I’ll admit it. In the early days of my first PR job I flung my press releases far and wide, hammering as many contacts as possible in the hope that somewhere, somehow, the story would stick. Did it work? No. Did I receive seething emails from journalists informing me that slinky men’s swimming tangas were ridiculous and irrelevant to their macho motorist readership. Yes.

It was my first lesson in the pitfalls of assuming that one-size-fits-all. Because journalists, much like consumers, prefer a more personal touch.

This works on a micro scale – your local grocer, optician and milkman might know you by name and know enough about your typical shopping basket to tailor their product recommendations. You probably appreciate it. On a macro, e-commerce scale, this means tracking customer journeys and capturing customer data in order to serve relevant content and offers. Do consumers appreciate it?

According to a recent infographic by Monetate, 85% of consumers are aware that brands track their online shopping behaviour, but they are also aware that this enables the brands to match content to their interests. What’s more interesting is that 75% of the consumers polled actively preferred for brands to use their personal details to improve their shopping experience. In other words, their desire for relevancy and personalisation superseded the need for privacy.

The demand, it seems, is there. But what about the return?

According to Retail Week, the fashion giant, Arcadia, incorporated personalisation software into its e-commerce platform that enabled the company to track customer behaviours and serve up recommended products personalised to each individual customer. Products based on real-time stock information guaranteeing that the products were available to purchase at that time. As a result Arcadia saw online order values increase by 67%, while 7% of e-commerce sales have been attributed to the group’s personalisation pilot.

Personalised customer service is as old as commerce. But for digital and social marketers alike, the shift from generic mail shots, all-encompassing websites and mass-market messaging to an entirely more personalised approach to consumers, is an emerging trend that looks set to firmly cement itself into the digital psyche of 2013.

Infographic courtesy of Monetate

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Yesterday saw an excellent example of when a brand’s social media goes very, very wrong. An HMV employee, who had access to the company Twitter account, began to Tweet about the mass sackings that were going on that day in wake of HMVs bankruptcy:

HMV clearly had not thought through potential implications of firing team members who had access to the company Twitter account nor the procedures in place to deal with the crisis as it arose. HMV hurried to delete the offending tweets, but not before an ex-employee shared that they overheard the Marketing Director asking ‘How do I shut down Twitter?’ Perhaps this mishap proves that HMV didn’t understand the important and influence a social presence can have.

An important lesson from this is the speed at which these tweets went viral. Despite how quickly HMV removed the offending articles they had still been screen grabbed by hundreds of people on Twitter who watched the meltdown in progress. These screen-grabs, along with the hashtag #hmvxfactorfiring, meant that within hours the hashtag was trending and millions of people could see what was happening to the employees at HMV.

HMV did try some damage control by sending out these messages:

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done and it was a case of too little, too late. These events once again highlight the importance of social media for brands and how instrumental it can be in bad PR. It is vital that training and protocol for dealing with a crisis is in place, as well as for all staff, regardless of seniority, to have a good understanding of social media. Not every embarrassing social media crisis can be avoided but the damage to the brand can be minimized.

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When the clock strikes midnight and the un-dead stir from their graves, it won’t be Freddie Krueger, or Pennywise the clown putting the frights into social media marketeers this Halloween.

Something far worse. Something far scarier. A social media metric that isn’t being measured.

As Social Media Examiner reports, the term picked up memento when @AndrewGrill, Kred CEO, and @jasonfalls, CEO of SME, discussed the matter at a conference earlier this month.

Dark social, also known as direct social, refers to the social sharing and traffic driving taking place behind closed analytics doors, which is to say via email or through instant messaging and chat apps on mobile.

When you consider that US paper, Atlantic, which coined the expression, can attribute more than half of site referrals to dark social, it becomes apparent that social media referrals may be slipping through the net and getting wrongly attributed to ATL, radio, PR or similar.

