Take for example, the Telstra Social Review program, a competition whereby Australians with a social media presences could ‘compete’ (in loose terms) for the chance to be one of 25 social reviewers.  The final 25 were each given a HTC handset and asked to review it for 2 weeks.

There is nothing new about this initiative in some respects – it is essentially a blogger relations program – but the public nature of the Telstra ‘experiment’ represents a very different approach.  Good blogger relations practitioners will insist on full disclosure but its rare for an organisation to PR this kind of program in the way that Telstra did.

As a result, Telstra has telegraphed its respect for blogging (as well as other forms of social media) and I believe that other Australian corporations will sit up and take notice.

I believe that ‘commercial confidence’ in blogging is a requirement for blogging if it is to acheive genuine mainstream acceptance.  This ‘commerial confidence’ could take many forms including advertising and sponsorship investment, collaboration, access, insights or simply advocacy.

The blogging community is challenged however by a fundamental lack of transparency.

Readership data underpins the traditional media sector, it provides the business justification for advertising spend and PR programs. In a section of the media where the glossy finish of the product (or lack of it ) bares little or no relationship to its reach and influence, its essential that proprietors become more open about their traffic and engagement scores.

Commercial (business) decisions are based on an assessment of risk over opportunity.  The blogging community in Australia needs to help its potential partners understand the opportunity.

That might sound like a scary proposition for a young blog with low traffic scores today.  But remember this.  At some point, consumption of print media will be a small proportion of what is consumed online.  Transparency can help you build trusted relationships with potential commerical supporters today, for the future.

What do you think?  Do you agree?  If not, why not?

Is it wrong to assume that all blogs have a commercial imperative?

Should bloggers be open and transparent about their number of readers, time spent, uniques?

If so, what data should they share?

Julian posed the question: Is Google Sidewiki a threat or an opportunity? I think that it is both and made the point that active participation in conversation via Sidewiki provided another PR opportunity for organisations to communicate with their customers.

I also suggested that businesses develop a policy for Sidewiki and that they publish this so that customers know what to expect when using this form of feedback. Brian Giesen makes a great suggestion when he says that companies should ‘claim’ their Sidewiki by making the first comment (if possible).

A quick scan of major corporate websites highlights the fact that Sidewiki is yet to take off in a big way. Potential commenters need the latest version of the Google Toolbar and they also need to be aware of the service. The digerati set will be well aware of this but I am not convinced that Joe Bloggs has this on their radar. There is more activity around social media related news sites and social networks, check out Facebook as an example of a active Sidewiki.

Google Sidewiki is an extension of an existing service from Google; which is the ability to place comments on search results.  This didn’t take off or hasn’t taken off as yet (it continues to be available – check out the speech bubble icon below organic search results in Google).

Radian6 announced last week that it now offers the ability to monitor Sidewiki, an important development for businesses that need now to be aware of conversation in a wide range of digital tools.

I think Sidewiki represents a major PR opportunity for small businesses, who may not necessarily want to invest in discussion boards, recommendation and feedback mechanisms for their websites but are provided a free infrastructure for exactly that via Google Sidewiki.

Sidewiki causes a PR headache

ALREADY struggling with the mountain of blogs, forums and social networks, public relations consultants are weighing up whether a new Google tool that enables consumers to leave comments next to a brand’s website is a threat or a challenge.

Google Sidewiki gives a new and very transparent avenue for disgruntled customers to air their grievances against companies.

Travel websites already carry customer reviews of hotels and resorts.

Google says it is all about ”facilitating the conversation on the internet” between general users and experts but the PR industry is watching closely to see if Sidewiki will become as popular and as powerful a tool for opinionated internet users as Twitter and Facebook.

Gabriel McDowell, the managing director of Res Publica, said companies that failed to understand Sidewiki risked damage to their image and reputation. ”This is going to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to managing corporate reputation,” Mr McDowell said.

Although Sidewiki presented ”yet another channel for them [corporations] to manage”, Daniel Young, the digital director of Burson-Marsteller, said it could be a useful tool. ”If one person has a complaint and you respond to it then, in a way you are answering others before the question has even been asked,” he says.

Brian Giesen, who heads the digital consultancy in the Asia-Pacific for Ogilvy PR, says Sidewiki could prove to be a handy way to spot potentially hot issues and the pressure groups pushing them.

”It just reinforces the need for brands to listen to such media. This is also a useful way for companies to find out who are the people who are making the comments and then to reach out to them,” said Mr Giesen, who recommends companies race to be the first to make a Sidewiki comment on a page, a privilege Google extends to website owners.

Mr McDowell said Sidewiki could also provide an avenue of redress by corporations that felt they misrepresented in the mainstream media. For example, a public relations consultant could post the entire statement given to a journalist, rather than the truncated version that might appear in an article. ”One of the major complaints about the media is the time it takes to get a correction up. This could go some way to rectifying that.”

