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Once upon a time, a request for an email address was a sure fire way to be able to reach someone. Now, as recent research shows, email usage amongst the next generation has dropped by a staggering 59%, and for the vast majority of the rest of us, email has quite simply become a burden.
So, how do you get in touch and stay in touch?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been solving this problem for the last few years and we need to start learning, fast, from these solutions. But, that simple question: “How would you prefer to be contacted?” no longer has a simple three phase answer: email, snail mail or telephone.
What we need to consider now is far more complex. As social networks expand and people become more au fait with their smart phones, tablets, and alternative ways of communicating, you need to find the communication medium of choice for your customers and contacts. And you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that for the vast majority of people – email is not IT.
Spam is not the only problem. The sheer deluge of emails into your average inbox each day means that many people are just ignoring email as a means for communication. And for instant communication, as the #blackberrycrumble showed this last week or so, even your smart phone cannot save you if something more major goes amiss with email servers.
People are relying on a variety of mechanisms to stay in contact and as a company, it is now down to you to learn and adapt to the chosen communication channels of choice for your users. Whether that is Twitter, Facebook, SMS, email, a phone call, or a visit. And then within each of those channels, you may need to understand more comprehensively how your user uses that channel to stay informed.
So, for instance, post something on Twitter as a reply to a tweet I have sent or as part of a conversation I was involved with, and I will only know if it includes @myhandle. I simply do not have time to constantly monitor Twitter so the only way you can reach me is a DM or a replytome. Start a conversation on Twitter with 3 or 4 other people and you will see how Twitter handles start to fall off quite quickly in 140 characters.
Post something on a Facebook page for a client and how will I know unless you tell me?
Understanding how each of those you contact uses social networking and communication channels is becoming a must. Look at those in your office and close family. Do you know the best method for contacting each of them, according to their preferences, which will raise an instant response? If so, then you need to start applying similar knowledge to your wider address book.
For instance, don’t leave me a voice message or expect me to spot an email in the several thousand which arrive each day. Instead, a DM on any of the social networks will arrive as an SMS to my mobile phone. However, you will never know how I set up my personal devices to receive my personal communications, so you need to guess until you know. And then when you know, you need to target me in the most effective manner possible.
Here are some examples:
x: will only answer emails. Thinks SMS are the spawn of satan and will not answer. Ever. The smartphone lives in a box waiting to be sold as a heritage item, like an Atari.
y: loves Twitter. Always picks them up within moments, even at the dead of night. Other than that….
z: checks email weekly. Chooses 10-20 emails to answer only. Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmark sites such as delicious and Digg are monitored constantly.
Worrying? It should be if you are relying on email to reach your target audience. It is time to get personal and understand how your audience wishes to communicate. A good CRM mechanism is essential and a full appreciation of the cost of NOT reaching your audience with your messages will force you to look into these solutions.
What does your company use?
Following the UK riots, the major social media companies, including RIM, have been summoned to appear before the government to discuss the option to close down the major social networks in the event of similar ‘uprisings’ occurring again.
When news first broke with the suspicion that BBM (Blackberry Messenger) was being used to quickly inform large numbers of people about plans for disorder, many were discussing the potential to close down the network to prevent further spread of the BBMs. Some of the BBM messages were posted online as evidence of its use.
However, as swift action was not taken to do such, then it began to occur to more people that giving the government the right to take this level of action in a crisis could seriously affect freedom of speech, as well as businesses. The government has loudly condemned the actions of countries such as China and Libya closing down networks in the past, so it would seem marginally hypocritical to do the same in the UK.
It also clearly ignores the positive benefits that social networks have brought in similar circumstances viz Egypt, and also the UK riots when the voluntary clean ups organised via Twitter eg under the #riotwombles and #riotscleanup hashtags, must have saved the UK taxpayer, councils and businesses a fortune.
This approach also misses the fact that a huge amount of information was disseminated through the social networks which helped to provide photos, facts and allay the fears of many who were often poorly informed by the mass media and government. Whilst news crews were being attacked, and hence not venturing into the hardest hit areas until after the event, people who were present eg by virtue of living or working in the location were providing factual accounts, pictures and videos of the actuality of the situation.
If networks such as social media were to be closed down, en masse or in certain locations, whether for the duration of a crisis, or more likely for far longer than the actual disturbance, this could cause expensive havoc for businesses, who have begun to rely on social media marketing as an integral arrow to their online marketing bows. In addition, Blackberry is quite often the phone and network of choice for enterprises and businesses, and making it impossible to use for any length of time could only harm those businesses who use Research in Motion hardware and products. This usage is often company wide and losing that communications capacity could cause millions and millions of pounds worth of daily losses UK wide.
Should the government be allowed to take such a decision and could it do more harm than good? Many companies are seeing a hefty percentage of their revenue now coming from online sources and the Internet is one of the biggest sources of UK revenue now (according to Google’s Connected Kingdom report), generating over £100billion per year, and making the Internet a larger sector than transport, construction and utilities. Can we really afford to shut down any section of it, for any reason?
