Winning the Digital Battle

Last week I shared on Twitter an excellent piece by Jim White from The Telegraph about the way in which Kevin Pietersen single-handedly won the digital battle with the ECB Media team over his continued absence from the England Test team. Long gone are the days when we had to wait for the official press release to know the details of a story, we now expect information on demand and Social Media has made this possible.

Pietersen is one of the modern-day sportsmen who understands the power of Social for building brands and releasing information, he had also amassed a large and vocal community who fight his corner at every opportunity, none more so than in the last few days.

He has been ferocious user of Twitter for some time and has recently taken to the relatively new Periscope platform to broadcast some excellent content.

This example shows that there are still organisations, big and small, who see Social Media outlets as the last link in the digital food chain. There seems to be a perception that these platforms are in some way frivolous as they are used for recreational and entertainment purposes as well as for business and commerce. It is a perception that is very wrong, as I wrote in my recent blog “10 Social Media Myths De-Bunked”, some businesses feel they are above entering the digital arena.

While it has always been said that having a presence on Social channels doesn’t constitute a marketing plan, it forms a very important part of a business strategy. It is a way of getting your content in front of someone who has made a deliberate decision to receive it, or is receiving by way of someone they like and trust. That’s why your social message can be more personal and effective than a newspaper ad or a radio commercial.

Seeing the way in which the media department of an international sporting body were out-thought and out-paced by an individual shows the immense power of social communication. It demonstrates too that a digital presence is now absolutely vital in any form of business.

Why be happy with coming second, especially if the person who came in first totally embarrassed you along the way.

Last week The Telegraph Business of Sport conference took place in London. Among the attendees were representatives of everyone from Uefa, through the Union Cycliste International to the Rugby Football Union, plus many of the corporations which sponsor their sports, including O2, BT and Barclays.

Those governing bodies and their financial benefactors understand the way that Social communication and engagement gives their sports and businesses the chance to get closer to the people who support the teams, love the sport and, the sponsors hope, buy their products. They know that the sporting future is digital.

It will come as no surprise, given the fact that they were still putting their shorts on when Kevin Pietersen had won the race that the ECB were not among those present at the event.

Are You Content With Your Content?

You may have a number of social channels on the go, they may be picking up some decent traction but are you satisfied with how they are performing for your business?

Are you content with your content?

It’s a question worth asking yourself, maybe as part of your main Social Media strategy sessions or perhaps as a regular housekeeping function.

Whatever you are publishing, whether it’s mostly text based, photos, videos, other visuals, a mixture of everything, it is all content. Every single thing you create and send out into the social arena.

I’ve put together a small checklist that may help you to assess your current content.

1) IS YOUR CONTENT SUITABLE FOR THE PLATFORM IT’S ON

You may have a handful of social outlets for your business, each one will require a different approach. Twitter gives you the chance to create short to the point tweets which grab attention or point your follower to another location (your website, other social channel or link to content you want to share). Facebook helps you to go into more depth with the opportunity to add a visual to your status and to start conversation threads with your fans and customers. Pinterest is an excellent way of curating quality visuals as well as being able to provide links to other sites and content. Instagram is more “in the moment” and may suit your business perfectly.

2) DON’T BE AFRAID TO TRY SOMETHING NEW

You may have settled on a few platforms which you are happy with but something new will come along all the time. If you think a new platform that one of your staff or your Consultant suggests might work, try it. You have nothing to lose. If it takes off add it to your social portfolio to strengthen your digital toolkit. If it doesn’t, delete the account and move on.

3) THINK FOR A MINUTE

When you’ve created some content, stop for a moment and listen for the voice in your head. Sometimes it will ask you a question.

“Do you think that’s suitable content?”

In my experience if you have to stop and think about publishing content you probably shouldn’t. That little voice in your head is nearly always right.

4) BE HUMAN

It’s okay to use your social platforms to give your business a human face and personality; in fact that’s what they’re great for. Of course you have to strike the right tone but you should know what that is. It may take a little practice at first but it will pay dividends. People expect their social interaction to personable and human; the businesses who are using social most effectively understand this.

