Social Media Savvy

F&B Social Media. The Art of Being Social

Polly Math — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 06:29:58 +0000

A version of this piece first appeared for Lavazza in Espresso Italiano magazine and its companion online portal. However, this piece can easily be applied to small businesses in general. More social media advice from me on this topic can be unlocked by Lavazza customers on the Espresso Italiano website. In their next issue, I talk about Yelp for the hospitality industry with a ‘How to?’ for members to unlock.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to
ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
Warren Buffett

What is Social Media for the hospitality industry?

What have you heard about Social Media Marketing for restaurants? Was it, “It’s free but it’s all too hard”? They could be right, but the first thing to consider before discussing this topic is ‘What actually brings new customers through the door?’

If a venue has a good reputation, you don’t need to advertise it, right? Your customers come via recommendation from their friends, or after reading a positive review. That’s what most assume.

Australians are skeptical of cafes or restaurants that advertise. Only 14% trust ads, but most will trust and respond to a recommendation from within their personal network. So the solution for growing your market share is to tap into opinion.

Social media marketing is the new word of mouth recommendation, amplified much further than ever before.

But if your venue is not particularly hospitable, it’s not clean and not passionately run – well, social media is just not your friend. And that’s because online opinions are like applying a magnifying glass to your operations and accountability, then spreading that to a huge audience.

So for the Hospitality Industry, Social Media is a tool for reputation management.

What to consider before using Social Media

Once you start using social networks, there is no turning back. You will need to allocate some time to read and sometimes to talk online, and for some that’s most days that your venue is open. With reputation as a key factor to your success, finding the time should be a priority.

If you choose to do it, then use social networks as a point of customer service, for inspiration and to share your enthusiasm. For venues, it is not a place to brag about how much you spent on the place, bitch, shout or even broadcast like it’s an advertisement. It’s networking in a community space, so be friendly and polite.

Consider if and how your staff use social networks? Remind them of their responsibility to the venue’s reputation in their personal interactions online. This includes the etiquette of making online comments about their employer or colleagues, not publishing confidential information or images and how they can help with customer service.

Where to begin?

Social media networks range from review sites to photo apps on smart phones, blogs and online scrapbooks. And of course about 50% of Australians stay in touch via Facebook. Most of it can be updated easily from a smart phone, so won‘t tie you to a desk.

Start by looking at the online review sites to take the pulse of your business. Act on suggestions made by public reviewers.

Consider what is the best and strongest feature of your venue? If your place was a person, what would that person sound like? What would they like to talk about? This will help you find the right social platform for you and assist in choosing the things your guests will enjoy reading about from you online.

Then decide who will be involved from your team. Behind the scenes photos are very popular and help the public develop a more interested and understanding relationship with the business. Snippets of news from certain staff can also spread the social work load.

Use platforms that link to each other that can help to economise on time spent online. For example, some platforms like Instagram and Pinterest will allow you to post a photo to other social networks at the same time.

Hootsuite will allow you and your team to share updates to a few other social media platform accounts as well as schedule posts into the future. And you can use your phone to push notifications to you if an enquiry has been made via Facebook or Twitter. That way you can respond quickly whether there is a customer issue or a compliment.

The elephant in the room

Crisis Management is the Voldemort of Social Media. Well, until you think of online criticism as an opportunity to improve your product and to create a more loyal customer.

They key is to be polite and to listen. That is the art of being social.

Acknowledge both compliments and negativity with grace, publicly. If you feel the need to be combatative, take a deep breath and step away from the internet.

Most often, your loyal customers will step in on your behalf and call foul of the person who is badmouthing your business, which will circumvent your need to speak defensively.

Should you feel you are being harassed, in a calm and polite manner invite the person to speak with you offline. The reason for this is that you are leaving a trail of online footprints that will remain there for others to see and to judge long after the fact.

If you are genuine, professional and run a business that cares for its customers, then social media will be a fun way to engage positive opinions and reviews. And because magazines and newspapers surf social media to find out what’s hot, it could be a way for you to get your business into other publications.

So, can you really afford not to be social?

Food Bloggers as Marketing Puppets. Marketing Tricks and Psychology

Polly Math — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:08:28 +0000

This piece first appeared on one of my food blogs – Deep Dish Dreams. Since 2007 the online community that has gathered around that blog and its companion accounts on Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter, have helped to shape my understanding of online micro-niches.

With PR agencies and brands increasingly seeing Food Bloggers as a cash-cow, the Deep Dish Dreams audience expressed concern about blog harassment from brand marketers and sought advice from me.

Meanwhile a schism was developing within the Australian food blogging community sparked by those who saw newer blogs to be selling out to marketing – but not going pro – causing an erosion to the integrity and trust that blogs previously had enjoyed over traditional media.

This post aroused a great deal of discussion across multiple channels and educated readers about the psychology of marketing approaches. It is my hope that it will continue to inform others.

Hook, line and sinker

In Australia if the traditional Food Media want to incite an online riot of opinion, they merely need to criticise Food Bloggers. It’s a story guaranteed to hit a raw nerve that is common to all bloggers: the validation of their medium. The provocation will result in debate and a frenzy of hits and backlinks to the article from bloggers, tweeters and readers who subsequently comment across many social media platforms.

But what many amateurs in the online space do not realise, is that they have deliberately been tricked into rage. The whole exercise may have been calculated to create a spike in online newspaper readership figures, to lift the number of page-views, organically boost the paper’s SEO and online influence figures. So the respondents involved will have played right into the hands of the newspapers for marketing purposes.

By publicising the story and spreading the word in social media, the bloggers and tweeters have unconsciously created sufficient free PR to yield above average traffic to the newspaper. The resulting online figures now look great to advertisers contemplating whether to pay for ad space in their publication, iPhone app or online edition.

Some might consider this calculated emotional abuse. For the paper it’s an easy win, requiring no financial investment, and with their readership looking reinvigorated, they can potentially rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from brand media buyers. Thanks to bloggers, the sales and marketing team will likely have hit their projected targets.

These stories are known as link bait. It’s a controversial marketing ploy and is not the only time that Aussie food bloggers fall for commercial tricks.

