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Real-time marketing

Posted by headstreamsocial on April 5, 2012
Posted in: Community, reputation, social networks, technology. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 comment

As previously discussed, we are currently witnessing a shift away from the carefully planned and orchestrated ‘BIG’ campaign, toward a campaign journey made up of small but valuable communication content, agile enough to respond to the 24×7 media environment.

This shift has occurred due to the rise in social media and data, fuelled by technology and consumers’ demand for immediate and contextually relevant content.  In response, brands already have, or will need to, re-structure their marketing departments to offer a unique, personalised value proposition to their customers with a focus on content.

From an agency perspective, creative, planning and production teams will all need to adopt a more extemporaneous mindset, so that they are able to respond in real-time.

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Social networks = ‘look at me’ Interest networks = ‘this is me’

Posted by headstreamsocial on March 23, 2012
Posted in: social networks, technology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

The social media phenomenon of 2012 to date has to be ‘online pinboard’ Pinterest. Its simple formula, which allows users to make ‘virtual pinboards’ of images that interest them and to browse others’ boards, has proved a winning formula. Having amassed over 10 million users Pinterest is moving towards its stated mission to ‘connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting’.

Pinterest’s success has thrown the subject of ‘interest networks’ into the spotlight, but the idea of ‘interest networks’ isn’t a new one…  

The success of longstanding Web1.0 forums such as Money Saving Expert, Motley Fool and Trip Advisor is based upon the wealth of user generated information available on a particular topic (interest).  Members can share links and information, discover links to information and collect links and information on a particular topic of interest within the forum.

Facebook on the other hand is a social network platform allowing us to share information with selected friends and family (our social graph).  However, to have a deep conversation with our connections around a specific interest, most of us revert to direct messaging e.g. email and IM which is closed.
Even though brands have joined in on Facebook, the primary conversation is between brand and fan.  For the brand it is more about being social with customers, rather than facilitating fan to fan interaction.  Yes a community does exist within a brand page, but conversations are primarily based on responding to brand updates. As a result brand content released through Facebook, such as applications, are one size fits all.  Content is primarily general interest (competitions, entertainment) rather than specific interest.

Twitter on the other hand allows many like minds to come together around hash tags and lists, but it is not easy to collate info on a single topic in one place.  You can use tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite, or custom data visualisations but it is not a perfect solution.  A brand can be more flexible in terms of content, but because of the limited number of characters allowed on Twitter it is difficult to use multiple hash tags in each post to produce a comprehensive interest list.  Again, as a result, the majority of content produced by brands themselves is usually generic to ensure that a large audience will re-tweet to achieve trending.

It is against this backdrop that interest networks such as Pinterest and Foodspotting are becoming ever more popular.  They combine the open API of Facebook (tapping into the social graph, allowing for frictionless sharing amongst personal social networks), with the open forum/message board behaviour of link sharing, allowing curators to comment, discover and collect information based on specific interests.

Facebook themselves are responding to this trend via interest lists.  If one is interested in UK Politics you can group together feeds from political party brand pages and curate a stream of related content. Alternatively I can follow someone who has already curated this list.
However, interest lists are limited as you can only group people/brands based on your social graph, or allow you to filter friends into circles similar to Google+.  They do not allow you to curate individual pieces of content surrounding a specific topic.

Moving forward we will see even more interest based networks springing up.  The life blood running through them all will be Facebook/Twitter, so that users can achieve ‘look at me’, showing off to their social network, when they discover ‘this is me’ content via their interest graph.

Next week we’ll be looking at how brands can take advantage of interest graphs.

Social Brands 100 in Review

Posted by headstreamsocial on January 16, 2012
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With the launch of the second Social Brands 100, we’ve compiled some comments and insight on last year’s ranking by representatives from the ranked brands, industry and press.

Nominations are open for this year’s ranking. Let us know what brands you think should be recognised by tweeting @SocialBrands100 with the names of your favourite brands using #sb100.

