FreshNetworks Blog

From the Top 10 viral advertising campaigns, to the Top 10 marketing moments of 2011, the “Top 10 season” is definitely in full swing, so we thought we’d jump on the bandwagon and look at the Top 10 social media blog posts from 2011 on our blog.

1. 15 essential articles for online community managers
2. 23 social media collaboration platforms
3. Google+: A social networking site or the future of search engine marketing?
4. Tips from the team behind the UK’s third most engaging Facebook page
5. How do different age groups interact across the social web?
6. Coca-Cola cut ad spend by 6.6% and invest more in social media
7. Why retailer Tesco bought a social media company
8. The social media landscape in 2011 – an infographic
9. Forrester report: how companies listen and engage with social media
10. 6 tips for using social media as a customer service channel

While our top 10 social media blog posts list is based on the most shared blog posts, other favourites from the team include:

• Why people don’t want to create content for your brand
• Social media management tools wiki/list
• Brands need to use social media strategically, not get advice from gurus
• What are your social media photo rights? Image T&Cs examined
• Calling all brands: stop counting Facebook “likes” and build deeper engagement instead

As well as the free guides we launched on our blog:

• How to measure Twitter (using the API)
• How to secure your brand name on China’s Twitter, Sina Weibo
• Report: The growth, current use and future direction of LinkedIn

We hope you enjoy re-reading these posts and that they help to remind you of what an interesting year 2011 has been for social media.

Earlier this month I attended a lecture by Nik Gowing, BBC World News anchor for the channel’s flagship news programme, The Hub, which reports on global news.

The theme of the lecture was about the compression of world events as a result of the power of social media and mobile communications, followed by an (as yet unresolved) discussion about who controls information power in the world of social and mobile communication.

Gowing showed how social networks, multiple mobile phone bearing witnesses, video and photographic images shared to the web have become serious challenges to those in positions of power – ie, governments and global corporations.

Gowing described how disconnected systems are in place to deal with sudden comms or social media crises both within corporations and governments, pointing out their inadequacy in dealing with the new information landscape. He referred to this situation as  ’the tyranny of real time’, making power in today’s world both vulnerable and brittle.

For example, during the Millbank Tower riots in November 2011, the BBC news teams used video footage and Twitter reports from protestors to assemble the news story as it appeared, before the news crews could get on location to film.

Another example cited by Gowing was that of Zoltan Bakonyi, CEO of Mal Rt, the Hungarian Aluminium firm whose damaged silos spilled red toxic sludge into the local towns and countryside in October 2010. Because social media spread the message about what had happened, with reports, video footage and online comments appearing so quickly, Bakonyi was arrested within days of the toxic spillage:

With decades of experience in journalism behind him, Gowing also noted a shift in people’s behaviour because of the rise of mobile phones and social media. During natural disasters, riots or acts of terror, people immediately reach for their mobile phones and begin filming events as they unfold before them. This was evidenced widely during the Japanese Tsunami this year: for days and weeks afterwards new footage appeared from people who had filmed the events unfolding at great personal risk:

Asked whether he believed this was in an effort to gain money for their coverage, Gowing pointed out that the BBC seldom pays for such footage. He believes (as do we) that people are not so motivated by money as by the desire to share their experiences.

Key social and mobile learnings from the session

One of the biggest take-aways from the presentation was the sense that businesses and governments are ill prepared to deal with the massively reduced time between an event and mass public awareness.

Even news teams, better equipped than any corporate organisation to receive, interpret, fact check and then publish accurate information often struggle to keep up.

The challenge for organisations responding to events, especially comms crises, is the mediation, authentication and prioritisation of a massive volume of information. The reality is that organisations in 2011, from the UK government to BP, have failed to have put systems in place to respond appropriately to sudden, massive public awareness of an incident.

To Gowing, the brittleness of power in a digitally alert world is from the sudden deficit in legitimacy of power created when information spreads rapidly during a comms or social media crisis. Information is power; if organisations don’t have enough when they’re under the spotlight they look weak.

Ultimately, the corporate and government perception of “media” must shift. Media can no longer be controlled or managed. The media that exists today lies in the hands of 4Bn mobile phone users – essentially a public information space.

