Social Media, Digital Marketing & PR Agency

To pay or not to pay, that is the question.  There seems to be a ground swell of support for some kind of payment to be made for online content.

Rupert Murdoch  has come out as saying that quality content on  sites such as www.timesonline.co.uk cannot be free for evermore and that readers should be prepared to pay.

Readers strike back by saying that there is so much free content out there that if The Times start charging, they will simply go elsewhere.

The thing is, is Rupert Murdoch and his mighty News Corporation influential enough to make a significant change in how we use the internet, with a whole band of other players following suit?  Or will his suggestion be a flop.  An interesting article in The Sunday Times by none other than Jeremy Clarkson highlights some of the issues not least of which is a generation of young internet users who are not used to paying for anything.

Interesting times.  Which way will it go?  Who knows.  We watch and wait with interest.

Many rumours have been flooding the social media streams over the past few weeks about the possibility of Twitter business pages and verified business accounts.

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, confirmed that they are to ‘start charging companies for using the platform from next year’ according to The Telegraph.

The new paid business accounts will allow businesses to have feedback areas and also in built statistics.

Biz Stone commented “”This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores.  We want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.”

So, the BBC are catching up!  They are asking their journalists to make two headlines – one more detailed than the other to make them more search engine-friendly.

As The Guardian reports today,  the BBC get 29% of their traffic from search engines, which is quite surprising for an organisation of their size and profile.  Here at The Funky Agency we have always believed that good ‘organic’ SEO is at the heart of a good Social Media (SM) policy and that SEO and SM go hand-in-hand.  We are stunned at the number of clients who come to us for SM campaigns who have new, shiny (and expensive) websites, with absolutely no attention paid to SEO.

In fact, more seem keen to spend money on Google Adwords, before getting their SEO sorted out first.  Our stance is that good SEO is the foundation of all online activity and without it, anything else will be just be a quickfix.

So well done to the BBC for seeing the light!

Gossip and rumours of the all new Google branded mobile phone have been circulating for a while now amongst social media, news services and blogs.  However it looks like that this may come to fruition as the Google mobile phone is set to be launched at some point during 2010.

The new Google ‘Super Android’ phone will be 100% designed by Google and is set to rival the Apple iPhone for sleekness as it is reported to be thinner.

Michael Arrington form TechCrunch commented “”there are a few things we have absolutely confirmed: Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers… it has now slipped to early 2010….[and] will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding.”

Watch this space!

We’ve all heard about, that Social Media stuff, and it does seem if pretty much everyone is getting involved – well, it is social media after all. Yet the vast majority of companies still seem confused about how best to leverage Social Media for business. So what’s it all about? And how do you best go about it?

Firstly then, for the technophobes amongst us, here’s a quick gallop through the current Social Media landscape, by which we don’t just mean Facebook or Twitter.

The big four in the West are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Blogs play a huge part in raising company profiles online, in fact it is fairly difficult to coordinate a Social Media marketing campaign without one, and in addition there are thousands of smaller and/or more niche sites across the Internet.

Add to that the bookmarking sites – Digg, Stumbled, Delicious – and then all the other myriad forums and special interest sites where you can chat, connect and interact with…er… other human beings, who would like to know about you and what you like, what you are doing or producing, already know and like what you like.

Because despite still being perceived as being ‘for kids’, the biggest rises in social media usage and participation has been amongst the 35+ professionals and these are likely to be your customers (or potential customers). So how many people are we talking here?

• Twitter – 20 million unique visitors globally per month, generating 50 million tweets a day

• YouTube – 2 billion video views globally per day

• Facebook – Over 400 million members, spending 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

• LinkedIn – 70 million members in 200 countries

• Blogs – 133 million indexed by Technorati in 2009 (most recent figures)

To put that in to concepts you can grasp easily – if Facebook was a country, measured by population it would be bigger than the USA; according to US census bureaux there are currently 307 million people living in the US.

