Category Archives: cyburbia

Your Deadly Diagnosis Awaits in Social Media

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Asking about your health condition in a social media channel means you are 82% more likely to get a deathly diagnosis from your peers than a non-lethal diagnoses. Yes, when it comes to diagnosing each other in social media it seems we like to tell each other we’re about to die from some rather nasty disease or condition. This was the rather odd finding of ours when we looked over the many research projects in the health care field we’ve done and then did a little more digging.

So why do we, as non-medical professionals with little more than an ability to do a brief Google or Bing search, like to tell our fell humans, they are going to die? Perhaps you have a thought? The attention it brings? Or is it our inner need to see someone else in tragedy then maybe rescue them?

 

 

So how did we notice this? We’ve done over 20 health care related research projects in social media channels. When we recently ran the numbers to look at some trends, we noticed this trend of giving each other doom and gloom stories. So then we went to 20 forums on health care issues, Yahoo! Answers, Quora and public Facebook profiles/comments. Out of 8,000 conversations, testing for sentiment then analysing the question and response, we did indeed find that 82% of the time people would offer a deadly diagnosis.

So, next time you put out a question on your sprained ankle in a social media channel, don’t be surprised to learn you have flesh eating disease and will be dead by breakfast tomorrow. Sorry about that, hope you find a miracle cure…

 

There Is No Recipe for Success With Social Media Campaigns

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Two of the hotly debated topics around social media engagement for businesses are 1) ROI metrics and 2) what makes up a successful plan. In this post, we focus on the “recipe” to create a guaranteed successful campaign in social media. Unfortunately, what we discovered is that there isn’t one. Certainly there are tactics and elements a business can take to mitigate the potential damage. Again, unfortunately however, many businesses don’t take those steps.

How We Arrived At Our Findings
We took two approaches to answering this question around a perfect recipe. First we looked at over 120 of our over 260 research projects for clients in the private sector. Then we looked at some famous flops (i.e. MacDonald’s and Motrin.) We looked for commonalities in both successful campaigns and failures. We discussed how several of our clients approached the planning, design and implementation phase as well, to gain additional perspective on the concept development of social media campaigns.

There is No Recipe for Success
Our conclusion: there is no recipe or methodology. None. There is no guarantee. The best a company can do when planning to execute a marketing campaign in social media is take some certain steps that will mitigate any failure and certainly help for possible success.

What is The Tipping Factor for Success or Failure?
We found that success or failure boiled down to two things. One can be controlled, the other can’t. The first reason for success/failure is human beings. Because people can decide if they “buy in” to your pitch and in “buying in” they can share what they think of a campaign – if they like it or hate it, they will share it and discuss it. There is nothing a company can do to make people like or hate something. The second factor was advanced research and we estimate that only about 15% of companies do any advanced research into audience preferences, types of content preferred and even potential issues that could cause trouble. Motrin Mom’s is a classic case of failure to do an initial campaign litmus test or research the audience – they ended up alienating moms as an audience and dealing with a PR crisis. The same happened with MacDonald’s asking on Twitter for peoples favourite experience…instead people told them their worst experiences.

Mitigating The Risk of Failure
There are some actions a business can take to mitigate failure and boost the chances for success. These include first and foremost doing some research. Know your audience, the channels they prefer, hot topics, things that make them happy and things that make them mad. Then, do some A/B testing with a small, controlled audience, just like might be done with an adwords campaign or similar. Have a plan on how you’d respond if things go wonky. Be prepared to spend time during and after the campaign engaging in and monitoring the conversation. Too many companies dive in for a quick campaign hit and then pull out…only later to discover their audience is mad at them and feels abandoned or neglected.

So while there is no recipe or guaranteed methodology for success, not engaging at all leaves lots of space for your competitor to edge in and build their brand. So you need to engage for competitive reasons as well.