This works through psychological manipulation. The technique in this case is known as ‘shaming’ and ‘vilifying’. Think of it as the overbearing parent who tells their children that their grades aren’t good enough. It’s bound to get a reaction from most on the receiving end of the criticism. And yet the same result can come slyly packaged as flattery, for the same purposes.

Modern Marketing Ninjas

As long time readers of this blog will know I have spent a quarter century in the business of advertising and marketing. My profession has been to make all manner of things desirable to the general public via a mixture of manipulative psychology, beautiful imagery and by generating hype. My technique uses a combination of strategy based on psychographic manipulation and lateral thinking combined with creative input.

Today anyone marketing a product, service, venue etc, faces tough times. The general public are now more sceptical of marketing imagery on TV and in print than they ever have been. They can filter their entertainment to avoid most advertising that they find intrusive or annoying. Some products have even been banned from traditional advertising media. So with marketers facing increasing sales targets from their employers, the search has been on to find a way to advertise surreptitiously.

And what exactly is this hidden advertising or guerrilla marketing? The most common ninja deployed is product placement. Take Australian Masterchef for example. The products you see being used have been provided by the brand advertiser in exchange for six figure sums to the TV production company.

This may be reinforced by advertising around the show, costing millions, paid to the TV network – whether aired on TV or their magazine’s ads or even on the Masterchef website and recipe fact sheets. The aim is that the general public will subconsciously identify branded products as being desirable or necessary next time they stock their pantry. The wealthiest brands also use product placement in Hollywood movies and popular drama or comedy TV series, reaching significantly larger audiences.

But shows like Masterchef are not on TV all year, so food brands in particular – and especially those with smaller budgets – are forced to be more creative in finding their target market.

The trending buzzword for advertisers is ‘Word of Mouth Marketing’. The power of recommendation by a friend or trusted source is now recognised as the ultimate way to convey a marketing message that will generate sales.

Magazine or newspaper Advertorials are a word of mouth option. It looks to all intents like a magazine story, it has been composed by a journalist and the staff photographer, but it’s actually a sponsored piece, a revenue stream for publications. It costs the advertiser in design, photography and media placement fees.

Advertorials are designed to trick you into thinking the ‘discerning Magazine Editor’ prefers that product/brand. Advertorials state ‘advertising feature’ or ‘promotion’ at the top of the page revealing its true nature. But even this is wearing thin with the public. So where else can advertisers create hidden influence?

There is a marketing term, “Hitting all the consumer touch points” and that now also includes product placement and advertorials or infomercials on blogs. So bloggers who have appeared in mainstream media stories, who have released details of high page view numbers, or high Twitter follower counts and a track record of influence, are the new target for marketing.

They are known generically as ‘online influencers’ and are now subject to heavy lobbying by PR companies and advertising agencies. Many of us in food blogging know it as the dreaded PR spam in marketing circles it is known as Blogger Outreach Programs and Blogger Bribes.

The attraction lies in the notion that an advertiser can covertly target the exact demographic required through a food blog. Just as they can in the food press, but with possibly an even narrower skew – such as Baker blogs having a high readership of those who also love to bake, or venue review blogs that back-link to Urbanspoon and attract people who regularly go to restaurants. Plus bloggers are more adept at using multiple social platforms including Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon and Facebook in their broadcast mix than traditional food media, which equates to even more publicity hitting the target.

Your new BFF

So, in Advertising strategy, bloggers are now seen as cheap and easy puppets for marketing messages as compared to traditional forms of advertising. By example, many food bloggers have already shown a predilection for going to events and receiving freebies in exchange for a blog post on their attendance or promotional item, so why not cosy up to them? Brands now aim to be your BFF.

After all, most who write blog review posts, will happily spend their own money trying venues and unsuspectingly giving free PR to the venue, so in advertising terms, why not extend that to products, loyalty clubs and services too? The potential is there for a brand’s new online ‘friends’ to generate free blog advertorials and extended social media broadcast too.

For brands, blogger outreach is significantly cheaper than paying publications for the same. Plus the blogger does all the design work, copywriting and photography for free – services that cost tens of thousands of dollars to commission professionally. Giving away samples, organising an event or junket to bloggers can be much cheaper by comparison.

It’s also a way for PR agencies and Blog Harvesters such as Nuffnang, Technorati and Foodbuzz to farm bloggers in order to make money on the back of this free resource. Typically it works by charging brands for harvested email databases or for permissions received from the bloggers. Some harvesters will potentially pay bloggers a small fee lower than market value for commercial digital insertions in return.

Others companies to farm bloggers are market research companies and new hybrid harvesters who charge bloggers to be part of a directory that will build page rank and SEO plus marry your blog with advertisers and PR agencies.

Trust issues

It is a given that journalists’ salaries are derived from publications’ advertising revenue, and hence edited opinions can be biased. So blog readers typically cite their interest is due to content being unrestrained by editors, advertisers or a commercial publication’s particular values or politics. Marketers are aware that many of the public have eschewed papers and magazine for blogs, in search of the truth.

So blogs appear to have integrity. It is generally supposed by the public that they are not affected the way that news has been tainted. They represent Jo Average’s opinion. So when a blog broadcasts about brands, the reader assumes it is a personal and unbiased opinion and recommendation that has not been initiated by an advertiser or fuelled by supplied content.

But this is increasingly not true. A blog post can be a ‘Stealth Marketing’ brand ninja, especially where many amateur food bloggers have not publicly declared their shift to becoming professional salesmen, or pro-bloggers in exchange for gifts or money.

This is compounded by the fact that bloggers seem to be unaware of the ACCC Advertising and Selling standards stating advertisers should “ensure that consumers are aware of the fact that a commercial message is being presented”.

Bloggers are required to clearly mark that the post is a sponsored piece, as per an advertorial or infomercial is transparent about its bias. It’s possible that many PR agencies and marketers seem not to know this either or perhaps are happy to parlay the deception and puffery?

Since some food blogs have already fallen under the spell of the PR machine, the term Flogger-Blogger has emerged. By this I mean when a blog that feels to all intents as though most posts are actually subliminal ads, designed to have your friends share the good word and generate publicity for a brand by spreading the post across the internet, conversations and by email. Ultimately this is the goal of marketing through amateur bloggers.

