Interesting survey - how Global Fortune 100 is using Social Media

I recently came across this survey by PR agency Burson-Masteller on London-based Social Media agency, Fresh Networks blog.

In my opinion, many of the best examples of Social Media leverage are by small to medium businesses. Perhaps this is due to their nimble nature and the entrepreneurial skills of the staff or it could be they are more likely to look for cost-effective marketing tools. Whatever the reason, this survey shows it is pretty rare for Global Fortune 100 companies not to be using Social Media. A whopping 88% of the European companies surveyed are using one, if not more, of the following: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs. However, in the Asia-Pacific region, this figure is just 50%. Read the rest of this entry »

An engaging online strategy doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in bottom-line revenue

I’d never really noticed it before, but Burger King has a really cool homepage.

Take a look for yourself, but the website has three volume bars (‘Fun’, ‘Food’ and ‘King’), which control how big the central icons are.

For example, if you max out the ‘Fun’ bar, and minimize ‘Food’ and ‘King’, it makes it easier to see all the advertorial video content on the site. Read the rest of this entry »

Creating online communities: the journey doesn’t stop there

Working in PR, marketing, advertising etc, we need to pull ourselves back from situations and realise that we don’t all spend the entire day behind a computer screen engaging with Social Media.

We should always, at the very least, ask how the offline is being influenced by the online. Jeremiah Owyang recently alluded to this in a post on his Web Strategy blog.  If we don’t, then we can end up with a campaign overflowing with clever ideas that create dynamic online communities, but build limited relevance for the company in question and, as a result, limited revenue and ROI. Read the rest of this entry »

Defining ’success’ in Social Media

Nobody has the definitive solution for how to measure the success of Social Media. At least not yet.

Sure, you can talk about online ‘buzz’ created by how many blog posts, tweets, videos, status updates etc. that occurred for a certain brand, person or topic, but what’s ‘buzz’? Virtue, a company which does ‘technology solutions for social media marketing’ has just released its second annual list of the ‘most social’ companies in the world on this basis. I was interested in the result, which was, unsurprisingly, the iPhone, but took it with a pinch of salt. Of course, Apple, and others on the list, have built strong online reputations, but ‘buzz’ doesn’t necessarily mean success and it certainly doesn’t guarantee revenue as the mentions could as easily be negative as they could be positive.

Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing in NZ: Where’s the Experience?

Experiential marketing is about bringing the customer closer to the brand and, by its very definition, creating an experience. It’s fair to say New Zealanders love experiences like anyone else; tons of graduates take an OE and the country is full of different tours, promising the ‘Kiwi experience’.

In addition, there are plenty of campaigns that tap into Kiwiana and play on the strong sense of national identity. You only have to look at the extremely successful ‘Tourism Paeroa’ campaign by L&P and the newly launched ‘Get Some Kiwi in Ya’ concept from Kiwi Bacon to see that we all love engaging with a brand that feels alive.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google Opts For Word-Of-Mouth News Announcement (Again)

With news that Google has just announced the next step in its plan to take-over the world , one tech sector at a time, it seems like an apt moment to highlight how it does PR/marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

The Importance Of Face-To-Face Networking

With the huge increase in the role of online in the media world, in particular social media, it’s easy to forget the importance of face-to-face networking. It’s great to ‘connect’ with people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like, but nothing beats having a drink and chewing the fat in person. Read the rest of this entry »

Is it a trend or is it a ‘megatrend’?

In the media we are always speaking about ‘trends’. Twitter was/is a trend; Google Wave is a trend; apps that drive core business revenue also seem to be an increasing trend (just take a look at the Pizza Hut app )…but what’s a ‘megatrend’? Well, according to Adam Kleinberg , CEO of a Traction, a creative agency out in San Fran, it’s something that transforms society as we know it; “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” and all that malarkey. Read the rest of this entry »

Social Media to bring world peace?

At what could be described as its ‘beta’ stage, social media was a tool for people to stay connected within restricted groups (think Facebook’s origins within American colleges). It obviously widened considerably after that and is now on a par (or even beyond) with us checking our emails everyday. It then became a tool for businesses to have a stronger online presence; one where they could communicate better with their customers and potential customers. In even more recent times, social media has evolved into an almost catch-all term for digital marketing. While those in the know will tell you there is more to digital than purely social media, it certainly plays a large part in today’s media landscape. The advent of Twitter has meant social media is now an information swapping super-highway and full-on customer service portal, in addition to all its other guises. Read the rest of this entry »

The ’socialisation’ of the internet

SEO and SEM specialist First Rate recently pointed out how data from Hitwise (the online data monitor) shows that Facebook has overtaken TradeMe as New Zealand’s second most popular website (after Google, of course).

With the rising popularity of other social media such as Twitter and Flickr and the further news that Facebook has just signed a deal with market research company Nielsen to boost its credentials as a genuine advertising platform, businesses in NZ need to be aware of how these events are changing the way they need to work. This ’socialisation’ of the internet is not simply a way for people to stay in touch; it’s bigger than that. The use of social media tools to speak to potential and existing customers has broken down the traditional barriers between businesses and the man on the street.

