FreshNetworks Blog

At FreshNetworks we aim to bring you the best posts in social media, online communities and customer engagement online. In case you missed them, find below our top five posts in June.

1. Gordon Brown’s YouTube trauma

Our most popular post for two months in a row, Charlie Osmond examines Gordon Brown’s use of YouTube to make policy announcements and why it isn’t always the best medium. There can sometimes seem to be a temptation to use social media to convey a message, but whether it’s marketing, communications, PR or engaging your customers, there’s a place for social media and a time that another route is more appropriate.

2. Build your own community or go where people are? Do both

Another popular post over the last couple of months, examining the debate about whether brands should engage customers where they are online (and so in social networks) or build their own site to bring them to (a branded online community). Here we look at the Hub and Spoke Model of Social Media Engagement. Showing how the most effective thing for any brand to do is to do both.

3. Dell makes $3 million on Twitter. What can we learn?

Dell has reportedly made $2 million in sales directly from their @DellOutlet Twitter stream, and a further $1 million from sales that started on Twitter but were completed elsewhere. That’s $50 in revenue for every Twitter follower they have. In this post we look at three reasons why Dell has been so successful with Twitter and what others can learn.

4. How organisations can use Twitter – some examples

A presentation of three different ways that organisations are using Twitter and some ideas of how other organisations can do the same. Putting a public face on the brand, like Ford. Segmenting and targeting different groups, like Dell. Or using Twitter as a gateway to a broader social media engagement strategy.

5. People are fed up of joining brand pages on Facebook

Research from the Internet Advertising Bureau suggests that people are becoming increasingly tired of requests to join brand pages and install branded applications on their Facebook page or in other social networks. We look at what this means for brands and marketers trying to engage customers in social networks.

I’ve spent the last ten days with no Internet and very little access to English-language news sources. On my return I turned to my three favourite sources for getting up to speed quickly on what’s been happening: BBC News, Twitter and Google. The first of these for an overview of what had happened and the last two to really delve into some depth, to find out what people have been saying and to see what’s really been happening.

It turns out I missed a lot.

Only a few years ago, my main source of information on anything from the events in Iran, to the events in Los Angeles would have been a printed newspaper or magazine. I could have picked up one of the weeklies at Heathrow airport on Sunday and found out most of what there was for me to find out on the journey home. Today things are very different. There’s a vast array of information out there from news outlets to people like you and me. People who might (at least claim that they) know more than the new outlets, or at least are more willing to tell us.

Both the aftermath of the Iran election and the death of Michael Jackson have highlighted the role that users can play in generating  news content. Keeping us up-to-date on what they are seeing, hearing and thinking. And often doing this more quickly than traditional news sources. The way we find out about what is happening is now quicker than ever  before.

Speed of reporting is important for news and has been the focus of many important developments. The Crimean war in the 1850s saw the arrival of reporting that must have felt to readers of the day like ‘real-time’ updates. For the first time, electric telegraph enabled news to travel across Europe in hours and not weeks. People could find out what was happening at the Front. This was a real revolution. The increased speed at which we could get news and reporting changed what people wrote about and how they wrote about it – the birth of the ‘embedded’ journalist with the troops. This was the first time people could hear about battles and what was happening in the war whilst they were still pertinent. People felt they knew more and knew more quickly. They felt like they could change things.

And the use of user-generated news is bringing similar changes thanks to the speed at which it is letting people tell us what they are seeing and hearing. This is changing the kind of news we are exposed to. Whereas previously we would see reports that a journalist had crafted and would assess how much credit we gave to that particular journalist, source or publication. We are now getting snippets of information from multiple sources and each time  have to assess what we think about that source and that piece of information. The many thousands of comments an news-snippets on Twitter about Iran or Michael Jackson need to be evaluated  – which do we trust (and why); which are we interested in find out more about (and why); which snippets when put together give us a fuller picture of events (and why).

There is a danger with this kind of news. A danger that people will question less and that things that are not true or have less critical appraisal will start to influence what we think and what we do. I’m more optimistic. I think that the  massive growth in real-time news will make us be more critical and help teach us to process this new kind of information – taking in more from a wider range of sources and filtering out what we don’t trust and query things by looking for other sources. This has to be a good thing.

