At the July London Meet Up we will be hearing from Interaction London about measurement and insight in social media.

Sentiment and listening in particular grab my attention when this topic comes round for discussion. Surely it is just common sense? So common sense in fact all the “Social Media will save your business” and “if you are not on twitter you will die by the end of this sentence” people are so far behind they think they are first.

The technology available merely enhances our ability to do an even better job of what we were doing already.

I often find myself crossing swords with traditional sales people who do “cold calling -because that is what works in our industry.”
Really, the only reason they do cold calling is “because that’s what they do”. They don’t know any better because they are so busy cold calling they have not got time to listen to people.
I consistently strongly, passionately and adamantly argue that we should seek human social and interactive behaviour to engage with each other. This means less time wasted, less annoyed people and a more often than not a win / win. Most of you will know this as ‘permission marketing’.

Why I love Meet Up is not so much the technology is it the ‘sentiment, culture and community around the brand. “Use the internet to get off of the internet” is their tag line.

It is very easy to hide behind a phone an advert or a flyer; being genuine, admitting your mistakes and taking responsibility (or not as the case maybe) is more engaging and attractive to people because it removes doubt and develops trust so things move faster.

This is at both ends of the business spectrum. Big brands who try to cover over mistakes end up with egg on their face; or smaller companies and sole traders pretend they are bigger than they are “We work for major brands on product launches”. (You were giving out flyers at a school fete for Tesco you mean.)

My point is that honesty and trust works in several different directions, if we claim we are authentic we are cursed with instantly sounding Inauthentic. However, if we accept and practice honesty with no attachment we get some of the most valuable feedback ever and that sets us on the path to winning. It is easy to muster up compliments from people but takes a braver person or brand to go out and find what is being said and deal with it. While this looks a very unattractive route to take it is certainly where the real gold lies.

Jim Collins uses in an example in his work of how Johnson & Johnson recalled millions of products in the early 70’s from supermarkets in the United Sates and won major brand trust, whereas another company had a similar situation a few months later and only recalled one consignment – this company shut down a few years later.

Building a community of advocates is, quite possibly the most intelligent way forward. Way before we were glued to our Blackberry’s and iPhones the words ‘know like and trust’ were bounded around in business. I would venture to suggest that is even more prevalent in today’s social engagement economy – YouGov surveyed 80,000 UK adults and tagged 25% of them as the N – generation, (this is the subject of a later post) but essentially these people live online and are influencer’s, in a higher earning, disposable income bracket.
Of course you have to meet people to get customers; most of all you have to know what they are saying and how to engage them.
So… meanwhile back in the ‘Cold Calling Hell Den’.
“How many meetings have you booked this week? Any of them this new N-generation thing?”
“I have not got time to find out about that, I’m on the phone!”

Guest post by Bernie Mitchell

Does “tweeting” mean you’ve figured it out? Does knowing how to “friend” someone qualify you as a modern marketer of the new advertising age? Hardly. In fact, reaching that lofty goal is less about the tactics we employ, and more about our overall approach to the complexities of the modern consumer.

Our jobs are becoming more demanding. Big businesses now operate in a multi-market, multi-lingual, and frequently multi-brand world. A world filled with commercial and cultural nuances. The modern marketers I respect are finding ways to address these nuances by developing cross-market and cross-brand efficiencies. They’re fostering smarter collaboration across teams, agencies, and disciplines, producing big brand ideas that transcend tactical executions and work in markets of varying sophistication, and they’re leveraging their scale to lower costs while focusing their marketing dollars in the right growth areas. All while producing great work.

My personal fascination lies in the fact that digital marketing — and at a minimum Internet based technology — is helping to drive this evolution. Digital marketing is at different stages depending on which markets you are working in around the globe. But in almost all instances, it seems to function as the great connector that helps to bring cross-channel experiences to the consumer.

Digital, once deemed complex and expensive by the rest of the advertising world, actually offers the ability to produce re-usable libraries of common tools that can be shared across markets and brands, empowering them to focus their budgets on brilliant creative ideas instead of unnecessary technology that had been used multiples times in the last year by other agencies and brand teams.

