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 It would be really appreciated if you could fill in this short survey which I’m undertaking as part of my MSc dissertation research.
The aim of this particular piece of research is to find out a bit more about people’s attitudes towards joining health related groups and pages on Facebook. The overall objective of my dissertation is to explore how Facebook can be best used for public health campaigns, how this relates back to traditional and evolving communication, PR and marketing theory, and what issues emerge around the use of this particular channel.
If you have any particular thoughts in this area then please let me know.
 The Nexus One So my trusty old 2G iPhone has finally given up the ghost. This is slightly annoying as the phone itself is still fine but the USB charging port is dead. Apparently (according to the nice man at iPatch) it’s still possible to charge the 2G’s using a firewire charger although:
a) It seems to be quite difficult to source a reliable one (given some of the reviews on Amazon)
b) It’s not all together clear to me whether you can actually do anything other than charge through firewire (little things like synching data for example)
c) I want a new phone!
Despite the title of this blog and my fondness for new technology and gadgets I do consciously try not to upgrade my phone just for the sake of it or “because I can” - I just don’t think it’s a particularly ethical thing to do as, although the story around handset recycling has improved over recent years with (approximately 8 million UK devices were recycled in 2009), IMO far too many still end up in landfill. And when you add this to the cumulative environmental cost of production, transport, packaging, etc., etc. … </moral rant>
Anyway … all that aside it’s decision time for me, so …
Do I buy a 3GS or wait a couple of months for the 4G to come out? Do I abandon iPhone altogether and go for an Android phone (most likely the Nexus One)? In an effort to come to a decision I’ve hunted out a few articles that I found useful amongst the hundreds of comparisons of the 2 devices:
Were I a developer I would no doubt be even more tempted by the Nexus One with its open source stack and far freer approach to application development. However, I’m not, and my current thinking is that I’ll probably stick with iPhone … at least until Android devices can offer me the vast choice of applications and that all important Apple user experience joy that I’ve come to know, love and expect.
I would welcome people’s thoughts, especially those of anyone who has experience of both devices … who knows, I may even be persuaded to change my mind and take a punt on the Nexus! 
 The strapline for this conference, held last week at the Chelsea FC ground and run by Communicate Magazine, was “How to use social media strategy and web 2.0 tools to engage all your audiences”. What follows here is a brief overview of some of the sessions and a few of the more (IMHO) pertinent points made by the various speakers. It’s in no way intended to be a complete account of the day but hopefully I’ve not misquoted or misrepresented anything or anyone too badly!
The morning keynote was provided by Peter Horrocks, head of global news for the BBC, who was famously quoted as saying of social media “If you don’t like it, if you think that level of change or that different way of working isn’t right for me, then go and do something else, because it’s going to happen. You’re not going to be able to stop it.” The fact that this was said at an internal meeting and then widely reported (as “BBC journalists must keep up with technological change - or leave”), itself illustrates the changing way in which stories can break and how full context can’t always be conveyed in 140 characters! Horrocks principle point was that the way stories are sourced and ordinary people’s involvement in their generation has changed journalism and he gave examples of new media and traditional media working together in Iran, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Interestingly Horrocks also mentioned how the next release of iPlayer will include social media integration to allow friends, family and other followers to see (and presumably comment on) what you’ve been viewing.
The Armchair Interview
In this session Sheila Parry interviewed Kathleen Goh of DHL Global Communications about an initiative launched to celebrate DHL’s 40th anniversary. This campaign was implemented at the height of the global economic downturn against a backdrop of poor staff morale and organisational change. The campaign needed to be cost effective as well as working across language barriers and different countries. What DHL came up with was an internal photo competition for employees to submit images illustrating what it means to work for DHL. This approach not only engaged employees and promoted loyalty and pride in the company but also left DHL (with proper legal and copyright considerations covered) with a bank of photos that could be used in subsequent campaigns. This was an example of a simple idea, well executed and the session presented a rare case study of social media being used by an “operational” rather than a technology or mobile communication company.
The Social Media Newsroom X-Factor
I have to admit to being intrigued but slightly sceptical about this session which was run in an X-Factor stylee, with 3 companies presenting their social media newsrooms to a panel of 3 “judges” who then passed comment. It actually worked quite well although all the newsrooms were reasonably similar and there wasn’t much to draw controversy or criticism from the judges. Some points from the 3 presentations, including those made by the judges, were:
Keith Childs - GM Europe
- Their traditional and social media newsrooms have now merged
- All resources are released under a creative commons licence (hooray for them!)
