We love purple as much as the next company, but it appears Cadbury have decided to take it to the next level in a recent trademark dispute settled yesterday with Nestlé. Cadbury wanted to trademark the tint and made the case that it has used the colour on its packaging for more than a century.

There were a few concerned looks around the office when we realised the similarity between Cadbury’s Pantone 2865c and our own Pantone 275c. This prompted an official statement.

An unnamed insider from social media consultancy, immediate future (established in 2004)  said: “If they come after our purple they should be prepared for a long, drawn out and debilitating battle. You may have beaten Nestle to Pantone 2865c, but we’ll defend our beloved Pantone 275c to the death. Plus we’re not bloody redecorating, alright!”

The company is awaiting an official response from Cadbury.

p.s. We might consider negotiation if Curly Wurlies are part of the deal

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An experimental scientist? A mathematician, an historian, an IT geek, a money making  economist or socially savvy psychologist? Last week we conducted a Twtpoll to discover who you would rather employ as a social media consultant for your business. The results were eye opening.

To our great surprise the mathematician received no votes.  One thing that social media and the world of online has is data – mountains of it. The ability to analyse and interpret data is increasingly important in social media, whether evaluating campaigns, assessing website analytics or search data or teasing out insights from the universe of social conversation.

However, it was the psychologist who was the most sought after. Inevitably, being able to understand the human psyche is a great advantage when trying to influence people and help brands to communicate effectively with consumers.

The IT geek ranked fourth in desirability. Having an avid interest in digital is a must, as the technology that drives social media is constantly evolving. But, perhaps our voters thought their technical know-how would obscure their ability to engage?

After much debate in the office we concluded that a professional with a mix of both psychology and a mathematician’s skills would be best suited. Having a firm grasp of statistics really is a prerequisite for the role. Social media campaigns’ success is dependent on a number of factors, one of which is to feel at ease with analysing data and responding accordingly.

Who would you employ in a flash? And whose CV would be quickly chucked in the recycling bin? We would love to hear your thoughts…

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Before hastily setting up a Google+ page for your business, you need to step back and consider whether there is any value in joining the early adopters. We pulled together 4 points to help you evaluate whether it is worth your company embracing Google+:

The promised land?

1.  Objective – Are you targeting your Google+ to generate awareness and buzz about your company? Or do you want to generate engagement and build upon relationships with customers? Google+ is in its infancy and audience demographics are unclear, there’s scant information about how active these profiles are. You’ll need to bear this in mind when contemplating what your objective is.

2.  Time and resources – Your time is important so you need to evaluate whether it’s worth launching a page and the continual maintenance and monitoring of that page. Content is also key. The page requires rich content to be shared and engaged with. As Google+ prevents competitions or promotions, it’s perhaps best to use content from assets that you already have.

3. How will Google+ fit in with your other branded web estates? – Do you really need to include it in your marketing mix? Will it play a large part in your online marketing ecosystem or are you just securing a simple branded profile? Perhaps wait and see what happens in the next couple of weeks, and then, venture into investing resource.

4.  Outcome – So far the main benefit is that Google+ has connected social with search. For those who participate in this opportunity it is likely that your page rankings will get a boost. And for those who do not, we anticipate that you may lose rankings or be displaced amongst your competitors who have a Google+ presence.

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Since Google’s  announcement, there has been an enthusiastic response to Google+ branded pages. Generally the

applause has been loud and energetic, with over 600 news articles and innumerable blog posts. The positive response has proved interesting. After all, previously there has been some less than flattering rumours about the newly launched network. Whilst attracting over 40m users, there have been intimations that 83% of them are now inactive. Data analysis has even suggested that the only activity is being led by geeky, early adopter males! The truth is that no one really knows who is using the service and how. And that means we need to look a bit closer at what value a brand can expect from investing in the network.

The Google+ value to your brand

So let’s get to the nub of the issue for marketers: is investing in a branded page going to generate the ‘relationships’ that Google promises in its launch blog post. More importantly, is it going to enable relevant and sustained relationships that add value to the brand. Google+ launched with some key brand pages, so we thought we would take a snapshot of the results just 48 hours in.

