FreshNetworks Blog

In the first part of our guide to getting started in social media, we looked at buzz tracking. Why brands benefit from understanding who is currently talking about them online, what they are saying, to whom and where. Once you have an understanding of what is currently being said about your brand in social media, you will be much better informed about the issues of interest to people, the opinions they have, who your influencers and advocates are and where you can start to engage with people in social media. The next step is to work out what you actually want to achieve.

For too many people, social media is seen first and foremost as a technological solution. People decide they want to ‘implement social media’ and then work out what they want to do with it. This kind of enthusiasm is great and people who want to harness and use social media for your brand should be embraced. However, for any business there is a critical question you need to answer first: “what are you trying to achieve”.

There is much talk about measurement and proving the ROI of social media. One way to ensure that you are able to show the impact that your use of social media has had is to make sure you have clear and measurable aims in the first place. Maybe you want to increase customer loyalty, reduce the cost of your current customer service channels, increase customer satisfaction, get new ideas into your business or reduce the cost of your customer insight spend. These are the kind of aims and objectives (at a very high level) that some of our current clients at FreshNetworks have. And all of them are measurable. You can show the impact you are having on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. And you can show either the revenue you are generating, or the costs your are saving, your brand.

A clear understanding of what you want to achieve should be the first step for any brand looking to get started in social media. This may be a detailed decision process or it may be simple, but no brand should try something without at least some aims. A simple three-step process for any brand is:

1. Think about your current business strategy. Consider what would make the biggest difference to your business. Evaluate where you can contribute in the short-, medium- and long-terms.
2. When you have thought through this you need to evaluate and refine your aims based on what is achievable using social media. Not everything is and not everything should be.
3. Finally consider each of the aims and objectives you have left and how you can measure the impact you are having. Think about what you should expect from social media, what return you should see and what return you would expect for the investment you are putting into your activities.

This is a simple but effective process. The most important thing is to critically evaluate what you want to achieve as a brand and then work with people with experience of using social media to understand the full and diverse range of things you could do, tools you might use and engagement methods you might employ to contribute to these. This is often an iterative process and will help you to refine what you are looking to achieve and make sure it is realistic and achievable.

At FreshNetworks, we have worked with brands who have started working in social media. They are doing great things and it’s great to see them experimenting. But without having thought through what they are trying to achieve, why and how they will measure it their social media efforts will more likely than not fail. If you are not clear in your mind why you are doing it, you can be sure that your users will not understand what they are supposed to be doing in your social media site.

Of course, this is easier said than done, but it is a valuable and important step for any brand getting started in social media. And remember at this stage we’re still not really talking about technology. Not yet at least. That part comes next.

You can read the full guide here: Getting Started in Social Media

When brands are getting started in social media, they really benefit from understanding who is currently talking about them online, what they are saying, to whom and where. After auditing what your brand footprint currently is, you can begin to make decisions about where you should have a presence, the issues of interest to people in social media and the discussions and debates that your brand can both benefit from and contribute to.

A thorough audit of your current presence in social media (or perhaps just the presence of your brand through customers, fans and others) is the first step for any social media strategy. Whilst Google Alerts provide a useful source for the latest items that are indexed by its search engine, to understand properly what is being discussed by your brand it is worthwhile investing in some detailed buzz tracking.

The best results come from using paid-for services such as Radian6. These conduct and analyse real-time, deep searching into what people are discussing in public forums and social media online that is analysed according to the reach of the posts and discussions and the influence of the people discussing your brand. You can drill-down into your keywords, understand which discussions are prevalent across different social networks and online communities and identify, measure and track your main influencers online.

As with most of our advice, however, a good first step is just to have a go. To do this you need to first establish what your keywords are and then use some tools (paid-for or free) to see what people are saying. Your keyword list is critical here and time should be put into building a list of terms about your brand, organisation, market and customers. Then you are ready to go. And if you don’t want to invest in a thorough, paid-for service right, and you are willing to put in more work and use multiple services, then there are a number of good free tools in the market. Some of these are listed below.

Only when you’ve got a clearer view of what people are saying about your brand and how it is represented online can you start to really develop a strategy to get started in social media.

In tomorrow’s post we will look at how to estabish the aims of your use of social media and how you can measure success.