The ranked brands:

Stuart Handley, Dell: The listening revamp

Claire Kavanagh, giffgaff: giffgaff leading the way: ranked telecommunications Most Social

Jas Dhaliwal, AVG: Top 100 social brands, how we came 15th

Sarah Pettegree, Bray’s Cottage Pork Pies: Say What? We’re What?

 

The industry:

Anne McCrossan, Visceral Business (and SB100 panellist): The state of the social brand

Ted Hunt, thisishelpful (and SB100 panellist): Social washing

Neville Hobson: 100 brands ranked by social ability to engage

Helen Brain, Mediacom: The top most bestest social brands

John Bell: What makes brands social

Rosemary Bird, Pure Content: Brands embrace social media but not geo-tracking

 

The Press:

UK

The Wall: Top 100 social brands revealed as Dell, Nike and Starbucks top table

Contagious: Social Brands 100

The Drum: Brands failing to use geo location social media services

Retail Week: How retailers can become more sociable

Third Sector: Child’s i Foundation ranks highly in list of top ‘social brands’

International

Biz-community: Social Brands 100 launches today

Propmark: Social Brands 100 destaca Twitter como a rede preferida das empresas

Marketing Media Review: Dell, Nike и Starbucks возглавили рейтинг «Топ 100 социальных брендов»

 

New Twitter: Yours to discover

Posted by headstreamsocial on December 9, 2011
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So last night Twitter brought us some new announcements, so Christmas came early for social media geeks (a term of endearment of course), and our very own social geek, Sam Hilary, spent his evening yesterday learning all about the new changes.

There’s loads to cover and possibly even more announcements from #LeWeb today, but here are our top level insights about the different changes announced yesterday: Continue Reading

Where does Google+ fit?

Posted by headstreamsocial on November 8, 2011
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So Google+ Brand Pages are here and everyone’s got opinions. Most people are disappointed for some reason, be it the lack of design elements, the one person admin, lack of Vanity URLs, the fact that people need to add you to their circles before you can add them, the very high chance of cybersquatting… let’s agree it’s not perfect, but what ever is?!

We do believe there is opportunity though, it’s just figuring out where Google+ fits in the plethora of platforms available. It’s figuring out what content is best shared where. I just found myself explaining my expectations for a fashion brand on the three main platforms (FB, Twitter, G+) as:

-       Facebook is for consumption. Here I want to see the latest clothes, be able to click through and buy them, maybe get involved in customizing them, entering competitions etc.

-       Twitter is for engaging with the brand and getting quick updates from them. Here I want to be able to praise or complain, I want to hear as soon as there’s a sale, get excited about a new launch with my friends.

-       Google+ is about telling me the story behind the brand. It’s about making my engagement with it even deeper. It’s giving me videos from people behind the brand (a la Burberry) to give me that extra insight. Yes, at the moment I get that on Facebook, but to be honest, it doesn’t really fit there for me.

Feel free to disagree by the way – I may be very wrong, and this may not work across other brands in other verticals.

Anyway, lots to figure out. And we’re not assuming that Google+ is right for everyone. It’s definitely more suitable to some brands. And most importantly, it’s most suitable to those who are willing to make a commitment. Maintaining your social outposts, and keeping them consistent and according to a strategy is not easy work.

In the meantime, we’ll keep learning and will share our opinions here or on our Google+ page!

 

The tricky issue of influence

Posted by headstreamsocial on November 4, 2011
Posted in: blog, Homepage, reputation. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 comments

Influencer ranking tools have been a hot topic of conversation lately. Last week when Klout, the original influencer-ranking tool, changed its ranking algorithm there was a sharp backlash on social media. What emerged was that some individuals had been adapting their online behaviour to try and ‘game’ their Klout score, and now they were angry that the rules had changed. To us this seemed to be a lose-lose situation. For the individuals it showed a huge lack of authenticity, and for Klout it demonstrated how its data can be flawed.