And of course it means that we will get this information quicker than ever before. What this means for traditional news outlets is probably another story…

Some more reading

• Michael Jackson: Information Overload (geeksaresexy.net)
• Web slows after Jackson’s death (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Twitter and the news cycle, perfect together (ethanzuckerman.com)

The real power of all the user-generated content and ideas that result from an increasing use of social media depends on our being able to find it. It’s no use to have millions upon millions of comments added each day if we can’t find them, or if we can’t sort for the ones most relevant to us at a particular moment.

This is, of course, not a new problem. Information from the earliest Medieval libraries to today’s online communities and social networks has needed sorting, categorising and cataloguing so that we  can find it successfully. Twitter users have a simple way of helping to sort data – the hashtag.

The concept is simple. A short code is added to the end of a Tweet to associate it with others – this then lets people search for everything on this  subject. So, for example, if you were tweeting at this weekend’s Glastonbury music festival in the UK then you could add the code #glastonbury to your tweet. If you wanted to search for what’s happening then you just need to search for everything with this code.

Hashtags are great for events and are a really effective way of associating related tweets with each other. But they are quite limited. As a means of sorting and cataloguing data they are very simple, perhaps too simple.

This became quite clear over the last couple of weeks with the use of the hashtag #iranelection. The tag was originally used by people in Iran who were tweeting updates about what was happening. Others in Iran were able to find out about  events, protests and developments by tracking these updates. The hashtag wasn’t the most used on Twitter but it was serving it’s purpose. Then it suddenly became popular, very popular. And that’s when you start to see the weaknesses of this way of organising information.

The #iranelection hashtag started being used by people not in Iran searching for information or merely expressing concern for or interest in what was happening in the country. The tweets from people on the ground were much less easy to find with hundreds of tweets from well wishers mixed in there. Information was much more difficult to find as the hashtag became more popular.

Whilst simple, the hashtag has limitations associated with this. One of the real challenges for Twitter (and indeed for many other social media sites) is finding ways to sort, file and catalogue information in a way that makes it easy for others to find. This is not easy – in part it depends on the fundamental structure of the site itself, and in part on the ways in which users use the site.

The ideal might be a way to filter content by type, by user information and by a series of categories. But this requires that you gather more profiling information than many of these sites do (or indeed than many users would want to give) and providing a way to categorise both at a parent and child level, which is complicated from an information architecture perspective. Resolving this is the real challenge of social media – finding a way to search for and discover information we want. It is this that will really show the benefits that social media can bring.

Some more reading

• Social Media and #IranElection | bigMETHOD (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• How to Search Twitter (olago.wordpress.com)
• Twitter numbers up thanks to Iran (thisisherd.com)
• Iran Twitter: Why The Movement Adopted This Medium (huffingtonpost.com)
• Iran, Twitter and the value of new media (sluggerotoole.com)
• ‘It’s Hot in Iran’ Is Latest Tech PR Gimmick (gawker.com)

Image by WolfS♡ul via Flickr

I have friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter. There is a temptation to think that these are two names for essentially the same thing. That Facebook and Twitter have just chosen different terms to describe the same thing in order to differentiate their offerings, distinguish their brands. But actually there are some fundamental differences between ‘friend’ and ‘follow’, and the two concepts signal very different types of site and user experience.

There is a basic and fundamental difference between these two ways of getting to know people in social networks and online communities. To ‘friend’ is a two-way process; it requires both parties to agree that they want to connect with each other. To ‘follow’, on the other hand, is where one party finds somebody they are interested in and tracks them, with no need for the followee to give their consent. So friending is two-way and following is one-way.

At FreshNetworks, we build online communities with both types of connection. Which one you use, if any, leads to a very different user experience, and suits a different type of site.

To friend

Friending suits sites where we are interested in personal connections. Where we expect people to identify others like them, that they share experiences with, are in a similar situation to, or have similar interests to. Both parties are interested in connecting and so both have to feel that there would be a benefit from this. It is a high-intensity connection.

Friending allows users to follow what each other are doing – they may be interested in the same discussions and so want to know when their ‘friend’ has added something. It allows users to navigate their way around the online community based on the activity of a smaller selection of people they have connected with. At its most developed, friending allows a user to create their own sub-community of people that they feel close to and are connected with.

Friending really works when you are building a community with persona types who really want to share their experience with individuals across a range of topics and areas of the site. Where people are going to be able to quickly identify people they want to connect with in this way. Either by showing shared areas of interest, concerns or ideas. They want to engage with each other and that is what friending helps them to do.

