According to the latest predictions from research firm, Forrester, social media marketing spend in the US will rise from $716 million in 2009 to £3,113 million in 2014. The accuracy of these figures may be up for debate – all the research in the world isn’t going to tell you how the world will change in five years time, and the beauty of the being an analyst is that few people ever test your long term predictions – but it certainly points to a clear trend, which is more useful than any attempts to pin precise numbers on the potential size of the industry.

Source: Forrester Research

As the chart shows, social media is expected to be the fastest growing online marketing sector by a significant margin (although, unsurprisingly, mobile is also expected to grow significantly, but people have been expecting that to explode for a long time now).

The reasons for this should be clear, the marketing industry is currently experiencing a sea change for a wide range of reasons, including:

• Modern consumers are marketing savvy and cynical of traditional brand messaging, you can’t spoon-feed them your pitch and expect them to swallow it any more
• Conventional advertising is losing its effectiveness. People are increasingly using their PVRs (SKY+ boxes) to skip through TV adverts, internet users are developing ad-blindness, print and radio are also suffering
• The internet is making it easier for consumers to share their brand experiences with each other – this is increasingly informing their purchasing decisions more than the brand’s own communications

People want to deal with businesses that respect their intelligence by engaging them in interesting conversations, rather than doggedly pushing sanitised, on-message marketing blurb into their face through tightly controlled old-world channels. Consumers are saying: If you want my attention, you need to talk to me like a human being.

This is what social media is all about, and this is the future of marketing – figuring out how to talk to your customers (and other stakeholders) like real people  - and the figures from Forrester support this idea. It’s really only a matter of time before social media forms the core of all marketing activity.

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There’s been a huge amount of discussion about how Twitter can be used most effectively for online PR and marketing, and there’s no shortage of interest in the subject since the mainstream media became obsessed with the platform. The only problem is that most of the current analysis is either lofty strategic level stuff, or is based on the assumption that you already know a lot about Twitter, neither of which are much use to the majority of people who just want to know where to start.

This prompted us to produce a practical guide to help PR and marketing professionals get some real value from Twitter, without assuming that they already have a deep understanding of the service.  You can get hold of a free copy of the Twitter for PR and Marketing Professionals guide on our website – we put a lot of work into it, so I hope you find it useful.

If you haven’t got time to read the whole thing, the following diagram outlines the basic steps you should follow to incorporate Twitter into your comms activities. It’s a very brief overview, and the full guide goes into a lot more detail about how you can accomplish each of these steps:

Simply put, you first need to monitor Twitter to find out what people are saying about the issues that matter to your organisation, then learn how to participate in the Twitter ecosystem appropriately in order to gain acceptance, and then you will be in a strong position to instigate the kind of conversations that are important to you.

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One of the most interesting changes taking place as the PR industry evolves into an online discipline is the increased emphasis on measurement. In the old days of offline PR, little attention was paid to systematically analysing the relative success of campaigns, because measuring PR is hard to do. Measures that attempted to pin a quantifiable return on investment to PR activity, such as Advertising Value Equivalent were woolly at best.

But that’s all changing and it seems that PR isn’t getting a free ride any more. All of a sudden, acronyms like ROI and KPI are being applied to an industry that has long been used to justifying its budget with a ring-binder full of shiny, laminated press-clippings. There is now a far greater expectation that PR should provide hard evidence of its impact on the bottom line.

There are two things PR agencies can do about this:

• Keep banging on about how the qualitative nature of PR makes it impossible to measure in the same way as other disciplines

• Figure out how we can use all of these new metrics which are available in the online world to put together some kind of robust and repeatable framework for measuring the value of PR activity with some degree of consistency

You might like to take a guess at which of those approaches is likely to win the most new business.

Of course, there’s already a lot of healthy debate and discussion about PR measurement in the blogosphere, and it’s no surprise that a lot of the big names in PR have their own ideas about the most effective approach.

On the one hand, it’s good that there’s so much interest in solving the problem, but on the other hand, it looks unlikely that an industry-wide consensus will be reached any time soon. Obviously, everybody wants to implement a measurement standard that best represents their own strengths, and it doesn’t help that any discussion on the subject invariably gets sidetracked into an esoteric debate about the nature of influence.

Obviously there’s still a long way to go before this is anywhere close to being solved, but at least there now seems to be broad acceptance that rigorous measurement will be key to the PR industry’s future.

However the measurement debate unfolds, I think it’s absolutely key to ensure that the metrics used are properly aligned with the client’s business goals.  All too often, arbitrary KPIs are chosen simply to provide a tick-box for PR staff to show that they’ve done some work, with little consideration into how exactly they help the business achieve its ultimate aims. And that’s a far worse situation to be in than the old days where we relied solely on qualitative reporting, which at least had some kind of value.