Google+ numbers first

This first analysis simply looks at numbers of followers and +1s (recommendations). Yes, this is a blunt measurement. But this is early days and further analysis would be just speculation. And after all, a branded page needs to reach critical mass to maximise the value from engagement. In the table below we examine the launch brands and highlight the top ten for followers and +1 numbers. The Muppets page leads the way. Not surprising, as there is likely to be a strong emotional connection to the brand. Generally though, the results are not bad for two days exposure, but not great either for such an enormously well covered launch and such high profile brand. Many brands may still do better in Facebook when it comes to acquisition.

Where is the inspiring content?

Google makes it clear that the key benefit to marketers is the ability to build relationships. And part of brands building relationships, is to give consumers value through content.  I was hoping for rich, engaging, inspiring stuff – in other words, lots of social objects that would motivate me into a relationship with a brand.

Maybe great content will come in time as Google and brands find their feet.  However, without the facility to run promotions and competitions [Google doesn’t allow it on its pages], brands are going to need to be inventive to capture the attention of the public as more pages launch.

Relationship building aside, content that inspires recommendations is going to be crucial.  Google promises to incorporate the results from +1s into search and bring faster ways of connecting to brands through its search engine (with the ‘+’ search feature).

Our intention is to benchmark brand pages over the coming months – ultimately we need to evaluate the business benefits in search, engagement and advocacy that will justify the investment.

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If you’re in the industry, you’d be lying if you didn’t shudder when a choice nugget of social media consultancy newspeak pops out of your mouth, or a colleague’s. It’s like an involuntary spasm, and you feel like you need a shower after it’s come out. Is social media jargon now endemic in the industry? Is it a way to explain a new form of media or a way to cloak the industry in mystery and maybe add a certain cache to a subject that might be otherwise obvious? We’ll be conducting a series of mini polls over the coming weeks to try and get to the bottom of it and gauge industry feeling.

But, in the meantime, you may be interested to see the results of a Twtpoll immediate future conducted the other day – apparently we think social media rock star or guru is more offensive than both Tweriod and Digerati put together! I must say I was a little shocked by that. Could this be because we don’t like to think of social media experts as occupying a special place in society?

Does there need to be an amnesty on these words – should we be allowed to use them without embarrassment? This brought to mind the most recent episode of Stephen Fry’s wonderful ‘Fry’s Planet Word’ which had a very powerful section on George Orwell’s 1984 and how the shortening of words and acronyms reduced their power and reduced the need to think.

Whatever your thoughts – please feel free to add your own most hated social media newspeak into the comments.

p.s As I write this someone has just sent me an email with the term ‘screenagers’ in it, in reference to Generation Y, millennials, digital natives or the Facebook generation. I take back what I said about an amnesty. Bring on the torches and pitchforks, we march!

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We’ve taken the three most engaged Facebook pages and for the past week we’ve been watching to see just how much emotion plays a part in their community management. In Part I of this series we laid out our measurement criteria; in Part II we put it to the test.

According to SocialBaker’s latest report, the three UK Facebook pages with the highest engagement levels are Kérastase UK, Lagavulin and Park Bench. Over the space of a week we’ve analysed the level of Emotional Intelligence displayed in their online community management, based on three of the key factors in Goleman’s theory. Here’s what we found:

#1 Kérastase UK
Hair care community
12,558 fans
This is the most engaged Facebook page in SocialBaker’s report, despite having the lowest number of fans in the top three; an indication, perhaps, that social media success is not always a numbers game. The community thrives on its own, providing the manager gives it a stimulus – and that stimulus is typically a prompting question to talk about themselves. Beyond starting conversations, however, the community management remains largely withdrawn emotionally, particularly when the community demonstrates any level of frustration.

1. Motivation
On average, the community manager posted on the wall every couple of days and did not respond to comments. When prompted by a simple question or poll the community became highly motivated to ‘Like’ and comment, left unprompted, the community fell into blanket silence.

