4. StepFree | Social media consulting Who am I ? Others verdict…. “ Enthousiastic and great personality.” “ Sjef is a true marketeer” “ Great meeting you, Very inspiring”
5. What I do Personal branding Social media Social networks Communities Blogging Lectures Workshops Strategy University Enthusiasm StepFree | Social media consulting Spinawards
12. What is Social media? ‘ A collection of online communication techniques, in which the content is produced for and by the peoples. You could say Social media is many-to-many communication’ - Ramon Eijkemans StepFree | Social media consulting
14. 5 eras of the Social web 1 2 Source: Forrester: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3478168483/sizes/o/ StepFree | Social media consulting
15. 3 4 5 Source: Forrester: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3478168483/sizes/o/ StepFree | Social media consulting
16. Why does it flourish? StepFree | Social media consulting Photo by: Macieklew
26. (3) ‘People don’t change technology does’ Photo by: Roger Blackwell StepFree | Social media consulting
27. Peoples don’t change! Physical needs Safety & Security needs Social needs Need for Appreciation Self Actualisation Social networks Comments/ratings & rankings Blog Photo Video Social networks StepFree | Social media consulting
48. Google wave StepFree | Social media consulting ‘ Hosted conversations’ ‘ All communication, mail and instant messaging’ ‘ Live text, no waiting’ ‘ Also photo’s etc, and embedding in blogs’ ‘ Waven’ will be in the official dictionary in a few years, just like ‘Googlen’
Before we start I would like to show you a little video of about 4 minutes about some developments around internet and media. It’s the shorter version of one from last year, and it shows us the impact of digital media. Take into account that this video is made by an digital evangelist, so some of the topics are a little bit overaxecurated. However, it does show us the impact. Ow, and the text might go a little bit to fast….just not try to read everything, watch it relaxed.
Was that an intro or not? Overexecurated perhaps, but the data are as true as can be. Today I will be your host, and we’re going to speak about Using Social media. This lecture/workshop is devided in mutliple parts, of which this will be the first part.
First of all, let me welcome you all to this magnificant city that connects east to west! FIP could not have chosen a better place I think. Did you like the conference so far? What have you seen already?
Ok, just to let you know who your host is, I will first introduce myself. Here you can look at some references peoples left on my Linkedinprofile. Ik think its always better to let others judge you, than to talk about yourself…so here it is.
What am I doing al day long? Well, this tagcloud sais it all. Everything I do, I do out of enthouisiasme…without that I would be on the couch all day. I’m an expert is communities, social networks, personal branding, social media and blogging. I give a lot of lectures and workshop all over the place but my focus is always on the strategy behind digital marketing. That I learned on the university in the Netherlands. I found out that most marketingmodels fit perfectly on ditital media, in contradiction with what most techfreaks alsways say. Digital media changed the world, but it did not change humans….more about that later.
In part one (this part) we will talk about Social media. Whats the history of it, what is it, what can we do with it….and why is strategy so important. We also take a look at costs and revenues and how to measure your social media work. And because it is so awsom, I will tell you something about Google Wave, that’s releasing at the end of this month. In the second part we will zoom into al the different Social media tools that are available, and I will give you examples of all this tools. The second part will end with a few of you guys presenting their own businesscase. The last part is all about how to make your website engaging. Once again some of you guys wil present their own engaging cases.
How did we kept eachother busy when there was no internet? How did we engage each other when there was no internet? Wel, the answer lies with the indians and their campfire stories. Campfirestories that are spread from generation to generation. Nowedays, we do exactly the same on internet with the use of social technology, in other words, social media!
Then, computers came into town! Can you still remember working with this program? I can… A few weeks ago someone told me he even worked with version 4.0, that’s dinosoures proportions right. Thinks like MSDos, Wordperfect, internet throug the telephone. It looks ages ago…but take a look at the next few figures, it astonisches me everytime I look at it.
First, the internet was invented. What you see here is the entire internet in 1986…….with some big providingplaces like wideband, and a few dozen of places whit internetspots. This is online 23 years ago! In Holland bearly anyone new about it. In the US it was for nerds. Where are the big Social media things you will aks yourself. Well, lets look at a little timephrase next.
