Media Week

I helped to organise a briefing on social media for a major bank yesterday. Here were some of the points that came out of the briefing:

Conversations about banks are taking place on blogs, wikis, podcasts and these are influencing customer perceptions. These conversations are likely to grow.

With the huge increase in user-generated content, there is a need to integrate social media ideas - and feedback - into communications activities.

Broadcasting messages in a narrow way is out, and there is a need to involve banking customers in a meaningful way with banking activities.

Banks have useful knowledge and expertise which they can share more effectively with their customers using social media tools/approaches.

There are clearly risks and opportunities associated with social media. Banks need to develop social media strategies which can embrace internal communications as well as external communications.

One size no longer fits all in terms of communicating with customers.

Try to take a positive approach towards responding to messages on blogs.

 A lot of these points are equally applicable to other large organisations.

www.itsopen.co.uk

Have had a series of frank discussions with quite a few large organisations about social media and here are some of the challenges they are facing:

Feeback is a big issue: no one likes to get negative feedback and this prevents some people moving forward

Blogging policies - how do you coordinate them globally?

Facebook groups- is it fine for employees to go off and set up Facebook groups and how do you leverage those?

Refreshing relationships - this is where the media can benefit most. Social media presents excellent opportunities for newspapers and magazines to refresh their relationships with readers by making new connections.

Issues - social media seems well suited to issues. Companies can use the technologies to generate debates and lead thinking

Culture - the technology is no longer really an issue. It is the culture. It is getting people to move forward, experiment and develop strategies. It can be scary especially if you are used to broadcasting messages the prospect of encouraging customers to participate in your business can be daunting. Starbucks has just started to do this and it will be interesting to see how it affects them going forward.

www.itsopen.co.uk

Starbucks needs to revitalise itself and has launched an online social networking community (www.mystarbucksidea.com). So what will happen next?

Personally I think it's a great idea. Starbucks customers can make suggestions which get voted on and then Starbucks will put them into action. It's an excellent example of crowd sourcing. Someone suggested free coffees on your birthday - you've got until October 19 to implement that one!

Starbucks has always talked a good story about being part of the community. Well now it is and it would be a tragedy if it let this great idea slip. I hope this inspires Starbucks to use social media in other areas as well. Surely it will not be long before other high street chains follow suit or will they be held back for fear of receiving the dreaded 'feedback'?!

www.itsopen.co.uk

Nick Denton of Gawker Media was in The Observer the other weekend being billed as the godfather of blogging and sharing his insights into blogs. He had some interesting things to say.

One point was so simple. He explained that ordinary people used to just look at the web but now with blogs they can participate. And that changes everything. Ordinary people are in there blogging, sharing photos, videos, contact numbers, work projects. They are no longer passive consumers. They have more power and they seem to be enjoying themselves!

I met someone who works in PR for a major bank and she said that their CEO was thinking of doing a blog. 'Of course, we'll write it,' she added. Err...I am not sure about that at all.

Firstly, with a few exceptions, can you imagine a CEO actually committing themselves to blogging and can you imagine them saying something fresh and honest? I don't think so. The idea of PR executives writing blogs for CEOs fills me with horror. What are they going to churn out? Once it has been written, edited, checked for any possible misinterpretations, checked again it will either by the usual back-slapping isn't everything wonderful here talk or bland messages which no one will bother to read. Blogs that work are fresh and interesting and they lack fake language which typically bores you to death.

The reason why many companies put up firewalls between themselves and the internet is because they are afraid of their customers and what they think about their products and services. Online markets are developing all the time. It's a real market out there with people talking about your products and services whether you are listening or not. Companies should bring down the firewalls and empower people to engage with the conversations that are going on. It might seem comfortable to be in an ivory tower but the risks of not being in touch with online customers are high. I don't think getting in touch with online customers is just a job for the communications department, it goes further than that.

