State of UK Social Media

This is a great video illustrating social media usage in the UK..

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Last month I was invited to participate in a VideoEgg Think Tank about Social Media marketing strategies around the World Cup. It turned out to be a really surprising and thought provoking discussion.

Far too often social media conversations centre on the hype around how it is set to conquer the world of marketing and how it is going to signal the death knell of every other channel. It was nice to have a conversation around how it plays in the wider mix.

So news flash – social media is important but other channels still have their purpose. It all depends on the requirements. Social Media will become/already is a key channel in marketing – just thinking about the basics:

1. Social Media is very much about digital conversations. Bringing those offline conversations that were already happening into the digital world. Lack of conversation about a brand can mean indifference in your target markets. As the old saying goes..  the only thing worse than negative press is no press.

2. Not participating in conversations (in an engaging and relevant way etc) can mean you are only reactive in the social media space – that usually means dealing with something negative.

So what that means is whilst hopefully you already have a core conversation you can have with your loyal followers; you almost certainly want to have something more to talk about. There is nothing like a World Cup year to help with that right? Well sure – but before continuing it is worth pointing out that you really should only be using it directly if there is a fit with your brand. Maybe I am jaded but World Cup sponsorships on their own strike me as a waste of money. It would be better if the sponsoring brands built up more of a story around why they are involved with the World Cup as opposed to just a sponsor. I am not sure I could tell you the various sponsors after the World Cup with the possible exception of Nike. Oh no hang on. They are not actually a sponsor. It is Adidas!  If there is any recent research around sponsorships of big events I would be interested in seeing them.

Anyhow, getting back on track, the World Cup generates conversations and plenty of them. One thing we all agreed on in the discussion – interrupting World Cup conversations is not a good idea. The trick is to identify something that will generate conversations on their own. One great example was the live TV ads that are planned on ITV during the World Cup – I am sure those will generate conversations. One advert that has already generated conversations – albeit for the wrong reasons – was the Nike ad which ITV cut short.

That was one of the key takeaways from the morning – using other channels to help facilitate or create conversations is an excellent way to generate coverage for your brand and hopefully in the process create more brand advocates in the process.

Just to be clear – I don’t mean using things like football hoardings saying “follow <insert brand here> on Twitter”. I mean seriously..

Get your creative hats on.. and thanks again to the guys at VideoEgg.

Related articles:

• ITV investigates Nike ad gaffe (guardian.co.uk)
• Nike’s Awesome World Cup Ad Shows Dwindling Power of “Official” Sports Sponsorships (bnet.com)

Mark Ritson has chosen to court controversy in his latest column around why social media should not be an automatic choice for marketers. He set his stall out immediately when he said he winced when every brand manager concluded with a major part of the spend going on social media.

Mark, it is safe to say, has his reservations when it comes to social media So is this a post by someone showing he is past his use by date?

Plenty of people in the comments and on twitter believe so though Mark is merely making the counter argument to the hype around social media. The same happened previously with virals, “useless” banner ads and second life. None of which makes either camp correct, though in the comments he admits there is a middle ground that is the better approach:

“Perhaps most marketers are already aware that social media is being over-promoted and that ultimately it has to be integrated into the existing mix where there are certainly many synergies between traditional and social media.”

The trick like all forms of marketing is to understand what the channel provides – Mark chose to give some excellent examples of companies who have not got it wrong  (Eurostar, Southwest Airlines) – I could add a few more to that list (Nestle, Habitat..) and others that he believes should not be using social media (Rentokil, Hellman’s mayonaise).

The difficulty is in getting the approach right – social media is not an easy channel to succeed in and worse it is difficult to measure today. Like all new marketing techniques online; it takes time for the tools to catch up.

Social Media is a platform that allows for dialogue and a way to encourage user to user conversations. This is something the best examples of companies using social media have figured out. I think the point Mark should be making is that if you haven’t figured out how to both have and also generate conversations online then you shouldn’t be creating those facebook pages and twitter accounts in the first place. Think it through first and understand why you should be there. What is the benefit to the user?

