FreshNetworks Blog

There’s a misconception that everybody ‘gets’ social media. That everybody is taking part. And that business, in particular, are all developing social media strategies. This just isn’t true. Whilst we have witnessed a monumental rise in social media use over the last 18 months or so, there are still some who are significantly more innovative than others. In fact we often surprise our clients are FreshNetworks by telling them that they are among the most innovative companies in Europe in their use of social media, and online communities in particular.

In July we’re starting a series looking at Why Social Media Matters and in particular how you can convince a CEO that social media is the single most important thing that their business should embrace. That’s why it was great to see a presentation from the US that looks at social media use by Fortune 100 CEOs. The findings are not a huge surprise – most CEOs are not actively using social media themselves and those who are typically work in the tech industry.

I’d love to drill down further in this area and look at use by Fortune 100 companies – even if their CEOs are not personally making active use of social media, are the companies themselves? And if they are is there a correlation between social media active CEOs and the extent to which the organisation embraces social media.

However, it’s interesting to see the level of social media adoption among the people who run some of America’s biggest businesses and that’s why the presentation is our Required Reading for this week. Clearly some work to do here.

Some more reading

• Offline Word of Mouth Still More Powerful Than Online Analogue (profy.com)
• Throwing Sheep In The Boardroom (accmanpro.com)
• Fortune-100 CEOs Remain Social-Media Hermits (marketingvox.com)
• Top CEO’s Appear to be Anti Social (Media, that is) (marketingpilgrim.com)

In the latest Technology Quarterly in this week’s edition of the Economist, there is an article about reviews online. This piece explores well why people read and trust reviews, and the value of both positive and negative reviews. John McAteer, Google’s retail industry director is quoted as saying:

No one trusts all positive reviews

For him you need some negative reviews as well as everybody knows that no product could per perfect. And this is certainly true. In fact, negative reviews can help people decide if a product might be for them, especially if they don’t associate themselves with the negative reviewer (“it wasn’t for them, but it might be for me”).

The article also looks at the value of having multiple reviews and cites a great experiment conducted by Bazaarvoice showing how products with more than ten reviews saw “drastically” higher conversion rate both for the products actually reviewed and for other products from the same brand.

So the value of reviews to brands and customers is clear. What is explored in less depth in the article is why people would write reviews in the first place. The example of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Amazon is cited, which has over 3,200 reviews. Why, the article asks, would people continue to write reviews? They quote Clay Shirky in response to this:

Mr Shirky suggests that in many cases, writing a review is more like writing fan mail (or hate mail) for a product, and the people who post them do not really expect it to be read.

I think this issue needs to be explored in more depth. There are a number of reasons people might write a review:

1. They are paid to do so (as per the recent case of Belkin hiring people to rate their products five star)
2. They are forced to do so in order to gain some other incentive (TopTable requires you to rate restaurants you have been to in order to gain points for their loyalty scheme)
3. They write reviews to increase their standing in a community (where, perhaps more reviews give them more credibility or access to more features in the online community)
4. They write reviews because they want to look good / impressive / intelligent amongst their peers
5. They write reviews because they had benefit from some and they want others to benefit in the same way from their advice
6. They write reviews because they have something to say

I am sure there are examples of all six out there – from people gaining financially or socially from the review, through people wanting to share their knowledge, to people just wanting to air their opinion (whether or not people read). But, I suspect people write reviews more for the reasons at the bottom of the list than at the top. And it is certain that the reasons nearer the bottom of the list lead to more genuine reviews.

Why do people write reviews? Well most likely because they are given the opportunity to voice their opinion. They want want to help others or may just have something to say. But once we give them the chance of doing so they will. That’s one of the real benefits of social media. It encourages us all to share our thoughts and opinions and then gives us other tools so we can sort these and only the most interesting or relevant rise to the top. Give people the chance to write a review and many will do just for the chance to air their views. Show the benefit they can get from reviews and even more will write their own. Allow voting on reviews or promotion of good reviews and you will get a higher quality of comments in return.

In social media people model behaviour. They want to express themselves and if you give them the tools and permission to do so, and you show them how to express themselves then they will do. You really don’t need to pay or incentivise them, in fact this can generate a lot of much lower quality reviews. What you do need to do is understand your customers, why they might want to review and how. Then offer them the ability to do what they want to do anyway.

Reviews are useful. They increase conversion, time spent on site and have a positive halo effect for other, associated, products. And people want to write the reviews in the first place. You just need to get the social architecture right so they feel they can.

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Some more reading

• Do You Trust User Reviews on the Web? (technologizer.com)
• Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges (technologizer.com)

We know that social media and social networks are big and that it is growing. And two reports out this month seem to confirm this for both the US and the UK.

First, in the US, the latest report from Pew Internet on Adults and Social Networks shows that membership of social networking sites in the US has increased over  the last four year. In fact it has increased more than four-fold, from 8% of US adults in 2005, to 35% of US adults in 2008. Impressive growth and a seemingly impressive statistic: more than one in every three adults in the US has a profile in a social network. That’s more than 27 million people in the US using social networks.

