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Guide to social media:
become part of the online community
Introduction 2
What is social media 4
10 rules to get you started, from the IAB
Social Media Council 6
The definition and role of social media
The landscape: the rise of social media platforms and practices
and the resulting consumer behaviour 8
The difference between ‘getting it’ and ‘doing it right’ 14
An introduction to online PR and blogging 22
The art of online conversations and the tools to help you 28
Stories, passions and actions – How BRAVIA Bunnies inspired
the social media conversation 34
Branded Utilities (and how brands from all sectors engage
the social media consumer) 40
When creativity and display advertising meets social media 46
Using social media to increase paid-search
marketing effectiveness 52
Integrating social media 58
Planning and evaluating social media campaigns 60
Social media measurement – the basics 64
The future: where we are now and where we should be 70
Jargon Buster 74
1
SocialMedia Handbook
As an IAB trooper
I promise to always use
online in a respectful and
responsible fashion.
Introduction
By Amy Kean,
Senior PR and Marketing Manager,
Network Internet Advertising Bureau
2
There have been some truly amazing and inspired campaigns in 2008 which
really made the most of what social media offers. We’ve had the Facebook,
MySpace and Bebo success stories, where brands have penetrated an
already-popular online presence with engaging content that people actually
want to interact with - O2 and Cadbury being great examples. There’s been
the standalone activity that has successfully tapped into the very essence of
the online community, like Balloonacy, from Orange – the first ever balloon
race across the internet. A fan of widgets? In terms of creating useful
online applications that get right in front of consumers on their own terms,
there’s been loads of brands who have flown the flag: UPS have done it to
stay ahead of their competitors; so have Cancer Research, with a Google
application which measures your alcohol intake; Amazon’s full of them and
even Kimberly Clark have embraced these branded utilities (don’t ask!) All
this is in addition to the hundreds upon thousands of conversations that
take place online every day about brands, products and services, whether
you want them to or not.
3
SocialMedia Handbook
Social Networks
Business Community
Blogs/Vlogs/Podcasts
Integrated
Facilitators
4
Consumer Content
Branded Applications/Utilities
5
SocialMedia Handbook
3. Get a feel for it: The world of social media may be big and scary,
so don’t dive straight in. Take time to try out small ideas and get
comfortable. Free tools such as Technorati and Google Pagerank can
help pick the most salient and popular social media sites out there.
Don’t just look at what one person says, but what others have said in
response.
6
4. L
isten: What people are saying about your brand is, of course, important
– both the positives and negatives, but the true art of listening also
considers this: how are they talking about it? Is it really engaged with
your brand and its online presence or are you barely worth a mention?
Then start thinking about what you can do around it..
5. N
egative isn’t necessary bad: Not everyone is going to love you
or your brand. Be prepared for some criticism, and consider it to be
a healthy thing (in moderation) – universal acclaim looks suspicious.
Criticism can be an effective way of motivating and rallying your own
supporters and evangelists.
7. L
et them share you: An all-Flash website with all the content locked
makes it hard to share. Ditch the splash screens and intros, make sure
your site’s content is directly accessible and has short, easy-to-spread
URLs. Don’t break links by moving or deleting stuff.
8. D
on’t cheat! Giving yourself fake reviews on Amazon, a ‘fan’ blog run
by your PR team, post your latest ad to Digg saying ‘this rocks!’ won’t
wash. Not only will you probably get found out and end up causing
more negative PR than positive, but since May 2008 it has been against
UK consumer law to ‘falsely represent oneself as a consumer’.
10. Have fun: The more you show passion for your own brand, the more
your consumers will as well. Don’t be afraid to experiment or try new
things – the flexibility and agility of web 2.0 tolerates failure a lot less
harshly. It’s better to give something a go than do nothing and let your
competitors take the opportunity instead.
7
SocialMedia Handbook
Social media is more than the collection of sites that have entered
the mainstream through the phenomenon described as web 2.0,
It represents a wholesale change in the way the internet is used
by the consumer. What differentiates web 2.0 from the web as
we used to know it is not any notable advances in technology,
but instead the application of technology. It’s about people
connecting, not just to each other, but through a shared interest
such as a new album, a funny clip, a movie that’s coming out,
8
a video game, a car, a party, a local venue, anything. This defines the
content and culture that’s important to them. No better is this illustrated
than by social media - the process whereby information is dynamically
created and shared to maximize collective intelligence.
But hasn’t the internet always been social? Instant messaging has been
around since the 1980s, customers of Amazon have long enjoyed making
purchase decisions based on customer reviews, and what was Friends
Reunited if it wasn’t a precursor to Facebook?
Social networks
Social networks are the most prominent of the social media offerings
due to their phenomenal growth and considerable media attention. The
immediacy of the internet combined with the ease of communicating to
a massive audience with a strong desire for self-expression has been
instrumental in this growth.
9
SocialMedia Handbook
were asked how they would spend 15 minutes of free time, 45% claimed
Network
they would check out their favourite social networks. And they aren’t
just killing time. These sites are being used to put cultural, creative and
commercial skills to profitable effect - as seen by the growth of socio-
Engagement environmental networks, new businesses (750,000 of them) and fanzines
on social networks.
Brand building
This behaviour has not been lost on the portals and search engines who
are either developing their own social media offerings or snapping up the
emerging players. Yahoo! started the ball rolling with the purchase of the
Interaction
online community GeoCities back in 1999 in a $3.6 billion deal which
gave an early indication into the perceived value of social networking. The
Sunnyvale company then went on to acquire Flickr in 2005 and video
editing site Jumpcut a year later. By this time the likes of MySpace and
Facebook were attracting considerable attention and keen to be player
sin social networking, Yahoo! developed Yahoo! 360, although it failed to
trouble these new start-ups.
Nevertheless, social networks were firmly on the map and for Rupert
Murdoch’s News Corp the $580m acquisition of MySpace’s parent
company Intermix Media in 2005 provided a valuable online addition. This
purchase signalled the start of a scramble for a foothold in social media
with the established media owners buying up the likes of YouTube (Google,
$1.65bn), Bebo (AOL, $850m) and a 1.6% stake in Facebook (MSN,
$240m - valuing the social network at a mind boggling $15 billion).
Whilst a huge amount of media is uploaded onto social networks (17 million
photos and 105 thousand videos are uploaded onto MySpace each day
alone) there are of course specific photo and video sharing sites.