Businesses should begin to speak out about the government having the power to do so because it seems more a knee jerk reaction to the problem, when the government should focus on the causes of the problem. There also needs to be a wholesale acceptance that more good than harm may have been done by keeping the networks open and accessible for the duration of the riots, and business leaders should be speaking out as a matter of urgency before the meeting next Thursday.
The impact on business at a time of recession, or even at any point in the future, could prove disastrous.
There is a growing trend by brands and companies to offer virtual goods through gaming and social networking sites, such as Facebook, Second Life and Empire Avenue. Instat reports that the sale of virtual goods rose by 245% from 2007 to 2010, and was worth $7.3billion last year.
This is not a new concept and back in 2002-3 Cyworld in Korea had many major brands on board, allowing users to purchase branded goods using the acorn, Cyworld’s virtual currency. Acorns could be bought using cash and this approach gave a solid business model for other companies to follow. For some years, it has been possible for avid gamers to sell characters and avatars for hard cash to those desperate to get on in the game but without the time to develop characters to the necessary level for their ambition. Now, companies such as Zynga and HitGrab have seen the phenomenal success of FarmWorld and Mousehunt etc enhanced by the sale of virtual goods for real money as well as for virtual currency.
The popularity of games has spread to a wide audience and is not restricted to those who might fall into the ‘gamer’ category, but also to housewives, white collar workers, and silver surfers. Those with a high disposable income are unlikely to flinch at a £5 buy of a virtual item in order to progress in the game, and the advances in micropayment systems and in-game or in-app purchasing has eased the way for the virtual goods market to expand.
Empire Avenue is the latest to offer virtual goods – an XBox – after teaming up with Microsoft, and the addition of a limited achievement will undoubtedly see the kleptomaniacs for such achievements forking out the currency required to purchase the item and then will spread the word they have done so using Facebook and Twitter, thereby helping to evangelise the product and reach a wider audience.
Offering virtual goods and rewards not only allows you to engage with users within a game, but you can also extend these to real world offerings. So, Foursquare.com offers companies the chance to offer deals to those checking in to their location, such as free coffees for the Mayor or discounts for multiple check-ins over time. Customer retention is far cheaper than customer acquisition and loyalty rewards and discounts are extremely popular the world over.
Whether you are a tiny pottery in the Yorkshire Dales or a global brand, the rising popularity of games and applications using gaming mechanics, along with the social networks’ growth, mean that this should be a strategy worth your consideration as part of your online marketing plan.
The big announcement this week has of course been Google+ and the limited field trial. Not so limited that people still aren’t managing to sneak in through various back doors! The general consensus from those within the field trial is positive, although obviously the entire reason for the trial is to find bugs and gather feedback so there are plenty of critiques, complaints and suggestions doing the rounds. And Google are responding in double quick time and making changes faster than users can find things to be critical of!
However, overwhelmingly it seems that the vast majority of the (lucky) early adopters want to see Google succeed; if only, to stop the behemoth that is Facebook, which 6 years in, does seem to be suffering a middle-age crisis for many.
There does seem to be a need for an integrator i.e. a one stop shop for everyone’s multiple so-me activities to be easily found, and perhaps Google + is attempting to be this. Add-ons, plug ins and apps will obviously need to be developed, and probably outside Google, just as Tweetdeck was developed for Twitter. It seems that few twitter addicts are likely to give up Twitter for G+, any more than many of us will stop using email, the phone or a letter when these are clearly the right tool for the job.
It would seem that Facebook are going to make an exciting announcement on July 6th, and the money at present is on a video chat with Skype built into FB profiles. There are other possibilities, but this is about the only announcement that will right now derail the buzz about Google’s Hangouts, which seem to be catching on at a rate of knots.
Facebook has made a few other changes this week too, such as adding the possibility of Klout for brands on Facebook. The vast majority of the non-so-me world have probably never have heard of Klout unless their Twitterstream mentions it, so this measure of influence has just taken a big step from the business world to the land of consumers. Klout’s announcement about Facebook integration means that brands can customise the user experience to any brand page according to their Klout score. One has to admit this is a clever move for Klout, extending their reach to consumers, whilst giving brands even more reason to take note of Klout.
This is a nice win-win for the social media world and pushes Klout, which many have been derogoratory about recently, back towards the forefront of activity in the so-me world. Not just for businesses, who should be at least monitoring their Klout score for an idea of how effective their social media activities are, but also for consumers who may well begin to see brands differently once Klout is introduced into the social networking experience.
Whilst many have to date seen Facebook as a purely social experience, the fact that most TV ads now have “Follow us on Facebook” shows that businesses, whilst relatively slow on the uptake, have finally realised that FB is a route to wallets, sales and “brand love”. What businesses need to do far more quickly than they did with Facebook is get into Google+ as soon as possible. Because Google + is not about social networking per se, and this is only one of the many changes coming from Google over the coming hours, days, week and months.