5) KNOW WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

If you are on top of your social analysis and metrics then you will know the types of content which give you the best engagement. You will be able to discover the times and days when your content ignites and this information will help you plan your content creation and publication each week. Of    course the beauty of social is being spontaneous but having a catalogue of detailed analysis will be the backbone to your function.

6) IS YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE GOLD STANDARD?

Your social platforms will now be the first port of call for many of your customers or clients if they have a problem. It is so much easier to call into a Facebook page and post a comment than searching out a website for a contact number or e-mail address.

I’ve always maintained that “Gold Standard” customer service shouldn’t be a target, it should be the norm. It is so easy to use your Social Media outlets to provide excellent customer service and that doesn’t mean waiting for something to go wrong before you engage and interact.

Just saying “thank you” when you get a positive comment will mean more to your customer than you think.

7) IS YOUR AUDIENCE CONTENT WITH YOUR CONTENT?

If your followers, fans and customers are not getting enough from your content to engage with it then that’s all you need to know that your content strategy is not working.  Social is sometimes hit and miss and it takes time to find your voice. The big advantage about social broadcasting is that if a piece of content doesn’t work for you, take note, understand the reasons why and try something else.

8) BE TOPICAL

If your Social strategy includes a content calendar then you won’t miss opportunities to tie in topical issues or events to your business. I feel that businesses and organisations whose social content shows their followers that they are tapping into relevant issues and stories stand out from the crowd. Of course that same approach also increases the amount of content you can create for your platforms.

Oh finally, if your Social strategy doesn’t include content calendar, it really should.

10 Social Media Myths De-bunked

This week I thought I would talk about Social Media “myths”. Words of wisdom in social communication that have been repeated so many times they become what people believe. However, they are also the same words that make you stop and question them.

When I worked in radio there were similar myths, mantras that had been trotted out by more experienced people for so long that as a newcomer you just accepted them, even though none of them had any basis in fact.

For example:-

• Female listeners don’t like female presenters
• Never play more than three female voices in a row
• Always put in an hour’s prep for each hour on air.
• Mentioning another radio station will make your listener immediately tune to it.

I could go on – as a young presenter I heard all these and just accepted them. As you gain confidence and experience in your profession you start to question these “myths”.

The same is true of Social Media; here are 10 Myths of the social age to question.

1) I SHOULD BE ON EVERY PLATFORM

Do you know how many social platforms there are? No me neither. One of the basic pitfalls of using Social Media is to try and maintain a presence on lots of platforms, see nothing happen and give up. The first step for every business or organisation is to identify the platforms that will work best for them and concentrate your efforts there.

2) I’LL JUST USE ONE PLATFORM

Just as spreading yourself too thin is not good, the opposite is equally as bad. By all means note the platform that gives you the most traction and make that your primary outlet, but remember that other sites can be complementary. Using a handful of social platforms also gives you the opportunity to cross-promote and link them together.

3) I CAN’T LINK TO MY OTHER SOCIAL PLATFORMS

You have a Facebook account, it’s doing fine, lots of engagement for your excellent content. So you set up a Twitter account as a complementary outlet and because your business is visual you think a Pinterest board would be good too. All excellent ideas. The problem is, you’ve read a few “experts” say you can’t link to them from your Facebook wall because………..well I don’t know why really.

It makes no sense to me. Just do it. The great thing about social is that you can tie up your social channels, your company website, your YouTube channel in a lovely chain of gorgeous digital content.

4) WALL-TO-WALL CONTENT

It’s quality not quantity, less is more etc. etc. Think about what you have to offer and the best way of saying it. What are your keywords, your important messages, how can you encourage your followers to share your content. Of course sell yourself and your services but do it strategically amongst your other posts. Make your channels ones your followers can rely on to be informed and entertained.

5) RE-POSTING

This is one of my bugbears. Someone once said you should never re-post content and it was taken as read. I still see some practitioners espouse this point of view.

I use the analogy of your wife or girlfriend who won’t wear a dress she’s worn before, even though there’ll be no-one at the event who will have seen it the first time.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with re-posting content. We would love all of our content to be seen by all of our social communities, but in the real world that’s never gonna happen.

Do it sensibly and creatively, choose carefully the content you recycle, make sure it’s still relevant when you re-post.

