This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation to a lunchtime round-table event, to chat about social media and the law. “What’s not to like?”, I thought, and a few days later I was enjoying the delights of good company in an Italian restaurant in London’s Covent Garden (and wishing I hadn’t driven to the station that morning – more vino please!). Well, what’s not to like indeed – a couple of hours flew by and I could quite happy have whiled away another couple, had I not needed to get back to the office…
So, social media and the law. Really? Is that such a big deal?
In a word, yes!
You see, whilst we’re all enthusing about sharing our lives online and building digital relationships, there are some for whom that’s a little too risky. I’m not talking about over-sharing personal details here – exposing oneself to undesirable physical world impacts from digital world slip-ups – but about negatively impacting one’s employment as companies struggle to get their heads around a world where relationships are formed online as well as in the traditional methods. Indeed, even the round-table where we were discussing these issues was run under the “Chatham House rule” – precisely so that participants could speak openly and freely, without fear of the consequences of reporting what they said (reporting is fine, attribution is strictly off limits).
Starting the conversation with concerns about employees tweeting, there are a whole load of considerations, from issues of authenticity to accidentally committing an organisation to a contract. Some organisations maintain lists of approved social media users but what happens when an over-enthusiastic employee defends your brand using their personal account and crosses a line?
Ultimately, companies are trying to protect their reputation online and limit their liability in the digital space, just as they do in the physical world. But there’s no “one size fits all” solution: some brands may be “free and open”, others more “locked down” and it’s increasingly important to create policies for acceptable use of social media. The issue is that these policies need to be kept up to date, and need to reflect the real world. For example, an organisation might forbid its employees to affiliate themselves with a brand online. That’s OK on Twitter, Facebook, etc. but what about their online CV on LinkedIn? For all of my disclaimers absolving my employer of any views and opinions I express online (disclaimers that were, incidentally, triggered by an unclear social media policy), it’s still pretty easy to find who pays my salary and to establish a link between my personal views and a brand. Thankfully, I’m told, there is a legal distinction between a social media account used for work purposes and affiliation of a personal account to a company or brand.
Unfortunately, until “social” is embedded in our organisational DNA, there will be issues – and the legal minefield around developments in the way we use technology is not exclusively limited to social media. Take recent legislation on the use of “cookies” for example, described at the event as “stupid laws by stupid people, made for the wrong generation”.
It’s important to recognise that much of the movement into social seen by companies today is out of compulsion rather than quantified need – organisations need to consider what’s right for their brand. And what if social media isn’t purely a marketing tool, but about relationships? Enlightened companies are accepting that employees are increasingly linked online but it’s still important to “think and use your brain”. Microsoft’s blogging policy is often quoted as “blog smart” – it’s actually two pages that boil down to “don’t be stupid”. The important element is being careful not to make forward facing statements on behalf of the company and monitoring takes place to control any breaches (inadvertent or otherwise).
Ultimately, employee behaviour is hard to control. Generally, there is no malicious intent. As employers we need to explain the consequences of actions but educating people is difficult.
Then there’s the issue of what happens when an employee leaves a company. There are high-profile cases of influential tweeters taking their followers to a new organisation, or of companies claiming that a LinkedIn profile belongs to them. Many companies are only to happy to benefit from relationships (and skills) when staff are recruited but try to protect these assets when they move on – maybe a future legal case will clarify the situation, with a sensible judge telling companies that they can’t “have their cake and eat it” (one can hope).
Even in the most sales-focused organisations, handing over an address book is one thing but relationships are individual (people transact with people)… perhaps it’s the relatively new nature of social platforms that means the rules of engagement are still settling down?
There’s an argument that assets gained on company time belong to the company, but what exactly is company time? In our increasingly connected society, there’s a fine balance between an employment contract, bringing chores/devices to work and working extended hours outside the office. When do we stop being employees and start being individuals again? For many of us, there is no more 9 to 5!
A couple more points that I liked were: that corporate use of social media is not really about openness but about translucency; and that we have years of history with employees talking to customers – in shops! The difference now is the online evidence trail.
Some consider that the damage any one individual can cause online is limited anyway, that the Internet is “filling up”, with user-generated content increasingly buried in search results by bland, corporate results (which may be authoritative but make it hard to find any real information on making things work). On the other hand, if patent trolling is a valid business model (which it appears to be), what about copyright trolls, or social media offence trolls?
That brought us nicely onto copyright, which evolved because society saw creative endeavours that needed to be protected. But the nature and scope of copyright is that it can only exist where society respects and enforces the rules. That means that copyright does need to evolve, especially here in the UK, where there is no concept of “fair use”.
In summary, there are a lot of worries about social media and the law but nobody is really over concerned – we know that laws will change (eventually) – but there will be intervening years where the implications exercise the minds of everyone from board members downwards and only common sense can drive us through. That means that monitoring is required: companies can’t engage in social media unless they’re prepared to monitor and to be intelligent about what they find.
Highlight of #SocMedLaw - "stupid laws for stupid things, made by the wrong generation" eg: Cookie Law. Who agrees?... 100%
So, what was the biggest lesson for me? Actually, it was nothing to do with the law. I found that taking comprehensive notes whilst tweeting and eating lunch is difficult!
Thanks to Social Safe for sponsoring the event and to Abigail Harrison (@AbigailH) for making it happen.
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Last week, I wrote about the first keynote speech at the fifth B2B Huddle, from Microsoft’s Dave Coplin. It’s taken me a few days to get this post up but the next “act” was Antony Mayfield (@AMayfield), who spoke about advanced persistent opportunities: re-imagination and business (in other words, looking for new ways of working that are not from past business models).
One of the early points that Antony made in his presentation is that there are no real case studies for this topic (everyone is at the start of a journey – there is nothing definitive) which is an interesting observation. He did suggest though, that there are some useful resources out there in the form of Mary Meeker’s [and Liang Wu’s] State of the Internet report and Kevin Kelly (former editor of Wired)’s What Technology Wants. Another interesting quote that Antony used was attributed to Marc Andreessen (web browser pioneer turned venture capitalist) who was cited as saying that “the future is six months away” or, in other words, the limit for any sure-fire bets in the world of the Internet and social media is much shorter than the business and marketing plans that we use, so we need to find a new way of working…
One area where people constantly have to re-imagine models is that of security – with constant threats and risks. One particular form is that of the advanced persistent threat (APT). These are not one-off attacks but are very serious and often related to organised crime although hacktivists and governments also represent APTs.
