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.

Earlier this week Twitter announced a new feature for US mobile users, ‘Fast Follow.’ Twitter’s blog gives all the details but to summarise in a nutshell, Fast Follow will allow anyone to sign up to receive Twitter alerts via mobile SMS.

Clearly aimed at passive users, Fast Follow is an interesting addition to Twitter’s portfolio and has the potential to change the way certain users tweet. As most mobile users won’t be keen to receive the many random tweets sent every day by your average Joe Bloggs, you’d assume that the main categories of interest for Fast Followers will be celebrities, news sources, public services (i.e. travel, transport info) and brands they are fans of. Depending on the success of this new venture, I wonder how this will affect the latter’s social media strategy?

Whilst the numbers behind Twitter are impressive and rapidly growing, the micro-blogging platform still has a long way to go before it rivals the dominance of Facebook. Fast Follow offers the opportunity to use the Twitter platform to reach a far wider audience, giving brands a new and exciting way to push their messages out to potential customers. Importantly, for digital marketers it also gives a free and instant way to connect with those mobile users who aren’t interested in actively engaging with Twitter.

One way that Fast Follow is likely to make an impact is in geo-location, a current phenomenon spearheaded by Foursquare and with which numerous brands are now experimenting. It might make sense for some brands, particularly in the retail and hospitality sectors, to create individual Twitter profiles for a local area. Fast Follow users could then sign up to receive the latest updates on relevant events, offers and discounts.

It’s too early to predict the success of Fast Follow, and Twitter hasn’t yet mentioned rolling it out elsewhere. As many mobile operators will undoubtedly charge users to receive Twitter updates in SMS format, most won’t be keen to receive a constant stream of messages from those Twitter profiles they choose to follow.

Perhaps Fast Follow will encourage Tweeters to consider the information and opinions that are being shared, diminishing the mass of irrelevant tweets in the process. Alternatively, we may just find Britney, Ashton and Lady Gaga add a load of Fast Followers to their ever growing Twitter armies.

With a new football season underway and an eagerly anticipated Premier League campaign due to start this weekend, I’ve been considering my consumption of the global game recently and how it’s changed.  Not just for individuals, but for brands as well.

Everyone knows football is big business with dedicated, die-hard fans.  So social media provides the perfect forum for fans to interact, share their thoughts, keep up to date with their team’s latest gossip and transfer news.  The World Cup was also a ‘first’ for two reasons.  Not only was it the first tournament to be hosted in Africa, it was also dubbed the first ever ‘social media’ World Cup.

Interesting stats courtesy of www.simplyzesty.com back this up too.  Coca Cola’s sponsored hash tag #wc2010 received 86m impressions in 24 hours.  The Vuvuzela iPhone app was number 1 on iTunes in 50 countries in June.  Nike’s World Cup advert received more than 19million views on YouTube.  3,238 tweets per second recorded during the Japan Denmark match (the normal rate is 750).  497,000 ‘Likes’ for the England’s Team Facebook fanpage (seems like too many to me and it’s now more than 550,000?!)

Interestingly, brands who weren’t even ‘official’ sponsors in South Africa this year, maximised their use of online channels for their campaigns.  Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ campaign for example dominated the social media landscape prior to the World Cup.  Nielsen also found that Budweiser, who paid a heavy price for the global sponsorship rights, was trounced by their rival Carlsberg in terms of online chatter volumes.

Everyone, from fans to journalists, used Twitter to experience this tournament, with dedicated World Cup hash tags making commentary easier to source.  Twitter is a serious presence in social commentary, an effective means of gauging response and reaction to cultural events for brands looking for tactical as well as more strategic territories to associate themselves with.  Appreciating how consumers are changing their media behaviour reiterates the value of events like the World Cup.

It’s the brands who take the time to understand this relationship, understand where their fans are talking, that grab the real opportunities to engage with consumers.  More importantly, brands are able to measure engagement providing a compelling case for new forms of marketing and sales promotion.

