Tagged: social media

Twitter listing – X Factor for social media types

I must confess I am sometimes a bit slow on the uptake and certain new social media thingies just slip by relatively un-noticed.  Thus it was with the announcement of Twitter lists a week or so ago.  I had a quick glance at it, reckoned that there was nothing a Twitter list could do that my User Lists in Seesmic don’t already do, and let it pass.

But today it has hit me.  Forget listing other people – the number of times people list me is (or will rapidly become) my highly visible social media popularity score.  Its basically the X Factor / Pop Idol for social media types.  Continue reading →

Ad agency + social media = car crash in slow motion

Here is an excellent article that highlights one of the classic mistakes of social media.  This is the assumption that social media is just another channel you can use to reach a consumer, rather than a channel that consumers use to reach you.  This results in the misplaced belief that an ad agency, or even traditional digital agency, can therefore “do” social media.  They can’t – because their expertise and business model is rooted in the world of the 0ne-to-many mass message.

I suspect the Toyota example referred to in this article will be a painfull thing to watch play out – for all the reasons the article highlights.

The big question is this:  how many organisations are going to engineer these sorts of car crashes before they wake up to what social media is all about?  Quite a lot I would suspect.

In the meatime – I would suggest the following precautionary principle – never, ever, let an ad agency, or media agency anywhere near a social media initiative.  And also take special care when asking a digital agency to get involved – simply because digital agencies make money selling web sites / platforms / digital places.  The whole point of social media is to get out of digital places and operate in digital spaces (conversations).  Note – this particular car crash I spotted a while back was created by a digital agency, also for an automotive client.

Because data loss happenz – how social media could help Zurich Insurance out of a tight spot

Zurich Insurance has just lost a tape on which was data on 51,000 of its customers.  I know this because I am one of them.  It is pretty major data too – bank account details, address, details of specific items insured and details on your security arrangements (safes, alarms etc).  Basically – short of handing over the keys to your house this is the next best thing, if it ends up in the wrong hands.

Luckily, there appears to be no evidence that this information has ended up in the wrong hands – according to Zurich.

What is going to be interesting is to see how this issue pans out.  Continue reading →

Ryan Air versus Easyjet: a clash of stories

Last night I watched the BBC Panorama programme on Ryan Air – an airline that manages to be at the same time successful but hugely unpopular.  Funnily enough it coincided with the BBC World’s Fast:track programme, with a segment (featuring yours truly) about how you can use social media to complain about travel experiences.  One of the companies featured here was Ryan’s Air’s rival Easyjet, show-casing their success in monitoring and responding to customers in Twitter – an approach to customers that is the polar opposite of Ryan Air’s. Continue reading →

Thinking the Unthinkable: Clay Shirky may be wrong (slightly)

Despite being one of the leading gurus on social media, Clay Shirky has only just started publishing his articles via a blog – and a very minimalist and basic blog it is too.  I might venture to say this illustrates my point that social media is about space rather than place – Shirky doesn’t need a fancy blog (place), all he needs is a launch pad to create and contribute to conversations (spaces). Continue reading →

The Rise of the Story or Why Social Media may Kill P&G

whats the story2(Warning – this post is 3,000 words, you may want to get a coffee)

Stories have always been a useful medium of communication – but the rise of social media has just made them essential.  If you haven’t got a good one, you could be in trouble.  Here’s why. Continue reading →

Just an interesting thought

In the Gutenberg world information was created by acts of publication.  In the post-Gutenberg world (i.e. world of social media) information is created by acts of observation.

Don’t know whether this goes anywhere – but the idea of the act of observation being more than passive is not new.  It sits at the heart of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantam mechanics where the way in which you observe something will determine its state (Schrodigger’s cat and all that).  Seems to accord with the emphasis on space rather than place – spotlight rather than stage sort of thing.  More thinking required.

Has Twitter encouraged journalism?

A journalism student in Australia (@jadelemoigne) contacted me last week (through good old fashioned email) to ask questions about Twitter and whether it was encouraging journalism.

I thought I would also blog the answers I gave, since this is a good question.

Dear Jade,

First off – its very difficult to separate Twitter from the rest of social media – it’s just one piece of the whole new information ecology that is transforming the way we access information. In general terms this shift is making traditional institutionalised media (and with it the journalists they employed) less relevant and creating processes that allow individuals to share with each other the information they need about the world.

Therefore – within my answers you could effectively substitute the term social media for Twitter. That said… Continue reading →

What social media monitoring and the English Channel have in common

What do social media monitoring and the English Channel have in common?

Answer: if you understand how you sail a ship up a busy sea-lane, like the English Channel, you will understand how to do social media monitoring.

As I have previously posted, there are basically two approaches / camps within social media monitoring.  First is the data capture approach that uses proprietary paid-for tools to crunch all the data and churn out charts and graphs and measure sentiment etc.  Second is the real-time approach based on constructing a monitoring panel that monitors activity in the relevant conversation spaces as it happens.  I sit very firmly in the latter camp, not because the analysis tools don’t work – they have their uses – but because they are nowhere nearly as important or useful a tool to an organisation that wishes to design and manage a social media campaign. Continue reading →

Social media: its not a clamour for attention

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 →