1.       From Bolt-on to Business as Usual

The advent of social media saw marketers attach themselves to channels such as Twitter, Weibo and Facebook with palpable glee. Many felt they were low-cost ways of pushing more marketing messages at a receptive public, and gleefully measured success per 1,000 likes in the same way they’d previously lapped up media coverage measured by the pound. Social networking activity was rather clumsily ‘bolted’ on to existing marketing and communications programs, and often left to its own devices.

The lessons of 2011 told us that social isn’t a ‘bolt’ on. For many consumers, Facebook is the Internet. Facebook traffic is going up and web traffic is in decline. 1-800 numbers are passé – customer support is 24×7 and on your social network. The mission for 2012 is to create a seamless experience across a range of historically disparate social media, digital and offline properties. Wishful thinking? For many, perhaps. But in the social consumer’s mind, the change has happened. Better interaction across business functions isn’t just management dreaming, it’s social consumer demand.

2.       Social goes mobile

More than 300 million people are accessing Facebook via mobile apps as the smart phone becomes the primary internet access device. The users have spoken and in 2012

marketers must be ready for them. The brand relationship is increasingly dependent on smaller screens.

Variables such as geolocation, NFC, mobile search and augmented reality need to be ns which need to offer compelling – and directive – experiences. We’ll need to start marketing through mobile channels first, making better use of images, video, and less text.

factored in as time and location become critical for brands wanting to capture greater mobile wallet share. For those that haven’t considered this, take a look at your website on a smart phone. Hope you’ll like what you see…or more crucially I hope your consumers like what they see.

3.       Influence is currency

2011 saw the influence debate really take off. Google and Facebook are fighting tooth and nail for your social credentials. Klout and Peer Index both have gained greater recognition over the year but with their success has come controversy. The fact that

Klout’s changes caused uproar indicates that reputation measurement is here so stay. 2012 will see even greater use of influence scores as the industry seeks a better standard.

Better algorithms will dictate greater use of scores in shaping PR tactics. Our focus will increasingly be on understanding how the influential and vocal minority can help us shape our client’s brands. Customers and employees will play larger roles in marketing programs as social currency becomes easier to measure. The ability of Klout and its ilk to keep innovating and providing more specific data will change the way we look at PR forever.

4.       Changing channels?

In 2011 the social network wars exploded. The emergence of Google+ saw Facebook and Twitter make significant changes to their UIs. Niche social networks like Instagram and Pinterest found a home on many desktops and mobile devices. In 2012 we’ll see Facebook, Google+ and Twitter continuing to innovate and greater ability to focus conversations

for more specialized groups. Will social consumers remain loyal or will new networks emerge to challenge?

Outside of the social networks, traditional broadcasters aren’t standing still. The entertainment

and social media industries are colliding, with Twitter in particular helping create a new discipline called social TV. Second screen apps such as Umami

and Gracenote are also blurring the lines further.

In 2012, stories will increasingly have to be told across networks to keep consumer attention. There will only be greater attempts at integration while simultaneously the big networks will do more to keep consumers within their ‘walls’. The challenge for brands will be to keep on top of the niche and large social networks and traditional broadcasters. It will be critical to keep an open mind and be willing to experiment as the channels jostle for position.

5.       PR’s future

My final prediction is a big call but that’s the pleasure of forecasting. From my perspective PR will go through a required change in 2012. The shift will reflect the other nine trends I’ve talked to. Our ability to react to changes in channels, consumer behaviors, tools and technologies will cement our future as an industry.

Images sourced under Creative Commons license from flickr users midgley, jcarlosn, Jeff Hester and Moyan Brenn, respectively.

Corporate bloggers make up just eight percent of the blogosphere, however statistics show there’s more understanding around the motivation and rewards for blogging.

Of the companies currently blogging, 64 percent say they’ve found that blogging has brought them greater visibility in their industry. This seems appropriate, given that 70 percent of them are blogging to share their expertise and industry knowledge. Nearly 45 percent reported being quoted in traditional media for something written in their blog.