Social media monitoring tools can be set up for enterprise businesses and deliver intelligence to multiple brands across multiple markets at reduced costs while facilitating a deeper understanding of the consumer. Web based collaboration tools are helping to produce better ideas, faster, with equal input from brand agencies, digital agencies, and media agencies.

I’m not discrediting the importance of innovation. I’m the world’s worst culprit for loving new exciting platforms in digital marketing. I just think we need to step back and reevaluate what makes us pat someone on the back for being in a “digital master class” that understands modern marketing. Some of the biggest companies in the world who frequently get accused of being laggards are realizing how scale and digital marketing play VERY well together, and could form the cement in their global marketing initiatives.

In the end, modern marketers are putting their money where there mouth is and, as a result, giving their agencies what amounts to a thinly veiled, but no less justifiable ultimatum: show us results, the analytics to support them, and develop creative in a cost effective way, or we’ll find someone who can. We should all heed the warning. Those who don’t? Well, then they don’t know “tweet” about modern marketing.

post by Freddie Laker

On 30th September 2010, Social Media Monday co-hosts the Social Collective conference. We’ve an exciting line-up of key note speakers along side the #MAPmad debate, here’s snap shot about what its about!

There’s something not quite right with how Marketers, Advertisers and PR folk are using Social Media.

1. It’s fragmented! A tweet here. A Facebook page there. A widget over there and oh yeah! Let’s get a blog in place here.

2. What are we delivering? Followers? Traffic to a specific site? A conversation with a key stakeholder? What does any of this actually do?

3. We’re thinking short term instead of long term. Social interaction seems to be in good shape. We can find the right people. We have access to a plethora of tools to reach the right people. We have community managers chatting up the right people. But so what?

4. Creating real value for business: delivering sales or reducing the cost of business just gets you a seat at the table. It’s what differentiates the Social Media talent from those that don’t quite get it.

Join us at SoCol for the #MAPmad debate. We’ll quickly look at what’s not working before we open up the conversation audience wide as we discuss some potential fixes and collectively try to answer some very big questions.

Take advantage of our limited 50% EARLY BIRD ticket offer, tickets are selling fast and excitement is ramping up about #SoCol

Blog post by Shannon Boudjema

Whilst I concede that this isn’t exactly breaking news, but we all love a good stat and Social Media Revolution 2 gives us exactly that, I also concede that many of us are already converted and wise to the powers of social and the value that can gained from relationships and community online (and offline, I love a meetup..!)

The value that Socialnomics bring us in this case is an additional wave of excitement that we can share and pass on to our clients and those dipping their toe into the market, so lets draw some of these wow stat’s and anecdotes out.

-Facebook added more than 200 million new users in less than a year.
-If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest in the world, bigger than the US, Brazil or Indonesia.
-80% of companies use social media for recruitment.
-The fastest growing segment is 55-65 yr old females.
-Gen Y & Gen Z consider e-mail passé.
-Wikipedia has over 15 million articles.
-There are over 200,000,000 blogs.
-25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are user-generated content.
-78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, of 14% trust advertisements.
-“Social Media isn’t a fad, its a fundamental shift in the way we communicate”
-“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO socialmedia, the question is how well we DO it.” Erik Qualman

And of course,
-Social Media has overtaken Pornography as #1 activity on the web…!

Take a look, Fatboyslim’s dramatic soundtrack makes #GEEK cool.

post by @BarryFurby

Confused about Social Media ROI? Check out this presentation by Todd Chaffee from MIKAMAI. He originally made this presentation at the London Twitter Developers Nest #7 in 140 seconds. The idea is that there is too much fuzzy and overly complicated talk about Social Media ROI. Hopefully this simplifies it a bit.

If you’d like more complete coverage of the Twitter Developers Nest #7, head on over to Mobile Industry Review where Ewan Macleod tells a good story. And be sure to check out his fantastic presentation on the mobile industry which you’ll find in the same article.

Are you involved in Social Media and working towards showing ROI? Have a success story? Or would like to learn more? Please leave comments below.