If your company has been relying on SEO, then you need to know that even Google is no longer relying on that. Read the next post!
Whilst Google+ is the big story of the day, Matt Cutts has just posted on his wall about a blog post that may have fallen under the radar about content creators being credited on search results.
For anyone who creates and authors content, this is a great new way to be recognised, found, and to promote your work in the search results, including with a photo.
There are a couple of very simple steps to being found by the algorithm which will be powering this addition to the SERPs. Full details can be found on the Google Webmaster help pages, but in essence, all you need do is:
Add the content pages where you post content to your Google public profile, and then paste a Google + button onto those pages. Like this:
Your own content will be automatically +1′d so it should create an archive of all your content over time for people to easily access from your public Google profile page. (This profile page is going to become as important as your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter bio etc, so be warned!)
Obviously, it is algorithm driven so your position in the search results and even whether you are listed will be down to good SEO and making sure you are putting out all the right social signals too.
So, it is always a good idea to tweet all of your fresh content, and make sure that it appears on other social networks as well as social bookmark sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon and Delicious too.
We’ll be playing around with this far more in the future to see how we can improve content rankings on behalf of authors and clients to establish a wider range of listings in the SERPS. Content that is well-written should have longevity on certain subjects, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out as a traffic generator.
As more of us become reliant on social media, not just for marketing campaigns but as a means to find out news, engage with peers, and so on, the need for search engines which specifically bring blog posts, Tweets, Diggs, social bookmarks etc to us has increased.
So, we set off to find some of the social media and real-time search engines that are already in existence. Get away from Google for a few hours and explore the many discussions and conversations on topics of interest to you!
LeapFish – this is a great little engine. Blogs, Youtube, Facebook, tweets, diggs, autosuggestion tool for searches, and much more. Definitely worth using.
SocialMention – interesting ranking system, plus regular users, sources, social media alerts, trending topics, and a blog widget.
Whostalking – search by category eg news, blogs, forums, images, videos, networks and tweets.
Samepoint – offers a wide range of searches across wikis, news, blogs, tweets, bookmarks, networks, podcasts, videos, news and so on.
OneRiot uses social networks to influence the results you receive. One Riot basically looks at what is being shared and trending at the moment, so that it is bringing you the most popular items.
AardVark is an interesting example in that you submit a question and the search engine finds the best person to answer for you across your social networks of friends and FOAFs (Friend of a Friend). An interesting idea, but one wonders if it implies that you can’t know your friends very well if you don’t know who to ask for yourself!
Fluther works in a similar way to aardvark, although it also shows all questions recently asked, and you can discuss your questions and answers in real time with other users and experts.
So, there’s a few to start with. Please let us know more – these are great fun as well as providing fascinating insights into what people are looking for from the social media they adopt.
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Recently, we talked about favicons, and how they had fallen out of favour a little. Now, there are gravatars to take with you wherever you go on the social Net.
Gravatar stands for Globally Recognised avatar.
It indicates part of a growing trend to have a one size fits all item for a user, wherever they go on the Net. We saw this first with user names eg Open ID.
The calls are growing for social networking sites eg facebook, Myspace, Linkedin etc to collaborate so that an individual can carry not just their ID with them, but also profile info, photos, videos etc etc wherever they go, and these are shared across the different sites. Otherwise you can spend your life filling in the same information across a multitude of sites!
Gravatars look fun, as well as being useful in establishing brand, corporate or individual identity, and it si easy to change your gravatar so that the change is reflected across many of teh sites that you and your company interact with.
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According to a new online survey by ABI Research, two social networking sites stand out from the crowd when it comes to attracting mobile users.
“The social network is increasingly becoming a central hub for communication across online and mobile domains for many consumers,” said Research Director, Michael Wolf.
MySpace and Facebook are the two social networks grabbing the lion’s share of consumers.
Although currently the early adopters of this type of activity are using it to socialise, it is likely that in the coming years, as mobile phones and browsers continue to improve, the mobile platform will be the access method of choice for further activities, such as shopping, checking for information, getting peer, brand and product reviews, watching videos and TV, and so on.
And for this reason it is important that your website is mobile accessible as consumers’ increasingly adopt a digital mobile lifestyle and search online.
A new report from Jupiter Research, entitled ‘Branded Social Networking Pages: Best Practices for Successfully Engaging Users’ shows that over half of the branded social network pages in Europe created by marketers for brands have fewer than 1000 friends.
NetImperative’s take on the report should give some Internet Marketing companies and their clients a chance to assess whether they are actually employing the correct strategies to harness the power of their ‘friends’ in such spaces.
Too many of the MySpace and FaceBook branded pages are mini sites rather than an opportunity to get interactive and involved with consumers. Additionally, the lack of multimedia is a hindrance to user engagement – social networkers love entertaining video and music, but marketers are still not thinking out of the box with social media.
David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch said, “By following the examples of what’s worked for other marketers and listening to what consumers want-such as original and entertaining multimedia content-advertisers can greatly improve the effectiveness of their social marketing efforts.”