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Just before Christmas, we experimented with some new brainstorming techniques across a number of clients. It got me thinking how there is a lot more to a creative brainstorm when you are planning for social media ideas.

Offline, a PR brainstorms rely upon understanding a client: its business or products, its audience, and its requirements. In addition, a good knowledge of what is newsworthy, the media and what is currently capturing the headlines is essential.

Of course, this knowledge is necessary for online PR brainstorms too, but you have to add to the mix with a more detailed understanding of social media.
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Brilliantly executed viral by Lean Mean Fighting Machine.

LEAN MEAN FIGHTING MACHINE “Dem Phones”

viral marketing, video

Technorati Tags: viral marketing, video

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Sadly I missed being on Ian’s NMK panel for ‘Clients in the Wild’ as I just had over 200 staples taken out after an op. But it seems the discussion and subsequent blog by Will McInnes has created a stir – causing several blogging PRs some deeper introspection. Antony Mayfield summarises the issues up rather eloquently.

Like Antony , I too am an optimist. I also lived through the similar, if not so public, growing pains of the digital ad agency industry. Back in the 90s these start-ups and specialists departments were dismissed by the powerful TV ad world. And we all know how that has changed now. We now have a very different marketing landscape with digital taking the lead and the more handsome budgets.

(more…)

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Daryl Wilcox has launched video on his site DWpub.com in series called ‘Experts in Communication’ . The whole thing kicks off with a two part video interview with Antony Mayfield explaining why he took his PR skills to a search company. Very insightful and I am full of admiration for how Antony shares his knowledge amongst his peers.

The video is rather nicely produced too. But the picture shown above is a screen grab as there is no way to scrape it onto my blog – a shame as it hardly encourages blog comments. Also, rather surprised that there is not a transcript to go with the video. That would gain a lot of SEO traction, but it is just a stand alone QuickTime video. Missing a trick?

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Our latest research looking at brand conversation in social media shows that techie companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo! and Microsoft, take the lead in terms of brand mentions in blogs, social networks and photo and video sharing sites.The study, launched at the Online Marketing Show examines the Interbrand Top 100 global brands and their voice in social media.

Here are the results for the top 25 most discussed brands.

 Technology leads the way, with Disney and Ford just squeezing in  the top 10. But split across the top 100 reveals that the industry sectors are quite evenly spread, with all of Intebrand’s top 100 brands getting a mention in social media.

Of course, this is just a snapshot and, before my friends at Onalytica and Market Sentinel rightly jump in, this research doesn’t take into account influence. Which we agree is essential. But the study does show that brands are being talked about and that is what we set out to confirm.

The full study will be available on the immediate future website on tomorrow or you can pop along to the OMS show at the Business Design Centre in London to get a free copy.

Technorati Tags: Google, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Interbrand Top 100 global brands, social media, Disney, Ford, Onalytica, Market Sentinel

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Positive and negative comments in groups on social network sites, such as Facebook, Flickr and MySpace reveal Disney, Nintendo and Google are the most popular brands. This comes from our latest research, Brands in Social Media.

Social networking groups are proving very popular in the UK. They are a very public demonstration of the connections between people and brands. Popular groups can quickly swell in numbers and influence large numbers of consumers online.

Understanding the sentiment of brand conversations is crucial. Frequency and popularity in the conversation is meaningless without a clear picture of whether the discussion is positive or negative.

We assessed groups set-up on three of the most popular social network sites: Flickr, Facebook and MySpace. We compared groups against the Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands. Groups that mention the top 100 brands were examined and brand sentiment (positive, negative or neutral in tone) recorded.

Automotive brands had the most loyal fan-based groups, Microsoft the most negative groups and Google hardly any negative comments at all! In fact, most Google groups were either advocating the search engine or explaining ways of using the technology.

The full report will be on our website on Thursday – for those that want the detail.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Disney, Nintendo, Google, Brands in Social Media, Social networking, Microsoft

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We are launching research exclusively at the Online Marketing show this week. The study looks at the Interbrand top 100 global brands, to reveal which brands have the largest share of voice and the most positive conversations.

The report measures brand mentions across blogs, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, social bookmarking and news sites, to provide a snapshot of brand share of voice. It also details sentiment (positive and negative conversation) in social network groups. A section of social media that is increasingly being adopted by consumers in order to discuss brands.

Come and visit us on stand V6 at the business design centre (26^th and 27^th June) and you can get your free report, along with a whole range of guides and tips (a social media toolbox).

I am speaking at the workshop too, at 1pm on the 27^th – worth a visit if you prefer an explanation along with case studies on how to engage with social media.

Drop me an email if you want to meet up during the show.

Now off to frantically look for a four-gang adapter so I can power up my laptop at the show.

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