eCommunications for global organisations

Perry Belcher explains how social media can create benefit for your business. A clear and simplified way of outlining some of the basic principles of Social Media Marketing.

Based on 2009 research, Forrester has developed a simple profiling tool that maps out consumers depending on their age, gender and country to determine their level of online engagement.





The scale to measure consumers’ level of engagement is based on Forrester’s Social Technographics® which classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see a 6 slide presentation below). Not all European countries are represented; nevertheless it’s interesting to see e.g. the difference between the US and Europe.

A friend of mine just sent me this absolute beginners guide for twitter (thanks Bryony).

She found it quite useful and there are even things in there I wasn’t personally aware off.

How can Twitter as a social media tool help you grow your business? The author maps out 3 priorities:
1. provide value to your audience. This is the basis for everything else
2. drive that audience to your blog
3. grow your audience

Definitely worth a read

Clay Shirky gives a TED (www.ted.com) 16 minute presentation on how social media changes the dynamics of power and communications because it creates the possibility of masses communicating with masses.  A compelling account of what communicators and politicians everywhere need to understand.

Clay wrote a book called ‘Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations‘ which looks interesting.  His site/blog also contains some more background on his thinking and approach.  He is a consultant to international organisations like Nokia and the BBC and a professor at NYU.

Just came across this post by JustinSMV about the impact social media is likely to have going forward (a bit like a fresh version of the machine is us).  A good way to get your mind to focus on the strategic importance of these new tools when preparing yourself for 2010.  As the FT and the Economist recently declared the recession in Europe (ok at least for France and Germany) is (almost) over, it is time to start thinking about the future and how to plan for 2010 - but without going back to the bad old ways…

This should give you some inspiration.

Here an interview from a Social Media presentation I gave at The Hub last week together with Oihana (eMarketeer at The Hub):

I do believe that the shift towards social media is not only important for Corporate Marketers.

The fact that you have to become more transparent also means you have to start reviewing your current business operations: How compliant are we really? And how do our stakeholders perceive our performance?

Some years ago it would have been a great opportunity for a Business to move towards social & environmental responsibility to gain a competitive advantage. Today it becomes more and more a must to not fall behind your competitors and to avoid a potential crisis.

Being truly transparent does not only mean that a corporation needs to implement a CSR report that is compliant with GRI standards we are talking about a process of change management that is not to underestimate. It’s not just about the numbers but also about the motivations & meaning given to these values by each and every employee.

Only in the moment a researcher from the R&D division, your supply chain partners and the external maintenance guy live up to this philosophy and come to work every day because they truly believe they help save the environment and add benefit to the community by working for your organization, you can talk about a successful implementation of this approach. It’s not just a one off exercise. It’s rather a cultural transformation of the whole organization.

“We think the web is better when it’s social. Currently, you have friends locked up in one or more social networks, social applications that work on only a few sites, and multiple usernames and passwords to remember. It can be better, and we are developing tools to make “any app, any site, any friends” a reality.”

Read more on http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com

I just came across a group called the Energy Collective.  I was interested in this community because they use an online platform to discuss complex issues.  Second, the topics are more niche and specialised than ‘web 2.0′ or ’social media’ as many existing communities already do.  This is how the describe themselves:

Welcome to The Energy Collective, a moderated online community for people who want to understand and discuss how energy choices, technology and markets are shaping the quest for a secure and sustainable future. Our featured bloggers are a cross section of respected scientists, activists, policy makers, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs united by their commitment to innovation as the key to a sustainable future.

I was already aware of this kind of structure to discuss similar issues by following the Social Media Today which uses the same platform (called Wordframe).  They also have a few other communities using the same basic approach.  What I like about these two examples is that they show how intelligent discussions can take place between “experts” and it provides some really useful way to learn about a topic and discuss certain subjects (either through comments or through direct posting).