To follow

By contrast, following is a low-intensity connection. It suits sites which are very much content-led with discussions, reviews or ideas take priority over the individuals who suggest them. One user needs to identify that they are interested in the content that another user has posted and that they want to be informed of all other posts that they make. The are less interested in engaging with the other user, sharing ideas and discussions with them, or even conversing with them directly. They are more interested in the content the other user creates and wants to read more of it.

Following is great for search. It allows users of the online community to select people whose content they admire and then build a large feed of such content. They might then use this feed to find out what is new, as an entry point into the community and the discussions.

Following really works when you are looking to build discussions on specific topics and want people to gravitate towards one set of discussions rather than another. It can be great when building a community around product reviews as users are typically more interested in certain types of product. It is also great for sites where there are a number of different discussion types and certain users are only interested in certain ones. But following works less well where you are tying to engage people across the content, and critically engage people with each other.

Image by coleydude via Flickr

Some people follow me on Twitter, where I invariably write about work-related things and my interests in social media, marketing, branding, online and such like. Other people are friends with me on Facebook, where they get to know what I did this weekend, can see pictures of me in a bar in East London and know all about my upcoming holiday plans. Still more people are contacts on LinkedIn where they know when I change job roles, qualifications or publications and speaking engagements.

I use each of these three social networks for different reasons. And different people follow me on them. Because of the nature the sites, and the people that follow me I talk about different things and so somebody following me on any of them only gets to see one part of my life. This is probably true of everybody online and is the reasons that many people question whether you can really make friends or get to know people online, in social networks or online communities.

The question of whether you can really become friends with somebody probably depends on individuals and their own personal concept of friendship. Perhaps the more useful question is whether we can really get to know people online.

This is certainly something that we discuss a lot with clients at FreshNetworks when designing online communities for clients – should a particular community allow members to become ‘friends’ with each other or not, should it allow them to ‘follow’ other members. We often debate whether this kind of function is valuable, and whilst it isn’t in all cases, in many it is. Why? Because online communities are about ideas and shared experiences. They are places where people share their thoughts and opinions, they share something of themselves and so people can connect through these ideas. You can read what people say and learn what they are interested in, care about, think and do. We actually get to know an awful lot about them.

So in online communities, at least, it is possible to get to know people quite well, particularly as concerns the subject area of the particular online community. Whether you become friends with these people probably depends on your own criteria for friendship.

Image by youngrobv (Rob & Ale) via Flickr

There has been a lot of talk over the last year of Obama’s election as the first social media election. And it is certainly true that there is much we can all learn from how Obama used social media as a candidate during the election process. But over the last couple of days we’ve seen another use of social media in elections – reporting on the fallout from the election results in Iran.

The presidential election in Iran was held on the 12th June, between incumbent Ahmadinejad and rival Mousavi. The result was a landslide for Ahmadinejad, and opposition supporters have since been protesting the results. There has been mixed coverage of this in traditional media – with many criticising CNN for its coverage, and the BBC seemingly blocked in Iran as a result of its reports on what is happening.

It is in social media that the wealth and depth of information is to be found. And some of this is quite remarkable:

• Twitter is perhaps the best place to follow what is happening in real time (#iranelection). And it is also the source of some particularly unique insights, such as the Tweet from Mousavi saying that he had been placed under house arrest.
• Blogs allow coverage in more detailed form from bloggers both inside and outside Iran and from all parts of the political spectrum
• YouTube is a source of video content from inside Iran, often in a raw and unfiltered manner.
• Flickr is building a library of user-created images of riots and the aftermath of the election.

In all, the amount of information that is being shared about what happened, and is currently happening in Iran is huge. People are creating content and, thanks to efficient search, others are able to find it.

If Obama’s use of social media showed how candidates can harness it to support their own campaign, and to build their own brand, the case of the Iranian elections shows how the public can use social media to express their own opinion and to show what is happening.

One of the real developments that we are experiencing at the moment online is a exponential proliferation of information. Cases like the aftermath of the Iranian election are a great example of this. We can follow things in real-time thanks to services like Twitter, but we are also documenting the events for the future and doing so through the words, voices, eyes and ears of users themselves. Perhaps that is equally important.

