FreshNetworks Blog

The real power of all the user-generated content and ideas that result from an increasing use of social media depends on our being able to find it. It’s no use to have millions upon millions of comments added each day if we can’t find them, or if we can’t sort for the ones most relevant to us at a particular moment.

This is, of course, not a new problem. Information from the earliest Medieval libraries to today’s online communities and social networks has needed sorting, categorising and cataloguing so that we  can find it successfully. Twitter users have a simple way of helping to sort data – the hashtag.

The concept is simple. A short code is added to the end of a Tweet to associate it with others – this then lets people search for everything on this  subject. So, for example, if you were tweeting at this weekend’s Glastonbury music festival in the UK then you could add the code #glastonbury to your tweet. If you wanted to search for what’s happening then you just need to search for everything with this code.

Hashtags are great for events and are a really effective way of associating related tweets with each other. But they are quite limited. As a means of sorting and cataloguing data they are very simple, perhaps too simple.

This became quite clear over the last couple of weeks with the use of the hashtag #iranelection. The tag was originally used by people in Iran who were tweeting updates about what was happening. Others in Iran were able to find out about  events, protests and developments by tracking these updates. The hashtag wasn’t the most used on Twitter but it was serving it’s purpose. Then it suddenly became popular, very popular. And that’s when you start to see the weaknesses of this way of organising information.

The #iranelection hashtag started being used by people not in Iran searching for information or merely expressing concern for or interest in what was happening in the country. The tweets from people on the ground were much less easy to find with hundreds of tweets from well wishers mixed in there. Information was much more difficult to find as the hashtag became more popular.

Whilst simple, the hashtag has limitations associated with this. One of the real challenges for Twitter (and indeed for many other social media sites) is finding ways to sort, file and catalogue information in a way that makes it easy for others to find. This is not easy – in part it depends on the fundamental structure of the site itself, and in part on the ways in which users use the site.

The ideal might be a way to filter content by type, by user information and by a series of categories. But this requires that you gather more profiling information than many of these sites do (or indeed than many users would want to give) and providing a way to categorise both at a parent and child level, which is complicated from an information architecture perspective. Resolving this is the real challenge of social media – finding a way to search for and discover information we want. It is this that will really show the benefits that social media can bring.

Some more reading

• Social Media and #IranElection | bigMETHOD (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• How to Search Twitter (olago.wordpress.com)
• Twitter numbers up thanks to Iran (thisisherd.com)
• Iran Twitter: Why The Movement Adopted This Medium (huffingtonpost.com)
• Iran, Twitter and the value of new media (sluggerotoole.com)
• ‘It’s Hot in Iran’ Is Latest Tech PR Gimmick (gawker.com)

Image by spud murphy via Flickr

Hi I’m Nick – the FreshNetworks marketing intern. Sadly, my time as an intern at FreshNetworks is quickly drawing to a close so I thought it might be of interest to talk a bit about what I’ve learnt – particularly around social media. Even though I may not have known it before, social media has had a huge impact on my life. Here are four things I’ve learnt during my internship:

Web 2.0 is part of an internet revolution…
So what is Web 2.0? A meaningless marketing buzzword, tech jargon for computer geeks, or an internet revolution? I never really understood the full meaning of the phrase. However since being here I have definitely gleaned a clearer definition. Web 2.0 refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in ways previously unavailable. On the web, people can publish whatever they want, when they want and this has led to the growth of social networking sites, wikis, support forums and online communities. My answer now? Internet revolution.

Could I live without social media?
Being part of the Nintendo generation I’ve grown up with the worldwide web so I’m an avid user of web 2.0 and social media; sharing photos on facebook, discussing my travelling plans on tripadvisor.com, providing feedback on ebay, downloading an mp3 and finding out how to fix a computer problem through online forums. The ability of the internet to allow users to share and discuss information has definitely been beneficial to web surfers like me. No doubt I’ve taken social media for granted up until now, but now I realise that without it my life would surely have been much less productive, organised and social!

Social media can make companies $$$
Next week I jet off to do the typical backpackers route – Thailand, Cambodia & Vietnam. The unbiased, user-generated content provided by Tripadvisor.com has been an invaluable planning tool – yet another benefit of social media. But I was fascinated to learn that this website generates its owners (Expedia) a third of their revenue. And here I was thinking it was just for fun.