With this in mind Headstream were pleased to be able to listen to Azeem Azhar (@azeem) the founder of Klout competitor, Peerindex, at yesterday’s #dellb2b event in London. He provided his take on just how good the current tools are, and how he thinks influencer rankings can be used.

Headstream’s view is that the current tools (the third competitor in this market is PeopleBrowsr’s Kred) are blunt instruments that should only form one small element when assessing influence. And this appeared to be shared amongst the gathering of social media, technology and business thinkers at #dellb2b.

When Azeem asked the room ‘Who believes influence can be measured in a single number?’ just one hand was raised amongst the sixty people or so present (@bejaminellis you know who you are!). The consensus was that there is a huge problem when applying a single influencer ranking for an individual when influence is such a subjective area. For example one person’s influencer could be another person’s non-entity, or an influencer in a certain subject in one geography could be irrelevant to those in another.

Azeem admitted that ‘There is no single accurate definition of influence at the moment’ but he believed that one could emerge over time, moulded by market forces. “There needs to be a standardized definition of influence. That will emerge from the to-ing and fro-ing of the market, and for that there needs to be competition.”

As luck would have it one of those competitors, Kred, in the shape of PeopleBrowsr’s Andrew Grill @andrewgrill, was in the audience. He agreed that the definitive influencer ranking doesn’t exist, and questioned if it ever would. Andrew said: “We have a really big responsibility. We are scoring humans, can that ever be definitive? I think it’s important that there are three or four companies out there doing this to give healthy competition.”

So is that the future? A ‘basket’ of different influencer rankings that gives an aggregated picture of how the individual scores in terms of online influence? That solution is probably little better than the single rankings.

From our practical experience in mapping influencers for clients the best solution is to use human analysis, rather than automated rankings. By using monitoring tools to gather data about a particular topic, then diving into that data and tracing relationships and information flows between individuals we establish if individuals have reach, relevance and respect around the brand (or issue) we are working with. These insights can then be used to create comprehensive profiles of each influencer, and to map the links between them.

Three elements of influence - reach, relevance, respect

We do use automated influencer ranking tools on occasion to double check named individuals. Most often though we use them to fuel some banter within the team along the lines of ‘my Klout is bigger than yours’ !

Happy Halloween!

Posted by headstreamsocial on October 31, 2011
Posted in: blog, Homepage, Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

As it’s Halloween we used the opportunity to carve some jack-o-lanterns over the weekend to send to some people along with our thoughts about why social media needn’t be scary.

Halloween pumpkins

We find that many people still don’t quite know where to start with social, and are worried about making the business case, or prioritising activity in the right way.

Social can be overwhelming, especially when it’s only part of your job.  It’s a world filled with buzzwords, technological developments, creative case studies and theories. The thing is; there is no need for it to be that complicated.

We have proven approaches that help focus this world, helping you to distinguish the important from the nice to have. These cover a number of issues, including:

- is your brand ready to make the most of social, and what challenges /opportunities might it have?

- how should you be prioritising activity, and how should your budget be split?

- what kind of content should you be developing to deliver the most value?

- how can you go about reducing your paid media spend by making the most out of other channels?

If you find social media scary (scarier than our pumpkins anyway) get in touch!

 

In conversation with Jeremiah Owyang

Posted by headstreamsocial on October 28, 2011
Posted in: blog, communications, Homepage, technology. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

Headstream had the pleasure of meeting Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) last week, partner at social business and technology advisory firm Altimeter. We’ve always been big fans of Jeremiah’s work, so it was a real privilege to hear some of his thoughts on the future of social business and technology. Here are five key-points we took away:

 

Open will beat closed

The business models that will thrive are those which “work with the internet rather than against it”. Jeremiah believes that “open will win” and cited as an example Altimeter itself, which makes all its research openly available, compared to other research firms that charge for access. He sees Altimeter’s  business model, which gains its revenue from follow-on advisory fees, as more sustainable than the paid-for content model.