Back a year ago in June 2009, Dell announced they’d earnt $3 million in revenue from Twitter. Which is pretty impressive by anyone’s standards. So how did they do it? Dell reported they were able to use Twitter to post coupons, announce new products and drive traffic to their Outlet Store. It’s made a lot of businesses jump into social media over the last year, often without any idea or what they are trying to achieve, or indeed, what they are doing!

Because obviously Del’s success didn’t happen overnight, and in fact it took 18 months for them to sell their first  $1 million from Twitter, and although the $3 million is a drop in the bucket given Dell’s $12.3 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2009, it has bolstered Twitter’s case that it can ‘change businesses’.

So what is the key to successful social media marketing?

Well first it has to be integrated into everything else a company or brand is doing – it can’t be a standalone. And second keep the campaign small, frequent and focused. Huge creative ideas that make a short massive splash are doomed to fail in this medium, which is the very opposite of traditional advertising and marketing. With a Social Media campaign you need to identify the right platforms to reach the right people, say the right things in the right way, keep the message consistent and frequent, and link everything together to make a cohesive and integrated whole.

Here, small is good.

The bad news is that you have to be consistent over a period (three months is standard before you start to get measurable results) and that means every day, every day, every day, sending a consistent message out that people will like and what to read and maybe share and act upon.

And the sheer volume of noise communications on Social Media means you can’t rely on people coming and finding you and then buying from you. You have to track down the people who want what you are selling and take it to them. Like I said, it isn’t traditional media – Social Media is crowd driven and everyone here is equal, so you have to go and…

• Find your potential purchasers i.e. Your Tribe

• Work out what they need and want

• Tailor what you are selling to fill that need

• Take it to them – which will require changing how you are selling it

• Have conversations and build relationships and trust

• Wash and repeat

Interestingly, the incorporation of Social Media into the business toolkit has resulted in the playing field being effectively and literally evened in the short term because Social Media is about people having conversations about stuff that interests them, baffles them, inspires them, helps them, intrigues them and downright annoys them.

The trick is to engage and then deliver, and if you do that your brand and your services and products will fit right along in there, whatever your size, so long as you remember this is a conversation not a lecture.

H.Samuel the jeweller has launched its own Twitter page, joining other
leading high street brands such as Tesco and Next on the popular social
networking site.

H.Samuel is following a growing trend in retail for engaging directly with
customers. Any retailer looking to maintain its brand presence in the
future and to stay competitive will be using social networking sites such
as Twitter and Facebook to engage with customers and manage brands and
reputations.

The H.Samuel Twitter page is designed to inform customers about offers,
promotions, new products and brands as well as keeping consumers up to date
with news about competitions and charity affiliations. The messages will be
a mixture of information and fun and will be aimed at consumers,
journalists and anyone interested in H.Samuel and its products, promotions,
offers and brands.

According to Jason Edworthy, Signet Digital Comms Manager, “We want to
engage with our customers, promote our offers and build our brand and
online presence with witty, fun and informative Tweets aimed directly at
our customer base.”

The benefit for consumers is access to up-to-the minute information about
new brands, new offers, competitions and an insight into products that they
might otherwise not consider or realise that H.Samuel stock, such as gifts
and collectibles. Other benefits include news on exclusive products and
competitions and the possibility for customers to engage in conversations
directly with the brand if they have queries.

Regardless of the topic, the company intends for each Tweet to link to a
promotion, information page or product. The Tweets themselves will not all
be directly sales orientated and are intended to entertain and please the
customer as well as inform them.

As well as promoting products and offers, H.Samuel is hoping to increase
brand awareness at a crucial time in trading for all high street retailers.
It is hoped that the Twitter page will drive footfall to stores and visits
to the website.

Earlier this year, the world’s first ‘virtual divorce’ thrust an intriguing debate into the limelight when  Amy Taylor ‘divorced’ husband David Pollard after she discovered him cavorting with a prostitute in virtual reality game Second Life. The couple spent so much time playing the game, that when she found him at the computer watching his 3D character having sex, she considered his online infidelity as real as if it had taken place in the bricks and mortar world.

