News here of two charities using social media platforms to create 'communities of interest'. Two interesting points. The use by charities of social networking platforms and mutual co-operation.

Charities know that people who give to one charity are likely to continue to support them. Equally other charities focussed on similar good causes are lilkely to be supported by those same people. By linking two complimentary charities there will operational efficiencies and an ability to target donors with a propensity to support both. The item of focus is sometimes called the social object. The product or service that people can identify with.

For commercial organisations it is sometimes not easy to visualise 'communities of interest' or what the social object will be. Fanatics, fans, followers and friends exist for almost everything. Name it and a group is likely to exist. As a company the challenge is finding those groups and plugging into them by listening and joining in the ongoing conversation.

It is not 'in-your-face' interrupt marketing and PR but participating and releasing information the community requests, in a format they find useful. It is building a rapport with them and finding out what you can help them with. For many organisations that will sound a lot like 1to1 marketing and CRM and in many ways it is, but without the expensive software. But it is still a cultural shift for many organisations. Remember 30 years ago the adverts for the Midland Bank - the listening bank? That is what organisations need to become. Many have outsourced many of the customer facing functions. Customer service and customer support is now often outsourced and if not they are not usually integrated into marketing. These are not usually 'barriers' the customers want or enjoy using. They want to engage with the company direct. 

You will find members of your communities are only too eager to help you by making useful suggestions (not always what you want to hear!) on what you can do to improve your customer service or product By monioring the internet buzz you will find out just what people think about you. By engaging with your online community you will be able to get a 365/24 feedback on how you are doing.

So how are US CxO's using social media tools and digital technology? (Thanks to Steve Ruebel via his twitter account)

A new research report from IPSOS MediaCT details the information. The full pdf is here. Highlights from the report:

• 71% own cellphones with cameras and multi-messaging,
• 68% own laptops.
• 40% own iPods.
• 36% have Blackberries 
• 68% have downloaded videos or clips from websites or received email newsletters/alerts on their computers.
• 49% have streamed or watched broadband videos from websites on their computers.
• 78% make flight/hotel bookings online
• 57% regularly buy products or services online.
• 72% believe keeping up with the latest technology is vital to the success of their businesses 
• 30% read blogs
• 4% contribute to blogs.

If you want to see what a Web 2/Social Media/blog enabled/employee engaged/customer communicating blog looks like then drop into SouthWest Airlines. This is the first update to a site they launched 2 years ago.

You will see along the bottom on the blog links to YouTube, flickr, facebook, LinkedIn and twitter. If you go to facebook page you will see how many images have been uploaded by customers. There is also a poll option so SouthWest can get even more feedback from customers. As you would expect with my background I love the use of audio and video feeds.

The site really encourages active customer participation - way beyond just comments on a blog. I am sure the YouTube and flickr pages will be well used so helping to make it a real 'community' so re-enforcing the brand and brand values of the company. You will already see what customers are thinking and saying about the new design in the comments on their announcement post. You will also customers helping to improve and bug fix the blog. Check out how customers are using the comments section in posts as a platform to cross-communication between themselves.

Wondering what others (Disney, Reebok, Pepsi etc) are doing with social communities and networks? Check this out (Source: WOMMA)

An interesting article on BA and its T5 woes. (Source: The People Bulletin).

If employees had been raising concerns for 'some time' why did BA go ahead anyway? Two possibilities spring to mind.

1. Senior management did know and went ahead anyway hoping for the best.

2. Senior management did not know because somehow issues were filtered and kept from them

I have no way of really knowing what went wrong. No doubt an MBA case study or examination will come out one day. I just hope it was number 2 as that is fixable. Number 1 does not bear serious consideration.

If it was number 2 and internally the upward communication process is broken I wonder if web 2.0 tools such as blogs and forums would have helped. Certainly they can help downward communication but 'wisdom of the crowds' can often give senior managers an objective view of what is happening far from the board room.

Chrysler is the latest company to create a 'conversation' site (source AdAge)

We have just finished a real fun project with a new client.

Wilkins Kennedy are a 125 year old firm of regional accountants that now have 12 offices in London and the South East. They are one of the Top 30 accounting firms in the UK.

They contacted us a few weeks ago to see how we could help them best use social media and Web 2.0 to get their analysis of the the 2008 budget to their clients and a wider audience. They have always produced a printed report on the budget overnight and use their web site and then held seminars and briefings. They wanted to look at other ways to get their experts feedback on the budget out publicly.

We agreed to try a podcast. They lined up their Head of Tax, Matthew Hall, and 3 senior members of his team to have a 'round table' discussion. They listened to the budget presentation yesterday and spent the rest of the day working on what it all meant for business and personal tax. At 9.30am this morning we set up a mobile recording studio of laptop, mixer, audio recorder and radio mics in a meeting room at their Egham office. We had one practice run through and then started recording. Within an hour we had our core programme. We did some editing, added the music and voice-over and reviewed the results with them. When they had approved it we uploaded the file to the host and activated the link from the Wilkins Kennedy site. We had finished by 5pm. A total of 6 hours from start of recording to live online.