10
Flickr is one of the earliest social media applications. Renowned for
its wealth of quality photographs, this site has evolved from a tool for
sharing photographs into an online community, with users prompted “Since launching
to find friends and view/comment on their images (as well as those mobile internet in
from the whole community). It is credited with being one of the first 2007 Vodafone has
sites to implement tag clouds which provide access to images tagged seen significant
growth in customers’
with the most popular keywords.
use of social
networks, email
YouTube has singlehandedly turned video sharing into one of the most
and search,” says
important parts of internet culture. Although much maligned for poor Al Russell Head of
quality content, 100 million videos are watched on the site each day, Internet Services
13 hours of video are uploaded every minute and in 2007, YouTube at Vodafone UK.
alone consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in “Working closely
2000. This consumption only looks like increasing as sites such as with internet brands
such as MySpace
these continue to exploit other channels such as mobile (including the
enables us to offer a
iPhone) and TV. PC like experience
to ten million of
Social media goes mobile our customers on
mobiles and allows
Many social networkers are so dependent on their online communities them to make the
that they rarely use webmail accounts like Gmail and Hotmail, most of the Internet
meaning that friends not on the same social network can fall into a whenever and
communication desert. They frequently use their mobile phones to log wherever they are.”
into social networks such as MySpace - which launched a new mobile
page with Vodafone in August 2008 and saw UK page views double.
In fact of the UK’s 21 million mobile phone subscribers who belong
to a social network 25% visit a social network each month.1 This has
prompted Vodafone to launch the “Vodafone to Connect Friends”
application on Facebook, enabling all UK mobile users to send text
messages from their Facebook profile to friends, whether they are on 1 Nielsen Mobile
Blogs
Network Online forums, wikis, podcasts and blogs are fundamental to social media.
A blog is essentially an online diary or notebook which generally focuses
on a certain subject and invites readers to leave comments. The speed at
Engagement
which they can be created and the low cost to entry means that blogs are
often the first source for information and as such the better known ones
Brand building
generate a lot of interest for media professionals. Tech Crunch, Valleywag
and mashable are established blogs for the industry they support and
blogs, of course, have their own search engine – Technorati.
Interaction
12
orkut, Linked In and Yahoo! are amongst those supporting the platform.
Advertisers must learn from this and accept that with social media it’s all
too easy for their brands to be interpreted in different ways through ‘mash-
ups’ and talked about on blogs, networks and offline communications.
Consumers are incredibly brand-savvy and expect more from advertisers
particularly when they appear on their own personal web space. If they
get it right, they can harness the power of this movement quickly and
with minimal effort - as Chris Moyles did when plugging his radio show
Facebook page, rapidly attracting 500,000 evangelists of the show and
influencing countless others through their individual communities. Through
this viral marketing how many of these friends will become listeners and
how many listeners will become super-listeners?
Engagement
Subject: You have a new email – somewhere else
I have 149 unread Facebook messages, which means I’ve had at least
149 emails to my work account telling me that someone has sent me a
message on Facebook. Since when did I need an email to tell me I have
a new email?
14
When I do log on to Facebook for a bit of ‘housekeeping’, someone pops
up on Facebook Messenger to tell me about their day. This is ironic, since
whenever I log on to Windows Live Messenger at work, that is exactly
what I end up doing all day.
It’s a good laugh though. Never before have I had such an endless supply
of entertainment in my life – nor have I been quite so distracted.
In the US, social networking site MySpace has overtaken Yahoo! as the
biggest player in the online market – growth which is directly propelled by
2
the deluge of user-generated content. Media comes from more sources Source: ‘Any Time, Any
Place: Understanding The
than ever before, a challenging trend for advertisers trying to capture
Connected Generation’
consumers’ attention. Alongside internet usage, 83% of mobile phones in (Universal McCann)
Europe have cameras and 99% of their owners have used that functionality,
with a further two-thirds claiming to have sent a picture MMS to friends.2
My phone has a 5MP camera and features a 140 MHz processor. It’s
hard to believe that the original Nintendo Entertainment System ran on just
over 5 MHz of power. As the march of Moore’s Law continues, content
creating hardware (and software) will become more accessible, more
powerful and more empowering. GarageBand, Windows Movie Maker
and iPhoto are all bundled with hardware; I can now get a version of Pro
Tools, the music industry’s standard studio workstation, for about £300
– which is incredibly powerful software. The net result of this (no pun
intended) is that big media companies have experienced an explosion of
potential competitors. As have advertisers.
The digital media landscape, particularly where it’s social (most of it), has
become democratic: social networks and companies like Google (see the
Android Developer Challenge) are encouraging a barrage of contributions
to the internet through open application programming interfaces (APIs);
Twitter was created in 24 hours using Ruby on Rails and is now a multi-
million dollar business; anyone can create a fully functioning blog for free
in minutes using services like Blogger and Wordpress.
15
SocialMedia Handbook
In 1993, the Chairman & CEO of Bell Atlantic said, “The time is not far
off when you will be answering your television set and watching your
telephone.”3 What sounds like a futuristic statement to some has become
3
a reality for users of the iPhone and other such handsets. Their phone
Source: ‘A Baby Bell
Primed For The Big Fight’, usage provides an early snapshot of mass consumer behaviour in the
Edmund L. Andrews (The future, over-indexing as they do against sophisticated computing habits.
New York Times) Already in Japan, only 24% of mobile phone usage is attributed to calls
and there are only three markets left in the world where that figure is north
4 Source: ‘Any Time, Any
of 60%: Thailand, Taiwan and the US. 4
Place: Understanding The
Connected Generation’
(Universal McCann) Q4 2007 Data Usage (past Month)
iPhone Owners 18+ Compared to All Subscribers 18+
As for answering your TV, Yahoo! and Intel have announced their plans
to develop widgets for televisions. Anything that can be digitized will be
widgetized (sorry), allowing further sharing and distribution of multimedia
content.
16
As Wi-Fi becomes ubiquitous, and even more so when WiMAX becomes
economically viable, we will see whole counties (possibly the whole of the
UK) become wirelessly enabled. It’s never been as easy to contribute to 5 Source: http://
latimesblogs.latimes.
the media landscape – and more access points and platforms, coupled
com/webscout/2008/02/
with higher data transfer speeds across all formats, will propel this trend of facebook-graffi.html
consumer participation in the media.
Well put sir. But even 0.01% of 70 million still leaves 7,000 videos for my
friends to enjoy and share with me as links, emails, messages, etc. Add that
Network
to the stuff I want to consume of my own volition – music, podcasts, BBC
iPlayer, GTA IV, beer, steak and chips – and suddenly it’s understandable
that the last thing on earth I have time for is an unnecessary pop-up advert.
