A briefing on social media
May 13, 2010
I was asked by a colleague (in housing, hence the housing references below) for a briefing on social media. I jotted some notes down and I thought I’d share them with you. And gather any comments you may have.
Why should you care about Social Media?
- Everyone is talking about it (and journalists love it)
In particular, journalists love twitter of course because it gives them easy access to stories across the globe. Of course just because journalists like it, that doesn’t mean we should ignore it.
- It is changing the way people communicate and this will have implications for the way people do business
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that social media is going to be as pervasive and ubiquitous as e-mail. It’s not a question of whether we use social media but how and when.
- There are real business risks associated with the technology
- There are real business opportunities associated with the technology
What is Social Media anyway?
- There is no firm definition
but I think most people would probably agree that it describes something like
technology that makes it easy to create and share content amongst communities and makes it easy to build communities around content
Where content means text, images, audio, video, the technology relies on the the Internet, and the communities are formed on-line.
- It includes tools such as facebook, WordPress, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, or flickr (the list goes on and on) which vary considerably in their structure and approach.
At one end of the social media spectrum are tools geared around a small number of people generating content and a larger group of people commenting on the content.
At the other end are systems designed to facilitate interaction between peers.
There are also tools designed to facilitate collaboration (wikis being the most widespread but there are others such as the Google Wave platform)
Like all tools people use social media for a range of purposes (for example, some people publish information on blogs but don’t allow any comments, some people use flickr as an on-line photo store rather than for networking).
It also, and perhaps more crucially, describes an on-line culture where sharing and critiquing information and content is emphasised. The tools may come and go (Friendster anyone?) but the culture is becoming increasingly embedded.
- It is quite widespread
There are 22 million users of facebook aged 18+ in the UK. Facebook is the most popular social media tool but several others are very well used.
How is Social Media being used?
- It is used as a form of networking, to keep people in touch with each other, to make new friends and to have discussions and arguments. Or to play interminable games involving farms.
- It’s used as a form of protest and to build momentum around protests
- Or just as a form of self expression
- And it is generally accepted that social media is an important part of the marketing and customer relations mix for many, if not most, organisations and companies.
And how do they make money?
Well, it’s possible that many of them don’t make that much money at the moment.
Essentially the primary route to making money for all of these tools is to understand how the networks they facilitate work and then to sell this knowledge, usually to advertsisers (facebook already provides very detailed targeting of adverts) but other organisations are interested: search engines pay Twitter for access to its database for example.
There are supplementary ways to make money, such as the “freemium” model where tools offer some functions for free and charge for others. Flickr is an example of this model.
What are the consequences of all this?
- Social media makes its users much more public than we are used to in society
Consequently there are privacy concerns in general and organisations run increased risks of reputational damage as a result of things that its employees, volunteers and contractors do on-line.
- Social media means that the consequence of poor customer service can more easily become a reputational issue.
Musician Dave Carroll was unhappy with the way United Airlines handled his complaint that they had broken his guitars in transit. He wrote a song “United Breaks Guitars”, made a video and uploaded it to YouTube. As of today it has been viewed 8.5 million times. I think it is fair to say that United Airlines would probably prefer that this video were not quite so popular.
- Social media is becoming pervasive
Many organisations block access to social media tools citing security and bandwidth concerns. This is not sustainable. A local authority of my acquaintance released a viral video in 2009 designed to raise awareness of the Xmas bin collection times. Because the council blocks access to YouTube it had to be distributed on a separate platform internally which prevented the several thousand employees easily sharing the video with their friends and family.
- The culture around making links on social media tools is not well developed.
For example should housing officers be friends with their tenants? should they never be friends with their tenants? under what circumstances should they “un-friend” people they have a professional relationship with.
There are strategic issues around the degree to which an organisation wants to encourage its customers and staff to use social media which need careful consideration. A Housing Association could say “we’ll start to use social media when the tenants ask for it” or they could say “we think that there are real benefits to this technologies so we will support our tenants to get on-line and to use these new social media tools”
- Policies and procedures need to be carefully established
Organisations need to consider whether some roles will be obliged to use social media (perhaps the Chair or Chief Executive should be obliged to use a blog or the customer services team to manage a twitter account).