Image by Alex\ via Flickr

There’s been a lot of talk about Twitter so far this year – starting with the incredible growth in number of Twitter users to more recent discussions about a Harvard Business Review report that 10% of Twitter users generate 90% of activity. In all these discussions there is a significant debate about how to monetise Twitter – how they can make money from it. Most agree that Twitter is currently not monetised, at least not by Twitter itself. But Dell tell a different story. This week they revealed that they have made a total of $2 million in sales thanks directly to @DellOutlet, and a further $1 million in sales that started on Twitter but were completed elsewhere.

So at least somebody is monetising Twitter, and quite successfully too. How is Dell doing it? What is the secret to their success?

Dell sells refurbished computers through @DellOutlet and has about 600,000 followers. And whilst $3 million revenue is a relatively small proportion of Dell’s overall sales, this does mean that they have taken an average or $5 for every follower they have on Twitter. A pretty impressive amount. If @aplusk could realise this kind of revenue per follower, he would make over $10 million. Even my few thousand followers at @mattrhodes would earn me almost $15,000 if I could realise revenue from Twitter in the same way that Dell can.

So how does Dell do it? The way it uses @DellOutlet is, like many of the the best ideas online, simple. They message their followers with deals, special offers and discounts. This is a form of real-time coupons – Dell can alert people to offers and discounts as they arise. And change the offers immediately when they sell out.

People love a bargain, they love feeling that they are the first to know something, and they love a personal connection and interaction. It is the combination of all three of these in @DellOutlet that makes it so successful.

• Dell’s approach to Twitter fosters a personal connection – rather than have a single corporate Twitter account, they segment their followers by having different accounts for different customers with different needs and interests. Those following are interested in what that particular Twitter account has to offer and will feel that it is meeting their needs.
• The use of a real-time update system like Twitter allows for offers to be promoted when they occur. It offers an immediate notification of any offer or discount and as such those who follow @DellOutlet are the first to know about deals.
• Through @DellOutlet, people can find out about genuinely good deals.

It is these three things together that make for Dell’s successful monetisation of Twitter. It’s a relatively simple formula that many businesses could adopt. Perhaps the more interesting aspect of this story is that whilst Dell uses Twitter to generate $3 million in revenue from its followers, Twitter itself asks for none of this revenue.

Some more reading

• Twitter is Not Your Average Social Network (mashable.com)
• What the Dell? Twitter Followers Get Bonuses (montysmegamarketing.com)
• Twitter to offer Facebook Page-like features for companies (or what)? (venturebeat.com)
• Dell Provides Exclusive Deal Offers on Twitter (shoppingblog.com)
• Dell joins those who ‘get’ Twitter marketing – who’s next? [VIDEO] (inquisitr.com)
• Dell Starts Offering Exclusive Discounts Through Twitter (techcrunch.com)

Image by horizontal.integration via Flickr

A post from Lon Safko on the Fast Company blog today talks about The 10 Commandments of Social Media. The advice is good and serves as a great starting point for individuals, brands or any organisation looking to use social media. Safko’s ‘Commandments’ are:

1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy).
2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere).
3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them).
4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find).
5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often).
6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately).
7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs).
8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone).
9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week).
10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)!

These ideas are great, and they encourage people to specific activities. However, I would add one simple and perhaps over-riding consideration:

• Experiment and innovate – give social media a go

I once heard an interview with Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO at Kodak, who advocates experimentation in marketing, saying that if you not going to kill somebody or break the law you might as well give social media a go. I think there is some truth in this, social media is a relatively forgiving environment as long as you are honest and open about who you are and what you’re doing. The cost of entry is also relatively low – it’s free to set up a Twitter account or a blog, and as long as you commit what can be a relatively small amount of staff time you can experiment and find out what works for you.

So whilst I think it’s great to get people to upload videos or photos, comment or write a blog, I think there is a simpler call to action – have a go, try things out, learn what social media is like by doing it and find out what works for you.

Some more reading

• I’m Your Customer and I Can’t Hear You (slideshare.net)
• Jeffery Hayzlett, Kodak’s CMO about Social Web and Marketing (pravdam.com)
• Brands say social media still an ‘experiment’ (thisisherd.com)

Image by MartinPhotoSport via Flickr

This week I was asked to talk to the Marketing Directors Network in London about how organisations are using Twitter. We’ve written before about how celebrities are using Twitter and how organisations are using Twitter as an engagement tool. In both cases, perhaps the best advice is just to try using Twitter and to see what happens. As a rapidly growing site, Twitter is changing on a daily basis. New people are joining and using it for new reasons. As such it’s a great environment for brands to experiment and to see what works for them.