Credit: Chartbeat data captured by Gigaom

So, what can marketeers do to shed light on dark social? Here are three simple tips:

1)      Use trackable links – by creating individual Bit.ly links or similar for each piece of content and segregating these by channel, it becomes easier to track content travelling out to those less easy to reach places

2)      Don’t forget email – make sure email features as a social sharing button as click-throughs can easily be tracked

3)      Don’t game it – there’s no algorithm to crack here. If you want people to email and chat to each other about your content, make it good, make them actually want to share it

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Social media marketing is not new. We’re all familiar with the basics and brands are actively engaging with their consumers on a daily basis. So, why are people still doing it incorrectly? Here, we share what to do and, more importantly, what not to do when it comes to the basics of social media marketing. Some of this may be second nature to online community and brand managers, but it’s worth reminding ourselves of the basics from time to time.  Taking a step back and reviewing the processes can help make sure your social media  strategy is robust and prepared for the out of the ordinary.

SEO

Recent data from AOL shows how important it is for brands to invest in SEO PR in order to feature well in search engine results. The first ranking position in search results receives 42.25% of all click-through traffic. Results on the first page (first 10 results) receive 89.71% of all click-through traffic. So, what should you do to get that prime first place position?

Do research your key terms. This will give you a clear direction and inform your content strategy and plans.

Do monitor your performance – make a note of where you were to begin with and see how you’re progressing in the rankings. This shows your efforts paying off and also shows where you need to improve.

Don’t rest on your laurels. Keep generating positive and relevant content to help keep your ranking up.

SEO can be a hard to get your head round. SEOMoz has created a great beginners guide to SEO that gives a good understanding of what it is, why it’s important and what you can do.

Social commerce

Social commerce is really taking off. Brands are beginning to see the value of selling through social platforms such as Facebook; ASOS and Best-Buy are good examples of this. It’s still a new area, so what should you be aware of?

Do integrate social commerce into your wider sales strategy and social media strategy. This will make sure all departments are singing from the same hymn sheet and your approach won’t be fragmented.

Don’t jump straight on the band wagon – take time to research social commerce. Ask yourself: is it right for you? How will it fit into your wider sales strategy and social media strategy and is my consumer demographic likely to respond positively?

ASOS is leading the way. Its f-commerce store looks and feels the same as its website, all within its Facebook page, offering a seamless experience for consumers. This type of integration is key. Consumers often don’t see the point of purchasing on a social site if the experience is not like buying from a normal e-commerce site.

Influencer relations

Contacting bloggers and other influencers is becoming the norm among PR agencies. More and more PR firms are conducting influencer relations in addition to outreach to journalists. Gone are the days of press lists. But, should all influencers be treated in the same way?

Do know your audience – take time to research who you want to target. Remember that not all bloggers or influencers think of themselves as journalists so tailor your approach to suit them.

Don’t send a blanket emails – this can be off-putting and gives out the wrong message for your brand, especially when littered with silly mistakes like “Hi [insert name]”.

Doing it right, means great relationships that will be beneficial to your brand. We’re in regular contact with influencers as a social media consultancy and a number of us have a background in traditional PR. We believe influencer relations is about utilising traditional PR skills and adapting them for a new audience.

Community management

There’s a whole world of conversation happening about your brand online, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, blogs or forums. Having a Twitter profile or Facebook page is a given when planning a social media strategy. But, how can you effectively connect with your online audience?

Do research your audience. Find out what social networks they are most active on and this will help inform your strategy. There’s no point setting up a Twitter profile when your core audience isn’t talking on Twitter.

Don’t ignore your community. Listen to what they have to say – their opinions can help build your online presence further and can quickly destroy it too.

We advise all our clients to listen and engage in consumer conversation. A community is a two way street – you have to interact with them so they engage back. You wouldn’t expect the organiser of your local community meetings to dictate things to you, so why should it be any different online?

Let us know if you have any other invaluable tips you’d like to share and we’ll make sure they’re included too.

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In the last post we looked at figures from the twentieth century and the lessons that could be learned from their experiences when implementing brand social media training.

In this post we’ll investigate some historical recommendations crowdsourced on Twitter over the past week.

