The ever controversial Andrew Keen has just published this in his Telegraph column – a guide to winning in social media. As with much of what Andrew says its true – the five steps he recommends would help gain attention. However, the assumptions that lie behind it render it (and also much of what Andrew says) misplaced shall we say. Continue reading
Pear Analytics has recently released a report that claims that 40% of tweets are “pointless babble”. This study is reviewed here by Mashable who cite this as not being “favourable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter.”
How disappointing. Only 40 per cent? I would have hoped for rather more. How disappointing also that Mashable chooses to take the view (along with Pear Analytics) that Twitter’s value and importance lies only when “something more intellectual is going on” rather than in tweets that fall into “I’m eating a sandwich now category”. Continue reading
Today I was giving a presentation on social media to a group from the PRCA – the UK’s professional body for PR companies. It was a new presentation because I had become bored with my old “What is Social Media” presentation.
I was at the stage in the presentation where I talk about the basic principles of Content, Conversation and Community. I had talked through how to “do” content (using the analogy of Newton’s Law of Gravity and the importance understanding gravitational ‘always on’ content as distinct from here today, gone tomorrow, mass message content), had covered off the ‘listening’ part of conversation and had got to the ‘what do you say when you want to respond’ bit. Now there are two missunderstandings I always deal with here. First the fact that the conversation most organisations want to have with their consumers are not the conversations consumers want to have with them. Second, the mistaken belief that if you have millions of consumers you therefore need to have millions of conversations. I usually cover this by saying that if you listen to your consumers you will find out what conversations they want to have that involve you – and that you will be surprised how few these actually are. This time around I had done a bit more thinking on this and threw out the slightly contentious claim that there are actually only four conversations consumers ever want to have:
The “your product or service is good” conversation
The “your product or service is bad” conversation
The “how does it work, who makes it, what colours does it come in, where can I get it etc. etc.” conversation
The “how you could make it better” conversation.
As I was talking this through, almost as a throw-away, I said that this actually tells you more than just what conversations you need to have, it actually tells you everything you need to do in social media: say thanks in the “good” conversation, respond to the issues raised in the “bad” conversation, make content that supports the “how does” conversation and convene a space to take on board and encourage the “make it better” conversation. Only as I was saying this did it dawn on me that this ACTUALLY IS ALL YOU NEED TO DO IN SOCIAL MEDIA. End of story. Job done. Can it really be that simple?
Here is a transcript from the Guardian of the interview last night on the BBC’s Newsnight programme with Evan Williams – founder of Twitter. What it reveals is a curious paradox. One the one hand, the BBC is probably the world’s most progressive media organisation in terms of understanding social media, yet one the other the editorial approach in its traditional programmes and from its traditional journalists appears to display total ignorance and denial of what is happening. Continue reading
I have recently had reason to focus on the area of monitoring of social media which has involved looking once more at the whole range of black box monitoring solutions that are out there. This has caused me deep feelings of confusion and uncertainty.
The reason is this: when I do monitoring for a client, or advise a client on how to do monitoring, this is what I do. Continue reading