It seems all football fans need now is an internet connection, or a smartphone and the information is at their fingertips.  The combination of podcasts (Guardian Football weekly), websites (nothing beats BBC Football, Football365), Twitter (some of the biggest official club feeds include Chelsea’s stamfordthelion Liverpool’s LFCTV) and Arsenal’s (arsenaldotcom), live streams over IPTV all prove valuable to brands looking to capitalise on fans’ online presence following their passions for the beautiful game.

However, not everyone will get it right first time.  As Umbro found out trying to run a Foursquare promotion at a Manchester City home game last season, aiming to create a record for the biggest number of people checking in at the same location.  Credit to Umbro for engaging with Foursquare so early on, however uptake was minimal.  More investment in the incentive to check in, free tickets or a replica shirt for example, rather than a t-shirt, could have produced further uptake.

Or was it because there aren’t many football fans using Foursquare yet?  We’ve seen brands succeed at the World Cup so I will be interested to monitor if those using social media tactics to good effect during the 2010/11 season…

Image via Wikipedia

Is it just me or is everyone talking about crowdsourcing at the moment? Every meeting or event I go to, it comes up. Crowdsourcing advertising (see T-Mobile, Berocca, Hyundai etc.) has been around for a while, providing ad agencies and brands with a new way of showcasing a brand or product (whilst also helping them save some budget, I’m sure.) More and more companies going down the route of taking product suggestions and improvements from its core audience:  innocent ask customers for new recipe suggestions, PlayStation’s US blog has an ideas section, whilst Dell’s IdeaStorm is the tech poster child for actually implementing people’s ideas.

For brands, it makes perfect sense, and we’ll see more and more companies extend their involvement in crowdsourcing, either by giving trusted advocates a voice on their official social media estates or giving supportive influencers the tools to actually create their own content, not just be one of the stars of an existing idea.

For the public sector, crowdsourcing seems like a perfect fit. Everyone has an opinion on how the country or their local area should be run. Public opinion of politics and politicians is at a low ebb; how better to get the public engaged again than to open the clandestine corridors of power for people to suggest their own ideas?

The problem with any crowdsourcing tactic is that there has to be some guarantee that, if you ask people for their ideas, something is going to happen with them. When the coalition government asked for people’s thoughts on policies, they received 9,500 responses. The only thing was that nothing happened with them.

In modern politics, it seems that only good old-fashioned public outcry gets anything done. Just this weekend, the government was forced into an embarrassing climbdown over cancelling free milk for nurseries after the media took umbrage at the idea. On one hand, this kind of action is great – mass movements still have an effect; a unity of voice gets things done. But, the government is ultimately there to make tough decisions. What would happen if something like Proposition 8 in California was proposed over here? Would the inevitable Daily Mail/Daily Express/Daily Star campaigns influence things so far one way that all rational thought goes out of the window? How do you legislate for personal agendas monopolising the activity?

I guess we just shouldn’t ask for, or expect, too much actual involvement in the way things are done. Just as Dell wouldn’t let an amateur into one of its factories to play around with the expensive equipment, we should hope that the government will keep at least of some its policy making and activity behind closed doors.

With Facebook having just announced it recently hit the half billion user mark and with Twitter declaring this week that it received its 20 billionth tweet, it’s hard to comprehend that there may be another phenomenon biting at the heels of the giants of social media. Over recent years we have seen other contenders try, and fail, to reach the top spot – even Google can’t seem to be able to do it despite their continued attempts.

So when I heard the recent hype around microblogging site Tumblr, I wanted to check it out and see what all the fuss is about.

Founded by David Karp in 2007, Tumblr was created as a way for the average person to easily manage a blog without the complications inherent in a search engine-friendly application like WordPress. Think of your grandmother being able to start a blog and that gives you an idea.

To date Tumblr has about 6.6 million users and apparently 25,000 new people are signing up every day. Tumblr is clearly different to MySpace or Facebook – while the idea is the same (to connect to people with similar interests or background) the venue is far different. Described as the space “in between Twitter and Facebook” the site allows users to upload images, video, audio and quotes to their pages by emphasising the types of graphic content which can’t be reproduced on rival formats. Users can then follow others whose posts become visible in a live “stream”, these snippets can then be “liked” by clicking on a heart or “reblogged” to the users own followers. What sets this aside from its competitors is that the volume of followers is not given, in an attempt to boost the “community” feel of the site, which values commentary above simple links to outside sites.