Sceptics view dealings in such online games as a poor substitute for ‘real life’ interactions. Yet the impact of virtual worlds cannot be underestimated. So far, over 15m people have established avatars in Second Life alone, with membership increasing by around 70,000 people a day. In
June 2009, market research firm Strategy Analytics predicted global membership of virtual worlds would increase from 186 million today to 640 million by 2015 (as reported in Virtual Worlds News).

That’s a staggering one hundred million people per year, creating characters for entertainment, engagement and business. Online multiplayer gaming such as Xbox LIVE is also increasing in popularity, allowing people from across the globe to interact in real-time. We’ve even seen the first ‘virtual murder’; a Japanese piano teacher was recently arrested on suspicion of killing her ‘virtual husband’ after becoming enraged when he divorced her unexpectedly in an internet game.

This explosion of growth raises some interesting questions about the nature of relationships in cyberspace – and virtual worlds are just one part of the ever-expanding, sophisticated world we inhabit online. From Match.com to mysinglefriend®, Sugardaddie.com to ratemybody.com, the digital environment plays cupid for a vast array of relationships. To some extent, email and texts have replaced the love letter, instant messaging has become a substitute for telephone calls and social networking is now key to social contact. These days, we’re just as likely to give potential dates a poke on Facebook, Skype Chat them up or tweet sweet nothings to attract their
attention.

Clearly, many of us now view the internet as crucial to modern-day communication –and not just in our personal and social lives. From a professional perspective, the web – and Web 2.0 in particular – has fundamentally changed the way we do business. We know this well at The Funky Agency, where us three founder members all met online in different social networking spaces over the last 10 years and, despite working together, speaking every day and using Skype as a virtual office space, the first time we will all likely to be physically together is when Claire and Helen stand as Matrons of Honour as Sally and Colin renew their wedding vows next year…

The way we meet and interact online with people from across the globe is now myriad, and for every sort of reason known to humankind, including love, lifestyle, social interaction, sex, friendship, and business. With over 40 million members, business networking tool LinkedIn demonstrates the internet’s importance to how we make successful contacts, while socially and for business we meet people and connect on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the like, and we use email and instant messaging for work just as much as in our private lives.

In marketing and media terms, the explosion of online communications has come as both a blessing and a challenge. In publishing, it’s little surprise that media use via the Internet is displacing traditional forms such as printed newspapers. In the developed world, we now get an
increasing amount of our news and entertainment online, and education via mobile phones has really started to take off in developing worlds, such as Africa, a trend that is bound to increase the following the landing of the fibre-optic undersea cable at Mombasa on the East African coast earlier this year.

Marketers continue to spend more online than on traditional channels – . As we discuss in ‘WTF Can Social Media do for Your Business?’, Forrester Research’s recent five year forecast predicted that by 2014, 21% of marketing spend in the US will be on interactive tools and services. Overall advertising in traditional media will continue to decline in favour of more effective online methods – with social media, email and search highlighted for particular growth. Basically, if your business isn’t using these tools (or you haven’t got time to implement them properly, in which case talk to us) you are going to lose out because we now truly live in the world of the virtual consumer, where most purchasing decisions are oinfluenced by what peers say online.

As BazaarVoice reports:

• Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. (“Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch, March 2007)

• Two thirds of UK social networkers (66 per cent) are more likely to buy a product as a result of a recommendation, compared to 52 per cent of non-social networkers. (Royal Mail’s Home Shopping Tracker Study, September 2007)

These stats are even more important now than when they were discovered two years ago because 2009 was the year that social media truly went mainstream, allowing people to do what makes them feel most comfortable – trusting people ‘like them’:

• One small e-retailer, AlpacaDirect.com, found that letting customers post reviews directly onto the site led to a 23 per cent increase in sales on reviewed items.

• Customers who browse ‘Top Rated Products’ pages spent 19 per cent more per order on Bass Pro Shops’ site and 63 per cent more per order from PETCO, according to data provided by the retailers.

