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 October.

1. Google Wave vs Twitter at conferences

There has been a lot of talk and discussion of Google Wave as it has spread though invites. For many people the immediate response is: “I’m here; what now?”. In our most popular post in November, Charlie looked at one example of how Google Wave can be used to add real value: as a conference back-channel. We show how at the Ecomm conference delegates were provided with Google Wave accounts. What resulted was a fantastic showcase of collaboration and crowd-sourcing.

2. How to use Twitter Lists as a free social media monitoring tool

Twitter Lists are great. They are adding real and valuable functionality to Twitter and changing the way that people can use the service. In this post we look specifically at how Twitter Lists can be used as a free social media monitoring tool. How you can use them to track promoters and detractors of your brand and know what they are saying and feeling in real time.

3. PhotoSketch or Sketch2Photo, it rocks

A great app developed by five Chinese students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore. It allows you to turn a simple drawing into a photo. There is clearly always a big jump between a video showcase and a working proposition, but it certainly looks good so far.

4. Live TV and real-time chat: X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing

Watching TV is almost always a social experience. Whether it’s people in the room, friends on the phone, Facebook, Twitter or in forums or chat. People talk to people about what they see on TV. In this post we highlight two ways in which Live TV shows in the UK (namely X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing) are using real time chat and online communities to support their live broadcasts. We look at what they are doing and why they might be doing this.

5. Russian social network Vkontakte.ru plans global roll-out

Back in September, we posted about the success of Russian social network VKontakte (В контакте). The site serves 1.4 billion page views each day to its 42 million users, and attracts 14 million unique visitors each month. In one of the most engaged and fastest-growing social networking markets in the world, it is a force to be reckoned with. At the start of September, Vedomosti (Ведомости), the Russian business newspaper, had reported that VKontakte had registered the domain www.vk.com and plans to begin marketing the social network in twelve new markets globally before the end of 2010. One to watch next year.

McDonald’s is the world’s largest and fastest growing food service organisation. It is also a brand that attracts a lot of discussion and debate online. Not all of it positive.

This presentation from Heather Oldani, their Director of PR, is a great overview of how McDonald’s is using social media and online communities. From Twitter and Facebook to their own online communities. It’s an interesting insight into how a brand like McDonald’s is using social media – what they set out to achieve and what actually happened. But the presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks for the five key learnings that Oldani outlines from McDonald’s experiences:

1. Don’t ask “Should we engage using social media?”; ask how you should engage
2. Get your strategy right before you start using social media – know what you’re trying to achieve
3. Collaborate across the business – social media impacts on a range of different teams and job roles and often leads to these teams having to work together in different and new ways
4. Be flexible and try new things
5. Be open and responsive to feedback – listen to what people say (positive or negative) and respond or engage if appropriate

For us, the most important of these is number 2 – getting a clear strategy before you start to use social media is critical for any brand. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, consumers won’t either.

image via shutterstock

For a while I have found myself extolling the virtues of being a Social Media Pragmatist, rather than a Social Media Purist.

There are many “social media rules” to follow. But as an entrepreneur, and an engineer at heart, I’ve always felt the purtianical dictats must not fall foul of a basic rule of business:

Time and resources are limited. Focus them only on the things that will bring you the greatest return

So I was delighted to read this excellent post by Jason Fells today: Why Social Media Purists Won’t Last. And I enjoyed his calls to action:

“Make your company blog drive search results to the keywords you want to win. Present calls to action that lead your Facebook fans to buy your product. Entice Twitter followers to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter where you can present similar calls to action for purchase.”

Taking his conclusion one step further, I suspect there will be a backlash in 2010 against the Social Media Purists. Sadly the backlash will probably tar Social Media in general. And that’s why I say:

Long live the Social Media Pragmatist.

Not a day for MacLaren

Maclaren has become the latest victim of social media activism. They have joined a growing list of companies to have suffered at the hands of bloggers and Tweeters [Twitterers?].


I find this story interesting for two reasons:

1. It highlights how social media jumps geographical boundaries.
2. It reminds me how much Social Media experts love to hype these effects.

Maclaren is a UK manufacturer of prams. On Tuesday they announced the recall of 1M baby pushchairs in the US. This was after 15 reports of injuries to children’s fingers. They also offered US customers free repair kits.

However, despite having identical products in both UK and US markets, in the UK, rather than a recall or an offer of repair kits, they simply assured parents not to worry about it.

It didn’t take long for social networks and blogging sites to react. Some created email templates to send to the firm and even David Milliband, UK Foreign Secretary, referenced the debate in a Tweet.

So 3 days on and Maclaren has adopted an identical policy in the UK.


Conclusions
On one hand the social media part of this is a big deal. The Financial Times wrote about it and the company has changed a policy that may have a huge impact on their bottom line. All thanks to social networks spanning the globe.

On the other hand, they moved pretty quickly and the real story here is the recall, not the social media impact. They listened to what was said on blogs and Twitter and before the end of the week had changed their policy. I’d call that good social media monitoring and pretty speedy action for a large company.

And that brings me to my second point: the social media echo-chamber can blow these things out of proportion. It annoys me when I read blogs proclaiming Armageddon after cases like this. Sure, this has been a really critical week for Maclaren. One can only imagine the anguish throughout the business. Yes, there is now one more company where social media has made it to the boardroom. But they did not commit a massive social media faux pas. They reacted with common sense after taking a little time to reflect.

I suspect 90% of customers will probably not be aware of the hesitation that came ahead of the policy change. In a month’s time this will be remembered as just a recall story.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Twitter has quickly become the must-have channel for conference back-chat. Reading what other people tweet during a speech provides an extra dimension as you get a sense of what the audience is thinking. And just like passing notes in class, it’s also a lot more fun than simply sitting and listening. (and empowering – remember that Facebook interview from SXSW’08?)

Twitter is also a great way to attend a conference without actually being there – just follow a conference hashtag (e.g. #smib09 or #figarodigital) and find out all the gossip and the key points from the comfort of your desk.

But watch out Twitter. Google Wave is going to take this digitally-enabled conference back-channel a step further.

At the recent Ecomm conference delegates were provided with Google Wave accounts. What resulted was a fantastic showcase of collaboration and crowd-sourcing. Sprinkeled with a good dose of integrated offline and online real-time social media.   <– way too many social media buzzwords.

Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.
Here’s an example:

1. Audience member starts a Wave

2. Others join and edit the wave as the speaker talks

3. By the end of the talk there are lots of people using the Wave (their photos are along the top) and the Wave became a complete record of the key points plus audience commnets below.

For this conference the organisers created a Wave directory so that you could find what was said in each presentation.

The organisers also added waves so that the audience could give feedabck about the conference in general and ideas for next year.

It’s worth pointing out that Twitter is still an early-adopter phenomenon, and Google Wave even more so. As a result, whilst I am a complete junkie for following conference tweets, I suspect it’s going to take a couple of years before this goes mainstream. But it will. And the impact on conference organisers and speakers is significant.

And just in case you are new to social media, make sure you check out the other excelent social media platform for conference notes: Slideshare. This is always the best place to find presentations from conferences.

Have you tried following conference tweets? Or waves? If so, have you found them useful? and will augmented reality will be the next major influence?