FreshNetworks Blog

Social Media Week in London saw a great set of events, thinking and presentations for all things social media. One of my favourite presentations from the week came from an event I wasn’t able to attend: Steve Bridger’s keynote from the Media140 Third Sector and the Real-time Web event.

Steve’s presentation is based on his experience of working with charities and not-for-profits and highlights the importance of the internal change that must take place in any organisation if they are to make the most of using social media:

1. Social media is disruptive to an organisation. It changes the way you do things, whether you intend it to or not. We see this a lot with organisations we work with at FreshNetworks. Marketing communities often produce customer service queries or ideas; research communities often result in word of mouth about the brand. Customers are not siloed in how they think about your brand or organisation and they way you interact with them in social media cannot be siloed either.
2. Social media is about relationships. It is not about technology but about what you do with it and how you interact with people online.

These observations are as true for corporates as they are for not-for-profits. Social media is not a silo because it is about relationships. It is about how you engage and interact with people on an ongoing basis.

Steve’s full presentation is below and is our Required Reading this week. You can also hear Steve talk at the FreshNetworks Breakfast Briefing on Thursday 18th February: Strengthen your membership strategy with social media.

The Economist on social networking - world of connections

What joy. This week,  The Economist, every Capitalist’s favourite magazine, has published a special report on on social networking.

A World of Connections, provides an excellent overview of the current state of social media for those still trying to get to grips with it. You can download a free pdf of the report here. Or check out my summary of key highlights below.

Introduction: A world of connections

1. “Online social networks are changing the way people communicate, work and play”
2. Facebook users post over 55m updates a day. 70% of users live outside the US.
3. Social networks are superb tools for mass communication [NB the report is a bit light on their strategic use as a driver of 1-to-1 customer-to-company communication]
4. “the most avid online networkers are in Australia, followed by those in Britain and Italy”
5. Social Networks have “become important vehicles for news and channels of influence”. Indeed, they “played a starring role in the online campaign strategy that helped sweep Barack Obama”
6. To sceptics all the “talk of twittering, yammering and chattering smacks of another internet bubble in the making“. Social networks still “need to prove to the world that they are here to stay”

“This special report … will argue that social networks are more robust than their critics think … and that social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size. Lastly, it will contend that this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of global interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.”

Facebook’s growth: Why social networks have grown so fast—and how Facebook has become so dominant

1. How the network-effect can drive lightning fast growth on a relatively modest marketing budget.
2. An openness to external developers helped create thousands of apps. These apps provide part of the service and additional reasons to spend time on Facebook.
3. Social networks have been beneficiaries of a fall in the cost of data storage and have also been “able to use free, open-source software to build systems that scale quickly and easily”
4. In a feat of technical wizardry, Facebook’s engineers “quintupled the performance of an open-source memory system called memcached, which allows frequently used data to be retrieved faster than if stored in a database.
5. Facebook Connect is one of the firm’s most important innovations as it allows members to take their social graph wherever they go on the web.

Twitter’s transmitters: The magic of 140 characters

1. A key difference between Facebook and Twitter comes from the nature of relationships that underlie them. “On Facebook, users can communicate directly only if one of them has agreed to be a “friend” of the other. On Twitter, people can sign up to follow any public tweets they like”
2. The most prolific 10% of Tweeters account for 90% of all tweets
3. Another big difference between Twitter and Facebook is in the kind of content that gets sent over their networks. Facebook allows people to exchange videos, photos and other material, whereas Twitter is part-blog, part e-mail [I disagree with this. On the surface Twitter looks like a text tool, but many tweets link to videos, photos or other media].

Social Networks making money: Profiting from friendship

1. When it comes to turning users into profits, social networks face two issues. Firstly, users are taking part to spend time with friends, so they do not pay attention to ads. Secondly, brands are nervous about appearing alongside unregulated comments and other content.
2. Click-through rates are low, but the amount spent on adverts is increasing despite the recession.
3. In part this may be because Marketers recognise the value that personal recommendations can have on buying behaviour. And social networks provide an opportunity for viral marketing.
4. During 2009, Facebook turned cash-flow positive on revenues thought to be in the region of $500m.
5. Games, virtual gifts, premium services and search rights are becoming an important part of some social networks’ revenue streams

Social Media for Small Business: A peach of an opportunity

1. They cover the well known Kogi BBQ social media success story and mention that according to Razorfish 44% of people follow brands on Twitter  for deals [NB the methodology used in this research was rightly brought into question by Susan Braton in a recent DishyMix podcast]
2. Social networks can provide a great launchpad for startups thanks to their reach.
3. This article then randomly veers off into social gaming. A subject that deserves it’s own dedicated piece. But you can’t have everything.

