An interesting survey as reported in Brand Republic showing young people building online networks of friends but still liking face-to-face meetings where possible. This contradicts many comments made a few years ago that 'online' would kill social skills in kids and confine them to a life of cybersocialisation.

What is interesting is the last few lines:

However, when given the option, most young people would rather not use technology to communicate. When asked how they prefer to keep in touch, 53% chose face-to-face communication, with 23% opting for text messaging. Social networks were preferred by just 2%. Use of sites such as MySpace declines as teenagers grow old enough to go out on their own with friends.

Indeed, young consumers show little interest in technology itself. When asked what they enjoyed doing, the top answers were listening to music, watching TV or DVDs, and spending time with friends. Surfing the internet ranked only ninth.

That is not our experience. Our observations and experience is that Facebook and other social media sites are used very actively to keep in touch with 'friends' and plan social lives. I guess, as with all research, it is how the question is framed and how the participant interprets the data that is being sought.

Our understanding is that young people are consuming more online - DVDs via PC and online TV itself - plus creating and watching content as on YouTube. For them the 'smart phone' mobile content is growing in importance. Traditional TV, radio and newspapers are all declining as sources of information.  

I am always looking for online resources. Found this excellent summary at OpenCulture of US and other colleges offering podcasts of lectures and information updates via RSS feed and iTunes. Most are audio but increasingly video is being released.

I notice many of the top Management and Business Schools are there.

Read the comments to the original post. Many people have added college names and other sources that they are aware of.

Shel Israel, co-author with Robert Scoble of the best selling book 'Naked Conversations:How blogs are changing the way business talks with customers' has just become a fan of Facebook.

Robert is too!

The PR Week/Brands2Life latest annual survey shows UK business uptake of podcasting, blogging and posting of videos on YouTube have increased significantly over the last 12 months.

In their survey they showed 44% of businesses are using podcasts, 41% now use blogging and 15% have posted a video on YouTube.

The blogging figures show a massive increase from only 4% to 41%. They caution that most companies seem to be experimenting rather than having a strategy for the active use of social media.

I will try and get some more details of the research as these seem very high numbers from my personal experience.

Not sure about you but I have been on LinkedIn for a number of years now and always found it a useful tool for finding old work collegues. I have invited people to join and get invites to. To be fair I never used it in 'anger' to seek business. I did get a flurry of invites a few months ago but I do not proactively contact many people in my network.

About six weeks ago I got another Facebook invite and too the plunge. I am hooked. I love some of the neat applications but most of all I like the way it helps me keep in touch and know a bit more about friends - their interests, tastes and hobbies. Nothing too heavy but enough to know what interests them. I have already used it to seek advice about a book to read and a film to see. I also found out someone was at the same University this week as me also attending a summer residential course. They saw my 'what am I doing' and they posted that they were also here. Without it we would either have never have known or found out months later. I have also started talking to some people in a similar line of business as ourselves and with similar interests.

For me it works. Nothing too resource intensive. Not intrusive but with enough info to help start the conversation.

For another opinion check out Paul Walsh's blog. Also read some of the comments. (Thanks to Hugh McLeod)

In a marketing newsletter I subscribe to from Marketing Improvement I read an article on Web 2 that I found interesting as it goes to the heart of the opportunities and risks companies have with Social Media Marketing. For completeness here is the article:

Here's a salutary tale for you. Right now I'm writing this while ensconced on a balcony overlooking the north end of Lake Garda. Blue-green lake meets sheer cliffs to my right, towering 500 metres to grey-gold summits flecked with outposts of foliage from trees foolhardy enough to experiment with growth on the fractionally less vertiginous slopes. Below me is the Piazza, surrounding the harbour, tables lie in gay abandon in front of a plethora of cafes and restaurants, all waiting expectantly for the lunchtime crowd. Tourists amble by in an amazing variety of clothes and body shapes, occasionally stepping aside to avoid another vividly lycra-garbed cyclist. It is, quite simply, a little bit of heaven on earth. But I nearly didn't get here - thanks to Web 2.0. Why? Because I Googled the hotel (Hotel Sole, Riva Del Garda) and Google found a bit of Web 2.0 content - a review on TripAdvisor.com that said it was a rubbish hotel, with awful food. And the review was posted just five days before I was due to arrive. But, I re-read the review and concluded that the reviewer was miffed by a 200m walk to the hotel in the rain and was not being as fair as he might. Suffice it to say, Hotel Sole is in a superb location, the rooms are great, the food is good and the service far better than most five star hotels (it is only 60euros a night!).