Although Gowing has been spreading this message for two years, organisations over the last year have failed to be ready for real-time information. The wisest ones looking ahead to 2012 will be asking whether they could have survived the big news stories of 2011 unscathed.

Here are 4 key questions organisations should be asking:

• How are we monitoring the public information space to we know what’s being said as quickly as the public?
• How many hours from news breaking to the first press questions do we have to brief senior people?
• What are competitors spending and what infrastructure are they building to deal with comms crises?
• How are brands and businesses safeguarding their online reputation on an ongoing basis?

Last year both Heineken and Carlsberg declared their intention to increase their marketing spend and so we thought it would be interesting to use analytics tool socialbakers to look at how both brands have fared in terms of their Facebook engagement strategy for the last quarter of this year (for the period 1st September – 13th December 2011).

1. Fans

At face value Heineken is leading the way in terms of fans with 4,740,759 fans, while Carlsberg only has 231,641 fans, giving Heineken 4,509,117 more fans than Carlsberg.

In fact, in just over three months Heineken’s fans grew by a massive 2,098,504 with a steady, average fan growth of 20,178 fans per day.

2. Engagement

As anyone who has read our blog before knows, we’re all about real engagement on Facebook rather than the number of fans and so it’s interesting to look at both Carlsberg and Heineken in terms of engagement levels.

Using Facebook’s “Talking About” metric, during the last 3 months significantly more people were “Talking about” Heineken over Carlsberg. In fact, the number of people talking about Carlsberg daily has been consistently low at an average of only around 2,500 people per day.

As the chart below shows, the peak on 25th November and then subsequent decline in the number of people talking about Heineken was probably due to people interacting with Heineken’s Thanksgiving post, as well as the fact that Incubus, an American rock band, had to cancel their performance at the the Heineken music hall in Amsterdam on this day.

As for Carlsberg’s low people talking about rate, this could attributed to a lack of posts from the page admin. The Carlsberg page admin has only posted content 42 times in just over three months. But while Heineken has posted double this amount, the amount of content used by both brands is lower than that of Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s Facebook engagement strategyand Heineken only really posted multiple times per day on 13th November in response to customer enquires about tickets for a performance at Heineken Green Spheres in Dublin (though this is a good example of using social media for customer service).

However, what is interesting to note is that when you look at both Heineken and Carlsberg’s Facebook pages in relation to their average engagement rate over time in the last three months it seems as if Carlsberg, at the start of the quater, had a higher average engagement rate than Heineken.

As you can see, there is a massive dip in the engagement rate on Carlsberg’s page around 7th October which they never quite recover from. This coincides with the day that Carlsberg announced it was rolling out the next stage of its marketing campaign for the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament on Facebook and so it could be that people started engaging with Carlsberg Football Facebook page to the detriment of engagement levels on the main Carlsberg page itself.

However, with Heineken’s average engagement rate decreasing and Carlsberg’s levels potentially looking as though it could increase again over time, it will be interesting to track both brands in terms of their Facebook engagement strategy over the coming months.

Last week we held a senior executive round table event at Claridges and one of the topics of discussion was about the proposed European Union (EU) directive on data privacy and the potential impact of this on social media.

As current EU data laws were created in 1995, before the rise of Facebook and other social networking sites, the EU has proposed a new directive on data privacy which is due to come into place in January 2012.

In essence, European politicians are seeking to simplify the EU Data Protection Directive in order to give businesses within the EU only  “one law” with  “one data protection authority”. Proposed changes to the data law aim to unify the existing legislation of each EU Member State, making it easier for businesses to transfer data.

According to Reuters, EU officials expect the draft legislation to be ready early next year (as early as January 2012) but it could take up to 18 months for the bill to become law, meaning that businesses will still have to  comply with disparate laws and often conflicting decisions made by data protection authorities (DPAs) in each of the 27 Member States.

The main changes to the proposed EU directive on data privacy that could affect the commercial use of social media largely revolve around data ownership. The directive places the control of data in the hands of individuals in order to foster a greater sense of trust with customers through transparent data processing. With this in mind, businesses must obtain explicit, specific consent from individuals and detail how this information will be used by them and any third parties.