My verdict?…well, our American friends across the pond are beginning to embrace it with open arms, with Newsweek and Rolling Stone both signing up to engage their readers in conversation. Will the UK be next to jump on the bandwagon? Tumblr’s figures are certainly impressive and there seems to be a growing momentum behind the website and despite the fact, in many ways, Tumblr does offer what Facebook and Twitter do, it does this in a very unique way. I’m watching this space!

Having declared last week that it was not illegal to jailbreak iPhones the U.S. government effectively gave consumers the right to fiddle with their proprietary software, allowing them access to other providers or to use apps and music from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes Store. This all became possible thanks to the exemptions made to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA.)

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF,) a selfstyled civil liberties group defending consumers’ digital rights, more than a million iPhone owners are said to have jailbroken their handsets in the past few months. The EFF hails the DMCA exemptions as a landmark victory and a good percentage of iPhone users might agree with them.

Apple on the other hand has warned that although jailbreaking may not be frowned upon by the law of the land, it won’t take the matter so lightly. Not only will jailbreaking void the warranty, but there is a risk of bricking the handset, effectively turning it into an expensive door stop. However, according to a journalist friend of mine it can be easily restored to a non jailbroken state.

If you’re after my personal opinion,  I’m torn. On the one hand, I agree that Apple should be able to protect their IP with some legal recourse, however, emotionally I’m with the EFF (who remind me a bit of the Wolverines from mediocre 80s action flick Red Dawn) who believe a handset shouldn’t be locked down once you’ve purchased it. This battle will continue to rage. Choose your side carefully, maybe grow a mullet, wear khaki, buy an AK.

Let me know what you think about jailbreaking; a digital taboo, or your revolutionary right?

mmmmm the 80s

For years we’ve been told that the internet and new technology is stopping traditional face to face communication. Parents have been warned that if their kids spend too much time surfing the net and chatting on social networking sites they’ll become void of emotion. But new research by Dr. Paul J. Zak and Adam Penenberg, a contributing writer to Fast Company, blows all this out of the water and suggests that social networking connects with people’s feelings and emotions and is something that businesses shouldn’t ignore.

According to Dr. Zak’s research, oxytocin, the hormone we release when we are hugged, shown affection or generosity, can be linked to social networking. In a series of tests on Adam Penenberg, Dr. Zak’s research showed that when using social networking sites such as Twitter, the level of Penenberg’s oxytocin increased by 13.2% and stress hormones decreased. This suggests that Penenberg’s brain sees tweeting as directly interacting with people he cares for, has empathy for and, ultimately, trusts. With these results in mind, Penenberg proposes that online relationships can be as real as offline relationships as social networking may increase a person’s oxytocin level, which can heighten feelings of trust, empathy and generosity.

So what does all this scientific talk mean for businesses trying to connect with the social consumer? Well, businesses should adopt a sense of persona and a character to help raise their profile online, connect with audiences and help earn a level of trust and empathy. Those responsible for setting strategies should understand digital sociology and psychology. The web works in the same way as human behaviour so this needs to be reflected in social media strategies.

Related articles

• Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love (fastcompany.com)
• Once More, with Feeling: Making Sense of Social Media (briansolis.com)

In a recent online poll by Faxo.com, the public was asked where they would most like popstar, Justin Bieber, to tour. The public said North Korea. When ‘the public’ cast its vote on July 7th, it was, however, predominantly made up of fans of the online bulletin board, 4chan.org, which encouraged visitors to hijack the poll and manipulate the results.

Given that Faxo.com is currently running a new poll entitled ‘‘Justin Bieber Loves Animals’’ it looks as though the site’s intentions have always been sardonic rather than sales-driven. And given that 4chan.com members delighted at the thought of sending Bieber to the ‘axis of evil’ this again looks unlikely to be a PR ploy.

This is the latest in a series of online attacks against Bieber – BBC News online reports that 4chan.com also recently encouraged visitors to search for ‘Justin Bieber Syphilis’, sending the search term up to the top of the ranks of Google Trend’s Hot Searches list. Bieber is also dead, apparently. Read the full article here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10506482.