Internal social networks: Yammering away at the office

1. Social networks are being used to break down internal barriers in the corporate world.
2. Informal conversations they allow can be a catalyst for creativity and new ideas.
3. “The networks are also a great way to capture knowledge and identify experts on different subjects within an organisation”

Recruitment in a social world: Social Contracts: the smart way to hire workers

1. Social networks, such as Linkedin and Xing help firms cut search costs
2. Business social networks help improve the efficiency of the labour market
3. They have also made recruitment more transparent as recruiters go onto social networks to check up on candidates ahead of making an hire

As an aside, if you’re interested in social media for recruitment here are a few relevant posts from our sister company, FreshMinds Talent:

How to use Web2.0 for recruitment
Social Media and the forefront of the job market
How to imporve your Linkedin profile

Privacy in social media: Privacy 2.0

1. Privacy could be the Achilles heel of social networks. Users could decide to start reducing what they are prepared to share with the world online.
2. Social networks have been developing privacy controls that give users the ability to edit what can and cannot be seen. However these are often hidden away within sites and social networks are making blatant attempts to encourage more sharing of data not less.

The Future of Social Media Towards a socialised state

1. Social connectivity could become ubiquitous
2. Mobile adoption will fuel future growth in social networking
3. Facebook says that mobile users of the site are almost 50% more active than regular users
4. Geo-networking apps may be the next big thing [unsurprisingly, the Economist can't resist a fleeting mention of Foursquare, the social network tipped for big things in 2010]

Conclusion

It’s great to see social media and social networking getting reported in such depth by mainstream media. This Economist report is not exactly cutting edge when it comes to social media insight or analysis. However it does provide a great base level for the 99% of the business world who do not spend their days glued to Tweetdeck.

Even if the above is not new to you, I recommend you read the report purely for a lesson in good business writing. As ever, The Economist delivers on elegant prose that neatly and efficiently flows from point to point.

Was there anything in the report that leapt out at you?

We wrote a couple of weeks ago about the role of mobile in the Japanese social networking market. It is a market where consumer internet use is driven as much by mobile devices as by PCs. Japan, and other Asian markets, are known for having more established mobile internet usage than in Europe, America or elsewhere. Therefore it is great to see a report that highlights the growth and development of the the global mobile internet marketing.

Morgan Stanley’s 2010 Mobile Internet Report, published in December 2009, predicts that 2010 will be a tipping-point for mobile internet globally. Perhaps most notably it will be the year when 3G penetration is expected to increase to more than 20% globally. In Western Europe, the penetration rate will creep above 50% of all mobile connection.

This growth will drive a change in behaviour to increase the use of mobile devices in three notable areas:

1. Social networking – consumers want to connect with others from their handset
2. Video – consumers want to find, select and watch video from their handset
3. VOIP – consumers want to chat via a mix of voice, messaging and video from their handset

The 2010 Mobile Internet Report from Morgan Stanley is full of a wealth of statistics and analysis on these issues and the mobile market more broadly. That’s why it’s Required Reading at FreshNetworks this week.

Three-quarters of Japanese social network users access the sites only from their mobile phones.

This observation comes from a survey conducted last year with almost 4,000 social network users in Japan by Mobile Marketing Data Labo. They found that 75.4% of respondents only accessed social networking sites from their mobile phone (and not from their PC). The number only accessing it from their PC (and not their mobile phone) was very low at just 2%.

This is a reflection on the mobile nature of the internet in Japan where 3G penetration stands at 95% of the market and 85% of customers have a data plan added to their contract. This is a much more developed mobile market than we see in Europe or North America and their use of mobile online services is world-leading.

These an other insights into the Japanese mobile social networking market is found in the great presentation below from Alexei Poliakov.