• Another PETCO number: allowing shoppers to sort products within a category by customer rating led to a sales increase of 41 per cent per shopper.

We only need consider our sphere of influence when making purchasing decisions. We research online, bank online, shop online, book holidays online. From branded emails and online customer service to consumer feedback, staff training and social media activities, brands have countless opportunities to form relationships and start a two-way dialogue in new and often unexpected ways. And not just from our laptops, computers and mobile-enabled netbooks either.

As I reported in 2007 in WTF magazine, the Japanese have long been using mobile phones to make purchases using virtual currency, and the trend has continued and expanded with iPhone apps like Redlaser, which allows you to scan a barcode and tells you whether you can get it cheaper elsewhere, as well as, apparently:

• Check online prices for a DVD player.
• Scan films at the store and beam them to your TiVo.
• Scan a book and check for reviews.
• Scan the milk and add it to your grocery list

Ok, yes, that is US-side, but increasingly t rends are global, not just US based, and the swing in power and influence from West to East is becoming ever more marked as we move in to the 21st century. For marketers such as ourselves who ride the trends and tap into the zeitgeist, the possibilities are endless – and a lot can be achieved, even globally, with minimal budgets so long as you are clever and consistent. Built around two similar sounding words, the recent ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign used an effective and quirky viral concept to boost brand awareness, drive traffic and enable cost-effective search. A series of excellent digital executions include YouTube clips, a Facebook page and amusing Twitter feed, along with a full spoof microsite. The campaign’s success is evidence that by adopting an integrated approach driven by personality, brands can maximise the potential for engagement.

For charities too, the online world has tremendous power to influence through the ability to form relationships with people on an individual basis, on a mass scale. In essence, so-called ‘virtual interactions’ can make a real tangible difference to people’s daily lives. By using Twitter as a driving force for event organisation and providing information on Facebook pages and Vimeo’s video community, Twestival was able to provide clean water for over 17,000 people earlier this year. This is just one of many examples of social media’s power to drive change by appealing
for people to join together.

It’s clear that in developed and developing countries, the online world has penetrated every part of our existence. From Facebook to LinkedIn, email to ICQ, all are controlled by real people,
with real feelings, instincts and motives. Our lives and relationships are a complex series of online and offline interactions – and we can no longer see the virtual and real worlds as separate spheres operating independently. We live our lives in a post-digital age; the Internet is no
longer an alien concept to be dabbled with on occasion, but something that pervades our entire lives from top to bottom.

My eldest, for example, was home with period pains recently while I was working in London. I wasn’t physically present, but I might as well have been as she maintained a constant conversation with me and whinge at me pretty much on an ongoing basis… How? Via Facebook, of course, and MSN on our two netbooks.

And the rise of reality TV in all genres, for example, is a guilty pleasure that is doubled when, like immediately following Xfactor last night, when the whole nation landed on to Social Media simultaneously (all the main terms were trending on Twitter within minutes) to discuss it, debate and rant about it, and, most importantly, make sure their views were very clearly heard by Simon Cowell!

Degrees of separation? No, we’re heading for total integration, as virtual and real come together and blend to make one multi-dimensioned world.

After numerous attempts to shut the illegal file sharing and downloads website Pirate Bay, more and more file sharing and illegal download sites are starting up.  A huge increase in these types of sites has been reported in the third quarter of 2009 already.

Net security firm McAfee reports that a 300 per cent increase in file sharing sites that offer music and films has been accompanied by a sharp increase in associated malware-themed scams. Some of the newly created sites are littered with ruses designed to trick users into downloading various strains of malware.

A spokesperson from McAfee commented: “In the days prior to the shutdown anonymizers indexed and relayed the data to users who might be blocked. Open-source code was available to anyone who wanted to help with redistribution of the bit torrents. This was a true “cloud computing” effort, as the masses stepped up to make this database of torrents (legal, infringed, and malicious) available to others.”