- They integrate their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc., all on one page
- Their aim is to make content “Easy to consume, reuse and share”
- Journalists (of all descriptions) just want something to make their lives easier
Amanda Brown - First Direct
- Their newsroom is very focussed on journalists and they publish stories immediately
- Provision of photos (hosted on Flickr), videos and webcasts (hosted on YouTube)
- They monitor visits to the newsroom and have noted how hits go up when stories break on Twitter (they have 1006 followers but many of these are “influencers)
- They intend to enable comments on content within a month. This will be monitored carefully due to the sensitive nature of the industry
- Social media can present difficulties in highly regulated environments but an incremental approach can ease the pressure
- It’s vital that the site is easy to navigate and find content (well doh! … but a point worth making considering how often this fact seems to be overlooked)
- The line between customer relations and PR are increasingly blurred (a recurring theme at the CIPR conference which I reported on in December)
I didn’t catch the name! - Sony Ericsson
- Their site is a hybrid of a traditional corporate website with social media elements. Within the corporate environment you often have to deal with legacy systems including the human relationships that go with them (nuff said!)
- Kids in bedrooms, “brand fans” are often the target audience. Youthful brand language, even on the more corporate areas of the website, is employed to “speak to a youthful media”
- They host images on Picasa due to the company’s links with Google
- Videos are hosted on the site as well as on YouTube to avoid problems with downloading
- “Who is a journalist? What is a journalist?” Serving the needs of different “journalist” communities, for example bloggers who are often unable to download content from traditional newsrooms
It was interesting to note that out of the whole audience, most of whom probably have traditional newsrooms on their company websites, only 2 people had social media embedded. FWIW, my vote would have gone to First Direct for the simplicity and navigational ease of their newsroom.
Workshop - The Corporate Blog
 Simon Henderson, Centrica. The first speaker in this workshop was Simon Henderson, Director of Corporate Responsibility and Internal Communications at Centrica. Some might think it a little odd that Centrica, who own British Gas amongst others, would even bother having blogs as they’re not a consumer facing company and are not directly selling a product. However, for an energy provider, then can play a bit part in demonstrating CSR and showing a willingness t be open. Henderson’s experiences were:
- Blogs can help to keep the content on your site fresh
- Centrica started off with graduate blogs aimed at a “tech savvy” audience and then moved on to tackle CSR issues such as climate change. Start small and safe and target one audience at a time
- Using social sites, particularly Twitter, gives the ability to “kill stories quite quickly”
- You need support from your legal and media teams
- Don’t expect miracles and manage internal expectations and concerns carefully
- Centrica’s statistics show that people visiting that section of the site stayed longer, accessed more pages and were more likely to be return visitors proving the stickiness of this kind of content vs often dry corporate content
The second half of the session came from Peter Granat, CEO of Cision, who had the following insights:
- Blogs can help you to understand your reputation and reach multiple audiences
- “Friends, not editors, shape Internet habits”
- Mapping social media trends against mainstream media trends across the life of an event - think about have stories move through channels
- Appreciate that you are visible, think about who you follow and when you do it as people are watching!
- 90% of the traditional media are getting stories from blogs
- Twitter activity has shown itself to be 97.3% accurate in predicting opening weekend box office returns for movies
- If you open up a channel you will most likely attract lots of “noise” but the key thing is to identify the influencers
- 46% of US companies can link sales directly back to corporate blogs and the blog can serve as a front door to the corporate website
Finally, a few comments on “Who’s the Gatekeeper?” a debate style session which asked who social media should sit with in the organisation - SEO or PR? Both sides put their viewpoints …
3 points in favour of PR agencies taking control:
- PR offers overarching strategic viewpoint whereas SEO is just one tool in the strategy
- It’s about helping advocates spread the word rather than helping Google spread the word
- Organisational reputation is too important to be left to SEOs(!?)
3 points in favour of SEO agencies taking control:
- You should “look to your digital natives” - SEOs are more likely to connect with the audience you’re trying to reach (bloggers, etc.)