They also need to consider the training requirements within their organisations, it’s not just about the use of the tools but also about the creation of content, and the rules around commenting and critiquing others.
Hey, let’s try this democracy thing for a change
May 13, 2010
The Digital Economy Bill has been shoved through parliament as part of the “wash-up” as MPs prepare for the impending general election. It is a piece of legislation that serves the interests of large media companies to the detriment of the rights of individuals and the development of the wider economy.
Why do such things happen? Is it because MPs are stupid? I don’t think so, at least not all of them. Is it because Ministers are venal and corrupt? I have less to go on here but let us use Occam’s Razor and see if we can propose an explanation which assumes cock-up rather than conspiracy.
It’s simple really. Large media companies are more important and powerful than you or I. They are more powerful than most businesses. Not only do they employ people and generate tax revenue for the state but they control the means by which you and I find out about the world. It is not as simple as supposing that when they say “jump” the government asks “how high?” but you can’t expect the government to pay as much attention to the rest of us.
Unless we do something to redress the power imbalance.
We could seize control of the means of production, we could try to organise mass protests, we could (as 38 degrees is advocating) lobby for lobbying reform. I’m not against any of that but I do think there is a simple reform that could make a huge difference.
Parliament should pass a law saying that political parties can only be funded from donations made by individuals and no individual may give more than, let’s say, 500 quid in donations in any year. No donations from companies, no massive donations made by rich individuals. Unions would not make donations (though their members could of course).
This would, at a stroke, force political parties to become mass movements again. In order to attract large groups of people to them they would have to listen to them, and talk to them. Individuals would start to become more important.
Some will say that this will force political parties into adopting ever more populist manifestos or becoming even more centrist than they already are. Maybe I’m a rosy-eyed optimist but I suspect it would actually engage more people in a decent political debate and anyway would it be worse to have a Government driven by pandering to Daily Mail readers than pandering to the last vestiges of an outmoded and dying industry?
Yes, but is it journalism? (who cares)
March 7, 2010
Earlier this week I travelled to Hereford, self-styled “Historic city of the Marches”. This was no hardship, it’s my home town and my dad lives there, currently with a putative boat. This time there was more than sailing stories and the world’s most comfortable spare bed to attract me. I went to attend the “Here Comes Everyone” event, a day of films and discussion around citizen journalism (courtesy of Borderlines film festival). No doubt those of you who live within striking distance of #thatlondon are constantly attending workshops in trendy bars where elegant people in turtle-neck shirts debate the cultural and economic impact of the changing media landscape. Out here in the Welsh borders it’s more frequently a couple of pints and “that twitter’s a load of nonsense”.
The keynote address was given by Christian Payne (@documentally) a “freelance mobile media maker”. He was a bit great. If he talks at an event near you go and see him. He really gets this stuff. He doesn’t have the secret to making a fortune with it. On the train back he tweeted
Must have been asked 10 times today “How d’you make money?” I said “Talking, teaching, documenting.” I should’ve said “Slowly.”
Then we had the oddest panel I think you can imagine. It comprised an anarchist, a Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, a journalist from the Financial Times and a manager from BBC local radio. We learned, I think, that journalists have yet to grasp what is happening to them.
It was almost impossible to square the rambling discussion that ensued (about why only trained journalists working for proper papers can fulfill the unique and vital role of seekers after truth necessary for the proper functioning of society) with the subsequent session. The second session featured Climate Camp TV, Undercurrents, Travellers Times and the aforementioned Christian Payne.
Now, for example, I really admire the way the Climate Camp movement uses social media to inspire and co-ordinate its activists. I think we can guess that various police forces are less admiring. But I don’t believe that anyone looks at Climate Camp TV and sees therein a balanced and objective perspective on environmental issues. This does not mean that they aren’t telling the truth. We get to make that judgement for ourselves. I also don’t believe that environmental issues are reported fairly, accurately and objectively in the mainstream media and, frankly, I know quite a lot about a lot of these issues.
