They say that a great idea is not enough for success. You’ve got to have the guts to follow your aspirations, to walk the line, to work hard hours, to climb the mountain. Not many people dare to take the step into the abyss of the unknown.
Bjørn Heidenstrøm is the man with the idea and the gut. For a long time he had a dream to unite football community around a cause of anti-racism by cycling from Oslo (Norway) to Cape Town (South Afrika) and collecting the football shirts from all over the world.
His ambition is to make the largest football shirt ever made, which will flutter under the opening of the FIFA World Cup. The shirt is the symbol that there is one big football family, which doesn’t forget even the smallest clubs and teams – and that it stands strong and united against the racism.
Today the dream became a reality. He put on his helmet, said bye to his family and friends – and started his 10 (!) months long journey. From Olso he is cycling to Stockholm, Finland, Russia, the Baltics, and the rest of Europe in more or less logical order. In December he has an agreement with a cargo ship that will take him from Turkey to Syria and further to the African continent. Altogether, Bjørn is going to transit more than 50 countries, including the most dangerous places like Congo and Sudan.
All he got with him is his mobile phone, a camera and a laptop, and he relies on us, the internet community to guide him through his journey. He hopes that we can help him with local tips and advices, couch to sleep on, places and people to see. He wants us all to be a part of this adventure, which can easily turn into the nightmare if we don’t stretch out the hand to help him through.
I encourage everyone to keep an eye on Bjørn – he is in it for all of us who wants to change the world for the better, even if it’s just a little. Let’s prove that social media really works – and that it is for real.
When Malcolm Gladwell applied Pareto’s 20/80 principle to communications by pointing out the individual traits of those few people who can influence others, and even start social epidemics, it was an eye-opener for many marketers. At least, it should have been. In the social media environment, who you are connected to is more important than how many.
The metrics of successful digital communications should by now have become purely qualitative and, not the least, tangible. However, we do not see it’s happening so much today. Influence is still measured by numbers: Facebook must be the most optimal arena to advertise on, after all, it is the largest social networking platform. Those who have thousands of followers on Twitter are considered the best potential brand ambassadors, blogs with most traffic are suddenly on all the PR VIP-lists, and are bombarded with commercial proposals.
Marketers apparently are trying to reach out to the ‘vital few’, but in doing so they apply the same old principles as always: the more exposure – the better. But in reality, not only social web is highly fragmented – so are the levels of personal influence.
There are small influencers in all possible niches, and some of these might not have thousands of connections and nevertheless be essential for marketers. The opportunity lies in the different kind of relationship these small influencers have with their network. They influence their readers on much more intimate, personal level because they have a chance to engage with every single one of them. And on the other hand, as Shirky puts it, ‘the larger the group, the more significant [the] asymmetry [of communication] and disconnection will become‘. Secondly, the chance for the juicy bits to be spread further is quite high – it’s a great ego-boost to be one of the few to discover a great content, as opposed to just be one of hundreds of retweets. Thirdly, these small-scale influencers are probably much more receptive to commercial messages, than attention-spoiled top-bloggers. And lastly, by reaching out to these niche-influencers you’re very likely to hit the nail on the head when it comes to your target audience.
So instead of notoriously using the old list of blog-gurus to send your message to, spend some extra time on researching your local blogosphere. You’d be surprised to see how much more creative and target-tailored your blogger relations can be.
I know I don’t usually write about music – in fact, it’s not one of my primary interests nowadays. But, being a daughter of a musician and a recreational song writer myself, I do recognize great quality music when I hear it.
The genre is Indie Pop, the lyrics are amazing and the music is a sensation – I’m totally hooked. ‘The Rescues’ is a band from LA and is comprised of four solo singer-songwriters - Adrianne Gonzalez, Kyler England, Gabriel Mann, and Rob Giles. The Rescues have more than 15 albums, dozens of songwriting awards and been recently featured in popular TV shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Army Wives’.
Go ahead and listen for yourself – you won’t be disappointed.