    Click the icon or here to listen to the podcast.

We will now track to see how many people access the recording and how quickly. Speed in such a situation is critically important as many changes the Chancellor announced will apply from April 6th. For many a delay in seeking and acting on tax advice could cost them or their company a lot of money!

Now compare that with a traditional 'white paper' approach to such a technical subject. BBC annoucers are taught to speak at an average of 3 - 4 words per second. The podcast lasts 22 minutes and so will contain about 4,500 words. An A4 side of paper has 30 lines and with an average of 10 words per line it means a 22 minute podcast is equal to 15 pages of A4. Allowing for layout and typesetting a 'White Paper' would be about 20 pages long. Now could that be written, printed and distributed in just 6 hours compared to a podcast? Equally with it being online the distribution costs are zero to Wilkins Kennedy. What would it cost to mail a 20 page document out?

Facebook have announced a German version of the product with be available immediately.

They used 2000 volunteers from Germany to complete the task in a few weeks. A voting system was used to decide on the accuracy of the translation. This is a very Web 2 approach to product design and development and of course all the participants will tell their friends and family about their work on the project so providing a massive word-of-mouth campaign.

MySpace does it the traditional way by hiring local people to manage the translation.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook can take Germany by storm. There is already a very strong well established local competitor so it faces a tough task.

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded foe podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded foe podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

Great example of a multi-media site from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yesterday which integrates podcasts, Forums/feedback loops and blogs.

As from their press release:

The multimedia portal is EPA’s one-stop location for environmental video, audio/podcasts, and photography.

The portal also includes interactive features such as “Ask EPA” and the Deputy Administrator's blog, “Flow of the River”. Another feature called "EPA in Action" goes behind-the-scenes; following the diverse jobs performed by the EPA workforce and examines some of the most pressing environmental issues facing our nation today.

Viewing video is integrated into the site using flash player, while photos of events and EPA work will be posted in a series of online galleries. Users may also subscribe to several podcast series or select from a number of individual podcasts featuring EPA experts and senior officials.

This new multimedia portal is an important resource for the public, journalists, academia, local governments and the environmental community. The portal will help increase awareness of important news items through an intuitive, media-rich focus, rather than through traditional electronic print.

From AdAge - Kimberley Clark has reduced ad spending by almost 50% in the last 3 years. Digital online and social marketing spending is increasing.

Most large advertisers are serving notice that the 'blast all channels media plan' is in decline. Higher production values and lower numbers of spots mean a re-adjustment of agency fee income. Making commission on media placements will have to be replaced by production and project management fees. This is why forward thinking ad agencies are investing in specialist digital marketing agencies and 'community or social network marketing' agencies.

The Unicom conference on 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaberative Tools to Business' is happening next week in London on 5th and 6th March.

Over 2 days a number of speakers will talk about their experiences of using social media. I will be presenting a case study on Poundland (a UK retailer with 164 stores) on behalf of their PR agency, BOTTLE, and the ongoing project using blogs, social networking and Forums to help retail sales volumes.

The speakers are:

• Lee Bryant - Headshift
• John Davis - BT
• Will Wynne - Arena Flowers
• Ed Michell - iShed
• Claire Reddington - iShed
• Crispin O'Brien - KPMG
• Ian Hughes - IBM
• Joyce Lewis - Southampton University
• Tom Ilube - Garlik
• Ian McNairn - IBM

The conference is chaired by Dave Gurteen of Gurteen and Associates.

All the speakers have given interviews on what their presentations on Web 2.0 and/or social media will cover.

All presentations at the conferences will be recorded and made available shortly after it ends.

To listen to last years conference visit this page

Focus Business Communications have recorded all the pre-interviews and will also record all the conference presentations as they did last year.

(Disclosure: I work for BOTTLE PR and Focus)

Found this link to a great video on TeacherTube. Thought provoking statistics about the rate of change of technology and how the 'Internet Revolution' could change the current 'world order' just as dramatically as the industrial revolution did. The statistic that 25% of US kids have posted content online was interesting.

Marshall McLuhan wrote in the 1960's that the world was becoming a global village. He was refering to the development of the TV and radio and the way they could manipulate time, space and physical locations without necessarily being Dr Who.

I wonder what he would have made of the internet? He saw TV and radio as becoming potential tools of totalitarian thought and messages. A sort of '1984'. Unlike radio and TV which both need substantial investment in the methods of production (studios, transmitters, licences etc) and has access to programming controlled by a few the internet is essentially 'free to air'. With a low cost audio and video recorder anyone can become a content developer and online publisher.

