Tag: social_media
A major misconception about social media
I overread a Twitter conversation the other day, where person A was excited about their succesful movie that had gotten lots of engagement and views. Person B on the other hand replied saying that it was too long for YouTube - since YouTube is only for short movies.
Do you see the mistake? The mistake is considering YouTube a media where there are rights and wrongs which will never change. I find this a common view of social media in general.
Twitter should be handled this way. All other ways are wrong.
You should blog that way. And that way will always be the right way.
This is so wrong and it helps building the misconception that social media has all these rules and thus is hard to engage with. Face it - social media changes and the users change its perception of it. All the time.
This means that you have the opportunity to develop social media and the user perception of it. You know your target groups and you know if they want to watch a four minute movie on YouTube.
4 
The PR industry needs to establish Forum Interaction Guidelines
Being a digital planner you need to have your user stats straight as well as some cases. Both positive and negative. Today a case which most certainly will become a classic social media fake case was revealed, when forum users talking positively about Samsung products were found to be representatives from Swedish agency The Viral Company, who represent Samsung.
The forum users, who had disguised themselves with normal forum nicknames, had been found in several forums talking about both gaming, tv's and other topics relevant to Samsung.
We work with customer support for clients in forums, blogs and micro blogs by answering questions and trying to help, and we do this being transparent and open about who we are. Forum users are knowledgeable and critical towards organizations entering their forum, which makes it incredibly important that we keep the distance and our transparency to establish trust with the forum users.
This kind of "seeding" makes my work so much harder and ruins the reputation of all organisations working with a distributed digital presence. Just as we have created a blogger relations document I think we need to establish a Forum Interaction Guidelines.
- We will always be transparent when interacting with forums
- We will never break the rules of the forum
- We will only interact with the forum when needed
What else is needed?
Pers Värld revealed the story.
Media Culpa also posted about the story.
Update: Adland contacted Samsung who seem unaware of the forum spamming.
Use online customer service to create a positve online footprint
Photo: throgers
Swedish SEO guru Christian Rudolf wrote an extensive and insightful piece on how brands get jacked online when negative discussions reach a high ranking in a search for the brand name. I also had the honor to add my comment to the story.
SEO is a founding part of all digital communication, something that is probably still unknown for many within communications. With people learning more about digital communication and discovering new services like blogging, Twitter, YouTube, Posterous etc, and also getting accustomed to liking or disliking brands, brand jacking will become a bigger challenge to organizations.
Digital communication has largely been about campaign sites and hoping for a viral effect, but often there is no strategy for creating positive digital footprints that prevent brand jacking. Creating and maintaining a digital presence is increasingly important and I am convinced that a function like customer service on the internet, where each client dialogue means a digital footprint, will be a natural part of a communication strategy.
Digital footprints is an important part of the strategy when we work with digital presence and online customer service for clients, answering tweets and blog or forum posts. When a forum user expresses a problem it is not only important to answer that person, but also all the users that will follow looking for information about the same product.
Making sure all questions have an answer and also letting users know that the company cares and listens to them is an important message to send both for existing customers as well as potential customers looking for a rational argument when choosing between manufacturers. And in the long run posting the answers online will save time and money for the traditional customer service.
Facebook is for girls
Photo: Cynthia Marie Photography
Canadien ice hockey player Lee Goren got traded from Swedish team Färjestad earlier this week after he had started a Facebook brawl with a supporter.
Goren had told the supporter to go to hell and that he would shove his fist down the supporter's throat. The story upset Goren's team enough to send him to Switzerland and get Slovak Lubos Bartecko in return.
When asked about the Facebook incident Bartecko told local news paper Wermlandstidningen, that he wouldn't get into similar trouble since he doesn't have a Facebook page. His wife does. Facebook is for girls, Bartecko says.
Swedish politician finds out Facebook is the real social media world
Photo: Daniel Zanini H.
The press secretary of the Swedish prime minister is in deep doo-doo after Facebooking about how amazing immigrants are, since a Russian cleaning lady had cleaned up after someone had defecated in the stairways of the press secretary's apartment.
2010 is an election year in Sweden and this time social media is for real, whether you want it or not. The press secretary is on paternity leave and probably thought his Facebook was his own part of social media – not the REAL social media world. It was.
How to summarize the social media landscape in three bullets
Friend and former colleague, Aaron Uhrmacher, has been AFK for a while, not posting on his blog. Yesterday he was back explaining the cause for his absence, and writing about how he hadn't missed social media and that nothing had changed.
- The same marketers posting too frequent Twitter updates continued to pollute the stream.
- The conversations about social media ROI, the iPhone vs. the Droid and the exaggerated death of news media continued unabated and with little in the way of new information.
- Google Wave came and went, and now everyone is back to talking about Twitter.
Aaron pokes the social media landscape right where it hurts. Social media discussions are often way too introspective and lacking a critical perspective. Let's get off of the compulsive retweeting behaviour and let's stop gathering around the same topics.
Something made me think about Bluto's speach in Animal House, when he runs out of the room (maybe it's just me who's seen the movie too many times).
SOTB doesn't do it for me anymore
Do you remember the times when Technorati was the place you went to find blogs since they had the most comprehensive and relevant index.
Every six months Dave Sifry posted the State of the blogosphere report, which was incredibly anticipated back then. And not the least they had those graphs that displayed that blogging was doubling every six months, graphs that inspired. Yesterday the first part of the SOTB ´09 was released, and the focus is
Professional blogging activities, brands in the blogosphere, monetization, twitter & micro-blogging and bloggers’ impact on US and World events.
There are four days left of reporting from SOTB, but this doesn't make me super excited. The blogosphere has spent years analyzing and explaining the impact and importance of social media, and I feel we should move on.
I realize I don't speak for everyone, but today I want action, inspiration and results. And then I'd love some analysis on top of that. The SOTB just doesn't do it anymore for me.
Stop Talking About Social Media
Even though I think Seth Godin is brilliant I tend to get a bit tired of his quite preaching style. However, when he's brief I enjoy it. Like when he says Make a decision.
It doesn't have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
I'd like to apply that thought to social media - because I think it is time to stop talking about why companies should use it and start doing it. I admit I am guilty of having talked about it, but I am trying to quit.
Rather than talking, teaching, preaching about possible strategies and benefits, let's focus on ideas and conducting them. Sure, there are really smart projects being conducted within social media, and sure, there are still things that need explaining.
But I am certain there could be a whole lot more fun social media projects if we'd just stop talking and start doing.