The point, however, is the Hotel had no idea (I asked them) that there was such a hugely negative comment about them on TripAdvisor and that Google was highlighting it for all to see! This is the danger of Web 2.0. It encourages us all to comment and, allied to Google, our comments are then given a prominence they perhaps do not merit. Reputational management is something major organisations have long been used to. But for smaller organisations it can now be just as critical. This hotel is currently half empty (it would usually be full) - the reason, one bad review!

For some reason it would seem we take critiques by complete strangers with no creds more seriously than we do those from "professional critics". So what can you do? Simple, search for YOUR company or your product or service every day on Google and see what is being said about you. Then at least you can do something about any injustices you may find. In the case of the Hotel Sole, I have written an alternative review - you can find both here. Enjoy!

I think I know the writer and admire them immensely both personally and professionally and so trust their opinion but I will try to be objective in my comments. To see the above review and all the others go to TripAdvisor.

Leaving aside the rather catchy articles title (showing the reviewers copy writing skills and knowledge of using a good title to pull the punters in) here are some comments on the interesting points the reviewer raises especially about the power of Web 2 and Social Media.

Firstly a legal warning.

From the end of this year it will be illegal under European Directive 2005/29/EC for a company to write or have commissioned to write or communicate a glowing reference by pretending to be a consumer without disclosing that fact. This has serious implications for ‘buzz’ and ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing, where marketing agencies are paid to promote products and services. They must disclose their contractual and financial arrangements. A number of big PR agencies have been exposed as being behind ‘we love x’ campaigns. Under the new Directive this will be illegal. A disclosure of the relationship is necessary. 

A great example is the blog by David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe. When mentioning clients in blog posts he always discloses current and past relationships. 

Back to the newsletter. The artcle author raises a number of good points:

• The internet with Web 2 allows all consumers to have a voice. This can be used to praise and criticise. Think of it as Citizen Watchdog. Being a multi-billion organisation does not allow you to ignore people as Dell found (see my earlier post about Dell Hell) to their costs. The ‘little people’ now have a voice and are getting more confident to use it. We can now have online ‘fan’ groups and ‘rant’ groups forming around issues and companies. With ever increasing internet connections and improved speed this is a global reach. Within 15 minutes a consumer can create a blog and be posting globally using free software and an interface just as easy as a word processor. For less that the cost of a stamp you can share your feelings – good or bad!
• Online PR and Reputation Management is important. As the reviewer mentioned they ‘Goggled’ the Hotel before booking. As they said the ‘hotel had no idea’ about the negative review or maybe even the existence of TripAdvisor. Most people will check multiple sources of information, including reviews before buying something. You may ask a friend or work colleague for advice or use a social media site like TripAdvisor. You may read magazine reviews. Companies that ignore the online ‘chat’ about itself are missing an important and rapidly growing source of information for consumers.
• Synthesising the data. The Reviewer mentioned that they thought the negative reviewer ‘..was not being as fair as he might...’. There are many reviews at TripAdvisor on the hotel and by reading them all you will get a balanced view. Certainly more objective than you would expect the company web site or brochures to portray. Multiple reviews are in effect what is called ‘The Wisdom of the Crowd’. If one person says something it has influence. When multiple people say the same thing it increases our confidence in the information. Research has shown (common sense?) when we use one review as a source of advice proximity, authority and depth of knowledge is important. We trust close friends judgements more than strangers unless they are in a uniform or are ‘authorised’ in some way. But if a room full of strangers says to do something or not do something we will usually follow their advice. This is where I disagree with the reviewers statement that Google maybe give the comments prominence they do not merit. At a philosophical level all comment has merit and everyone should have a chance to have their say. Secondly companies have always had more power than a citizen customer. When we complain about something how often do we feel ‘fobbed off’ or given the run around. We are often made to feel our issues are unique, unimportant and trivial. That the company has better things to do than sort us out. What can a single person do? They can now see if others feel the same way and create a blog or comment on review or similar site.
• Web 2 is out to get you! Nice title. How about - Web 2 is a great tool to help ensure you (the company) maximises customer service and gets repeat businesses. Uum...not as sexy I know....A company can use social media/web 2 tools to get immediate 356/24 customer satisfaction reports from customers. Now what is that worth to a company?  Where mistakes have been made (and you will - you are only human after all) you can address the issue by commenting on that persons blog or posting and take action to address it and tell people what you have done. Maybe if everyone is writing negative comments about the food you should acknowledge it, fix it and tell people what you have done. The next person to post may says the changes are working and this will help drive business. The reviewer says to check everyday. 100% agree. You should and you can. Do it automatically using tools like GoogleAlert.
• Why do we trust ‘wisdom of the crowds’ and not professionals? Well quite simply because the professionals have sometimes been shown to be anything but. Even the venerable BBC has been shown not to be above a little ‘spin’ or maybe more accurately ‘allowing spin to happen’ through independent producers rather than BBC employees. As I said I think I know the reviewer. They have no financial incentive to write anything positive as far as I know. It is personal so has more impact.
• Facebook/MySpace and Web 2 tools. This is a very interesting development. TripAdvisor is great. I use it all the time but sometimes I would like to know a bit more about the reviewer so I can weigh-up the value of their comments but they hide behind a name without any personal data. So you have to use judgement and ‘safety in numbers’ where you look for patterns and threads. What if I knew more about that person? Food and musical tastes? Similar family circumstances and life styles, hobbies and interests? Similar opinions on a range of subjects? It is strange but we often have friends we like even if we do not know lots about them. We may have friends through social media tools that we have never met but we know so much about them – maybe more than maybe our physical friends. Now armed with our online matching profiles am I happy to follow their advice? Yes. What I will do is see what they say about a movie or a restaurant. Try it myself and if I agree with what they thought I would have even more confidence in their opinion when I come to decide on a bigger value purchase.

 Finally. Notice the date the reviewer joined TripAdvisor by checking their personal profile. They joined just to make the comment. They had such a good experience that they wanted to ensure the other negative review had a counter balance. That is the real power of social media that companies can leverage. Customers can become evangelists just as easily as critics. With no payment the reviewer took time out while on holiday to write the review and post a photograph.

All the presentations from the Social Tools for Business Use seminar from last week are now online at Focus Business Communications apart from one presenter who is seeking clearance from their legal department.

We actually were uploading the audio files immediately after the presentations finished. So in effect it was a virtual 'webcast' of the event. Within 15 minutes prresentations were online.

There were about 40 delegates present at the conference over the the 2 days. As at 5pm Tuesday 17th - 5 days after it finished - the audio files had been accessed 268 times.

What does this show?

• Majority of the visitors will have been sent to listen by delegates and presenters telling their networks about them either through 'word of mouth'  or blogs. We did not do a press release or other marketing to drive traffic to the recordings so far.
• The attendee to listener ration is just over 1:6 (40 attendees to 268 listeners)

For companies this is a perfect way to add value to any event they organise especially when getting people to attend is hard because of their workload and time constraints. In additiona many employees would often benefit by being able to 'virtually attend'.

One final consideration. The podcast will still be accessible in a years time. Our experience is that such events have at least a 2 year 'shelf-life'. People are interested in 'what was said last year' even when the new one is available. For some clients we are finding their podcasts are being accessed by 20 - 30 people per month 18 months after the event happened.

