FreshNetworks Blog

This week, ESPN, a US sports cable TV network, appeared to tell its employees that they could no longer use Twitter except to Tweet about ESPN. A few hours later it turned out that things were not quite so simple as ESPN released its internal social media policy. Whist perhaps a little direct in its choice of wording and phrases, this policy is a good example of what every firm should have.

Perhaps the biggest threat to a firm in their use of social media is to not have a policy about it. To not have guidelines for your staff and to not know how you expect people to behave. Most firms will have policies about how employees should behave both in and out of work. About how they shouldn’t discuss the detail of work that they are doing out of work, or how they can’t earn additional money doing certain things out of office hours. And there are sensible reasons for this. Employees represent the firm they work for, and they also should not act to either to discredit the firm or to take business away from the firm. If you work selling fruit then it would be unreasonable for you to set up stall outside the shop selling goods from your own garden. If you work selling your thoughts on sporting events, the logic perhaps goes, it is unreasonable for you to do this elsewhere.

Of course employees’ use of social media is not as simple as this. We are looking at a new medium which is letting people communicate in new ways. It is like the conversation with a friend in a cafe, just taken to new levels, reaching more people and being significantly more shareable. This should be a risk for all firms. We don’t need reminding of the examples where employees have posted a video that has embarrassed their employer, or a Facebook status that has lost them their job. Firms need a policy on social media and part of this policy should be guidelines for their staff. It’s not about banning them, as the ESPN story suggested, just about being sensible, as the ESPN policy actually is.

The core elements of ESPN’s policy are sensible and could be of use to most firms:

• Don’t run your own websites or blogs that talk about sports content – this is not to be unexpected for a business that produces sports content. They should, however, make sure they are harnessing any enthusiastic employees and giving them a platform to write their own thoughts in a place that benefits ESPN too, such as an ESPN blog
• You are representatives of ESPN even out of working hours – this is a sensible policy that most firms have already had – to remind people that even when they are not at work people will see them as representing the firm and so they shouldn’t do anything to discredit it
• Show respect for your colleague and for fans – in this case the fans are the customers and it is sensible to remind people not to embarrass or otherwise harm either them or fellow colleagues
• Content posted by employees needs to conform to ESPN editorial guidelines – it is difficult if employees talk about things in one way at work and another out of work but both are visible and shareable on the web
• Do not discuss internal policies, processes, decisions or debates – what goes on in the office, stays in the office and some things probably shouldn’t be shared.

These points include the basics that any firm should consider when it is drawing up its own social media policy. But perhaps the biggest danger is not to have one at all.

Some more reading

• No Social Networking for U.S. Marines [Shut Up, Twitter] (gawker.com)
• The White House Has a Ban on Twitter (laughingsquid.com)
• Bleep Tweet: Should Twitter Be Banned In Pro Sports During Games? (bleacherreport.com)
• espn’s twitter fumble: the real value of influencers (jburg.typepad.com)
• ESPN Responds to Criticism and Publishes Social Media Policy (mashable.com)
• ESPN Limits Social Networking (nytimes.com)
• ESPN Editor on Social Media Policy: Our Talent’s Personal Brand is ESPN (mashable.com)

We are big fans of the work of Michael Wesch at FreshNetworks and have previously posted about his great presentation: An anthropological introduction to YouTube. His latest presentation builds on this and looks at the impact that social media sites such as YouTube has on society and also how society is influencing them.

The presentation looks at social theory, a segmentation of why people use YouTube and an analysis of why we use it in this way. A great 30 minutes of insight and learning, and our Required Reading for this week.

Some more reading

• The Web is Us/ing Us – check this video (wordspring.ca)
• YouTube as a Medium for Community (googlesystem.blogspot.com)

Earlier this year we reported on how Russia is the fourth largest social networking market in Europe. Data from TNS showed that use of social media and social networking in Russia is widespread, making it the fourth largest market in Europe for social networking behind the UK, Germany and France. In part this position is driven by strong local social networking sites, principally Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники), which reports some 30 million registered users, and VKontakte (В контакте) with some 28 million registered users.

These numbers are truly impressive and perhaps the rate of growth in membership of social networking sites in Russia is even more so. But recent research from comScore shows that Russians are the most engaged users of social media in the world.