2. Self-regulation
The community manager had the opportunity to step in and diplomatically engage with frustrated members, but instead chose to keep out of the conversation, which felt like a missed opportunity to a) forge a stronger relationship with the community and b) use the platform as a means of customer care.

3. Empathy
The community clearly enjoyed being asked questions about themselves and the community manager pandered to this and in this respect showed a clear empathy towards the group. When a practical solution could be offered, the community manager was quick to step in and offer this, but when all that was needed was a sympathetic response to frustrations that had no real solution, the community manager held back.

#2 Lagavulin
Whisky community
112,023 fans
This community displayed a high level of emotion and a great passion for the brand. The community manager used personalised and evocative questions to further fuel the community’s passion and the manager also showed a good level of empathy towards the community when responding to its frustrations.

1. Motivation
Lagavulin posted less frequently than Kérastase, leaving several days between posts, though the community manager did respond when prompted and the community kept the wall active without being prompted. Simple wall posts such as, “if you were asked to describe Lagavulin to a fellow whisky fan who had not yet sampled it, how would you describe it to them,” elicited a visibly emotional response from the community.

2. Self-regulation
When a member of the community complained that they couldn’t find the brand in their local supermarket, the community manager was quick to act in a diplomatic fashion, apologising and offering an explanation in a friendly and understanding way.

3. Empathy
This is a community that wants to talk whisky and the community manager gives them exactly what they want. A prompt to answer the question, “the best place to enjoy Lagavulin is, “________”, generated just under 700 comments and over 800 Likes.

#3 Park Bench
Dog-lover community
45,247 fans
The Park Bench community displayed the most emotion of the three, with the community manager tapping into the shared love and sentimentality surrounding animals, which the community clearly thrives on.

1. Motivation
The Park Bench community manager was the most motivated of all three, posting several times a day and always responding to comments. The community needed a stimulus to start talking, but the community manager never failed to provide it.

2. Self-regulation
Fantastic levels of diplomacy are shown here. The regular ‘Ask A Vet’ slot encourages members to visit the event Wall with questions for the vet, though many members leave their questions as comments on the page which they have been asked not to do; nonetheless the community manager cooly and calmly puts members on the right track.

3. Empathy
The community manager is highly empathetic to the community, responding to its love of sentimentality with Wall posts that play perfectly into this. Regular posts offering advice also offer the community reassurance and encourage trust.

Conclusion
These are pages that see high levels of engagement from their communities, but it’s interesting to see that the emotion and the engagement come more from the communities than their managers. If Emotional Intelligence is as much about expressing emotion as understanding the emotions of others then the role of a branded online community seems to be reading, igniting and empathising with the emotions of the community rather than injecting any emotion of its own.
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Over the past few months we have been investigating the essence of good online community management. We’ve dissected the very definition of an online community and we’ve gleaned insights from experienced community manager, Heather Taylor. Over the next two part-series we will be exploring the role emotion plays within a community; and the need for Emotional Intelligence in a community manager.

There was no end of speculation surrounding this year’s F8 conference. Facebook was making some drastic changes, and, as Mashable et al reported, Facebook was determined to once again re-ignite an “emotional connection” for its users.

This got us thinking. How big a part does emotion play in an online community? And how does this impact community management; if an online community manager has a high Emotional Intelligence (EI), does this automatically translate into a more engaged community?

Putting it to the test

We have decided to take the EI behavioural model as outlined by Daniel Goleman in his work, ‘Emotional Intelligence’, and apply it to the three most engaged branded Facebook pages in the UK, as outlined in SocialBaker’s latest report.

Over the space of a week we will be exploring whether the community managers for these three highly engaged communities do indeed display EI based on three of the key factors outlined in Goleman’s theory, which, for the purposes of this experiment, we have re-interpreted to measure interactions on Facebook:

1. Motivation
We will be measuring the frequency of wall posts and responses.

2. Self-regulation
We will be measuring reactions to negativity and whether the community manager responds in a level-headed manner.

3. Empathy
We will be measuring how much the community manager tailors the tone of their wall posts and responses according to the reactions of the community.

