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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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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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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By Kate Eglinton

Last summer whilst researching graduate positions in communications and public relations, I was drawn in by the social media buzz that has taken the PR industry by storm in recent years.  Social media seemed to be big business. With my curiosity piqued and a brand new Twitter profile, I decided to take the leap into online PR – and managed to secure myself an internship at immediate future, where I’ve been for the last few weeks.

3 key learnings from my stint at IF:

Social media is without a doubt, social.

Social media has widened our communication horizons by an immeasurable amount. It’s human nature to want to share and discuss with others and social media allows us do this – wherever, whenever, non-stop.  The popularity of social media platforms is evidence enough in itself – we love to communicate. With social media you can have fun, be inspired, get involved, learn… and all a super speedy rate. I think there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

It is also diverse.

Each social media platform serves a plethora of purposes and is used differently by different people. We must be careful not to lump all platforms into one social media box just because they come under the same label. I use Twitter to learn from tweeting PR and social media professionals and to keep-up-date with the latest news. Others use it for chitchat and staying in touch, which I save for Facebook. There are no rules of how to use social media – it’s entirely up to you! This diversity extends to brands and businesses…

A career in social media is equally diverse

Working in social media is surprisingly vibrant. From being at IF, I’ve learnt that social media still requires the creativity and communication prowess that traditional PR and marketing demands – with an element of geek which I love. It’s exciting to be involved in such a fast developing and ever-changing arena of business. And I don’t want to get left behind.

To round off…

I think social media’s brilliant. It’s a fabulous new way of communicating – but it’s also a big change which can scare some people. It took me a while to take the plunge and even now I’m a little nervous about tweeting. However, the social media sphere isn’t going to disappear and I believe there is something in it for everyone, whether brand or individual

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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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The extension of the ASA’s CAP code to cover digital marketing communications – both on brand’s own websites, but also through social media, has been driven by a need to close the gap related to companies’ claims online, in particular to regulate marketing to children.

There is no doubt that regulation is essential to protect the vulnerable. And to give brands clear guidance on accepted professional standards of communication. Everybody benefits.

At face value, the digital extension is clear: online communications that are generated or commissioned by a brand fall under the CAP code’s remit. All you need to do to ascertain liability is ‘follow the money.’

But is it really that clear cut?

Marketing communications falls under the Code; press releases on a company website are exempt. But ‘editorial’ and ‘marketing communications material’ can be difficult to distinguish. PR covers more than just press releases. Many different forms of content may be used to grab the attention of influencers.

And many different flavours of influencers may be engaged. If those influencers are professional journalists they are deemed capable of making up their own mind about PR material. What about bloggers? At which point do they move from interested member of the public who needs protecting by the Code, to media professional who can apply a different set of criteria to evaluating marketing material?

So what is marketing promotion?

Beyond online PR, the non-paid-for space online presents even more shades of grey. If a brand commissions user generated content (UGC) which is shared online, that communications piece falls under the CAP code digital remit. Unsolicited UGC is not covered. Promoting unsolicited UGC is covered. So what is considered a marketing promotion?

• Is a tweet highlighting UGC a brand admires to be considered under regulation?
• Is hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website, promotion?

There are many challenges here for social media marketing.

• Advertisers may have many different social media estates. These are not always managed at a senior level and engagement with those sites is not always defined. There is a potential that this extension will add to the fear of social media that already stops many companies from taking part.
• Those individuals already engaging in social media activities will need a level of communications expertise and an understanding of regulations that may be unfamiliar and outside of their experience.
• Hat tipping trends and influencer comment has become common amongst social savvy brands. This will now need some forethought to prevent false claims.

ASA will risk your brand reputation

Another concern is the risk to reputation represented by the planned ASA ‘outing’ of non compliant brands.

Even under the existing code, long after reparation is made, an adjudication can still show up high on a search engine results page. The new Code will bring a new ‘name and shame’ site into play. The impact of appearing on that site will affect business and increase punitive measure way beyond the fines.

The industry needs clarity

We have many questions that the Code as yet leaves unanswered:

• What is the difference between marketing communication and editorial on a website – and will the decision be made based on solely ASA assessment?
• Is an RSS or Twitter feed that pulls UGC onto a company website considered promotion and therefore covered by the code?
• When will the ‘name and shame’ site come into play? While the Code is still being defined advertisers could easily fall foul. If the point of contention is an ambiguous one, will there be negotiation room around the complaint or could a brand fall victim to a temporary ambiguity, while the judgement remains online for perpetuity?

Perhaps the biggest question that remains however, is this: given the ambiguity between editorial, PR and marketing, why was the CIPR not even consulted?

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Sitting through a number of presentations from social media monitoring companies recently, I was struck by how these tools all look very similar. I am sure there is a significant difference in what goes on under the hood, specifically in the algorithms and search spiders that each have, but when it comes to the output from these tools they all seem to provide much the same.

This is kinda scary and only adds to the current confusion. How do these guys manage to differentiate to their prospects? Are they milking ignorance? Well yes and no. For sure there are some very clever products out there and a huge range in cost, but none will be worth a bean if they are set up badly and the person interpreting the information the system delivers is not up to the job.

Also presenting on the same day was Nathan Gilliatt, one of the world’s leading experts on social media analysis. He set out how important it is to invest in the person, or people, interpreting the information generated by your chosen monitoring tool. Absolutely!

So, how do you know that you have the right consultant? I suggest there are five must haves:

1. An understanding of your business
2. A broad knowledge of your market
3. Insight into the target customer
4. Experience in a wide variety of social media platforms
5. Experience in using the monitoring tools themselves

So it seems the clue is in the name, social media monitoring tools are just that, applications or platforms that provide raw data. Interpreting that information is a skill that demands a broad range of insights and a clear understanding of a business’ expectations as well as the demands from its social media programme.

Only with this breadth of knowledge will an ongoing social media campaign continue to gain the interaction it needs. This will lead to an audience that will continue to positively influence perceptions of the company or product; easy to say, not so easy to do. There are a huge number of dots to join here and we must remember that monitoring is just part of the picture. It is reassuring to find that the human element is as essential as it always has been.

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