Lying low isn’t an easy thing for brands to do on social media, particularly when it comes to the young and socially savvy customer.

According to a recent study by Sitel, 15% of 16-24 year-olds in the UK use social media as their preferred channel for resolving customer service issues; while 7% say that venting on social media is the first thing they do when faced with a faulty product.

This compares with only 8% of 25-34 year-olds who cite social media as their preferred channel for customer care; and drops off to just 3% for the over 35s.

In the accelerated world of social media the need for fast customer response times is amplified, particularly by younger demographics , born and bred on social media and with high expectations of quick reactions and – where possible – resolutions from brands.

Judging by the low statistics, social customer service is still very much in its infancy. Which can only mean one thing; it’s going to get bigger.

The current volumes of online customer complaints are a mere fraction of the levels they will reach as the 16 year-olds of today – not to mention every generation to follow them – come of age.

Customer care through social channels will shift from a nice-to-have to a critical necessity.

If you would like to find out more about the way social media is reshaping the relationship between customers and brands, then immediate future MD, Katy Howell, is speaking at The Social Customer 2012 conference in London on March 29.

For details and to find out how to claim immediate future’s exclusive 10% discount contact info@immediatefuture.co.uk.

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From one-man-bands to global conglomerates, social media provides businesses with a wide open window into the thoughts, opinions and behaviours of customers. Whether it’s a simple keyword search in Google or the deployment of a sophisticated tool, social media monitoring can add value to everything from customer acquisition and product development, right through to crisis management and customer service. At the end of 2011 Radian6 drew up a list of 100 of the best uses of social media monitoring. We’ve pulled out our favourite five.

1) Brand monitoring

Listen to what is being said about your brand. The good and the bad. Run keyword searches within social media platforms to identify where and when the conversations are taking place and build a deeper understanding of who the brand detractors and advocates are.

2) Competitor intelligence

Follow the conversations surrounding key competitors and look for opportunities to poach. By using keyword searches that associate negative words with competitor brands, bad consumer experiences can be tracked and intervened, turning disgruntled competitor customers into the next customer acquisitions.

3) Customer service

Keep a watchful eye out for customer issues. Publicly engaging with customers in real-time might seem like a high-risk proposition, but the value-add of converting an angry customer into a brand advocate in such a public sphere is an insurmountable marketing tool.

4) Crisis communications

A crisis can spread like wildfire across social media and the brand can often be the last to know. Actively follow the conversation to locate the source, understand the volume and scale of negativity and work to put the fire out. As FedEx recently demonstrated, when a video circulating a careless courier emerged, honestly and openly addressing the crisis is an effective way of restoring brand perception.

5) Product development

Find out what the customer wants. And give it to them. Online customer conversations can provide deep insight into likes and loathes surrounding products, while offering a means of beta testing and potentially developing new products. A great example of this is Vitamin Water, who crowdsourced a new drink flavour, not only showing its fan-base that it was prepared to listen to them, but it was prepared to act.

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Online content creation typically falls to the marketing division of a business. Look beyond the four walls of communications, however, and therein lies a treasure trove of ideas.

From customer services to sales, each function is filled with insights into every corner of the business. Whether it’s the questions on the tip of customers’ tongues, or the biggest barriers to purchase, those insights form the basis of a solid content plan that can break down communications silos and tie directly back to business objectives. We’ve taken a look at three divisions rich with content for the picking:

1) Customer services

The customer services team has the most intimate insight into a business’s customer base. They hear the questions, concerns, aggravations and praise for products and services every single day. A coffee with the team will quickly help to identify the most useful tips and advice to base content themes around.

2) Sales

More than any other stakeholders, the sales team have a clear picture of the biggest barriers to purchase. They know the features and benefits that get customers on board and they know the bottlenecks that prevent deals from being closed. It is well worth sitting down with the team to identify the messaging that should be brought to the fore in content.

3) Human resources

While content is largely designed to attract new customers, it is equally visible to employees and prospective employees, who are arguably the most important asset of a business. The human resources team know which aspects of a business have the biggest appeal to candidates and the biggest impact on staff retention. Getting a handle on this information can again help to ensure content captures the most impactful messaging.

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For years, content strategists have been hiding in the wings, quietly coordinating the show, while the social media rock stars take centre stage.

Not anymore. A media frenzy surrounding the information overload debate, combined with the growing impact of social search, mean that the need for sophisticated content planning is no longer a nice-to-have.

With that in mind, we have pulled together a list of five useful content tools to help you plan, optimise and curate your way through 2012.

1. InBound Writer

A tool designed to help you discover the keywords and phrases your audience is searching for in real-time. By inputting a few terms that tie in to your content’s theme, the tool analyses conversations across the web as well as social media platforms to deliver the best phrases to optimise your content with.