If I wasn’t looking for you or your product, the least you can do is give me
Engagement
Even if you reach out to consumers, they can close their browser, ignore
your ad or better still blog about how annoying you are to the hundreds
of people in their social network or subscription base. It’s all on the
consumer’s terms now. This is indicative of the on-demand behaviour
that is becoming the norm across all media channels (see Sky+ and BBC
Radio 1 podcasts for two examples), which is what makes understanding
social media so important.
18
MySpace’s calling card since inception was the 4-track music player,
which bands would install to showcase their demos. In delivering the
brand promise, Intel launched the official 5-track music player, literally
allowing bands to ‘multiply’ their music on the social network. While this
exclusive sponsorship undoubtedly brought value to the audience, it was
deemed that something more would be needed to drive excitement and
allow the brand to spend time with its consumers.
Those winners were then flown to London for four days, rehearsing in
Bush Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, before going to Universal Music to
record a single in their studios, which is out now on iTunes and all major
Network
digital music stores. The artwork and band name were also chosen by the
Engagement
MySpace community, who were handed full control of the project.
A Dynamic Logic study showed that all of this excitement, coupled with
great content from Intel on how to get the most out of home studio
recording, yielded massive spikes in brand affinity metrics and purchase
intent across the hundreds of thousands of people that visited the Intel
MySpace page.
Moving forward
20
We’ve always consumed media socially but it’s becoming far more
automated. In the short term, our web activity is going to get more
communal. Services like OpenSocial, Facebook Connect and Microsoft
Source: http://
Live ID are battling it out to become a singular log-in point for users across
latimesblogs.latimes.
the web. com/webscout/2008/02/
facebook-graffi.html
If one becomes the standard, we’ll see many websites sign up to the
service so they can capitalise on registration details and behavioural activity
by increasing the relevancy of their advertising (and charging media buyers
a premium in the process). This also involves displaying search results and
other content based on our ‘social graphs’, which means what our social
network friends have clicked on will be deemed more relevant.
In the longer term, we will see many more examples of this to come,
across a multitude of media platforms. Intel and Yahoo!’s TV widgets are
just the start.
The difference
between ‘getting it’
and ‘doing it right’
22
Anyone with access to the internet can ‘do’ it – that’s the essence of social
media but for a brand to ‘do it right’ involves a real understanding of the
medium. As a first important step therefore, living and breathing social
media is vital. If you want to get more involved with photo-sharing, for
example, then make sure you’ve got an account with each of the key
sites.
The second key differentiator for those who are doing it right is an
understanding that social media is not, on the whole, campaign based
activity (although it can of course play an important role in this). Consumers
are talking about, and interacting with your brand 24 hours a day, 365 days
a year. Social media is therefore like oxygen to the current generation
of connected youth in particular – your social media strategy needs to
reflect this raising important considerations in terms of how you resource
it both internally and via third party agencies. This may seem like common
sense but is essential in gaining consumer understanding.
“The Social Media Team is the core of Dell’s business’s marketing strategy.
The dedicated team focus on listening to the customers by engaging
with blogs, wikis, forums etc. The other elements of marketing are less
important as they have become more transactional and tactical in nature,
whereas social media is much more strategic,” says Lark.
It’s about how you use listening and coalescing
with conversations that are going on to back up
and inform everything you do. He suggests
the notion of traditional media ‘was killed
a while ago’.
23
SocialMedia Handbook
Social media is also often best viewed as a research and insight activity.
It gives brands an unprecedented chance to listen to and respond to
Network
consumers. While understanding target audiences clearly remains
important, social media is better viewed as a way of exposing the trends
around wider topics and understanding how your brand should (or
Engagement
Top 5 differentiators between those that ‘get it’ and ‘do it right’:
Interaction
1. Understand Social Media activity runs 24hrs a day, 365 days a year.
2. Resource it correctly (i.e. have the right internal and external teams
in place).
3. Value all engagement – even if it doesn’t create an obvious and immediate
benefit (research and associated insights can be hugely valuable).
4. Expect the unexpected – results are sometimes far better or worse than
anticipated. If the message has been correctly constructed, it will have
an effect on the recipient, even if they don’t get back to you.
5. Exploit your own website – consumers have high levels of trust in brand
websites.
24
It harnesses the power of the internet to enable
music fans to:
• Discover
• Invest in
• a
nd share in the financial success of emerging
artists
• F
irstly, it was felt that it would be the right
medium to build credibility for Slicethepie.
• S
econdly, as the concept was new and it needed a proper ‘conversation’
to introduce it. WOMM was identified as the ideal medium to open such
a conversation with key individuals.
• T
hirdly, the internet has played a key role in changing the music industry
in the period preceding Slicethepie’s launch and so it was the natural
medium through which to work.
• F
inally, the fact that Slicethepie’s business model is internet-based and
will appeal to internet savvy individuals confirmed WOMM as the correct
approach.
Network
The key objective was to drive registrations pre-launch. Those who
registered were able to enter the first Arena. It was also important to
create a credible buzz prior to the launch and so get key influencers talking
about the concept and the site.
Engagement
MySpace and Bebo proved excellent sources of contacts and the team
used an informal and personal approach - posting comments and
messaging. Personalising messages was vital.
Initially, the contact didn’t reveal the brand name, but rather created
interest and asked if the recipient would like to be involved. For those who
responded positively, a second communication was sent which included
the name and also linked to a YouTube area which featured a couple of
user testing videos (one longer ‘taster’ video and one shorter ‘funny’ clip).
The final message gave bands exclusive password access to the pre-
launch site.
After the launch, a Facebook application was created which targeted people
within a social networking environment. The Facebook apps focussed on
the most ‘chattable’ aspects of the site and featured Slicethepie’s ‘Watch
List’ and ‘Scout Profile’ areas.
26
What were the results?
“It’s been exactly one year to the day since the Slicethepie website
launched! One year has seen a vast number of achievements and with 16
financed Artists, 4 awards, over £1/4 million pounds raised in total, 10,000
Artists signed up so far, an army of 60,000 music fans and Investors and
over 1 million reviews submitted to date.”
Social media
in action
O2 –
Fill the Indigo campaign
AIS London
27
SocialMedia Handbook
An introduction to
online PR and blogging
28
Who are digital media owners?
However in today’s world, the landscape of the digital media owner has
changed dramatically, with the real sea change being the ability to ‘self
publish’.
