Coast Digital Blog

Early last week I was reading an article in Marketing Week and was delighted to see the breadth of organisations embracing the power of social networks, in particular the Government.

The Department for Work and Pensions is the latest organisation to welcome social networking. They will be trialing a new site on Wordpress.com with the Hansard Society as part of the Government’s Generation Experience Initiative, with the express aim of targeting the older generation.

The site http://generationxperience.wordpress.com will be linked to other social networks including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. It will encourage discussion on every aspect of life, including work and pensions.

Age Concern and Help the Aged are among the groups invited to participate and create debate. Pensions Minister Mike O’Brien commented: “This site fills a gap in the market by providing an online forum for older people to get their views heard.”

Personally, I think social networks offer a fabulous way for ‘silvers surfers’ to voice their opinions. Though widely regarded as orientated towards young people, my belief is that social networking offers opportunities for all age groups, lifestyles and cultures. Most importantly, it brings everyone together online.  

From an online marketing perspective we’re seeing increased interest in social networking from businesses in the public and private sectors. Companies are keen to embrace online PR and create buzz through blogging and forums. I believe social networks provide a great channel to engage and build relationships with every age group.

This year social networking has taken the online world by storm. According to latest research Brits are logging on to social networking sites more than any other country in Europe, spending an average of 5.8 hours per month.*

UK social networking usage is now the highest in Europe, with 24.9 million unique visitors – 78% of the total UK online population – participating in social networking communities.

Clever companies, like eBay are due to set up their own social networking service based around shoppers’ interests, whilst smaller businesses have taken advantage of free online tools to build their online PR presence.

The online hangouts have also provided the public with the power to influence and voice their views, share interests and create new communities. I commend organizations like HSBC and Cadbury for listening to Facebook groups by responding positively to the “Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off Group!!!” and the “Bring Back the Wispa” campaigns.

Another trend with Facebook I’ve noticed is that people are using it more for work as well as play. As a marketeer, I think it has the potential to become a new way of learning and gaining customer insight, taking away reliance on traditional market research focus groups.

Initially, it was great to use the tool for socialising and to catch up with old friends and family, but now I’m actually using it to network and learn about my professional field. It’s also great for teachers, SEO specialists and people with common interests. It’s slowly becoming my mini search engine tool too, giving people the choice to research, recruit, learn and socialise (out of work hours that is!).

Many people I speak with disagree or simply don’t like the way we are exposed by the concept of social networking…. But I think it’s like the mobile phone, eventually it will become accepted as the social norm. Having a phone on you all the time wasn’t always accepted, but now I don’t know anyone who doesn’t carry a mobile. Do you? 

* Research figures supplied by ComScore  www.comscore.com

Over the past couple of years the internet has increasingly dominated my life – so much so that I get a bit panicky when I’m ‘offline’. Working in digital media has sharpened my senses to the fundamental shift that’s taking place, but it’s staring each of us in the face really.

Nearly every day there’s yet another news story about Facebook or some other aspect of the internet. It makes me wonder how much more our lives are going to change in the next few years.

One change I’m acutely aware of is that if I want to read the news, and I mean the ‘breaking’ news, I certainly won’t find it on my television. Citizen journalism is a reality – stories are ‘broken’ by people at the scene, by texting, blogging, emailing and taking pictures, even videos, and posting them online.

For example, there was a major incident at Liverpool Street Station recently during the evening rush hour. A huge exclusion zone was set up sealing the whole area off. I learned this from a friend at the scene who called me. Concerned, I switched on my TV news channel… and nothing. The ‘breaking news’ on TV had been the same all afternoon. But had I been able to get online I’m sure I’d have found out what was happening.

Most ‘old’ media businesses worth their salt woke up to this reality years ago. Check out the BBC’s help us make the news feature or The Guardian’s news direct to you range of functionality; with g24 you can even print off your own PDF for a more old-fashioned read – updated every 15 minutes.

The Guardian has arguably been at the forefront of successfully translating traditional journalism online – with their website updated by the minute, winning awards, and offering amazing usability and choice. There’s an astonishing level of engagement with their huge range of blogs, where a new post can collect hundreds of comments in literally minutes.

As Howard Owens – a prolific journalist/blogger – recently stated:

“The user is in control. They decide what, when, why, where and how to consume media. Users aren’t interested in newspaper deadlines and their desire to have the full story before publishing. They want to know what we know when we know it. They want their news now.

People want to participate. They want to talk back. They want to add to our stories, correct us and just spout off as need be with their own opinions."

Absolutely. And I welcome the ongoing efforts on the part of publishers to embrace the web, but what I’m really looking forward to is someone inventing a way for me to find the time to read everything.

Google have unveiled their foray into the world of social bookmarking, a step that keeps them up with the likes of StumbleUpon, Digg, Furl and Del.icio.us.

Shared Stuff works by allowing you to share your favourite pages, push them to other social bookmarking sites, or email them. Feeds are also auto-generated, thumbnails are auto-attached from the site, and visit stats are tracked.

Essentially, the service adds a social element to the existing Google Bookmarks.

It will be fascinating to keep track on the progress of this feature, and to see if Google develop a community social element around it.

