FreshNetworks Blog

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

It’s been an interesting afternoon for Vodafone. Their VodafoneUK Twitter account has attracted a lot of attention after one Tweet in particular stood out from their usual customer service conversations online. In between the Tweets resolving network coverage and other queries one stood out. You can read about what was actually said elsewhere. But, in addition to some rather questionable grammar, the message was offensive and not appropriate for a brand’s Twitter stream at all. It was clearly the work of either a hack, a case of very bad judgement, a disgruntled employee or an inappropriate sharing of passwords.

The official response from Vodafone (as you can see from almost every message they have sent since on Twitter) is that it was a breach of rules by an internal member of staff and that they are dealing with it internally. This is the kind of PR that any company doesn’t want, and as it was done through Twitter it will no doubt be held up by some as one of the downsides of social media and of engaging with customers online in this way.

Putting aside any short-term issues and negative publicity, there are a couple of things we can learn from what happened to Vodafone today. First in how you should manage your use of social media as a brand, and second in how you should respond when things go very wrong.

Managing your brand in social media

We’ve posted before about how to write your firm’s social media policy and, perhaps more importantly, what to do once your firm’s social media policy is written. The basic principal is that it is the quality of your staff and the relationships they make with customers that will make all the difference. Not the technology you use or any technological solutions you put in place. The general principal is that if you trust your staff to represent your brand in traditional media, then you should be able to trust them in social media.

Of course, Vodafone may not today be able to empathise with this and there are some differences. Notably that anybody with access to a Twitter account will be able to say something that is immediately and directly communicated to customers. This is a huge responsibility and one that people should not take lightly. But it is a responsibility that brands should give to their staff and one that is most important when building your brand online and in social media. Whilst there are many agencies out there who can help to manage your brand online for you, with the appropriate training and support (which may need to come from a specialist social media agency) the best person to represent your brand online are your own employees.

The key things here are:

1. Have a culture where social media is acceptable. Encourage your staff to use social media so that they become comfortable with it and that is becomes part of your culture. This is a big shift for many organisations and one they are often nervous of.
2. Have ongoing social media training across the business. Things change and they change quickly in social media. A firm that wants to position itself best online needs a regular and ongoing set of training and ideas and knowledge share. Try things out and share what works and what doesn’t for your brand.
3. Trust people but have a very clear policy in place. You should trust people to interact with your customers online but be aware of what they are doing. It is not one-to-one communications, nor is it always one-to-many. You are talking to one person but in a very public environment. Recognise this and have policies and processes in place for this new way of communicating. But make these policies simple and clear to understand.

And whatever happens you need to be aware of the risks and have processes for dealing with them. Social media is growing and changing rapidly and as such can be a very forgiving place if you approach things in the right way. Everybody is experimenting and will often forgive you if things go wrong and you handle them in the right way. For me this is what Vodafone got right.

What we can learn from Vodafone’s response

When things go wrong the way to respond to it can be simple. Vodafone did two things that all brands can learn from. Whilst there will be discussions, debate and probably some negativity about what was said this afternoon for sometime, fundamentally, Vodafone should not suffer too much damage, because:

1. They responded quickly and said what was happening. In social media, people can spread messages quickly. Vodafone also responded quickly and said exactly what happened and was happening. It wasn’t a hack but an internal employee and that person was being dealt with.
2. They responded in the same place that people are talking about them. Vodafone responded to its Twitter followers on Twitter, using the VodafoneUK account. The key to crisis management in social media is to respond where people complain. Otherwise you risk alienating them and losing your role in the story.

So lots that we can learn and lots that they got right. But no doubt a challenging day for Vodafone today.

Some more reading

• Vodafone suspends employee after obscene tweet (guardian.co.uk)
• Top five Twitter gaffes (guardian.co.uk)
• Vodafone suspends employee over obscene Twitter update (telegraph.co.uk)

We’ve had a new look to the blog at FreshNetworks this month, but our aim is still the same. 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 January.