Word-of-mouth is four times as trusted as TV advertising…
Word-of-mouth is the most trusted decision-making tool for consumers. And today, more and more people use the web for word-of-mouth – reading other users reviews and comments on particular products and services. In fact, online communities are increasingly a first choice for this sort of research. As a result, marketers are adapting their campaigns to allow for this change in consumer behaviour; it makes a lot of sense, as online communities allow one person’s recommendation to reach thousands around the world.
Without me knowing it, social media has become and integral part of my life. Could I live without social media? Probably not, but at least now I know it!

Some more reading

• Should schools ban social media practice and education? – ZooLoo … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• What IS a Social Media Expert? (growmap.com)
• Using Social Media As A Sales Tool (kylelacy.com)

Image by djfoobarmatt via Flickr

We highlighted Mayo Clinic in a recent post of examples of online communities in healthcare. They are doing great things with blogs, podcasts, video and online communities. That’s why this week’s Required Reading at FreshNetworks is a great presentation from Lee Aase, Manager, Syndication and Social Media at Mayo Clinic. He looks at how the use of social media at Mayo Clinic has progressed and, in particular how it has helped to spread word-of-mouth.

The presentation highlights an important for those of us who work in social media – technology really should be invisible. Whilst the technology you use must meet your needs and aims it isn’t the most important factor in making your use of social media a success. Of much more importance is how you use it, the way in which you encourage people to engage with you and the quality of the content, comments and conversations that you have on your site.

Whether your technology costs zero dollars, or many hundreds of thousands of dollars, it is the way you use it and the way you manage the conversations and engagement that will make a difference.

Some more reading

• Social media experience at Mayo Clinic (fastforwardblog.com)
• Sharing Mayo Clinic Goes to Facebook and other Social Networks (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Mayo Clinic launches new culture blog (tissuepathology.typepad.com)
• How Mayo Clinic utilizes Web 2.0 (ivor-kovic.com)
• Health Care Meets Social Networking (designmind.frogdesign.com)
• FIR Interview: Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic (nevillehobson.com)

It is a couple of weeks since our last set of online community examples, with trips to the Marketing 2.0 Conference in Paris and Web Mission 09 in San Francisco taking up much of our time and space on the blog. But we’re returning today with a great set of examples from the healthcare industry.

Online communities in healthcare

On one level, healthcare would seem to be an ideal area where online communities can add real value to professionals, patients, families and carers, friends and others. We’ve written before about how user-generated medical content can add value to people’s lives, and why this online space is a great place for people to be sharing their experiences and stories and also finding and connecting with others in a similar situation to them. Online communities for healthcare can provide real insight and real support as the examples below show.

Mayo Clinic Blogs and Podcasts

There are a number of examples of healthcare providers making good use of social media and online communities, and Mayo Clinic are one of the most notable of these. They describe themselves as the largest not-for-profit practice in the world and treat about half a million people in the US each year. Their use of social media is a great case study of how you can use a number of simple tools to engage your stakeholders and how providing a range of ways to engage you can reach different people.  At FreshNetworks we believe that sometimes the best online communities can be quite simple, but effective, and this is the case with Mayo.

There are three main parts of the Mayo Clinic strategy and together they are starting to build an online community of people with a shared interest in the organisation, and in the topics they cover. On their own website they host a blog and a series of video and audio podcasts.  Together, these serve both as a way of them communicating internal developments and changes but also their opinion and expertise. Alongside this they run a YouTube channel where you can see expert videos and also videos that give you a real insight into the organisation, their clinics and the people who work for them.

The best online communities are often simple, providing a way to engage people around themes, topics and content that is relevant to them and you. For somebody like Mayo Clinic, this engagement is around their knowledge and expertise as healthcare providers. They also, through their blogs, videos and podcasts open their organisation to outsiders – showing you inside their buildings, putting forward their own experts and putting a human face and interaction on a large organisation. For healthcare organisation this kind of interaction makes all the difference – they’re about social interactions and real stories, online communities help them to show this.

AIDSPortal

AIDSPortal is a knowledge-sharing online community sponsored primarily by the UK’s Department for International Development and aimed at people who are working as part of the response to the global AIDS epidemic. The site provides professional and peer-to-peer networking and an online community where they can share experiences, knowledge and support each other with answers to questions and problems. Part of its purpose is, undoubtedly, to open up policy making and the UK governement sponsorship is a sign of this,  but as a service to those working in this area it is a powerful tool.