(Thanks to JoAnn for the link to the video)

A great session at the Social Media Café yesterday in London. (Flickr pictures) It was fun to catch up with Lloyd Davis (the driving force behind the concept) and others and see how the idea of the Cafe and Tutle Club is coming to fruition.

  Lloyd Davis - photo copyright Adam Tinworth via Flickr.

Being based out in the Shires it is not always easy for me to get up to these meetings as often as I like but when I do I always realise what I have been missing.

So what about yesterday?

It was a mix of academics, consultants, educators, developers, marketing and PR types (30+ strong) who all share an interest in social media and creating a working space to work, share ideas and co-operate. Rather than try and explain the idea why not read Joshua March’s blog posting. Joshua was at the meeting (thanks to Twitter - nice to see the technology in action) and has recently formed a marketing agency/consultancy focussing on social networking and media.

  Joshua March

While at the Café I had a chat with Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK about a project he is involved with and cares passionately about. I recorded our chat and will get that online next week. It is fascinating project called Web Mission ’08 where a group of entrepreneurs are being taken out to Silicon Valley to look at how they do things out there as well as showcase great European talent and products. This is a subject close to my heart having been involved in the foundation of what was to become the European software industry in the early 1980’s. (Next year is the 25^th Anniversary of the founding of Lotus Europe – I headed up one of the two software development teams and looked after Symphony in Europe so that ages me!)

  Mike Butcher

I also met and interviewed David Jennings the author of a new book looking at how social networks help the discovery and commercial success of music. David is an expert in online learning. I will get that interview up online next week. David and I had a great chat with Mitch McAlister, Product Development Director at MySpace Europe. Mitch is a great guy and is from the US music scene. MySpace just launched the developers platform API. A lot of what he was talking about reminded me of the early stage business building we went through at Lotus in the mid 1980’s where we wanted to court developers who would take the marcro command language and build custom applications for clients around 1-2-3.

  David Jennings          Mitch McAlister

Finally I did an interview with Lloyd himself where we talked about his thoughts about the Café concept. As always Lloyd is a great facilitator practicing what he preaches. He has no pre-conceived notions or a hidden agenda on what the Café should be – he will go with the flow and join in the conversation. A café in constant beta with minimal house rules so providing the best environment for creativity and mutual co-operation and sharing to evolve.

If you are interested in coming to the next one check Lloyd out. There is a group on Facebook.

I am often challenged by marketing people over this.

Is Web 2.0 useful or a distraction? Should we bother? How much should we spend?

From my experience of working with clients leveraging Web 2.0 tools and techniques certainly does work and is worth every penny.

But you would expect me to say that!

So it is always nice to have some independent academic research on the power of Web 2.0 and online crowd buzz/conversations. Thanks to Podcasting News for highlighting this research.

To quote from the academic paper overview...

'...the study provides some preliminary answers for marketing managers interested in assessing the relative importance of the burgeoning number of “Web 2.0” information metrics that are becoming available on the Internet, and how looking at interactions among them could provide predictive value beyond viewing them in isolation. The study also provides a framework for thinking about when user-generated content influences decision making.'

What they found was that

• The volume of blog posts about an album is positively correlated with future sales 
• Greater increases in an artist’s Myspace friends week over week have a weaker correlation to higher future sales
• Traditional factors are still relevant – albums released by major labels and albums with a number of reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone also tended to have higher future sales.

The 'take-away' for marketing and PR people is

• Join in the blogosphere and online conversations
• Use social media networks BUT
• Don't ignore traditional marketing and PR

OK but how much to spend?

My suggestion. Take 5% of your marketing budget, 5% of your web site development budget and 5% of your PR budget and try a 6 month campaign.

Test and be flexible. Be open and listen. Monitor and react. All the most successful campaigns I have been involved in have been adaptable.

The UK retail chain is expanding its marketing communication programmes to include social networking capabilities. They will be adding pages to Facebook and other social networking sites. They currently use PR and 'word of mouth' as their marketing vehicles. They also say they are using web video of snowboarding and mountain biking and have a Forum on their site.

Whilst I can find a place to sign up for newsletters I cannot find where the video feeds are.

Nor can I see an RSS feed enabled anywhere obvious on the front page. That is a simple way to help customers keep up to date with the latest company and product information.

Unicom are holding a conference in London on March 5th and 6th. It is called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business Problems.' They have a great line up of speakers. 

Focus Business Communications are again recording all the presenters for later podcasting. They have also interviewed a number of the speakers before the event and asked them what they would be presenting.

(Disclosure: I am speaking at the conference. I will be presenting a case study of a B2C blog/social networking communication campaign for UK High Street retailer. I have a financial interest in FBC) 

In the same week 3 people who I respect and listen to on different sides when it comes to considering the future.