The truth is that bloggers and citizen journalists are not going to replace trained journalists working for conventional media organisations. Bloggers and citizen journalists are going to complement conventional journalists and challenge them. No-one really understands how we can make money out of this yet, but that doesn’t seem likely to stop anyone.
The day started with a screening of Burma VJ (a very worthy nominee for the Documentary Feature Oscar). This is based on the footage filmed by astonishingly brave citizen journalists within the country. I think that it is pretty clear that these journalists have an agenda. They want democracy, human rights, and the release of political prisoners in their country. During the saffron revolution in September 2007 every news organisation in the globe seemed to use their footage.
Are they “proper” journalists? It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.
The first rule of social media is… it’s not about social media
February 23, 2010
Here’s a fun game that we can all play. Let’s have a look at some recent comms crises involving social media and see what we can learn. It certainly beats Scrabble.
Paperchase recently apologised after an internet campaign supporting an artist who claimed they had infringed her copyright. Interestingly this is no longer available on the link I had bookmarked. At the height of the storm they set up their first twitter account.
Many of the 1.5 million twitter fans of director Kevin Smith were outraged when he was kicked off a Southwestern Airlines flight for, apparently, being too fat. Southwestern were on the case immediately (they already have a popular twitter account). Their public apology didn’t seem to hamper negative press coverage.
And my personal favourite, Dave Carroll’s measured and amusing response to what he felt was United Airlines unhelpful customer services. United Breaks Guitars. Now viewed over 7.5 million times.
What do all these have in common? It is obvious isn’t it. The original complaint had nothing to do with social media. Social media just made the consequences of upsetting the three individuals involved much more serious.
Paperchase didn’t seem to take the complaint of copyright infringement seriously. United Airlines didn’t resolve Dave Carroll’s complaint to his satisfaction. Southwestern can’t expect to kick passengers off its planes and have high levels of satisfaction.
You should worry about these case studies (and the many, many more spreading across the net like viruses). They present a reputational risk. And as we all know there are two ways to manage risk.
You can manage the impact of the event. And this is where a crisis comms plan would come in handy. However managing the impact is not the desirable option.
It would be much, much better to reduce the likelihood of occurrence. Social media makes customers (and other stakeholders) much more powerful. It means that poor customer service and poor complaint handling can be rapidly reflected on your business on a scale that was unimaginable for most of us until recently.
So put your resources into better customer service. Be flexible, train your staff better, use PR tools (including social media) to find out more about what your customers want. That will be good for your business, good for your customers and good for all of us.
How many words is it worth?
January 26, 2010
A few years ago I had the honour to be summoned to a conference at a rather lovely Yorkshire Hotel. A gang of us had been brought there to give our views on how the region would look in 2050 if we achieved the deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution had said would be necessary (50% based on 1990 levels since you ask). This was, at the time at least, grist to my mill.
Imagine my horror when it turned out that, for the entire two-day session, my views would be captured by painting and drawing on flipcharts. We weren’t allowed to write words at all, not even labels. I tried but I really can’t draw and anyway my mind doesn’t work that way. I had, in short, a bad weekend.
Lots of us in PR and comms have minds that work on words. Most of us started as journalists and all of us believe a Sunday with the papers and a vat of coffee is what evolution has been striving for all these years. Just check this for me. How close to your desk is your dictionary? How close to your desk is your history of art book? Is it still on the shelves at Amazon?
So we employ designers to do the visuals for us. Even then, though, graphic design is largely applied to the service of text. We allow designers to arrange our precious words and in these modern times, we illustrate the words with photos. Sometimes (if we feel a bit outre) we include cartoons or abstract art.
A while ago an old friend and visual artist Rob (follow him @plentymuch) gave a short discourse (over a cup of tea as I remember it) on the subject of the images in contemporary society. It rather struck me at the time. He argued that our access to visual media in popular culture: film, TV, print and, of course, the computer screen has given us a level of sophistication in how we interpret and understand images.
