Public Relations

Social media: Preposterous before…er…Posterous came along?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

Apparently sane person is asked what they consider to be the ‘next big thing’ in social media. (Actually, scratch that ‘apparently sane’ bit – anyone who’s in a position to be asked what they consider to be the blah blah blah is obviously several tweets short of the full nest.) And this person named three potentials – Foursquare, Brightkite and Posterous and another one the name of which I simply couldn’t be arsed to remember which wasn’t, after all, a ‘social medium’ in the true sense, more a CMS. Which, therefore, doesn’t really make it eligible to be the new Twitter. Even I know that.

Anyway, given that I’ve already had a look at Brightkite some time ago and felt that it really had very little to offer (well, it didn’t, go and look for yourself), I thus had two to choose from and I chose Posterous.

Now. If something had been touted to you as the next big thing in social media, you’d expect it to be a bit special, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? Or is it just me? Yes, of course you would. Well, here it is:

http://posterous.com/

And no, don’t bother, because it isn’t.

Maybe it is me. Maybe I’m missing something. I read another post this morning about the wonderful world and uses of Twitter and how big companies like Dell and Pepsi and Coke…………………hold on a cotton-picking moment. Aren’t they the same three companies that are ALWAYS mentioned whenever someone wants to demonstrate how social media has been used to corporate advantage? Are there no other examples?

I can only draw one conclusion. And it’s the same one. Social media and social media marketing are another minor royal with no clothes on. Not even an Emperor, more a Duke of somewhere not-terribly-important. Posterous – and the acqusition of Friendfeed by Facebook are nothing more than the desperate attempts of those who are making a living from the chimaera to string that living out for a little longer.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Social Media – A Tweet in Time….er….

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Some more happy horsedroppings, this time from that venerable organ, the WSJ. Read it here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124925830240300343.html

On first glance this all seems fine – big names – Ford, Pepsi, Coke etc etc etc – all got a social media presence, all got social media teams, must be important.

Then delve down a bit.

So Ford found that people were complaining about the shutting down of a website. C’mon guys. So what. Is this actually going to affect sales of your cars (because that’s what, as an auto manufacturer, you’re all about and don’t you forget it). No, it’s not. Therefore, all the time that your people spent ‘rectifying the situation’ was, in fact, time wasted.

So Coke found that some guy with 10,000 followers was having difficulty reclaiming a promotion. They fixed it for him. He chaged his avatar to a picture of him with a bottle of Coke. Hot-diggety-dog-dump and a big fat whoop-de-do. Did it sell more Coke? Probably not. Did it impact on this guy’s 10,000 followers? Probably not. Why? because most of those followers don’t actually exist or, if they do, aren’t active. See the link below:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/08/13/firm-reports-twitter-is-40-useless-babble-were-0-surprised?icid=sphere_wpcom_inline

So, Coke, all that time your people spent sorting it out? Wasted.  In fact, the WSJ article is just plain wrong, on many, many different levels. Not least of which is that it reveals that these companies have such desperate cases of Shiny Object Syndrome that they are lashing undoubtedly obscene amounts of money on the salaries and benefits packages of entire teams of ‘social media strategists’.

C’mon. Facebook and Twitter (there’s another thing wrong with this article – gives it the lie in fact – these are the only two social media mentioned) are passing fads. There’s no burgeoning new comms/marketing world being signalled by social media/online social networking. It’s a chimaera. It doesn’t exist – and neither, therefore, does ‘social media strategy’ or, indeed, ‘social media strategists’. Waste of money and several perfectly good workstations.

As an aside, I saw that Dominos Pizza were speaking at a conference recently – one of those that hapless comms and marketing people like us pay oodles of cash to go to on the off-chance we might learn something. And they were there to talk about the issues around employees posting uncontrolled video footage on YouTube and other social media. Talk about shutting the door after the horse had buggered off – and what did anyone think they were going to learn from Dominos, anyway. I was amazed.