For many corporate organizations, blogging is a way to integrate all of their social channels. Close to 90 percent of corporate bloggers are also on Twitter and 40 percent use the platform to promote both their blog and professional personality. Thirty percent also link to blog posts on their Facebook page.

While it’s clear that some companies really seem to “get” blogging (see this list from SocialFresh for a few examples) better than others, the report calls out a few tactics for companies to carve out a name for themselves in the corporate blogosphere. Key points include:

• Encourage and enable sharing across platforms.
• Bloggers are trusted peers. Work with them to create or curate unfiltered, credible content and reviews, in order to create a conversation around your brand. Focus on building long-term relationships.
• Use blogger outreach organically and encourage these social influencers to be honest and open about their opinions so that they don’t feel forced to give a “good” review, but rather, their “own” review.
• Use social media not only to distribute content but to build active communities and interact with and respond to your audiences.
• Layer on social media measurement tools to find where users fall into your conversion funnels.
• Leverage paid media on social channels.
• Findings show that corporate bloggers are the least likely to respond to blog comments individually. Can your company break the status quo and level up its one-on-one engagement with readers?

As for the ever-elusive measurement question, the majority of corporate bloggers report using a variety of basic quantitative values: number of followers, friends and likes; number of blog readers or RSS subscribers; number of blog comments, and so on. While all are simple ways to get an idea of the general reach of your blog, it’s important to layer a level of qualitative information on top as well to get a better understanding of how your content is being received. For example, what sentiment comes through in the blog comments you receive? Are your followers, friends or fans sharing your content with their social networks as well?

The personal and professional rewards of corporate blogging create great opportunity for organizations to find their niche and make a mark in this space. And while it’s a great platform to share a brand’s message and expertise, it is also one of the most effective ways to engage in dialogue with key stakeholders, including consumers, investors and employees. Further, the relationship building that can occur within a blog will give way to the more traditional measurements of success, such as media placement, industry recognition and brand awareness.

If your brand has yet to jump in to the blogging waters, first consider how it will fit into your larger business strategy; determine its correlation to your goals and how it fits into the bigger picture.

For more findings from the State of the Blogosphere Report, visit Technorati.

Considered analysis and commentary is critical. 140 characters forces brevity and, frequently, superficiality.

Look at today’s tragic earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. I learned of the ‘quake through a post from my Uncle on Facebook. I went to twitter and saw a raft of RTs and links to mainly mainstream media channels. To find out what had happened I looked to blogs, mainstream media, radio and news sites in particular. I wanted to go beyond the headlines and sought out channels that were able to frame the story, provide context and give me a level of qualified detail that short form social networks couldn’t offer.

I think what the New York Times has identified is perhaps a decline in traditional personal blogging. But, in doing so, must make us question precisely what traditional blogging actually is. Is Hong Kong’s NeonPunch a blog? Or is it a news outlet? Is Tumblr a blog? A microblog? These channels have much in common with blogs as we knew them.

And what of the enterprise? I feel corporations, too, are undergoing a blog-inspired evolution. We’re gradually seeing companies such as Alibaba.com through its Alizila news site communicate in real language and offer objective commentary and news that can be commented upon and shared.

But more to the point, does it even matter? Blogging has given us a form of expression to which Facebook and twitter owe a great debt of gratitude. The consumers have spoken. They want personal opinions and they want to be able to share and comment. These attributes were at the heart of blogging long before before the first tweet was tweeted nor the first question posted on Quora.com.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the death of blogging have been greatly exaggerated. Blogs – and more critically the communications revolution they inspired – will be with us until people decide they no longer want long form articles to read, share or comment upon. And I for one hope that’s a day we’ll never see.

- Cross-posted from http://publicrelationships.blogspot.com

Because we are curious about these things, we decided to conduct our own research by analyzing 4000 posts from the top 100 brands to see what we could learn. The results have been collated into the Beyond Brand Interaction Study. To save you reading it, we have also put together a video which summarizes our findings and collates other freely available facts and figures we found interesting.