Applying the same thoughts to social business, there is no such thing as the definitive social business strategy – strategy is seen as something distant. Strategy should be thought of as an advanced persistent opportunity. Strategy is fluid and social media is the context. Social media is a proxy for change but it is an approach, not a technology.
Antony then went on to talk about social marketing and its relationship with social brands and social businesses, building up to “six brilliant things” for successful brands to follow [in their social media marketing].
Leadership: Mandate and licence for change is clear. Antony cited Burberry as a case study where the CEO ambition was one of a digital brand. Following successful pilots, Burberry built an in-house content team and a social media approach based around a community that, once built, drives the brand.
Principles: How they will operate with social/digital. Again, Nokia was the case study cited by Mayfield (Brilliant Noise has a paper on Nokia’s global social media strategy), with six principles for digital engagement – effectively “the right ways to behave”: 1. Consider the social opportunity in everything we do; engage in better conversations with more consumers; deliver personal experiences, be authentic, and earn trust; sharing is more important than control; define clear objectives from the outset; invest and commit to social presences. These are a great starting point for developing a set of principles for an organisation but, to give another example, the UK Government Digital Service sets out its own seven digital principles to follow:
Pilot and scale: [Have the] Will to try things, [and the] will to scale things that work. Nike was the quoted case study here, building relationships and viewing campaigns as an investment, rather than straight spending.
Frameworks and governance: Systems to guide pioneers and connect key stakeholders. IBM’s investment model has moved from a traditional campaign model of spend, followed by attention to one of consistent spending targetted on building a community (creating an “S curve” of attention, rather than peaks) – but this is hard work and requires a continued focus.
Digital literacy: investing in skills across the organisation. Examples here are the Nokia Socializer and the Dell Social Media University.
Antony Mayfield believes that social business is a journey and, just as we embark on personal journeys to move from reading, to marking favourites, sharing, commenting, posting, creation, and [perhaps] starting a group in an ever-more-steep curve there are Business models such as Red Ant’s 5 stages of: traditional experimental, operational measurable and fully engaged social business. Some organisations might want more detail
Some organisations want detailed ideas but ultimately, says Antony, we need to re-imagine everything (or someone will do it for you…).
Video
For those who would like to watch Antony Mayfield’s B2B Huddle presentation, a copy is embedded below:
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
January 2012 new year’s resolution: to join the 21st century!
With two young children, the past few years have flown by in a time-starved, sleep-deprived haze. Juggling motherhood with work has left little time or head-space for anything new.
I’m firmly stuck in the age of email. If I want to contact someone, I call them or I email them. Very occasionally, I text. MySpace and Bebo passed me by. Facebook and Twitter are things that other people do and LinkedIn is somewhere I ought to be.
After many months of procrastination, I reluctantly dipped my little toe in the water this summer and joined LinkedIn. I felt slightly exposed having an on-line presence for the first time. The photo is still proving a sticking point.
Needing a further push, I went along to a social media event hosted by flexible working specialists Ten2Two. Aimed at individuals like myself, who have somehow missed (or avoided) the social media revolution, the workshop gave a useful insight into LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and blogging. Around the room, questions and concerns included choosing the best media, privacy and security, and of course the holy grail for all working mums, finding the time.
Which Media When?
Yes – I’m on LinkedIn – but my sad lack of photo is a no-no. The privacy issue with Facebook has always been a concern for me. But, while it may not be the best place for B2B connections, I do need to get to grips with it before my children are on-line. I see the value of Twitter for keeping up-to-date with news and hot topics but remain slightly alarmed at the thought of constant tweet distractions. While there may be guidelines for using social media, there are no hard and fast rules. You simply have to get signed up, try it and see.
The Sticky Issue of Privacy
One of the reasons I’m not on Facebook, don’t tweet and have never blogged before today is; how do I keep my private life private? The answer is, with social media, you can’t! And you can’t keep work separate from your personal life. I’ve decided on the following approach: With anything that I put on-line, I have to be comfortable with the idea that my customers, colleagues, parents, friends, children’s teachers and school-run acquaintances could read it. I also have to be happy that anyone from my past could read it – as well as anyone I may meet or work with in the future.
Finding the Time
The old problem of finding the time won’t go away. But I’ve put aside some time to write this blog post and I’ve enjoyed it! The moment it goes live may be slightly nerve-wracking (will anyone read it, what will they think…) but equally rather liberating!
From a personal and professional point-of-view, I’ve learned that I can no longer bury my head in the sand. Ignoring social media and hoping I can carry on as before is no longer an option. And so with a deep breath, I take the plunge!
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Yesterday, I spent the morning at the fifth B2B Social Media Huddle, organised by Kerry Bridge (@KerryBridge) and Neville Hobson (@jangles). I’ve written about these events before – and I find them fantastic because they are focus on using social media for business to business communications, whilst many events are focused on consumer audiences. Some would say that doesn’t matter – the channels are the same (i.e. the same social networks) and you are still communicating with people (and, fundamentally, people buy from people, so it’s about building relationships) but I do believe that the two markets have very different needs (B2B is not just B2C scaled down, as someone once suggested…).
Unfortunately I had to leave before the unconference started – so I’m sure I missed some great content later in the day but I wanted to call out some of the fantastic points that Microsoft’s Dave Coplin (@DCoplin) made in his fantastic opening presentation.
Restricting access to social media at work
Firstly, taking a look at the view that employees shouldn’t be allowed access to social media at work. Thankfully, IT departments are becoming more enlightened and the number of organisations blocking access at the firewall is dropping but there are still issues in management. The concerns generally boil down to:
I don’t want my team wasting time.
I don’t understand the value (of conversation flow, etc.).
As Dave eloquently pointed out, if you are concerned about people wasting time on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, you should probably also frisk them for newspapers with crossword and sudoku puzzles. And, as Helen Reynolds (@HelReynolds) added on Twitter, whilst you’re at it, ban small talk and daydreaming!
Understanding the value is harder – like Dave, I thought Twitter was a waste of time, until I saw a moderated stream used alongside a keynote video. These days I’m hooked (although Twitter’s apparent desire to self-destruct might change that one day soon…). Another way to look at this is that we might once have struggled to see value in email, or the world-wide web – and now there are large groups of employees for whom we would not envisage a world without those tools (or something similar). Social media is the next iteration of modern communications and, whether its on internal or external networks, there is immense value in many of the conversations to be had.
One important point that Dave made for those who think social media is just “for the kids” is to take a look at the #bbcqt hashtag on a Thursday night and you’ll see a lively debate from across a wide spectrum of Twitter users. Social media is certainly not just for “Generation Y” – and even those middle managers who frown upon its use at work probably use at least one social medium, even if it’s just to follow their favourite sports team, or to pick up deals from a brand with whom they like to transact.