6) DON’T BE PERSONAL

Hang on, isn’t this what being “social” is all about. Of course keep your audience and your customers in mind but don’t be afraid to show off your business/brand’s personality. If it didn’t have one before your social channels give you the chance to create one. It’s 1-2-1 communication, it’s personal, it’s dialogue between you and the person looking at their screen.

7) IT’S A NUMBERS GAME

People still get hung up on numbers; obsess about how many likes, followers and friends they’re notching up. You’ll see people following you then unfollow a few days later when you haven’t reciprocated. You don’t want them anyway.

The sorts of fans and followers you need are ones who will find your content interesting, informative or entertaining enough to share with their own tribes. They could be your flag-wavers and brand ambassadors. 500 people who engage with your posts on a regular basis are far more important to your business than 10,000 people who clicked the “like” button once.

8) IF IT’S NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, IGNORE IT

No-one likes seeing negative stuff written about their business or organisation but the worst thing you can do is ignore or delete it. It’s important to have a plan in place when the situation arises so your response is timely and constructive. Remember anyone who sees the negative comment will also see your way in which you have handed it.

9) SOCIAL IS TOO INFORMAL FOR BUSINESS

I heard this at a networking event just the other week, what the comment says to me is that the person saying it doesn’t know what social media is all about. Social communication is for everyone, irrespective of business type, it can change perceptions of your business in a post or a tweet. When the CIA fired up their Twitter account they got it absolutely right with their first tweet.

10) EVERY POST NEEDS A HASHTAG

#Saving #the #best #for #last. #Dear #Lord #above, #save #us from #Hashtag #Hell.

Hashtags are great, they tie up events, topics, opinions and conversations beautifully but they are the source of more social evil than almost anything else (with serial re-tweeters a close second). They are not however, compulsory and will not guarantee you a trending topic but used carefully and creatively will help those following the hashtag to find your content.

I hope that if you’ve comes across any of those Social Media myths this blog has given you the confidence to take my advice and ignore them.

There a more of them of course, I have a feeling there may be a part 2 coming soon.

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Why Should I Hire A Social Media Consultant?

Social Media is now such an integral part of life and business that many companies and organisations believe they can steer their way through their digital communication platforms in the same way their employees and managers use it for their personal uses.

Of course using Social Media in business needs to be more strategic and measured while still maintaining the personal aspect of being “social”. This is where a good Consultant can help steer you and your content in the right direction.

I have identified several areas in which your Consultant can work with you to make your communication channels give you improved results.

IMPARTIALITY

Hiring a Consultant gives you the opportunity to have your Social Media usage audited and assessed by someone who doesn’t have a personal or emotional attachment to the content. If you’re involved in the day-to-day business then it’s easy to become so close to it that you can’t see the wood for the trees, sometimes you can’t even see the trees – we’ve all been in that position. Your Consultant will give you a new perspective through fresh eyes based on his or her experience.

One of my favourite parts of the job is looking at a client’s content for the first time, you never know what you’re going to find.

STRATEGY

One of the great misnomers of Social Media is that all you have to do is set up a few channels, stick some content on them and everything will be great, customers will start coming out of the woodwork and before you know it you’ll need an extension on the extension.

A social strategy is essential to identify the platforms on which you need to be active, the sort of content you have to offer and the ways in which you can make what you have to say stand out from the crowd.

Very often the first question I ask in a consultation is the most difficult question of the day to answer.

“What do you do that makes you different to every other business?”

It’s surprising how long it sometimes takes to identify the answer/s to that question but once you know what makes your business special we can work on the rest of the strategy.

CONTENT

Oh man we love content, we say the word at least a hundred times a day and if we don’t we get a headache on the way home. Your Consultant will help you identify the content you can “ignite” to make your social effort stronger and more successful.

I’ve heard from some people that they’re in the “wrong type of business” to use Social Media. This is another fallacy, there is no such thing. Every business or organisation has something they do which they can turn into digital content for their platforms of choice.

Very often companies and individuals don’t realise how much content they have to offer and it’s often this which holds them back from using social channels as they feel they have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

EXPERIENCE

It almost goes without saying that your Consultant will know more about Social Media usage and communication than you do. That’s why you’ve hired them in the first place.