Whilst the Mayo Clinic case study was about engaging around their expertise and knowledge, AIDSPortal is about 4,500 professionals with knowledge, experience and expertise connecting with each other. They can share knowledge and articles, experiences, blog posts and answers to questions. But one of the strongest elements of this site is how it is organised.

Any online community is only as useful as the way that users can find and AIDSPortal is particularly strong in the way it organises this, allowing you to view data by region and country or by topic area. You let people dive into the content in a way that makes sense for them and organise their own content so that it fits with this. This is a large part of the battle of getting an online community launched and is an important aspect to work out during the pre-launch strategy stage.

Novartis’s CFVoice

CFVoice is an online community for people with Cystic Fibrosis, built and managed by Novartis, a pharmaceutical company. Launched in March 2008, the site has a clear focus on children, teens and young adults and on their families and carers. The site is indeed split into separate areas for each of these user-types, with a different mix of content, activities and games that each of them can do.

This online community is a great example of engaging different people in different ways – using interactive games as a way of younger audiences sharing their information, videos and personal stories for teens and the younger adults and discussion boards and forums for parents and carers. A different way for different members to use and gain benefit from the online community.

And for these members, the benefits are clear. They get to meet and share experiences and stories with people like them, people facing the same challenges and issues and people with similar concerns. And they can do this even if they don’t know anybody in that situation or aren’t able to reach them locally. For Novartis the benefits are also clear. Through the stories, questions, discussions and contributions they are able to get a real granularity of insight into the lives of people with Cystic Fibrosis, and the lives of their carers. This kind of insight has traditionally been difficult for them to obtain and is an area they would probably not have had the same level of understanding about. So benefits on both sides and a clear example of how to use an online community to engage different member-types.

See all our Online Community Examples

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Mayo Clinic launches new culture blog (tissuepathology.typepad.com)
• Social media experience at Mayo Clinic (fastforwardblog.com)
• Engaging Healthcare Consumers using Social Media Tools (thielst.typepad.com)
• Sharing Mayo Clinic Goes to Facebook and other Social Networks (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Three months ago we started a small experiment with one of our online communities at FreshNetworks. The site had been in seeding phase for about 10 weeks and was starting to get some activity and some real traction, there were loyal members and real conversations starting to grow. At this stage we wanted to grow the number of members and also to grow the quality of the contributions to the site. There are a number of ways you can do this, but one of the real benefits of online communities is the ability to drive natural, organic, search. We wanted to test this and to start to build an ROI model for brands.

We decided to put paid and organic search head-to-head. To devote a modest sum to Google AdWords and also to monitor the organic search on the site. We didn’t spend any more time than usual optimising the content on the site, with the community manager working to organise content and correct spelling but not to make sure that user-generated content was keyword-rich. We wanted to do a real test – putting real organic search against paid search.The experiment is to run for six months and we are now halfway through this.

My hypothesis was that organic search would take time to grow and that at the three-month stage we would still be seeing significantly better results for paid search – higher traffic, more conversions to signing up, greater loyalty and deeper, longer visits. Then during the second three months of the experiment I’d expect organic search to really take the lead and over the six months this to be the clear winner.

Things never work out quite like you expect them to. And in this case they are actually much more interesting.

We’re going to be working on this experiment for another three months so we don’t want to reveal too many details, but initial results are, in part, as expected, but in other areas really not:

• More visits to the online community come from paid search than from organic search (although if we take just the last month then this is reversed). In total about 1.5 times as many visits came from paid search as from organic search in the last three months
• But, those coming from organic search are more likely to sign-up to become members of the community. The difference is marginal at the moment, but there is a clear trend to higher conversion rates for organic search visits
• Those coming from organic search are spending much more time on the site and visiting many more pages per visit. In fact time on site is almost three times as long for organic search as paid search, and they visit almost twice as many pages per visit
• Finally, those users that first came to the site by organic search are more likely to become active Members of the online community.

So the results are not quite what I expected, but a clear trend is developing. Whilst paid search delivers more search traffic (although this balance is changing) the quality of organic search is significantly better. Traffic to the site is important, but in an online community people signing-up, spending time on the community and actively contributing is much more interesting. For this, organic search seems to be significantly better.

Stay tuned for the final results of the experiment in three months time when we should be able to show the real power of organic search. These initial results are exciting.

Subscribe to updates from the FreshNetworks Blog

Some more reading

• Three fremium strategies (vator.tv)
• What Sweet Search has to say about the future of SEO (tynansanger.com)
• PPC Myths (seodoz.com)