This figure gives me the chills everytime I see it. Lets start with Yahoo…the first in the list. Only 15 years ago! Internetexplorer…a part of most peoples live, 14 years ago. Than, the top10 brand Google, worth more than 60 biljon. Ever seen a company do this in 10 years? They rule half the world and did that in 10 years! Than, 2000, napster the first wellknown internetprovider took the stage. After that Wikipedia started, now only 8 years longer it is more accurate than the encyclopedia brittanica. Only in 2002 the first weblogs appeared. I Can’t imagine a world without weblogs…there are so much now. For every little thing is a blog, even about the cat from the neigbours. Almost all selfrespecting blogs are based on the free open source platform of wordpress, founded in 2003. 6 years later, mat mullenweg the founder is one of the richest internetntrepreneurs around the world, and he is only 25 years old…exactly my age! Damn…where did I go wrong :p . In 2003 the first major social networks come into town, myspace and linkedin. When you look at facebook it is unbelievable it is founded in 2004, only 5 years ago. Wright now, it has 250 milion members! 2005, youtube was founded….18 hours of video per minute already. And 2006 the current hype Twitter was opened. If you look at this figures you can most defenitly say that no other medium like internet ever was adopted so fast as social media. Off course that has major influences on society.
Social media is actualy quiet easy to explain. It stands for …….. In short words, social media is many-to-many communication.
If we look at some of the more well known examples, just to give you a clue, this are the ones to take into account: We start with Flick…the online fotosite, that currently added video as well. Youtube off course. The third is off course wikipedia. Wikipedia shows us a typical social media feature: a little group of internetactives makes the content for milions and milions of readers. Some call this sick and dangerous…I believe in the wissdom of the crowd. False messages will be detected by the crowd. Off course we must call facebook, because they currently are trying to become the platform form whish you do everything on the internet…from mailing till payments. Facebook wants to be your home on the internet. Althougs, there are trend on the horizon that are not in favour of big social networks. Small niche networks offer more value and have the future. Ning is a free site where you can start your own niche little social network. Over 1 milion networks are already started on Ning. And last but not least, our just mentioned Wordpress.
The americans of foresster, and than mainly their former employee Jeremiah Owyang, have done a few very interesting Social media surveys. Jeremiah indicated that the social web knows 5 era’s of development. First we have the era ofsocial relationships…we passed that already. Think about Myspace and Facebook. The second era is the era of widgets and apps that give extra functionality to our profiles. We also passed this era.
The third era is developing at this moment, as we stand here. We see more and more colonization of sites. Think about Shared ID and that sort of thing. You can now read and react on a weblog through facebook for instance, without ever leaving the fecebook framework. This era will deal with the problem that we have to log in on 399 different places all the time. The fouth era is the so called web3.0, or semantic web. In this era technology will be so smart that it recognizes context in pages, in stead of only ons and zeros. In this era social networks will be able to really understand the context between you and your contacts. In the fifth and last era, the social web will be commercialised..but in a good way. Because technology can add context, spam is no longer necessary. Advertising will always be relevant for you, and will most of the time be initiated by your own friends. Word of mouth and referencemarketing will be glorious in this era.
But…why does social media flourishes so enormasly in this last years…it has to do with a few thing.
The first one is our digital heritage. There are digital natives and digital immigrants. To which of those we all belong do you think?
Well, we are all digital immigrants that lived without internet, and think the internet is quite exiting.
As you look at this figures, you can see that we are hardly creators….which means we make stuff on the internet, like blogposts and videos. We are however spectators, which means we read a lot on the internet. Hough…still high inactivefigures. This does not mean we don’t use internet, but we don’t use social technologies.
And than we have the digital natives….the grew up with internet, don’t know it wasn’t there a few years ago. They look at internet like we are looking at a dishwacher. It’s usefull, and just has to work. I’m totally not interested in how it works…..if it works, its great. The are not interested in the technology behind it, and take the internet for granted.
If we look at their profiles, the differences are obvious. A lot more creators, and a lot more spectators. Most obviuos however is the difference in inactives. And I can tell you…this are figures from 2007/2008. For 2009 they are even more extreem.
So digital heritage is one of the reasons social flourisches, because we are getting more and more digital natives. The second one is the start of the word of mouth era, that is related to digital heritage however. Younger generations have far more trust in references from friends and families than older generations.
Like scott brown quoted so beautifully: ‘if it doesn’t spread its dead’
The effect of this WOM era is off course that consumers start to talk more about your brand. The social tools give them numerous opportunities to talk about you and your products. The can litteraly make or break your brand. The dell hell is a great example off course, but I want to show you the Comcat case now.
The technision in this movie was installing something in the house of a client, who filmed him…look at this! Some regular dude uploaded this.. The effect, comcat lost reputation and almost went bankrupt!
