Online public relations and the privacy debate

There have been lots of conversations recently about privacy, specifically in social media. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and head-honcho at Facebook, got very sweaty when discussing the topic recently. If Mark Zuckerberg, one of the pioneers of the share everything world we live in is getting sweaty about ongoing privacy concerns, then perhaps we should all be worrying.

But I don’t think it’s really about privacy. It’s actually about money. And egos. Read the rest of this entry »

Are location based services the next wave of social media or just hype?

Interesting guest post here on Mashable from Chris Treadway, about the future of location based services.

It raises interesting and salient points around, say, the number of people using LBS only manifesting itself into relatively small groups of people in individual areas.

The article also touches upon an ongoing, but rarely discussed, issue for PR and Social/Digital Media: are we just talking into an echo chamber? Read the rest of this entry »

Wave goodbye to Foursquare and Gowalla

It had to happen. It was inevitable. Rumours are abound on Mashable and Advertising Age that Facebook is adding location features this month, which probably means the end for existing location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Facebook’s huge critical mass allows it to get to where its smaller rivals could only dream of being and at the flick of a switch. Read the rest of this entry »

Not all about Gen Y: why age is just a number in social networking

Check out an interesting breakdown of the different demographics from online monitoring company, Pingdom (via BrianSolis.com). It details how, despite a similar look and feel, the multitude of social networks have a very different make-up in terms of participants.

PR and Marketing thought-leader Brian Solis highlights a few interesting findings. For instance:

“The 45 to 65+ group, those who are usually considered laggards in the technology adoption cycle, symbolize almost one-third of total users of social networks. They’re equally connecting with not only each other but also the younger generations.” Read the rest of this entry »

The rules of social media

Rule number one:

There are no rules.

Sure there are ways that you should do things and a lot of ways that you shouldn’t, but for all intents and purposes social media and the law by which it is governed, is not too dissimilar to how we live in the real world. ‘Do unto others…’, build relationships, show respect and generally be nice; all of these social etiquette practices apply online and act as a guide to how we should behave.

If understood, the success of campaigns, initiatives or ideas that people/companies have will rise and fall on the response of the desired recipients: the community you are looking to engage with.

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 »

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 »

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 »

Social media plays major role again in breaking news

In November last year, terrorists attacked a hotel in Mumbai generating huge offline and online coverage around the world. Social networks led the story and provided live commentary throughout the ordeal. I blogged about it at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

United Airlines and online reputation - responding to Sons of Maxwell ‘United breaks guitars’

Check out this YouTube effort by Canadian band Sons of Maxwell who have been fighting United Airlines since March 2008 over compensation for damaged guitars while touring. Clearly, the band felt they weren’t getting a satisfactory response from the airline, so after a frustrating 12 months or so, they finally took matters into their own hands. The  video was loaded onto the Sons of Maxwell YouTube channel on Monday, and after only three days it’s already had 640,000 views!! It’s certainly not doing any harm to the band’s reputation at the moment, with loads of coverage both online and offline. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

NZ judge takes social networking sites beyond the social network

Reading the news of New Zealand High Court Judge David Gendall’s decision to allow court papers to be served via Facebook, it occurred to me that the inexorable move away from ’snail mail’ to online communication is at a tipping point. While social networking channels are of course used predominantly for social purposes, Judge Gendall’s ruling is the first time in New Zealand we’ve seen a social network used for clerical/administrative/official purposes. For many, social networks are already supplanting email as their primary form of written communication, and the practicalities of being able to instantaneously deliver a court order to someone on the other side of the world is a demonstration of how redundant paper mail is becoming. I still prefer getting Christmas and birthday cards via the postbox mind you.

Avoiding identity hijacking online

The latest Aladdin Annual Threat Report warns that the boom in online social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace etc could very easily turn into an “online nightmare” with the rise of identity hijacking rather than identity theft damaging both personal and corporate reputations. 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 »

Banning Facebook altogether is not the answer

The Virgin Atlantic and British Airways examples of employees misusing social networking sites (both on Facebook) have attracted widespread media coverage. While some corporates may now be considering baning the use of such sites, as Jason Ryan warns, this may be ultimately counterproductive:

The implications of blocking will likely be far more deleterious. First, for many skilled and connected professionals, a disconnected workplace will be the equivalent of a career backwater. Second, from an organizational point of view, you are effectively abandoning what is now a competitive advantage and will soon be the industry standard.

SEO PR and leveraging Social Media

With the rapid growth of user generated media, managing online reputations has become critical. In New Zealand, Google is the search engine of choice in approx 95% of all searches. Each Google page shows 10 results, and in an ideal world you would fill all 10 spots on the hugely important first page with positive brand affirming content. Today, social media provides you with an opportunity to create relevant, compelling content beyond your own website.

This can be achieved in a number of ways, for instance:

• Create a YouTube profile page & upload related videos. Content on YouTube frequently obtains high rankings in Google results.
• Create a Myspace page for your corporate identity / brand.
• Facebook - Create a public group.
• Create a Digg profile page and Digg your content.
• LinkedIn - which allows you to create an individual profile page.

(And let?s not forget Blogging, which we will discuss in detail on the Bullet Points blog.)

Remember, relevance is the key! Each of these locations must contain good solid relevant content which makes for useful viewing.

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.