One of the challenges with data analysis is to create some specific actionable insights so we have pulled together our Top 10 Practical Steps to building and engaging your community on Facebook:

1. Put together an incentive program for your loyal fans
2. Increase the use of images and rich media to increase likes
3. Use polls to increase comment levels
4. Aim for a ratio of brand comments to fan comments of 1:10
5. Funnel customer service issues into the appropriate channels and away from Facebook
6. Clearly signpost news distribution from within the corporate facebook presence
7. Ask the fans for ideas for content
8. Integrate your Facebook presence with all other social presences and web presence
9. Let other fans handle a lot of the other negative comments
10. Benchmark your Facebook presence against other brands in your sector

We can’t promise that this will get you as many fans as Coca-Cola but we can guarantee if you follow these steps you will be well on the way to building a happy fan base.

Our full white paper is also available here.

Guest Blog:

David Hargreaves is CEO of Beyond, Next Fifteen’s specialist digital consultancy that was launched earlier this year. It works for clients such as Google, YouTube, Genentech and Cisco.

Researchers at Indiana University spent 10 months analyzing more than nine million tweets and found a strong correlation between the mood expressed on Twitter and whether the Dow Jones Industrial Average would rise or fall. Using two mood-recording algorithms, the Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS) and OpinionFinder, they discovered one of the six “moods” measured by GPOMS – calmness – was an indicator of whether the average went up or down between two and six days later. The predictions were accurate around 90 percent of the time.

While using Twitter to track the stock market is nothing new (many investors use StockTwits to track stock-related news), this is the first occasion where stock predictions came as a result of social media sentiment analysis.

Though more research is likely needed to fully validate the potential of this as an economic gauge, brands should take it as a broader indication of how heavily social media can affect the performance of a company. Whether a brand is active on Twitter or not, strategies should be put in place to monitor and handle conversation on social media channels and blogs. Investors have more resources than ever available to them to aid in making financial decisions. Public opinion has a greater play because of the ease of expression through social media.

Here is one quick, but often overlooked, tip to keep your Twitter activities in front of investors: when appropriate use $ signs ahead of company name or stock symbol to ensure content gets pulled into Stocktwits feeds.

But while literally finding talent in a digital haystack poses its own set of challenges (and advantages), it’s knowing what type of person you’re looking for in the first place that’s the critical piece of this selection process. Armano refers to a spectrum with deep social media expertise at one end, practical professional experience on the other and a sweet spot somewhere in between. Let’s dig into that.

If you’re looking for someone to lead social media internally or an agency to help, you want to focus on critical thinking skills first. Actually, make that first, second and third. Look for a logical thought process that takes into account your specific goals (the business kind, not just social media), target audiences, where they spend time, the types of interaction they welcome and how your brand fits into that picture. They should examine your organization’s ability to realistically execute, the relevant balance of broadcasting vs. interaction that’s right for the task at hand and how to define success.

Making a compelling case to executives and business functions that don’t care about social media (or think they don’t need to) matters as well; the ability to intelligently defuse skepticism and speak someone else’s language is critical there. And a little gravitas wouldn’t hurt. Little to none of this pertains to tools.

I could go on but the point is there’s a lot to consider when trying to zero in on the right kind of talent. There’s at least as much snake oil as legitimate talent out there as Stephen Baker rightly points out in BusinessWeek. Big followings on Twitter and prolific blogging don’t necessarily translate to an understanding of your business and how social media applies to you specifically. Maybe it doesn’t at all – he or she should be honest about that too.

Whether or not all of this points you to a specific spot on some linear spectrum of talent, I don’t know. But either way, when evaluating a candidate do yourself a favor and peel back the layers with some thoughtful questions – your company’s time and resources will be better off for it.

Joseph Kingsbury

Twitter: @jkingsbury

Photo credit

In the next segment of our regional social media snapshot series,  I thought I’d share insight from the Text 100 Munich office into the region’s unique online behaviors and cultural considerations:

• Social media usage in Germany lacks behind other major European markets and globally compared to the USA or Asia/Pacific. According to the a recent report from Universal McCann, only 57% of the active Internet users in Germany regularly read blogs and 50% have created a social network profile.  A recent ReadWriteWeb story noted that Germany is five years behind the US in terms of social media adoption.

