Sometimes, Social Media Doesn’t Matter To A Business

When you live and breathe the Social Web everyday, spend hours on Twitter and looking at data, it can be a surprise when you stumble upon a business that has no website or Social Media engagement and well, really doesn’t need it. At all.

What business could this be? a shoe repair store. The Christmas tree sitting inside the door has been up for at least a decade based on the layer of dust on the ornaments. Magazines from 1989 sit on some shelves and shoe shine packages from the 1950′s sit on the slightly tilted shelves on a far wall. So one would naturally expecte a wisened elderly gentleman to be at the counter. Quite the contrary. It was the owners grandson, just shy of 30 years old who’d taken over the store three years prior. He had not changed a thing. Eccentric? Perhaps.

But why would this little shop need a website? He was in a prime business district, surrounded by theatres, restaurants, fine shops and coffee houses on one of the busiest streets in the city. The store is 45 years old and about 20 feet wide and 60 feet deep – what we might call “a hole in the wall.” Even the floors are lopsided, the linoleum the original, well worn and torn.

He has all the business he wants. His clientelle are loyal, they consider his work of high quality (a business does not decide if it makes quality products, the buyer decides that.) His prices reasonable. He has no stress and a part-timer who keeps the books in order and the cash register is older than the first abacus.

The lesson I learned was that Social Media, and the Web as a whole, is not a defining of the modern business. At times we have to remember that technology is not always necessary. Sometimes a friendly chat, face to face with someone interesting provides more insight that analytical tools or networking platforms.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner – Twitter: Webconomist)

Don’t Forget the People

It’s so easy to get caught up in the exciting new technologies that enable Social Media, the tools and applications like Twitter or Plurk, WordPress widgets and new add-ons to Twitter. What we sometimes forget however, is people and the role they play.

While a new iPhone application might be really cool, it’s not very useful unless people decide they want to use it. Not only is it vital that people will use a technology, it’s “how” they use it. When blogs took over from forums and newsgroups and one button publishing became easy and free, could we have predicted bloggers would create so much pain for businesses, journalists and governments?

One way to predict if a technology will become popular with people however, is to look at the demographic the technology is aimed at and what gatekeeper might possibly be displaced. Prior to free blogging, the gatekeeper of much information to the general public was news outlets. Even Twitter as a microblog, further displaced the gatekeeping of professional news outlets. Twitter is a case of a value-add technology that built on what blogging had already started – breaking down information gatekeepers.

It was people that saw how blogging and microblogging could be used to foster change and provide a counter opinion to industrial media. Granted, much blogging content is mediochre and not always reliable, but in many cases, blog articles have created significant change or had major impact.

The key to Social Media being so huge as a “movement” is people. The technology just enables people to socialize, organize and create. In choosing a “tool” for a social media strategy, the people and how they might use the tool (you can never know for sure to start) are a ey consideration.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner – Twitter: Webconomist)

Passive & Active Social Media: High and Low Engagement

It was noted today that Twitter surpassed Digg for traffic this past month. What is this a trend indicator of? Well, we view Social Media as two primary types; 1) High Engagement and 2) Low Engagement. Although both enable engagement, the level of engagement varies, and most vital to these two are the cost of the transaction.

Low Engagement: Here we clump Mixx, Digg, Newsvine and similar as well as Social Bookmarking. We label them as “Low-Engagement” since the transaction cost is rather much higher than active Social Media services that encourage broader engagement. They are “passive” because discussion of an issue is not easy, and spreading the word is also not easily done. They are based on “voting” principles rather than true “sharing” such as Microblogging services like Twitter. The stories lie relatively dormant until people find them. These services are far more passive.

High Engagement: A prime example here is Microblogging, as well as SMS, IM services and Forums. Once registered, the transaction cost is low and the engagement level is high. Services such as Twitter are instant and generally very viral since “Re-Tweeing or RT” is easy and sends the “content” across broader reach faster than Digg or Mixx. Witness the US Airways crash last week, the terror attacks in Mumbai and even the small earthquake that hit LA last summer – the news was out on Twitter before traditional news media picked it up in all cases. This is highly-active and sharing audio, text and video is simple and fast – low-cost to the user. More is shared faster. This is highly-active.

So what does this mean? It means another “shift” in how people are deciding to use Social Media tools. Services like Digg and Mixx will be where content might reside, but Highly-Active services like Twitter or Identi.ca will become the primary distribution channels, perhaps more so than email.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)

Blended Search Results & Social Media Strategy

Blended search is changing the way people use search engines and impacting the good old days of SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) Just when your marketing team got their head around SEO, the rules change. Ah, the world of the Web. Ever evolving, ever changing. Blended search tactics will also have an impact on your Social Media Optimization – and what people learn about your company.

Okay, so what is “blended search“? Quite simply search engines are “blending” more than just text links on the results page. They’re including video, images, pdf links and maps in the results. This means any, and I mean any content from any part of your website, blog(s), microsites etc., can be included in search results.

The advantage is if your using SMO tactics, you can improve your chances of dominating more search results around more keywords and terms. The downside is that competitors and negative content and content you’d rather your prospects not see, is also more likely than before to show up in search results.

In developing a Social Media strategy, we think it’s now important to consider search engines that deliver blended search results. The search engines  do this in part because “tagging” has enabled them to index and deliver rich content (i.e. videos and images) and they want to keep eyeballs on the page longer to improve the chances of ad clicking.

Blended search is becoming more popular. Understanding it will help in your Social Media Optimization strategy as well.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)

Twitter: Is Not a A Marketing Channel

Twitter. We’ve seen it touted in election coverage on mainstream news, mentioned in news articles and discussed ad nauseum on blogs…and on Twitter. It has an entire “ecolosystem” of add-ons and tools. Many agencies (PR, Advertising, Marketing) push clients on. Wrongly so in many cases.

Twitter is not a new “marketing channel” and this is why it is failing for companies urged by thier agencies to use it as such. Twitter is a conversational tool, it is a communications channel. Twitter can be a viable way to engage with current and potential customers – when used in the correct way from the correct approach.

As Beth Harte so rightly and effectively says ” social media is about sharing and discussing information. It’s communications, not marketing.” This relates very much to Twitter.

Effective Social Media projects for business rely on 3-core-sm-principles 1) Promise, 2) Tools and 3) Bargain. The “tools” vary depending on the campaign, goals and objectives. We applied these most recently to CarShareHFX and it delivered results. Twitter became a viable medium because they were “communicating” with, mutually, an interested audience. Other tools were used – as a communications strategy, bringing in traditional PR tactics.

Using Twitter to push your own agenda results in, well, no results. Used to share, discuss and engage with your audience, it works. This is the approach Dell, among others, has taken – and it is working. Because they use it as part of their communications. As a result they have more loyal customers and yes, subsequently it helps sales, so it becomes an element of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC.)

Be careful when a Social Media consultant or agency says “you must be on Twitter.” We’ve counselled more clients NOT to use Twitter than we have to use Twitter.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)