- SEO is not just a tool any more but is about showing the overall authoritativeness of your content
- Many PR agencies (and IMHO communications people in general!) have a very poor understanding of what is going on technically which can lead them to make silly mistakes
 Deep inside enemy territory! As someone who works in the public sector and very rarely (if ever) relies on PR or SEO agencies for services, this felt like a bit of a non argument. Perhaps working as part of a web team, I possibly came down slightly on the side of the SEOs although, obviously, skills and knowledge can vary vastly from team to team and agency to agency. At the end of the day, social media tools are just that - tools to facilitate the delivery of a communication campaign. This may well involve agencies and departments working closely together. As someone in the audience commented, people just need to get on with it and stop “land grabbing”!
The SMCC conference was a very worthwhile and enjoyable day - despite the true blue setting!
 I had a conversation the other day that went pretty much as follows:
Other person: Does your team develop apps?
Me: Well yes, what kind of apps are you talking about?
Other person: Oh, you know, for mobile phones and things
Me: So an iPhone app or something then?
Other person: yeah, yeah, exactly, an iPhone app
Me: Well we could. What exactly does the app need to do?
Other person: We don’t know yet but we know we want to launch it at X conference, the new head of X is really keen that we be seen to be using all the new technologies
Me: *sigh*
I’ve had many comparable conversations over the last few years about setting up blogs, wikis, Twitter feeds, Facebook groups - the list of buzzwords goes on. People seem desperate to say they’re using these these tools or technologies often without having any understanding of how they work or any clear idea about what they actually want to achieve. When asked why they want to use these tools, the answer has most often been “because we want to be seen to be cutting edge” rather than “because we think it will help to achieve X outcome/benefit”.
Facebook is littered with groups that have been set up by organisations, presumably so that they can say they have a “presence” on the site, and then abandoned. Before embarking on a mission to use any of these tools you need to have a clear and workable strategy, at the very least around:
- Who you are targeting and what messages you’re trying to get out
- How you are going to provide a steady stream of interesting and engaging content - users can easily recognise corporate “spin” on social media sites and the tone of your messages will need to be carefully considered
- How you are going to resource the monitoring of the site and make sure you can respond to any feedback in a timely way
- How you are going to deal with potentially negative comments
Social networking sites work best for building an ongoing relationship and maintaining a conversation with your stakeholders. It may sound a little bit alarmist but I think it’s fair to say that, to a certain extent, you only get one shot at this. If a user invests the time and effort in subscribing to your feed/page/channel etc. and then gets no benefit from it and no sense that they are building a relationship with you they are unlikely to be particularly impressed. This can only serve to damage your reputation and future invitations to interact with you online may be met with scepticism and apathy. It’s true that this presents a bit of a dilemma - on the one hand you need to register that Twitter account, or Facebook page, to claim the username/group name, but on the other hand I think you need to be ready to use it once you’ve got it. Otherwise users may sign up only to be disappointed.
But I digress … social and emerging channels and must not be used simply because they are seen as the new “in-thing” – they must truly add value both for the organisation and the end user. People must ensure they are using the most effective medium for their message. At the end of the day there’s nothing wrong with producing a good old fashioned press release, news article or section of content for your website if that would be the right tool for the job!
 Improving connections within the organisation I recently undertook some research with a small group of staff within my organisation as I was interested in finding out more about their personal use of social media. The intention was to gather some data around what level their digital competencies are at and therefore what their attitudes might be towards using so called “Enterprise 2.0″ tools internally to improve communications, both within their own teams, with other teams and with/from the senior leadership.
It was no great surprise to find that around 80% of staff surveyed are using social media away from work. By far the most predominantly used site was Facebook, but also forums, blogs, wikis, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Skype are all being used to varying degrees. This indicates that the majority of staff are familiar with concepts like real time status updates, blogging to share knowledge and opinions and seeking help from others on discussion forums. If staff are comfortable with these ideas, and are feeling the associated benefits in their personal lives, then it isn’t a huge leap for them to apply them to their business lives too.
And it appears that this “leap” is one that some are already taking on their own. My results indicated that, although the use of social media isn’t mandated or particularly encouraged within our organisation, and the tools provided are minimal (mainly very basic Sharepoint 2007 sites and some use of the NHS collaboration site eSpace) 50% of survey respondents reported that they have used, or are using, such tools or websites for work purposes. So where are these interactions taking place?
I’m painfully aware of a few cases where staff have implemented and are using, often unsuitable, tools that haven’t been approved for corporate use (and it worries me to think how many more we’re unaware of!). Even if this activity occurs behind the firewall, it still raises concerns. For example, what about information governance and security, or the maintenance and sustainability of the tool over its lifecycle? In addition it really doesn’t help escape the “silo mentality” which prevails in many large organisations if people are setting up their own repositories and collaboration tools left right and centre!