The Seduction of Eve

I think that most Australian food bloggers have innocently entered the media as a place to air their thoughts, but appear vulnerable to the potential traps of that space. The traps I refer to are those of potential loss of integrity and falling victim to commercial manipulation. And I sense that some Food Bloggers are falling victim to Fox and Crow syndrome.

So what are the tricks to look out for? Behind most modern marketing tricks is psychology – the study of human behaviour – and how to take advantage of these insights to assist selling things.

“According to George K. Simon, successful psychological manipulation primarily involves concealing aggressive intentions and behaviours. Also, knowing the psychological vulnerabilities of the victim to determine what tactics are likely to be the most effective.”

The most fundamental aspect that is taken advantage of by marketing and advertising is the human desire to feel good. It is thought that we tend to see our life as judged against other people and that our happiness is relative to this.

We compare our lot against others. Richer people do get happier when they compare themselves against poorer people, but poorer people are less happy if they compare up. That is why Marketers target our self esteem when aiming to seduce us for their purposes

Nathaniel Branden in 1969 defined self-esteem as “…the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness”. According to Branden, self-esteem is the sum of self-confidence (a feeling of personal capacity) and self-respect (a feeling of personal worth).

He also claimed that any positive stimulus or incentive will make a person feel comfortable, or, at most, better with respect to themselves for just some time.

So when a PR company, brand or Marketer approaches a blogger to promote their cause, they will – like Eve’s serpent – cajole and flatter us, tell us that we are deserving of special treatment and offer a sense of personal exclusivity that will make us feel a step ahead of others. They will talk it up with honeyed terms such as “You have been especially chosen to become a Brand Ambassador” or appeal to your desire to have something you can’t afford.

Society has been warned against this behaviour for all of time. Religion and the arts play it out as an enduring theme, cautioning against allowing our shallow desires to trip us up. Yet it proves constantly irresistible to this day, the tactic of ‘positive reinforcement’ is one of the most powerful to encourage Bloggers to generate income for others with no significant remuneration in return for their services.

A mere pat on the head

I like to think of the next trick as summed up by the adage ‘Beware Greeks bearing gifts’ the ‘Trojan Horse’ analogy. While we may warn children not to go with strangers offering gifts, bloggers seemingly also neglect to take that advice. Instead, they are fooled into dropping their guard.

A blogger’s vulnerability in this case is typically coined in psychology as using ‘reciprocity’. The trick is, when given something for free we feel obliged to return the favour. So in our circles when offered a free meal, product, event, book etc, we feel indebted to write a blog post about that gift, often without criticism or significant insight.

Like a dutiful child, we write a public thank you note on social media platforms, which form free publicity for the marketer, brand, service or venue. We take photos, design and cultivate a post – often giving away our intellectual property rights in the bargain – and with theoretically even better results for the brand than ads, because blogs communicate to exactly the right consumers for the promotion.

So the marketing goal is achieved. For virtually a fraction of the cost spent on advertising or loyalty marketing, the blogger has obligingly become a puppet, as a brand salesperson.

In return, the blogger likely receives a regular deluge of press releases with the expectation of future publication each time, with little or no further reward or remuneration for giving away many thousands of dollars of free PR. In the psychology of persuasion this is known as ‘consistency’. People want to be consistent with previous actions. If they said yes to something in the past, they’re more likely to say yes in the future.

Meanwhile the PR agency that approached the blogger in the first instance will be receiving a monthly retainer for their services and possibly project fees – but who really is doing all the work here? Who has generated the sales? Who deserves to be paid? It is the Blogger.

In some other blogging circles – particularly pro-blogging and the influential fashion, beauty and parenting blog communities – this has begun to change, with some bloggers receiving fees directly for their publicity.

Sex and greed, and power

The adage ‘Sex Sells’ referring to scantily clad women in advertising is an old cliché. But sexy is not always so literal. The psychological equation for using sexy persuasion on a blogger for the purposes of converting them to brand salesmen is greed + power. The tactic used appeals to their materialistic impulses, to narcissism and to jealousy.

The technical psych theory is sexual attraction arises when the person is stimulated through the vanity mode of narcissism. It engenders admiration for compatible personality characteristics. Excitement arises when the person is stimulated through the self-pity mode of jealousy, engendering physical intimacy and passion, which theoretically will result in eager and enthusiastic broadcast.

Relative to bloggers, for the social type person, power is channelled through jealousy. For example subconsciously: “This blogger junket will make me feel good and my friends, colleagues etc, envious – they’ll likely find me even more fascinating”, hence the blogger may unconsciously feel sexier for there is social approval and admiration from others.

For the self focused person, power is channelled through narcissism, eg. “They’ve spotted how good I am, so they’ve given me a ‘money can’t buy’ experience, I’m getting something huge for nothing”. The subconscious perception of social reinforcement makes the blogger feel powerful and that in itself is sexy to many.

The overall picture is most people, unless aware of the tactics, can be manipulated. In Blogger Outreach programs the brand they will promote is getting the blogger’s services and time for a fraction of the usual marketing budget, by making the blogger feel a bit sexier, giving them a sense of power and all by appealing to their vanity in order to make them brag. In return the blogger gets a temporary hedonistic head rush and feels an obligation to the brand when they come down off the back of their experience.

The Spin Cycle

So how do else do marketers appeal to a blogger’s deep human impulses for commercial manipulation? They use ‘Spin’.

Spin is “Making a silk purse from a sow’s ear” or “Spinning gold from straw”. It is a form of deception to make something more enticing than it may appear in the cold light of day. It takes the consumer’s aspirations and projects them on a product, venue or person.

Often spin on an item avoids facts and focuses on implied benefits. And when applied to politics, is termed propaganda. Using psychology to understand what pulls at the heart strings of the target market, an advertiser will know exactly how to project something to make it seem enticing and highly desirable to consumers.

Spin Doctors are primarily the creators of consumer zeitgeist, ‘future cool’, Cool Hunters and the initiators of global trends. They read public sentiment, understanding how economic movements affect public values and shape cultures. Now when something is suddenly ‘hot’ often it is because key community influencers, like bloggers, were persuaded by the hype, publicity and promotion generated by Spin.