IT literacy
Dave Coplin suggested that there are two common threads when talking to people (real people, not IT or technology marketing people!) about IT. The first is the “I know nothing about computers – I need my son/daughter to control the insert piece of technology here” response, suggested as if it were a badge of honour (i.e. “I’m not a geek”). Dave continues to comment that “I know nothing about computers” should not be acceptable; people need to realise that they are part of society and digital literacy is as important a skill as reading and writing in a traditional sense. I’m not suggesting (and I don’t think Dave Coplin was either) that everyone should be able to write computer programmes, but the idea that some people are proud not to understand how to use common technology like smartphones, video equipment, an Internet browser is a social problem that needs to be addressed.
Secondly, companies that say “don’t worry about IT… we’ll deal with that for you” are not helping – they need to empower users to take control of technology and use them to good effect (writes the man using a corporate PC with so much “security” software piled on it that it takes 5 minutes before it is usable after turning it on…).
Many of the issues are about educating people for a digital future [I’d say a digital present] – not just children but every member of society – and Dave suggests that we need to change our approach, to start teaching skills not tools.
He went on to illustrate the point, something like this (although it might need to be adjusted depending on the audience, this worked for the Generation Xers in the room yesterday!):
Our grandfathers went to school where there was no electricity.
Our parents went to school when there were no PCs.
We went to school when there was no world-wide web.
And our kids will go to school in a world without hover-cars.
In other words, technology develops at pace and it’s no good teaching people about technology – we need to equip them with the skills to apply as new technologies come on stream.
In another example, there are signs in various parts of the world advising drivers not to follow satellite navigation (e.g. lorry drivers under low bridges, motor vehicles along footpaths). I’m sure that the creators of the sat-nav technology didn’t intend to take away the responsibility of the driver to apply some common sense – technology should augmenting human reactions, not replacing them.
In other words, Dave Coplin suggests that the world we should strive for is one of human plus machine, not human versus machine and critical thinking is a more important skill than word processing.
“Humanising” the web
Humanising the web is Microsoft marketing-speak. The company I work for talks about a “human centric intelligent society” and I’m sure there are others in a similar vein but the point is a similar one – tapping into a network of people to change the way in which services are delivered. Somewhat cynically, I tweeted that this just sounds like crowdsourcing but there is more to it than that.
Our smartphones are permanently authenticated to us as individuals – they are truly personal devices and that gives companies the opportunity to deliver personalised services. For example, Dave suggested that mobile can make accessible mean something to a wheelchair user – “what’s the best route into a station – and which of the eight entrances has a ramp?”. There are other opportunities to augment reality too – like translation, or overlaying information onto pictures. But why stop there, asks Dave? Why not stitch things together and deliver new experiences – applications that know our preferences and suggest activities accordingly?
Much of this depends on “big data” and machine learning – and, the more we use data, the more we can provide new insights. Data scientists will become increasingly important as we find a way to navigate information, without over-reliance on algorithms – which are really powerful but can have unintended consequences when combined. Dave gave an example whereby, if enough people perform a search, then the engine will decide that it’s important and adjust the results accordingly – that can have unintended consequences (a bit like the example in this old blog post of mine).
Of course, when looking at humanising the web, we need to consider social implications too and there are, undoubtedly, some people whose online behaviour leaves a lot to be desired. We’ve seen that before though – fifteen years ago, people would interrupt conversations to take a mobile phone call but these days it’s normal to use silent rings, or to divert to voicemail. As a society we have learned how to integrate mobile telephony into our conversations but we are less mature in other areas. Dave Coplin suggests that Facebook is not a problem – the way the (some) people behave on Facebook is the issue – we’re still learning how to behave online – we troll, bully, etc. And that leads to a society that gets really challenged…
Which leads on to privacy – we all have a line above or below which we are comfortable. For example, my Facebook is just for friends and family (although I have extended it to aquantainces from my “real” life too); whilst LinkedIn is only for people I have worked with professionally (and whom I would like to work with again some day); meanwhile I’m pretty open on Twitter, sharing a mixture of the less-personal personal stuff, with technology, things I find out and topics related to my hobbies.
But, as a society, our definitions and expectations of privacy change over time. In one of Dave Coplin’s anecdotes he spoke of how the landlord in your local pub knowing your name and drink of choice is an accolade of social acceptance. But what if you walked into a pub in a different town and the barman said “Hello Dave, pint of the usual is it?” – that might be a little strange (how do they know your name and how do they know what you drink?). Ultimately though, it’s just personalisation of service – and we will increasingly see this on the web as our expectations of privacy and information sharing evolve.
We’ve seen this before – in another example Dave reminded us how Caller ID used to be something to avoid (“what, give out my number to someone when I call – no way!”) but these days we use it extensively and screen calls that don’t show a number that we recognise. Technology evolves, as does our use of that technology, and our acceptance of the implications of its use.
Empower others, be human, and don’t just engage – enchant!
Dave closed his presentation with three points about their use of IT, in particular in their use of social media:
Empower others – to make decisions, to interact, to learn.
Be human – companies need to have humour and personally in their online interactions and too many just want to sell (or be dull).
Don’t just engage, enchant. John Lewis’ ads don’t tell us where the stores are and what they sell – instead, they reach out to us emotionally and drag us in.
This content is 13 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
The morning keynote was an awe-inspiring look at the Red Bull Media House, founded in 2007, 20 years after the drink/brand organisation, to focus on creating a media business – building a structure and organisation for the commercialisation of Red Bull’s content assets.
Red Bull’s Chief Commercial Officer, Alexander Koppell, believes that brilliant content should be at the centre of every great brand. But, with content as the company’s major asset, Red Bull found that they needed to consider how to create more; to create a platform and tools; and to handle distribution. Rather than turn to agencies the Red Bull Media House was created as a 360 degree media business with content, its own production facilities, marketing communication, publishing press, music label publishing, broadcasting, platform provision, and worldwide distribution. As a result, Red Bull is the third most influential social brand globally.
Now, as YouTube has become the world’s global video pool, it has partnered with brands to move into content creation. Red Bull is one of those brands and this is just one of the results:
Koppell summed up by highlighting Red Bull’s key focus areas of:
As for his advice to other organisations? Build structures, invest inside your company – if you go for third parties be aware of the risks to you as a content player – and at same time build up your asset (be that technology, events or Formula 1 racing teams!). Whatever your core product is, make sure that you can differentiate your company from its competitors!