In the UK, research from Hitwise reports that social networks account for 10% of UK internet traffic during the Christmas period at the end of 2008. On one day (Christmas Day in fact) 1 in every 22 UK Internet visits was made to just one social network, Facebook, up 69% on the previous year.

Both of these reports are impressive and show the power and reach of social networks, and in particular how traffic and membership has grown rapidly in the last few years. However, I suspect both underestimate the scale of social media, social networking and online communities.

In 2008 we saw a rapid increase in both online communities, and websites adding a social layer – introducing widgets or social media tools. Whilst there has been considerable and significant growth in social networks, there has been a real surge in people engaging on other sites and communities online.

The Pew Internet research, for example, includes the main social networks (and indeed some others) but does not include Ning communities, those using Meetup, Delicious, LiveJournal or even Twitter. Let alone the large online communities such as TripAdvisor, or the more niche online communities such as Nike+.

It’s not that either of these pieces of research are intentionally missing things out, but more that they are looking at just a part of the picture. I think we are missing all the data we need to complete this. We don’t know how many people are taking part in online communities, but anecdotal evidence from the communities that we run at FreshNetworks would suggest that there are a lot of people who join online communities but are not members of social networks. This would mean that the total number of people engaged in social media, using tools and engaging online is much bigger than we might think. Potentially much much bigger.

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Some more reading

• What Are the Top Social Networking Sites Globally?
• A New Level of Internet ‘Stalking’? (rotorblog.com)
• Twitter Rises Above Digg’s Market Share, What’s Next? (taragana.com)
• Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform? (briansolis.com)
• Benefits Of Top Social Networking Sites (marketersdaily.com)
• On social networks, adults umm… socialize (vator.tv)
• Exploring Social Media: Defining Twitter Demographics and Interests (blogherald.com)
• Exploring Social Media: Twitter Adoption Stats and Demographics (blogherald.com)

Whether it’s a sneezing panda, Charlie biting that finger, or just Rick Astley, everybody loves a good online video. It doesn’t have to be amusing either, some of the most popular videos online are factual and we see great use of video in online communities to engage people in a way that articles and text often can’t. Whatever the balance is of serious to amusing (and I would guess it was weighted towards the latter) a report out today from Nielsen Online tells us what most employers have always suspected. That most of us are watching videos at work.

Their VideoCensus of US internet users showed that 65% of all people who watch online video do so during 9am and 5pm on weekdays – when they’re at work. By contrast on only 51% of them are viewing videos during the day at weekends. There are probably some reasons that help to explain this – broadband penetration, whilst high across the US, is higher for corporates than for individuals and so viewing videos may be easier for some at work than at home. However, I suspect the real reasons are that videos make up many of the popular virals that are sent to work email addresses, and that videos are distracting and engage people in a way that is different to other material they see during working hours.

Whatever the reasoning behind this survey, it is true that video engages. It’s a really powerful tool and one that is worth perfecting if you’re in the business of using social media or running online communities. At FreshNetworks we make a lot of use of video in the communities that we run and anybody who joins the team very quickly gets used to picking up a camera, interviewing some people and editing it down to a short clip for one of the communities. Recently I was sent a copy of a new book from O’Reilly Media (YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts) and whilst I was initially skeptical about this, it’s much more use than the title suggests – and we now use it as a textbook of how to make good video for online.

In our communities, we find that community members respond better in some circumstances to video than they do to articles, and that the completed view rate is often higher than I suspect the completed read rate is for longer articles. Finally, we find that providing video is a great way to stimulate activity on the communities themselves. Not only do people interact around the content, they are also much more likely to upload their own videos after we have uploaded some.

So whether we watch them too much at work or not, videos are really good engagement tools online and can help to boost activity on an online community.

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Some more reading

• Why The Rick Astley YouTube Rickroll Matters
• YouTube Gains Views, But Loses Market Share
• Online video, two reports
• YouTube keeps growing
• Online video usage continues to grow
• YouTube + Google = 100 Million Video Viewers in US

Earlier this year, we posted about research from Universal McCann looking at the impact of social media. Thanks to Simon at Curiously Persistent, I came across some new and equally interesting research from the team their. This time they look at the influence we have online, how we respond and react to other people, and how user-generated content informs our decision making.

This is a timely piece of research, as we posted last week, 25 million US adults base their purchasing decisions on social media. The Universal McCann research looks into this behaviour in more detail.

I won’t try to summarise the whole thing here, but it has become required reading at FreshNetworks. For us the research is particularly useful in highlighting how and why people are using social media and online communities to effect change across a range of domains, from politics to shopping. The data on which these conclusions are based are worth exploring in more detail but the message for brands is clear: we’re in a new world of transparency.

In this world, it is easier for people to have their voice heard and to hear the voices of others. Everybody matters and everybody can be part of an exchange with each other and with a brand. Brands need social media strategies to reach out to these people and to truly engage in these new transparent terms. Scary stuff at times, but there are some great examples of where this has worked (and if you want to see some jump to the end of the presentation below).

Some more reading

• Research and Markets: As the Number of Business Users of Social …
• The Consumer and Social Media
• Scientists Use Social Media
• If You’re Not Participating in Social Media
• More than Half of US Adults Text, Blog, Otherwise Use Social Media
• Social Media Rapidly Going Mainstream