FreshNetworks Blog

At FreshNetworks we aim 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 June.

1. Gordon Brown’s YouTube trauma

Our most popular post for two months in a row, Charlie Osmond examines Gordon Brown’s use of YouTube to make policy announcements and why it isn’t always the best medium. There can sometimes seem to be a temptation to use social media to convey a message, but whether it’s marketing, communications, PR or engaging your customers, there’s a place for social media and a time that another route is more appropriate.

2. Build your own community or go where people are? Do both

Another popular post over the last couple of months, examining the debate about whether brands should engage customers where they are online (and so in social networks) or build their own site to bring them to (a branded online community). Here we look at the Hub and Spoke Model of Social Media Engagement. Showing how the most effective thing for any brand to do is to do both.

3. Dell makes $3 million on Twitter. What can we learn?

Dell has reportedly made $2 million in sales directly from their @DellOutlet Twitter stream, and a further $1 million from sales that started on Twitter but were completed elsewhere. That’s $50 in revenue for every Twitter follower they have. In this post we look at three reasons why Dell has been so successful with Twitter and what others can learn.

4. How organisations can use Twitter – some examples

A presentation of three different ways that organisations are using Twitter and some ideas of how other organisations can do the same. Putting a public face on the brand, like Ford. Segmenting and targeting different groups, like Dell. Or using Twitter as a gateway to a broader social media engagement strategy.

5. People are fed up of joining brand pages on Facebook

Research from the Internet Advertising Bureau suggests that people are becoming increasingly tired of requests to join brand pages and install branded applications on their Facebook page or in other social networks. We look at what this means for brands and marketers trying to engage customers in social networks.

Image by horizontal.integration via Flickr

A post from Lon Safko on the Fast Company blog today talks about The 10 Commandments of Social Media. The advice is good and serves as a great starting point for individuals, brands or any organisation looking to use social media. Safko’s ‘Commandments’ are:

1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy).
2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere).
3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them).
4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find).
5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often).
6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately).
7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs).
8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone).
9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week).
10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)!

These ideas are great, and they encourage people to specific activities. However, I would add one simple and perhaps over-riding consideration:

• Experiment and innovate – give social media a go

I once heard an interview with Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO at Kodak, who advocates experimentation in marketing, saying that if you not going to kill somebody or break the law you might as well give social media a go. I think there is some truth in this, social media is a relatively forgiving environment as long as you are honest and open about who you are and what you’re doing. The cost of entry is also relatively low – it’s free to set up a Twitter account or a blog, and as long as you commit what can be a relatively small amount of staff time you can experiment and find out what works for you.

So whilst I think it’s great to get people to upload videos or photos, comment or write a blog, I think there is a simpler call to action – have a go, try things out, learn what social media is like by doing it and find out what works for you.

Some more reading

• I’m Your Customer and I Can’t Hear You (slideshare.net)
• Jeffery Hayzlett, Kodak’s CMO about Social Web and Marketing (pravdam.com)
• Brands say social media still an ‘experiment’ (thisisherd.com)

Image by ToniVC via Flickr

I’ve read a few posts and articles this week discussing a report from showing that Facebook users spend more time on site than Twitter’s. These articles make the assumption that increased time-on-site is a good thing; that it is a sign of greater engagement and involvement with the site.

It is certainly true for social networks that there are significant benefits to be gained from increasing time-on-site. Perhaps not for the immediate benefits of greater engagement, but more because it is a sign of the increasingly important role that any particular social network is playing in a user’s life. We’ve written in the past how Facebook’s valuation is possibly related to a shift in our use of the internet to put social networks at the heart of a user’s experience. And in this context, time on site is important.

But in an online community, where we are interested in shared ideas and experience rather than share of time online, is time-on-site a useful measure of engagement?

As a health measure, we use time-on-site a lot at FreshNetworks, it is useful to measure and monitor over time and together with other health measures (such as number of unique users, depth of visit and frequency of visit). But a greater time-on-site does not, in itself, mean a better online community. We are more interested in the share of ideas than the share of time online. We want people to join, benefit from and, if they wish, add to the debates and conversations in the community. We want their contributions, even if they only spend a small amount of time on the site itself. Online communities are about shared ideas and interests – we want people who add to them.