Here at Keplar some of our recent advisory work has been for online community sites, helping them to improve their customer proposition while also growing their revenues. In the course of these projects we have started to develop a new technique for guiding the development of these sites which we call “value chain mapping” – a technique that works to improve the way community sites serve their community whilst simultaneously growing their revenue. This blog post aims to explain this technique – articulating the theory but also providing practical advice for owners of social networks. (None of the companies mentioned in this post are current or past clients of Keplar.)

Vertical social networks: a primer

For this post we focus on “vertical” social networks – these are simply community-oriented websites which focus on one content area, interest group or demographic. We use the word vertical to distinguish these community sites from general-purpose social networks such as Facebook and Bebo. For this post we use Mumsnet, the UK website “by parents for parents”, as our main example.

So, what does a vertical social network look like? Typically these sites provide their user community with a set of “soft tools” such as forums, profiles and articles, all designed to support the site’s users in socialising, sharing knowledge and fulfilling specific needs. On Mumsnet, those user needs would include childminding, keeping their child healthy, and finding a kindergarten.

On the monetisation side, vertical social networks generate most of their revenues through advertising – showing users targeted or general banner ads but also directing users towards relevant businesses for a fee (see for example the Mumsnet Mall). It’s a delicate balancing act for the site owners as communities respond badly to advertising which they deem excessive, irrelevant or dishonest.

So, what’s wrong with this model?

The current model is far too narrow

The fundamental weakness of this approach to a vertical social network is that it’s far too narrow. To continue with the Mumsnet example: parents are an important part of the parenting ecosystem, but they are only one part of it. There are many other people and organisations who have a direct or indirect role to play – from the children themselves through to care providers (e.g. childminders, paediatricians), merchants (e.g. toy shops, pharmacists), manufacturers (e.g. buggy makers) and educationalists.

In short, parenting is a huge, complex ecosystem of which parents are the most important part – but they are only one part. And a site which only gives a voice to one player in an ecosystem is an echo chamber – think of the House of Commons without the Opposition, or eBay without the sellers. These sites are facilitating peer-to-peer communication between their narrowly defined interest group, but they don’t truly fulfil that group’s needs, because they don’t allow them to build real relationships with the wider ecosystem.

Our approach for vertical social networks, then, is built around the idea that these sites need to expand to accommodate – and serve – as much of their respective ecosystems as possible. It is only by this expansion that the user needs of their core interest group (e.g. parents) can be properly met.

Mapping value chains

If this is the theory, then how does a site such as Mumsnet go about incorporating its wider ecosystem – isn’t this a Herculean task? Fortunately, each ecosystem breaks down into a set of smaller, discreet value chains. By a value chain we mean a set of people or organisations which pass value in one direction to fulfil a user need, for example the value chain for childminding looks something like this:

Our approach is to incorporate these individual value chains into a vertical social network to better serve these user needs. We do this by “mapping” these value chains into the network – in the case of childminding this would be a three step process:

Extend the network to allow agencies and childcarers to have individual profiles on the site
Provide discovery tools to allow parents to find and evaluate these childcarer profiles on the site
Provide market tools to allow parents to buy childcare from providers through the site
With this value chain mapped into the social network, parents are now able to discover and buy childcare without leaving the site. We are leveraging all the powerful attributes of social networks – discovery, reputation, communication – and applying them to solving a specific user need. Incorporating more of the ecosystem is then simply a case of “breaking off” more value chains, mapping them onto entities within the social network and providing the necessary tools to connect them to users.

If this is the approach, what is the impact on the site’s bottom line? The impact can be considerable, because whenever a service is fulfilling key user needs there are significant revenue-generating opportunities. To go back to childcare: in the UK alone this is a £4.1 billion market (source). If a social network can model a value chain like childcare then there are various ways of capturing a slice of that value – perhaps a small slice, but certainly much higher than any revenues from current advertisers from that value chain. Wahanda, the health and wellbeing network, is a great example of a site which has mapped its key value chains and is capturing value as a result.

Conclusion

In summary, then, value chain mapping is a way for vertical social networks to break out of their current narrow focuses and start comprehensively fulfilling their user’s specific needs. In doing so they can directly capture value from their respective ecosystems, in addition to the indirect revenues they currently make from advertising.