• While Facebook is seeing tremendous growth, the biggest social network in Germany is SchuelerVZ, a community of 7.4 million students from 12 to 18 years old.  In June, Facebook cracked the top three with more users than competitors StudiVZ and Wer-kennt-wen. Companies planning to launch a consumer social media campaign in Germany should keep in mind that Facebook isn’t the only place to target and SchuelerVZ has a bigger reach.

• Looking to make business connections in Germany? The most important German business network is Xing, which dominates LinkedIn in the German market. At the end of July Xing boasted more than 8 million users; among them are 635,000 premium users who pay for their accounts. Like LinkedIn, Xing has lots of different groups around targeted business topics like SMB or social media marketing, etc.

• Interesting cultural tidbit: Germans are very hesitant to change and known for their habitualness. This translates to their lives online:  Each time Facebook introduces new features, Germans express their outrage.  Be sure to spend time listening before you launch your social media program in Germany to make sure you understand their social media preferences and patterns. The use of these norms will increase your project’s chance of success.

A few weeks ago Vodafone launched a marketing campaign in Germany with a large social media component (see Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Youtube, MySpace and Microsite),  one of the first of its kind in this region. Vodafone faced harsh criticism of the campaign for a handful of social media 101 offenses that you should always keep top of mind:

• Social media is a conversation, not a megaphone: Vodafone was criticized for purely taking its marketing messages and pushing them through this new channel, not tailoring their approach for the community or trying to start a dialogue. In addition, the company received more than 2,000 negative comments within two hours on Facebook, but did not respond or adjust their approach.
  
• Don’t fake it. Always be authentic: Vodafone hired a popular Germany blogger to support the campaign. This blogger was well known as an iPhone and T-Mobile customer, so his work for Vodaphone was immediately seen as a shame.  Vodafone should have more closely evaluated their partners and insisted they be transparent about their involvement.
  
• Get to know your audiences likes/dislikes before you engage:  The Vodafone campaign used Denglisch (German mixed with English terms, in an attempt to sound cool and interesting), but some didn’t even seem to be sure how to pronounce the buzzwords they were using. This tactic backfired as Germans complained they would have preferred to be reached via German or English language, not a combination.

Want to learn more about social media in Germany? Leave your questions in to comments or get in touch with me on Twitter or Xing.

In our continuing examination of the most influential blogs in the blogosphere, we’re looking at not just which blogs are cited most often, but why. When it comes to the gossip and culture blogs, the answer is fairly straightforward: juicy content and compelling multimedia.

KEY FINDINGS

Gossip blogs are relatively well-represented among the Power 50, making up 11% of the 50 sites. These types of blogs were actually cited more often than business blogs (11% of all citations vs. 2% for business blogs). The top five gossip blogs included: Gawker, Perez Hilton, Valleywag, Stereogum and Jezebel.

ANALYSIS

Traditional media generally reference culture blogs as primary sources for original news content, such as interviews or transcripts. In comparison, technology and lifestyle/entertainment blogs are more often cited for their opinions, providing commentary and expert insight into breaking news or industry trends. Typically, an interesting photo, video or exclusive interview would appear on a blog, which was written about by traditional media. We found that authors of culture blogs were rarely interviewed or quoted as experts in the field (although citing Gawker’s Top Ten Worst Media Moments of 2008 could be considered an exception).

CONCLUSION

For communications people, there are a couple of primary takeaways. Gossip blogs are clearly a great place to seed content about celebrity and entertainment related clients, especially if you have access to interesting video clips and images. But you’d better have the goods. Finding creative ways to intersect your content with timely trends already in the public eye is also a tried and true approach.

Gossip blogs can generate massive spikes in awareness or interest, but they can also be a short term and often unpredictable solution. Since gossip bloggers rely on popular culture to dictate their content, it’s very hard to predict whether your client will get the “right” kind of attention. For example, many companies shy away from gossip blogs because they’re concerned by the types of comments that gossip posts can elicit. Under the right circumstances though, the opportunity to leverage this channel as a means of driving residual mainstream media attention remains strong, as our study suggests.

This post is a part of a series on the Power 50, a study of the most influential blogs as cited by the top 100 mainstream media.