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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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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Online crisis phase 1

So, in case you’re not aware of it, the international fashion retailer is facing a bit of a brand crisis. In short, it has been accused by Stevie K of tru.che of copying a line of her jewellery.  In the industry it appears that Urban Outfitters has something of a reputation for copying complimenting other designer’s work.

Stevie has stated on her Tumblr that international fashion brand had ripped of her designs for her “I heart New York” necklace, which can be purchased through Etsy.

This claim struck a chord with the Tumblr community first. The micro blogging site (with its high proportion of fashionistas and creatives, all early adopters) was keen to back the little guy, but from there the movement against Urban Outfitters was picked up by the hugely influential Huffington Post, rounding off his article yesterday, blogger Jason Linkis, openly called for a boycott of the company.

The spike in social media mentions

Here are a few more insights of how the online sentiment has really gone against Urban Outfitters in the last 48 hours. The monitoring of social media estates reveals in the last 48 hours the negative sentiment from consumers is rising against Urban Outfitters. You can clearly see the leap in posts and tweets around the brand from midnight GMT on 26^th May.

Reputation analysis

In the last 48 hours there have been more than 800 tweets with the word hate in conjunction with Urban Outfitters:

The normal average for daily mentions of Urban Outfitters is 1,470

The number of mentions yesterday topped 15,000 (that is a tenfold increase in 24 hours)

Mentions of hate/hating in conjunction with Urban Outfitters – 1,900 /25,000

Mention stealing in conjunction with Urban Outfitters – 1514/25,000

Mentions boycott in conjunction with Urban Outfitters – 6029/25,000

The word cloud below shows just some of the negative sentiment being expressed by consumers on Twitter: stealing, bastards, boycott and hating are prominent.

An inadequate response?

The US Urban Outfitters Twitter profile with more than 400,000 followers has, responded with the vanilla holding statement – “Hey guys, we see your tweets regarding the I Heart Destination necklace. Please know that our accessories buying team is looking into this.”

So why not kick back, get some snacks and see how this pans out. It’s going to take some deft footwork from Urban Outfitters’ PR dept to turn round this mass of negative sentiment with anything short of a public apology and remuneration for those with a designer axe to grind. This isn’t going to disappear from Google news results for Urban Outfitters for a while…

Here comes Miley

And once influential celebrities get a sniff of it you can be sure that they’ll make the biggest splash of all. In particular, Miley Cyrus’s tweet to her million plus fan base has been picked up in more than 180 news articles, dwarfing the number for the original story.

In short – If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… A celebrity on Twitter.

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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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When Santa Claus comes to town, the rules are simple. You watch out, you don’t cry and you don’t pout.

I put to you that in 2009 the social media marketeers ignored every single one of these rules, pedalling Christmas campaigns that involved risks, made people cry and yes, made them pout. For this reason, I propose last year’s social media marketeers did not want Santa Claus to come to town.

The offending articles

Item One

In 2009 Essex couple Jon and Tracy Morter diced with fire when they attempted to topple Simon Cowell’s UK Christmas Number One monopoly.

The couple used Twitter and Facebook to build a groundswell around shunning X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s single, The Climb, for Rage Against the Machine’s 1992 release, Killing in the Name.

The result? More than one million fans joined the Facebook page and Killing in the Name reached the top of the download chart just in time for Christmas.

Item Two

US blogger Jill Kocher wasn’t worried about bringing tears to ours eyes when she launched a campaign to bring SEO to the charities that needed it most.

Kocher, SEO Manager at Groupon by day and blogger for WebPieRat by night, found local-level charities had little knowledge of SEO and optimisation.

Following her findings, she set out on a mission to provide back links to charities in featured posts in the first instance, followed by arming them with the skills to embed optimised terms into their sites in time for Christmas 2010.

Item Three

Fashionista definitely wanted you to pout. Last year the augmented reality tool was developed for fashion retail sites to help shoppers virtually try on their Christmas party outfits and share the pictures with friends via Facebook.

I think the evidence is clear, social media marketeers do not want Santa Claus to come to town.

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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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The lines between PR and SEO are becoming ever more blurred. Back in February, Matt on his InfluenceFinder blog asked “Is PR the next SEO or SEO the next PR?” Yesterday I came across a new eConsultancy Q&A with John Straw – thanks to the power of Twitter – that again looks at the merging of these disciplines.

To a certain extent I agree with the views in these posts. SEO is definitely a natural extension of the digital PR skill set. That said, there is more a PR consultant offers than just relationships. When it comes to how PR can influence natural search rankings, these relationships are important and at the heart of a PRO’s ability to do his/her job. But, more important in delivering greater click throughs from natural search, is a PR professional’s ability to deliver the right message, in the right format, at the right time to the right influencer. A process and skill set that I am sure a SEO marketer can identify with.

Having the right relationships certainly makes this process easier as it provides the insight into which influencer is best placed to deliver your chosen message to the audience you wish to reach. But without the right pitch you will just be spamming that poor blogger or journalist, damaging any existing relationship you may have had.

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This ash cloud has been quite a strain, my wife and baby are still stuck in Dubai five days after they were due to fly home. The good thing is that they are staying with friends and have a great support network.

What it has shown me is how great the internet really is. Searching for information on Twitter, airline websites with the latest information (sometimes), news sites with real time video and Skype to stay in touch and more has provided real peace of mind.