Don’t expect people to be interested solely in your news, get the mix right - Samuel Pepys – a mixture of your own news and timely social comment is always advisable. People aren’t just interested in your latest news, version 2.6.8 of your latest software package or the appointment of so and so to Vice President of Packaging. By all means update your customers and fans through social media, but don’t expect them to share it with others unless it is relevant to their interests. As the great Pepys provided eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London he still provided daily insights into his home life from his love of wine to his wife’s dancing lessons. Getting the mixture of news and comment right is key in any social media and blog posting.

Watch your supply lines and make sure that your resources can live up to your social media platform commitments – Erwin Rommel‘s failure in North Africa was exacerbated by stretched supply lines and by limited resources across a wide front. Logistical problems plagued his Afrika Korps in 1941 and finally lead to his retreat. Brands need to realise that if they are going to set up social media platforms to interact with customers and fans then they need to be properly staffed, and have guidelines in place to respond to customer queries. A Facebook page with an empty wall or one that was updated months ago is worse than useless because it gives the impression that the brand does not care about its community and gives competitors the opportunity to step in and interact with your consumers.

Spelling and punctuation is vital – A social media platform is a real time representation of your brand, poor spelling and grammar reflect badly upon companies and give followers the impression that not enough care or resource is being devoted to them. Gordon Brown was hauled over the media coals for his numerous spelling mistakes in a letter to the family of an Afghanistan military casualty. The backlash was yet another costly PR mistake that took time and resource to try and resolve and still appears high in the Google search rankings when looking up the former Prime Minister. Proofing and sense checking should be at the heart of any communication that goes out on a branded social media profile.

Sex sells, or the prospect of sex and style sells – Now, I’m not advocating you to advise your social platform managers to turn branded profile into X-rated broadcasts, but Mae West certainly had the right idea in terms of promoting her personal brand. A maestro of the double entendre, Mae made a name for herself throughout Hollywood as the go to woman for quotes, quips and controversy. People don’t become fans of the mundane, they don’t share with friends and colleagues things that might label them as boring. Branded content should be treated in the same way as any other piece of content in the sense that; “If you wouldn’t share it with your own circle of friends, why should you customers or clients be interested?” With that, I leave you with one of Mae’s most famous quotes and one that has been shared by millions “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” Brand managers take note.

Please feel free to proffer any tips you may think relevant for social media training or blog training and I’ll update the post accordingly.

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Those looking to ensure staff are equipped to represent their brand across social media platforms could do worse than learn from some of history’s most famous and infamous historical figures. So what can your social media training learn from the past?

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Don’t take others at face value - Fake news stories spread like wildfire, especially on Twitter, from the reported death of Charlie Sheen to Rebecca Black’s pregnancy. Even seasoned journalists and media publications have been caught out by news that originated online without any facts behind to back it up. Even today, news that Madeline McCann has been found is a trending topic on Twitter, yet no news outlet has officially confirmed these reports at the time of writing this blog. Neville Chamberlain was easily swayed by a mixture of gullibility and persuasive argument from Hitler in Munich in September 1938. In short corroborate your news from a viable site prior to a blog, retweet or wall post. It pays to be vigilant and accurate rather than timely in many cases. It’s great to break some news early to fans and followers, but not at the cost of your brand integrity.

Wit and personality goes a long way – Brands looking to develop a voice and persona of their own, especially in a busy marketplace, should look to Oscar Wilde.  His belief that; ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’ should not be taken lightly, there are many brands on Facebook and Twitter who are happy to go along with the crowd and not distinguish themselves from the competition for fear of controversy. However, people are far more likely to retweet or share something that they find amusing or useful; this could range from the bizarre Skittles profile to the erudite and compelling Dr Samuel Johnson. However, Oscar’s theory that ‘It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information’ may now be somewhat redundant.