Well into 2009 nearly all media production companies are continuing to lose their market share. The situation seems to be worsening by day. It seems that corporate content producers are starting to accept their fate, and are not fighting it as vigorously as they did just a year ago. Even historical law-battle between International Federation of the Phonographic Industry(IFPI) and Swedish based Pirate Bay which although ended in favour of the prosecutors, is hardly a victory for the music industry. The trial only added extra gasoline into the fire, music companies are hated more than ever, Pirate Bay and other file-sharing sites will continue to prosper and multiply. It’s from the category – would you rather be right than happy?
But the question I would like to raise in this post is: why have we become so reluctant (and even aggressive) towards commercial media content?
Is it as simple as it’s purely human nature to grab things for free when possible? Is it at the roots of the digital paradigm that all information should be free? Is it our revolt against decades of imposed and artificial scarcity? Is it revolt against all bad quality content we were often fed by mass media? And lastly, is there hope for media business?
The answer to all these questions, including the last one, is yes. I agree with Peter Kim and Jeff Jarvis who plead companies to network, aggregate and share their content rather than engage in “reactive right-click copy protection”. But I also side with those who to try to find a business model to sell their content, like Apple succesfully does.
I think that rather than thinking of today’s battle between users and corporate media producers as a cultural revolution of hippies in the 60s, we can compare it to the American Wild West history of the late 19th century. The anarchy was caused by the re-organisation of power. It was a war between a new nation, and the old conquers. In an undefined territory there are no political rules, no laws, and everyone’s got a gun.
In the war over the Internet we (the users) are certainly going to win, if we haven’t done so already. But it doesn’t mean there are going to be no rules and laws. And it’s not because the barons wants it that way, it’s because we prefer it that way.
There is a business model for commercial media content, be it news, games, videos or music. More than we appreciate free, we appreciate abundance, respect, usability and not the least quality. Apple got, and so did Amazon. We are surely on the way towards a new gift economy, and companies (not only in media sector) should be prepared to give value for free to get a chance to establish future business relationships. Instead of spending last money on lawsuits, or the little time they have fighting with bloggers – they should start figuring out how to survive, and how to succeed. After all, the Wild West internet era is not over yet.
I think we’re beyond realisation that social media is great for reputation and crisis management, customer service, recruitment or mobilising communities around an honorable cause. There is a great amount of case studies to prove it.
But in these financially hazardous times it’s more important than ever for companies to see that they can actually make money on social media tactics, also in a short term perspective. I know that there are many critics who believe that the very “short term” attitude to social media is blasphemous, and reject the notion of social media campaign altogether.
However, there are some brands which succeeded in effectively using social media to improve their business of today. Southwest Airlines and InterContinental Hotels are just two brilliant examples. What is their secret key that helped them to improve their immediate sales, while there are so many others who try in vain? Is it because they were more innovative in their creative concepts, or is it because they were the first to the market to try particular tactics, like Ding-widget and viral PCR promotion?
The suspicion that social media campaigns don’t really bring in the money came to me some while ago, when I kept reading the reports of various campaigns. They notoriously referred to the amount of traffic to the websites, user generated content and blog coverage. But if any one of these companies would hit a jackpot in sales as a direct result of their involvment in social media, wouldn’t they be screaming out loud about it?
The thing is, I don’t really believe it did. The recent digital campaign by Nike+ in Norway , Men VS Women, conducted by the company I work for, clearly showed that there are no plausible correlation between the size of the online community and actual sales of the product. In fact, the team which had fewest members (appr. 3oo) on its Facebook group, run almost twice as much kilometers (and, hence, bought more Nike+ products) than the leading group (appr. 1000). Notice: the campaign is not over yet.
So, does social media sell? Can we use it as a marketing strategy to drive short term sales? From larger business perspective, I think that unless you’re Apple, D&G or Harley Davidson – your brand name won’t sell alone. Apart from the brand loyalty, in these highly competitive times price is likely to be the most important factor for the end user. Together with another two. Context and Timing. And nothing is so JIT (just in time) as social media.