Read the rest of this entry »

Telecom chooses Twitter for big announcement

Today, New Zealand telco Telecom gave its voice on Twitter the big job of unveiling the launch date for its long awaited new 3G network, the XT Network (brought forward to 13 May).

It’s interesting that such a significant announcement was entrusted to Twitter as the first channel of dissemination - such is Telecom’s confidence in its growing and influential Twitter followers. And it didn’t take long for major blogs to take note with Geekzone leading the way, slightly ahead of mainstream media such as the New Zealand Herald.

Definitely a sign of the times; not that long ago, the media release would have been the largely undisputed means of communicating such a major company milestone.

Spreading the message via Twitter - provoking re-tweets of great content

When the National Business Review interviewed me recently on the role of Twitter, I told marketing reporter Hazel Phillips that those companies contemplating Twitter shouldn’t get too distracted by the early adopters who may appear to dominate the conversations with endless updates of banal goings-on. The fact remains that there is a remarkably high level of serious communication taking place on Twitter and, more significantly, much of this is exclusively taking place on Twitter. So my first comment to our clients is: if you are not there in the first place, how can you take part? Read the rest of this entry »

PR and social media observations on the demise of Ferrit

The news that Telecom is folding its online retail outlet Ferrit has come as little surprise to most commentators. In the pick of the blogosphere’s musings on the story, Lance Wiggs lays out the reasons he believes Ferrit has failed. I agree in particular with his third point about Ferrit’s poor business case. From a consumer’s point of view, it was always a somewhat confusing proposition, while to retailers it will have seemed a rather questionable channel to opt for - a commissioned intermediary over direct trade with the customer. Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook groups - Why some flourish and others fail

Facebook groups cover seemingly everything, from people’s pet hates to their political views. However, the relative success or failure of such groups varies greatly. Why do some groups fail to take off, while others go viral and spread across the planet accumulating millions along the way?

Here are my observations on Facebook groups and some tips for success:

The four key groups:

Read the rest of this entry »

Latest YouTube development enables users to get specific with video clip links

YouTube’s newest trick might not be a giant leap forward, but it’s a handy step for those wishing to share YouTube clips. In the past when you linked to a video, or embedded a clip in a blog post you were stuck with the clip playing from the start (unless you also employed additional tools liked Splicd). However as Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch explains, by adding a small extension to the link, you can now control the point at which YouTube starts playing.

In other words, rather than link to an entire speech, or full video clip, you can now add ‘#t=2m15s’ to the end or the URL in order to set a specific start time. In this case, 2 minutes and 15 seconds in to the clip. Particularly handy if you wish to refer to a specific point in a YouTube clip, or even simply to skip advertising or opening credits.

For an example of what I mean, just compare the two links below…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VIPS73z5_UY&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VIPS73z5_UY&feature=related#t=3m22s

How NOT to use social media part 2

I blogged a few weeks ago on National Australia Bank’s dodgy use of comment spam to promote its services on Aussie Rules-related blogs. If you thought that was shoddy behaviour, have a look at this example from the US.

As with the NAB case, the consultancy’s social media practice here is astoundingly unethical. Have a read of the excruciating way 5WPR VP Juda Engelmayer attempts to wangle his way out of it. Amusing, and extremely embarrassing for a consultancy that supposedly prides itself on its online PR savvy.

The future of public relations in New Zealand

I spoke on a panel at the PRINZ Annual Conference last week on the future of the PR industry in New Zealand, alongside Pip Tschudin of Trustpower and Sharleen Pihema of Manukau City Council. It was a lively hour, lots of interesting questions from the floor.

One of the main topics of discussion was the role of technology in the industry, new media in particular. It’s obvious that we are a good few years behind the US and UK in how we utilise new media channels, but it was heartening to see that, on the evidence of some of the questions we received, NZ practitioners are becoming more aware of the potential of social media.

It has taken so long for the idea that blogs and user-generated content are incredibly powerful communications tools to filter down to this neck of the woods. I spoke on blogging at a PRINZ event in June last year, and the lack of awareness in the audience was surprising. Clearly, in the year since that event people have become much more clued up, and the next 6-9 months should see more and more organisations employing new media as part of their comms strategy.

Corporate Blogging & Online PR ? Bullet PR presentation at Search Engine Room

Here are some edited video highlights of our presentation at Search Engine Room in Auckland November 2007.
There were more that 100 attendees at this inaugural event, mostly from the search industry as opposed to public relations.

Online Reputation Management Tools

Sarah Perez at Read Write Web gives a useful overview of some of the tracking tools currently available for online reputation management, from the well known and widely used (and free!) Google Alerts, to Trackur, the latest offering from Internet marketing guru, Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. Of course there is more to effective ORM than these tools alone. For instance, some of them may not be timely enough for the exigencies of doing business today; and without specialist knowledge and counsel, companies may be deluged with unqualified reports.

Then there is the active role an online public relations specialist should play in ensuring your share of voice online.