Social media has really made it’s mark on 2010. Twitter and Facebook seem to be in the headlines almost every day, Hollywood is even making a movie about Facebook, and it seems as if every company is now looking to social media to help propel themselves beyond the aftermath of the GFC. But there is still a lot of confusion about what social media actually is and where the threats and opportunities lie.

In this article I take a close look at the social media landscape, describe some of the “platforms”, examine how these are changing the market place and outline a strategic framework for deploying social media as a branding, marketing, PR and intelligence tool.

What is social media really?

The big social media brands are YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but they are just that – brands, and like any brand they are designed to cater to a certain niche to meet a specific need.

As with any successful product or service the people behind these brands spotted a market need and developed a solution to it. They then had to work out how to generate revenue. Because social media is able to generate a huge amount of data about each user (age, gender, place of work, where they live, things they like, people they know and so on) the most obvious choice was to provide highly targeted advertising. Facebook is the brand that has managed to do this most successfully so far. But it is still early days – and Google is yet to weigh in seriously.

The market leaders do not define the market.

Social media is the convergence of technology and the desire people have to be heard and connected. In an age where people are feeling increasingly isolated, social media has managed to connect people with old friends, complete strangers and interest groups – or said another way connect people to the “market segments” they wish to belong to. This has happened in a way no other technology has been able to do.

We humans are essentially tribal animals and social media has allowed us to gather into these new ‘location free tribes’ incredibly fast. What’s more, the users of social media like it and want more.

The march of social media is now unstoppable. There have been times this year where the amount of time spent on Facebook eclipsed the time spent on Google. This competition is only going to intensify. Facebook recently released some new tools to extend its reach and influence over the whole of the web. Recently rumours around a new service called GoogleMe have started to surface.

Social media is now becoming more than a marketing experiment. By the end of the year the majority of big name companies will be looking at how social media can be directly integrated into their brand strategy. It will be the core of any new digital strategy.

Why has it happened?

Networking and collaboration is fundamental to what it means to be human. In our bodies atoms work together to create cells and cells work together to create our organs. In our brains’ neurons work together to create our thoughts, feelings and language. In your company people are working together in a similar way – to create something bigger and more exciting than the sum of it’s parts.

We can take this thinking and look at the development of the personal computer and see a very distinct pattern emerging.

Before anyone had a computer or a smart phone, everything was a social event. Meetings were face-to-face or over the phone. Communication in general was human-to-human based.

In the last 30 years things changed. Initially the personal computer made everything a private and secluded affair. Games, for example, could be played without the help of another human and work could be carried out sitting in front of a screen. The advent of the early internet exposed the power of a computer network. But from a personal perspective ‘computing’ was an insular activity.

The first social networks, forums and blogs worked with a huge number of anonymous users. While this was a step forward in person-to-person networking, the anonymity allowed people to behave in ways they would never dream of in real life. This constrained many of these networks to the domain of early adopters and special interest groups. The ‘rules’ that govern effective social networks were yet to be developed.

What has happened recently, particularly with Facebook, is that it’s become far easier to transport your real identity around the web. This means that increasingly people are joining new social networks with their ‘real identity’ – their real name, their place of work, and other details that define them as a person in a movement (sometimes referred to as the ‘Open Web’). Naturally this makes people think more carefully about what they say and how they behave on social networks.  Because they ‘own’ their comments the common rules of society come into play. When a person’s reputation is attached to what they say it makes them think carefully about what that comment might mean to others.

Of course people can still misbehave in social networks as they can in real world networks. But the networks are now being governed by majority rule so this behaviour is quickly dealt with. This makes cooperation and collaboration much easier. Because of this the barriers to entry are dropping at an astronomical rate. Companies are starting to feel more secure in setting up their own networks, knowing that the majority of users will join to get value out of the information that is provided and quickly deal with other users who lessen the overall value of that network.

So when thinking about why social media has become so widely adopted, and pondering where it is going, avoid getting distracted by in the leaps in technology. These are important of course but it is the behaviour of the network and the development of new social norms that are really driving the progress. Every individual in this massive network is doing what he or she is preprogrammed to do – communicate, collaborate and continue the march of civilisation’s evolution.

The New Web

The age of the “website” as we have known it is coming to an end. People may still go to your site but they expect information to be tailored for them and available on the social media platform of their choosing and on any device that connects to the web. What’s more they expect to be able to comment on almost everything they see. The web is no longer a digital version of print. It is the space where conversation is facilitated. Websites are becoming applications that feed information out to various social based platforms. This allows people to receive and consume information the way they choose.

The more you can utilise your social media presence and leverage the influencers in your network the better. It is even possible to embed e-commerce and other web based applications directly into Facebook. Most brands need to start thinking about their websites as a database that organises and distributes information and features to specific groups within the world of social media.