Finally for today, may I express my dismay that the digital/social media strategists employed, at great cost, by Coke, appear to have managed to get permission for a group of people to post to social media sites (probably FaceBook and Twitter – as the only ones that anyone really knows) without going through the PR department. Someone could do with talking to Dominos, now I think about it.

I love the smell of impending disaster in the morning, it smells of – hmmm – Meat Feast?  Or is it random brown sugary liquid? I’m not sure………..

Social Media – A New Dotcom Bubble, As If Proof Were Needed

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , .

ITV sell Friends Reunited for £145m less than they paid for it. DC Thomson buy it, announce that they plan to make a dating site for the over-50s out of it.

As a service for the hard-of-thinking, in simple terms, this is what it means. ITV paid over £150m for Friends Reunited because they thought they could ‘monetise’ it (to press a curennt buzzword into service). They couldn’t. DC Thomson, being slightly smarter AND with the benefit of some years extra intel, realise that they’ll not be able to sell it as a marketing/advertising opportunity, so look at the ways they can make money from the users of the site. Who happen to be over 50 and – let’s face it – looking for something.

This – and eBay’s experience with Skype (OK, not technically a social network, but reliant on users parting with cash to communicate with each other) – really underlines where we are with social media as a marketing tool. Nowhere. Marketing activity through social media delivers no tangible value – certainly nothing that translates into noticeable uplift in revenues. The ITV/Friends Reunited debacle just shows how futile it is to try and ‘monetise’ – get a sensible, serious and stable revenue stream out of – a social medium.

It is an object lesson. Do not do it.

Oh, I hear you say, but I have no intention of buying placebebo.com and trying to monetise it. No, my social media marketing strategies involve using existing social media channels, and require no investment from me.

Wrong. Every hour you, or your people, spend monitoring Twitter or creating groups on Facebook is time, effort and opportunity cost that would be better dedicated elsewhere.

(Oh, yeah – Twitter – becoming the province of the middle-aged and older. Young people moving away, new research says so. Google it.)

Social Media – The Twitter Crack’d 2

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

Those avid followers of my blog (thanks, both of you), with a decent memory, may remember a post back in June which highlighted – actually, that’s a bit grand – which focused on a piece of research done by the Harvard Business School into Twitter’s usage patterns. It seemed to show that the bulk of tweets come from a hardcore of twitterers (95:10 was the ratio, I think) and that average numbers of tweets during the lifetime of a twitterer is one.

This kinda leads us to believe that Twitter’s not really the massive phenomenon that other media – and the rash of ‘social media experts’ that has infected the face of the internet – would have you believe and – thus – it’s a bit rubbish as a marketing tool. As I’ve often said, don’t ignore social media – you’d be foolish to do so – but bear in mind that there are countless other things that you should do first (from a comms and marketing point of view).

Anyway, here’s another nail in the coffin piece of research that would seem to lead us to similar conclusions, although for different reasons. Enjoy:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007208

New Uses for Social Media – Part 7,523

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , .

Is it just me or are the attempts to get some real use (and thus value/benefit) out of social media getting more desperate by the day?

Today’s was a facility for the Jewish community to Tweet prayers and have them then – I presume – printed out, folded up and stuck in the cracks in the Wailing Wall. Which is great – a genuine service and all credit to the ‘young man from Tel-Aviv’ who’s responsible.

A great use of Twitter, thereby providing a little more grist for the social media justification mill. Yes, social networks, they get everywhere. In every walk of life. Social networks – they are your daddy.

Only, only – would it be as easy to email ‘the young man in Tel-Aviv’ and get him to print that out? Or, in fact, if you’ve got a friend in Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem, you could email them. Or text them. Or fax them. Or – how about this – you could ‘phone them up and get them to write it down.

It’s a great idea, it genuinely is and it’s a real service. It just doesn’t need Twitter. Or FaceSpace, or MyBook.