 

Why Google+ Is A Digital Threat to Mining Industry

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Why is the impact of Google+ so important to the mining industry? Because all online activity starts with a search engine query and Google holds 78% of the world search market. As of May 2012, Google started to include content from social media in its search results.  Most prominently, Google started to rank Google+ content as very “important” in search results. This means that content produced by citizens not just in Google+, but links from news articles, blogs, videos and photos on other sites and services will suddenly rank very high in a person’s search results. But may not appear in a GoogleAlert. As activists and environmental groups have become increasingly agile with the use of digital media and social media, this means anyone searching for “open pit mining” is 90% more likely to see content opposing this form of mining. The issue then, is that people will refer to these resources before they ever see your message about the different approach you are taking and the environmental safeguards you are putting in place. As a result, initial impressions are formed and once perceptions are established, it’s very hard to change them.

The more content placed in Google+ by these activist groups, the harder it is to convey your message of being environmentally responsible.

Our research into Google+ use shows that content opposing many forms of mining has increased 25% since February 2012 and in search engine analysis, Canadian citizen searches for information on mining has increased by 37% over 2011. But in 97% of the instances, the content being delivered is by opponents to mining. In terms of North America, that means over 40 million people are researching mining practices through Google alone.

A Look at Fracking Through the Social Media Lens

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Fracking. It’s a rough word for what is shaping up to be the most contentious issue around the energy and resources sectors, ahead of the tar sands and pipeline leaks. To understand what the primary concerns of citizens are in regard to fracking, we undertook an online analysis of 1,500 Americans and Canadians to see what they were saying about fracking in online channels (including social media.) We ensured the age group was +25 in our analysis and eliminated “trolls” and any sockpuppetting through our software.

A Look At The Issues on Fracking
(See graph below)

Water: At 35% of overall concern, citizens fear water pollution the most. In terms of social media, the most shared video on fracking is a man who sets his tap on fire as water flows out; it can be seen here.

Habitat: The second largest concern is destruction of habitat for all sorts of reasons, from animals through to human uses such as hunting.

Farming: Farmers and those who are proponents of local food usage are the most concerned about damage to farm lands (i.e. water tables) from crop growth cycles to increased chemical presence in the food.

Wildlife: This concern piggybacks on habitat, but we broke it out as there is direct citizen concern for damage to specific species and more so with species at risk.

Some states have banned fracking and the province of New Brunswick in Canada has taken the same steps. This is likely to remain a contentious issue for sometime, and is being rolled into the greater debate of resource exploitation that will only become louder in the coming months and years. For the most part, industry is largely unaware of or not addressing citizen use and engagement in social media, giving activist and aid groups a significant lead in the political battle. Yet some citizens are neither concerned with or against fracking and tend to support it. Either way, fracking is contentious.

Our Cultural Identifiers in Social Media – From Africa to Latin America

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In 2009 we ran our first internal research project regarding social media use in Africa in terms of civil society issues. We were surprised in a few ways by what we learned. Clients that we shared the report with were also quite surprised – all in a very good way. The objective of our research project was to attempt to understand if there were any online discussions by Sudanese around the census undertaken for the referendum on separation by southern Sudan from the north. Indeed there was. The key take-aways from this research and some subsequent projects were:

1. Tribal Identifiers: In 97% of the instances of discussions in forums, blogs and social networks, people first identified themselves by their tribe, then their country and then their views. Tribal distinctions it seems, are important in the context of online discussions around politics, sports and religion in social media in Africa. We have since found some similar traits emerging in parts of Latin America.

2. Engagement is Not Restricted to Elites: A common assumption of business management and many senior government officials is that only the elite in a developing nation use the Internet. We’ve proven this wrong with our research projects in Iraq, Haiti, Jamaica, Ghana, Benin and a number of other countries. As we’ve detailed before, non-elites or the general population use mobile phones, Internet cafes and hijacked high-speed connections. All socioeconomic levels are very active in social media and this is increasing rapidly around the world.

3. Language Usage: The most common language, even in Africa, tends to be English or French in Africa then Spanish and English in Latin America. As Africa is a plurality of languages, the dominant language is that of the former colonising country. Since there can be an incredible variance in tribal languages, English or French becomes the easiest for more people to understand.

These findings have been supported through subsequent research projects we’ve since conducted in Benin, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, DRC and South Africa. For governments engaging in Digital Diplomacy (or eDiplomacy as some call it) and companies engaged in international marketing through social media, understanding these nuances can make the difference in monitoring and also strategy development.