1. Why the retweet is a powerful engagement tool

The retweet on Twitter, and Facebook’s new ‘via’ feature are very powerful tools in these social networks. In any online community or social network, some people are more active than others. In fact, in a natural online community we would expect that out of every 100 users, only one will originate new content. The retweet provides a way for these other users to express their opinion. Say that they agree with something that others have said or just promote content.

Social media is about more than just generating new content, people play many different roles and the retweet is a way to let people do this.

2. Social media as a crisis management tool

When crisis happens, you will typically see a lot of people discussing, debating, and complaining about your brand online. Many of these discussions will be factually inaccurate, and many will be from customers who have had bad experiences. These are the types of discussions that should be responded to, and should be responded to in the right manner.

In this post we looked at a how brands can use social media when a crisis hits, but perhaps more importantly why they should be engaging people in social media before the crisis.

3. The Economist on Social Networking

At the end of January, the Economist published a special report on on social networking.Their special report on A World of Connections, provided 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 our summary of key highlights in this post.

4. Social Media Case study: Vitamin Water’s newest flavour created by Facebook fans

Vitamin Water’s latest flavour, launching in March this year, was developed and named by the brand’s Facebook fans. The black cherry and lime flavoured drink will be called ‘Connect’ and one Facebook fan, Sarah from Illinois, won $5,000 for her role in developing this new product. In this post we look at what Vitamin Water did and how they used social media to help to test and develop a new flavour.

5. Essential reading for online community managers

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). In this short post, we look specifically at things that help managing and growing communities online. There are many great books, articles and blogs out there and we’d love you to share your favourites in the comments below the post. But this is a good starting point and we would consider them essential reading for online community managers.

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?

In December 2008, global consumers spent an average of just over three hours on social networks. In December 2009, they were spending over five and a half hours on average. An increase of 82%.

According to The Nielsen Company, social network sites have grown in importance globally in 2009. Alongside blogs, they are now the most popular category online when ranked by time spent on site. The survey (which looked at the US, U.K., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) shows not only that overall time on site has increased, but also that the global audience for social networking has increased.

Facebook leads the pack in terms of number of users. Of the 307 million social network users in the countries in the survey, 207 million (67%) were users of Facebook. But Twitter leads the pack in terms of growth. This is not surprising given the relatively small base that Twitter was growing from in 2009, but is still striking. In the US alone, the number of users of Twitter grew from 2.7 million to 18.1 million (579%) and time on site grew 368%.

When these figures are broken down by the countries included in the study, the US, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the largest number of social network user (142 million). They are followed by Japan (with 47 million users) and Brazil (with 31 million). The UK comes in fourth place with 29 million users of social networks. However, when you consider time on site, Australia leads the pack. There, the typical social network user spent an average of nearly seven hours on social networking sites in December 2009. The US and the UK come close behind with just over six hours.

Overall this data shows that social networking sites are becoming an ever increasingly important part of users’ web experiences. More users are using and joining such sites, and they are spending longer on them. Users now spend more time on social networking sites than on other categories of sites online. Social networking is now an established part of global consumers’ lifestyles.

Last week Facebook announced that it is rolling out what is, effectively, its own version of the retweet. The new ‘via’ feature allows users to repost another user’s shared items. As with the retweet, it is a way of further sharing content you find and find interesting, and of expressing your interest in the content in the first place.

The retweet, and now Facebook’s via feature, are very powerful tools in these social networks. In any online community or social network, some people are more active than others. In fact, in a natural online community we would expect that out of every 100 users, only one will originate new content. Another nine will add to or expand on this content. And 90 users will just read and learn from this content. They are unlikely to publicly create or add to a conversation themselves, but they are critical to the success of the the online community – without them, the others wouldn’t start or add to conversations.

When we’re managing online communities at FreshNetworks, we work hard to provide these 90 out of every 100 people something to do and a way to express their opinion, without having to start or add to an actual discussion. It’s about finding other ways for them to express their opinion, perhaps by rating or voting for content, organising their favourites or voting in polls. You can engage more people by offering ways for them to express their opinion without actually having to express it publicly in their own words. More often than not just finding a way for them to align themselves with others’ words is enough. Indeed it is often the best approach.