A pop video, for example, will reference movies, pieces of fine art, mass market brands and previous videos. This is transparent to the viewer and is often has a complex relation to the main story of the video. Visual short hand is widespread and well understood. My favourite Christmas card this year featured a snowman rendered as Munch’s the Scream and titled “Forgot the Christmas Turkey”. Tell me that’s not sophisticated.
And it’s a two way process of course. Images fly around social networks like… er… flies. Even if we get that we can transmit information and concepts in the form of pictures how easy do we make it for people to use images to talk to us.
Wordsmiths need to recognise that this is happening. Images aren’t mere baubles to hang on our well-crafted prose. They can replace our prose. We need to spend a lot more time hanging out with designers and artists. We need to stop and think “Would a picture do this better?” We need to imagine a word in which the dictionary has pictures.
Now obviously I shouldn’t have written this post. I should have selected a series of well chosen photographs. But my mind just doesn’t work that way.
Belfast City Council has the most effective facebook page in local government
January 7, 2010
How did you spend your holiday?
Just before Christmas I decided to have a look for Councils who were doing good things on facebook so that I could point you to them. Now actually there are plenty of things that Councils could be doing on facebook but the easiest one to spot is where they have corporate pages. The best list for Councils on facebook is maintained by the eGov register. Finding pages is one thing, how to we identify organisations using the technology well?
In my view effective use of a facebook page would be evidenced by lots of fans, lots of interactions, regular updates and content specifically prepared for facebook. So I measured these figures for each Council page just before Christmas (and looked back for 2 weeks preceding this). Then I combined these scores to give an overall score for effectiveness. The breakdown of the scores for each page I looked at is here.
Who’s top of the pops?
Belfast scored the highest despite the fact that it doesn’t make a lot of use of content prepared specifically for facebook. It has more fans and more interactions than any other page. If you want to improve your local government corporate page, they are definitely the ones to watch.
Barnett and Torbay have plenty of fans but aren’t very interactive. Still bums on seats certainly count.
I also rather liked Maidstone BC’s page which had a rather middling score but seems to be run by someone who “gets” social media.
These are highlights in a landscape of local authorities who are, at best, putting a toe in the facebook water. Plenty of council’s haven’t established a presence, plenty more have very low-key pages.
What’s Belfast doing so right?
Well Belfast has some in-built advantages compared to (let’s say) Carmarthenshire. It’s a university city, it’s the capital of Northern Ireland and one of the two most important cultural, economic and political centres on the island of Ireland. So you might expect plenty of social media appetite there. The page seems intelligently managed, it isn’t just re-publishing the RSS feed from the Council’s news pages. it’s timely and relevant.
In the scale of things though, even this powerhouse of social media effort is a actually pretty small beer. Sitting next to the City Council page is simply the “Belfast” page with over 30x as many fans as the local authority, oodles of interactions (many with swearing) and almost now official status updates.
And the conclusion is?
Simon Wakeman has argued that local government shouldn’t use corporate facebook pages. I wouldn’t go that far. These findings suggest that there is an appetite for a well managed page. I do agree with him that social media requires a different approach. Council’s (and indeed all corporates) need to learn how to use these tools to engage with and converse with people.
Decent PR people are fretting about how we can measure the effectiveness of social media. This is a start. What do you think?
The crystal ball returns
January 4, 2010
Almost exactly one year ago I, perhaps foolishly, made a series of predictions for 2009. Let’s see how I did.
I said: Arguments between local authorities and their local partners will break out across the England as a result of CAA reporting.
Was I right?
Yes but I can’t prove it.
In December, the Government has set up a slightly confusing site which enables you to find out how your local public sector is doing. So far councils seem to be getting the blame for everything. That is not sustainable. Gossip suggests that there are considerable tensions behind closed doors.
I said: There will be a general election in June and Labour will be returned to government with a reduced majority.
Was I right?
No. And no room for obfuscation either.
I said: There will be an amusing range of rubbish and embarrassing forays onto YouTube.
Was I right?
Well I was clearly in a bad mood. There have been a range of experiments with virals and video content. Some have been more successful than others. UK public bodies are still feeling their way with all this stuff. Few of these forays have been ground-breaking but few could fairly be described as I did a year ago.