As an example, consider the current Australian fascination for macarons. It started buzzing amongst sweet and bakery enthusiasts and was identified by Spin Doctors as a possible emerging trend within the culinary fashion for small indulgences, such as dim sum, mezze and tapas.

From here it began reaching into online food communities – sometimes via astroturfing, sock puppetry and link baiting.

Advertisers and journalists now typically eavesdrop on social media platforms, so once they picked up on the emerging vogue, the macaron buzz then made its way into commercial marketing and food media. And the coup de grace was an appearance on Australian Masterchef, which in turn exploded its popularity into popular mainstream appeal.

The concept has rippled back from the mainstream into blogging communities beyond food and across Twitter, Facebook and other popular communities. There have been a flurry of macaron shops, books, recipes and classes by those jumping on the bandwagon and finally, it has resulted in a demand for $400 macaron towers. That’s a purchase that three years ago would have sounded totally absurd and not at all enticing to the general public. And it was all in the Spin.

Nailing your colours

In my last post I stated that I feel it is time for food bloggers to nail their colours to the mast. I have witnessed the original integrity of blogging as being diluted by advertorials and product placement.

While I have my doubts about the value and quality of Blogger Outreach in Australia, it is not something that is going away. My stance with clients is that online influence and viral marketing reach in Australia comes voluntarily from bloggers perceived as having high integrity, not just whoever responds to a PR call.

Those who write commercially sponsored posts, have a duty to inform readers or subscribers that a post is an advertorial, which will allow them to determine bias.

Unless presented with a contract or express a commitment to do a piece, a blogger is not obliged to write about a Blogger Bribe they have received. And should a blogger consider publishing a sponsored post based on a product, event or reader giveaway, I feel that they ought to be entitled to ask for payment ahead of posting it. It is to all intents an advertisement for which the blogger provides the media and the content.

If you have no desire to engage with brands and no wish for your blog to be a vehicle for their sales pitch, you may already be annoyed by spam press release emails.

Because there are some grey areas regarding permissions, the ACMA recommends those who do not wish to receive commercial offers, put a non-solicitation disclaimer on your blog. Just as I have in my sidebar, under the subhead ‘email’. I placed it there because typically email is the key word a commercial email harvester is looking for.

When I receive PR spam in spite of this, typically I respond by drawing attention to the statement. In Australia, by law there should also be an unsubscribe link on the email, which I will use if I trust that it is a verified Australian PR agency. And if the spam persists, I am not above reporting the email as contravening the Spam Act 2003.

In deciding whether to participate in promoting commercial messages on your blog, consider the theory of the Hedonic Treadmill. “According to this theory, as a person makes more money, their expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness”.

After years of working with brands, I find I don’t need much in the way of consumer durables and hedonistic activities to be happy. Close ties to friends and family, plus good health are the things that count most to me.

I don’t merit grinding away on the treadmill to generate money for brands without being paid for it. When I come across something I like, I will tell you about it and you can trust that it was not skewed or initiated by a third party.

Most crucially, I’ve learnt that keeping things simple ultimately makes you happier and better respected. With this integrity your opinion is trusted and well regarded. And unlike free gifts it brings lasting happiness.

What nobody tells you about Social Media

Polly Math — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 22:40:11 +0000

The Sales Pitch Is Deceiving.

In the days before Madison Avenue was paved with gold, a good door to door salesman often sealed his sales pitch to the vulnerable housewife with,
“Don’t worry, it won’t cost you anything upfront”.

Similarly the perception today is that Social Media is a cost-free medium that Marketers can use in the face of shrinking budgets.

But don’t believe anyone who tells you this. Whether for a small or large enterprise, Social Media has hidden costs that are revealed once you engage it. The first cost is in man hours. The second is data management. This post will focus on the former.

The Human Touch.

Social Media platforms rely on real time conversations and that’s not something that can be automated. It takes flesh and blood to moderate, converse, answer questions, mediate and to engage an online audience. This kind of resource is often underestimated and should you try to rely solely on automation, it may open the door to negative PR.

A case in point was the ‘Best Job In The World’ campaign devised by Sapient Nitro for Tourism Queensland, where resources were severely underestimated and the project could easily have fallen apart, except for the quick resolution of those involved.

Having worked with ad agencies for over 20 years, I can picture the initial campaign pitch:

“We need a Blogger, so we’ll run a promotion to find them, and for six months they’ll extoll the virtues of tourism in the state from a cool house on a tropical island. It’ll be everyone’s dream job.”

“OK – and the cost?”

“A Blogger’s salary and a PR campaign. We’ll do some channel marketing via POS and run some classified ads. We’ll get the tourism suppliers to chip in, and get some cross promotional activity happening. If we want candidates to come from overseas we can run it through Reuters and Breakfast TV via our US parent group’s PR agency.”

What Happened.

While this particular campaign launch was successful and generated an enormous amount of global publicity, the people behind it were ill prepared for the influx of responses.

With a goal of 400,000 impressions, the campaign site quickly hit a million and crashed. The team were forced to engage ten servers and thirty seven staff to respond online, to review the 34,684 application videos and to keep the conversation going 24/7. And to top it off Sapient Nitro staff were also rostered to participate, in order to stop the whole thing falling apart.

It has been claimed that the site garnered 47,548,514 page views in 56 days. The publicity it generated organically has been estimated as being worth AU$100million from an initial spend of $1.7m. International campaigns were later created to maintain the interest, increasing the spend, plus, the Blogger’s tenure was extended.

Fortunately – the winning candidate was diligent in their blogging. But the requirement was far too big an undertaking for one person to handle.

After the launch, moderators were still required to maintain all the connected feeds, that’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube supporting the blog. It was also necessary for others to be involved behind the scenes to provide support in site building, gaming and maintenance across all channels, also teams were required for editing, research, moderation, production and community management, while PR support was ongoing.

Human Resources necessary for Social Media.

Dependent on the approach, I usually suggest that a company that invests in Social Media should appoint a full time Community Manager.