So time-on-site is a useful health measure, but it does not necessarily determine the success of your online community. That’s why we think that the success of your online community should be tied to specific business objectives, and not to relatively arbitrary measures such as time-on-site and unique visitors. We have very successful online communities with only a hundred members, and very successful ones where people visit less often or for less time. It’s about establishing your business objectives and then working to maximise your share of ideas and share of insight. Not fighting to get more time spent on your site if that time is not productive or helping you reach your aims.

Some more reading

• Metrics and intuition (thisisherd.com)
• Forget Social Media Measurement. Get Back to the Basics. (kylelacy.com)
• ROI-Return On Influence (directmarketingobservations.com)

Image by MartinPhotoSport via Flickr

This week I was asked to talk to the Marketing Directors Network in London about how organisations are using Twitter. We’ve written before about how celebrities are using Twitter and how organisations are using Twitter as an engagement tool. In both cases, perhaps the best advice is just to try using Twitter and to see what happens. As a rapidly growing site, Twitter is changing on a daily basis. New people are joining and using it for new reasons. As such it’s a great environment for brands to experiment and to see what works for them.

And if you are going to experiment, three ways that organisations are using Twitter are as follow.

1. To put a public face on your brand

This is what Ford, Southwest Airlines have done so well. Taking a large brand, that to many has seemed faceless, and putting people centre stage. Using Twitter as a way of putting a face to the brand and providing a route for people to engage. There are many benefits of putting a public face to your brand, overally it provides a personal connection and helps build the emotional relationship with your consumers that can be so useful, especially in the current economic climate.

2. Allowing you to segment and then target different groups

Dell is a great example of how to use social media, and how to experiment with it. It has a large range and variety of Twitter accounts that are used by different people to engage different audiences about different things. Twitter is a great search tool – you can monitor and analyse the different conversations people are having about your brand. Start to understand the segments and the give them different messages using different accounts. The marginal cost of another Twitter account is practically zero and so it’s a great way to engage different people in different ways.

3. Using Twitter as a gateway

The best use of Twitter can be as part of a hub-and-spoke model of social engagement. Use it to engage people in Twitter just as you might engage people in Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social networks and online communities. Then provide your own site or online community that you can take people to. It is when they are on your own community that you can really work with them, share and discuss ideas with them, get a better understanding of who they are and what they think. And bringing them to your own space makes them feel special. You move from interrupting them where they are doing something else, to providing a direct line to engaging with you.

Some more reading

• Ryanair doesn’t believe in online PR, but it’s working well for other airlines. (bigclever.blogspot.com)
• Perfect storm: JetBlue versus Southwest on Twitter – real incident (simpliflying.com)
• HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service (mashable.com)
• People are fed up of joining brand pages on Facebook (freshnetworks.com)
• Why We All Benefit From Big Brands Being in Social Media (mashable.com)

Image by Jeff_Werner via Flickr

Today I was speaking at the MRS Online Methods conference on London – a great day with people sharing ideas on online research and how to engage customers online.

I was speaking specifically about how online research communities are actually just online communities that people use for research but that they should also use for other things (PR, marketing, customer service, innovation…the list goes on). And about how the client can, and indeed should, get involved in the process. It’s when you don’t do this when online communities fail to live up to their promise. We need to think community first and research second, rather than just tagging a forum onto your online survey. That’s when you get the real benefits and when you start having some fun.

The presentation I gave is below. As always these things are better presented but the point should still come through clearly. Thinking just about an online research community misses out on the big opportunity. An online community is a direct line to your customers. Research is a great place to start with this but you need to think bigger.

To make the most of this the client has to get involved:

1. Add value to the community by being a visible part of it, either to respond to specific points, join discussions naturally or even to take a major role in community management
2. Incentivise the responses but don’t do this with money. A good community is a vibrant social environment; adding money into this turns things into a market. It changes the dynamic to the detriment of the community itself. Think of what else you can give people. Think about what knowledge and ideas you can trade for their ideas
3. Make sure you represent the community in the business and that your brand is making full benefit of the powerful resource it now has

Some more reading

• Customer service is the new marketing (freshnetworks.com)
• Pricing, WOM, PR Efforts Get Recession Boost (marketingvox.com)
• One Hell of an OCM List of Responsibilities (chrisabraham.com)
• Marketer // Customer (conversationagent.com)