceremony,  I can’t wait to see what else the cunning PRs have up their sleeves. Assuming we don’t experience a fiasco on par with the ticket allocations, I’m sure there’ll be more to come.

In praise of mathletics

Anything that makes younger children actually want to do their homework is a good thing in my book.  My junior school aged son is fine when it comes to science – particularly if it involves live action experiments – or anything arty that demands a bit of ‘mod rock’ or much cardboard, paint and tape but getting him to do the basics can be more than challenging.  So bring on Mathletics, which has just been upgraded: I heart you.  Never has learning times tables for the nth time been so easy to make fun.

We’ve been rocking, rapping and mixing to times tables cartoon music videos (‘Times Table Toons’ no less), in the rainforest learning  algebra and decking out his avatar in the latest garb via credits he’s earned doing his math.  Ok, the last one isn’t quite learning maths.  The best thing however is playing live mathletics against other students his age from around the globe.  It’s all I can do to stop myself shouting out the answers as you see three or four kids doing mental maths in real time and racing against each other and the clock live on screen.  So simple, but such cool tech.  Love it.

Mobile: the next big thing in Marketing and PR

The number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices may reach 1 billion by 2014, meaning mobile will overtake the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web. At the same time, more users will be consuming mobile apps with the mobile app market reaching $8.3 billion in 2014 compared to $3.8 billion forecast for this year.

This makes thinking about the marketing opportunities of mobile and mobile apps all the more pressing and exciting. Many brands are already incorporating mobile apps into their marketing and PR campaigns. Deodorant brand Lynx has launched a mobile app which encourages consumers to share their party experiences with selected friends by streamlining their social media activity in one place. The application will be promoted through the company Facebook page, YouTube channel and a dedicated website and will act as a media channel for future brand and marketing campaigns.

What’s significant about this example is how it makes the most of how the mobile platform allows marketers and PR professionals to interact with consumers regardless of time and location. The increase in mobile internet usage is a great opportunity for brands to engage consumers through social networks, while using dedicated apps and location-based websites to make their messages relevant to consumers. Additionally, mobile apps can be used to create innovative, interactive and engaging forms of content using specific Smartphone functionalities such as multi-touch navigation, cameras, GPS, etc.

Not surprisingly brands and media companies are focusing significant efforts on tapping into the mobile platform. In the era of mobility and social networking, mobile devices will have a profound impact on how marketers and PR professionals communicate with their target audiences.

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.

A professional hot or not.

During my daily routine of checking the trends and happenings on Linkedin and Facebook, I found a website that seemed to mix the two.  If there were two social networks that I didn’t think had any need to interact it was these two.  My interest was captured, however, when I began to see a few more of my connections and friends using it.  Now it spans Twitter and your email contacts and invites you to choose who is the best at “social media” or “business development” or in fact one of any number of skills we may have listed on a CV. 

The next stage is what does Mixtent do with this data?  It works out your worldwide rank and the position within your connections and within your company. I am yet to see how accurate this tool is going to be, as there are a number of times when I vote for someone based on the fact that I like them or I know them personally.  And I am sure others will do the same thing.  It is interesting to think that in the future when recruiting you might simply disregard anyone whose worldwide rank is outside the top ten percent. 

If this site does hit the tipping point, then it won’t be long before we will be throwing around terms like, “So what’s your Mixtent rank at Creativity?”

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.

Social Media Revolutions?

The roll call of dictatorships falling (or tottering dangerously in the case of Gaddafi today) is exhilarating and continues to dominate the news agenda and front pages (even pushing the NZ earthquake off the front pages which is striking because this event is so tragic and much closer to home with the  UK’s  ties to New Zealand).

What’s also interesting is watching how commentators are arguing over the real role of social media and social networks in triggering and driving these mass movements that have been so unexpected. Today’s UK Guardianlooks at this issue in depth and makes the point that we are seeing events unfold through ordinary people’s   footage posted on Facebook et al. This is a vivid feature of what’s going on and links back to how some many media events now are told through social media (remember the 7/7 tube bombing footage). But is social media running or simply recording the revolution?

We had some inkling that this could happen when Twitter was lauded as enabling last year’s Green Revolution in Iran over the disputed election. What’s different this time is that protests haven’t been extinguished as viciously as they were in Iran. Personally, while I credit the powerful role that social media and the Internet has played recently, it still seems to me that successful protests like these depend on the sheer physical bravery of citizens who are no longer willing to be cruelly oppressed and the willingness of powerful components of the state apparatus – the army, police, national TV media –  to not take part in the repression e.g. look at how the departure of Mubarakwas hastened by the reluctance of the army to intervene on his behalf. That latter is probably the most critical factor as has been the case in other popular uprising (e.g. the break up of the Soviet Bloc in the pre-web era)

So what’s this got to do with PR?  Other than how a poor response to getting Brits home  has been a PR crisis for the first PR man to be prime minster,  it is a  reality check about what is happening on so many levels. Social media is becoming more woven into people’s lives globally(and not simply in the West) and  the influence of publishing personal content online can be powerful when topical and unique. But it also tells us how social media is a tool not a panacea for solving all of our problems.  As in revolutions, social media works best in PR when done in conjunction with other tools and disciplines. And when you put in a lot of hard work and slog.

Social networks? Watch out for friends’ posts while you are searching for information online

Last week Google announced that it was planning to implement changes to its Google Social Search platform to include posts from people’s online friends into its standard search results. The social search results, which previously appeared at the bottom of the page, will now be mixed throughout the list of results based on their relevance. Another interesting change in the search engine functionality is that users will be prompted to connect their social networking accounts any time Google’s algorithms find a public account that might belong to the same user.

As social networking profiles become more interconnected, people will be able to see publicly shared links posted by online ‘friends’ and connect their Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or Quora accounts. However, the upgraded social search engine will not include posts from the social networking giant Facebook. This does not come as a surprise as the two companies have a long history of trying to ‘steal’ each other’s market share with Google tapping into social media and Facebook developing its own email platform.

Despite excluding Facebook, Google’s Social Search platform will offer access to much more information about users than it was previously available. Some people will question whether this is entirely a good idea. Google seems sensitive to the privacy issues and allows users to opt out of the social sharing service by not connecting their online accounts to the search platform. However, if any of your online friends is ‘connected’ and shares or retweets your posts, they will become publicly available in the search results. Moreover, it remains uncertain how you would be able to control who sees to your online posts once you have connected your social networking profiles to Google.

Overall these changes highlight a number of trends which will potentially impact social media PR and marketing. As social networks are increasingly woven into online search engines and online profiles can be easily linked, businesses will be able to reach wider audiences and niche customer segments. SEO practices will be adjusted to take into account the rising importance of social networks for placing content in the top ranking of people’s search results. This will result in more intricate and subtle integration of social media tools into PR and marketing campaigns and will place higher importance on online networks.