The advent of free publishing tools, faster and wider provision of broadband
and cheaper high-quality cameras and videocameras have led to the
dawn of web 2.0, which has meant that anybody now can publish their
own content and media online.
Blogs, forums, wikis, social networking sites (to name just a few) have
created a new breed of publisher, one with no start up cost, no commercial
imperative, and most importantly no editorial guidelines.
A person with a point of view can now reach a vast audience. All they need
to do to grow their readership is to be committed and passionate about a
subject and if people like what they say their audience will blossom.
What’s more the opinion of these self publishers is often taken as a more
trusted source of information than traditional forms of media, certainly
when it comes to product reviews.
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SocialMedia Handbook
This has led those ‘traditional’ online media providers to change and adapt.
Mainstream sites are adding social features such as commenting, UGC
Network
uploading and content sharing. This is the first step in the web becoming
a truly conversational ecosystem. All of this means brands now have a
myriad of promotional opportunities online. There is a community for just
Engagement
about every topic imaginable, but playing in this new environment means
adapting your techniques as the old rules no longer apply.
Brand building
Conversation is king
Interaction
The rise in social media has led to change in the way we see communication
with consumers. The previous ‘broadcast’ model was a monologue where
messages were crafted but now people are actively participating and
responding to what they watch and read.
This means the best campaigns are crafted to create dialogue with
consumers.
The end result should be a much wider exposure to the initial outreach.
What’s more, it doesn’t have to be a one hit wonder, as consumers respond
the brand can join in the debate, respond and react. By participating and
engaging in your audiences’ activities you have a real opportunity to connect
with your consumer and make more meaningful relationships with them.
This is all very well, but brands may be worried that if they engage in social
media they are somehow losing control.
30
If you type your brand’s name into Google, you will see an alternative
homepage, created by other people who are already talking about you so
the control that you desire has already been conceded for the most part.
Brands that recognise this and seek to become active members of these
communities, enhancing and enriching said community can help to shape
the thoughts and opinions of key influencers which, in turn, benefits them.
It can be tempting in this environment to take the easy route, of just using
blogs and wikis to promote your product or brand without disclosure,
using the comments or UGC saying “xxx is great!” After all, what’s the
worst that can happen?
The answer is simple. If you lie, you will get caught out; authenticity and
trust are key factors in the social media environment – and brands that
have tried pulling the wool over consumers’ eyes have been named and
shamed with relish by bloggers and since 2008, not only do you lose
brand value and trust by doing so, but it is now against the law, so the risk
has a legal dimension.
The alternative, while it looks and sounds harder, is the one that reaps
rewards in the long run. Be authentic. Don’t shy away from criticism, and
engage with your detractors as well as your enthusers. The brands of
the future will be the brands that converse, and just like a face-to-face
conversation, nobody likes being lied to.
Summary
This doesn’t mean that suddenly marketing has changed forever and
everything that once was is no longer in effect, in fact far from it. What
it means is that online we have new opportunities. We can mix up the
approach and have seen that brands that engage communities in a
meaningful way are reaping the benefits.
Steve Rubel SVP with Edelman Digital created some thoughts around this
which sums things up perfectly so, with kind permission, here it is:
Network
Brand building
Participation
Open Open
Interaction
Communication Collaboration
Online initiatives such as viral videos, that Win-win initiatives that open a dialogue
are designed to generate discussion, but toward reaching a broader goal.
not necessarily produce a shared
outcome.
Controlled Controlled
Communication Collaboration
One-way tactics such as TV advertising, Programmes that facilitate participation but
online advertising and media relations. are more controlled e.g. Dell IdeaStorm
Passive
Talk Action
32
Social media The Carphone Warehouse –
in action X Factor Challenge
CHI & Partners
The X Factor Challenge lets viewers sing and draw themselves for
a chance to appear on TV during the show’s ad breaks. Having
the web experience at its centre, the campaign uses TV, mobile
and social media to engage the user in different levels. From simply
watching and judging someone’s performance to creating their
own, sharing it via their mobile and, ultimately, starring on TV.
On the site, users can get the lyrics for eight classic singalong
tracks and then choose to record their performance via a freephone
number on their mobile or their computer’s microphone, also
creating an animated character. They can then send performances
to friends as an email, upload it as a personalised message to
Facebook and even send it on, for free to their mobile as a video
ringtone.
33
SocialMedia Handbook
34
This presents the brands of today with a simple choice: ignore it and live
with the consequences or learn to embrace it. In this chapter we will try
to explain how a brand might try to embrace it, whilst mastering the art of
online conversations. We provide a helpful framework on how to approach
this whilst also highlighting some of the potential pitfalls to avoid.
1 Buzz monitoring
T
he secret of a good conversationalist is to listen to your audience
before blindly diving in head first. The same logic applies to any brand
wishing to join a conversation in social media. Fortunately, there are a
number of tools at your disposal to do this.
35
SocialMedia Handbook
an eye out for you and even inform you by RSS whenever your brand
Engagement
crops up.
hat about if people post a video about your brand? Well Google
W
Brand building
Video has that covered too - pretty useful if it happens to be a damaging
or misleading review on your product or services and even better if it’s
singing your praises as you might want to link some of these on your
Interaction
corporate website or blog.
If you’re looking for something a little more involved you can buy a licence
from a press clippings provider. These companies have feeds from all the
major publications in the UK, Europe, US or rest of the world and will
issue a number of search agents with the licence so that you can track
important keywords across the net and forward any relevant articles to
key stakeholders.
If you want to listen at an aggregate level then you may want to consider hiring
the services of a specialist buzz monitoring company. These companies
have sophisticated proprietary tracking tools to monitor conversations as
well as determine whether the threads are generally positive or negative.
Some can even tell how influential a given blogger might be.
Having identified and listened to conversations about the brand you can
then decide how best to respond. Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs
lie but there are occasions when you may want to respond to a negative
or positive conversation. On a macro level you may need to refine your
PR strategy, do a tactical campaign (e.g. ‘T5 is now working’ campaign
36
for Terminal 5) or you might need to channel this feedback into new
product development. On a micro level you might even participate
directly in the original conversation itself.
If you want to adopt the latter approach it’s worthwhile considering
recruiting and training professional members of staff about the brand,
product or campaign. However, if the salary bill doesn’t quite stretch
that far it’s possible to hire specialist moderators to act on your behalf.