Controlled controversy - Kenneth Tynan made a name for himself as an outspoken theatre critic and writer, oh and the first man to say ‘fuck’ on television. Link baiting or controversy has a role to play in certain aspects of social media activity in order to excite debate and encourage shareability of branded content and messaging. On 13 November 1965, Tynan participated in a live TV debate and was asked whether he would allow a play to be staged in which sexual intercourse was represented on the stage, and replied: “Well, I think so, certainly. I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word ‘fuck’ would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything which can be printed or said can also be seen.” Critics later stated that Tynan’s use of the word was a “masterpiece of calculated self-publicity,” adding “for a time it made him the most notorious man in the country.” Notoriety is not always desired by brands, but publicity and the guts to say something out of the ordinary and that your competitors are afraid to, cannot be underestimated in terms of creating widespread brand awareness. Tynan was always one for breaking down linguistic inhibitions on the stage and in print and I’m positive that if he was still alive he would be confounding expectations on Twitter.

In the next part of the ‘Lessons from History’ series I’ll be delving into the training tips that can be gleaned from the lives of some recommended historical characters. Thanks to @photogirluk @Elle_Emmm @Carrot79 @nickhide @lesanto @Shinybiscuit for their input! Also please feel free to recommend your own historical characters who we could learn a few social media tips from.

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We’ve been doing a lot of work around crisis and how crises are accelerated by social media, at immediate future recently. You might say it’s a passion for us, and it’s also a major worry for many brands who want to protect their reputation online.

However, it seems that one particular industry in the UK feel that they are above negative criticism and don’t worry about alienating their support base. Namely, Premier League football clubs.

Monday saw Mohammed Al Fayed (no stranger to controversy) unveil his much talked about statue of Michael Jackson outside Craven Cottage.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

He put it here because he can no longer put it in Harrods, completely oblivious to the fact that there is no correlation at all between his team and Michael Jackson.

As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of football could have predicted the backlash from Fulham fans was not exactly positive. Apparently it was a surprise for Al Fayed. His response beggars belief:

“If some stupid fans don’t understand and appreciate such a gift this guy gave to the world they can go to hell. I don’t want them to be fans. If they don’t understand and don’t believe in things I believe in they can go to Chelsea, they can go to anywhere else”.

Can you imagine this response from anyone else in any other industry in the world? The news coverage is littered with quotes from Fulham fans complaining that they are going to be a ‘laughing stock’ because of the statue. Al Fayed and the Fulham board are completely ignoring the customer base and actively telling them to defect to a competitor. Of course, because of the nature of football, they know most people won’t defect – but it is still staggering for a club who aren’t exactly full to capacity every week.

No brand could get away with this, or the various other fails that have affected most Premier League clubs over the years. Even Sky Sports were forced to react during the Andy Gray/Richard Keys crisis, conscious that the Premier League could throw their toys out of the pram and defect to a competitor. Unlikely, but a serious enough threat to Sky’s cash cow to force them into action.

I struggled to think of any brands who could treat their customers in this way and not have their revenue and image irreversibly tarnished. The only one I think who comes close is Apple – there are plenty of documented issues with their products, but their position of pre-eminence within the world of consumer tech is pretty much secure. For now at least.

I wonder how long Premier League clubs can go on in this protected bubble outside of the real business world. All things come to an end, eventually.

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Search is a hot topic at the moment. With innovations in mobile and local search and the impact of real time mentions and social media, the competition for the much sought over front page position is hotting up. For some, the temptation may be to take advantage of one (some) of the many free press release distributors in the hope of creating  a few of those juicy Google links –

Here’s why we don’t think they should jump in, without looking deeper…

Death by association:

Your content might be good, but there’s no saying what it might be next to.  Scanning the headlines on a couple of the leading free press release sites shows that “Innovative Bilingual Program Builds Bright Future for YCIS Beijing Students” is next to “New Website Scores You On How “Do-able” You Are” and “Sceneric relaunches Frasers Autographs on hybris”  precedes  “Inspired or expired meat! Can cancer make you feel horny?” With little say in what your content will sit alongside – both in terms of other stories and links –  the reputational risk is definitely worth considering.

But press release pages are for journalists and not consumers, right?

Well, yes. It could be argued that journalists are accustomed to sifting through press releases to identify the relevant stories; however, what you’re paying for in traditional press release distribution sites – direction, focus, proactive targeting – is lost when you take out the price. As Daryl Willcox from DWP Publishing said in an Econsultancy interview last year: “You get what you pay for with free press release distribution services. Enough said.”