I won’t go into the benefits of using social media for internal comms in this post as its documented elsewhere (see this article on the Headshift blog as a starter for 10) but I would suggest that companies, especially those with a large amount of staff, need to think about embracing these technologies sooner rather than later. Its also worth mentioning that younger employees (the Y and, increasingly, X Generations) are more than comfortable with the idea of doing business online and, in fact, are coming to expect that such tools will be available to them. As Richard Dennison put it in his still excellent and informative blog post (which I’ve quoted from more than once now!) - “BT 2.0 Case Study“:
“Many believe that trying to stop social media tools seeping onto Intranets is a futile activity anyway, so it’s better to introduce them on your terms in a managed way”
This doesn’t have to mean spending thousands of pounds on heavyweight enterprise systems - there are enough open source tools out there that can be implemented quickly and above all cheaply. If you provide, initially basic, tools for those who want them then this gives you the opportunity to try things out and develop, what are after all reasonably new and untried ideas (especially when applied in a business context), learning lessons alongside your user base.
When the time comes to roll these systems out accross the whole organisation they should already be well tried, tested and fit for purpose. I’d suggest its better to start off with imperfect tools, and support “early adoptor” staff in exploring new and more innovative ways of working, than risk an uncontrolled, unsustainable and ultimately unproductive free for all.
 Mmmmm, cigarettes ... In a follow up to their pre Christmas iPhone app to help you track your alcohol intake (which has reportedly been downloaded 65,000 times), the Department of Health have now launched an app to help people give up smoking too.
According to an article in OnMedica, paraphrasing the DH press release, yesterday:
“The app gives daily hints and tips to manage cravings, keeps a running tally on how much money quitters have saved since they stopped smoking, tracks the number of days, hours and minutes since quitting, includes a direct link to the stop smoking helpline so people can speak with an adviser when they need to, and helps find local NHS Stop Smoking Services.”
The aspect of this story that caught my eye, purely because I find the figures interesting, was (presumably) the DH’s justification of releasing this app for the iPhone only. The numbers, quoted in the DH news piece about the app, are that access to NHS information by mobile devices is split as follows:
- iPhone – 61 percent
- iPod touch – 17 percent
- Nokia 5800 – 2.75 percent
- Nokia e71 – 2.11 percent
- Blackberry – 4 percent
I’m not sure if I’m questioning them but I’d be interested to know what data they used to come up with these figures and which particular websites/applications these users were accessing.
Speaking as one who is 6 days in to yet another ultimately doomed attempt to quit smoking … ok a running tally of how long I’ve managed without by beautiful tobacco filled friends could be “fun” but, quite frankly, if my iPhone starts giving me “hints and tips” to manage my cravings I will shout and swear before I throw it on the floor and stamp up and down on it repeatedly until it shatters into tiny weeny little iPhone pieces which I will then burn, burn, burn … AAAARRRRGGHHHHH …!
… aaaannnnd, relax and breathe. Time to eat another orange I think 
 Earlier today Google unveiled its contribution to the world of social networking, “Buzz” and, of course, the service is already dividing opinion amongst commentators. I’m on the fence slightly on this one … on the one hand I’m quite excited about the prospect of Google bringing their technical might and search know-how to bear on the social media world, but on the other hand …
In their official blog post Google state that:
“In today’s world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it’s increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations. Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web - finding relevance in the noise - has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve. … It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch”
At the moment Buzz will only allow Gmail users to connect with their email contacts and other Gmail users and services. When personal email has become almost obsolete for many (the heavy users of social networking sites) I’d question Google’s apparent assumption that email forms the nucleus of my network. Presumably Google sees Facebook as it’s main competitor but at present I can’t see any earth shattering features that will challenge its dominance.
I’m a user of both Gmail and Facebook but I don’t want to (and can’t afford to!) invest the time and effort in maintaining a social presence on both. My friends are almost without exception on Facebook - I often converse with them but very rarely, if ever, email them. Whilst a place to organise our ever increasing information streams is much needed, I’d suggest that in trying to bring things together Buzz, in it’s current form, actually runs the risk of introducing yet more fragmentation or “noise” as Google put it.
Obviously it’s very early days and it will be really interesting to see how Google take Buzz forward, but until it aggregates content from other social networks I really can’t see many users rushing to switch their allegiance from Facebook or whatever their “drug of choice” may be. So all in all, a good starting point, but I think they really must try much harder to play well with others in future.
