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The Issue

Given that we are in the middle of 2011 and technology and media is merging and growing at such a rapid rate, I’m amused and a little bewildered when I hear comments such as,  “We don’t need social media right now, our model works just fine”, or “Twitter is such a waste of time, how can I sell on it?”. The classic is “My kids use Facebook, it’s not a business tool”.

Though there may be a resentment or misunderstanding of these Social Media platforms, what is clear however is that these tools are here and if used correctly, become a potent arsenal to augment to the current marketing strategy.

In my humble opinion, there are many reasons why companies shy away from developing a social media strategy let alone executing one. Here are 10 possible quick reasons:

• May not understand it
• Don’t have the time to understand it
• Have used it once and ‘it didn’t work’
• Cannot measure whether it is effective
• Feel it’s not relevant to them
• Potential negative feedback from Customers
• Easy target for competition
• Think that Facebook is for teenagers
• Twitter is for celebrities
• No one had joined their LinkedIn page

All of these perceived issues can be addressed by an agency that knows how to plan, develop, execute and measure the effectiveness of social media for business.

How are Companies Using Social Media?

In last years Burson-Marsteller Fortune Global 100 social media study it is clear that the top companies are using social media extensively – so why aren’t medium sized companies? These companies are using social media to inform, listen and engage with new and existing customers. From the study we can also see that:

• 79% of the top 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 Index use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & corporate blog
• Twitter is most popular in this group, 65%
• Stakeholders want to hear what they are saying and start following
• Nokia, AT&T & Samsung each have between 4-20 Twitter accounts alone
• This is matched by no. of corporate blogs
• Most companies in this group (top 100) average 27 tweets a week

How companies can benefit from an Agency’s Experience?

As the social media landscape matures and the market becomes more complex, there is no doubt that a cohesive strategy deployed and managed by an agency is a practical and intelligent way forward.

An agency can pragmatically asses a company’s needs without the usual politics that can plague internal planning meetings by organisations, and present a clear and workable process. Though all agency proposals are bespoke, here are some general ways in which agencies can help and add value.

Expertise
An agency will be able to demonstrate current and historical social media campaigns they have worked on as well as sharing case studies and testimonials of previous work. In certain cases an agency will have created a white paper or commissioned research into a specific sector of social media to demonstrate their level of understanding.

Accountability
Any good agency will be accountable for what they do and keep you aware of progress, potential pitfalls and more importantly, uplifts in your campaign.

Focus
Dedicated to your needs. A good agency will be working toward achieving your goals that will have been clarified prior to the campaign. The agency will have also managed your expectations so you know what to realistically expect.

Analysis
OK, so were tracking but how do you make sense of the data? Your agency should be able to create the information you need in the format you need it and in a time cycle you want it. There’s nothing worse if you’re a marketer and in amongst everything else you have to pull off a ton of data and make sense of it. Get an agency!

Technology
Your agency should be au fait with the latest tracking and analytics technology. From Google Analytics to high end, in-depth tools, the information gleaned from this analysis can sometimes be worth a campaign on its own – knowledge is power.

Team
When you buy into an agency, you buy into a collective power house of individuals and experience that world cost a small fortune to have at your beck and call internally. The team also includes you.

What to look for when choosing a Social Media Agency

There are many agency’s out there who puport to be experts in social media. Looking to partner or work with an agency is no different from buying or investing in anything else.

Due diligence is key. Look for:

• Experience – How long have they been established
• Client List – Who do they work with
• Case Studies – Previous work
• Testimonials – What do people say about them
• References – Talk to past and current clients
• Studies or White Papers – Have they commissioned any research?
• Who are principles of the company – Are they respected individuals?

Conclusion

Social media should be seen as another marketing platform and in turn have the ability to enhance and compliment both a company’s customer service offering and ability to hear what customers (old and new) are saying.

However, it is clear that the growth of social networks; the complexity of analytics’s tools along with the need to crunch and clearly understand all the information coming back is becoming a headache for many companies. The best way to do this is for the company to get on with the job or running the company and the Agency help the company do that job better.

7.45am I arrived at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, a new venue for the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Exhibition.
After a well deserved coffee and biscuit I headed to the 4th floor for the Search and Social Media breakfast workshop presented by Brad Kleinman – Director of Education at Online Marketing Connect.

