An interesting six months at Innovation Manchester

Back at the beginning of July,just after completing my degree,I embarked on my first position at Innovation Manchester.

It was originally a three month contract,extended to six months and it has certainly been a learning curve.

When I was last in the corporate world,social media was not even a twinkle in the eye,twitter and facebook were not around,linkedin would have brought blank stares and blogging was in its infancy.

The standard for any corporate was to have a website.These were often simply corporate statements and information of the kind you would find in any reception or corporate manual.

How times have changed.Now business believes that social media is the tool to communicate,to brand,to listen and to create.The days of the static website are almost behind us.

Yet the experience of the last six months has taught me a lot.

Firstly you cannot divorce social media from the rest of the organisation.Like the computer manager in days of old,the danger is that it can be segregated into its ivory tower surrounded by an aura of technicalities.

As with any other form of communication,you have to know what your message is.Social media doesn't solve that problem for you,it simply gives you the means to distribute it,target it and get instant reaction back.

Where does it lie with the traditional communications manager and PR? Well I have read many posts predicting the demise of both.Of that I am not quite sure but both professions need to embrace the tools and accept that the goalposts are changing otherwise they will become history.

In fact for social media to work,then all members of the organisation have to embrace it.It has to become the corporate norm.

As for the static website,it will die,maybe sooner rather than later.It no longer serves a purpose and as open source software becomes more and more accessible,then so too will the web designer.

But the most important thing is content and this is what will keep journalism alive.It's a skill developed over time and to drive traffic to your site you need to keep people interested.That is the skill of the journalist,it is not the job of managers.

Traditional marketing is now irrelevent

I think that Steve Farnsworth has got it spot on in this post

Communications is in a time of tremendous change. Traditional marketing communications models that allowed a company to have a significant level of control over the message and conversation (one-to-many communications) have become irrelevant.

agreed and he adds

We are now in a time where the consumers are empowered, and 95% of the conversation about your product is taking place outside of your Web page (many-to-many communications). The old tools and strategies have to be re-imagined, and new ones invented. This is a whole new game for today’s communications professional.

The social hub

A god example of how companies are putting social media at the heart of their strategy.

This from New Media age which reports that LG IS using social media as the backbone of its brand strategy to promote its online sponsorships of LG Arena and F1.

The consumer giant currently uses social media for product launches only, but wants to extend this to include its sponsorship of events and extend its Life’s Good brand message beyond products such as TVs and mobiles, creating a social media hub.

adding that

It’s kicking off its new marketing strategy by relaunching the LG blog in the first quarter of 2010. It plans to use its sponsorships to provide sports and entertainment content on the blog, such as exclusive footage, backstage reports and gossip. LG hopes this kind of extra content will encourage consumers to share it.

Keep emailing your boss

Certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production.

That's the conclusion of a joint survey by IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Business Week reports that

Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to this new analysis of social networks in the workplace

So the message is -Keep messaging the boss

Ht-Robin Hamman

Did Marx predict twitter?

An interesting argument from Chris Gillow who asks

Does the Trafigura/Carter-Ruck case vindicate Marx? ie
Marx argued that technical change was a powerful force behind social change, so technology influenced power relations between people:

Would Trafigura have got away with it without the new media?

In the pre-web age, they might well have gotten away with trying to suppress free speech. But thanks to technical change - the emergence of the web and twitter - their efforts backfired spectacularly and inadvertently led to one of the most effective viral marketing campaigns of recent years.

Dress codes for avatars

You might not think that it is all that important but Gartner Inc predicts that by year-end 2013, 70 percent of enterprises will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the enterprise inside a virtual environment.

Gartner have established six tactical guidelines that organizations can follow

1. Help users learn to control their avatars. For most people, controlling and using an avatar is not viewed as intuitive or easy, but like any skill, after a few sessions a user can master the basics. The platform being used can also be an important factor, but improvements in optimizing virtual environment memory have lessened this issue.