So, free press release sites aren’t great at taking a story to the right person, but what about generating online links?

An SEO strategy?

As one of the determinants of page ranking, the promise of online links might be enough, on its own, to tempt businesses towards free press releases. There are few flaws in this thinking. For a start, not all the free press release sites that we reviewed permitted live links, and the majority did not permit anchor text. And then, the risk to reputation that we were talking about earlier? With some recent noise around the quality of Google’s search and the consequent demotion of low quality, spammy sites, a link is not always an asset.

This extract from the Google blog illustrates the point:

“As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.”

Recommendations

Google’s emphasis on relevance is the key, we think, to both effective online content strategies and getting a news story out. The internet may have opened up the media, but some of the old rules still apply:

• Targeted approach: Invest time in identifying, targeting and developing relationships with appropriate online influencers. Individually pitching your news angle to the top people you’ve identified within your market is more likely to result in coverage and any links will be more valuable due to the relevant content they’re associated with.

• Content strategies: Having high quality content online is more likely to generate natural linkage and encourage share-ability.  Ensure that content is well optimised for search so that news is discoverable and will appear in any relevant online searches.

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This week, YouTube reported the acquisition of movie recommendation engine, fflick, a service that streamed film mentions from Twitter to show users their friends’ tweeted reviews, as well as an indication of the sentiment around the film.

Whilst there’s not enough information, at the moment, to see how this acquisition will pan out; it is clear that the trend to integrate consumer sentiment and recommendation is still going strong. We’ll keep you updated with what’s going on.

Whilst details about how fflick will work with YouTube are still unconfirmed, the YouTube blog hints at the potential for using this technology to integrate YouTube videos with the comments posted on other social platforms –

“We’ve always believed that there are great conversations happening all the time off of YouTube.com, and that commentary has the potential to enrich your experience when watching and discovering video on YouTube itself.”

- a move which could have some pretty big implications for brands.

• Online conversations may no longer be restricted to the platforms on which they take place. This means that someone does not to be Twitter user to be influenced by a Tweet.
  

  Image via CrunchBase

• Negativity or positivity related to video footage is likely to be amplified as the commentary will be amalgamated rather than thinly spread across audiences.
• YouTube would become more social with an increase in dialogue and active conversation. This would make monitoring YouTube conversations increasingly important for brands.

• If content is streamed onto brand-owned YouTube pages, there could be a potential risk under the new CAP code relating to user generated content appearing on branded social.

Whilst there’s not enough information, at the moment, to see how this acquisition will pan out; it is clear that the trend to integrate consumer sentiment and recommendation is still going strong. We’ll keep you updated with what’s going on.

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Research from Ofcom this week shows that we are all getting better at multi-tasking. This evolution has been spurred by our need to juggle various communications devices and channels.

Rory Cellan-Jones in his BBC blog asks if there should be a moral panic about the way we are all spending our time. With so much multi-tasking there is clearly an overlap in how we use multiple devices together. But, surely you can’t be concentrating on different things on the TV, while surfing a web site, while texting a friend? I know I couldn’t.

Ofcom’s report shows that TV and radio (let’s not forget that) remains the main focus of our attention, whether it is recorded and watched later or watched live. So when sat in front of the same episode of Friends for the 23^rd time, smartphone, iPad or netbook in hand, connected to the web, I would suggest – partly because I actually do this quite regularly myself – that when something catches our eye on the TV we go online and look for more information. I know the broadcasters would be keen for us to hit the “red button” but the speed at which that works is just such a turn off.

This clearly suggests that TV content is influencing the way we search the web, and surely those sites striving for natural SEO success must, just must, include broadcast PR in any optimisation strategy. Another example of where the PR consultant can bring real value to an organic SEO campaign as suggested in my post last week.

Search is changing and the variety of on and off-line channels influencing it are growing all the time.  As digital PR specialists we now need to work out how to truly measure the effect of these different influences on search and site traffic and distance ourselves from traditional PR’s historical evaluation offering.

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