Online video: great to watch, even better to share
The next session was a panel on video and, as is usual with this format, I found my mind wondering to other things – panel discussions just don’t engage me! I did get to a session later in the day on the topic (more in a moment) but a couple of quick points I picked up were:
We have always loved video but it’s now easier to distribute and consume.
An emotional video ad that makes you feel good about a brand is unlikely to lead to an immediate purchase – it may influence future decisions though.
And, as for the future of social video:
Expect to see more value exchanges – e.g. watch a video in preference to a micro-transaction (e.g. buying a crop in Farmville).
Infomercials will become common.
The democratisation of video creation (as the barrier to content creation is now very low) will create an explosion of channels and an amazing amount of content.
Brands can be content creators too and users will decide whats good or not (great stuff will bubble to the top).
The accidental social campaign: understanding the multiplier effect
As the conference moved into a series of breakout sessions, I decided to join Jonathan Wolf (@JonathanWWolf)’s workshop looking at creating the multiplier effect – taking advantage of user generated content and using it as many times as possible to maximise value.
In stark contrast to a later workshop, Jonathan took a refreshing approach to self-promotion, joking about having six slides to present about his company first, and then saying “not really” and moving straight into content. Thank you, thank you, thank you Jonathan. That, combined with some quality advice is an example of thought leadership. And it meant that I did actually read the literature about BazaarVoice rather than blanking them from that point forward (take note Wildfire and Telligent – more on Telligent in a moment…).
Jonathan outlined a couple of case studies where companies used user generated content to build loyalty and brand advocacy:
White Stuff‘s UHT campaign gave customers the opportunity to put their man on a charity calendar. In step 1, people contributed stories/photos and participated, but step 2 was to get people back to vote on the best stories – a second wave of the campaign (for free as heavy lifting already done). Once the finalists had been selected, White Stuff got people to come back again and vote once more (and if your partner was there you would have got all your friends to vote…). Now they have selected a winner but not told us who yet – so expect a fourth wave as they market back out to us – combined with the press opportunities as this is a charity calendar… In all, the same content has been (or will be) used four or five times so the return on investment is great!
Domino’s Pizza had a brand crisis in the US – so they reformulated their food and gave people insight into how things work (Amy is making your pizza, Joe is delivering your pizza) with a pizza tracker. On top of this, they encouraged customers to write reviews and the company put them on screen in New York’s Times Square. This campaign has several effects: it gives insight and solicits feedback; it is used internally as a measure of how well the company is doing; it engages employees to have pride in their work (employees don’t want their name on a bad review…); it serves as an advertisment (in Times Square); and it’s driven from the web – so the Times Square activity acts as an ad campaign in itself.
After whetting our appetite, Jonathan stopped and got us to have a go at a practical exercise. But I wanted more… the workshop was good, and well-run, but it was a lot to squeeze into a short session which ultimately led to us over-running the time-slot. Hey ho, I guess that was the brief…
Video: it’s how we see the world
In this next session, Google’s Harry Davies (@HarryDavies) gave some insight into the world of online video (and advertising… after all he does work for Google!)
He’s absolutely correct that it’s to video we turn to to understand great events (citing an example from 9/11 – watching events unfold on the TV in his boss’ office [I did that too]).
Harry’s hypothesis is that video is the closest media we have to life and that makes it “super-important”. And advertisers have long understood the magic of television and used that so that they can ride on back of great content and provokes an emotional response (for example the John Lewis Always a Woman ad) – which attempts to connect with customers on an emotional level:
Quoting from Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking fast and slow”, Harry highlighted that we make snap decisions based on emotional connections – and that’s what TV ties into. Online provides an opportunity to take the emotional journey further.
Some more snippets from Harry’s talk:
On average people watch 4 hours and 2 minues of TV each day and 54 minutes of online video viewing – but half of the ads are not watched, so Google developed skippable ad format to avoid annoying users.
Skippable ads are good from an advertiser perspective – getting rid of those who don’t care about your product/service and retaining those who are truly engaged (you don’t pay for those who skip).
So what’s next? The democratisation of video – examples include:
Red Bull becoming a media company from a soft drinks company…
Money Saving Expert videos advising on home finances (all Financial Services companies could be doing this) – and this plays into an idea of “branded usefulness” – become useful to people every day (far easier than being funny or entertaining every day).
Of course, Harry demonstrated some YouTube functionality, like trends, charts and video statistics (look for the button next to the play count), but that was in context, and useful… so not really pitching.
Summarising the session in four points:
Emotional ads work.
Follow the user (where are they watching – if there is an 80/20 split between TV and online watching – split your budget and plan accordingly).
Only pay for engaged users.
Develop content for the new video generation (you don’t have to stay with traditional ads – think about generating your own content – people don’t care where it came from as long as it’s good).
How to transform your marketing with social customer engagement
This session promised a lot. And delivered very little.
In short, Telligent showed us a 3 minute corporate video (with United States contact details) and then their partner (Insites Consulting) spent some time telling us about themselves… Hello? We are not here to hear your pitch!
I'll say it again: *do not pitch to me at a conference*. Use as an opportunity for *Thought Leadership*; sales will follow later #iStrategy
I’ve used Telligent’s software (Community Manager) in the past and I hope it’s a lot better now (that was in 2003). I won’t be engaging with them though based on their performance at iStrategy. And next time I see a presentation is being delivered by a “Sales Director”, I should know better than to expect anything other than a pitch…
The iPitch
Post lunch, the conference moved in to a Dragons’ Den-esque session with six companies each given six minutes to pitch their product. It was a bit of fun – and quite interesting, although, by this point I had one eye on the clock as I needed to leave soon…
Redefining marketing success: why ROI and marketing don’t always belong in the same sentence
The first thing that this panel did was to redefine the topic to “A decade of focus on metrics (measurement, accountability and ROI) is inhibiting innovation and progress in social…”
Moderated by Thomas Brown (@thinkstuff), the panel included Georgios Kolovos (@gkolovos) Azeem Azar (@azeem), Delphine Remy-Boutang (@delphineRB), Joshua Graff (@joshgraff) and Marc Munier (@marcmunier) and there were some interesting points put forward.
Some of the key points raised in this debate included:
The Days of Don Draper are over – we need goals, not just eureka moments – and what better goal than ROI? Combine this with an iterative process to get closer to that goal.
Metrics make sense when you know what to do and you have done it before but don’t make sense for innovation. To deal with this and avoid being late to the table 90-95% of time needs to be driven by metrics (in order to be operationally efficient) but 5-10% should be around experimentation, within a framework and with the right people.
