Workshop with Neville Hobson

What is web 2.0? Second coming of the term. En video som förklarar web 2.0 – connecting people. Discussion about the term. It’s a complicated topic, it represents a challenge to many IT-people.

The IT-people is the key to get org’s to implement social media. If someone alienates IT-people it will not be upgrading 2.0.

The era of social computing. The social structure in which technology puts power in the hands of individuals and communities instead of institutions. The mobile is probably the most important device in the future. It is about to change the behaviors of people. The mobility is to a mindset-shift: everywhere is the workplace.

The mindset is changing the behaviors. The digital natives is clashing with the digital immigrants. The communication change: young – SMS, Twitter; older – email (and phone).

Seismic shifts:
Evolution – from read-only to read/write and sharing/giving.
Disrupting – traditional businesses and models
New companies, new ideas, new behaviors appearing to leverage the shifts.

If the phone is on; it’s okay.

Twitteriffics free version use advertising, relevant out of the using target group. The new trends in software dev. is on usage not on the sell pitch. The CTR-concept is probably changing to easier ways to market.

Critical Rules of engagement (engagement is one of the most over-used buzzword).

1. Channel have fragmented
2. Sources of trust have shifted
3. Social media have arrived
4. The consumer is in control
5. Content creation and distributioin have been democratized
6. You must reach the new influences
7. Transparency is required
8. Engage in the conversation or fail to communicate

The newspapers aren’t dead. The free editions is growing. Looking on the statistics (old) that some of the big blogs have the large reader-bases, compared to ordinary media.

The Edelman Trust Barometer.
Trust in businesses are higher than gov’s in 14 of 18 countries. US divide is largest divides. Mainstream media are the most widely used sources of info about companies. “Person like yourself” and experts continue to represent the most credible spokespeople.

The social customer manifesto. The reflection of the consumer.

I don’t want to do business with idiots.

The picture today:

• Consumers, citizens, and employees – have changed
• Don’t trust company speak
• They fast-forward their PVRs through the interruptions
• They pull content that interests them
• They create their own content, original and mashups
• They pay attention to (and are influenced by) word of mouth.

Annika disses TV4s nya Nyhetskanalen. Talking about the RSS-feeds blow out. People scans their RSS. The headlines is important since it’s the thing that you read.

An example: a guy do a podcast about his hood in London. Not a lot that are subscribing but he do it since he can.

BBC are going to offering user generated movies. A discussion of the intellectual properties thing. There will always be some technological securitythings on the intellectual property, the Utopia of non-DRM. Björn is not to sure. Telling about Rob Zombies test on the net.

The Facebook Fatigue. Putting up a lot of the platforms. Discussion on the geo-tagging/personal integrity. The UK CCTV-thing. Are we loosing privacy since we are trying too much to hide our private things.

A lot of the “problems” of harassement might be the perception of it. The individual have the choice on what to go online with. The problem can be to much closure – and it starts the fear on what to disclosure.

If you can do it on the real world – you can do it on the net.

Some cases. Chevrolet Tahoemashup. When it started they started to engage and make dialogue with the critics. Everyone participating in the the online conversation and the GM is pretty much win. But the thing is – everyone can take every content and do what they want with it. The old answer would have been to send cease or desist-letter. The new is to engage and connect.

Dove Onslaught. Not has had any criticism. Enourmous knowledge. The social media-approach. Unilever har dock fått kritik genom att de också producerar Axe som (hittills) gjort filmer typ den här. What happened was this:

Social media space: 1,3 million blog posts daily (18 per second), 100k new blogs daily (2 per second). But a lot is spam blogs.
More podcasts than global radio stations. Feedburner delivers 44k feeds. And of course Myspace 100 mil, 64 mil at Facebook and LinkedIn about 9 mil.

The consumer maybe in control. Jeff Jarvis role in Dell Hell as an example. They started One2One. Dell managed to turn it to a good outcome. Become an opinionplace, and works as a idea factory. Other topics except from the supportdiscussion. The Dell Ideastorm is even more progressive. The discussion on what to get back on the users engagement. The sharing/giving is one thing of the mindsetchange.

The disruption on the push-model of information might seem like a model of chaos. But it is a reversed push-model and mixed with reciprocal pulls. The page view-thing is RIP. The thinking is still on the quantity rather than the quality of the readers.

Some statistics (from nov):

• 50% of biz some form of blogging
• 64% of company blogs have been launched last 6 months
• 31% state that blog has generated significant biz ops.
• 55% moderate biz ops.
• 63% of managers want to understand more how to benefit
• 66% believe blogs becoming more influential as info source.