A social network can start small with this approach – we recommend that network owners reading this start with just one user need: take that user need, understand the value chain that fulfils it and make sure that the relevant organisations and people have a space within your network. And let us know how it goes! We’d love to get a discussion going around this post with a view to building on this approach and helping social networks to deliver more.

Thanks to Alexander Dean from Keplar for contributing this insightful post.

Thanks to Shannon for drawing our attention to this fantastic resource from Seth Godin…

I’ve loaded it to slide show or its downloadable from the link below:

Getting Found: Social Media for the Job Seeker

There’s a rapidly expanding list of resources available to the job seeker to find work, with dedicated sites such as Chinwag, Only Marketing Jobs and NMA Jobs for the Digital Marketing and Social Media sector.

These sites all utilise tools such as Twitter and LinkedIn to build communities and broadcast their latest jobs (join and follow them…), but what about using Social Media to paint YOUR public profile to SELL your skills and help you get FOUND. I think if you’re going to spend some time doing this, then LinkedIn and Twitter are the place to do it. They’re the key tool s that I use on the other side of the fence to find job seekers and broadcast my jobs. (My LinkedIn | My Twitter) )

LinkedIn:
Anyone can sign up for LinkedIn, throw a basic profile together and do nothing with it… That’s not going to get you anywhere. LinkedIn is an excellent opportunity to paint a skilled, professional profile of yourself. It should contain all your recent relevant experience, job titles, descriptions, companies, url’s and provide a synopsis of what you can do best.

Sell yourself… If you’re conducting your own job search then why not give hiring managers and recruiters the chance to find you, remember the people search shows search results in relevance order so write about what you do using keywords and that perfect job might just find you. In a punchy way it should contain as much info as your cv!

Use Groups… Search for groups that are relevant to your skill sets and job area, some of the groups have 200,000+ members, so take part in discussions and again, get your name in front of people, build your network and increase that chance of being found.

Connect… If people have been happy to engage in conversation and discussion in the groups then invite them to connect, you never know what relationships might bring. This could be B2B contacts, future clients, people to learn from, people who’re hiring?

Broadcast… If you’re in a position where you can, broadcast the fact that you’re looking from your status update, if you have been taking part in groups, connecting with people then you have a greater chance of getting referred or recommended for new roles.

Twitter:
Again, anyone can sign up and send 10 random tweets, but you will not get anything from Twitter without investing a little bit of time in actually engaging with people in the communities that you live/work/breath, do not under estimate what can be achieved with twitter, I know several people that have found some really priceless relationships and i have a few of my own.

Peronalise it… People buy from and hire People, so a bit of personality is a good thing. Twitter gives you 140 characters to describe yourself in your profile settings. Also, I recommend using the url field to link to your LinkedIn profile, add a profile pic, and the 140 character description of you and what you do.

Download Tweetdeck… For me Twitter doesn’t quite make sense without it, start here…!

Engage… Status updates that talk to 100,000,000 people but say nothing don’t add value, but finding content that will interest others will, so read NMA, Revolution Mag, Mashable or whatever you trade read and tweet interesting things, You can set up searches and RT (retweet) other peoples links, reply and comment on peoples posts and you will gain followers and build a network of listeners.

Use Hashtags… Many users have a column in their twitter app to find interesting tweets, I have a search ‘#socialmedia’ and ‘#digital’, but also #ukjobs #jobs #web #SMUK might be worth a look. If you then tweet and use a hash tag, people that aren’t yet following you will find your tweets and hopefully pick up on your interesting content.

Conclusion: Spend some time, ENGAGE and be part of it, Build YOUR personal brand,and reap the REWARDS.

5 connections and 10 followers probably isn’t going to get you very far, but it might? Ultimately we’re talking about a numbers game and how to maximise the chance of being found, but I’m confident that a few weeks into your campaign you will have found job leads and found communities that share opportunities and referrals. Social Media is all about transparency and sharing, so why not share things you find and help others too.