He presented an overview of the Search and Social markets honing in on vital statistics that identified why ‘Social’ was becoming essential to most businesses and what market trends were being predicted. There were many sources used for the insights however the key resources which stood out were eMarketer and Global Web Index.

Some key points to take from the slide share is the shift in social media and how people are using different social platforms and comparing this to businesses opinions or approach to social media. Also the data showing that micro blogging has increased +35% based on research comparing wave3 to wave1, however writing blogs and visiting forums and chat rooms is down. A 35% increase in micro blogging raises the importance of the likes of Twitter as they are being recognised as platforms to share real-time and breaking information to a huge audience. It is now for the advertiser or social media strategist to plan how these social platforms can enhance business goals via these platforms by managing customer service, sales opportunities, product reviews or customer word of mouth selling to mention a few.

This was followed by the SES conference welcome and opening keynote presented by Jeffrey Hayzlette, Celebrity CMO, former Kodak CMO

A very entertaining and energetic presentation about story telling to engage with potential customers and focussing on what hayzlett calls the 118, others may know this as the elevator pitch. As well as this he talked about the 4 E’s – Engage, Educate, Excite and Evangelise and how these play a vital part in talking to your audience and building customer loyalty through your branding and positioning.

We were exposed to a few snippets of social media activity Kodak had run and one of the most facinating statistics came from a twitter campaign which they ran to come up with a name for their new waterproof video camera. They asked people via twitter what they should call the camera, the winners would have the product named after their idea and would be announced the mother/father of that product.
This campaign generated more followers and interest in a few days than they had had in the whole history of the account. This just goes to show how powerful the engagement with your audience can be. I would be interested to know how many of those followers then went on to purchase a Kodak product and within how long after the campaign.

The ExhibitionHall
The Exhibition hall was fairly ‘compact’ as we have seen year on year at London SES and it was interesting to see many SEO link building companies competing. Amongst the rest of the 19 booths was a majority of SEO services and a spread of social media tools and technologies as well as some search marketing software and analytics tools.

Although I did not attend the following days I heard the seminars on everyones radar (other than the cocktail reception and parties) were ‘PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle’, ‘Update on realtime search: I want it now!’ and ‘Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics’.

Did you attend? If so what seminars were of most interest to you? I would love to hear your feedback.

Hosted at Microsoft’s London HQ, presenters included Orla Malone – Sales Associate UK and Ireland for Facebook, Director of Search at Bing – David Coplin and Colm Bracken – Microsoft Advertising’ Group Search Manager. It was a good turn out and some interesting case studies were delivered by Radisson Edwardian’s Amy Clarke, as well as some interesting insights into Microsofts steps to integrate Social and Search.
However throughout each of the presentations the elephant in the room was Google.

In the UK Google still holds 92.27% of the search market with the remaining 7.73% being split across Bing, Yahoo and other search sites according to StatCounter Global Stats data.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

The US tells a different story however with Google only reporting to have 80% on Global stats but as little as 65.6% reported from ComScore for January 2011. However Google search on mobile is by far the dominant force in both UK and US.

The US search and social market leads the way for the UK and often we see the same or similar trends breaking in the US reflected in UK market. This would suggest that Bing’s Search Engine market share is likely to grow and that growth may be to Google’s detriment.

So what does this have to do with Facebook?

Well Microsoft and Facebook seemed very comfortable together and currently Bing provides the search results within Facebook. Facebook is the most used website in UK and with over 500 million global active users and 50% of them logging on every day, with this in mind if Facebook can integrate a search function that delivers the relevance at the quality of Google’s results then this may be a fighting force for Google. Whether they develop this themselves, partner with the likes of Bing to deliver the search results or if they move in this direction at all is something that Google must have on their radar.

The clear problem I see at the moment is Bing’s Search results are just not as relevant as Google’s.
To test this I ran a search for ’what is Quora?’ on Google and Bing and this was the result:

Bing is delivering Sponsored links for totally irrelevant ads to the search query as well as the natural listings being less relevant. The layout of the page even makes it difficult to find what you want and the related searches bear no relevance to Quora only the ‘what is’ part of my search query.
So Bing has a lot of work to do here in my opinion. But back to Facebook, if people are spending such huge amounts of time on Facebook every day, and this includes on their mobiles, tablets, PC’s and laptops, why not facilitate a search into the tool which allows users to stay in the Facebook environment but effectively search.

I then looked on Facebook to see what results were delivered on the same search for ‘What is Quora?’ to my surprise the results (which are powered by Bing) were more relevant than the Bing searches themselves? It displays fewer results but all are highly relevant to Quora.