A recent article onTechCrunch,written by Eric Clemons: Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet prompted a heated debate on the subject both in the comments and other blogs. The author’s postulat is that participatory nature of the Internet, which presents users with multiple choices ultimately rejects advertising. While surfing the web, people don’t want advertising, don’t need advertising and don’t trust advertising. Good provicative post, which I recommend together with it’s some 500 comments.
Now I know that I earlier have written that I myself don’t believe in mass advertising on the Internet. However, I think this issue is far more complex to be answered by one sentence. For the first, we shouldn’t confuse the concepts of advertising and PR. While both are marketing tactics, they are not the same. Every effort to monetize the Internet, whether it is a website, search optimization, product placement, opt-ins, reviews, e-mail and mobile marketing – I think it’s too thin to call it all advertising. One thing is to say that advertising on the Internet will fail, and dramatically different thing is to claim that all monetization of the Internet will fail.
But even if we limit advertising to ‘simple commercial messages’, as Clemons puts it – I think there is hope for advertising to survive. I agree with Clemons, when he says:” simple commercial messages, pushed through whatever medium, in order to reach a potential customer who is in the middle of doing something else, will fail”. But I think there is also an answer there. Yes, mass advertising on the Internet will fail. But relevant and creative advertising for a targeted group of people, while they are in the middle of searching for a certain type of information somewhere in the middle of nowhere of the long tail – will it automatically fail too?
Maybe. But I think it’s worth trying. After all, what do you have to lose? The long tail is cheap.
Lately I see many poor attempts from the organisations to manage the “community issue”. Most of these are still early adapters in Norway, and deserve praise for the initiative. But giving the job to a wrong man will more often than not result in…well, no result at best.
So, what are the common mistakes people do when hiring a community manager?
1. Placing an add in a local newspaper with text that sounds like this: ” If you’re young and ambitious (maybe a student who’s looking for extra earnings) and have understanding for social media, we have a position for you”.
2. Extending the responsibilities of the exisitng information manager (who has only worked with offline media) to cover social media channels in addtion to the rest of the official communications.
3. Hiring the external social media guru.
The main purpose of getting a community manager is to listen to all those voices on the web who talkes about your organisation, and when approprite, respond to them. He or she is ideally supposed to build the community around your company by being timely, transparent and valuable. But most importantly, the community manager should be able to convey the best attributes and qualities of your company to those who doesn’t know about them yet, or those who got dissapointed. Now how can you ever be persuasive and authentic if you talk about something you don’t believe in or know everything about?
The best way to pick a community manager is therefore an organic way: through natural selection from within the organisation. You’ve got to find someone who’s got both passion and loyalty for your company and a genuin interest and understanding of social media. Before searching for experts outside, look at you employees. Maybe there is already one or more who’s doing the job just for the love of it. No one will represent your company better than those who breath your corporate culture, knows all the stories, weaknesses and streanghts, and proud to be a part of it.
Anyone can learn social media techniquies.You can even teach a crow to speak a human language, but it’s how it’s being spoken that makes all the difference.
At the risk of appearing over self confident (I’m just starting my carrier as a digital PR consultant) I decided to express my views on the subject. I hope my more experienced readers will correct me if I’m out of line.
Considering that half of the social media campaigns will fail I think we should get to roots of the problem and roots of the solution. Surely, there is some truth in the opinion: if you think of social media in terms of ‘campaign’ you’re already failed. The fact is, fundamentally, social media is not about getting your message across - alone. But it’s about that too. As much as it is about having conversations with stakeholders, engaging users in the brand experience, customer service and crisis management ‘just in time’, being transparent and useful. It’s about all this and much more - but it’s never about a monologue.
As i previously wrote, social media strategy rarely holds a stand alone - unsupported by offline marketing communications, value adding services or great creative consepts. My main point of this post is that thinking about your markeiting communications must start right here. Do you have a great product and a great concept? If you do (very few does) - you will most likely succeed with a blitzkrieg social media campaign that will make people talk long after you’re gone. But if you don’t - and that’s the case for most of the brands out there - don’t try to fly if you havn’t got the wings.