Owning the data

One way to think about the forces driving the development of social media is the old saying: “knowledge is power”. To that you need add a more recent motto “and the person with the most data wins”. Each social media brand-name earns its money from collecting and analysing data. And they are not too keen on sharing that information.

Obviously there’s a huge amount of data that brands can obtain from the many social media monitoring tools currently available. But if you really want ‘granular’ information about your brand you need to devise ways to generate and own your own data. If you are used to thinking about campaigns and short term goals this might feel difficult. If you take a longer term view however, it is possible to generate massive amounts of data relevant and specific to your brand, your product category and your competition.

It’s the economy, stupid

During the 1992 presidential campaign in the USA, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist coined the phrase “…it’s the economy, stupid…”. He did this to make the case that Clinton was a better choice for president because president George H. W. Bush had not successfully addressed the economy, which had recently undergone a recession. Clinton, of course, won that election.

Nearly twenty years later the world is emerging from a period of economic turmoil that has forever reshaped important elements of the market place. One of the most significant changes is the movement of social media into the mainstream. This is far from surprising. Challenging economic times always induce consumers to carefully assess how they spend. Being a member of a community where you trust the recommendations of people who are real consumers is an obvious choice. Technology has allowed this to happen in a measurable way and on a global scale.

We are now in a time where the phrase “it’s the social economy, stupid” could well become a catch phrase for companies rather than voters. Those that ignore the opportunities social networks provide may well be putting themselves at a distinct disadvantage.

Fractured or identifiable markets

There has been a lot of talk about how social media is fracturing markets. This is a myth.

Social media doesn’t ‘create’ new markets and market segments. It just identifies them. The interest groups and needs already existed – we just didn’t know enough about them.

The mountain of data that social media produces can now shed light on who these people are, and what they like. We now have clearly identifiable and serviceable markets.

Of course this has created an additional layer of complexity. But utilising tools to listen to, and more importantly, understand these market segments gives you an opportunity to talk to them in their own language and hear what they have to say. You might say this technology can help you treat your customers like humans – something that most forms of marketing and communication have not been good at thus far.

Defining value

A recent survey of the social media activity of major brands, including Nokia, Adidas, Nike, Coca-Cola and Red Bull, showed that some brands are engaging well with their Facebook fans. The people who have voluntarily decided to follow what these brands have to say tend to spend significantly more than non-fans – sometimes more than twice as much. Further, fans were more loyal and 68% were inclined to recommend the product to their peers. Nike was able to put a value of $209.83 on each Facebook fan – even though some fans spend nothing at all.

It could be argued that these fans would be loyal brand advocates anyway. But even so social media has given them a convenient platform to stay engaged and and share their views and preferences with others.

Starting a social media strategy

With this background we are now equipped to discuss how to form a social media strategy. Before we start a couple of principles need to be highlighted. First there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to strategy. Secondly it’s worth taking time to get a strategy right.

Many companies have been adopting an approach to social media based on an assumption that it is ‘free’. They have set up accounts and hoped it will work. It won’t. Hope is not a strategy, and social media takes time to get right – so it can’t be free.

So let’s walk through the basic steps…

Define your goal

A brand needs to first define it’s goal. Social media can be used for customer service, customer acquisition, brand awareness or public relations. But trying to do everything will produce unfocused results. Understanding what stage your company is at and setting goals to propel communications to your desired stakeholders is the first step.

Listen to gain context

Once you have defined your goal you need to measure what is already happening. Before meaningful KPIs can be set it helps to know what measurement tools are available and the quality of the data they generate. These tools can be categorised into three groups.

Site analytics – One of the most important tools you will need to utilise is website analytics – tools that measure the activity on your website. Google analytics is an extremely good free option but there are many others depending on what it is you are actually trying to do. Make sure you do your research get advice and know what option is right for you.

Social media monitoring – There are a number of ways to monitor what is happening in the social media space. Who is talking to who, who is influential and why the conversations are happening. There are free tools available but some of these lack precision as the technology is not constantly upgraded or not enough effort is put into collecting the data. A well developed tool is worth the investment. Good monitoring tools can give you extremely detailed information – what people are saying about your brand, who is saying it, details of the demographics of your social media following and even what people are saying about your competition. The right data allows you to snare the ‘low hanging fruit’.

Data mining tools – To dig deeper into data it may be necessary to employ more advanced tools. You may need ‘text mining’ to get an overview of what words or themes seem to be surrounding your brand online or ‘geo-locating’ comments to identify potential new markets.

Good choices require knowledge of what type of data is available, and how to best get your hands on it.