This is where the retweet, and now the via feature in Facebook, really come to the fore. They are a very simple way for all people to say “I agree with this” or “I want you to see this too” without actually having to articulate their own opinion from scratch, or start their own discussion. They provide a real utility to the bulk of users of the social media tools, allowing them to express an opinion and add to discussions and debates, even if they would not typically be the kind of person to initiate or add to a discussion themselves. They are a great tool for engaging the 90 out of every 100 users who do not want to be a primary content creator.

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.

Social media and social networks allow people to connect either because of a shared experience, a shared interest, concern, question or problem. Social networks, on one hand, are about connections – they allow people to connect and organise themselves and to keep in touch with people. Online communities, on the other hand, help connect people who share a similar experience, problem or situation.

In Haiti, both these types of social media have been helping victims. From giving them a voice and letting victims tell and share their stories, to providing tools to help find the missing, social media is a valuable tool in dealing with the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. There is much we can learn from this, many great inventions develop from crisis situations and looking at how people in Haiti are using social media.

Three examples of how Haitians are using social media stand out as great examples that we can learn from.

1. Providing a voice for victims

Too often, people object that social media and, specifically, tools like Twitter are full of people updating with seemingly meaningless statuses. This is not true. Twitter, specifically, allows people to share what they are doing or thinking at a particular time. These updates are not intended to be read by all or appreciated by all. But they are and they will be by some.

Twitter has proven to be a particularly important tool getting messages out in a crisis. Allowing those on the ground to inform those elsewhere about what is really happening. We saw this in Iran in the summer of 2009 and have posted before about the benefits (and challenges) of user-generated news.

For the victims of Haiti, social media has enabled them to share their story with the outside world. It makes them feel less isolated by providing them with a way to share what they are experiencing. And it provides us all with a real connection to people on the ground in an earthquake zone. Social media is a great way for people to share information and it really allows people to start to see and experience an event through the experiences of people who are there.

The kind of stories being shared include:

“Just experienced a MAJOR earthquake here in Port au Prince – walls were falling down. – we are ALL fine – pray for those in the slums” troylivesay

“The St Gerard Church has a school behind it that collapsed.I heard someone speaking from the rubble, feet were trapped he couldn’t get out” RAMhaiti

People in the streets are chanting as the night settles.” fredodupoux

2. Informing rescue attempts

Within hours of the earthquake hitting Haiti, victims and their families and friends started to organise themselves using social media tools. A huge task for aid agencies in crises like this is to compile and keep up-to-date a list of people who are missing. Tracking who is missing, who has been found and what their status is.

Social media has been helping with this task in two ways:

1. Building user-generated lists of the missing. Groups on Facebook has grown to list the missing – with hundreds of thousands of names gathered by people who are missing friends or family. Users update the information they know and together they crowd-source an up-to-date list of the missing
2. Co-ordinating rescue attempts. Twitter has provided a way for people who are missing to publicise where they are – sharing locations where they are trapped or from where they need rescuing. Using a common hashtag, the missing were able to attract rescuers to come and help them.

Social media is an especially useful tool when a large number of people each know a small piece of information, which when put together build the bigger picture. By getting users to tell us about the information they know and to keep this up-to-date, we can build a larger picture of what is really happening. This can be done with much less effort than trying to build a central picture from scratch.

3. Providing eyewitness content

The first images to emerge from Haiti on Tuesday this week, whilst most news agencies were still waiting for their correspondents to arrive in the country, came from mobile phones and were shared online. In a crisis situation like this, imagery and stories are critical to securing the donations needed to support rescue and relief attempts. And for both of these, time is of the essence. The sooner people donate money, the quicker support can be on the ground. Social media allowed imagery and videos to be shared and distributed more quickly and before some traditional news outlets were on location. It is these images that we have seen on social networks and across the news output and it is these that have prompted many people to donate and support the attempts to bring relief to the country.

Real eyewitness content does not replace balanced and informed reporting by traditional news organisations. But it does have a real role in communicating what is happening and letting people see what those on the ground are seeing. Social media allows these images and eyewitness stories to be spread more quickly than ever before. In a situation where time is critical, this is very important.

