It's Open - Social Media Strategy Consultancy

Social media is being used to collect, map and share geographical information in different parts of the world. One site that is leading the way is www.ushahidi.com.

Bloggers set up Ushahidi (which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili) during the violence that followed the elections in Kenya in December 2007 to gather citizen-generated crisis information at a time when unrest was difficult to monitor in real time. People on the ground could contribute to the site via email, or text messaging, providing crowd-sourced data.

I found this example in September’s edition of Geographical magazine. It is fascinating to see how social media tools can be harnessed in a variety of ways to bring together stakeholders without using traditional media. This examples underlines the positive way in which social media technologies can contribute to and help people through life-threatening and challenging situations.

The growth of Facebook motors on with the social networking service racking up more than 300 million members worldwide. This is phenomenal. It is an answer to anyone who suggests that social media is simply a trend.

It also serves to clearly underscore the inefficiencies of companies whose media centre teams and PR agencies continue to invest the majority of their time and resources in traditional media whose numbers are declining fast.

Here’s an interesting piece by Ashley Norris about future Facebook trends. It highlights some other social networks around the world which could possibly hold up Facebook’s rise. I’m a friend of Ashley’s and used to work with him at The Guardian and on Shiny Media.

See this interesting research about how Capital One is gaining advantages from its involvement with Facebook.

Robin underlines the increasing importance of social media in terms of generating visitors to sites.

What’s your attitude to Twitter? What’s its impact on news? How does it fit into the fast changing media landscape?

Here’s an insightful piece from Jeff Jarvis, who explores the issues by looking at contrasting interpretations from journalists.

The best-selling social media book, Marketing in the Groundswell, has been re-issued in a different format with a new introduction.

The authors talk about the importance of investing in social technologies and argue that they work no matter the economic climate. ‘Marketing in the Groundswell’ shows how you can build social applications, measure their results and use the social technology movement to your company’s advantage.

One of the book’s authors, Charlene Li, has done an interview with us. We think it’s worth a listen if you want to know how your company can enjoy social media success.

One of the key characteristics of social media is sharing. People are sharing links, photos, videos, podcasts, reviews, jokes, useful blog addresses, interesting articles and so on.

They are doing this freely themselves. They are not waiting for a remote editor to decide what they should read which is how traditional media works. They are editing content for themselves. This is the people’s media.

The challenge for companies is to find ways of encouraging their customers/stakeholders to share their content and spread it.

Nate Elliott from Forrester makes some interesting points in his piece and highlights the tools that can be added to web sites to facilitate this process.

But the important point to remember here is that this is not just a case of giving your customers the tools to share your content with their friends and peers. How many web sites do you see with an RSS feed slapped on it and you know honestly that no one is going to spend time subscribing to it because the content is so irrelevant to their actual needs.

The point is that you need to create content that is genuinely – and I mean genuinely what your customers will value. If you do that then, the sharing tools will really help you gain valuable results. Great content is the fuel for driving social media success.

Corporate responsibility teams are getting more and more interested in the potential of social media.

Often this area of work can be treated with cynicism by traditional media as dismissed as ‘PR stunts’, but social media tools present fresh opportunities for companies to counteract and challenge that perspective.

Through social media, CR teams can discuss more openly and widely the work they are doing; and these new information-sharing tools present innovative platforms to demonstrate the real value and impact of corporate responsibility initiatives.

At a basic level social media is an opportunity to distribute corporate responsibility reports more widely but at a deeper level it is an opportunity to listen and enter into discussions and add value to key stakeholders and their networks.

The more authentic the conversations are and the more unique the content is the better, otherwise corporate responsibility teams will not gain real advantages from the use of social media.

I think corporate responsibility teams need to think hard about how they can be of value to the networks they are involved in: what can they share which will genuinely be of interest.

Whilst coverage of the work of many corporate responsibility teams may have perhaps been held back by the cynicism of traditional media, CR teams also need to be aware of the fact that bloggers are alert to crude propaganda and will be unforgiving if they find content which they feel is straight out of a glossy brochure and which they think does not really add anything of personal value.

At a time when there is increasing pressure on organisations to be more conscious of their impact on communities, the world’s limited resources and the environment, social media presents a great opportunity for progressive and imaginative corporate responsibility teams to engage with key stakeholders through social media sites and to join conversations and listen to feedback to continue to improve the work they are doing.

It will be interesting to see which corporate responsibility teams make the most effective impact through the use of social media. You would hope that it is the ones who are doing the best work.

More media communications  teams are  starting to use blogs to communicate with their key audiences.

Blogs offer media teams the following advantages:
1)    You can communicate directly with your key audiences without having to go through the gatekeepers of the traditional media
2)    You can share links to relevant content which you would like your audiences to read or share with their peers/colleagues
3)    You will begin to reach people who will not necessarily come to your web site.
4)    You have more space to share videos and audio about the company
5)    You can correct mistakes in the media
6)    You can speak in a more individual voice
7)    You can use the blog to build a platform from which you can start to influence the conversations going on around your company and its products and services
8)    You can use the blog as your own media channel to break news about your business or to provide commentaries on new developments
9)    You will be able to efficiently measure  who is reading your blog
10)    You can use your blog to develop networks online to reach more audiences

It is our view at ItsOpen that the bedrock of a social media strategy requires listening to what your customers are saying and collaborating with them to improve and develop your products.  And  we have a number of services which can help you do this successfully. The value of shopper reviews is underlined by an interesting piece in The Financial Times by Jonathan Birchall.

Jonathan explains that Samsung  is tracking what its customers are saying. It is weeding out feedback that matters from comments which are too spurious and feeding back meaningful customer views to suppliers. It’s a great way to save on product development and to be more responsive to customers.

Simply plugging into a vendor software system to do the tracking is not the way to go, in our opinion. You need specialists to interpret the data and to help you make the distinction between whether or not it represents meaningful input.

You can read the full piece here.

Good piece in the FT about social media by David Gelles.

David makes a number of important points:

Content providers cannot assume that users will seek out their content

Social networks are becoming massive engines of recommendation

Social networks are upending traditional editorial agendas

From the point of view of companies, this underscores why social media communications strategies are essential.

David says: ‘….it is clear that a new dynamic is emerging. Social networking sites are changing the way people navigate the information landscape and share and consume media’.

Companies need to be actively promoting their content on social networks and encouraging readers to distribute links to their friends and they need to be entering into relevant conversations about their products/services and markets. This cannot be achieved through advertising or through traditional PR.

You can read the full piece here.

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