Choose your communication platforms

Platforms then need to be chosen. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are a few of the big ones but there are many more. Each is focused on a different demographic. There is also the possibility of creating your own platform to fulfil a need that may only exist for your market

Set KPIs

Once you know your goal, have chosen the tools you will use to measure it and the platforms through which you will focus your communications you are ready to set your KPIs. There are many ways of doing this. One of the most effective is aiming to ‘increase positive sentiment’ – basically getting more people on side.

Define a voice

Finally you need to create a ‘voice’. A tone for how you will communicate. Will you be informative, humorous or serious? What language will your market respond to?  Making the correct choice and implementing well is important. Get this right and your market will follow.

Get good advice

Ultimately a good social media strategy needs good advice. So make sure you talk to people who know this space well.

Looking to the future

Social media is here to stay. These methods of communicating have become embedded in our technologies and culture. Companies will soon be interacting with a generation that will find it impossible to imagine a time where the individual didn’t have a voice and an ability to exert influence.

This gives those companies a huge opportunity to be involved in conversations about their brands and to learn and respond to the views and preferences of their customers.

We are moving into the age of the ‘people organised web’ – information organised by people, for people and recommended by people in your network. We have moved beyond the ‘industrialised’ view of the world where markets are represented by impersonal statistics. Markets are made of individuals and they demand to be treated as such.

This is the beginning of the next great step in the evolution of human civilisation. It’s happening. Time to get on board and be part of that evolution.

W3 Chatter is an easy to use mobile app that has been developed by Melbourne based Working Three to keep you connected to all of the most important developments, and new RSS feeds are continuously being added.

Working Three clients can also access social media monitoring and a variety of other reports – so they have a detailed picture of how their brand is travelling in the social web.

If you have any issues please contact us

To download the app via iTunes click here.

Are you using social media to push your companies message, gain a thought leadership position or generate new product ideas? If the answer is yes then that’s great, consider yourself ahead of the curve. But if you are now wondering how to measure the effectiveness of your activity or if you have spotted that a lot of information is slipping through the cracks then it may be time to be rethinking your strategy.

know what you want

The first priority is to define a goal. That goal may be as simple as ‘generate new leads’, or you may want to manage your brand reputation, segment your market place to communicate with them more effectively, or generate long term customer loyalty by forming an effective customer service channel. Think carefully about what stage your business is at and what goal is most important. Remember effectively utilising social media takes time so it is not possible to do everything. Focus on one goal, and then set a realistic timeframe.

Know your tools

Once you have defined your goal you need to measure what is happening. Before meaningful KPIs can be set it helps to know how to define the metrics. The way to do this is understand the tools that do the measuring. They can be categorised into three groups:

Site analytics – One of the most important tools you, or your supplier, will need to utilise is site analytics. Google analytics is an extremely good free option but there are many others depending on what it is you are actually trying to do. Make sure you do your research and know what option is right for you.

Social media monitoring – There are a number of ways to monitor what is happening in the social media space. There are some free tools available but some of these lack precision as the technology is not constantly invested in or not enough effort is put into collecting the data. A well developed tool is worth the investment. Good monitoring tools can give you extremely detailed information – what people are saying about your brand, who is saying it, details of the demographics of your social media following and even what people are saying about your competition. The right data allows you to snare the ‘low hanging fruit’.

Data mining tools – To dig deeper into data it may be necessary to employ more advanced tools. You may need ‘text mining’ to get an overview of what words or themes seem to be surrounding your brand or ‘geo-locating’ comments to identify potential new markets may be essential.

Good choices require your knowing what type of data is available and how to best get your hands on it.

Choose your platforms

There are thousands of social media platforms operating in the market place. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are three of the best known ones but there are many many others. These social media platforms are brands designed like any other to meet a specific need. What matters then is finding out what your customer needs are, then choosing the platforms that fit them best.

It is also well worth remembering that social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn make their money through targeted advertising. This means that their most valuable asset is the users’ data – what they like, who they talk to, what stage they are at in life and so on. While this may make your advertising on these platforms cost effective it may also mean that you have limited access to the raw data.

If your market is big enough you may need to set up your own social network so you can ‘own’ the data and use it to define new products, segment your market and really understand what people are talking about. There are many ways to approach this, from blogs and forums to fully fledged social platforms with user profiles and interest groups. Don’t get caught up in the technology, it’s your customers needs that are important.

Get going

Of course you will need to define how KPIs are going to be set, who is going to be managing the communities and how your reports are presented. But knowing what data is available and how to read it is vitally important. In some cases just collecting the data and really understanding your customers may be a goal the is adequate enough.