Unilever have introduced a video competition for Pot Noodle. (Thanks to heads-up from Garath Jones of Brand Republic).

A special upload area has been created so people can upload their videos. Challenges will be issued and competitors will have to accept them. The first challenge  is to upload videos of the strangest place you have ever eaten a Pot Noodle. Every entrant will get a prize of Pot Noodles and entry into the free prize to win a Sony games console. Promotion will be via Facebook and the Sun Online. Visitors can vote on their favorite entry.

It is an interesting experiement by Unilever into how they can use social media tools to create and communicate with a community. Judging by previous similar social media based competitions they will get a wide variation on the quality (and taste) of the content submitted but a fair measure of engagement.

Well maybe just not yet according to the latest data from research outfit Hitwise Intelligence 

At last weeks Unicom Conference on Social Media tools the question was asked (by show of hands) 'How many of you are using Facebook'. I would say we had 80% of the 40 attendees hands up saying they did. When asked if they were using Facebook 3 months ago only two people put their hands up.

That is an amazing level of take up in a short period of time.

It remains to be seen if the momentum of signing up will continue but people really like its ease of use, ability to keep in touch with the wall feature and groups that can be easily formed. I have already in only a few weeks been invited to a number of events and parties. It is this blend of work (networking) and pleasure that makes it nice to use. I have added a neat gadget that allows me to play tracks from my favorite music while at my desktop. Someone pointed me at it and now people can see what type of music I like. This is from a potential business client.

Sony Electronics are starting to blog. The blog is by their Head of Corporate Communications in the USA, Rick Clancy.

Thanks to Josh Bernoff at Forrester Research for the heads-up.

I have never met the Sony blogs author Rick Clancy personally but having spent part of my career in Corporate Communications (the job Rick has) I know all the potential pit-falls.

His first post has already had 18 comments. Here is one that captures the value of blogging to a company...

       July 17, 2007 1:47pm | Posted by: Stan M.

Wow! Finally! I am glad that you guys decided to come up with a blog that will
have a 2 way street: Sony - Consumer. This is something Sony should have
started a long time ago as consumer feedback can progress the company and
better it in many ways (I am not saying that you do not listen to us at all
though). Hopefully this place will become a great resource to share comments
and get some insights. Looking forward to reading and posting!
Stan M.
Very Loyal Sony Customer/Enthusiast
P.S. hey if you need an extra moderator, I am up for it! =)

See how a customer welcomes the opportunity to get into conversation with the manufacturer. No reseller or distributor to filter it. In the case of this customer see how they are actually offering to help Sony at no charge.

I am sure Rick and Sony will get a few ‘brick bats’ but with customers like Stan act as unpaid and impartial evangelists and influencers to their own personal network of contacts they will be even more successful.

At the Unicom Social Tools for Business Use conference in London today and tomorrow.

A great range of speakers this morning. To listen to what they had to say check here (www.focus.co.uk/unicom)

• Lee Bryant shared his experience of how industries and businesses are using social media tools.
• Sue Charman demonstrated a number of social media tools like Twitter and how she used them in her business and personal use.
• Jim Moffat talked about virtual teams and what techniques can be used to ensure maximum effectiveness.

We are doing 'real time' audio recording uploads at the event so that within minutes of each presentation an audio file is available to listen to. This way knowledge from the presenters can be shared to a wider audience that was able to attend on the day.

We are currently working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to film the salvage operation of the MSC Napoli. We hope to have footage in next months MCA video podcast.

For previous footage see here. The March podcast has footage of the initial beaching, loss of containers and scavenging. The May podcast has footage of the removal of the last containers from her hold.

Heather Gorringe was recently featured in The Sunday Times being interviewed on How She Made It. Taking an initial £15,000 investment she has turned it into a £3m annual turnover business. Check out her mail-order site at Wiggly-Wigglers.

I interviewed Heather for a video podcast while we were both speaking at the recent European Podcasting Summit in London. 