There is much that we can all learn from looking at the use of mobile internet, and the way it has influenced social networks in Japan. Whilst in other markets the growth in social networks sees a growth the likes of Twitter and Facebook, in Japan, homegrown social networks dominate. This is, in part, a result of the English-centric focus of these sites, at least initially. But also mobile social networking leads to a different type of site and different uses by consumers. In Japan, mixi and Mobage-town and Gree are incredibly successful social networks. Mixi has a reported 17 million users in Japan, compared with 1.4 million Facebook users and about half a million Japanese people on Twitter.

These social networks are very different in two main ways:

1. They put gaming either central to or highly within the user experience. Facebook and Twitter tend to be about content exchange or organisation whereas the Japanese social networks have a strong gaming element that attracts and connects users.
2. Premium content is often paid-for. Mixi, in particular, provides premium content and features at a fee to users and this is easily done by adding it to their mobile bill. (This trend explained the rumours that Twitter would charge for access in Japan)

Whilst it is unlikely that other markets will necessarily develop in the same way, it is interesting to see how these sites work and operate in Japan. An increasing penetration of 3G access and data-plan adoption in Europe, and the US, will see more and more people using their mobile as a major access point to the internet in 2010. And with social networking sites from Facebook to Twitter becoming more mobile friendly (such as the launch of push notifications on the iPhone from the Facebook app this week in the UK) it is likely that use of social networks from mobile devices will increase this year.

So we should learn more about what is happening in the more developed mobile markets like Japan. Whether it is simple things – such as brands allowing customers to complete a whole journey (from social networking site to purchased item) on convenient mobile platforms. Or more complex things – such as the adoption of paid-for add-ons to the mobile social networking experience. There is a lot for us to observe and a lot we should experiment with.

A good friend of mine started a new job for the new year – working in social media for a UK charity. She asked me what reading I could recommend for somebody looking to learn more about online communities and how they can be launched and grown. There are a whole range of great books out there on how social media is used and the impact this is having on society (anything by Gladwell or Shirky would be a great starting point), but she was interested specifically in things that help managing and growing communities online.

Here’s the very short list I shared with her (and a few extra ones added in). There are many great books, articles and blogs out there and we’d love you to share your favourites in the comments below. But this is a good starting point and we would consider them essential reading for online community managers.

Books

• Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities, Amy Jo Kim (Amazon) – a great text explaining the how to grow online communities, and explaining through examples why they grow like this.
• Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards, Patrick O’Keefe (Amazon) – another great textbook of how to set-up and manage online forums and discussion boards.
• 18 Rules of Community Engagement: A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting With Customers Online, Angela Connor (Amazon) – a pragmatic approach to planning and building online communities, you can read our review of this book here.

Blogs

• FeverBee – a great blog from practical community-builder Rich Millington.
• Community Spark – a community-building blog from Martin Reed.

Articles

• Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities (2005) – a look at how to combat under-contribution to your online community, examining how social psychology impact when and how people will contribute online.
• Understanding Community: A review of networks, ties and contacts’, Working Paper, Real Life Methods (2007) – an interesting perspective on and review of the different ways communities form and bond online

This is purposefully a short list – what would you add to it? Let us know your essential reading in the comments below.

We posted a couple of weeks ago about Facebook fan pages and how more than a third of fan pages have fewer than 100 fans. There are lots of reasons for this – many fans pages are designed to have just small numbers, some are niche or local brands and some are small but powerful groups of people interested in a certain topic.

But for many brands, size is important and they use Facebook specifically for that reason. It is often not the best answer. There are a range of social media tools, techniques and strategies and you need to choose the one that fits your business aims and objectives. Facebook fan pages might not attract the numbers you want or achieve the engagement you are looking for.

This week, Brand Republic interviewed some users on how likely they are to join Facebook fan pages and what they think about brands on Facebook. There are some interesting views in the video below and it is Required Reading at FreshNetworks this week.

What are your thoughts on Facebook Fan Pages?

• Do you join them?
• Where do you think they work for brands?
• And where are they less successful?

McDonald’s is the world’s largest and fastest growing food service organisation. It is also a brand that attracts a lot of discussion and debate online. Not all of it positive.