Verdict: It won’t replace a solid SEO strategy, but it should certainly give your content a useful optimisation boost.

2. InfiniGraph

This tool promises to optimise social profiles by giving brands “Hypercuration™”, the power to identify content that is currently trending on your own as well as competitor brands’ social estates, based on the social behaviours and actions of influencers.

Verdict: It’s based on real-time social analytics, so could be a great aid for swiftly A/B testing content.

3. Scoop.it

Curation is the current buzzword and Scoop.it provides curators with a platform for creating topics and ‘scooping’ relevant content to add to the topic at the click of a button.

Verdict: Really straightforward to use and easy to adjust your keyword searches until you find the content you are looking for.

4. DivyHQ

Markets itself as a spreadsheet-free editorial calendar application. The tool can be assigned to multiple team members for multiple campaigns and the calendars can be created from scratch within DivyHQ itself, or simply imported directly from Excel.

Verdict: It’s currently only in beta format and largely looks to offer the same functionality as tools such as Outlook – though it may yet prove a valuable tool.

5. 37Signals’ BasecampHQ

A project collaboration tool, which enables all project files to be stored in one place, centralise discussions, keep track of events and view all upcoming activities and milestones.

Verdict: It has a smart user-interface and the upcoming activities and milestones functionality is handy for keeping deadlines.

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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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This is a two-part series exploring online influencers and their role in social media marketing. Part I looks at the reasons why a brand should focus on wooing influencers over journalists; Part II defines ways of identifying and measuring their influence.

Traditional PR vs social media marketing

Traditional media are longstanding powerhouses – politicians and even prime ministers have been kowtowing to them for generations.

Securing a piece of coverage in a leading national newspaper is an undeniable gateway to spiked consumer interest – which may convert to sales.

But newspapers rely heavily on circulation sales and as the Financial Times pointed out a few weeks ago, “in 1966, the Daily Mirror sold 5.1m copies a day, the Daily Express 4m and the Daily Telegraph 1.4m. Last month, those titles had circulations of 1.2m, 631,000 and 635,000 respectively.”

Less sales mean less editorial space and less editorial staff as a consequence. In short, the assumption that traditional PR is a sure-fire investment is coming under scrutiny, as more brands shift investment to social media marketing and the targeting of online influencers.

Who has online influence

Online journalists might look like the obvious target, but if the key objective is to source people with influence (“the ability to cause measurable actions and outcomes,” Brian Solis), then online journalists are not necessarily the most obvious or effective choice.

In a study of online influence by Brian Solis and Vocus, an influencer is defined as:

• Someone with online reach (although that doesn’t automatically correlate with popularity i.e. celebrity status)
• Someone who produces quality content
• Someone who produces relevant content

Data courtesy of 'What Makes an Influencer: a Survey by Vocus and Brian Solis'

There is no uniform online influencer – they are not automatically a journalist, or a blogger, or even a Twitterer. And their content may not even come in the form of written words.

An online influencer could be on any social platform, producing any number of pieces of content, from videos, podcasts and tweets, to slideshares and infographics and on any number of niche subjects.

The relevancy of those influencers to their followers – and your potential customer base – is what makes their influence so powerful; they aren’t ruled by the editorial policy of a publishing house, so they are free to focus on a topic that interests them. And they are most probably creating content on a shoestring budget or even for free, which means it’s a labour of love not a looming deadline.

Signature 9 recently reported that, despite the larger staffs and budgets of online magazines such as Vogue, fashion bloggers have overtaken their online influence, generating more links, greater social media activity and more overall buzz.

Don’t miss Part II, when we take a look at identifying online influencers and measuring their influence.

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There is a real dearth of social media case studies when it comes to business to business. The scarcity is even more profound when you are looking for examples from UK companies. Yet, surveys tell us that almost half of UK companies are active in social media.

We have delved online and found a few good examples of businesses tapping into the social opportunity. We popped them into a presentation so we can share. We have left our B2B social media clients out of this slideshare for the moment, as we hope to publish more detailed reviews to share later this year.

From this small sample there is quite a diverse range of approaches. However, they all follow the same philosophy covered in our report on B2B social media – they place employees at the heart of the engagement.

What is clear is that B2B social benefits from a very focused and tailored approach. These activities are working because the ideas are unique to the specific audiences targeted. And they are all in context and relevant.

When it comes to platforms being used Twitter dominates, followed by Facebook.  Psion and RICS are spreading their wings and managing five social estates. Almost half of the companies have created communities, either on the social platforms or in their own bespoke site. The engagement levels are deeper. The response to comments and involvement in discussions is more intense than B2C.

Of the sites we found, only one – HP – clearly uses its profiles for customer service. The rest focus on brand building, customer relationship building, loyalty and lead generation.