2. Recognize that users will have a personal affinity with their avatar. Users often take pride in their avatar and dress them up or down. For enterprises, this is where dress codes can come into play, if the avatar is being used for company business. Early efforts with avatar appearance have often been viewed as an inhibitor to adoption but this issue should fade as quicker and easier methods of configuring avatars become available.

3. Educate users on the risks and responsibilities of reputation management. Organizations can avoid problems with employees mixing their personal and professional avatar interaction and activities by suggesting that employees use one avatar for their work interactions and another avatar for personal activities.

4. Extend the code of conduct to include avatars in 3-D virtual environments. Just as with social networking sites and individual Web pages where employees participate as representatives of their employer, an avatar's behavior and appearance are a reflection of the individual and the company they work for. Companies with codes of conduct for other Web activities, such as blogging, should be able to extend those policies into virtual environments. However, because 3-D environments add the visual dimension, they will need to make sure that their policies also cover dress codes.

5. Explore the business case for avatars. Justifying avatar use in a business setting is becoming easier, in part because avatar use is gaining wider acceptance. Training and virtual meetings are the top use cases, and one of the main reasons for the increased use of avatars is cost.

6. Encourage usage and enterprise pilots. Looking ahead, one of the biggest uses of avatars appears to be for online meetings. Web meetings are emerging as an important new use case for virtual environments, and this may be a good point at which to start learning about the issues and opportunities surrounding users and avatars. Enterprises may find that they have a willing and ready population of users who are familiar with avatars and their usage. Pilot testing is still the best option for starting to understand the issues that enterprises will face with increased avatar adoption.

Ht-Neville Hobson

November in Manchester-or lost in social media love

Last night's Social media cafe returned to the Northern in Tib Street Manchester and was ostensibly to be a discussion on the future direction of the event which has now been going for 12 months.

Prior to the discussion,November in Manchester gave a short presentation.

The idea is to create six fictional characters who will be blogging, tweeting and filming their lives across Manchester during the four weeks in November.

It is perhaps the ultimate in social media crowd sourcing with people being asked to send in photos and video.These will become the background of the novel

It will revolve around two characters and will be a romantic drama.The two will not initially know each other but will ultimately fall in love.

The aim is two fold.To explore what social media can do but also whether it will support a novel.

So if you want to get involve take a look at the site and get in touch through twitter

Onto the discussion hosted in three groups by Sarah Hartley,Ian Forrester and Julian Tait

Sarah has already posted a good round up on her blog

The opinions being that the venue needed to rotate,and that the skills, knowledge, talents could be utilised for a wider purpose in helping the Manchester community.

The latter being an important point and one which I for one am wholly behind.

I have probably been as guilty as anyone of talking about social media,new media,new journalism but perhaps now is the time for action.Let's put all these ideas and fantastic tools into practice.

Staff shouldn't be incentivised to use social media

Rather an interesting post from Suw Charman-Anderson who asks the question whether organisations

pay their staff extra, or provide some sort of bonus, for engaging with social media?” Sometimes it’s asked in the context of getting people to use an internal wiki or blog, sometimes it’s about getting them to engage externally with business-relevant communities

Her answer is no and the reasons

1.People generally use social tools because they find them useful or helpful in some way, because to do so increases their status amongst their peers or wished-for peers, because they are curious, or because the tools are enjoyable to use, amongst other reasons.

2.Putting a financial value on the use of social tools feels wrong. Not to mention simplistic, patronising and a gross misunderstanding of what social software is all about. I think it feels that way because social media is all about relationships, and we don’t explicitly “incentivise” (what a horrible word!) the creation and maintenance of relationships in any other context, so why would social media be different?

Could Manchester topple London's crown?

So apparently London is the social media capital of the world.

That is according to Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent of the Telegraph who argues that

1.Nearly 10 per cent of traffic to news recommendation site Digg comes from London alone,

2.London is the Facebook geographical network with the largest number of members and

3.London is the top Twitter-using city.”