You can read the full guide here: Getting Started in Social Media

Some free buzz tracking tools

Earlier this year Econsultancy produced a list of free buzz tracking tools which provides a great starting point for any brand looking to explore what is being said about it in social media. The original article is here, and the list republished below:

1. Addict-o-matic – Allows you to create a custom-made page to display search results.
2. Bloglines – A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client.
3. Blogpulse – A service of Nielsen BuzzMetrics. It analyzes and reports on daily trends within the blogosphere.
4. BoardTracker – A useful tool for scanning and tracking within forums.
5. Commentful – This service watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts and similar content such as Flickr or Digg.
6. FriendFeed Search – Scans all FriendFeed activity.
7. Google Alerts –Daily or real-time alerts emailed to you whenever a specific keyword (chosen by you) is mentioned.
8. HowSociable? – A simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web.
9. Icerocket – Searches a variety of online services, including Twitter, blogs, videos and MySpace.
10. Keotag – Keyword searches across the internet landscape.
11. MonitorThis – Subscribes you to up to 20 different RSS feeds through one stream.
12. Samepoint – A conversation search engine.
13. Surchur – An interactive dashboard covering search engines and most social media sites.
14. Technorati – Search engine and monitoring tool for user-generated media and blogs
15. Tinker – Real-time conversations from social media sources such as Twitter and Facebook.
16. TweetDeck – Not only a great way to manage your Twitter account, but the keyword search means you can see what people are saying about you.
17. Twitter Search – Twitter’s very own search tool is a great resource. Can be subscribed to as an RSS ffed.
18. UberVU - Track and engage with user sentiment across the likes of, FriendFeed, Digg, Picasa, Twitter and Flickr.
19. wikiAlarm – Alerts you to when a Wikipedia entry has been changed.
20. Yahoo! Sideline – A TweetDeck-esque tool from Yahoo. Monitor, search and engage with the Twittersphere.

Last week, I was interviewed for an article in the Independent about how brands should be using social media. Whilst some of the other interviewees talked about how brands could use the like of Twitter, I took a step back:

The starting point for any business, according to Matt Rhodes, head of client services at social-media experts FreshNetworks, is ensuring you know what you want to achieve – increased brand awareness, customer retention, a feedback mechanism and so on. “Next, establish who you want to engage – new or existing customers, a certain part of your customer group or more general. Then work out where these people congregate and what will engage them best.”

The biggest mistakes companies make, he says, are implementing a tool-based, as opposed to people-based, strategy and simply choosing the best-known communities. “It may be that you just won’t be able to engage people in, for instance, Facebook,” he says, adding that sustained engagement is also key.

Working out why you want to use social media is an important step for any brand getting started in social media. Rather than just jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, or racing into Facebook it’s important to take a step back. Listen to what people are saying already about you in social media. Think about what you want to achieve. Then experiment with a passion and have a clear process for evaluating what has worked. And what hasn’t.

This week we will be sharing our thoughts on four steps any brand should do when they are getting started in social media. We will look first at buzz tracking and how you can understand what is being said, where and by whom in social media. We will then look at how you should establish aims for your use of social media (and how you could measure these). Only then will we encourage you to experiment (with a passion). And finally we’ll look at measurement and ROI (and how you will know what’s working and what isn’t).

The aim is to give any brand who is looking to use social media (or indeed to use it better) a framework to work through, some ideas and also a lot of questions and decisions that will need to be made. As I say in the Independent article:

The biggest mistakes companies make, are implementing a tool-based, as opposed to people-based, strategy

This week we will help you to not fall into this trap.

You can read the full guide here: Getting Started in Social Media

The Marketing Forum on Aurora

This week FreshNetworks has been at two marketing conferences: The Richmond Events Marketing Forum and the IBDG Marketing Directors Strategy Meeting.

Both events use the format of an agenda rammed with 30-minute speed-meetings between marketing service agencies (suppliers) and Marketing Directors (delegates).

I’ve taken part in quite a few of these over the years and in case you’ve ever considered one, I thought it might be worth a quick post about my thoughts and learnings.

How do the marketing forums work?

The organisers attract delegates with the promise of a free conference pass and an opportunity to meet a pre-qualified group of suppliers. For these marketing budget holders it’s an opportunity to get out of the office, to network with peers and to discuss curent issues with some suppliers they might not otherwise cross paths with.

Suppliers pay between £7-15k to attend. That’s a lot of money for an agency, but the draw is having between 10 and 30 one-to-one meetings with the Marketing Directors – meetings that would take a lot of effort to book and attend if you tried to arrange them yourself.

A key part of making the events work is that delegates and suppliers provide lots of information about their respective businesses ahead of the event. That enables both sides to flag who they’d like to meet on the day. And after the conferences, just like speed dating, both parties say who’d they’d like to meet again.

This meeting format has been around for 20+ years (I think Richmond were the original innovators). It’s a far more focused way of doing biz dev than a stand at a trade fair, but it can be quite a bit more expensive. Relative to cold-calling I think the price per meeting is in the same range: £300-£500.

Richmond Events – Marketing Director’s Forum

This is the pinnacle of speed-meeting events. Three days on a boat moored off the Jersey coast. 150 Marketing Directors trapped with no chance of escape. Except by lifeboat.

The event has a good reputation and continues to attract a high level of delegate with marketing budgets that ranage from £100k to £50M. However over the years the number of Marketing Directors who attend has reduced sigificantly and most of the delegates now tend to be Marketing Managers or Heads of Marketing. One reason for this may be that the marketing procurement process has become more sophisiticated. As a result major appointments are rarely made purely on the basis of meeting an agency on the boat.