This role should be held by someone inhouse, as it is their role to liase with Marketing and PR to find relevent information to feed through the chosen channels and to have the ability to resolve conflict by reporting to management in instances of crisis management. They should also be thoroughly familiar with the brand culture and competant in Customer Relationship Management.

A Community Manager can work with the Planner to manage the volume of communications and dependent on the bredth of strategy, should have a team of Moderators to assist them.

Moderators can be a team of rostered part timers who have the ability to maintain the brand personality and use the correct voice. For example if your main demographic is Formula One enthusiasts, your moderators must understand the culture and jargon, with an enthusiasm for motorsport.

It is very important to use your Social Media team as a community barometer and for them to be able to report sentiment or identify trends. This will give you the opportunity to identify brand advocates in your audience and allow for targeted communications down the track.

Another piece in the HR puzzle for Social Media is the Data Manager. Having a person who can report and assess sentiment, demographics, statistics and categorise your various communities, will give you unique insight upon which to improve services and build campaigns.

It won’t work without the batteries.

Entering into Social Media unprepared is akin to buying a new appliance from the door to door salesman and finding that it’s useless without the pricy but necessary accessories.

While you might find the cost involved to buy a website rebuild or a customised page on a Social Media platform reasonable, you must also consider the ongoing cost of human resources when setting down your budget.

Consider, when you experience six star service, it always involves the human touch. And logically the core of brand interaction with online communities is based on excellent customer service that evokes a personal touch. It has to be maintained and have continuity to reflect the desired cachet. Be aware and calculate the ongoing costs, because now, you can’t say that nobody told you.

Social Media – how to get started

Polly Math — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:20:48 +0000

194/365: Blind Date by Mr Flibble

Social Media is like online dating.

So everyone has said that the place to find your soul mate is online, but getting started is a bit daunting. Where do you start? Once you look around you realize that there are lots of options, but how do you pick what’s right for you? How should you project yourself and what exactly are you looking for in the ideal partner?

In the same way, the buzz is that Social Media is the next big thing for Marketers to get involved in. But where do you begin? Everybody knows Facebook. Do you start there? How do you go about it? And what does a Social Media Marketing campaign actually look like on Facebook?

Often the first thought is to do a viral campaign. Shoot a piece of funny video that gets seen by millions on the internet. Nice idea, but fundamentally flawed. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Even though two billion online videos a day are viewed, it doesn’t mean that yours will be, or that it will be shared virally.

So how about a blog? Everyone reads blogs, surely it can’t be too hard to tack one on to the corporate website? And Twitter, what can we do with that?

Once you start exploring Social Media you also see that there are a great many platforms. The AddThis share button that appears on most Social Media savvy sites can facilitate sharing information to over two hundred Social Platforms.

Just like in online dating, the way to begin is to start finding your customers online and merely eavesdropping to see where they are, and to understand what they do in that space. Once that’s done you select a social media platform that many of them use and begin to engage them. You create an appropriate persona and begin courting, giving away enough about yourself to attract interest, flirting and chatting your way into the lives of others until a loyal bond is formed.

Unlike dating however, the key idea behind Social Media is to organically grow your own extended community on appropriate networks.

Scoping the opportunities

When scoping out Social Media goals for clients I do a cultural audit of the brand I am working with. From there we identify key messages that we wish to deliver, a personality to project and a way of engaging the audience that will encourage positive word of mouth. I then identify appropriate platforms with which to engage the target audience.

The first step is to build an online following and you do that by giving the public a reason to engage with you on a regular basis. One simple move is to examine the content of your website to see if it provides good or interesting content that would warrant social sharing. If it does, then tools such as RSS feeds and AddThis can easily be applied to start word of mouth happening.

Which platform is right for you?

A great way to begin Social Media activity is to create a promotional activity that will draw a following on one particular platform. Discounts, sampling offers or competitions can be an uncomplicated way of starting an online following. A number of platforms already facilitate this kind of activity.

If you have an existing email database you also have an opportunity to use that to promote your campaign by driving traffic to your social feed. Be mindful however that you will need to continue to interact with the community that you create from the campaign, once the offer ends, as this will become your ongoing social capital.

Similarly a Social Media add on to an above the line campaign can also be a way to launch your brand in the medium. But it should utilize a platform that is flexible enough to allow followers to interact with the brand after the campaign has ended.

For some brands an Ambassador Program can be an ideal social jumpstart. Harnessing the social influence of customers already involved in social platforms, blogging and/or micro blogging can be invaluable. These programs require long term commitment by the brand to the community, evolving in order to capitalize on the ongoing value of social advocacy.

Small businesses are often successful by starting their word of mouth marketing strategy in micro-blogging. Short sharp blog posts or picture posts require lower involvement if resources are stretched. Also consider using Twitter as one of the easiest ways to initiate online conversation on a personal level, provided you have dedicated Moderators who understand the difference between spamming and the appropriate mix of dialogue with broadcast.

If customer service is your social goal, Twitter is again a great platform to launch in. However if your customers are looking for time saving devices or a value add to your products, a phone app could be the ideal vehicle for your social efforts.

And let’s not forget YouTube. If you’re in the business of creating regular video content, then harnessing the power of this huge community through a brand channel and promoted videos on YouTube’s home page might be the ideal platform for your brand. If photographs are a big part of your fan base’s enjoyment, then consider a photo aggregator or platform such as Flickr that already have millions in their communities.

And then what?

Once you’ve dipped the toe in, you will garner a better understanding of your community and can gradually build on your efforts. Adding a blog to your site will benefit if you have already begun to carve out an online following. Member areas for websites can continue the growth of your following and interactions. Tools, apps and geospacial add-ons can be utilised too. Semantic web technology can be adopted to understand and create intuitive responses to your followers needs too.

You can extend your reach by hooking into more social platforms as you find appropriate. But the most important thing is once you’re in, maintain your efforts and allow your target audience to have open dialogue with you. Just like in online dating, in Social media remember to maintain a transparent honesty, to have a sense of humour, have a bit of fun and to always to attend to feedback or dialogue in real time.

Social Media & Word of Mouth. (rvsocialmedia.com)
post-digital or die! (wklondon.typepad.com)

WTF is Social Media?