If you want an additional insight into how Heather made it then watch here. You will hear how she has used audio podcasts as a way to help her become a global brand.

Wiggly has embraced social media and now has its own Facebook group.

The debate over measuring customer loyalty continues. Net Promotor Score has supporters and detractors. In this article from the latest MyCustomer e-mail newsletter the detractors put their point of view.

In the 1980s and 1990s companies I worked for (Lotus and Tektronix) spent small fortunes on market research, service and product development to 'gain and retain' customers. We did everything to engage in a dialogue with 'end users' as both companies used distributors and resellers as the sales channel. The issue was by being twice removed from the ultimate customer transaction do people actually have a relationship with the brand rather than the company. For both companies the challenge of using an indirect sales channel was that part of the experience was not under our direct control. The issue was simply the greater the success of the company the further the distance from the customer and so the weaker the relationship became. Our constant concern was to have an interface with 'real' customers so we had user groups, user magazines, special service programmes and conferences.

As with all relationships a two-way dialogue is important or one party will feel disengaged from the process. For us at that time we had to work hard to encourage people to contact us. It was resource intensive but we must have been doing something right as both Lotus and Tektronix were very successful in their own time.

Looking back I can see many of the social media techniques and tools that we now have would have been so useful. Instead of having to use sophisticated (or at least what we considered then as 'smart') tools and techniques to try and get a better profile of people we now could just ask them. Instead of trying to put them into segments and catagories that fitted our perceptions they can now self select - even a catagory of one. Rather than having staff analyse and 'slice & dice' data we can take them from a totally back-office role and get them engaging with customers. Conversation is the start of all relationships.

A recent report in AdAge (sorry - here is the link to the article) highlighted that almost 3/4's of teenagers use a social media site once a week.

This certainly matches our research. In our focus groups what was striking was just how much social media has replaced mobile phone texting and e-mail as a way of communicating and organising social lives. Analysis of activities being reduced to 'fund' time on social media sites was TV and texting. The ability to 'meet' in special interest groups (and make new friends) was mentioned a number of times. Facebook was mentioned more positively than MySpace.

What was also interesting was their reaction to advertising. They uniformily hated irrelevant intrusive adverts but for things they expressed an interest in or considered relevant they were happy to receive.

Waitrose has just upgraded its site to Web 2.0 capability and now provides an interactive platform for their customers to engage in Forum discussions. People can ‘Scrapbook’ to save articles and recipes as well as make recipe suggestions and post photographs.

What is interesting is to see the feedback from active users of the old site. It is overwhelmingly positive.

Two points to note:

• Customers are often your best feedback mechanism (check out the comment below)
• Quick and open feedback on issues and concerns does more to engender customer loyalty than any reward points system.

This is typical comment but then check out the detail and effort that a customer will go to to help Waitrose build a better site and provide a better service. Now that is real customer relationship management...! 

i too agree that the is excellent looking, and navigates well, apart from a few hiccups! I've yet to look through all the content.

But a few things....

Firstly probably the most major thing... you cannot access the branch's microsites by entering www.waitrose.com/branchname. This is how each branch is advertised on till receipts, even today, so this should be corrected asap.

Also by using the "branch finder", the place name or postcode search does not work, you have to use the drop down.

The link to the press office page is broken.

Some branch details are wrong... Just to mention a few....

Since when did Canary Wharf branch have Quick Check, Quick Pay, Photo processing, photo booth, Studio?

Chandlers Ford has delivery service but that is not listed.

I never knew Belgravia was a Food & Home store either! - It certainly wasn't the last time I shopped there! It too seems to have had Quick Check now.

Once these are ironed out, it will be an EXCELLENT site for foodies!

The US Presidential candidates and supporters are using social media tools very actively - and creatively. A good analysis by a US newspaper - Indianopolis Star. Could this be a taste of what is to come in the UK?

Certainly looking at the age profile of social media tool users it covers most of the voting population. In the US the focus is on voter engagement and fund raising. Something the UK political parties need after years of decline.