Got any other theories?

Compared to all the other events I have attended, Richmond definitely stand out as having the best-run most expertly-organised events. I also think they maginally clinch it on quality of delegates. As for conference sessions, based on the feedback from delegates, they were pretty good. The quality of keynote speakers is always superb. Richmond clearly invest a great deal of time and effort in picking the keynotes. And the other thing that I really enjoyed this week were the lunches and dinners. These provided excellent opportunites to venutre off the usual sales patter and really get to know some of the delegates.

IBDG Marketing Directors Strategy Meeting

I’ve been to lots of IBDG events. They are held in a hotel just off Portman Square in London. What I love about these events is that whilst they only promise you 8-10 meetings, we have often met 30 potential clients in one day. The reason for this is that the IBDG team really hustle (especially Nathan Lovegrove, our trusty account manager).

On the flip side, from the last two we attended I don’t think we’ll get a payback on our spend. That may be more to do with what we’re selling (Social Media services are still surprisingly new for UK Marketeers and only the early adopters have budget for it in 2009 or 2010). I understand that they are already booked solid for 2010 as many other suppliers have re-booked.

The other negative for me is that relative to other events, these always feel like a much harder sell (to suppliers). IBDG (understandably) try to hook you into the next event whilst your still trying to meet people on the day. But this is the last thing you need when you’re trying to focus on your next 30-minute meeting for which you have already paid. There is a cooling-off period, but it all feels rather pressured.

Other marketing forums

Similar events are organised by:

World Trade Group WTG One to One meetings

Revolution Magazine: The Revolution Forum

Forum Events: The Internet Marketing Summit

Have you been to any of these events? If so what was your experience?

Two things this week have shown the weakness of the traditional media outlets in the face of online communities of people. On Monday a judge issued an embargo on the Guardian newspaper to stop it reporting a question that was asked in the House of Commons. Within 18 hours not only had this embargo been lifted, but the question itself had possibly become the most reprinted and widest spread question ever raised in the British Parliament. Then on Friday, an article by Jan Moir in the Daily Mail on the death of pop star Stephen Gately provoked considerable discussion on Twitter thanks to its controversial associations between Gately’s sexuality and the manner of his death.

If we’ve learnt one thing this week, it’s that people are willing to talk and express their opinions in Twitter in ever increasing numbers.

Both instances show the role that Twitter, and online communities more broadly, have to play in questioning, challenging and debating issues raised by traditional media outlets. And both cases show how online communities are more nimble and more able to harness, express and promote the range of opinions that people have.

In the case of the embargo on the Guardian, Twitter became an investigative tool. Within moments of the newspaper reporting that it had been prevented from reporting a particular question that was asked in the House of Commons, people had come together in the online community to solve the problem of what that question was. It very soon turned out that it was a question about a British oil trading firm, Trafigura, and Carter-Ruck their law firm. Whilst a British judge had prevented the Guardian from printing this question, Twitter faced no such restrictions. The question was quickly circulated and discussed; read and republished by many thousands of people all while the newspaper was prevented from even acknowledging that the same question existed. If you wanted to know the truth of what was happening on Monday, you didn’t go to the news outlets. You went to Twitter.

By the time the embargo on the question was lifted it had been discussed for almost 18 hours in a public forum. With the large and growing Twitter user base, the fact that the Guardian had been prevented from printing the question became almost irrelevant. People were able to read, and perhaps more importantly, discuss this forbidden question quite openly in Twitter. Together they could find and share information about Trafigura and Carter-Ruck and debate the various opinions on the issue. So not only was Twitter able to print the question that the Guardian was prevented of doing, they were also able to host and facilitate an online community of people discussion and debating the issue behind the question. Much more than traditional media could ever do.

Then on Friday, Twitter again came into its own when faced with discussions in traditional media, this time an article by Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Whatever you think about Moir’s article you cannot deny the breadth and volume of discussions on Twitter about it. This time it was less about Twitter being a source of information where traditional media was unable to do so, and more about Twitter providing a way for people to debate and dispute the very issues raised in the article. And then to organise themselves to campaign against the article itself.

Many many people on Twitter were angry about Moir’s article and expressed their anger in a number of ways. They expressed their unhappiness. They debated and disputed with each other. And they proactively provided information on how to complain. The online community in Twitter was able to do things that would not be possible with traditional media, providing a space for a meta-discussion about the article and about the issues raised.

In both of these cases, Twitter has really come to its own as an online community. It allows people to first identify and then express themselves with other people who share the same opinions and interests as them. Information is traded between people and shared and spread to reach as wide a group as possible.

People often ask and debate why people take part in discussions and debates online. The truth is that they will do so if they share similar interests, are facing similar questions, want to solve similar problems or provide similar resources. If they share something, they will share information with each other. This is the real power of online communities and the way in which you can grow them and engage more people. Faced with this, they pose a significant and dangerous threat to traditional media.

This week in the UK it is at least Twitter 2; the British press 0.