Other changes to the proposed EU directive that could affect social media are:

• Increased data portability – it will be simpler to transfer data to alternative service providers.
• The ‘right to be forgotten’- the directive proposes to instate the ‘right to be forgotten’ so that an individual can request the deletion of data.
• Compelled disclosure –  data controllers will be obliged to notify those individuals concerned and the relevant DPA of any data breach as and when it is discovered.
• A ‘one-stop-shop’ – one law and a single DPA for each business to be determined by the Member State (ie, country) in which the business has its main operations.
• Abolish processing – the directive will dispense with the general requirement to notify DPAs of data processing.

While Mark Zuckerberg has managed to appease the Federal Trade Commission in the USA by agreeing to get permission from users before exposing more of their data, as well as allowing external audits of his privacy systems, he still has a long way to go in the EU, particularly with regards to Germany and their strong opinion about data privacy, so it will be interesting to see the how Facebook itself is treating data by the time this directive comes in to play.

By now we all know that social media can help put our customers at the heart of our business.

With this in mind, Lauren Carlson from Software Advice recently pinned down Brian Solis to discuss his definition of engagement.

Solis responded with what he calls the six rules of engagement: value, efficiency, trust, consistency, relevance and control. Let’s take a look at this to see how they can be applied as part of your engagement strategy:

1. Value

Consumers want to feel valued by the companies they do business with. Feeling valued translates to knowing that the company or brand will go above and beyond to meet your needs.

How to achieve this: Use social media to help you stay in touch with your customers in a personal way. In the “old days” this would be making a phone call, and there’s nothing worng with doing that today too, but you should also try to respond directly to tweets and other comments on social channels. You could also set up a loyalty program to reward return business, or offer discounts through social media channels to your most loyal customers to help them feel valued.

2. Efficiency

With the rise of new technology, particularly mobile, processes that used to be long and laborious are now happening much more quickly. Because of this, customers expect the same level of expediency when dealing with businesses.

How to achieve this: Consider how efficient your site is for mobile access and mobile purchasing. Also, instead of using call centers to deal with customer queries and concerns, think about using Twitter, Facebook or a live chat module for real-time support.

3.Trust

Consumers need to be confident in the credibility of your business and the product, actions and services that you deliver. With the rise of social media customers are trusting brand messages less and are turning to the advice of friends, peers and “people like them” to make their decesions.

How to achieve this: It’s been said time and again but be honest and transparent in all communications, across whatever channel. If a company builds trust through honesty and transparency, their customers will feel more confident to recommend the company or brand to others through social media. Don’t bombard your audience with your own brand messages and agenda; listen to what people are saying about you and join in the conversation in a natural, organic way to gain their trust.

4. Consistency

It is common for companies to offer multiple channels for communication with their customers. Offering multiple channels is a good thing, however there is no value unless the service you provide is consistent across each one.

How to achieve this: Don’t offer something you can’t deliver on. It is more valuable to have three consistent channels as opposed to six fickle ones that do not really engage with your customers. There is no point having a Facebook page or a Twitter profile just to have what you believe is a presence on there, if your customers are posting and commenting and getting no response or interaction.

5. Relevance

Many companies use social media as another means of advertising. They essentially spam social media profiles, blogs and marketing emails with product-centric information. However, that’s not what the consumer wants – engagement needs to be relevant.

How to achieve this: When potential and existing customers visit your blog, Twitter, Facebook page etc, they want to find information that is interesting and focused on their needs. Use social media monitoring to listen to what your customers are saying and identify your influencers or people who form part of your target audience. Engage with these people on their terms and only interact with them if you have a relevant message, or something of value, to offer them.

6. Control

We have heard over and over again that the customer is in control. But the idea of control is two-fold. It is clear that customers want a sense of control in that they want to choose the channel they communicate on, and they want the ability to opt in and out of specific engagements. In other words, they want an experience that gives them the sense of control.

How to achieve this: This is an interesting analysis of the word control. It puts the onus back on the businesses to still control the customer experience as a whole; it’s just that now, with the rise of social media, the customer can choose where and when they want to interact with a brand, if at all.  What Solis seems to be suggesting is that businesses should gain consumer insight and design an experience that provides the user the choice to interact with you or not (so ‘control’ in that sense of the word). Look at your key customer touchpoints to see where social media can add real value to your business.