First Tim Beadle of Marketing Improvement says as one of his forecast for 2008 that...

Web 2.0, or the semantic web or the user-generated content web (choose your favourite term) will be quietly dropped as businesses and consumers recognize the inherent risks of a) linking web systems together and b) telling the whole world about yourself. If Web 2.0 becomes anything, it will become the home of web applications that will work well on a mobile phone. As more and more phones adopt the format of the iphone, why would you need a big, heavy laptop or clunky PDA?

This is in the same week that both General Motors and Coca Cola announcement even greater support for user generated media and social media conversations rather than traditional marketing.

In the same week the head of Intel talks about the 'personal and portable web'. Tim is wrong on the first count. User generated content is here to stay. I do agree with him on the second point. Smart mobiles with customised applications merging the functionailty of PDAs and laptops with location specific filtered information will be available in the next 5 years. I cannot wait for my smart phone to start delivering specific information based upon my Facebook profile and other information when I arrive in a country. Give me some maps. Locations of places to eat based upon known availability (and if reservations are needed) and filtered to reflect other peoples recommendations. The recommendors profiles will be matched and ranked against my profile so giving me more confidence to trust their judgement. To me that is where the real value of social networking lies. Using their generated inputed of experiences and recommendations to influence my decisions.

Now check out what Jeff Jarvis says in his latest blog about journalist training and them having their own personal blogs. Also see what David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe says about candidates having social media awareness and experience.

This is the new logo that Xerox has just spent a large amount of money on. (Source: B2B Marketing Online)

According to their marketing chief it solves the problem they have had for the last 10 years of wanting "...to shake off the unapproachable tag that we seem to suffer from...and project ourselves as the friendly, dynamic company that we are."

Coca-Cola on the other hand is pushing even further into the realms of social media. (Source: MyCustomer.com). This is what the head of digital marketing at Coke said "...With the increasing sophistication in the digital world and virtual environments, we knew it was time to create a richer, more lifelike experience for MyCoke.com members..."

Read those words again and compare what it shows....

Project ourselves (Xerox) v lifelike experience for MyCoke.com members (Coca-Cola).

Now who is already engaged with customers? Who is in conversation with its community? Who has a community?

Now given the choice of investing possibly millions of $ on a new logo or on social networking communities what would you spend you money on? What do you think would give the best ROI? A new logo or an enhanced experience for a customer?

I know where I would spend the money if it was in my budget. 

Shel Israel has posted that the book he co-authored with Robert Scoble has just turned 2 years old.

You may want to check out my interview with Shel about his book that I did last year.

The book is a great read. It is now showing its age as many more corporations have joined the social networking and blogging community. The initial uptake by companies may have been a bit slower than many thought (including the authors) but without doubt a real momentum is building up. 2008 will see much of what Shel and Robert wrote about come to pass.

(Photo: Thanks to Buzz Bruggeman)

Is this the start of a trend?

An article in Ad Age today says WPP shop Ogilvy & Mather is to layoff staff due to a downturn in traditional ad revenue. As more and more clients move to digital marketing and social network marketing the ad agencies are finding their commission based revenue model no longer works.

A great post by Saad Saraf in Brand Republic on media consumption in multiethnic communities. One very interesting statistic is that internet usage is 50% higher than for the UK average.

Check out the top 100 list from Virtual Hosting on bloggers about Web 2.0, blogging and social media.

Roy Greenslades decision to leave the National Union of Journalists after 30 years has highlighted the painful change the print media and journalism is going through in adapting to the new media world. The NUJ are 'rubbishing' Web 2.0 and 'citizen journalism'.

Check out e-Consultancy for their take on the subject.

Also see Jeff Jarvis's comments in his blog.

• Secondary strike action is banned in the UK. But what about in Second Life?

VNUnet is reporting that IBM has a Second Life strike on its hands. IBM has been active in Second Life for some time. A dispute with their Italian business office in real life has resulted in workers picketing the IBM offices in Second Life.

• CRM 2.0? So where does CRM go next?

P&G have in the past been very focussed on using traditional media for advertising and promotion using the product brand. They have, like every other global brand, kept product R&D and market testing and research under tight control.

In the last year or so it has changed strategy and is now focussing on openly engaging with consumers directly and interactively rather than discreetly. Fastcompany.com have a brilliant report on what the giant has been up to.

A report by VNU says the Eden Project has put Web 2.0 and Social Media communications tools at the heart of a £50m funding submission to the the Big Lottery Fund's Living Landmarks programme.

The Eden Project is launching a web site next month to support its bid to create The Edge, a centre that will explore living with climate change.

The aim is for the web site to have rich media and provide interactivity with members of the public and interested groups.

The Eden Projects head of IT, Jon Curry was quoted in the VNU article as saying “It is all about using technology to get your message across to the public and capturing their interest.”