Provided they are fully briefed and given clear Rules of Engagement,
they can provide a level of personal service to your target audience
which is normally reserved for the shop floor or call centre. The
numbers of brands who actually operate in this space are limited but
there perhaps lies the opportunity.
During 2 months of the campaign going live, the moderators engaged in more than 1000
conversations. In fact, 13% of Infiniti’s web traffic originated from these very sites alone.
By law, commercial brands have to be much more transparent than this but it’s interesting that the
CTU have recognised the power of conversation in social media in their quest to influence consumer
opinion.
38
) R
8 eporting – empower your moderators to report back to you as
it’s impossible to monitor every conversation in real time, particularly
if it’s in multiple languages. Also make sure escalation procedures
are in place to ensure you react to any potential problems quickly
and efficiently.
9) S
pot check – factor in several spot checks after the campaign has
finished.
In this day and age when you think you need the latest widget or viral
asset to capture the consumer’s attention, it’s often easy to overlook the
most basic of communication tools at our disposal - the art of making
conversation.
Source
1. Buzz monitoring: 25 free social media tracking tools www.marketingpilgrim.com
2. ‘Marketers’ stealth on the web will not pay for long’ by Ben Richards and Faris Yakob,
Financial Times, 26 May 2006,
3. Revealed: Britain’s secret propaganda war against al-Qaida by Alan Travis, home affairs
editor, The Guardian, 26 Aug 2008
4. The value of online conversations by Brian Solis, PR 2.0 blog, 17 January 2008
Engagement
Of the plethora of emerging models and methods for
engaging with social media, amplifying a brand marketing
campaign can often be the simplest way to start the
conversation. A company can maximise existing assets,
build expectation, heighten awareness and create an
ongoing dialogue that can be the beginning of a strong
relationship between brand and online influencer.
40
The final advert in the Sony BRAVIA trilogy
was eagerly awaited by bloggers, forums
and power networkers alike, so it was
imperative that the brand met expectations.
Moreover, with the increasing numbers of
active social network consumers there is
always an opportunity to engage with new
advocates.
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SocialMedia Handbook
If social currency is the trigger, then it is storytelling that is the bullet that
carries the invitation for dialogue. Social media consumers want to tell
stories. Whether it’s a blog post, a comment or a tweet, it is the story
that inspires the passing-on of information. Make it secret, exclusive and
shareable and the brand story will take on a life of its own as it is told
across the web.
Add keyphrase rich content and link to relevant landing pages and you
also create a vehicle for search engine optimisation. Then as the stories
spread, they connect a network of influencers discussing the brand and
products that benefits SEO and raises awareness.
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Within each interest cluster two types of influencer were identified using
clear and measurable metrics: those that had popularity and those that
had authority.
For Sony, the key to campaign success was the timely nature of
conversations – picking the right points to ignite discussions. Anticipation
was built throughout August and September, ahead of the October ad
launch.
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and insights: supplying influencers with new information about the advert
and distributing assets such as the ‘making of’ video and ‘limited’ images
Brand building of multi-coloured bunnies. By the end of the campaign, storytelling,
distribution of assets and consumer sharing, generated in increase of
almost 700,000 brand mentions.
Interaction
To introduce the advert to a wider online audience, the ‘teaser’ for the
ad was posted on video sharing sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion,
driving further interest ahead of the launch with over 200,000 views. Post
launch, the full commercial was posted - attracting more than half a million
views.
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One step further: real world and real time
Meeting influencers offline can deepen the engagement with social media.
Sony brought a select number of bloggers to the ad shoot in New York,
where they were given the chance to meet members of the production
team to gather exclusive content for their postings.
Micro blogging site Twitter was used by Sony’s Ruth Speakman to keep
influencers updated on events as they happened across the course of the
shoot, providing a live feed of exclusive content to followers.
The data also provided Sony with clear benchmarks for continuing the
conversation and creating further campaigns. Sony Europe now has a
continuous programme of social media engagement that manages the
brand reputation and maintains conversations throughout the year.
Branded utilities
(and how brands from all
sectors engage the social
media consumer)
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Applications in ‘The Cloud’
Brands are now trying to catch up with this new world. We’ve moved from
a web where you simply read from, to a web that you can also write onto.
The bar has been raised, and old school approaches based on messages
are being replaced by brands focusing on helping by creating applications
that are both useful and/or entertaining to their audiences. This is the idea
of the branded utility. This move is necessitated by the need to standout
in a world full of the noisy sound of conversations, where there are billions
of web pages indexed on Google, and Technorati tracking 112.8 million
blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.
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SocialMedia Handbook
48
Shock news: being useful is not new
Of course, being useful is not really a new thing, we are returning to the
smart things we did before the broadcast age - we’ve gone full circle.
Consider Guinness who, according to Wikipedia, commissioned Norris
and Ross McWhirter (who had been running a fact-finding agency) to
compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August 1954.
One thousand copies were printed and given away. Alternatively consider
Michelin – who, again, according to Wikipedia - published the first edition
of a guide to France in 1900, to help drivers maintain their cars, find decent
lodgings, and eat well while touring. This Michelin example is particularly
striking when you think of Michelin Stars being the most coveted award in
dining from a tyre manufacturer.
For me one of the best examples of a branded social utility is still Amazon,
and although it would not see itself in this way, it continues through its user
reviews and ratings to build community, and uses this to create tools that
are useful and helpful.
User reviews and ratings are partly about teaching Amazon what you
like, but the reviews are a form of indirect reciprocity, which evolutionary
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Brands from all sectors can engage the social media consumer, and
build branded utilities to help them differentiate their brands. It requires a
different mindset from traditional broadcast messaging, and a willingness
to open up to the collaborative economy, and start to accept user reviews,
ratings, and other forms of user generated content. This means bringing
down the walls between the organisation and audience, and making them
partners, co-creators, and most importantly, genuinely trying to help them
by offering tools, widgets, and applications. Being helpful is the most
customer-centric thing you can do right now. It’s as simple as that. Thus
one of the first tools man ever learnt to use is now the hottest tool in digital
communications.
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Social media
in action
Sky Sports –
Heroes Evolution campaign
AKQA
In the build-up to the new season, pessimistic football fans in pubs,
bars and workplaces up and down the country feverishly speculate
about what will become of their beloved team. Recognising this as an
opportunity to capitalise on this pre-season excitement and engage
fans in a debate, AKQA created a campaign that let fans voice their
views not just around the water cooler or in the local, but live and
online for all to see.