The research showed that in May this year, 1.1 billion people went online worldwide, and 75% of these visited social networks and online communities. In fact, the typical user of the internet spent 3.7 hours on such sites in May. But users from Russia led the way with the typical internet user in that country spending a total of 6.6 hours ever month on these social media sites. Brazil was second with an average of 6.3 hours per user and Canada was third with 5.6 hours per typical user. These numbers compare with 4.6 hours spent by the typical UK internet user on social networks. And a typical 4.2 hours for people in the US.

By this simple measure, the Russian internet audience appears to be perhaps the most engaged in the world in social networking and online communities. This highlights the danger of focusing on English-language-centric developments in online communities, social media tools and social networks. In Russia, two local sites each reach more than 40% of the entire Internet population in the country. Facebook, by contrast, reaches only 2% of the Russian internet audience.

Some of the most interesting developments in the use of social networks and online communities are happening where the users are most engaged and where the user bases are growing most rapidly. This is more likely to be in the markets where the audience and access is developing quickly. Perhaps we should all look to Russia and Brazil more when we want to know what comes next.

Some more reading

• comScore: Russians Spend More Time On Social Networks Than The Rest Of World (uk.techcrunch.com)
• Top 20 Countries for SocNet Engagement (marketingvox.com)
• Useful chart – the top 20 countries for social media engagement (thisisherd.com)
• Russia has most active social networks? comScore on social media usage globally (nettiehartsock.com)

Last year we highlighted a great presentation from Paul Isakson on the future of marketing and advertising, where his argument was that advertising was dead and the future was marketing. This week, Isakson updated this presentation and theory for 2009, with an equally good presentation on what’s next in marketing and advertising.

In this he looks at the constantly evolving marketing world and the way that marketing and advertising is reacting to and evolving with this. His basic thesis is that things no longer work like they used to and that marketing and advertising still needs to change to deal with this. For him:

The future of marketing is not about doing and saying things to people. The future of marketing is about doing and saying things with people.

For Isakson, there are a number of ways in which this manifests itself. His presentation is Required Reading at FreshNetworks this week and below, but in summary his thoughts on marketing can be summarised into eight points:

1. The future of marketing is collaborative
2. The future of marketing is generous
3. The future of marketing is experimental
4. The future of marketing is helpful
5. The future of marketing is playful
6. The future of marketing is personal
7. The future of marketing is honest
8. The future of marketing is participatory

I wonder how much marketing is all of these things?

At FreshNetworks we aim to bring you the best posts in social media, online communities and customer engagement online. In case you missed them, find below our top five posts in July.

1. Guy Kawasaki explains the art of innovation in 10 steps

Our most popular post is July highlights a great video from Guy Kawasaki presenting tens steps to innovation. In the current economic climate it is, perhaps, more important than ever that firms innovate, try new things and work to gain an advantage on the competition. Kawaskai’s video is a great overview of the steps to creating an innovation culture in your business.

2. Michael Jackson flash mobs

In the aftermath of the Michael Jackson flash mobs, Charlie Osmond looked first at some recent flash mobs and then at three of the best. From the T-Mobile dance in Liverpool Street Station in London to the MC Hammer dance.

3. Twitter 101 – a guide to Twitter for business

July saw Twitter launch Twitter 101; a guide for businesses of how to use Twitter. The guide itself is part a how-to guide, part an explanation of what Twitter is and part a set of ideas and examples. It encourages businesses to: listen to what is being said, set up their own presence, follow relevant people and respond where needed. But perhaps the first step that any business should take is to work out exactly why they are using Twitter in the first place. What business aims will this use of Twitter contribute towards and how can you measure the success you are having.

4. Older users becoming dominant on Facebook

Analysis by iStrategyLabs shows that the biggest group of users on Facebook are 35-54 year olds. The study of figures for the US that are publicly available to advertisers shows that over 28% of Facebook users are in this age-range, with a further 12% of users aged 55 or over. In fact the 55+ age-group is the one that has seen the largest growth in the six month to July 2009 – an impressive 514% increase in users. Whilst the study reports figures in a way that prevents real analysis (the age-ranges are of different sizes), what is true is that Facebook is not the preserve of the young alone. Older users are there too, in increasingly large numbers.

5. Build your own community or go where people are? Do both

Another popular post over the last few of months, examining the debate about whether brands should engage customers where they are online (and so in social networks) or build their own site to bring them to (a branded online community). Here we look at the Hub and Spoke Model of Social Media Engagement. Showing how the most effective thing for any brand to do is to do both.