 

“Make the market your marketing department”

By adopting an ‘open’ business model, distributing content widely, and providing individuals with the tools to link back to your content, the entire market can become your marketing department. A business like GiffGaff is a good example of a company where the customers are working for it in this way. (GiffGaff ranked highly in Headstream’s Social Brands 100 listing, published in March)

 

URLs will go away

As we enter the era of the social web i.e. an internet built around people rather than machines, the traditional architecture of the internet will change radically. Jeremiah sees a future where “corporate web pages go away, URLs go away, search as we know it goes away. We will know so much about customers that we won’t need those things. Data will be used so well that we can predict and anticipate what the market wants.”

 

Europe vs. the U.S

Jeremiah had two observations. First, Europe is 24 months behind the U.S. when it comes to adopting social business practices, and second, Europeans are much more decorous when it comes to conversations on Twitter, in the U.S. the Twitter ’noise’ is much greater!

 

Teaching people to shout

If you respond to unhappy customers on Twitter without a co-ordinated and in-depth social CRM strategy in place, you are simply “teaching them to shout at you some more”. Only those companies that are prepared to introduce a service culture throughout the organization e.g. Zappos, will be able to handle customers successfully. Jeremiah is wary of any company that says it wants to undertake social CRM if the executives aren’t prepared to get personally involved.

 

These are a few highlights from a wide-ranging and excellent conversation over a lunch organized by Neville Hobson @jangles, and supported by Dell’s Kerry Bridge @kerryatdell. Many thanks to them for making it happen, and to the other guests @sheldrake, @benjaminellis, @jas, @abigailh and @sophiebr, who made it such a great conversation. Lovely photo here.

Google+ Is Going Mainstream

Posted by headstreamsocial on September 27, 2011
Posted in: blog, Homepage, technology. Leave a Comment

That’s right, whilst we were all looking at the new Facebook features (and were briefly distracted by Twitters promoted ads in the UK) Google+ decided to go mainstream. How can you tell? Just look at the top users: http://socialstatistics.com/top/people/followers

Hey pop pickers it’s Slam Jam Sam here bringing you the celebrity Google+ entries in today’s chart:

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Relevance was the word of the day

Posted by headstreamsocial on September 19, 2011
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Last Friday we spoke at and attended the latest NMA Live event entitled  ‘Social Media – Implementing an effective strategy for your business’. A quick half-day event to give guidance around all things social to 200 delegates, it was interesting to see what was discussed during the speaker slots as well as the panel discussion at the end.

With a different social media event seeming to happen every day and learnings being thrown about at every corner (or in every tweet/blog post) it was interesting to hear the main advice from the five social experts available on the day:

Chris Buckley, Head of Agency, Headstream

David Parfect, Group Head of Agency Sales, Facebook

Sophie Brendel, Head of Digital Engagement, BBC

Alex Pearmain, Head of Social Media, O2

Conor Ryan, Co-Founder and COO, Betapond.

‘Relevance’ seemed to be the word of the day for me. It came up in every presentation and regularly during the panel discussion. Relevance in terms of focusing on your brand and business objectives, relevance in terms of collecting those audience insights, relevance in terms of targeting those most significant (influential) to share your engagement, relevance in terms of creating appropriate content that drives value for the community, etc.

This is all pretty obvious stuff but it’s amazing how many people and brands still get this wrong. Social, unfortunately, isn’t only about you, the brand.  It’s primarily about your community and what they want. Similarly, just because you are doing something on Facebook or Twitter, does not automatically mean it’s social. Conor Ryan said it concisely: “Turn a transaction into a social transaction”.

The panel discussion ended with lots of questions from the audience around location, augmented reality, possibly already outdated (?) QR codes, and Near Field Communication (NFC). This is clearly where social, and marketing as a whole, is going; something I think it’s fair to say we are all pretty excited about. And just to tie it all up, of course using location-based insights appropriately will ensure that we can make all our activity even that more relevant to our all-important community.