Scale is an issue – in a large organisation it’s not so much about new ideas but ideas that are scalable. That means that a rigorous approach to assessing innovation is needed, and process and rigour come with ROI. Marketers need to be bold enough to agree that others brought an idea to market and also to say it’s not viable for us.
Perhaps, consider a “return on ignorance”, which also has a cost. Eurostar spent €6n to reduce journey times but meanwhile customer feedback suggests they are less concerned about journey times and want Wi-Fi on trains. We need to listen to our customers – not so much for the I in innovation as the C in collaboration.
It’s not either/or (ROI or not) but striking a balance: data vs. creativity; and data vs. innovation. Data driven marketing decisions help drive innovation by better understanding consumer behaviour, segmenting customers and what they are doing, we can be more thoughtful and creative. Data, creativity and innovation are not mutually exclusive and the greatest innovations come from a balance: work with data, innovate and then mesh with creativity.
Marketing needs invest ahead of curve (unlike sales, finance, customer service, etc. who can ramp up as need to based on sales, invoices, customer interaction, etc.).
Going global: how Ford Motor Company sets the tone for a global social media strategy
I had to leave early and missed the final keynote, scheduled to be delivered by Scott Monty (@ScottMonty) from Ford although I understand he was unable to travel and Alex Hultgren (@AlexHultgren) stood in for him. Even so I’m sure it would have been a pretty interesting close to the conference as Scott’s story at Ford is an often-quoted case study on crisis management and I’m sure they have a pretty good grip on social media with lots of advice for the rest of us. In leui of my own opinions, I’ve picked some tweets from others that were in the session
#istrategy secrets to reinventing Ford Motor Co 1 - break down silos, get common vision
Yesterday I said that I had mixed feelings about iStrategy and the major letdown for me was the apparent inability for certain presenters to avoid their own marketing pitches. I’m told by one of the conference organisers that guideline number 1 for speakers is “do not pitch”. I guess you can’t help some people but it’s particularly galling when “social media gurus” and marketing professionals don’t understand the difference between promoting your brand from a thought leadership perspective and turning your audience off with thinly (or not so thinly) disguised sales tactics.
On the whole though, iStrategy has let me take stock (and think a little about my own future direction) as well as to arm me with additional knowledge about the world of digital media (although it’s also true that some of that knowledge can be obtained from free events too – I’ve written on these pages about Dell’s B2B Social Media Huddles and about Digital Surrey and those are just two examples). Nevertheless, for busy marketing professionals, iStrategy should represent a pretty good return in their (time) investment – particularly if they are grappling with their own organisation’s move into the brave new world of connected consumers and data-driven marketing.
It has a good mix of keynotes, workshops, case studies, networking and the ever-present panel (in a variety of formats) and, whilst not all formats will appeal all of the time, there should be something in there that works for everyone.
That’s not the end of my iStrategy coverage on this blog – I’ve got some additional notes that I’m likely to shape into blog posts over the coming days and weeks but, in the meantime, I’ll be switching modes, back from geek marketeer into solution architect as I fill the rest of my week with the immediate day-job concerns around IT strategy and governance…
This content is 13 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
I’m spending a couple of days this week at the iStrategy digital media conference. Whilst my current role is not strictly concerned with marketing, elements of it have led me to describe myself as a “geek marketeer” in the past and I hope that I’ll be able to do so again in the future. Either way, I live and breathe “digital” and we all need to be something of a marketeer these days…
iStrategy attracts a broad range of marketing professionals and executives from all sectors (a quick glance at a few badges shows a wide range of brands that we would all recognise) and, equally, features some high calibre speakers. Its multi-stream approach is both a blessing (allowing delegates to attend the sessions that mean most to them) and a curse (inevitably some sessions run up against one another but this post gives a rundown of some of the highlights from the sessions I attended yesterday.
The social media brandsphere
Kicking off the event, Adam Burns (@AdamRobertBurns) welcomed us to Stamford Bridge, home of the newly-crowned European Champions, Chelsea FC, before international speaker and author Brian Solis (@BrianSolis) spoke about what he calls “frictionless sharing”. I’ve heard Brian speak before and he is certainly entertaining and engaging but the subtext to his talk is “buy my book”, giving just enough to whet the appetite but not enough to make anything real (some might say that’s smart).
I’ll probably write a more complete blog post over the next few days but, in short, Brian suggests that:
We have lost our way in digital media, confusing brand engagement metrics with likes/comments/shares whilst missing the true metrics which are about how people feel and engage.
The challenge for digital marketers is to design a form of engagement which provides a worthwhile interaction, to make today’s more discerning “connected consumers” come back and to get them talking/sharing your content.
Context is now king: mobile and web, online and offline need to work together seamlessly because, whether we like it or not, customers contribute to the state of our brands simply by sharing their experiences.
Great content is consumable; and great social content is sharable – alwyas think about relevance, resonance and significance. What we say is far less important than what we do.
Mobile first, exploiting the potential of the mobile economy
The next session was a panel discussion about the use of mobile technology in marketing. I’m not a fan of these panel discussions and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the audience checking his email etc. as five people sat on the stage chatting amongst themselves with very little audience interaction…
The most useful points (for me) can be pretty much summed up with a tweet:
Yes! Apps vs. HTML5: not an either/or; make mobile site work (concentrate on UX); mobile accessible; apps about rich experience #iStrategy
(I’m not sure, but I think most of that was based on comments from Mastercard’s James Davlouros (@james_davlouros).
The (real) value of social media
Introduced by Alistair Beattie (@bicameralman) from Tribal DDB, this break-out session was a workshop looking aiming to ”look beyond the value of media in social media.” and to reconnect with the importance of the social graph, and with marketing as a whole.
Re-enforcing some of the messages from Brian Solis’ keynote, Alistair highlighted:
Interaction: the 200 top brands only get 1.3% interaction on Facebook and other social platforms – and that’s likes, commenting is even lower.
Reach: fans are only a small portion of the available market – and pages naturally reach just 5-20% of those fans.
Loyalty and advocacy: purchasing frequency doesn’t increase after becoming a fan – and, because of a phenomenon known as edgerank, likes aren’t actually seen by 250 friends – the real number is closer to 16 as not all friends will see that status update.
Regardless of the above, social media is still a powerful medium. When considered with the “Four Ps” of promotion, product, price and place we can use the social graph to improve connections and the session broke out into groups looking at how to apply this principle to a second tier shoe brand looking to retain and attract 16-24 year-olds to its brand.
Open innovation: how EMI learned to love APIs
Betrand Bodson (@bbod)’s case study session was another one that warrants a more complete examination in a separate blog post – and I found it very interesting to hear how EMI Music has managed to create an environment for open innovation (OpenEMI) in a market sector that is traditionally considered slow to adopt new business models.