We are keen to create and share a comprehensive portfolio of UK businesses implementing B2B social media, so if we have missed anyone please add to the comments with notes and a link and we will update the deck and publish it soon.

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What do ancient philosophy and social media have in common? Well, let’s see. In a possible world in which Aristotle transcends time to come face-to-face with the social team at Facebook HQ; he stands there in his toga and sandals and asks everyone to stop rushing around and sit cross-legged on the floor for a moment of metaphysical contemplation. The social team stares at him blankly in a vacuum of stunned silence, before darting their collective heads back to the future and keeping their fingers tapping firmly away at the technical revolution.

Me: “Sorry Aristotle, they just didn’t have time for contemplation.”

Aristotle: “Well when they do have time, could you please point them in the direction of Physics 239b11, I think they might like the Dichotomy paradox of motion.”

Me: “Sure thing Aristotle, you’re the man.”

The Dichotomy (Paraphrasing Aristotle, who in turn paraphrases Zeno of Elea)

It is impossible to walk from A to B. To get to B, you must first walk half way and this should take you half the total time of the journey, assuming you are in constant motion. To walk half way, you must first walk a quarter of the way (i.e. half way to half way) and even before you can walk a quarter of the way, you must walk an eighth of the way (i.e. half of half of half). Therein lies the problem: how do you even take a step forward from A, when the space in front of you can be divided an infinite number of times and should therefore take an infinite amount of time to cross? A bit like social media, no?

You’re a brand, you want to take a simple step from A (no social media integration) to B (successful social media integration). But, before you can reach successful social media integration, you need to know your brand voice. And before you know your brand voice, you need to know your strategy. And before you know your strategy you need to know your risks. Suddenly, the space between your brand and that ever-so-simple goal of reaching B starts dividing in front of you. And as the social media landscape continues to change at lightning speed, where do you even start?

The truth is that you can walk from A to B. You do it every day. But perhaps there’s comfort in knowing that a seemingly new and perplexing problem is reassuringly ancient.

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A few weeks ago Google‘s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, suggested people may be forced to change their names in order to escape youthful misdemeanours immortalised online on social media sites, like Facebook. As a university student looking for a placement for my third year, I found myself doing some housekeeping, but there was nothing I deemed bad enough on my profile to warrant a name change.

Schmidt’s comment provoked a vast debate on the volume of information we freely publicise, which is next to impossible to eradicate. He told the Wall Street Journal:

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.”

As someone who has grown up using social media, I certainly understand where Eric Schmidt’s suggestion comes from. My generation spends a vast majority of their day logged on to social platforms, such as Facebook, where they document every aspect of their lives, without supervision or thought as to who their information is available to.

An Independent article including the story of a trainee teacher, unable to complete her qualification following a comical picture online of her captioned, “Drunk Pirate”, is a stark warning. Therefore, Schmidt has a good point.

But is this suggestion relevant to companies?

Brands might be attracted by the idea of a new identity, but is this possible to achieve when an online reputation can last forever? If the internet behaves as a public archive, is it possible to turn public opinion around? And is damage to brand reputation ever enough to warrant giving up brand awareness?

When Aviva changed its name two years ago, from Norwich Union, members of the public polled by the Guardian, thought ‘Aviva’ was a bus company, not the UK’s biggest insurer. Brands need to consider social media as part of their campaign management strategy and a channel to manage any risk to reputation. Name changing may be an option for individuals, but the cost to businesses can be much higher.

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On Wednesday, we blogged about the new ASA regulations and some of the questions that it raised in relation to communications in the online space.

It caused a bit of a stir.

Whilst marketing, PR and social media professionals all seem to concur that ensuring vulnerable people can trust marketing communications in the online space is important and that guidelines are helpful for professionals operating in this area, there are some grey areas requiring resolution and some questions that need to be addressed.

Like whether hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website is promotion. Or what the implications are for re-Tweets.

As we continue exploring the implications of this measure, we were pleased to see that Copy Advice is beginning to address some of these questions and wanted to mention the piece as it nearly slipped under our radar.

You can read the full article for yourself here and, whilst it’s reassuring that some of the questions we touched on are being addressed, the article also highlights the complexity of the debate. For example, whilst Copy Advice offers reassurance that each breach will be examined on a case-by-case basis , we are already starting to get a sense of just how many subtleties will come into play – think context, tone, solicitation – and how hard interpreting the regulations may become.

Similarly, the attempts to define ‘marketing communications’ and a reminder of the exemptions are helpful, but fail to clarify some of the haziness around the increasingly blurry definition of editorial content.

With such rich and varied content being created by both users and companies, gaining clarity is of paramount importance – both in relation to protecting consumers and also keeping social media exciting and fresh.

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