The third reason why social media are flourishing lay in our human being. We all have needs, and that needs don’t change. It’s the technology that changes.
You all know the model of maslow I suppose. This are the five keyneeds for all peoples. And if you look at the different parts, you will see that Social media gives us all more opportunities to fulfill this needs. The conclusion off course is that it is logical that social media flourishes, because it gives us the change to fulfill the maslow piramid. So there is nothing scary about the new internet….it can still be quite easily be explained with a model that is years old.
But…beware, with every reaction there will be a contra reaction. Research from Nielsen shows that some are getting tired with all this sharing, connections and tools…..<rest uitleggen>
Did you guys hear about the campaign fron Burger King last year? Peoples who deleted friend from facebook got free whoppers from burgerking. This lead ro 100es of thousends of deleted friends. This may become the biggest problem for the huge social networks…..value of friend. Do you believe that peoples can have 600 or more friends…I don’t so they are no longer friends, they are connections. This are very weak links that may destroy the big social networks some day. They will have to adopt or they will dissapear or schrink. Recently, the biggest network in the netherlands…Hyves, is thinking about changing the title friend to contacts. That’s says everything I think. Mark this words…..niche communities have the future!
What can we exaclty do with Social media? A lot…more than most peoples know or think. Branding: Like we just talked about, peoples talk about your brand on internet these days. No stopping about that. BUT, no worries, this is an excellent opportunity to brand your company, service or product. The customer is actually branding your brand. You only have to monitor it and join their conversation. Public relations, or Online PR, is another very good chance for companies. Social media gives you for instance the chance to make easy connections with for instance the press (lot of journalists on Twitter). It also gives you the opportunity to build a relations with your public. Share info / learn: You can share info on social media. Info about your company, or about your knowledge (blogs/whitepapers etc.) This can give you into an recognized authority. But also think about internal sharing of information in intranets etc. To end, it also gives you the chance to learn from your customers and targetgroup. Some companies use that very well, like lego that lets the young kid customers design their own products. Customerservice: telephoneservice is very expensive, and customers are often dissapointed with the results. Online service is far cheaper and peoples are more satisfied We just discussed the intranet al little bit. That is a big chance for internal communication as long as it is kept human, social and personal. But that’s not all. You can also use social for the communication between your employees during the day. Yammer is for instance a companyoriented secured Twitter that you can use for internal use. Its briljant, and the managers can keep up with the employees more easily. Loyalty: If you use the first 5 points in an open an good way, and really join the conversation, you will give the community around your company more shape. Peoples that are in a organised community are always more loyal than customers that are not. When you give them extra value of joining the community, they will be far more loyal. Marketresearch: on the internet, almost everything can be measured. Social media are known as one of the cheapest forms of marketresearch, just because ALL the data or on the streets and in the databases of the big networks. Crowdsourcing: I just talked with you about the LEGO factory, a website where customers can upload their own lego design. Lego uses this designs to pick out the best and really get it into production. A few years ago, the best selling LEGO product was coming from an idea out of the legofactory. Some young kid I believe. Using your customer for productdevelopment is known as crowdsourcing or co-creation, and is also very interesting for you guys. Last bot not least: social media can be used for acquisition. Social is not much of a advertising tool, but can most defenitly be used to get new customers indirectly. All of the point we just discussed help building a relation with your customer and spreading your brand. This will give you new customers, and very loyal new customers as well.
But, nothing works without strategy. Behind every good marketingcampaign there must be strategy, also with Social media. If you look at the kind of money that is thrown away everydag, with social media campaign that are hardly planned at all, it makes me sick. Such waste of money. Most of the times social media campaigns really are experimental islands in the marketingstrategy, they are not integrated at all. This my friends, is the freeway to failure. So….strategy!
There are some different models in the market. One of them is the post strategy from Forrester. < Post uitleggen>. I miss al lot of things in this model, so I developed my own SocialStrategyModel.
Discuss model
What are the possible revenues from social media? The revenues can me categorised under two main functions: - 1: reduce costs for all this points
Or: 2: raise turnover
But, it is not all fun and games, you DO have to make some costs as well. (1) You must be open and vulnerable. When you start with social media you go into direct conversation with your customers. This makes you vulnerable, because the marketing is no longer on its ivory tower looking over the customers. You make your company more open to the public, an that’s asks for a culturechange within the company.