There is no denying it Google have the Search market sussed at the moment, however in order to stay ahead of the curve and to drive search and social integration I am waiting to see there next move. Google’s search results currently integrate social results and often Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn results will populate the search engine results pages (SERPs) but what are they doing to engage with users on via social platforms?

Facebook on the other hand have their own challenges, people are there to communicate with friends and family, to share photo’s and updates on their lives, are they there to search? And if so what is the best way to facilitate that and try to take some of Google’s market share?

InMaps automatically goes through all your current connections and works out relationships between them, and groups them into different colour coded networks, and then each group can be customized with individual labels.

As always there is a share button incorporated into InMaps which gives you the option of sharing just your map, so friends and family on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn without an account for InMaps can easily view your landing page without having to sign-up.

Quora’s service provides a platform that allows users to ask and answer questions on all topics, there are additional features such as ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ answers. Users can also follow other users as well as specific topics.

So is Quora a threat to Twitter? Well not exactly, as they are used for different purposes, if anything they work well together.

Twitter is used to allow people to communicate and share information with their followers on what they may be doing or have done, it also allows them to share news or information in an immediate way via computer or mobile. Their follower’s can then “re tweet” to their followers and therefore creating a social network. Whereas, Quora is solely based on asking questions and answering them on any topics, which people can then start to socialise.

Quora aims to co operate with other social networking sites, allowing users to pull in posts from their Twitter and Facebook accounts and allowing you to share any questions you have posted on Twitter or Facebook onto Quora.

I think it will be a case of ‘watch this space’ to see if Quora has the rapid growth of some of the other social platforms.

The lines shown in the map above link pairs of friends in cities across the world and after a little tweaking of the rendering process a picture emerged that shows how much of the world connects.

What’s interesting is not that the continents are clearly defined (not many people connect to Facebook in the open ocean!) but the idea that it visually demonstrates how people around the world are connected with one another in ways that would have been impossible before the rise of the internet and social networks like Facebook.

Areas such as China, central Africa and much of the Amazonian basin are missing due to Facebook lack of reach in these areas.

Original Source

The resulting data has been visualised in the video below, with regions expanding or contracting in relation to the volume of tweets.

For the full story, check out the original Mashable post

Firstly we need to address what the competitive factors are between Google and Facebook. Yes Facebook now has more overall web traffic than Google in the UK but people use the 2 platforms for different activities.

People use Google to search for information, products, news, services, addresses, images, videos and more. Where as Facebook is a social networking platform used to communicate and engage with friends, family and communities who share your interests.

Therefore how can we start to compare Google to Facebook and suggest that Facebook have stolen Google’s top spot?

We need to understand what this means? A more pertinent question on this for me is that Facebook are becoming, if they are not already, a bigger brand than Google? With this comes power within the market and they are able to influence advertisers and users to engage with them over and above other platforms.

Facebook currently has 59% of the social network market in the UK (StatCounter)

In regards to search Google has 92% share (according to StatCounter) and completely dominates the UK market.

These figures clearly show the domination of the Facebook and Google within Search and Social media and both have different offerings however as advertisers we are looking for the online platforms which will allow us to generate the best results. Google offers tools and reporting which are far superior currently to the Facebook reporting, but Facebook in comparison is in its infancy. There are more and more examples of how Facebook can generate ROI and cost effective results for business so maybe this is where Google needs to be cautious. Can Facebook start to win bigger budgets and steal some of Google’s ad revenue?

Once the likes of Twitter and Facebook have a more established advertising platform for agencies and advertisers to manage and report on they could defiantly become a threat. Something I am sure Google has a close eye on.

Like the Super Bowl every year, where the ad business is as talked about as much as the event itself, major sporting occasions tend to draw the largest budgets from major advertisers out the best work from those responsible for putting the ads together.

Now, with the 2010 World Cup now upon us, there are a number of great commercials which have become incredibly popular on YouTube. Let’s look at a couple.

Nike Football: Write the Future

Uploaded: May 17th, 2010
Views to date: 15,576,055

adidas Originals – Star Wars™ Cantina 2010

Uploaded: June 4th, 2010
Views to date: 3,297,285

To be honest, I don’t know too much about how the success or failure of traditional TV commercials are judged, however my feeling is that the extent of how they are shared and distributed across the web is certainly becoming a factor.