Well I was clearly in a bad mood. There have been a range of experiments with virals and video content. Some have been more successful than others. UK public bodies are still feeling their way with all this stuff. Few of these forays have been ground-breaking but few could fairly be described as I did a year ago.
I said: Millions of pounds of public investment will be wasted as infrastructure schemes are rushed and poorly planned.
Was I right? Sadly yes.
I said: Facebook will rule the world.
Was I right? Pretty much, even though the media buzz is around twitter, facebook is where the action is. Just by way of example: people spend a lot more time on facebook than on any other site and facebook users share 3 times as many photos as flickr users (which is a dedicated photo sharing site).
I was pretty negative about twitter back then and I’m still ambivalent. I still think the most interesting thing about twitter is where it might lead.
So that’s 3.5 out of 5. Despite this I will be publishing my 5 predictions for 2010 very shortly. Call again soon.
Councils on facebook- please help
December 17, 2009
Dear local government world
I’m doing a little research for this blog on local government use of facebook. As part of this I’m looking for Council facebook pages. Facebook’s search feature is pretty rubbish. This is what I’ve discovered so far but I’m sure there are plenty more out there.
If you know of a Council facebook page that I am missing, could you leave the link in the comments or drop a line to ben@benproctor.co.uk or tweet it to @likeaword. Thanks very much.
I’m looking for corporate pages or pages clearly owned and maintained by the Council, rather than pages set up for a specific event or project but I’d rather have too much than too little.
The results of the research will be published here and possibly on http://benproctor.co.uk under a Creative Commons licence.
Any questions or concerns, just ask.
Thanks everyone
Ben
Should housing associations tweet?
December 16, 2009
This is a response to a post on Kate Hughes’ blog “Part One: Should housing associations tweet?”
She says “Yes”.
I say “maybe”.
I’m a reluctant twitter fan. Being freelance, I spend a lot of time on my own gazing at a computer screen and it is very addictive having tweetdeck pottering away on the laptop to my left. I have also worked with some organisations to bring twitter into their marketing comms with some success.
So I’m certainly not going to say that housing associations should not tweet. I do think that twitter is, for most organisations, at the bottom of a hierarchy of social media and that resources should be put into blogs and facebook (and maybe bebo and myspace) first. I also think that organisations like housing associations need to have conversations with their staff about what is and isn’t appropriate on social media (should you follow tenants? should you friend tenants? should you identify your employer on social media? should you set up official profiles?).
Kate points out that there are plenty of stakeholders other than tenants on twitter which is important because twitter is probably not an effective way to engage directly with most tenants (though it’s an excellent way to engage with those tenants who use twitter).
I do think that it is time for housing associations to take the social media debate on a step or two. Social media is definitely here to stay and it certainly has many benefits to users. Over time, there is a real risk that the users of social media will tend to get faster and more effective access to services than those who use more conventional ways of accessing services. It’s in the nature of the technology.
It seems to me to be entirely appropriate that housing associations should consider how they want to respond to the changing on-line world. They could invest in supporting and encouraging tenants to get into the social media cloud. They could decide that there is insufficient benefit to be had by engaging with tenants through this mechanism. Let’s face it most of them will be somewhere in between.
But it is time that social media stopped being the preserve of the marketing team and started being the preserve of the board and the chief executive.
As I will no doubt continue to say here for a while.
United Breaks Guitars
December 8, 2009
Mashable has a fun post of “The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2009″
In at number 7 is the marvellous “United Breaks Guitars” a rather catchy sing-a-long number. As the song explains, it was written because Dave Carroll’s guitar was broken en route on a United flight and he felt that their response was not satisfactory.
He happens to be part of a professional music outfit. They made a simple and witty video, they mixed the song well. They put it on youTube.
And, so far, it’s been viewed well over 6 million times. It will stay there as well, just sitting there, waiting for people to stumble across its catchy refrain. Literally all I know about United Airlines is that “United Breaks Guitars”.
Play it to senior decision makers who don’t take this social media seriously.
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