This Slideshare is really helpful for understanding Goleman’s model and how it fits with our working lives:

Stay tuned for Part II, where we find out what happens when you take one chatty beauty brand community, one passionate whisky-swilling community and one sentimental dog-loving community and ask the question: just how high is your community manager’s EI?

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In 2004 social networks were a groundbreaking channel for brands to self-publicise and broadcast their news. Today, the dynamic between brands and their customers has shifted. Customers want brands to talk with and not just at them. According to Heather Taylor, founder of online community, RiotRemedy, today’s brands need to talk with and not at their customers. We asked Heather for the inside scoop on considerations to take before creating an online community; along with her top tips for making that community thrive.

1) What are the top 3 things organisations should consider before setting up an online community?

Firstly, know the purpose behind the community; it might seem that everybody else is already on Twitter or Facebook, but it’s important to remember that what’s right for one brand might be completely wrong for another. Also, make sure you have the resource to manage a community; do you have more than one person who can take the reins? A good online community manager is enthusiastic and completely immersed in their job. They need to be a part of that community all the time and that can get exhausting so do make sure they can have down time or they will burn out. When I worked for PayPal we had three people on shifts managing the @AskPaypal Twitter community and that worked really well. Finally, be clear on who your audience is and decide from the beginning whether you want that audience to be niche or broad. It will define your tone of voice and the way you engage.

2) Which online communities have you taken your inspiration from?

The first community I ever joined was Lonely Planet’s forum, Thorn Tree, and that was 11 years ago. At the time I wanted to move to the UK so I was asking lots of questions about travel. Thorn Tree was so well managed and had a real community spirit. I felt welcome from the beginning, it wasn’t cliquey or closed off, and I never felt overly criticised by my questions or that I was being spammed. The best online communities don’t actually work on a One-To-Many principal; they work on a One-To-One-To-Many. When you have a community of people who are really involved and care for that community, they become moderators themselves, they become super users.

3) What are your top tips for boosting engagement in an online community?

It may sound odd, but don’t be too involved once your community gets going. Allow members to engage and ask questions and don’t always ‘jump’ in to answer, let them be a community and help each other. And if you find pick up is slow, send a direct message to your more engaged community members and ask them if they could respond to it. If it’s a direct question on a platform such as Twitter, then naturally you respond, but if it’s an open question on a forum or Facebook, you’ll find the community wants to do the talking and engage with each other. Ask the right questions at the right time and don’t resort to cheap tactics like ‘retweet to win prizes’. By all means encourage people to use hashtags in their tweets, but give them a good reason; ask them an engaging question and you’ll get engaging answers. And then, most of all, act on those answers.

4) What advice do you have for online community managers?

Be interactive and be helpful. But also – and this important – allow downtime, time to disengage and switch off from the community. You’ll find community managers are checking their smart phones from the moment they wake up until the second they go to sleep and as I said, it can get exhausting. And be smart, you need to build your super users inside your company as much as outside; your brand managers, product developers, customer service teams are the ones who will have the answers to your community’s questions and you’ll need to coordinate a workflow system for getting those answers responded to quickly. You may be met with resistance, especially if your co-workers are busy and unengaged with social media, so incentivise them, explain how their involvement will benefit them, help them get feedback and ideas for product development; you need their buy in.

5) What do you think are the measures for success in terms of online communities?

To measure your community’s success, you really need to know why it’s being set up in the first place – are you trying to get feedback, improve customer service? Yes look at numbers i.e. how many people have joined the community, but ultimately the number of people isn’t as important as the number of engaged people; using dirty tactics like ‘retweets for prizes’ or ‘Likes for prizes’ might see a dramatic upturn in fan and follower numbers, but if they don’t stay and interact, what was the point? If it’s a forum or a blog, then look at traffic and bounce rates, if people are coming, staying, reading and finding their questions well answered by the community, then it’s a success.

6) What do you think is the future of online communities?

More integration and customer ownership of the brand. Mozilla works hand in hand with its customers and it’s a great example for other communities. Ultimately an online community should be a space for conversations and not just broadcasting news at people, which means there always needs to be somewhere within that community where people can engage.