By creating a secure, managed environment (a “sandbox”) for developers who have signed up to OpenEMI, the company provides a brief and content to for the creation of commercial apps for iOS, Android and the web.
The system is based on a partnership approach with regular reviews and a 60/40 revenue split between EMI and the developer/platform owner:
Developers are responsible for the apps, engineering, product development, upgrades and maintenance.
EMI provides content, manages the clearance with rights holders, and markets the app
The EchoNest provides a technical platform and tools, intelligence on app trends, and facilitates the creation of a network of developers.
Incidentally, one of the other case studies in the same slot examined at how Macdonalds used crowdsourcing in Germany for its Make Your Own Burger campaign – and the challenges that presents to the business if adopted more widely. I would have liked to have heard that talk, but there’s only one of me so I can only be in one place at one time! Nevertheless everyone I spoke to who attended seemed to find it interesting.
Social unleashed: unlocking the transformative power of social media
After a pitch-side lunch, the afternoon keynote was probably the biggest disappointment of the day and, based on the RTs I received, I was not alone in my view that hijacking a keynote to promote your product is unacceptable – even if you have paid a lot of money to sponsor an event.
In fairness to Wildfire’s Doug Laird (@dougbytes) he was a substitute speaker but instead of using the keynote as an opportunity to be a thought leader he simply marketed Wildfire’s social media marketing platform and, ultimately, put me off any future engagement.
If “earned media” is the holy grail of social media marketing – exposure via word of mouth marketing – maybe 13,000 brands can’t be wrong but it all felt a little “me, me, me”:
Adaptive brands: delivering contextual value in a shifting world
In what was probably the best session I attended at the first day of iStrategy, Neil Clemmons (@neilclemmons) from Critical Mass got me on board right from the start when he said that everyone has a list with two columns: urgent (those things you need to do to hit your numbers) and important (those things that will become urgent if you ignore them).
Neil’s presentation was about the “important” things and examined how the 4Ps (used in the morning session on the value of social media) no longer apply – how brands need to adopt new attributes to adapt to a changing market as the emphasis moves from product to service to serving.
Much better than any synopsis from me, Neil’s team had his slides on Slideshare soon after he finished – and I recommend you take a look:
Data and creativity: the near future of display advertising
Micheal Steckler’s session was full of insight into the future of display advertising as the data held on each of us allows for more personal approach.
Michaels own final thoughts make a good summary in that:
The data you own is still the most powerful.
Consider that most activity is talking to existing users online.
Differentiate creative, offer and pricing by user group (this is the future of display ads).
Use sophistication to marry data insight and creativity.
The social club
Hosted by Adam Burns, the final session of the day actually made the panel discussion format work (more chat-show style than discussion around the table). Some of the highlights from Gillian Muessig (@SEOmom), Kerry Bridge (@KerryatDell) and Azeem Azhar (@Azeem) were:
Corporate values have to match brand values – we can tie employees up with social media guidelines but not their friends, family – or our customers… and they will talk about their experiences.
When people come to your “place” to discuss something (your website, your blog, etc.) then you are the centre of the conversation… be that place for your industry or topic…
Dell trains employes in social media just as they do for presentations…
For proof that word of mouth is real – Telenord found that if someone has a frind with an iPhone, they are twice as likely to buy one themselves within the next 90 days. If they have two iPhone-toting friends, they are five time more likely – and that’s based on real world conversation (not social), together with Telenord’s insight nto phone data (i.e. who calls who).
We are putting more online… expect to see more companies seamlessly segment users – not as rough as influence engines but in same way might by, for example, postcode, today…
We often compare influence scores with credit scores but Experian would never disclose your credit score – that’s a key difference with influence engines (and credit is due to Azeem for his transparency and honesty in highlighting this!)
End of day 1
At the end of day 1, I have mixed feelings about iStrategy. As an event it has a lot of potential, but I’m not convinced the mix is quite right (maybe, given the early start, providing some breakfast might have put me in a better mood!) – and I’ve already given my views on Wildfire’s abuse of the afternoon keynote. Even so, I got a lot of value from some of the other sessions, so it can’t have been all bad – and I am writing this on my way back to London for day 2 after all! Watch this space for highlights from day 2 (and some more of the detail from day 1 too).
This content is 13 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
It’s been another crazy week without any time for blogging so here are some quick highlights from the stuff I would like to have written about (and still might, time permitting!)
On Tuesday evening, Mark W Schaefer (@MarkWSchaefer) spoke at Digital Surrey about the use of influence marketing on the web. It was an enlightening talk and certainly something to consider as organisations increasingly judge our online influence in deciding how to (or whether to) react to and interact with us. My personal view is that Klout and its ilk are over-rated (Klout in particular is very much led by volume of online activity – if I go on holiday for a few days, my Klout takes a hit) but, if I were to give a “tl;dr” view on Mark’s talk it would probably include this diagram:
Surround yourself with people who care about you (and your views) and have a pre-disposition to “move” (i.e. like, retweet, advertise, etc.) your content.
Create unique and interesting content – have something to say (in order to make it “move”) – make it relevant, interesting, timely and entertaining.
Be consistent in engagement – not just broadcasting but being authentically helpful and looking for opportunities to interact.
The Internet of what? Well, depending on your source of technology reading material, you might have head that we’re increasingly connecting lots of “things” to the Internet – sensors, for example – and Wednesday saw a CloudCamp Special in London on The Internet of things. As usual, the evening was introduced by Simon Wardley (@swardley) with his well-practiced (but still interesting) talk on the cycle of innovation leading up to his vision of “augmented intelligence” supported by utility computing (cloud), big data, and intelligent mobile applications.
Then, onto the lightning talks with: Andy Bennet (@databasescaling)’s introduction to the Internet of things (it’s not new!); Raphael Cohn’s fascinating recital of how Smith Electric Vehicles overcame a major business issue in that “electric trucks rule, but batteries suck, and mobiles die”; Kuan Hon (@kuan0)’s rundown on cookie laws (which have a much broader impact than just websites); Paul Downey intruducing us to the wonderful world of open source hardware (which is far more extensive than I ever imagined); and Chris Swan (@cpswan)’s review of the Internet of Things in some of his favourite science fiction novels. Oh yes, a a couple of guys from Betfair stood up and tried to plug their new application cloud, which I’m sure is very good but seemed a little too like a vendor pitch to me…
Wrapping up with a panel discussion, before beer and pizza, it was a thoroughly agreeable way to spend the evening and I learned loads about the Internet of things… hopefully I’ll write some more on the topic over the coming weeks.