The creative invited fans to share their opinions via expandable rich
media placements, the results of which were then fed in real-time
to perimeter board-style sky and banner placements. In total, the
campaign gathered some 225,000 votes and drove numerous Sky
Sports subscriptions.
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SocialMedia Handbook
Interaction
It seems that, of late, as many column inches are dedicated
to how social media sites are monetised, as to their latest
product innovations. This perhaps shouldn’t come as a
surprise given the huge valuation of sites such as Twitter,
YouTube and Facebook and the huge numbers of engaged
users (and user data) they draw. It’s clear that social
media and advertising have the potential to become happy
bedfellows. However, actually turning this potential into
ad revenue has proven tricky thus far: the previously
untouchable Facebook got their fingers burnt on the Beacon
ad platform and even Google freely admit they can’t figure
out how to best advertise against YouTube videos.
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Of course, these days, any site worth its salt has ‘social features’ to it, so
to draw a clear distinction between e.g. MySpace ‘a social media site’
and Yahoo! ‘a portal’ is erroneous. Media owners of all shapes and sizes
are converging on a form of Media 2.0 – sites that offer pro content, UGC,
community tools, editors, feeds, blogs ….
But the perceived chaotic nature of social sites and the proliferation of un-
moderated content means some brands are hesitant to advertise in these
new environments (despite freely advertising in print products for years!)
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SocialMedia Handbook
54
This is where the value of display advertising comes in. The advertising
that Yahoo! serve on Bebo, for example, can be targeted by age, gender,
geography, behaviour and content. Campaigns can be frequency capped
and can be bought on a CPA basis. Furthermore, your integration page
can be pixeled and the users who visited the site can be re-targeted with
additional advertising (or, indeed, excluded from future campaigns to level
out the frequency of messaging). There’s also the opportunity to further
increase the reach of the campaign through ‘Look-a-Like Modelling’ -
serving ads to users who are similar (in demography or behaviour) to those
who visited your integration.
For some brands, integrating within social media sites is not what they’re
after. It might be considered too expensive, too high maintenance or too
risky. There may not be a compelling enough call to action to create
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a community around your brand. This doesn’t mean that social media
Engagement
advertising should be altogether dismissed, however. Provided your
target audience are there, in big numbers, you should still fish where the
fishes are.
Brand building
One thing we know about social media sites is that users like spending
huge amounts of time there, it’s their default media consumption for killing
Interaction time. Rich media advertising offers the opportunity to engage users
with interactive games, video trailers and embeddable social widgets –
essentially all the functionality you would expect from a sponsored profile.
As with any activity in social media the key point is not to detract from,
interrupt or invade the experience.
Over time, advertiser fears of UGC will decrease though users’ fears
of invasion of privacy may increase – but amongst all of this, the same
principles apply: keep the message engaging, add value, be authentic
and understand the medium you’re working in.
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Resident Evil Extinction –
Extinction campaign
Greenroom Digital
Social media
in action
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SocialMedia Handbook
Any good search agency will tell you the more they understand the
motivations of your customer the more effective the campaign will be.
It’s that old phrase of knowing your client’s client. Your paid search
account managers are trying to get your customers to engage with
you, so they need to know about both of you almost equally.
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As a brand, as well as the usual demographics, you should be aiming to use your
ongoing tracking, monitoring and research of social media to tell your search
marketers:
• Which social utilities your customer base uses i.e. are most of your
valuable customers using MySpace rather than Facebook, are you
a travel company who finds a lot of its customers use Flickr to host
holiday photos?
• W
hich message boards/forums do your customers, and potential
customers use?
Remember your search marketing budget can be used across areas other than
search engine results pages. By knowing which social networks and utilities your
customer base frequents, your account managers will be able to take advantage of
any internal search marketing opportunities.
Finding out the discussion areas (message boards and forums) used, could also
open the potential for search budget, as many forums include adverts from paid
search platforms such as Google AdSense. But be careful and be constantly
monitoring, as your adverts could appear within threads that are uncomplimentary
to your brand.
Make sure you are engaging whenever conversations like this appear; otherwise
your advertising becomes more than redundant. You should be encouraging
whoever is in control of your conversation monitoring to alert your search marketing
team when an ad is appearing within a negative thread.
Forums will also give you an understanding of the language and phrases used
by your customers. You need to know if your market is calling your product by a
different name, and you need to be including your words in your search campaign,
as keywords and in the creative copy. Why stop there? Pass on this intelligence to
your offline marketing team too and use those words in your literature!
Those who embrace online social communities and groups will turn to message
boards in times of brand uncertainty. If they want to be sure about a purchase they
are about to make they will seek the advice of the community. You need to know
what the anxieties about your marketplace and brand are – so you can alleviate
their fears in your ad copy – know your customer’s insecurities and increase your
click through rates by confronting them from the off.
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SocialMedia Handbook
Offline integration
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asks listeners to participate in online debate about hot topics that the
brand is associated with; for example an energy company discussing
climate change.
• PR
PR has long been a tool for many marketing needs but we’re now at
a stage where social media, namely blogging and managing blogger
relations can be integrated into any traditional PR strategy.
• Brand Events
If we were to stand back and compare all aspects of online and offline
marketing, no method or discipline more closely resembles digital social
media than bespoke events. They are social in the truest sense and they
encompass all the fundamentals of modern social media marketing.
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SocialMedia Handbook
Online integration
Interaction A typical organisation will have people carrying out research, managing
photo and video assets, putting together presentations and updating a
corporate website 2-3 times a day with information such as special offers
or company announcements. How can all of this be transported into the
social realm?
• Research
Research can be posted onto blogs, article websites, syndicated via
RSS and tagged on social bookmarking websites. If there is something
an organisation is researching you can be sure that other people on the
web will find it interesting.
• Video and photography
Photo and video assets (providing they are informative, entertaining or
deliver some kind of value) can be placed onto media hosting sites such
as Flickr and YouTube, these website platforms allow media assets to
be distributed and viewed by people who would not directly access a
corporate website or otherwise interact with a brand.
• Microblogging
If a corporate website or blog is being updated frequently throughout
the day why not have a webmaster simultaneously update a microblog
such as Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce. Users of these platforms are likely to
follow a brand if its microblog provides useful updates or the brand has
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equity with platform users. A good example of a microblog is the No.10
Downing Street twitter microblog, which has over 4,000 followers.
• Slide sharing
F
inally if a brand or business has put together some useful presentations
why not place them on a slide sharing platform where other people
can use them and comment on them. This activity can be extremely
useful for brand owners as commentary, be it positive or negative, can
help tailor future work whilst simultaneously providing valid grounds for
conversations with audiences.