There are plenty of companies who you would either  expect to stay away from social media or who you might think do not need to even be there but take a look:

1. Domino’s Pizza UK has approx 30k people on their Facebook page and regularly getting feedback from their customers – how much would this information have cost in the past? Mark talks about how small the numbers are in social media but in reality these are either your most loyal brand advocates (and who will help with those user conversations) or transient dissatisfied customers who you should be listening to anyway. Both are a valuable commodity to a marketer.
2. Shipserve are leaders in the online marine supplies & online marine chandlery business. Why on earth would people want to be involved in a LinkedIn group around this particular niche. They are.
3. Starbucks has been a bit of a poster child of social media advocates. The Next Web really tells the story well enough. Read it here. I still cannot figure out why someone would want to be a fan of a coffee shop but then I am not a coffee nut
4. Finally a good example of adapting Social Media to work for a bank is First Direct’s Live campaign. See it in action here. It is an almost real-time view of what people are saying about First Direct on the web. At the time of writing 77% of people are saying positive things – I am not sure any of the other banks would be so willing to try this campaign!

You need to have good service capabilities to succeed in social media.

What this all boils down to is if you’re just starting out or thinking you need a social media programme, plan and/or experiment in smaller niche areas (if possible). Social Media is not good for campaigns only. Be prepared for the fall out if you don’t have a plan in place for the negative comments you are going to receive and be prepared for an even worse outcome in social media.. silence.

Social media should not be taking up a major part of a everyone’s marketing plan by default today but that doesn’t mean it is not an important part of the mix. Of course for some companies it could well be the entirety of their marketing budget – it all depends on a company’s specific needs. The important thing to figure out is where your company sits in that spectrum.

Wherever you sit today, I would expect budgets to grow year on year for pretty much all companies as consumers and businesses identify the best companies for their needs more quickly through the use of social media tools.

To be silent in social media is a death knell for companies.

image source: elycefeliz

Despite the numbers being suspect (see Return Path’s post here for a good look at why); the following chart from Morgan Stanley got me thinking.

As a result, I just posted my thoughts about the future of email over on the DMA Email blog on how email’s future is destined to continue but as just one of several “tools” within the social network toolset. It also looks at what this means for marketers going forward. Rather than republish the entire post here; please click here to view it in its entirety.

At the end of each year I usually jot down some areas within online marketing that I think are worth keeping a closer eye on the following year and usually easily come up with 3 or 4.

Albeit a bit late posting, 2010 is looking like it will be a year of accelerating change in online marketing.

Here’s some of the areas I am thinking about:

1. Mobile

With the growth of smartphones and in particular the success of the iPhone and Android; 2010 is promising the return of the old guard in the mobile space with Microsoft and Nokia talking about major improvements to their devices so mobile data usage can only continue its acceleration in usage. Add the launch of a tonne of new ereaders; the growth of netbooks and now the launch of the new iPad and it is no wonder that I think mobile is the number one place for innovation in internet marketing in 2010.

Of course, everyone jokes it is always the year of mobile every year so in that sense 2010 is no different. But I don’t remember seeing as much potential in mobile marketing since the launch of mobile data services circa 2003 (though.. umm.. yes that did flop. Big time).

Still, although the answers to mobile marketing are not there yet; ads are being delivered and general usage is growing quickly – Admob released some statistics at the end of last year which illustrate this growth: In September 2007 AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests, in September 2008 5.1 billion, and in September 2009 10.2 billion.

2. Social Media Marketing
The hottest topic and growth area of them all in 2009 – it is hard to see this juggernaut stopping in 2010. Expect to see some serious advances in metrics and marketing technology in 2010.

3. Video
Having worked in the video ad space for several years before Silverpop this seems like something that has been around for a decade. 2010 might be too soon but expect to see HTML 5 play its role in ads both in email and on the web over time and less flash (which you should not have been using inside emails anyhow right?) .

4. Location
Each year that goes by marketers get hit with more data to deal with online. Did you think it was going to get better in 2010? Not a chance. Real time location data is the latest piece of data to get your head around and deliver better more engaging and relevant messaging. Right now foursquare; Gowalla and MyTown (at least in the US) are leading the way in consumer usage but I expect to see Facebook and Twitter continue to roll out location based technologies integrated into their platforms for a significant increase in both usage and opportunities for marketers to take advantage.

5. Ad Optimisation
Companies like the Rubicon Project are delivering better returns for publishers and better results for advertisers by matching unsold publisher inventory with the right ad all in real time. This type of automation significantly improves the efficiency of buying and selling ads and should deliver better results at the same time.

Some others: Augmented Reality – still a way to go I think. Real time ad testing – with Adobe buying Omniture I fully expect the multi-variate testing capabilities to be integrated into the ads themselves allowing for real time self selection.

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