This content is 13 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Yesterday, I wrote about an event I’d attended as part of Social Media Week London, hosted by MEC Global, looking at thought leadership and B2B social media. For reasons of brevity, I skipped over much of LinkedIn‘s presentation in my original post but it provided a lot of insights that I would like to share… so here’s the follow-up!
LinkedIn’s Colin Smith was talking about the role of social in a digital ecosystem and he started out by saying that social media in 2011 was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to an emerging audience, with organisations testing campaigns and activity, predicting that 2012 will be the year when social gets down to business.
Brands are now what people say they are, and:
“The impact of social media is far-reaching,well beyond how we connect with our friends.It has changed how we work. It is changing how we make markets. It has, critically, re-leveled the playing field.”
Citing various statistics from a recent CIM/Ipsos ASI study (Social Media Benchmark), Colin Smith highlighted that:
Consumers want to be engaged in a conversation – not sold to.
Brands are now what people say they are.
Business is evolving – moving from transactional to relational. This affects the speed to close deals, the size of those deals and the length of the relationship.
Liking, sharing and commenting are all emotions – we need to build an emotional relationship with our customers [I agree: people buy from people – not brands, although there are some brands that will always be considered “safe bets”].
Decision cycles in B2B take longer than in B2C – longevity makes a difference in the relationship.
People will, on average, follow just 2.8 companies in a given sector, but 50% will follow a company in perpetuity – so you want to your brand to be in that 2.8!
Don’t forget that your staff have profiles, engage with, and are probably connected to competitors and customers – people will check what your staff profiles look like.
Sometimes you’ll know that someone is talking about you, sometimes you don’t – some reactions will be negative and some positive.
It’s important to consider that customers have [LinkedIn – and other social network] profiles too. Before they come to meetings they will check out yours, your staff, your company page, what people are saying and come armed – you need to do the same. They follow, like, share, comment – and expect engagement. They connect to your staff and communicate with them. And they will trust you if communicate and share useful information.
Social hygiene is about the ways in which people [your audience: customers; staff; business partners] expect you to engage. It’s about having an authentic voice and sharing. Businesses have a challenge to be open, authentic, honest, engaging.
Don’t just ask an agency to do this – it needs to go to the core of the business – the CEO, or others who are senior enough and have the credibility [and charisma] to speak on behalf of a brand.
Think about social media in the context of employment – it reflects your brand (even if you don’t employ someone they may make buying decisions elsewhere).
Colin gave some advice for engaging on LinkedIn:
Engagement starts with creating a presence, for example, a company page built out on LinkedIn. Many of these are generated through algorithms so claim yours and make it say what you need it to.
Once you have the presence right, think about who want to attract (think about a specific audience – CEOs, CIOs, procurement advisors, etc.) – LinkedIn can target specific audiences. Samsung ran a LinkedIn campaign and gained 20000 followers in 3 days. Mercedes were looking at just the C-suite and gained 12000 followers in 5 weeks. These are not just big numbers, they are highly targetted and therefore the reach is potentially significant.
Continue to engage through company status updates – provide value at scale. LinkedIn has found that 45% would like weekly updates.
Amplify – as with engagement, think who followers are connected to (LinkedIn average is 151 connections per person).
The only cost is building a content strategy, the hard bit is acquiring followers.
Groups can be used to position a company as a thought leader in an existing conversation or a topic that’s important. For example, Statoil is facilitating a conversation for people to talk about energy innovation. A strategy for content will be required when the group is first started (initial 3-6 months) after which it should take on a life of its own.
Finally, Colin gave some tips for better use of LinkedIn [although many of these could equally be applied to other channels]:
Improve your company page to attract a more relevant audience.
Consider engagement with followers – questions and topics to seed into a group.
Members expect insights and news from companies they follow: 66% expect industry insight; 65% expect upcoming company news (advance information before it hits the press); 45% expect the opportunity to join a group; 45% expect sneak peeks of upcoming products and services; and 43% desire inclusion in a community with similar interests.
Interrogate the social hygiene of your company.
Work across departments so that all customer-facing departments have profiles that are relevant to your company – make sure your brand is represented across the board with links to company pages, blogs, etc. Think about whether modifying a LinkedIn profile is part of the induction process for new employees – and, equally, what people say when they leave.
As an individual, I don’t use LinkedIn as a daily destination – it’s still about professional networking for me. For daily conversations, I prefer the immediacy of Twitter (besides, some of my tweets are more suitable for that audience – and the frequency would just be too high for LinkedIn) but I took a lot away from this presentation about how brands might better engage on the platform.
One thing’s for sure, as MEC’s Shane O’Byrne highlighted at yesterday’s event, B2B social media requires effort on the part of the company, and cannot just be left to an agency. That means applying resource, possibly dedicated, but certainly as part of their work (not as an add-on to do “in their spare time”) to generate content that makes an audience want to engage. That’s been the challenge that I’ve struggled with in my own work on corporate blogs and other B2B social media activities over the last couple of years – and making a B2B brand become “social” is a lot more work than simply setting up a few accounts on major platforms…
This content is 13 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
This week is Social Media Week in London and there are a lot of events taking place at a variety of locations. I’m not London-based, but I do work there for a couple of days each week and I booked onto some that look particularly relevant to my role – the first of which was hosted by the social media team at MEC Global (@MECsocial), looking at thought leadership and the role of social media in B2B communications.
To be honest, it was a bit light in places on the “thought leadership” angle (MEC covered this, the invited guests less so) but I was pleased to see someone taking a serious look at B2B social media. In my experience most of the “advice” given at events like this is very B2C (or even C2C)-focused and when asking about specific challenges for B2B it’s often brushed under the carpet.
With presentations from MEC Global, LinkedIn and the Telegraph Media Group, followed by a panel discussion, there was a lot of information provided but I’d like to concentrate on just a few highlights.
Organisational considerations for social media
MEC’s Shane O’Byrne (@shaneysean) opened up the event with some organisational considerations for B2B social media. Taking the view that, in stark contrast to B2C (which is 80% agency, 20% client), B2B social media requires more client input (the 80:20 split is reversed), with the agency helping organisations to deliver thought leadership externally. Considerations include:
Hard vs. soft approach.
Thought leadership.
Lead generation.
C-suite.
Sales.
Credibility.
Prospect.
And, whilst Shane didn’t go into detail (after all, he’s showing just an insight – let’s call it thought leadership – maybe I should engage with MEC for more detail), in general, it’s about bringing people into a community, thinking about when to approach and move them down the pipeline, and shaping conversations with potential clients rather than selling.
