FreshNetworks Blog

At FreshNetworks we work with a lot of large brands and organisations, helping them to use social media and online communities to engage their customers, stakeholders and other people. Small businesses often think that they don’t have the resources or the demand for a social media agency or to even need to engage their customers and other online. This is very often not true, in fact more often than not the opposite is the case.

Small businesses can benefit hugely from using social media to engage people online. It can help them to reach people in a very cost effective manner. It can let them have a presence online that is bigger than their size might suggest they are. And it can let them have a voice and share their opinions and knowledge on subjects relevant to their products and services.

We’ve written before about how any business can get started in social media, about the four steps any brand should do when they are getting started in social media:

• Step One:  Do you know what people are saying about you? Buzz tracking, social media monitoring, the power of understanding who is talking about you where and why, and some great free tools for any brand to use
• Step Two: What do you want to achieve? Working out your brand’s aims and objectives (and making these measurable) is the single most important factor in a successful social media strategy. Do this before you think about technology.
• Step Three: Have a go and experiment with social media Once you have clear objectives that are measurable it’s time to get going. Try things out and experiment, but make sure you do them where you know you will have the greatest chance of achieving these aims and engaging the people you want to engage.
• Step Four: Track and evaluate the success you are having When you are using social media tools it is essential that you are measuring and tracking your performance against these aims. Measurement is critical and assessing the benefit you are having will help you to refine and improve your strategy overall.

The same is true for small businesses, they should know what is being said about them, plan what they want to achieve and then experiment and measure success. Over the next week, we are going to discuss four different tools that small businesses can use. All of them free and all helping in different ways to meet different aims and objectives. From blogging to  Foursquare we’ll give real practical tips on social media for small businesses.

You can read all our posts on social media for small businesses here

The Matthew Effect dates from the 1960s. It is the theory, first expressed by sociologist Robert K. Merton, that those who possess power and economic or social capital can leverage those resources to gain more power or capital. Put simply: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Or as it is expressed in the Gospel of St Matthew, from which the effect takes its name:

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

So what does this have to do with social media? Well this great presentation and video from Torsten Henning Hensel explores the power of linking online and how the Matthew Effect can help us to understand how things become viral and spread online and in social media. As Hensel explains:

Thanks to the Matthew Effect, the already famous get more famous, the often quoted get more and more quoted…

It is easy to see how this transfers into social media – the more something is spread the more it will be spread even further by word of mouth. Imagine two pieces of content of equal quality, interest or importance. It is the content that has been linked to, retweeted, forwarded or otherwise referred to that is more likely to become viral. For Hensel, “Social media is a linking machine” and the more links you can get to a piece of content the more likely that content is to become viral when compared to a similar piece.

This is an interesting theory and a great attempt to deconstruct and to understand what makes something go viral. The presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks as it reminds us all of the importance of links.

One question brands frequently ask themselves is why should people want to discuss their brand online in social media? With some brands that is true, certainly if they want to develop a sustained online conversation over time.

Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives using social media are not new. Brands that have aligned to a pursuit or a cause have found that the online conversations are more purposeful as their brand is seen in a new light.

Recently Pepsi has caught the attention of social media commentators by going one step better and much bigger. By shifting $20m of event based traditional advertising budget (from the Superbowl) Pespi launched the Pepsi Refresh Project.

Bonin Bough (Global Director Digital and Social Media at PepisCo.) described it on Beth Kantor’s non-profit focused blog:

For those who don’t know, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a new effort to empower individuals to make a positive impact on the world.  We’ve pledged to award more than $20 million to support innovative ideas that move communities forward. Anyone can apply for a grant and the public decides who wins.

Each month, Pepsi will award grants up to $1.3 million to the winning ideas across six categories, including: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

The interesting question is that Pepsi has first mover advantage is repeating this type of campaign possible in the future? i.e. can they (or for that matter anyone else) do the same sort of crowd sourced campaign next year and expect to get the same media exposure?

The longer term impact of the Pepsi Refresh Project partly depends on whether the causes that benefit will talk or continue to talk online about Pepsi.

This is our first post in a new series on social media and not-for-profits

Last week I attended an event on social media measurement and ROI as part of Social Media Week London. There were a lot of issues flying about such as ‘the meaning of ROI’, ‘campaign objectives or strategic objectives’. And some interesting perspectives from the panel on all of these topics and some discussions with the crowd. However one of the more important points discussed  was the use and relevance of objective setting. It was refreshing to take a step back and remember that with all this emphasis on objectives and direct results that we don’t forget that engaging in social media will usually help in ways that you never intended and objective setting can sometimes narrow your focus.

I have personally been working on evaluating some of our 2009 social media engagements, showing how this engagement met the initial objectives that were laid out as the foundations for undertaking the projects. After sifting through a lot of analytics, community data, and online buzz monitoring there were some really good results. The nicer part of this however was looking at some of the data and seeing the impact that a campaign had, that you would never have intended or expected it to.

A community that we have recently launched was set up with a view to strengthen the brand among a younger target audience, become an authority in its category and drive insight through the business. The campaign is doing very well in meeting these objectives, but we have also noticed that we have driven a lot of questions from people abroad and have been able to help international customers feel closer to the business and given them the ability to ask questions that they are restricted in asking due to the lack of stores in their country.

This is one of many examples that I have come across of social media adding value to a business that was never originally forecast or planned. I agree strongly that to make engagement a success and not open your company up to unwanted activity then you have to have clear objectives but make sure that your measurement is not as focussed as your objectives because you will miss out on value that you never intended.

Perhaps one of the most exciting developments with social media is that it allows anybody, from a large global consumer brand to an individual to build their personal brand online. To some extent some of the same rules apply – decide what you want to do and why you are using social media and then make sure you are using it in a way that helps you to achieve this. For individuals, of course, the most important thing is acknowledge in the first place that by using social media you are building your own brand, whether you intend it or not. The main advice is that only you can be in charge of your brand online and in social media, and so you should take control of it.

This is important – especially for job-hunters. I recorded a podcast for Guardian Careers last week talking about the importance of owning your personal brand and building your network online in social media. We also discuss:

• what a social media agency is and what it does
• why it’s best if a brand manages its own presence online (but why it usually needs expert help to do this)
• how you can network and build your connections online
• the best use of LinkedIn (and how this is different from Facebook)
• why you need to be aware that people are able to find information out about you even if you haven’t told them
• that you should take control of your own brand and use privacy settings sensibly to help you do this

Oh and you’ll also find out how I got from a degree in French and Russian at Cambridge to be where I am today.

You can listen to the podcast on the Guardian website: Careers Talk: Job hunting using social media

The podcast is also on iTunes