Use the tools to find the right people to get in contact and get on. Who is the keybloggers? Who is the hubs of their segment of the blogsphere? Hobson have built a blogdatabase on different segments.

To approach a blogger isn’t the same that approaching the journalist. The blogger is interested in his or hers personal (blog) brand when journalists are interested in the public and the objectivity.

If you’re not prepared – don’t ask people to write about it. And do not try the NDA-track.

Talk about the conditions for being publiced at bloggers. The best way is to disclose what it is all about. The discussion of objectiviness and trusthworthiness. To Neville means it’s the core of social media – through the transparency and disclosure. Maybe it is more important for the company to be a stealthmarketeer more than the trustworthiness of the blogger. Neville believes it is the other way around. He sees the disclosure in the old media as a new tendency.

The Deloitte Film Festival employment brandingjob. From internal to external – the brand marketing. Exempelvis Green Dot. An example; creativity, the available tools and the incentives (competition, motivational, award and stuff).

Next is about using content. Creative commons, social media news releases and social media newsroom. CC need to get real test-cases.

Neville is looking at Electrolux Social Media Newsroom. It’s basic but using the social mediathingys as tags and links to external things, and links to where the name is mentioned on the blogs. And RSS-feeds, bloglinks and the images on the flickr and the videos at Youtube. They too have the social bookmarking-share. The easier you let people understand your company and how to use the content, the more they will. The good thing of the social media press release is that it is not one single definition yet. They missed the target group in the way to use the content. Should one have comments to a press release? Is that a conversation piece? Not in the traditional writing way.

Neville Hobson thinks that the traditional press release is still needed for the old wires and Google juice. The wires aren’t up to the social media press releases yet.

GM Europe Social Media News Room. Using commentaries on the press releases and all the downloads of the GM. They using a blogroll with a lot of external blogs in the segment across Europe. Sharing links and a choice of print version. They also got related entries.

The social media press release from Ford Focus. Everything is not yet fab anywhere, since the standard isn’t yet set.

Leverage is with he who seizes the conversation, not the one who starts it or tries to control it. GMblog – using the Twitterbadge.

The communicator’s role: counsellor, adviser or guide – on communication not by blogging. Hands-off role – no anonymous ghost writing for the CEO. There is a massive difference between writing a speech or writing a personal posting on a blog. A leader should use about 30 % on communication.

The Dell Case
Direct2Dell:
objective: transparent, candid and timely communication. Results: 4 mil page views/week. Expanding in languages and areas of Dell business. About 100-200 comments/day.
Ideastorm:
objective: encourage ideas, feedback, input and dialogue. Result. 8k ideas generated, one mil unique users. 50k comments. 1500 comments/day.
Avoiding the credibility deficit. Listen actively, understand that social media tools enable real conversations and empower customers. When negative issues arise, deal with them head-on. Know that look, but don’t touch is not a successful strategy. Enter the conversation. Engaging the right way. Think like a customer (again), never underestimate the value of a sincere “I’m sorry” or a “thank you” with no strings attached. Remember that real conversations are two-way. Don’t try to bury the negatives. Answer the tough questions, and do so with honesty and transparency.
Why does it matter? Real conversations build real customer relationships. Social media tools help establish credibility and trust on a different level. Engaging directly will become an increasingly important competitive advantage.

Monitoring online conversations.
It’s not about numbers. It’s about the right people.
Approaches: DIY, consultant, agency, subscribe on monitoring service, contract a service.
What? References: your organization, products and service, key issues. Who use you social media props.? Connections to you? Are they talking about you?

Case issues. Absolut Vodka. Some of us thought it was… fun… First the Google stuff. Clean search, news search and blog search. Then Technorati, which is rather flaky. Blogpulse. Tweetscan.

Leverage the seismic shift.

Measuring ROI. Return the question: how do you measure the ROI on an employee newsletter.
How many visitors. Firsttimers, repeaters, uniques
Subscribers to RSS
Citations.
Comments.
Anectdotal commentary on what people think

Second Life. It’s a first step on the way to the 3D-Internet. Interesting playground. The IBM-case. All is experimental. Why? Because it is possible. Because it is fun. Because it is something else.

Social media is not the cure for cancer, but there is useful tools of communication. Everything is interlocking.

På Berns pågår Disruptive Media. Där skulle jag ha varit om inte en riktigt elak förkylning satt P för det. Känns inte speciellt kul. Däremot kan man följa det via diverse livebloggande (Sofia livebloggar på SSBD), livebambusande och följa jaikubackchannel. Själv ska jag bädda ner mig för att försöka ta griståget imorgon bitti och vara med på Neville Hobsons workshop.

Jardenberg är också sjuk.