Bieber’s record label, Universal, has denied any involvement in the poll, calling the whole thing a hoax. Even the most guerrilla of campaigns will avoid associating clients with animals, STD’s, communism and/or death, so by process of elimination we can assume the conversations were not sparked by the Bieber marketing camp, but by a cult of Bieber-haters ready to topple the pop prince. The joke, however, is on them, because all they’ve done is give him a leg up.

Team Bieber was quick to react to the attacks, reinforcing his social media presence and ensuring he had a steady stream of tweets going out to fans both responding to the attacks – “let’s take some time to answer some crazy rumors….these are always fun.…” – and thanking them for their support – “I like answering all your questions. Thank u all for caring. Just want u to know I care to and I’m just a normal kid [sic.]”

By July 16th Mashable reported that Justin Bieber was battling with Lada Gaga for the YouTube top spot – his video for “Baby ft. Ludacris” having captured 245,746,720 views. By maintaining a strong microblogging presence and openly responding to the attacks, Bieber has successfully managed to convert what could be career-damaging sentiment into one of the most viewed online videos of all time.

The traditional tupperware party

In this week’s New Media Age we find eBay talking down social commerce. This seems a bit strange to me given it is the leading light in social retail.

Let’s think about that for a minute, the online auction site has made its name and a multi-billion dollar business, by bringing people together on a single site and giving them a platform from which they can communicate with each other in order to sell to one another.

As brands and merchants see the 500 million (almost) Facebook users as a huge potential customer base, they are building on their existing brand presence and already engaged fans to promote products and offers. Sound slightly familiar?

It is no wonder eBay’s nose is a little out of joint. By flipping over to page three of the same publication, we see that P&G has chosen to sell its Max Factor beauty products through its Facebook page. What the online auction site wouldn’t give to be the online channel-of-choice for such a brand.

The retail channel now needs to work out how it can maintain its position, and how it can do better than the brand itself, in selling to the end customer. I have to say that if this is eBay PR, it is unlikely to change the steady increase in social retail. The infamous Tupperware party is coming to a social networking site near you.

We are in the midst of the 2010 Tour de France and the race has come down to just two riders. Andy Schleck is just eight seconds behind “Berty the Accountant” (Alberto Contador) as Ned Boulting and Matt Rendal call him on their Real Peloton podcasts. It has been an amazing spectacle, cobbles, crashes, tears on the podium, mountains, more crashes, British riders in the mix and millions of Twitter posts.

This year more than ever before we are able to share in all the ups and downs of teams, riders and all other interested parties in diverse ways. Where marketing budgets for teams (marketing tools themselves) are tiny – let’s take the first year British team, Team Sky, as an example – social media has become a cornerstone of its communications plan.

Prior to this year, and it can be seen in Formula One as well, Facebook fan pages and especially Twitter profiles were the preserve of a limited number of tech savvy competitors looking to build their own brand. 2010 however, has seen a holistic approach to social networking as a seriously cost effective channel to fans.

Looking more closely at Team Sky you find the website is supported by a Facebook page, a Twitter profile and a blog (only in name as nowhere to add comment) on the website. Add to this the set of individual rider’s Twitter profiles and the whole story of the team’s race can be gleaned in just a few minutes.

If success is measured in numbers, and it most often is, then Team RadioShack - undoubtedly due to the presence of Lance Armstrong – has the social media yellow jersey. Team Sky do well with over 42,000 fans, while the current yellow jersey wearer’s team has just 2,133 fans. That said the current race leader himself has almost 70,000 followers on Twitter, damn good when he is only following 16.

We are seeing a real revolution in sports marketing. Fans have always been fans, but with social media the ability to get to share in the success and disappointment of your heroes, almost as it happens and directly from them, creates a much stronger bond for that fan with that sports person as a brand.

Having said that, you can get too much of a good thing. At the moment I have to avoid using Twitter for large portions of the afternoon and evening so I don’t see who wins the stage before catching the highlights on TV that evening. But, once the stage is over, I am straight onto TweetDeck to get the inside track on what the riders are saying.  Word of mouth marketing has never had such a perfect case study.