Robin Hamman thinks the reason is

“London has a comparatively young, affluent and office based workforce with high levels of internet connectivity. That, combined with its status as a global communications, business and social hub, means that its population is more likely than those of similar sized cities to participate in social networking activities.”

But maybe Manchester combining its creativity backlground with its social networking scene should be mounting a challenge

Permanently alienating potential crushes

Imagine you have a crush on a girl at the bank.Every time you talk, it's only business.
But one day she says, “Here's my cellphone number. Call anytime.”

Derek Sivers is writing about corporate social media policy and the story continues

You call her and ask her out. She says OK.
You meet up for dinner and after talking for 15 minutes she says, “Could I interest you in a home equity loan?”
Arrgh! That's worse than if she had never given you her number in the first place!

The giving of the cell phone number is the equivilent of the taking on of social media but

They're acting like they want to connect directly with you, get to know you, or hang out where you hang out.
But unless they learn how to stop selling, listen, and be real - they're just permanently alienating potential crushes.

Ht-Joanna Geary

Social media policy or does common sense prevail?

The issue crossed my path yesterday yet again.Do organisations need a social media policy?

General guidelines should be in place but I firmly believe that the moment an organisation starts bringing in rigid structures,the very essence of social media ,its vibrant coomunication and instant reaction starts to dissipate.

I was therefore quite interested in what Scott Hepburn has to say in this post especially his call for getting rid of a can't do that policy

Social media is a new-ish approach to business. It enables new forms of collaboration, new approaches to problem-solving, and new ways to increase efficiency. “You can’t do that!” is our default response, a knee-jerk posture we instinctively deploy as a defense against discomfort. Hear it, recognize it, accept it, and set it aside

Maybe though his final point is the most important

Since the dawn of commerce, more companies have failed for lack of innovation than because of legal liabilities. Yes, be compliant with the law. Yes, know your risks. But there’s a difference between knowing your risks and deferring to them. Err to flexibility, toward encouraging new ideas and new models, and your people will astound you with their talents.

Companies get on with it and sell your message

I couldn't agree more with what Dave Sparks says

Given the endless tools for cheap to free production and distribution of content, there’s absolutely no reason a business must rely on others to tell their story. Yet for some demented reason, it’s still unbelievably difficult trying to convince corporations to do just that. Tell your own story. Businesses ingrained with the culture of “corporate communications” feel far more comfortable going through the traditional channels of PR firms, journalists, and bloggers.

Yes there are problems in allowing a story to go uncut,notably the need for professionalism in writing the content.That can be overcome as can the issue that PR can target more effectively.

But what the hell,companies get on with it and sell your message

New study shows shows social media rising up the priority of agencies

A new report on the media buying plans of advertisers and agencies indicates that having a "presence on social networks" is one of the top priorities of their media plans for next year.

2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study,found that 57.7% of respondents "ideally" plan, and 56.3% "realistically" plan to include social media in their media plans next year.

The study covers more than 25 industries, including advertising, automotive, business service, pharmaceutical, restaurant, technology, healthcare, entertainment, education, travel, nonprofit, financial, home improvement, luxury, telecom, media and electronics,

Amongst its other findings,were that those who plan, buy, approve media would ideally buy presence on a social network.
Almost two times more would ideally buy mobile video than will realistically buy it
and agencies and brands both would ideally buy more national TV than they will realistically buy

Via Online media daily

Welcome to Twitterville

No surprise that a new book about twitter and business is out and no doubt there will be a gushing of others in the next few months and business embrace social media.

This one by Shel Israel is called Twitterville and the FT's David Gelles does a good review in today's paper

Twitterville manages to be an engaging read, full of meaningful anecdotes and useful analysis. It makes a convincing case that Twitter's worth is not just the ability to broadcast short messages, but the ongoing and transformative conversations that these tweets ignite.

he writes

The book comes with a warning though as twitter is

quickly transforming from a quaint community into an unruly megalopolis. "As it grows it suffers from an ongoing assault of a steadily increasing flock of spammers, scammers, stalkers, phishers and plain old-fashioned flimflam artists,

Social media is a tool not a solution

More on the Twitter phenomena reaching into the corporate boardrooms.