Oh yes, and a final thought … where/how does Google Wave fit in to the big picture?
 Yesterday Forrester’s Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li published a new version of their social technographics ladder as popularised by the 2008 book “Groundswell”. The ladder provides a useful framework to analyse and profile the social technology habits of particular markets, so enabling PR and marketing campaigns to be tailored to the particular online behaviours of these groups.
This updated version takes into account developments in social media over the last couple of years namely the rise of Twitter and the microblogging phenomenon. A whole new rung has been added, “Conversationalists” to account for people who update their social network status on at least a weekly basis, so using it to to converse with their networks.
According to Bernoff Conversationalists are:
“… 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.”
The new figures around Conversationalists, 33% of web users in number, are interesting but I’d suggest they don’t really come as a shock to anyone who regularly uses of Facebook or Twitter and has participated in their growth. However, I do find it a little surprising that “Critics” (those who might comment on a blog, post on a forum, edit a wiki, etc.) come in both lower on the ladder and higher in percentage than Conversationalists. My personal experience doesn’t really bare this out as I know of, and see online, much more evidence of Conversationalists than Critics. In addition, I would class being a Critic is a lot more participatory/proactive than someone simply using their networks to shout out their status (is this necessarily a conversation anyway?) and so would suggest that it should be on a higher rung of the ladder? I’m not party to the full research which is available to Forrester clients so perhaps there are regional differences that come into play, although US and European behaviours are typically not that dissimilar (Groundswell, p49).
On the whole the Social Technographics ladder is still a useful tool although some commentators, for example Blonde Digital Limited, are suggesting that the added rung and blurring of the boundaries between the behaviour categories are complicating what was originally a very simple and intuitive model. I agree that this seems a shame, but you could perhaps argue (as I’m sure Bernoff would) that it’s just a reflection of the ever more complex ways that people interact with their environments and each other when online.
 When does what you put on Facebook become your employers business? I was recently reading “A CEO’s Dilemma: Should I Take My Burning Man Pics off Facebook?” which tells the story of hotelier Chip Conley’s experience when Facebook photos of him at the Burning Man Festival caused a “mild uproar” among his employees. His experience is somewhat unusual as it’s usually the senior management within an organisation expressing outrage at employee behaviour on social networking sites rather than the other way round! It got me thinking about the whole dynamic though …
Social media policies are generally seen as a way for the organisation to protect itself and it’s reputation from the reckless, ill considered or just plain harmful actions that employees *might* enage in when online. However, when I wrote our social media and online participation policy earlier this year I felt I was writing as much to protect the rights of the employees as the employer. I’m aware of a couple of instances where people have been threatened with diciplinary action over things they may have posted on Facebook or groups they may have joined that have been deemed innapropriate. I feel quite strongly that, unless that person has identified themselves as an employee of the organisation or is being explicitly and openly critical, then it’s non of their employers business what they do on social networking sites - I was keen to put in place a policy that supports this view.
I recently read some truly awful social media “guidelines” that were obviously written by someone who doesn’t participate in any of the online activities they were dictating to others about. As a person who is pretty much living and breathing this stuff, I’ve found it can put you in an interesting position with regard to setting rules that you then have to follow yourself. On the one hand you have a true understanding of the mechanics of social networking and online collaboration, but on the other hand this understanding can lead you to agonise over every little detail because, at the back of your mind is the feeling that you’re quite possibly going to be in violition the very policy you’re writing!
For example, when putting the policy together and getting feedback from colleagues a number of issues that came up that made me feel uncomfortable, not least the issue of “personal gain”. It seems fairly reasonable to expect employees not to blog for financial gain but there was a suggestion that this should extend to personal gain too. What does that actually mean? Surely everyone blogs for personal gain (to enhance their professional reputation, to try and snare a better job, etc. etc.) so how could this possibly be upheld? And more importantly, how would it affect me?!! 
At the end of the day, due to the nature of the beast, any social media policy has to be a living breathing document subject to change as our use of the tools evolves. It’s a pretty obvious point perhaps but it’s essential that the policy owner understands what they are actually writing about and the implications that this might have for the real people who have to follow their words - even if this does lead to the odd feeling of guilt!
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The use of social media by charities and individuals alike to mobilise people into donating after the recent earthquake in Haiti has been widely reported. With Facebook and Twitter being the biggest referrers to the DEC (
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