(2) You have to give away free content. Peoples are no longer willing to pay for online content. This is a big point of discussion. Well knows enfant terrible of web2.0 Andrew Keen is very sceptic about this. In his opinion we are killing our own cultural knowledgebase with this rediculas free content attitude. I partly aree with this…our opinion that eveything is free is not very nice…but it could be turned into revenues for companies, so its not That terrible. What do you guys think?
(3) Yes…social is investing a lot of time sweat and patience!!! You don’t become social and recognised in one day. Building a community asks for a communitymager that is going to provide the starting community with content and interactivity. Only than, other people wil see the value and go interact as well. Most of the times it takes you a few months before the first reaction on your blogpost is written….So, don’t panic if you don’t get reacties, be patient, the interaction will develop and you ARE noticed. Rule number one is of course that you can in fact offer value.
SO, the costs are not easy or small, but they are mostly costs for human effort! The technology thatyou use to operate on are mostly very cheap or even free. The open source principle is getting more and more popular, in which you can use the API as it is called (that a sort of website code) to build your own application on top of existing websites. Als the freemium model is wel know in this sector, as a model where you can register for free, but have to pay if you want a more specialised or broader membership.
Off course you also have to measure. This is a thing most companies don’t do is they invest in Social media. That’s because everybody still thinks Social is experimenting and that the revenuemodel is not clear. The public opinion still says ROI is not measurable. But guess what….it is! First you can measure a big load of qualitative digital data, called the social media metrics: They contain measuren such as ‘unique visitors’ ‘cost per visitor’ visits per visitor’ ‘pageviews’ ‘return visits’ ‘interaction rate (how often peoples say things to you on twitter for instance)’ ‘time spent’ ‘videoinstalls/embeds’ ‘relevant actions for instance the placement of the widget you designed’. This are all qualitative data, but there is more!
You can go one step further and als measure the use of your social media applications. On of the nicest examples I just mentioned are widgets. You al know what a widget is? It is a little application that you build, that people can embed (place) in their own private social media spots, like their own blog or social network. For instance: My blog Bijgespijkerd is in the top 50 blogs in Holland on the site marketingfacts. Ik kan embed a button from marketingfacts with my position in their list, and place it on my own blog. Off course, the button contains a link to marketingfacts, so the can gather a lot of traffic.
But, quantitative data or not the ontly thing you can and should measure. It is not ALL about the numbers and data.
You should also look at qualitative data. Wow, how oldfashioned I hear you say. That is correct, but why should it be useless or not done? Through old marketresearch methods you can get very very very importen qualitiative user information. I recommend every company to use for instance focusgroups to get into the wishes and thought of your members. Speak with them about your social media ideas etc. Also if you already have your online community, you can measure qualitative. Just analyse the reactions peoples make, the conversations they have, the things they do. This kind of deskresearch can be very usefull for improving you position.
So, it is really 1+1=3 in this case. Measure data as well as qualitative information
Ok, that was my part about Social media…at least the first part. Because the organisation asked me to discuss a recent or future development, and because it is co cool, I want to speak with you about Google Wave for a moment. It is not very on topic, but nice anyway. Google wave is the new onlie communication aggregator from Google, that will be publicly available on september the 30e. It is Googles new method for mailing, messaging, sharing etc.
The startingpoint for Google was the conclusion that the most popular internettool is still email. Email however is over 40 years old, even before the appearance of internet. So, when we look at current emailing, we see that the message goes from person to person etc. With google waves, the conversation is all placed at one place, called the wave…and all the participants can logg into that place to interact. It looks quite simple, but it is in fact very smart I think.
Google calles waves the ‘Hosted conversation’ because google hosts your conversation with your friend. It contains all communication….mail, instantmessaging just like MSN but better, fotosharing, videosharing and also direct embedding into your website, blog and so on. It also contain live text….so if you talk to someone, you don’t have to wait till he is finished typing to see what he wrote. Mailcontact is built op in layers…so you can answer on different parts of the email. If I look at this, I truly believe ‘Waven’ wil be in the dictionary just like Googlen did before: can you already image the person you are talking to on the phone to arrange a meeting saying ‘ just wait for a minute, I’m going to wave it’. Is does sound good, doesn’t it?
I would love to tell you about a new weblog me and some collegues are going to release this year. It’s called King of the blind, and is focussed on Social media and Online marketing. But on our blog you won’t find gadgets or difficult applications. Our blog is targetted at marketeers and enthousiast who don’t have all the knowledge yet. Look at it sometime, I think wel will launch in oktober.
You all earned a small break I think….lets say about 15 minutes? After the break we will discuss different social tools.