Of course anyone can give themselves a label, call themselves a Consultant or an “expert” – I hate that word, or maybe a “guru – hate that even more, or if they’re very special a “ninja” – there are almost no words at this point, suffice to say if you come across someone who has given themselves the epithet “ninja”, a wide berth would be the best course of action.

I see people calling themselves “experts” only to find their own social channels to be disaster areas. My advice to anyone looking for a Consultant would be to browse across their platforms, in my opinion if they can’t “do social” for themselves then you can you expect them to do it for you.

Like any form of media, social is all about effective communication. You may have terrific content, fantastic ideas on how to ignite it but if you can’t communicate those things via your social channels they’re useless.

After nearly 30 years in broadcasting there isn’t too much I don’t know about the art of communication. It won me a daily audience of nearly a quarter of a million people and enabled me to build a social community in the days before Social Media. The advent of digital platforms merely helped me grow and strengthen the loyalty, trust and support I received from my tribe.

ANALYSIS

Success in Social Media cannot be measured purely in followers, likes and fans, indeed those numbers may mislead you into thinking your content is working better than it actually is.

Your Consultant will be able to analyse your activity and identify where your strengths and weaknesses are. Which types of content work best – at what times your posts get more exposure and shares – who are the followers passing on your content to their communities and giving it more traction and penetration.

INTEGRATION

When I first started using Social Media channels at Real Radio in 2009 they were very much seen as rival outlets and I encountered a lot of resistance while trying to promote the use of these new tools as part of an integrated marketing and communications network, tied to the company website.

Nowadays this integration is seen as essential to a successful Social Media strategy with platforms and websites working with each other to build and strengthen ties with clients, customers and fans. Your Consultant will be able to identify ways to tie-up your Social platforms and spot the ways in which you are missing opportunities to integrate social, blog and web content.

A good Consultant will give you an unbiased, honest view of your social activity and help you improve in the relevant areas. They shouldn’t tell you everything’s terrible or everything’s great and they certainly shouldn’t look for criticism to justify their fee. We get paid the same amount irrespective of the outcome although you may have, like me, been on the end of reports from Consultants who were clearly looking for faults because they thought they should.

They will help a business and its staff understand how their social strategies and plans work and what’s expected from them when they are publishing on social channels.

The services your Consultant will offer are many and varied ranging from a one-off consultation to a long –term association with your business’ social activity. One thing you can be assured of is that finding a knowledgeable, reliable Consultant will add enormous value to your Social Media usage.

Here’s where you’ll find me www.chrismooremedia.co.uk

Come on, you didn’t expect me to blog about the benefits of a Social Media Consultant without a plug for my own services at the end did you?

Are We Still Engaged?

One of my favourite podcasts is the always excellent “Marketing Companion” by Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster, a weekly broadcast about the worlds of marketing and social media. On the most recent edition they talked about the subject of engagement and how there seems to be less and less taking place in the social space.

Social media usage is ever-increasing, social platforms and mobile applications are seemingly appearing on a daily basis, we are becoming more and more reliant on social sources for information and entertainment yet, Mark and Tom argued, the engagement factor is on the decline.

They argued that though streaming video, infographics and podcasts are rising in popularity the engagement is not there as it once was. Top bloggers have eliminated their comment sections and Mark claimed that it was now hard to start a conversation on Twitter.

This may be a little exaggerated to encourage discussion but there may be solid reasons for these claims. It is plain to see that Social Media is becoming more and more visual, hence the increasing popularity of Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. Podcasting is becoming an easy way to share content and build a listener base of your own and in the last few weeks streaming video has received a boost with the arrival of Meerkat and Periscope.

Although it’s the latter which appears to have captured the imagination of the masses.

Maybe there is now an acceptance of content being delivered to our various devices merely for our own reference and interest, without the need to engage with it by way of comment and opinion. We may be happy some of the time to be entertained by someone or something.