In yesterday's Observer John Naughton writes of

CEOs who see all this social media activity going on and are disturbed by it. They read reports in the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal about Facebook having 250 million users, Twitter growing exponentially or the YouTube search engine becoming the prime source of information for teenagers, and think "hey, we're missing out on this". So instructions go out to minions to create a corporate presence in this whirlpool of online activity.

Neville Hobson meanwhile asks whether social media change the rules of old-world business? Finally deciding that the question should actually be

Can changes in society, people’s expectations and behaviours change the rules of old-world business?

I am experiencing some of these problems in the current role that I am doing.People forget that social media is simply another way of communicating.It shouldn't be pigeon holed into a special department,it is part of the strategy of the organisation.

The important thing is the message and the targets.

Social media is a tool not a solution

Your organisation has to get behind social media

I just love this opening paragraph from Kate Harrison Whiteside

Many people (read: bosses, organisations) still think the web delivers virtually – without needing an investment in resources. But, you get what you pay for. If you don’t invest time and human resources into social media, you won’t get a measurable return on your investment. Organisations wouldn’t design a brochure without a designer. Build a website without a website developer. Put on an event without a venue and entertainment. So we must get them to move beyond the virtual to the reality about social media.

How true

A pulse on the feelings of the web

Welcome to the world of sentiment analysis.

As the New York Times reports

The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression.

adding that

online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency that can make or break a product in the marketplace.

As with many practices in the world of social media,the art is at an early stage but services are starting to appear including Scout Labs and Jodange

Both seek to provide services to enable decision makers to better understand who and what is influencing their customers, competitors, marketplace and therefore their company.

The FT has set up Newssift that

that tracks sentiments about business topics in the news, coupled with a specialized search engine that allows users to organize their queries by topic, organization, place, person and theme.

The Content bubble and how to build your brand

David Murray over at the Biving's report writes that it is all very well having an online profile such as Twitter of Facebook but

You would be doing yourself a disservice by simply posting content without taking some time to think about the community you want to build. With the wealth of information available on just about every niche, you can create a valuable social network that people will want to follow.

He gives the example of an Italian restaurant building up a brand and here are some examples

* Italian food has a rich and incredible history. Share this in your feed.
* What region of Italy does your restaurant represent? Are there stories and facts which you can talk about?
* Highlight specialty dishes.
* Share some links about all the different grades of olive oil.
* Who doesn’t want to know more about Italian desserts?
* Go on YouTube and find some relative videos to post.
* Talk about how certain ingredients became known. How is ricotta cheese made?
* What about Italian songs or music?
* Spotlight some famous Italian chefs.
* Explain how all the different types of pasta come about.

The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN.”

US sports channel ESPN has issued guideleines on the use of social networking sites for its employees reports the New York Times.

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites. They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

Is this going to be part of a growing trend as organisations reign in the corporate message.

Well according to Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman,they

have been in the social networking space for a long time, and will continue to be there,but we want to be smarter about how we do it.

Asset managers are the latest converts to Twitter

The latest converts to Twitter and other social media are Asset managers according to the FT.

The paper reports that

US mutual fund Vanguard, which announced its arrival to the UK market in February, has a Facebook page with more than 2,300 members. Its ‘Simple Truths’ section includes videos offering tips on saving, while the firm also provides links to its Vanguard Blog, careers section and future events such as webcasts.

The sector sees social media as a way of reaching people and listening to people by building up a loyal following.

But a word of warning

Managers in the US and Europe are prohibited from posting material that could be deemed as giving financial advice. This, in turn, has an effect on what messages can be relayed via social networking sites.