With many clients we have been exploring various tools to create, manager or engage with online communities and it is clear that there is no magic bullet and many experiments out there (read my post on what we have been doing for ZN) and even more dead communities or failed attempts at building online communities that simply don’t have momentum.

Most of the communities that are very active center around web or technology related subjects which is why I really like the energy collective as it demonstrates that the same logic can apply to any kind of environment.  I expect that over time these online communities will be considered as the source of real expertise and the thought leaders will develop and share ideas from there and onwards to others.  They also become a place where experts, policy makers, journalists and interested parties can build their expertise and profile on the issues.

One thing I am missing is more transparency behind who is funding these initiatives.  In the case of the energy collective it would help to know if there is a political agenda behind the organisation - maybe it is there somewhere but I have missed it.  As it is a very sensitive topic I think they should be clear and upfront about who is doing this, why and how they get paid for their time (for editing and managing the community).

I just read a post from Gitte Gorzelak called You mean..having 57 blogs is not a good idea? and as I found myself commenting on the post it made me think about when is having too many platforms, blogs and social networks running at the same time is a waste of time.  I tried to answer in my comments, but I feel that this question deserves a more thorough examination.

To take ZN as an example we have quite a few ‘digital assets’ running.

First we have the ZN site (www.zn.be).  It has a hyperlink on the homepage to our blog (Hyperthinker.com).  So far, so good.  However we have a page called ‘The Lab’ which links to another initiative which is our NIng platform.  The later platform has links to the blog as it feeds it through an rss feed.  We also are able to import videos from our youtube channel which means that actually there is a lot linked to the ning platform.  We also have two other ’groups’ on Xing.com (actually two: one called hyperthinker and another on emarketing).  Interestingly  the latter has continued to survive despite being neglected (I had some difficulties with lack of applications and the lack of integration with the outside world).  But they both have over 400 members and as I checked earlier, both had posts dated December. 

We also created several facebook groups (some private, some public - but to be honest this generated little impact from a business point of view but it was great to connect with old friends).

Finally we created a platform on linkedin.  This one is very interesting as it well designed, and has a great facility to share articles (automatically creating a clean title and summary from a url).

All these experiments are very useful in approaching clients (we have replicated a ning platform for client recently around a packaging competition) and we have also started many blogs and facebook communications programmes which have met with some success. 

The Xing group actually generated a few leads and some positive referrals and so did some of the other initiatives.

The main puropose of these online ‘assets’ is that they serve as a place of learning.  I am also finding that a good blog serves to focus the mind on key questions (like this one) and helps to share your thoughts and feelings, especially with your own team and clients (and perhaps prospects but I feel this is not the main aim of this).

So I guess so far we are making slow and steady progress up the learning curve.  I would like to see as much hyperlinking as possible between those different platforms so people can choose how they want to consumer their information, which profile they want to use and what ways they want to choose to express themselves.

The simple blog seems to be the most ‘mature’ of the lot, but it takes hard work and discipline (something that was a missing a little in the past).  However I have seen the various communities serve very effectively the purpose of client if the fit with the campaign was right.   We will continue into 2009, with more experimentation and look forward to meeting you there…

Understanding what happens behind sites and where people come from is a constant challenge of emarketeers.  I just found this very nice post from a blog called socialfishing which identified a great tool to get detailed demographic about big sites, including social networks, search engines and other sites that qualify. 

It’s called quantcast and it seems to deliver some great insights.  Check out the summary of soime of the key networks by socialfishing:

“So here’s Facebook. 52 million US people. It skews slightly younger, female, educated (college), with children. (Click on the “demographics” tab for the summary).

Here’s LinkedIn. 9.3 million US people. It skews slightly older, male, highly educated (grad school), no children, more affluent.

Here’s Twitter. 2.4 million US people. Skews more female, more Gen-X, less affluent, educated (college and grad school).

Here’s Blogger.com. 23.5 million people. Skews male, younger, middle income, post grad.”

Worth a look.