Polly Math — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 09:53:22 +0000

The beginner’s guides to Social Media

I always look forward to Marta Kagan‘s aggregation of Social Media statistics. Her series of presentations, “What The F*** is Social Media” take a standard Social Media acronym #WTF to create presentations that don’t take themselves seriously and may even have you #ROFL.

The format is easy to follow and the irreverent humour make for a good benchmark for contemporary communications. Your eyes certainly don’t glaze over during these, just as with the Socialnomics video I posted previously.

At best, the WTF series illustrate the global impact of Social. At worst, there are those who have seen them and then presumed to know everything about the medium. Trust me, these presentations are great for enlightening those who have yet to know the Social Media impact on Marketing and Communications, but you will need a Planner to help you utilise this medium effectively.

For those who’ve never seen these pieces, I offer you them all. The first was written in 2008, the latest was uploaded four days ago. A bonus of viewing them together is that the rapid spread and uptake of platforms across web 2.0 is plain to see. As Marta puts it, “Two years later, the stats don’t just speak for themselves—they literally boggle the mind.”

If you’re worried about showing your executives a presentation that implies expletives, she has also published her last two pieces sans the F***.

Enjoy and use to enlighten, and as a user of Social Media platforms, please respect the creative commons:

© All Rights Reserved Marta Z. Kagan

The Semantic Web, the future of Social Media

Polly Math — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:59:10 +0000

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee addresses TED March 2009

It’s not just for Boffins and Geeks

For those of us who have long been immersed in the evolution of Social Media – also known as Web 2.0 – we are now looking forwards to the evolution of Web 3.0. Let me introduce you to the future zeitgeist, otherwise known as The Semantic Web. The excitement lies in the broad scope of possibilities.

A year ago in the above video, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of The World Wide Web, addressed TED in 2009, encouraging us to have an ‘open web’, where we upload all the data we have, to share it and allow others to freely merge data and draw new and interesting insights.

This merging of information we call Mashables, and they are giving rise to an amazing array of infographics that help us to have a better understanding of a wide range of topics. One year later at TED he reviewed some of the emerging mash-ups. You can review them here.

This enormous mine of data is ripe for Developers, for whom Semantic Web is described as the creation of intuitive applications, most notably for search and data. Semantic Web helps us wade through the volumes of information we deal with on a daily basis.

It has been claimed that the current generation of children will process more information while at school, than their grandparents encountered in a lifetime. So intuitive navigation of data is going to be vital to us all.

The lifting of privacy in Social Media

Marketers are accused of hijacking the term Semantic Web and sullying it for the purposes of creating branded Social Media promotions. But as I have held in previous posts, Social Media is just part of the way we communicate today, it is not unique to consumers, it’s open to commerce and hence Marketing.

As Sir Tim puts it, Social Media is data rooted in relationships and interests, so merging learnings from your profiles, forum contributions, reviews, tweets, status, comments and blogs will just be a part of the data mix. The lifting of privacy on Social Media platforms such as Facebook are their first steps along this path to creating more accurate search mechanisms. It will also potentially create more revenue for them.

Acknowledging that the technology has been bubbling along for some time now, many developers conclude that The Semantic Web is ten years away. But what I perceive is that Marketing muscle, by way of funding, is what will accelerate the development of Semantic Web technology.

The potential of harnessing this data will become invaluable for brands, so Marketers will be using the power of raw data in the near future to their advantage. With Facebook now also opening up, Social Media savvy Marketers will have access to even more sensitive and personal data about their customers.

What can Semantic Web do for brands?

One of the huge advantages to Marketers will be the ability to take this personalised data to drill down to find your core customer accurately, using Semantic Web.

While once Direct Marketing promised to take us directly to our primary audience, our current Social Media platforms go closer still. Using Semantic Web, it narrows the field considerably. The technology is there. It will just take the merging of creative marketing minds with developers to hook into it.

In short, Semantic Web can answer the questions Google can’t cope with. Take for example Apple‘s recent purchase of ‘Siri‘. It’s a Mobile App “Assistant” – using Semantic Web tech. I feel strongly that this is an indication of what will roll out on a broader level through Social Media in the very near future.

This is how Siri describes itself: “You can ask Siri to find a romantic place for dinner, tell you what’s playing at a local jazz club or get tickets to a movie for Saturday night.” Basically what it does is scan multiple aggregators, sites and search engines so that you don’t have to, forming a virtual assistant that does all the leg work.

Coming soon

For me, web API and Smartphone applications already feel clunky and inefficient, as I know it’s possible to do so much more with Semantic Web tech. Wouldn’t you like to just say into your phone: “Tell Dad I’m running late” or “Move my meeting from 3pm to 5pm” “or deliver 20 data lines to HSBC Sydney HQ” and have it automated for you? Soon you will be able to do just that.

For the benefit of Marketers, this will be pitched as time saving tools that you add to your promotional mix. Imagine saying to your phone: “Making Masterfoods Chilli con Carne, 7pm tonight, invite”, resulting in your phone app assistant sourcing a recipe, scanning data of the contents of your fridge, creating a shopping list and ordering the ingredients online to be delivered when you get home.

Then it will update your status to your select group of chilli loving friends on your preferred Social Media Platforms to say, “Hot stuff! Making Masterfoods Chilli for the gang tonight – be there 8pm” including an RSVP prompt, placing it in their calendar, and adding a link to the recipe. Meanwhile you’ve received a list of attendees, any allergies they may have, a video demo of the recipe and a countdown of what you need to prepare.

For some this is a crude use of the technology. Realistically its practical use indicates the early future of Semantic Web for commerce.

But of course it’s not all about commerce

In a more noble vein, Sir Tim mentions that it may also help significantly in the development, understanding and diagnostics of medicine. Of course there’s also fantastic scope for philanthropy, altruism, for artistic applications, social justice, gaming and a way to simplify bureaucracy. In fact, the more imaginative we are, the more we can put all that data to work for us.

So it’s time for society to invest in the future and for the big dreamers to all put our heads together with Semantic Web Developers.

Looking at the big picture, The Semantic Web is exciting stuff indeed.