Your customers are openly discussing their likes and dislikes, what they saw on TV and what they think of the news. There is also a good chance they are talking about you. If you want to get on the front foot and respond to that then get moving – start to collect data and make decisions based on what it is telling you.

If knowledge is power then data is it’s generator.

Online networks, including social ones, evolve and take on a life of their own. In the real world, for multi-celled organisms to exist a number of cells must work together to make something bigger. When individual cellular components work together multi-celled organisms evolve and these can evolve into complex life forms over time. A branch of these complex life-forms have evolved and eventually became humans. Human civilisation has in turn evolved to where we are now because we have mastered the art of continually grouping together into teams, tribes, cities and nation states to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Networking and collaboration are fundamental to what it means to be human. In our bodies are atoms working together to create cells and cells working together to create our organs. In our brains neurones work together to create our thoughts, feelings and language. In your company people are working together – to create something bigger and more exciting than the sum of it’s parts.

We can take this thinking and look at the development of the personal computer and see a very similar pattern emerging…

Before anyone had a computer or a smart phone, everything was a social event. Meetings were face-to-face, or over the phone at least, and communication in general was human to human based.

In the last 30 years things changed. Initially the personal computer made everything a private and secluded affair. Games, for example, could be played without the help of another human and work could happen sitting in front of a screen. The advent of the early internet showed how powerful many computers networked together could be, but from a personal perspective ‘computing’ was an insular activity.

The first social networks, forums and blogs worked with a huge number of anonymous users. While this was a step forward in person-to-person networking, the anonymity allowed people to behave in ways that they would never dream of in real life. This left many of these networks to be the domain of the very early adopters and special interest groups. The ‘rules’ that govern effective social networks were yet to be developed.

What has happened recently, particularly with Facebook, is that is has become far easier to transport your real identity around the web. This means that increasingly people are joining new social networks with their ‘real identity’: their real name; their place of work; and other details that define them as a person in a movement – sometimes referred to as the ‘Open Web’. Naturally this makes people think more carefully about what they say and how they behave on social networks – because they ‘own’ their comments the common rules of society come into play. When a person’s reputation is attached to what they say it makes them think carefully about what that comment might mean to others.

Of course people can still misbehave in social networks, like they can in real world networks, but the networks are now being governed by majority rule so this behaviour is quickly dealt with. This makes cooperation and collaboration much easier and because of this the barriers to entry are dropping at an astronomical rate. Companies can now start to feel more secure in setting up their own networks knowing that majority of users will join to get value out of the information that is provided and quickly deal with other users who lessen the overall value of that network.

So when thinking about why social media has become so widely adopted and pondering about where it is going avoid getting distracted by in the leaps in technology. These are important, of course, but it is the behaviour of the network and the developments of new social norms that are really driving the progress. Every individual in this massive network is doing what he or she is pre-programmed to do – communicate, collaborate and continue the march of our civilisation’s evolution.

The future of the Social Web will see openness and ownership of communication adopted on a much greater scale as the tools to do so become more wide spread and easier to adopt. The potential economic benefits of social media will force this to happen. Companies can and will want to access to increasingly granular data about their ’stakeholders’ – employees, supporters and consumers. Knowing what individuals are saying what, how they are behaving and who is influencing them is critical and valuable information.

When Facebook releases it’s new developer tools in April this year there will be an even bigger push towards the Open Web – something that many market analysts are predicting will make the eventual float of Facebook bigger than that of Google’s IPO.

The rules governing online social networks are beginning to mature. Unsurprisingly they closely reflect those that exist in offline world.

Many of you may have heard that markets across the globe are fracturing into ever finer segments. You may have also heard that this is been driven by the rise of social media.

But if people are getting together to discuss specific interests and this is leading to an emergence of ‘new markets’ to emerge then surely these interest groups must must have existed already. It just we didn’t know about them. So in this sense social media doesn’t ‘create’ new markets and market segments. It just identifies them.

The mountain of data that social media produces can now shine a light on who these people are, and what they like. And voila – we have new identifiable and serviceable markets.

Want to grow in this brave new world? Then learn to collect and read the data and then use the tools to communicate with them as they progress down the path towards making a purchasing decision.

All the tools are there and the people are waiting.

Thanks to TED for providing brilliant speakers to us all, again.

My favourite is “Think big. Bigger than that.”

See it here

“Social media hit a tipping point in 2009 as sites like Facebook and YouTube increased their presence in mainstream media while sites like Twitter and Digg emerged. On top of the obvious, thousands of new and legitimate social media websites hit the scene with hopes of being the “next big thing”.

While most credit and attention are being given to Facebook for unofficially winning the social networking battle with MySpace, Bebo, and others, Twitter and Digg were the real winners in 2009 for very different reasons.”

Click here to read it all