Always start with asking a question: is this product worth talking about? If it’s not, you should ask how to get people talking about you instead. Skittles is a good example of such way of thinking. Of course, it depends on what business you’re in. That’s why I believe that productification of social media tactics is simply not possible. Only after a good research and a great deal of creative thinking will you know if you can take a shot on a social media campaign, or if it will have to evolve as a long term strategy. Smart brands already found out of this, and not wasting time and money on campaigns that will most certainly fail.
Indeed, we all want to sell something. But most of us will need to accept that it will take a much longer route to success than they would have hoped. And, just so you know, there are not short cuts any longer.
There is a great article in the last week’s Advertising Age by Freddie Laker “The Paradox of Interactive Marketing “. He warns against polluting potentially optimal interactive platforms with bombarding users with too much of social media goodies – ads, apps, widgets, contests, games and so on. His main point is that even if the conditions are close to perfect to engage the users in ‘brand experience’ – the user gets so overwhelmed with the choice of interactive opportunities and imposed attention that they get turned off instead. What can be done to stop this over saturation of social media platforms, and how can we make our community to stay with us?
The marketers need to aknowledge the fact that as both quantity and quality of information on the web are increasing, the users’ attention span limits are dramatically decreasing. The new marketing hype these days is the user generated content – but just how many UGC-contests can we participate in? As a result, there is a clear trend that users are leaving not only traditional media channels, but also their favorite websites.
Another problem is that most of the companies who engage is social media, do so quite passively. They might have a presence in form of a group on Facebook or Flickr, or YouTube contest – but it usually ends there. The social media spiral doesn’t take off, but usually just hangs as an unfinished circle, with not much $ to show for.
Now I know this will sound kind of dramatic, but maybe we should stop focusing so much on our products, and ourselves. Maybe we should just listen to our market segment. Ask questions. Give advices. Be there when they need us. Treat them just how we would treat a friend. No selling, no imposing, no campaigns - at least for a while. If we don’t have time to listen to them – why would they listen to us? If we don’t have patience with them – their patience for us is limited to 1 minute per website.
There are a lot of rewards in listening. Imagine that you can get to know your audience like your own pair of hands. Then you can segment even further, and craft even more personalized and relevant messages.
Being there all the time means nothing in comparison to being there exactly the moment when your audience is open for your suggestions.
As unbelievable as it sounds, I think he is not that crasy as his post readers’ poll suggests. When it comes to print news, I’ve been following it’s trends since this spring, both in Norway and internationally. This weekend I arrived at the conclusion that newspapers will not recover after this year’s financial crisis. High drive costs combined with falling revenues both in form of sales and advertising incomes is a very bad combination. It’s creepy to see how in desperate chase after cash, even the most serious editions are degrading in their content, getting more and more inadequately squeezed in between glossy banner ads. There is no way they can survive the digital wave now that the news are not only being broken online, but also collectively analysed in ways impossible for journalists to compete with. Switching from print to digital news will also be a natural transition in our increasingly environmentally-aware culture.
DVDs and mainstream video game industry will vanish because of the rocketing choice of the free software combined with rapidly increasing bandwith: it’s just to take a look at the music industry.
The only truly sad thing about media digitilisation is a gloomy prospect that books too will be replaced with digital Amazon Kindle-like alternaltives. With books being at the very base of our modern civilisation, it is hard to let them go. And I also wonder how future civilisations will survive say next ice age or some other drastic lose of all electricity, with no instructions on how to turn it back on.
h ended in favour of the prosecutors, is hardly a victory for the music industry. The trial only added extra gasoline into the fire, music companies are hated more than ever, Pirate Bay and other file-sharing sites will continue to prosper and multiply. It’s from the category – would you rather be right than happy?
At the risk of appearing over self confident (I’m just starting my carrier as a digital PR consultant) I decided to express my views on the subject. I hope my more experienced readers will correct me if I’m out of line.