Other uses for social media today – publicising Aleksandr the Meerkat (if you’ve been in a hole in the ground for the last six months, this is the eponymous Aleksandr the Meerkat from comparethemeerkat.com, which is a sort of search engine for meerkat-related paraphernalia. I think).

I like Aleksandr – simples! – and he reminds me of a lot of people I work with, but, let’s face it – sorry Alex mate – he’s a fluffy PR stunt. A very, very good one, but a fluffy PR stunt nonetheless – here today and gone tomorrow.

And therefore an absolutely perfect fit for the social media phenomenon.

‘Tis The Season to be Silly

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , .

Just a reminder to all that the Silly Season is here and – if you’re not already carping the diem – it’s time to dust off all those rubbish stories that would never make the cut in a million years normally, and get them out there! There’s acres of  gaping media void to be filled and we, the few, have a duty to fill it.

This morning – and OK, it was one of those terrible free papers (but somehow so much closer to the zeitgeist than your average broadsheet, d’you not think?) – there was a story (‘story’) about someone on holiday in Great Yarmouth (I think, could have been Skegness – it doesn’t matter – seaside town anyway) sending a postcard to someone at home in the West Country. On looking at the photo, a view of the seafront, taken over a decade ago, the recipient discovered it included images of her and her daughters, sat on a park bench! What are the chances! Cue much mumbling in astonishment and small-world commentary.

(The fact that the person sending the card sent it because they knew the recipient was a fan of the seaside town, and had visited, at peak season, many years on the trot, and that she and her daughters often sat on the same bench, does actually reduce the chances considerably, but never let logic get in the way of a good story.)

Yes – the silly season’s here. I even read a story about some guy – Peter, I think – who’s managed to become the most powerful man in the country, without going through the boring rigmarole of being elected, or with any form of public consent or (indeed) knowledge at all!

Amazing the old nonsense that gets printed.

Silent with Rage – Better Off Just Silent?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , .

‘Fraid this isn’t very timely – been busy doing nothing, d’you see – but the more I sat and thought (as opposed to just sitting, which is what I try and do mostly) I felt this needed a little exploration/explanation – what with all the current hoo-ha over Directors of Communications for political parties (sorry – that’s the ‘phone……….strange…….nobody there).

Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, consuming some media, when I happen across a (what can hardly, really, be called a) story about Damien McBride and the PM (Gordon, not Peter) and the PM’s reaction (Gordon’s, not Peter’s) when McPoison told him about the content of the unfounded smear emails he’d been circulating. He was (that’s the PM, G not P), and I’m paraphrasing, shaking and silent with rage. Might even have been speechless. Beyond angry, anyway, and out the other side.

Well, you’d hope so, really, wouldn’t you. But, and here’s the thing, why did we need to know? And, more to the point, how come the ‘news’ got into the media anyway (‘cos it wasn’t just one story, no, I saw it run across other outlets, when I bothered to look).

So, was it No 10, trying, as part of a rearguard action, to show G (not P) in a favourable light (speechless with anger and rage and probably coated in mortification also)? And therefore distancing himself further from the evil McPoison? Or was it McBride himself, finding it all a bit difficult on the employment front, making an attempt to rehabilitate himself – a bit ot a tw*t, but honest enough to ‘fess up and take the (silent with rage) consequences? Or was it a half dozen of one and six of t’other – collusion between No 10 and McPoison – ‘this’ll help us both, Damian, mate’? (And if so, was it also testing the waters, laying the first good intentions on that road to Damian’s rehabilitation?)

Whatever, it made me suspicious. (But I’m always suspicious.) For what it’s worth, I reckon it’s McBride trying to rehabilitate himself. I mean, no-one would be stupid enough to fan the dying embers of this unhappy episode, running the risk of re-ignition and all the nightmare that would come with it, on the off-chance that it might have some small positive impact on the PM’s (G’s, not P’s) reputation.

Would they?