About RiotRemedy

RiotRemedy channels charity donations through a partnership with JustGiving.com, while promoting and coordinating volunteering for cleanup projects across the country through Twitter and Facebook. For more information, see www.riotremedy.org

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Gotta catch 'em all

Netflix have learnt the hard way that social media can’t be a last minute consideration when it comes to a rebrand. Marketing has to be fully integrated with social media planning. On demand video service Netflix struck upon the name Qwikster for its DVD side of the business, you can find its official web holding page here. While the company may have managed to secure that prime piece of web real estate, it appears it was a little tardy in bagging relevant branded social media estates. Twitter was where it all came unstuck.

I urge you to visit the Twitter profile of Jason Castillo or @Qwikster as he is better known; Jason has an enviable way with words, a love of weed and an aversion to wasps. And he’s not beyond talking about the offers he has begun receiving from Netflix’s rapidly mobilising marketing dept to try and secure his Twitter handle (however, these references to money have been deleted from his account in the last 24 hours, it appears he doesn’t want to kill the goose that could lay some golden eggs.)

Dayum $1,000!

Jason has seen his follower count increase from the tens to more than 11k in just two days. This is high profile embarrassment for Netflix, more media attention is now on this social media faux pas and the expletives being pumped out from the @Qwikster profile than in the new service. The company’s online reputation had taken a knock on Sunday about the way it communicated its service update to customers, as seen in this apology from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

The reality is that the Jason Castillo incident could have been avoided.

If you’re a brand manager you simply have to remember that old Pokémon adage – ‘Gotta catch ‘em all.’

It’s a fine art, coming up with an original name and idea, but the proliferation of social media and the fact that anyone can own potentially valuable online real estate without out-laying cash means that brands are ever more likely to run into these clashes between the general public and their brand aspirations. Google +’s Huddle feature is another example of a big company (that really should know better) not researching new branding sufficiently.

The key learning?

Bag your brand handle and do your research. You can social media estate sense-check campaign and brand names via sites like Name Chk BEFORE an announcement or making your web site live. Prevention is better than cure, after all your online reputation is at stake.

Finally, you can’t Pikachus your social media estates after the fact, sorry, I had to put that in there.

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This week, in a move that Brian Solis entitled the ‘Mad Men Moment’, Twitter introduced the latest addition to the Promoted products family.

So what prompted the dramatic headline?

Well the latest version of the promoted tweet will appear in the timeline of users that are not already following your brand.

And why is this groundbreaking?

Twitter has entered the advertising arena cautiously. It’s been sensitive to the anticipated resistance of the Twitter community, only serving up advertisements to people that are already engaged with the brand or specifically searching for a related term . Now it’s going one step further. The new promoted tweet will be targeted to users that Twitter identifies as being interested in your brand.

So what does this mean?

There’s an opportunity for brands

Research into the first promoted tweets has demonstrated their value to brands. Nearly 25% of users reported seeing a promoted tweet that was of relevance to them. 14% reported re-tweeting a promoted tweet.

With the new promoted tweet, brands will now be able to extend these benefits by reaching a wider audience and an audience that includes people not already affiliated to their brand – but possibly affiliated to their competition.

The competition is hotting up

Twitter is identifying users on the basis of their existing interests and profiles. There’s a high chance that your promoted tweet will be featured in the timeline of a tweeter who is following a similar brand. This means that brands will have to work harder to retain the loyalty and engagement of their existing followers. It also means that tweets from your competitors might appear in your followers’ timeline.

Twitter is becoming more commercial

The extension of promoted tweets marks a new step in the evolution of Twitter. Although this is yet to roll out in the UK, the trend is towards more opportunities for brands to proactively engage with consumers rather than wait for consumers to demonstrate an interest in an area or brand.

It’s a great opportunity for brands, but not without its challenges. Barely distinguishable from regular tweets and restricted to the same format criteria, the content will have to be compelling to get cut through. And, whilst the anticipated backlash against Twitter advertising is yet to materialise, we’ll be watching how the Twitter community responds as advertisements increasingly feature in their Twitter streams.

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