But there are concerns that because Sidewiki is ”completely unregulated and uncontrollable”, as Mr Young put it, it will be harder for companies to sort out the legitimate complaints from the serial sledgers. Deciding on whether to answer was going to be key, he said.

Mr Giesen said Google ”needs to take greater responsibility for the comments that appear on Sidewiki”.

A spokeswoman for Google Australia said it had not received any concerns from Australian publishers. ”Website owners and publishers here and abroad have told us that they see this as another way to connect with their users, similar to conversations they’re already having on their blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.”

It’s the question on everyone’s lips: What will media look like in the future?

I was riding the 6:02 from North Sydney to Central station on the way home from work this evening. The girl sitting in front of me was reading two forms of media simultaneously.

In both hands she held The Metro newspaper, a free city newspaper here in Sydney and in her right hand she also held her mobile handset, which was clasped at eye level. She was switching between the two – old media and new.

It was a good metaphor for the forces at play in media. These well reported forces are transforming the media industry and giving media industry moguls like Rupert Murdoch major headaches. Every dogs gets its day, as they say.

I have been thinking about the forces at play on the media industry – it’s relevant to a project I am working on at the moment.

Media in the future won’t necessarily be re-shaped by one  extreme at the expense of another but I think its safe to say that the chips have to ultimately fall on one side or the other, in most if not all cases.

The sooner the better because media is important and sustainable and credible industries need certainty.

So here’s a black and white analysis of some of the forces influencing the future of media. There’s no thinking behind the black and white. The direction that media takes has fundamental implications for the marketing industry but also for our society, communities and families in the future.

It’s with great pleasure that I announce the launch of a new Just Another 24 Hours Series entitled Media Directions. This follows the short and sweet The Microhoo Application series.

The Media Directions series will tackle the forces outlined in this post one by one and seek to pick one winner over another (if possible). The series will capture the characteristics of future media . This analysis will be highly subjective with the occasional statistic and fact thrown in for good measure.

And if you have any suggestions about other forces impacting the media industry then please add them to comments and I will tackle these in due course.

The outcome for Media Directions will be a definitive mind map of the media industry of the future, which will act as a foundation planning and strategy tool.

Watch this space.

Subscribe to Just Another 24 Hours by Email

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/media/media-directions-forces-at-play-that-will-determine-the-future-of-media/feed/ 0 http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/my-highlights-from-todays-future-of-influence-summit-foi09/ http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/my-highlights-from-todays-future-of-influence-summit-foi09/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:17:07 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=838 The ability to effectively filter information is a new ‘literacy’ that our society requires in order to sort the valuable information online from the crap.  This Crap Detection was one of the opening gambits provided by Howard Rheingold during today’s The Future of Influence Summit 2009.

My firm – Burson-Marsteller – sponsored the Summit, which took place today in Sydney and San Francisco. The event is produced by The Insight Exchange and was chaired by Ross Dawson.

The Summit covered a wide range of topics relating to the somewhat nebulous concept of Influence.  It’s really hard to summarise the findings or conclusions from the event so I thought I would summarise my most interesting statements and perspectives.

The speaker list including Brian Solis, Richard Bell, Tim Burrowes and Duncan Riley:

• There is a whole industry dedicated to ‘gaming Google’
• We may trust people in one sphere but its hard to transfer that sense of reliability if them from one field to another
• New tools are emerging that allow us to accurately measure Influence
• A currency of influence is/ will emerge
• Dell and Starbucks are two companies that have successfully listened to the feedback provided by their community and implemented it (i.e. made a change). One example of this in the context of Starbucks is the Raspberry Muffin, which was dropped but then brought back as a result of feedback provided by customers
• Advertising and marketing industries are moving from audience measurement (readership, circulation) to influence measurement
• We live in a confetti economy – high fragmentation of media and proliferation and distribution of source of information
• Burson-Marsteller research with PR Week: 78% of American consumers say that advertising does not provide enough information for them to make a purchase. Approx. 60% of American consumer say that the media does not provide enough information…
• Brian Solis categorised the social media community as an ‘ego-system’
• Lessons are learnt in failure. Google refers to this as ‘failing wisely’
• The Dell @DellOutlet Twitter concept succeeded partly as a result of very cheap products
• The number of active Twitter uses is staggeringly low
• Intel: Marketing industries should stop referring to ‘target audiences’ and start thinking about them as people
• CBS: Economics dictate a high degree of consolidation in online media. Today’s tier one bloggers will become the trust agents of the future. We are in the adolescence of the new media industry. Power will return to marketers, as a result
• 80% of online news content is consumer online via Fairfax properties in Australia. New media lacks credibility in this market.
• Joe Talcott: The message is the message. Technology is the focus for communications today but technology will gradually retreat into the background and content will assume its rightful position as the most important aspect of communication
• 80% of communication is non-verbal and 90% of conversations about brands still takes place offline

Lots of interesting thoughts and conversations here. No firm answers for a definition of influence or for a criteria or standard for measuring it.