Social networking giant Facebook has made most of its users’ profiles potentially open to the public. The addition of a profile search bar to the homepage of the site now allows anyone to browse users’ profiles.

They don’t stop there though. Within the next month Facebook will allow search engine spiders to index their profiles, meaning your Facebook profile could be found not only by someone using their new search box, but you could also be found via Google, MSN, Yahoo and the rest of the major search engines.

This will undoubtedly cause huge controversy amongst the Facebook community. But this is something Facebook seem to enjoy. It was only yesterday I saw an article on Facebook’s “F**k Islam” group and the 50,000 or more people who have joined a group to protest its being.

However, if you're already a registered Facebook user, you do have the option to alter your privacy settings. Read more on the Facebook blog.

With 30 million active users, Facebook seem to be doing something right. But it will be interesting to see how these changes go down with the community.

The emergence of web 2.0 has become a vital part of our everyday lives; allowing consumers to become reporters, publishers, and journalists; bringing opinions together for the benefit of fellow online readers.

This week I was interested to learn that new consumer website www.sutori.co.uk has launched an online community allowing consumers to share experiences of products and services, offering a real-time barometer of attitudes towards companies and brands.

In turn, the community also allows brands to voice their own feedback and engage in conversation with their customers. The transparency of this site is a fantastic way of uniting brands and consumers, enabling them to exchange points of view and encouraging conversation.

Consumers now have the opportunity to influence each other in the context of their experience of products and brands. The online community at Sutori enables brand perceptions to be influenced by the many, rather than by the narrower experience of a very few.

I think it’s great that customers have a voice online. But it’s equally important for organizations to have the opportunity to respond and listen to what their customers have to say. It’s good to hear both sides of the story.

The past six months has seen a phenomenal growth in social networking. This latest craze is huge. It’s being talked about in the media, amongst friends and family, work colleagues, as a part of everyday conversation. It’s become an extension of the real world. It’s certainly part of my world!

The latest headlines to hit the media this week reported that Bebo have hit the top spot, attracting a phenomenal 10.6 million unique visitors from within the UK in July. This was closely followed by rival, MySpace, which enjoyed a 25 percent increase in traffic, reaching 10.1 million unique visitors. But the fastest growing social networking website, Facebook, has grown 366 percent since the start of the year to attract an audience of 7.6 million unique visitors in July 2007.

Facebook has also very cleverly taken a leap into the mobile web and joined iPhone by creating a new Facebook mobile site for them. iPhone hasn't even been out for two months yet, but it has already changed the way people think about the mobile web.

I’m pretty confident by the end of this year Facebook will knock Bebo off the top spot…. Watch this space!

After browsing a few articles on the BBC this morning, I spotted a new addition to the main template: 

A Bookmark With: field is now in place on every single article on the BBC’s website giving users the choice to bookmark each article at Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

This is a good move by the BBC and will undoubtedly help get their articles more exposure across the web. Not only socially, but the back links generated from these social sites will also provide a great boost for popular articles in the natural search results as well.

The social marketing scene has really gone into hyper speed over the last few months, and with a huge web presence like the BBC picking up on the buzz, we can be pretty sure it’s here to stay.

The issue of online advertising appearing alongside inappropriate material isn’t about to go away. The web, by its very nature, is dynamic and ever-changing. Ads are served into a web page in real-time so there is no easy way to editorially control how a page will look once it is generated, as has recently been the case with Facebook.

1. Buyers beware - know what you are getting into

When buying online media on behalf of advertisers both you and they need to be aware of where advertising could show. Media planners and their clients need to be clear that ‘run of site’ or ‘run of network’ media placements, while often cheaper, could result in adverts appearing anywhere on a website.

2. You get what you pay for

If an advertiser has concerns over where adverts display then their campaign plan should state that their advertising should only appear on certain areas of a website.

This will almost definitely result in the advertiser receiving less ad views for their money – not so good for branding campaigns – but, with the reassurance of knowing within which channels of a website their adverts will appear. Unfortunately they will still not know the exact content of those channels.
 
3. Read and question the Terms and Conditions

When placing advertising ask the sales team: "How is your content controlled?" and "How do you ensure my adverts will not be displayed alongside drugs, violence, pornographic etc content?" 

The sales representative should be able to give you a clear statement on how content is moderated as part of their terms and conditions. If they have no such mechanism, negotiate, if they do, get your requirements added to the media placement contract.

By their very nature social media websites rely on user generated content (UGC). But the terms and conditions of a website's usage should stipulate what content can and can't be generated and shown on a UGC website.

On social media websites – where users generate the content – the users need to be trusted and given authority to flag content as 'adult', 'indecent' or 'inappropriate.'

UGC websites are reliant on advertising revenue – as such they need to take steps to re-assure advertisers that their content is legal and they have control mechanisms in place. If an advertiser's trust is broken this will seriously hamper a major revenue stream.

4. Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising solutions are a step forward; with analysis of web pages to select adverts to display based on the copy used. Advertisers should be able to add negative keywords to campaigns to limit where their ads display.

Another solution is advertising on websites where the content is subject to control, with flagging of pages possibly containing illicit material. Where necessary, advertising should cease to be shown on webpages flagged as containing inappropriate content, or on pages that have been submitted for editorial (flagged as potentially containing inappopriate content) review by the UGC community.