A final real world example of early social media integration has to be related
to SEO. Elements of social media such as blogging, user-generated
content, provision of branded web applications and branded content
have enabled SEO practitioners to extend their content strategies across
websites in order to maintain and achieve search engine rankings more
effectively.
With Semantic Web Optimisation (SWO) and Enterprise 2.0 now gaining
magnitude, brand and business opportunities for social media integration
will continue to grow. As simple as it sounds, it is important to get on the
‘bandwagon’ as early as possible.
Of course, the issue is that no one quite knows what the impact of a
social media activity is going to be until it is running. Not that traditional
media has it any better - there’s no more of a guarantee that a TV
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advert will be more motivating to an audience than a blog post. However,
experience gathered over many years and the acceptance of media owners’
audience estimation processes is enough to put most doubts to rest. Social
media has neither of these, which creates the challenge and the opportunity –
to find new ways to plan activities and measure effectiveness.
KUDOS
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SocialMedia Handbook
Network KUDOS can serve as a checklist to make sure each component of your
activities and tactics is knowledgeable, useful, desirable, open and
shareable. These activities might vary wildly from one brief to another – from
Engagement
content and information to fuel conversations, to tools and services that
might facilitate community action.
Brand building
The KUDOS framework allows for this variance while maintaining a uniformity
that makes a comparison of metrics possible.
During the planning stage, you can look at each of the five KUDOS elements
for the proposed activity and give them a qualitative score out of five, based
on benchmarks created from previous campaigns. Then use this as one of a
number of factors in estimating the likely interest in an activity.
The issue with social media is not finding things to measure - there’s an
embarrassment of riches in terms of data - but knowing which metrics are
useful and meaningful. You can use the KUDOS framework to select five
attributes that allow us to track and optimise activity.
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Measuring the impact and effect
What we haven’t done yet is measured the effect. The effect is difficult
to measure as it occurs over a long period of time, happens in many
disparate locations and can be attributed to many factors. But it’s possible
to use social media to provide some indication of the effect. We can use
various standard digital measurement techniques to track people who
click through directly from one of our social media assets to purchase or
register. However, it’s much harder to estimate how many more people
might have heard about our product via the word-of-mouth our social
media activity has generated, and then acted upon this information.
Furthermore, traditional media uses complex (and often expensive)
econometrics processes to gauge the effects of their brand building efforts
– but this will be beyond the social media budgets of most clients.
In both these cases, some indication of the effect of social media activity
can be found by measuring the change in the interest level around the
brand or product. We do this by analysing its share of conversation
online.
Conversation trends
Social media is all about user generated content and conversation, and
Engagement
there are already a vast array of tools that allow you to measure trends
Brand building
in conversations. This makes it easy for you to look for words or terms
that are related to your campaigns such as brand and product names.
Importantly, Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) lets you monitor
Interaction how popular searches are across the biggest social media site in the
world: Google. Nielson’s Blog Pulse (www.blogpulse.com) shows what are
currently the most popular news stories, conversations and more across
blogs. Whatever the form of social media, there is now a tool to help you
monitor it, in fact, even Twitter has a dedicated conversation tracker (twist.
flapto.com). On top of this small selection, check around for other tools to
help you monitor and plan.
Get reading
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makes it a lot easier if you have your own forums and comment areas.
Using this direct feedback is one of the best methods of researching
into trends.
Website analytics
Let’s not forget the basics when it comes to measuring social media.
Often your standard web analytics are going to offer the best form of
measurement because you can see which sites people originate from,
where they click off to and what content they are most interested in
on your website. Couple this with the information you can obtain from
conversation trend tools and qualitative research of forums and you can
begin to build one powerful little picture of the social landscape. Site
analytics tools include Site Intelligence, WebTrends, Google Analytics,
NetTracker and many more.
Applications on the likes of Google and Facebook will all come with their
own measurement packages for you to use that vary in detail. You can
go the extra mile by including items such as graphics or small pixels
which are hosted on your own servers to find out how many times they
are downloaded. This will give you an additional insight into the amount
of times one of your applications is used.
Caveat time
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In seriousness though, it is not a cop-out to say the one thing you can
expect in social media and marketing in the coming decade… is the
unexpected.
In the face of such hopeless odds of being absolutely right, let me offer
three trends that will be important for us to pay attention to when it comes
to evolution of social media and indeed the whole web, certainly over the
next couple of years, if not the next decade.
1. Growth: Big numbers, like the 100 million users of Facebook, trick us
into thinking that the revolution has happened, it’s arrived and we can
now make sense of it. But studies by analyst house Forrester show
that the longer people have broadband at home the more sophisticated
their use of the web becomes, the most likely they are to use social
media. Expect growth, lots of it.
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SocialMedia Handbook
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And for the marketing industry, what’s the future likely to bring? Let us take
three trends here too:
Engagement
1.Useful marketing: As Google says, “It’s all about the user”. When it
comes to being successful on the web this is a key principle and one
which increasing numbers of brands are learning as they begin to engage
Brand building
3.Native digital marketing: The first phase of web media and marketing
might be thought about as a time when models of thinking were imported
from channel media (broadcast, print) to a world of networks. In the
coming years we will see consensus emerge around new models of
research, planning and execution in a web that is dominated and defined
- particularly in terms of the user experience - by social media. These will
be what we might call truly native, digital strategic marketing approaches,
informing the strategy for brands from a perspective that is web first,
embracing its full potential.
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Caution: revolution in progress
The preceding chapters in this book represent a range of views from the
pioneers in the UK marketing industry. Do not expect them to agree on
everything, or to be right on everything - it would be incredible if they
were.
Media and brand owners and their agency partners alike need to keep
their minds resolutely open to possibilities. As F Scott Fitzgerald famously
said, “...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
The most successful brands and agencies in this new world may well
support the ones that are able to hold several, sometimes opposed, ideas
about the world in mind simultaneously, behaving in an agile way to push
resources to the ones which turn out to be most successful.
Social Media
jargon buster
with thanks to Immediate Future – www.immediatefuture.co.uk
Aggregator-
Brand building
An aggregator, newsreader or read feeder, is a bit of software which collects
news from websites, blogs, podcasts and vlogs and delivers them to your PC
in a simple format. It is also the name of an Arnie Schwarzenegger character.
Oiill be back.