There’s no doubt that this area of digital marketing will grow into the future, with organisations launching methods for measuring influence. I think there is a risk in using the degree to which people are inter-connected as a measure of influence.  There is also a danger in placing higher value on quant. measures of influence such as delicious tags because it assumes that the community that either has access to that content or access to the Web is somehow representative of the total, when this is not necesarily the case.

At the end of the day its very easy to ‘game the system’ and today’s Summit is yet more evidence that big business will invest heavily to excert influence online – at the cost of authenticity, trust and truthfulness in some cases. I believe that we place too much faith in the Web at our peril.

Trust in institutions has eroded; we need to protect and foster the trust that we have in each other.

This graph shows the Traffic Rank for the three biggest international social networks since mid-2007, courtsey of Alexa.

Traffic Rank compares all websites and ranks them from number 1 up in terms of traffic figures. Facebook has been the fourth most Trafficked website on average over the last 3 months.

MySpace has gone from 6 in mid-2007 to 11 today. Twitter has enjoyed a steep ascent from around the 3,000 mark in mid-2007 to 15 today.

Google.com is number 1, at the time of writing. The number 1 spot rotates between Google and Yahoo.

This graph shows that total social networking activity peaked in Q308.  It shows the percentage of total daily page views for each of the three sites.  MySpace has been on a steady decline since then.

The MySpace experience suggests that social networks have a limited lifespan or that they need continual re-invention to motivate their members.  The challenge lies in making changes and re-inventing without alienating users, as Facebook has found to its cost.

News Limited is about to embark on a new strategy for the loss-making site . The site will re-cast itself as an “entertainment portal” following a spate of redundancies and cut backs.

In 2008, U.S. ad spending on MySpace was $585 million, up 15% from 2007, and on Facebook was $210 million, up 50%, according to eMarketer.  Facebook generated $210 million in ad revenues in the same period.

Ad spending on Facebook is expected to surpass that of MySpace in 2011. This will be a good indicator of the overall health of the social networking market.

Twitter has dominated the headlines in 2009 thus far. Facebook – which was today valued at $6.5billion – continues to be the star of social networking but I feel that there are signs that it’s star is waning.

Anecdotal feedback from friends suggest that the novelty factor has worn off. Photo sharing seems to be the primary function of the site for most users who tend to interact inside Facebook with the close circle of friends that they hang out with in real life.  The re-design hid many applications and services behind tabs meaning that users have to go and look for content rather than have it come to them.

There are signs of an emergence of editorial ruminating about the future and usefulness of Facebook. In this article for Mac World, Hillary Rhodes asks: Is Facebook past its prime? Hillary makes the point that ‘the quality of the content that people share at Facebook may contribute to the longevity of the site far more than the sheer number of people who connect with each other’.

Negative editorial can only serve to speed the deterioration of the Facebook brand as a cool go to place. We always knew it was geeky but perceptions of the site seem to be edging into ‘un-cool’ or at least ‘old-hat’.

A recent study covered by The Australian identified a reaction to digital lifestyles. It found that the younger demographic longs for simpler times, it interested in retro and vintage (comes as no surprise if you live in Surry Hills) and has a desire for more authentic real-world relationships. The study found declines in the time spent on the Internet amongst 1,600 young adults (16-30 years old).

My view is that Twitter has a relatively sustainable lifespan because of its simplicity and its diversity.  Twitter seems to have m0re potential due to the fact that it connects people that don’t know one another creating many more opportunities for users to refresh, grow and evolve their networks, exposing them to new sources of information and opinion.

It seems inevitable to me that the traditional / new media pendulum would swing back towards the reality of physical offline media.  Like the dotcom bust, this process will redress the balance and bring a sense of reality to what has been a massively over-hyped area. I’d be a nut to argue that social media has had its day. We’re still in the formative phase of social networking and the chances are that Facebook will be superseded by something else in the short to medium term, in the same way that it has overtaken MySpace.

What does this mean for marketers?

Firstly, for online campaigns leveraging social networks and the Web. Marketers must ensure they have a presence within all major social network. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket.  It must be possible for the customer to engage with the brand and participate in the campaign within the social network of their chosing. This ensures maximum reach. Post campaign analysis will provide some interesting insights as to where  your audience participates, which can be weaved into future campaigns.

Secondly, social networks will come and go. What’s important is that brands interact with their target audiences online in an authentic and credible voice.  Its not about Facebook, MySpace or any other social network per se, its about understanding your customers and engaging them via the Internet and other forms of media in meaningful and valued interactions and conversations.