Also watch this short piece by Kate Ray – ‘A story about The Semantic Web’

The Semantic Web, Customer Service, and the Financial World | Smart Data Collective (smartdatacollective.com)
How the Semantic Web Will Change Social Media Marketing Part 4: Your Privacy (ignitesocialmedia.com)
How the Semantic Web Can Help Enterprise Apps (ciozone.com)

Latest Statistics on Social Media

Polly Math — Sun, 09 May 2010 10:33:51 +0000

The Social Media Strategist’s Best Friend

This updated presentation by Socialnomics author Erik Qualman encapsulates most of the media statistics that have broken across Web 2.0 recently.

It’s a handy tool for explaining the reach of Social Media to clients, employers and staff. And potentially a good motivator for those attempting to wade through the mumbo-jumbo of the medium.

Why Bloggers think Marketers stink

Polly Math — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:54:29 +0000

Like the cry “There’s gold in them there hills!” Social Media has become the business perceived as a license to print money, attracting every shark that smells there’s something to be made from nothing.

Somewhere along the line, word got out that Bloggers were the passport to advertising online with zero financial outlay. Supposedly they’re the golden ticket to Word of Mouth marketing and by harnessing them via press releases and sampling, you can charge your clients tens of thousands of dollars worth of Social Media Marketing without spending a cent.

You just have to read the discussions in LinkedIn’s Social Media Marketing groups to see how many self-named Social Media Experts – with zero relevant expertise – are expounding the joys of utilising bloggers for marketing. And then there are the mountains of online excrement that tell you about the art and science of Social Media, but actually show a lack of insight into the medium.

In all honesty, it’s these kinds of people who give Social Media a bad name.

In the blogging community approaches by some PR companies have already damaged the reputations of those they represent and Search Marketing companies are joining the ranks. Within that, include Market Research survey companies and free competition/promotional websites. Why? Because these so called ‘Experts’ put up their hands to court bloggers, without regard to the psychographics of the medium.

But what would I know?

Under various pseudonyms, I write a number of blogs, ranging from the personal journal to those targeting various communities of interest to FMCG, Service industries and SME’s. And when I say communities, I’ve since met a lot of my local readers in person, many also blog.

Those who regularly read my blogs comment on posts, talk about them in external forums, in Google Buzz, in Twitter and on Facebook. Many now hook up for social gatherings, swarms and tweet-ups too. They also email me, and like me, the Bloggers have a file full of unsolicited mail, aka spam from the kinds of companies I mentioned above.

So I know firsthand and have seen evidence of the visceral response from Bloggers to approaches by brands. Not all Bloggers are averse to being courted by advertisers, but the approach has to be couched appropriately. And this is where most companies fail, at the first hurdle.

Some Insight

Because it is a crowd sourced online medium, the crux of Social Media is listening, chatting and understanding. In approaching Bloggers you must apply all of the above. And by doing this, in terms of identifying your target market, you drill down even further than Direct Marketing ever has. But this is where merely downloading a list of blogger’s email addresses and sending out a templated email will be your undoing.

Blogging outside of business oriented sites is often deeply personal. The name comes from ‘Web Log’ – an online journal. Just as in life, in blogging communities you have niches within subcultures and if you ignore that, the drawbridge will be raised, subjecting your brand to firebombs of negative online PR – from exactly the group of readers you were hoping to promote your brand to.

Clumsy examples: acquiring a list of Food Bloggers and asking a Vegan Blogger to promote Quick Service Restaurants; or asking a Mummy Blogger with four kids to test drive a compact car for review. Hell hath no fury like an irate Blogger, especially when the current statistics are that 90% of the public trust personal recommendations. Those who give may also take away.

You have to understand the philosophy and values of the bloggers you approach before courting them. They’re not professional journalists. Nor do most aspire to that. For the most part they’re amateur Writers, passionate about the subject they write about, that’s what drove them to blog in the first place.

For example, unlike Journalists, sending out a press release does not work. Unlike subscribers to sampling websites, sending promotional packs may also be ineffective. Telling Bloggers that you want to publish their posts or images on your website (but that you own the intellectual property in the T&Cs) is bound to invoke scathing criticism. Telling them to be a Brand Ambassador will see scorn heaped upon you.

The most influential Bloggers are savvy to the fact that you want make money out of them for no remuneration. Would you volunteer to boost the sales of a corporation that posts profits larger than the GNP of some countries, for zero compensation? I think not. You’re not, your ad agency isn’t. So why expect Bloggers to?

A considered Approach

For brands to get results, avoid the smooth talking Snake Oil Salesmen of Social Media, they have but one angle. Talk to Social Media Marketers within your advertising agency. They should take the time to understand who to work with online and then offer an insightful and creative promotion to take to Bloggers on your behalf.

Have them support the campaign with traditional media and PR. That way you can ensure that your established brand values and corporate image will marry with the appropriate gatekeepers for maximum exposure.

The Bottom line is, if you want Bloggers to be your friends, treat them as you would yourself, with manners and dignity.

DT2PQZWUWPJF

You don’t need Social Media Strategists

Polly Math — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:29:47 +0000

Social Media is dead

While some people prefer a cosy niche, I don’t like pigeon holing people. It feels too narrow in scope to bring out potential.

I’ve never been enthused that Advertising creativity is specialised within the traditional silo’s of media. I have always seen advertising as a whole, with channels appropriated to suit the customers. And now I am at odds with self appropriating the title of Social Media Strategist.

I can carry this title because I came to use the tools and platforms long before many in advertising were aware that they were potentially of consequence to marketing. Ten years ago I was initiating mobile phone marketing, online forums and various web tools that companies could use to reward, educate and motivate staff. At the time it was considered HR oriented, and not appropriate to Customer Relationship Management, but already, back then I knew the time would come.

Instinctively I knew that as the general public became more educated they would decide how they wanted to engage brands, and that time has come. This is a new era. A time where consumers will shape brands, customer service and product development by choosing at which level they engage. More importantly, by making public their views of the brands observed day to day.

I appreciate that company titles make people comfortable. But I envisage a future paradigm where we will have planners who have advertising and marketing skills across all channels. There won’t be Digital specialists, Social Media specialists and Traditional Media specialists.