Let’s talk specifically about use of social media platforms to help deal with the crisis. Twitter has become the web user’s right hand. The way the platform is set up allows a number of really useful things. You can choose to follow everything from airports to sports personalities, each wrestling with the problem of the lack of air travel in their own way. I have put together a targeted list of some of my key sources for keeping up to date. It just takes a little time to search on the site.

With a mix of journalists and news sites as well as the likes of Jake Humhprey and the Formula1 teams struggling to get home from last weekend’s race in China, there is a lot of information out there to wade through. It gives real world insight into what might work for getting the family home and is building camaraderie online.

The next key feature of Twitter is the hash tag, a really useful way to gather conversations on the same topic together. You just need to make sure that you include the right one. It is also proving a great platform for people to help each other out. The #getmehome tag has been widely used and is enabling people to share rides across Europe. I have even seen organisations and companies – one is a car share organisation called Roadshare – that are using these tags to communicate out their services to people with a specific problem; clever.

What will be interesting is to see if there is any direct increase in Twitter users as a result of this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter does see a European surge on the back of Iceland’s latest contribution to the global economy – I know, an act of God.

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You might have heard a lot of chatter about real-time search recently, with Facebook buying Friendfeed (a microblogging service with some strong real-time search technology) and Google unveiling Caffeine, a more real-time focused version of its own search technology. Although real-time search is currently more hype than reality, it seems likely we’ll see the technology being used a lot more over the next 12-18 months, so online PR and marketing people should be paying attention.

What is real-time search?

In conventional web search, results are influenced by the authority of a page – well established websites with a high number of links from other trusted sites tend to rank highly. Real-time search is much more focused on what’s hot right now – what are people currently talking about on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

If you searched on the word “Pie” using a conventional search engine, you would expect to see some websites of big pie manufacturers, pie recipes from big cookery sites, the Wikipedia page about pies, and so on.

Real-time search, would be more likely to show you a current news story about the Prime Minister being hit in the face with a custard pie, a popular viral video of puppy stealing a pie, or some reviews of a new American Pie movie -anything related to pies that is currently generating a lot of buzz.

This is all very exciting, so it’s led a few people to declare that old-search is dead and real-time search is the future. This is nonsense. While real-time search is certainly going to get bigger, conventional search isn’t going away – if anything, the two will simply merge to provide blended results of high authority content alongside real-time results.

What does this mean for brands?

We know what we want from conventional search – our clients should be at the top of the page for relevant keywords, and the rest of the page should be filled with authoritative third party recommendations. This is what SEO and online PR is all about.

But what’s the goal with real-time search? If you want to consistently appear at the top of real-time search results, your brand is going to have to consistently be interesting enough to get people talking. This, I would suggest, requires a kick-ass online PR strategy.

What should you do about it?

Brands need to get a lot better at monitoring what’s happening online, to stay informed about what the rising trends are in their key markets and what subjects are generating online buzz. Forget monthly or even weekly reports – too slow, you lose.

Second, reaction times need to improve. If it takes you a week to get anything approved, you’re wasting your time. As real-time search becomes more important, comms teams will need the flexibility to respond to issues quickly, while the public is still interested. When one of those funny complaint letters about your company goes viral, nobody will care that you responded brilliantly if it doesn’t happen until a week or two later.

Take a look at your crisis comms plan and consider updating it for the real-time comms environment.

It’s not just about responding quickly to the bad stuff. Keeping on top of trending topics will help you to spot opportunities for positive conversations that your brand can be a part of, although this doesn’t mean you have to pounce on every new meme and beat it to death with corporate messaging.

The essence of all this is reaction time. If your brand wants to be involved in fast moving online conversations, you will have to find ways of keeping up or risk being left behind.

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There seems to be a lot of confusion about the purpose of online PR these days. Too many people think that the sole job of online PR is improve the client’s search engine optimisation and help drive traffic to their website. Granted, SEO and online PR do go hand in hand to a certain extent, but they are not the same thing and to think so is to underestimate the contribution that PR can make to your wider communications strategy.

Without wishing to understate the value of the discipline, SEO is essentially a technical exercise – it’s about figuring out how search engines work and determining the on and off-page measures most likely to put their clients at the top of the results for the most relevant search terms.

Online PR is, just like offline PR, largely about managing the client’s public reputation. A key part of this is building relationships with influencers, with the ultimate aim of gaining positive media coverage. Obviously, the coverage generated by online PR often features links to the client’s site from high profile blogs and online publications, which is undoubtedly great for SEO.

But the important point to remember is that the SEO benefit of the coverage is just a nice side effect of the PR activity, not its primary purpose. The point of building relationships with influencers is to get positive coverage for the client in relevant media, and the point of that, lest we forget, is to get the client’s message heard by the people that the client wants to reach.

SEO does not do this. SEO might help hook a business up with somebody who is actively searching for something that business offers, but SEO can’t tell people why that business’s products are better than their competitors, or whether that business has great customer service, or if that business has sound environmental policies. SEO certainly can’t help a business to communicate clearly and effectively with the public if it gets caught up in a crisis situation.

Most importantly of all, SEO does not facilitate dialogue between a business and its customers. Online PR can help you engage with your customers via the digital channels that they feel most comfortable with, enabling your business to build stronger relationships and earn greater loyalty.

So, while there is clearly an overlap between SEO and online PR, it’s important to understand that they are two distinct disciplines which require different skill-sets and deliver unique benefits. Organisations which don’t understand the difference between these tools are unlikely to be able to use them as effectively as their competitors.

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