This presentation from Heather Oldani, their Director of PR, is a great overview of how McDonald’s is using social media and online communities. From Twitter and Facebook to their own online communities. It’s an interesting insight into how a brand like McDonald’s is using social media – what they set out to achieve and what actually happened. But the presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks for the five key learnings that Oldani outlines from McDonald’s experiences:

1. Don’t ask “Should we engage using social media?”; ask how you should engage
2. Get your strategy right before you start using social media – know what you’re trying to achieve
3. Collaborate across the business – social media impacts on a range of different teams and job roles and often leads to these teams having to work together in different and new ways
4. Be flexible and try new things
5. Be open and responsive to feedback – listen to what people say (positive or negative) and respond or engage if appropriate

For us, the most important of these is number 2 – getting a clear strategy before you start to use social media is critical for any brand. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, consumers won’t either.

Wave Couresy of Shutterstock

People have been going mad to grab their Google Wave invites.

The’ve been auctioned on ebay and begged for in Facebook. But my favourite story so far has been the one about Ian Tait losing his Twitter mind: Ian Tait does not have 1,000 Google Wave invites

If you still haven’t got your invite, then go here for the least imaginative way to get one.

PS did you watch the first Wave video? It was good. Long but good. Sadly I was a bit put off by the t-shirts the presenters wore. It made them look like they had sweaty chests.

If you missed the content (and the t-shirts) you can see it here:

Is the world becoming less friendly? Some people might lead you to think so. “People don’t help out their neighbours like they used to”, they might say, “I’d never ask a stranger to help me”. It might be true that in some areas, especially in highly urban communities, people are less engaged with people who live near them. Statistics might show that people are less likely to hitch a ride on a Highway than they were 50 years ago. But at the same time we are seeing people becoming much more ‘friendly’, helping out friends and strangers alike. They are just doing it in different ways.

Social media, and online communities in particular are all about people helping other people because of a shared interest, aim, goal or question. They might help people to find the answers they are looking for, share their own experiences or help people to sort their content and ideas so that the most relevant comes to the front.

In one of the online communities that we run at FreshNetworks, we see such examples on a regular basis. Over the summer there was a particular poignant one. A group of women on a community focused on anti-aging and beauty were blogging about their diets and lifestyles. Then one of the lady’s husbands was rushed into hospital. She blogged about this, going off topic but writing from the heart about what was happening in her life and her trips to the hospital every day. It was wonderful to see the rest of the community rally round, supporting her, giving her advice and looking after her. People who have never met each other offline giving each other real help and support.

The internet, and social media in particular, is designed to allow people to connect not because they know each other, or they happen to be in the same place at the same time, but because they share genuine interests and concerns. People connect around these bonds rather than the happenstance of location or time. This results in an environment where people empathise with people more, and more easily, and want to help them out. Random acts of kindness are becoming commonplace online and with the growth of social media will be more so.

Jonathan Zittrain recently spoke at TED Global on this very issue, about how the internet is made up of millions of random acts of kindness. The video of his talk is our Required Reading for the week.

Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness

FMCG brands are often some of the most innovative in their use of digital and social media but this great presentation from Helge Tennø shows the importance of staying ahead of the market. And of continuing to innovate what you are doing, to avoid becoming what he calls a Big Lazy Brand.

His presentation outlines five ways to market FMCG brands in social media:

1. Use your marketing activities to impact how consumers feel about your brand, not just what they know about it
2. Build direct connections with consumers, rather than letter retailers have this connection. Engage them and have a dialogue
3. Use your marketing  activities to be part of their life, from home to the office to the store where they finally make a purchase
4. Remember that in social media it is about them and not just about you. This isn’t the place for a one-way conversation or for just telling them things. Ask questions and get ideas
5. Don’t confuse social media with media, the two things are different and need different strategies and approaches

Tennø’s presentation reflects well on the need for brands to move from just thinking about campaigns in social media, to thinking about ways in which they can use it to engage consumers in a sustained manner. For FMCG firms, who often have little direct contact with their consumers, this is of critical importance. Viral videos and buzz can be great, but too often it can leave users remembering the video or the game, but not remembering the brand. Engagement, on an ongoing basis, sees greater return for the brand and is a more effective use of social media marketing.

The presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks for its great thinking and the number of case studies and examples that it uses. It also highlights what we think of as an over-riding consideration for social media marketing: Digital is not a silo, it needs to integrate with other online and offline activities.