And if you are going to experiment, three ways that organisations are using Twitter are as follow.

1. To put a public face on your brand

This is what Ford, Southwest Airlines have done so well. Taking a large brand, that to many has seemed faceless, and putting people centre stage. Using Twitter as a way of putting a face to the brand and providing a route for people to engage. There are many benefits of putting a public face to your brand, overally it provides a personal connection and helps build the emotional relationship with your consumers that can be so useful, especially in the current economic climate.

2. Allowing you to segment and then target different groups

Dell is a great example of how to use social media, and how to experiment with it. It has a large range and variety of Twitter accounts that are used by different people to engage different audiences about different things. Twitter is a great search tool – you can monitor and analyse the different conversations people are having about your brand. Start to understand the segments and the give them different messages using different accounts. The marginal cost of another Twitter account is practically zero and so it’s a great way to engage different people in different ways.

3. Using Twitter as a gateway

The best use of Twitter can be as part of a hub-and-spoke model of social engagement. Use it to engage people in Twitter just as you might engage people in Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social networks and online communities. Then provide your own site or online community that you can take people to. It is when they are on your own community that you can really work with them, share and discuss ideas with them, get a better understanding of who they are and what they think. And bringing them to your own space makes them feel special. You move from interrupting them where they are doing something else, to providing a direct line to engaging with you.

Some more reading

• Ryanair doesn’t believe in online PR, but it’s working well for other airlines. (bigclever.blogspot.com)
• Perfect storm: JetBlue versus Southwest on Twitter – real incident (simpliflying.com)
• HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service (mashable.com)
• People are fed up of joining brand pages on Facebook (freshnetworks.com)
• Why We All Benefit From Big Brands Being in Social Media (mashable.com)

Image by spud murphy via Flickr

Hi I’m Nick – the FreshNetworks marketing intern. Sadly, my time as an intern at FreshNetworks is quickly drawing to a close so I thought it might be of interest to talk a bit about what I’ve learnt – particularly around social media. Even though I may not have known it before, social media has had a huge impact on my life. Here are four things I’ve learnt during my internship:

Web 2.0 is part of an internet revolution…
So what is Web 2.0? A meaningless marketing buzzword, tech jargon for computer geeks, or an internet revolution? I never really understood the full meaning of the phrase. However since being here I have definitely gleaned a clearer definition. Web 2.0 refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in ways previously unavailable. On the web, people can publish whatever they want, when they want and this has led to the growth of social networking sites, wikis, support forums and online communities. My answer now? Internet revolution.

Could I live without social media?
Being part of the Nintendo generation I’ve grown up with the worldwide web so I’m an avid user of web 2.0 and social media; sharing photos on facebook, discussing my travelling plans on tripadvisor.com, providing feedback on ebay, downloading an mp3 and finding out how to fix a computer problem through online forums. The ability of the internet to allow users to share and discuss information has definitely been beneficial to web surfers like me. No doubt I’ve taken social media for granted up until now, but now I realise that without it my life would surely have been much less productive, organised and social!

Social media can make companies $$$
Next week I jet off to do the typical backpackers route – Thailand, Cambodia & Vietnam. The unbiased, user-generated content provided by Tripadvisor.com has been an invaluable planning tool – yet another benefit of social media. But I was fascinated to learn that this website generates its owners (Expedia) a third of their revenue. And here I was thinking it was just for fun.

Word-of-mouth is four times as trusted as TV advertising…
Word-of-mouth is the most trusted decision-making tool for consumers. And today, more and more people use the web for word-of-mouth – reading other users reviews and comments on particular products and services. In fact, online communities are increasingly a first choice for this sort of research. As a result, marketers are adapting their campaigns to allow for this change in consumer behaviour; it makes a lot of sense, as online communities allow one person’s recommendation to reach thousands around the world.
Without me knowing it, social media has become and integral part of my life. Could I live without social media? Probably not, but at least now I know it!

Some more reading

• Should schools ban social media practice and education? – ZooLoo … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• What IS a Social Media Expert? (growmap.com)
• Using Social Media As A Sales Tool (kylelacy.com)