Elsewhere in the B-M world, we (not me) launched TweetElect09 – a real-time European election monitor and dashboard that is tracking – you guessed it – the European elections.

1. Wayward Dominos’ employees in Conover, North Carolina
2. The UK Labour Government’s political smear campaign

I have heard much discussion about the brand and political impact of these unfortunate exposes and lots of experts talking about the need for the victims (or culprits) to engage social media to clean up the mess caused by these indiscretions.

All of this is interesting to a point.

I have heard commentators sprouting the following nonsensical claims; that organisations will withdraw from social media programs as a result of the Dominos experience – in particular. And that Dominos in particular needs to get out there – i.e. into social media – to address the issue. Something that they eventually did.

Let us face the facts.

• Employees in fast food restaurants mess with food.
• Political smear campaigns are as old as politics.

The community is so obsessed with social media at the moment that we are failing to address or consider the underlying and age-old stories and issues here.

Social media has become the story – for everything. Its like a veneer that corporations and institutions can paint over their shoddy and unethical practices to make everything alright.

We’ll quickly move onto the next thing but I doubt that much will change at Dominos or within British politics.

Social media can be a means to an end (i.e. changing stuff) but its not an end in itself.

If you don’t know what Twitter is by now then I’d argue you don’t need to know.

The only people that will get value out of Twitter today are people that use the Internet as a core part of their professional or personal lives (or some combination of the two). Rubel refers to the lack of organisation and this is going to be a major turn off to your average users who is happy with the way Facebook and other networks serve everything on a plate in a personalised fashion.

Twitter will need to evolve considerably to appeal to a mass-user audience. I remember reading about a lot of very switched on social media experts who questioned the value of Twitter when it first came on the scene.

Twitter has hit the mainstream media as the latest social media phenomenon but it’s not new – its been around since 2006. It’s being positioned by the mainstream media as the latest hot thing on the Web and there has been much discussion around its lifespan, future, viability, business model. The geek chic Twitterati feel discovered and are looking for their next big thing as the general population flocks to Twitter to check it out. Nielsen has reported a 1,000+ percent growth rate.

I spend loads of time online

Twitter started to become uncool when Britney and a raft of celebs signed up but surely the fact that it has taken three years to ‘go mainstream’ provides some indication of its relevance to the general population.

I’d say that talk of Twitter’s demise is premature – not withstanding the questions around its business model, which is surely the real issue here.  I’d bet that the vast majority of new Twitter registrations that come as a result of this publicity fade and die very quickly – having zero impact on the activity that’s going on right now and minimal impact on the protective community of active Twitter users today.

Forrester’s Technographics research found that only 13% of (US) online consumers are Creators.

It takes a lot of time to identify and build your community on Twitter. It works for:

• The digerati – the population that spends a lot of time online
• Thought leaders and those that have something interesting to say
• Individuals promoting their own commercial interest or reputation
• People who want to promote their own content
• People who want to receive randomised news items from ‘authorities’ and experts in their field
• Chat in real-time at real-life events #hashtags
• Those that are generally interested in social media and how it works

You have to invest a fair amount of time in Twitter to generate returns, simply by virtue of the fact that messages don’t hang around for long – apart from anything else. As Rubel points out, it is disorganised and this will be the networks biggest challenge if it wants to retain the mainstream user.

My sense is that large swathes of the general population will quickly migrate back to the familiarity of Facebook and other multi-function social networks. The press coverage will undoubtedly drive a ton of people toward Twitter but I doubt that many will become very active.

The general population would be better advised going to Yahoo Answers! or a specialised social network if they want to tap the opinions of a mixed collection of people on an ad-hoc basis.

The attention paid to Twitter will be a positive thing for the service in the long run – it will also increase its attractiveness of potential acquirers. If Twitter can couple the increased user population with a workable business model then Twitter will remain relevant for a long time to come.

Does the mainstream’s media sudden obsession with Twitter reflect the growing importance of social media OR does it reflect the fact that social media is maturing and there are fewer new things to get excited about? What do you think?

The fact that no-one seems willing (or able) to define Influence or Engagement is further evidence to me that the content of the conference is very project focused, which is reflective of an industry which is not ready or able to put the stake in the ground when it comes to qualitative measures. The Smirnoff Experience case study was interesting and compelling (original, not so?) – the team talked about the ability to turn on and turn off the community.

My second observation, which supports, the point made above is that many of the campaigns projects are focused on competitions or contests, which involve a prize (7:Eleven – free Slurpies), (Vodafone NZ – 10,000 prizes plus $10,000 cash prize for the winner); (V – $100,000 in prize money). In a sense this is a form of sponsored conversation between the brand and consumer – if it represents a conversation at all.   

This is a theme that Mark Jones picks up on here.