I have enjoyed spending time with Periscope in the last couple of weeks, watching some behind the scenes feeds from radio stations (once a radio geek, always a radio geek) including some from the legendary Tony Blackburn, I took a car ride from the Swalec Stadium to a Cardiff hotel with Kevin Pietersen and Kumar Sangakarra, rode the monorail at Disney World in Orlando and watched some guy try and eat 8 MacDonald’s’ cheeseburgers in an hour. Not a vigorous challenge I’ll grant you, but it made me stay with it because the guy was really engaging. He was re-enacting an initiation from a firm of London share traders (I thought they were more creative than that). I watched for a couple of minutes and really liked him, so much so I went back late to see if he’d managed to complete the challenge. He had of course but he probably suffered for it later on.

However, during all the time spent with my Periscope chums I never felt the urge to comment once, I just enjoyed what I was watching. Maybe that gives Mark and Tom’s argument some weight.

We always talk about how you can increase the engagement your social content receives by using visuals and moving images and in my opinion that still is very much the case.

I think we will always have opinions and thoughts that we want to share with our communities, it may be the case that we are becoming more selective in the amount of participation we carry out.

Will there be a time when we will have to develop new ways of measuring how our Social Media activity is working for us?

Maybe – but one of the fascinating parts of thinking about Mark and Tom’s podcast is the way in which social communication is ever changing. While the main roads of digital interaction stay the same, the side roads are developing new twists and turns and on occasions the inevitable road works (usually on a Bank Holiday weekend).

A Social Media – motoring analogy. Come on, that’s worth a comment in itself, isn’t it?

Disclaiming the Disclaimer

You’ve probably seen hundreds of them; you may even have one of our own on your Twitter bio.

Yes it’s the disclaimer; the one above is what’s opted for in many cases, however sometimes users get a bit creative.

After all these years there is still a general belief that these disclaimers in a Twitter profile somehow bestow a suit of armour if a problem arises with any dubious content issued from that person’s account.

It doesn’t matter how they phrased, a Twitter disclaimer is about as much use as an underwater hairdryer.

I don’t know where or when the disclaimer was born but like anything that gets repeated over and over again, the perception becomes reality.

To give it a legal comparison it’s like the word “allegedly” which is still thought of as a shield if used before a libellous or defamatory comment. Again, this is a popular misconception but still widely believed.

The main man in legal training for radio folk is Paul Chantler, he says this about that word

“For example, despite what you may have been led to believe by ‘Have I Got News For You?, the word “allegedly” is not a defence against a possible libel action; if anything it just digs you even deeper into the hole in which you’ve dug yourself. In libel cases, the burden of proof is on the defendant, so by using “allegedly”, you are, in effect, admitting you are not totally sure of the facts, and, therefore, have no adequate defence”.

The same thing applies to the Twitter disclaimer.

We shouldn’t need a form of words on our bio to protect us from our own ideas and thoughts being published on a public forum. All we need is to take responsibility for our opinions for that is what they are; they cannot be anyone else’s.

You will occasionally see another disclaimer on a Twitter profile which declares that :-

“Re-tweets are not endorsements”

My argument is that that is EXACTLY what they are. What else could they be, unless you add a caveat to the tweet you are sharing you can expect the content to be taken as something you not only agree with, but agree with enough to share with your own Twitter community.

Here’s a story that grabbed my attention in the last couple of days featuring a tweet from Geoffrey Miller, a Psychologist at the University of New Mexico.

He declared via Twitter :-

A rumpus quickly ensued as you would expect and with every justification, as unless he’s done research into both the correlation of willpower relating to the intake of carbohydrates and the impetus to complete a dissertation, he’s on shaky ground. Love the hashtag too, as if that’s enough proof to justify the preceding comments.

He soon responded to the criticism he was getting by explaining it was all part of a research program to gauge Twitter reaction to provocative comments. I suppose we should give him credit for trying to come up with something more creative than “I had my account hacked”, but once he realised we weren’t all born yesterday, he issued a disclaimer AGAINST HIS OWN OPINION.

It’s another example of the way an ill-judged, bone-headed Social Media posting can not only come back and bite you in the backside, but not be happy until it’s eaten your trousers too.

The way to avoid these embarrassing episodes is not to indulge in meaningless copy and paste disclaimers but to be measured, thoughtful and considered.

A tweet can take seconds to share but the impact and damage of a poorly judged post can stay with you for a lifetime.