Astroturfing-
You know when there’s a grass-roots buzz about a product? And it seems
that everybody is blogging about it? Sometimes it turns out these blogs have
actually been written by a PR company. Who’d have thought? Well, that’s
Astroturfing. Artificial and plastic.
Blog-
Although now being used by businesses, a weblog or blog is more often than
not a frequently updated personal online journal kept by a blogger. Entries
or posts are in reverse chronological order and can be insightful, witty and
philosophical. Or maybe not.
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Blog Storm-
A blog storm or blog swarm is when bloggers in the blogosphere write thousands of
posts about a subject which then forces the story into the mainstream media. Never
underestimate the power of the blogger.
Bookmarking-
You know how it is. You’ve just found an online flight to Fuerteventura for only £4.50
and now you can’t remember what site it’s on. In future save your fave site addresses
by bookmarking them. Just click the bookmark button or the ‘add to favourites’
button on your browser tool bar. Ole.
Buzz-
Often created by word of mouth and viral marketing, buzz is the word-on-the-street,
ear-to-the-ground, finger-on-the-pulse kind of thing that gets people jumping up and
down with excitement about a product or service. You also get a buzz when you jump
out of a plane. Woo-hooo.
Chicklets-
Chicklets are the small, often orange buttons, which are links to web feeds such
as RSS and Atom. Absolutely nothing to do with Bridget Jones’s diary. Or small
chickens.
Cloaking-
Cloaking is when a website returns different web pages to the search engine spiders
than it does to regular visitors. Cloaking is an attempt to distort search engine rankings
and give the site a higher ranking. It’s a bit of skulduggery that could get a site banned
from the search engines.
Crowdsourcing-
A bit like outsourcing where you pay people £3 an hour to stuff envelopes,
crowdsouricng is when a company involves a large number of enthusiastic volunteers
to create content, do research and solve problems. Free of charge. Well they might
send you a badge or something.
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SocialMedia Handbook
Digg-
is a user generated content site where members submit (mostly techie) articles and
news items they’ve found on the Web. The articles are then voted for and the most
Network
popular published on Digg’s front page. Can we Digg it? Yes we can!
Engagement
ebooks-
ebooks or eBooks are electronic versions of traditional printed books which can be
Brand building
downloaded from the internet and read on your PC or hand held device. e-books take
up less space and use less trees. And you never forget which page you’re on.
Interaction
Early adapter-
A bit like Angelina Jolie or Madonna, early adopters are companies or people who sign-
up to new technologies or marketing techniques, as soon as they become available, to
get ahead of the pack. Early adopters make up 13.5% of the population. Fact.
Folksonomy-
Folksonomy refers to people classifying their blogs, web pages and pictures with
informal descriptions or tags. So on Flickr, the tags for a picture of freshly-cut grass
might be green; spring; nature; hay fever; sniffles; headache. Folksonomy are also
people who go to barn dances.
Mapping-
Gathering together a list of influencing social media, such as niche blogs, mainstream
blogs and forums, which relate to a specific topic, is known as mapping. When preparing
an online campaign, mapping is a useful planning tool. So is an A-Z. Where are we?
Microformat-
Microformat is a data format which works alongside XML and HTML. Inserting
microformat tags into your website or blog means the content can be more easily
defined which helps the search engines do a better job. Small, unobtrusive but helpful,
Microformats are a bit like The Wombles.
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Net Promoters Index-
The number of people who would recommend your product, service or topic minus the
number of people who wouldn’t - is known as the Net Promoters Index. The results are
collated by monitoring message boards and blogs. The power of the Web: we love it.
Networks-
Networks are made up of nodes and connections. In a social network, the nodes
are people and the connections are the relationships. Networking is the method of
strengthening those relationships. ‘What’s your name, what does your company do?
Here’s my card. Call me’.
Ping-
Short for Packet Internet Grouper a Ping is what alerts the original poster of a blog that
someone has made a reference to that post in another blog when using TrackBack. A
ping also notifies blog tracking software when the content of a blog has changed. Ping
also refers to knicker elastic.
RSS-
Like Atom, RSS is a web feed which enables you to be notified when the content of a
blog or site has been updated. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site
Summary or RDF Site Summary or really something stupid. Possibly.
Seeding-
Seeding refers to ‘viral’ agencies which place messages, pictures and videos on
such sites as YouTube or Flickr and then just leave them there. No interaction. No
conversation with the customer. It’s a all a bit seedy really.
Social Bookmarking-
Social bookmarking is when you share your favourite or bookmarked websites on a
Network
public web based service such as del.icio.us. The list of your favourite sites can be
then be shared with others who have similar interests. It gives you a warm fuzzy feeling
doesn’t it?
Engagement
Social Currency-
Brand building Social currency is used to define the value that people have in a social setting:
some people are rich, rich, rich whilst others are overdrawn. Social currency is also
something that provokes interest and quickly gets passed around. Like a joke. So a
Interaction
man walks into a bar. Ouch.
Social Media –
We refer to social media, in a commercial sense, as: the creation of useful, valuable and
relevant content and applications by brands, or by consumers with specific reference
to brands, that can be shared online, facilitated by web 2.0 technology.”
Tag Cloud-
A tag cloud is a visual representation of the popularity of the tags or descriptions that
people are using online. Popular tags are often shown in a large type and less popular
in smaller type. So, on Flickr, the tag Party is shown large and the tag Hiking is small.
Why are we not surprised?
Vblog-
Vlog or Vblog. Short for videoblog. Refers to a blog that has video content. Vlog is
also a big, beefy potato farmer from the Ukraine.
Widget-
A Widget is a piece of code that enables you to pull in data from another website onto
your own site or blog which is then constantly updated. For example, news headlines;
local weather; footie scores. So all the really important stuff you need to keep up to
date with.
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Wiki-
A wiki is a website where you can add, remove, edit and change content. The best
known wiki is wikipedia: an online encyclopaedia created by thousands of different
contributors across the world. Wiki wiki means rapidly in Hawaiian. Not a lot of people
know that.
WOM-
Traditionally WOM or word of mouth was an over-the-garden-fence way of sharing
information. These days word of mouth also refers to text messages, blog posts,
message board threads, instant messages and emails which all create a buzz. So
word of mouse. Geddit?
acknowedgements
Trooper Amy Kean, senior PR and marketing manager, IAB
Trooper Jack Wallington, programmes manager, IAB
Trooper Chloe Chadwick, marketing executive, IAB
Trooper Harriet Clarke, team assistant, IAB
14 Macklin Street,
London WC2B 5NF