Not every company is suited to blogging because the culture might be too closed, information is too tightly controlled or it might not fit with the brand.

IBM has published some good guidelines on blogging but the key point is that they see blogging as linked to them being an innovations company.

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

More people going to work want to be free to blog. If they can't morale will drop and talented people will leave. So companies need to develop blogging policies.

Should corporates delay comments on blogs or not? There's been a bit of debate here about whether or not delays affect the quality of a blog. I think vetting of blog comments is understandable but it should be done quickly. It makes the person making the comment feel recognised and more involved. Plus you want to encourage the feedback. If it takes me too long to put a comment on a blog then I feel fed up and move on.

Quite a few talented marketeers are puzzeled by RSS. They are not sure what it does. To help clear things up, here's an explanation from Wikipedia. It's important because RSS is a great way of keeping in touch without having to keep emailing people which can be irritating after a while, as everyone knows.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content including, but not limited to, blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" ^[3] or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.^[3]

RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator". The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

As we say goodbye to editors, with the emergence of Digg and blogs, large companies are losing their control of influence. The usual gatekeepers have gone. So what's the answer?

Companies paid PR people thousands to build good relations with influential editors on magazines and newspapers hoping to get favourable coverage etc. But that's all gone now. Blogs are posting messages from anywhere and they can suddenly capture interest on the web and before you know it, companies are struggling to catch up.

What Digg and blogs tell us is that it is the quality of the content that matters. If it is worth reading it will get passed around and get the thumbs up from online readers. If your content is good you gain influence. Which is probably why the BBC gives all of its online readers the opportunity to bookmark and share its content. They know that increases the chances of it being passed around and so the influence of the BBC grows.

Companies therefore need to focus on creating relevant content for the sectors they are targetting but it cannot be the usual bland PR stuff otherwise it will not get passed on and shared.

Digg.com has to be one of the most fascinating social media developments and has plenty of lessons for marketeers.

If you let customers 'digg' your websites and microsites, what would they think of the content? Of if you give them opportunities to give new product ideas the thumbs up or the thumbs down, how would that affect your sales? If your company had a thriving participatory customer community what would you need to be doing?If you let customers digg advertising ideas, what affect would that have? Putting customers at the centre of a business must be a pretty scary thought for some companies. But if you look at companies thriving on the web - such as Amazon - that is what they aim to do through reviews and letting you know how other people are buying etc. Successful companies are those that their customers want to 'digg'.

Why can't you speak to the marketing team of some large organisations unless you have a name?

On occasions I have tried to contact large technology companies because I wanted to discuss a social media idea with a member of their marketing team. But reception will not give me a name so I cannot even make contact. Why are companies making themselves so inaccessible to the outside world. What are they frightened of? It reflects their attitudes to blogs and putting comments on blogs and letting staff surf the web at work. You would think that you are asking them for the source code of all their special products. Companies need to open up online and offline and enter into meaningful conversations in order to give themselves the chance to grow develop and gain influence.

How many corporate web sites just slap on an RSS feed for the sake of it and have not taken on board the lessons of the new participatory web?RSS is meant to distribute content of interest to readers so why put it on stale brochure sites? I shudder to think how much companies spend on fluffy corporate web sites and how many people actually bother to read them. If companies were spending more time creating something original and worth reading and changing their content regularly - using blogging platforms perhaps (if they dare), then RSS would come into its own. It would be worth adding it to your reader.

Despite the rise of social media with its emphasis on sharing and starting conversations, major brands still insist on one-way messaging.

Monologue brands don't want to enter into conversations with customers online. They just cannot handle it. While companies like Amazon prove how effective it can be. It must be frustrating for some large companies, pouring in millions of pounds into messaging campaigns, and discovering that actually not many people are listening to them. Authentic, meaningful online conversations are a good place to start. Read some blogs in your market sector and see what's being said and take it on board. Maybe you'll learn something you didn't know about your business and market. Try then to start a dialogue.