We will all be adept at thinking through the big picture and running an idea into many facets of branding. And most importantly, gathering the public feedback and devising engagement via Social Media platforms will not be left to Public Relations staff, but will be entrusted to those who understand the full impact and quality of this data, in the manner of Direct Marketing analysis.

This requires an understanding of the psychology of your target market and marketing of your brand as a whole. This insight will guide you in the best way to move forward.

So if a Social Media Strategist approaches your company, ask them what they’re actually offering you? Many such people focus on sending out blanket emails to bloggers or to online survey groups offering sampling, but how do they integrate that into your marketing as a whole? What data will they give you in return and how well do they know the online influencers they are dealing with?

You may be approached by a Social Media ‘Expert’ who is a smart phone application developer or those who will tack a forum or a blog onto your website, but they may only be offering the physical structure. Again, what will they broadcast, how will they converse with your customers and what data will they collect? Do they train the advocates that moderate these platforms or will it be left to you? Do you know how best to interact with online communities?

My advice would be to find a company that is already offering a three hundred and sixty degree view of your brand’s marketing. Find a company that builds your brand personality in a variety of ways across traditional and digital media. But they must also have Senior people able to use Social Media as a quality research tool, who understand the online stakeholders who can build your brand by word of mouth and to provide utilities that suit your customers, as well as being cognisant of the importance of online Customer Service.

Backing that up they’ll need resources that can provide you with the bells and whistles of new media that engage customers. That would be in the form of widgets, Smartphone applications, online TV and radio, to name just a few of the goodies on offer in the Social Media grab-bag.

It may seem premature to declare the death of the Social Media Strategist. I call myself one because via long term immersion, I am one of the rare few brand advertisers that understand this medium, overlooked by many in the industry. But I know that as I educate others, this will no longer be a specialty, because brands ultimately deserve broad thinkers.

The title Social Media is already redundant among early adopters. It is now known as the Semantic Web. It is the natural evolution of communications and in a relatively short time, your brand will also evolve. So please, future-proof your brand by putting it in the right hands.

Technorati DT2PQZWUWPJF

Advertising and Social Media

Polly Math — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:30:59 +0000

It’s time for advertising to reflect the change in how we communicate.

As someone who has worked in the advertising and marketing sphere since 1987 I have borne witness to a seismic shift in the way people communicate. While technology has been instrumental in providing new means of reaching each other it has been the change in societal attitudes that have brought about the most fundamental changes in the first world.

The core values that bound traditional communities have eroded. The church and intimate extended family relations no longer drive who it is we socialize with and work with. Class structures are less predominant, along with cultural differences, especially in new world countries settled by migrants.

The nuclear family has eroded leaving a generation who’ve grown up in blended households. They open up to their peers online in order to bond. We are adrift, making our own way, seeking out others with whom to traverse life’s path, through work and play across a significantly larger pool of other people. Our voices can be heard globally.

The instrument that we are increasingly using to seek out others with whom we share common interests and values is the internet. Rudimentary online forums and basic blog rings have evolved into online communities founded on mutual interests. The title Web 2.0 was coined to describe movement towards this user generated content online. Now Social Media has taken its place as the buzzword.

The social media landscape is dotted with many villages that cluster like minded groups of people both locally and globally. Going a step further, Facebook is said to have so many users that were it a country, it would be the third most populous in the world.

Word of mouth recommendations within these online communities hold as much sway now as those of the traditional ‘wise man’ of the village. And so marketers are now turning a keen eye to these communities. After all this is a natural and obvious space for businesses to market themselves to the public. However it’s also a place where traditional advertising has no place.

The transition in advertising

In the late eighties, pioneering Direct Marketers declared that to advertise broadly to the general public was not enough. Why trawl the ocean when you can shoot fish in a barrel? Go directly to the people who are exactly your audience. Later, they instigated Customer Relationship Management, which reached even further into the pockets and minds of consumers to sell brands and products. Traditional advertising agencies then had to change gears, with marketing dollars now being shared with DM agencies.

Then after the dotcom crash came the rise of digital advertising agencies and digital media agencies, who could service marketers with websites and the various forms of adspace now available online. DM embraced email and e-commerce websites as part of their offering. The pie split again and in order to consolidate the shrinking ad dollar, traditional ad agencies annexed both DM and Digital as part of their offering. Now brands are choosing to divert funds into Social Media and ad agencies are struggling to get their heads around the medium.

Social Media combines all the advertising tactics mentioned above, yet it slipped under the radar of advertising agencies, initially allowing Public Relations agencies to move into this space. But in the main, traditional PR agencies are being shunned by online influencers. Why? Because online communities have their own unwritten rules, their own voice; they’re savvy and anti establishment. They can’t be approached as you would a Journalist or a TV Producer.

Why pursue Social Media?

Today we are aware that for many consumers, word of mouth drives more sales than traditional aspirational brand advertising. The term ‘Dead Tree Media’ is affected disparagingly by a time poor populous who want variety and news in real time, and on demand. Today our markets increasingly turn to online citizen journalism unbound by editorial guidelines and legalese, turning away from magazines, journals and newspapers. With PVRs in many homes many no longer even watch TV ads. Conversely, billions of pieces of video footage are viewed online, on demand, and smartphone technology is amplifying this growth.

A different strategic approach is required to corner this market. It has to come from within the social media space. But unlike DM and PR you can’t buy lists and issue a blanket email to online influencers.

You can’t build a social media platform and demand that influencers supply free positive commentary for your website or for them to produce glowing advertorials for no return, because online influencers are driven by their own passion. They’re not media professionals, they’re in their communities because it allows them freedom of expression within the safe confines of a tribe that share their attitudes and opinions.

You need a Trojan horse. Once you’re on the inside you can evaluate what that community wants from your brand. And that fundamentally, is the crux of Social Media Marketing.

In this next wave of marketing, consumers direct exactly how they wish to be addressed, they’ll tell you what they expect from your business and how you can improve your brand. And that kind of information is invaluable, but it will take a fundamental mind-shift to break from traditional corporate practices in order to embrace it.

Welcome to the brave new world of communications.