Blog by Barry Furby | Fresh Resources, Social Media Jobs

Also on this subject:
- Recruitment Waters, Simon Lewis
- Social Media tools: Job Hunt, Shannon Boudjema

We all know that LinkedIn rules the earth.  Well, it is certainly trying to do so.  Business folk circumvent this networking platform at their peril, for avoidance renders them conspicuous by their absence.
But just like any other product, LinkedIn is only beneficial if you know how to use it.  Virtuous it may be but just how much can it improve your personal development opportunities and, anyway, how do you use it to network?
First, let’s look at what you could do:
Courses of action
Suppose you are a jobseeker looking for <a href=”http://www.onlymarketingjobs.com”>marketing jobs</a>.  What would be your usual course of action?
1. Register your details with a couple of selected recruitment agencies.    2. Type “marketing jobs” into Google and see what comes up.  You may also wish to determine a specific location.    3. From this you’ll get a selection of advertised vacancies from job boards and recruitment agencies.  Or aggregators pointing to the same.   4. You may be an executive, in which case you’ll probably grab the Guardian on a Monday or, perhaps, you’ve already subscribed to a trade journal or two.
Whilst on the face of it these proactive job hunting methods are admirable, they are nothing new.  All your competitors are doing this; and right now there are many of those.So here’s what you can do with LinkedIn:
Before you start, make sure your public profile is complete and up-to-date.  And this includes your photo.  There is little point engaging in the social media space and hiding under the sofa.  Show people who you actually are, not what you want them to believe.  Where’s the transparency in that?
Next there’s your recommendations.  Who can endorse you?  Of course, these need to be business references, not something your ‘professional friend’ cobbled together.  Ideally you’ll have a collection of suppliers, clients, peers and managers.
Are you a blogger?  Do you have your own blog page?  If so, set it to RSS into your LinkedIn profile – provided, of course, it complements (rather than contradicts) the image you’re tying to portray.
What we’re trying to get at here is that your profile is your sales platform.  You have no idea who views your page each day and if you get it wrong you could be missing out on some great opportunities.  Because unlike the four channels mentioned above networking is a two-way process.  You need to visible to people looking to find you as much as you need to be proactively punting yourself.  By getting it right, you really can maximise your exposure on LinkedIn.
Once ‘social you’ has been established you can confidently commence your networking, which means putting yourself in front of as many relevant people as possible.  And if you are jobseeker you’ll be tracking down premier recruiters and, of course, direct employers.
Join a LinkedIn Group
One of the most constructive ways to network via LinkedIn (and any other digital space for that matter) is to join relevant groups.  This is where your peers, recruiters and potential employers hang out.  There are 1000’s of groups on LinkedIn so choosing the right ones can be a bit trial and error.  If you are a marketer, for example, you would join a marketing group.  Common sense.  Many groups are densely populated by friends across the pond, and whilst the US tends the lead the way technologically, they don’t half mind nattering about themselves.
Contribute to the Group
Once you’re in the groups, take part.  Social media encourages an altruistic culture so you should be giving more than you receive.  Start discussion and join in others, offering advice and passing on your knowledge.  People soon realise who the good guys are and you will be surprised who starts connecting with you.  If you have an interesting news piece, share it.  Benevolence this may be, but this is part of the networking.  Play the game right and you will be rewarded by the bucket-load.
LinkedIn offers you the chance to send messages directly to the people with whom you wish to engage.  You already share common ground so with some clever content you can easily break the ice.  You can request people to join your network and they will oblige if they see some relevance.  By offering the opportunity to connect with your contacts you will initiate a two-way beneficiary.  Again, it’s about being authentic and transparent.
LinkedIn search functions
There are various search functions you can implement to find the people you want.  The same process will help you uncover companies in your [skills] area that would be worth researching.  Before/after you apply for a job (via LinkedIn or not) why not seek some advice from people who are either working there now or who have in the past.  This will help you prepare your application and, where necessary, tailor your cover letter.  It will also provide useful knowledge at interview stage.
Make an impact
Don’t forget that the fundamental rule of networking is impact; leaving your contact wanting more.  You need to be as proactive as you are reactive, ensuring your online presentation is as good as it is during the offline meetings LinkedIn will undoubtedly afford you.
For more information about using LinkedIn view this LinkedIn user guide.
<a href=”http://www.linkedin.com/in/simonlewis1″>Simon Lewis</a> | Only Marketing Jobs