Vitamin Water’s latest flavour, launching in March this year, was developed and named by the brand’s Facebook fans. The black cherry and lime flavoured drink will be called ‘Connect’ and one Facebook fan, Sarah from Illinois, won $5,000 for her role in developing this new product.

The competition was interesting and unique in that it used Facebook fans to develop all aspects of the product:

• Choosing the flavour – over the summer Facebook fans were able to monitor and add to buzz about different flavours. The more chatter about a flavour online, the higher it was rated on the Facebook page. And by mid-September the most ten talked-about flavours were put to Facebook fans for them to vote for their favourite. This is a good example of using a community to help sort and rank ideas in a co-creation process. Fans couldn’t create their own flavours from scratch, but could influence the top 10 flavours and then vote for the best.
• Designing the packaging – when the flavour had been selected (in October last year), the Facebook fans were able to use the app to design the packaging – the look and feel, the blurb and colours used on the label. Fans could collaborate with up to two more Facebook friends to develop the packaging and the final winners were chosen by a panel of experts.
• Naming the product - alongside the packaging and look-and-feel, Facebook Fans were asked to name the product. The team who created the winning name would be given a prize of $5,000.

This is a great example of co-creation and working with your customers and fans to help to develop your product. Using experts from the brand at critical input stages – choosing the original flavours that could be shortlisted and then selected, and reviewing and agreeing on the winning product design and name. The community was used to help shortlist and select the flavour to be produced, and to create a range of options for the design and name of the product itself. Many brands would be anxious of allowing consumers to create a product like this, but at every stage the brand and consumers were playing different roles and doing different things. It is true that some of the best and most intelligent people don’t work for your company (whoever you are) and so working with them in a controlled but creative way like this can have great results.

And for the more than one million Fans of of the Vitamin Water Facebook Page, they feel like they have had real involvement in the development of the new product. That’s one million people who feel ownership of this product. One million potential purchasers when it launches.

Read more of our Social Media Case Studies

We’ve written before about the ways in which politicians are using social media, from US President Barack Obama, to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. These politicians, like many others, are using social media as a way of engaging directly with the public. They often use they use these tools as a way of focusing on specific topics or issues that are of interest to them. And social media can be a great way to open up and bring people inside the organisation and see what is going on and feel like they have a direct connection with those people making decisions. Just as this is beneficial for brands, so it is also beneficial for organisations and governments

The latest world leader to start using social media is Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (鳩山由紀夫). On the 1st January 2010, he started Tweeting (@hatoyamayukio) and blogging (Hato Cafe).

He currently has almost 150,000 followers on Twitter, not bad for his 12 updates. He says in his bio that this account is not just to talk about politics and the updates so far range from politics to insights into Hatoyama’s life and routine. On cold mornings he likes a warming cup of tea and a walk, apparently. Even sharing a video of the pigeons in the garden of the residence from one such walk. On the blog – Hato Cafe (or Dove Cafe) he has reported on his trip to India and his discussions with Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, from the International Space Station.

On the blog, Hatoyama explains what he is using social media for:

I started this blog as a first step to burying the gap between people and politics as well as changing this country together.

It will be interesting to watch how this use of social media develops and changes. The update so far have been a mix of personal reflections, insights into the Japanese Prime Minister’s life and reflections on official trips and events. He talks about engaging the public in public policy debates via both the blog and Twitter and this would be a fascinating development in the Japanese political landscape where traditionally engaging people online has not been part of policy during elections or governments.

But there is a lot to be said for just using social media to engage people and let them see behind the scenes and into the live and perspective of the Hatoyama himself. Social media tools can be a great way to let people understand more about the individuals – what they do, think and experience. This is, on its own, very important – breaking down barriers between the public and politicians in a way that has previously not been possible to do on such a large scale. Whilst a small number of people might once have heard a Japanese Prime Minister’s story of the birds in his garden as he takes his morning walk, we can now all know about this and even experience it with him through his video. Do not underestimate the importance of this. The more we understand about people the more we engage with them.