Thought leadership may include advice about the marketplace, culture, political landscape, and even some “crystal ball” gazing; and Shane has seen success in organisations who have found the right seniority of stakeholders using a social media council – working as experts to nurture talent and expertise, turning that into rich content for digital ecosystem.
That digital ecosystem was a topic of conversation for LinkedIn’s Colin Smith and, I’ll hold back on that for a future blog post but Richard Fitzgerald, also from MEC (@fitzyrichard) spoke about the need to avoid treating social media in isolation – integrating with other channels.
Richard recommends setting a mission statement – whether that is a philosophy, a brand campaign, a goal, or a business objective, and building on top of that. In terms of time allocation, a rough split might be:
70% resource planning, data and insights, content audits, market analysis, futures studies (what are people expecting to hear about?).
10% for the unpredictable – breaking news, crisis management, reactive content, real time engagement and tactical campaigns.
Social is another means of communication, to be ignored at your peril
Matthew Margetts and Jonathan Davies spoke about the Telegraph Media Group’s experiences of social media, which they regard as another means of communicating and not as superseding a web presence or any other form of communication.
I was particularly interested to hear about their experience of digital media consumption. The Telegraph Media Group is a brand, a content provider and it has commercial solutions (with declining newspaper sales but new markets including competition applications, social video, bespoke applications and Twitter). And, on that last point – Twitter as a channel:
That shows that Twitter should not be ignored and, although monetising the output might be a challenge, there are opportunities to establish presence, create a groundswell of opinion, establish oneself as a thought leader, and become a recognised (and respected) brand – all of which have positive effects later – even if they don’t lead to direct sales.
Pick your channels with care; and who owns that social profile?
The event finished up with a panel discussion and there were two main areas of interest for me here.
Firstly, there’s a lot of talk about relative sizes of social networks (Facebook is huge, Twitter is pretty big too, Google+ may be significant too, and LinkedIn is relatively small) but then think about the audience that you are targetting.
Think about context for B2B socmed. LinkedIn connects professionals but only 640m professionals in world, 12.5m in UK #smwmecsocial#smwldn
This tweet is based on information given by Colin Smith from LinkedIn and, whilst it clearly plays into LinkedIn’s market position (connecting professional people), I think it makes a powerful point: perhaps the majority of those 800m people on Facebook are not actually your target audience? Perhaps Saleforce.com Chatter might serve an organisation well, in a B2B context?
Finally, who owns your social profiles? Well, I’m pretty determined that I own my LinkedIn presence, this blog, my Twitter stream, etc., many of which predate my employment, but a communications director might take a different view, said the panel! One argument is that you learned the points that you communicated whilst you were working for the company (but do we? Some might argue that we build personal brands, based on experience with a variety of roles and employments). There may be cultural differences between personal and company accounts and Matthew Margetts highlighted that The Telegraph has guidelines but, equally, it employs “contrarian thinkers who are encouraged to give their opinions”. Maybe some brands are threatened by the rise of the “personal brand” – that will depend on the company and the market. One thing’s for sure – this particular issue is far from clear cut and looks set to become more and more significant, most likely to be settled in the courts…
This content is 13 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
There’s an old adage about how
“a happy customer tells one friend, and unhappy customer tells everybody”
I’m certainly no celebrity and I don’t expect every company to roll over when I act like a petulant teenager, but they could at least try to address my issue. Couldn’t they?
To be fair to Three, their online team @ThreeUK (which is clear about its online hours: Monday-Friday, 9am to 5.30pm) responded but their response simply bounced me to another Twitter account operated by the company:
Ignoring the grammar, if you care about customer service, what happened to owning the customer’s problem and managing it to resolution?
Clearly Three have (at least) two Twitter accounts operated by two teams: marketing and customer service. That’s OK, but they don’t seem to be able to take a problem inside the organisation to work out the best approach – they simply bounce me from one to the other. Oh dear.
“My issues here are: having to pay to speak to a customer service agent and being kept on hold for a while; getting poor advice from the agent (unless Three can tell me how to drag and drop my bill from their portal to my email, on an iPad); and not getting an answer to my problem. Visiting a store is simply not worth the effort (20-odd mile drive, pay for parking, an hour of my time) – but could well lose Three a customer.”
I even threw them a lifeline:
@ThreeUKSupport Thank you for responding... even if both you and @threeuk have failed on the customer service front...
Now, I know that implementing social media for large corporates is bloody hard. I tried – and there is a lot that we can do better where I work too… people in glass houses and all that… but this is me, responding as an individual, not as an employee, so hear me out, please.
Firstly, if you want to operate a corporate Twitter account (or any other “social” account), be ready to deal with complaints. For support, be ready to direct people to official channels but for customer service issues, then a little more tact and diplomacy might be required.
Secondly, if a customer outlines multiple issues to which they would like a response, it’s OK to ask them to supply some contact details so that you can get in touch and investigate further.
Finally, if all you do is provide stock answers then you’ll annoy a customer who is already unhappy with your company’s service.
For whomever is responsible for social media at Three, there’s a really good book I can recommend: it’s called “Empowered” and it’s written by Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff (@jbernoff) and Ted Schadler (@TedSchadler). The book talks about groundswell customer service and provides real-world examples of how innovative leaders and their teams use technology to solve customer problems… it’s definitely worth a read. And Forrester released a report yesterday entitled “Twitter: the public forum for your brand”. If you don’t have access to the report, it’s author, Melissa Parrish (@melissarparrish) has some great blog posts about the use of Twitter too.
Incidentally, Sainsbury’s, another company that recently incurred my wrath on Twitter after failing to follow up on a customer service email about the quality of the groceries they had delivered a few days previously deserves mention for fixing my issue. Their social media team took action to get my enquiry dealt with and compensated me for the problems I had experienced. Arguably, that is how to respond… Three’s example is how not to…
I started this post with a quote, so I’ll finish with another:
“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”
[Donald Porter, British Airways]
[Update 16 January 2012: Three have been in touch and would like to make it clear that they do care about their customers on Twitter. I’m still disappointed about how my calls and social media follow-up were handled, but it is good to know that they are at least attempting to improve the experience that their customers receive via social media.]
A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation to a lunchtime round-table event, to chat about social media and the law. “What’s not to like?”, I thought, and a few days later I was enjoying the delights of good company in an Italian restaurant in London’s Covent Garden (and wishing I hadn’t driven to the station that morning – more vino please!). Well, what’s not to like indeed – a couple of hours flew by and I could quite happy have whiled away another couple, had I not needed to get back to the office…
.
” and it’s written by Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff (