As with everything else, the Marketing and PR teams grab hold of these concepts and tries to participate with the view to generating revenue via sales, affiliations, sponsorships etc. 

Craig Hepburn wrote in his predictions for 2009 that social ranking,de-friending and filtering will become more important and I think he is right. The problem many of us have with all this communication is that a lot of it is marketing and sales. Now this also can be broken down into two main areas products/services and Self PR.

Self PR is starting to gain traction in the on-line world like never before, there are so many ways in which to publicise yourself and now it has never been as easy due to companies allowing employees to socialize with the communities. These employees may become figure heads or well known in the specific areas and this may lead to job offers as more and more recruitment is being done via social media tools. 

This has a few implications that you need to be aware of and will indeed lead to some disruption.

 So why am I talking about this?

Well I think that we are coming to a point that the social web is getting less and less social and more about “Look what I have done” rather than engaging. There is a great blog post about Social Media experts being the cancer of twitter which I find both amusing and pretty much true in many ways, http://www.fanboy.com/2009/01/social-media-experts-rant.html

I do find it very difficult to even justify this becuase I am a) writing this (self PR) and b) plan and create social media campaigns.

So the question is…

How do we re-socialize the web to make it easier to communicate without being sold anything or do we leave it as it is because we are all happy with the way things are?

Or are we addicted???

Social media is a term that encapsulates technology and social interaction, social media has been around for a very long time (around 30 years and were USENET  newsgroups), since then we have seen many different forms of online communication take shape that now fall under the umbrella of social media and are often referred to as social media tools.

•          Email
•          Instant Messaging
•          Forums
•          Blogs
•          Wiki’s
•          Social Networking
•          Video
•          Pictures
•          Pod Casts

Now the above list is just a few examples of social media that are currently in use.

I often get asked the following question

“How do I start a Social Media campaign?‘

So here are my views on creating a social media campaign

Re-Search (Using search to research)

You can start simply by searching the likes of google, yahoo, live etc for your company’s name, domain name and products. Ignore the results that are for your site, look at some of the content discussing your stuff, see what they are talking about and make notes.

Then look at other types of search such as Technorati and twitter’s search.

From this information you will start to get an idea of your company’s perception and penetration is within the online community.

Personify

Understand your target audience or demographics, Build a number of persona’s.

Wikipedia says:

“Personas or personae are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product.

Personas are given characteristics and are assumed to be in particular environments based on known users’ requirements so that these elements can be taken into consideration when creating scenarios for conceptualizing a site.“

Identify and Plan

Now you have completed your research, you need to plan your social media campaign, this should involve you looking at your specific industry in which you want to engage, understand the user demographics (A 37 year old gardener may not use twitter or LinkedIn but may have a Facebook account and only use YouTube to watch (not post) videos.

People use different tools for different reasons, I use my Facebook account for my friends and is not associated to my LinkedIn profile which is strictly for business networking, I use twitter to communicate in both areas, The point is, I can be marketed through various ways (professional and personal).

So, what questions need answering?

• What social media tools are popular within your industry?
• What social media tools are popular within your demographics on a personal level?
• What are the most popular websites in the industry?
• What are the most popular blogs in the industry?
• What are the most popular discussion forums in the industry?
• What are they talking about?
• Who is your competition online and offline? Same or Different?
• Are they talking about your company or product?
• Are they talking about your competitors company or products?

These are just some of the questions that I ask to clients to try and get them to think about the complexities of what they about to do as most think it is easy to deliver a social media campaign because it is just a blog isn’t it? Well no its not, it is the difference between success and failure.

Create

Now you are almost ready to start the engagement process, but first you must use the information you have gathered to create your relevant profiles within the identified social media tools, I believe it is best to use an individual’s profile and not a company profile as it seems to me personable and elevates the trust perception, but this is my perception. You can look at creating profiles on Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, youTube etc.

Engage

I suggest starting off by using your research so far to engage in relevant discussions and communities that are already in place, especially the ones that are popular within the industry. This will allow you to start communicating with your target audience, remember you are not here to sell anything or to promote brand awareness, you are here as a member of the internet community, think, you wouldn’t go to a book club and try and get everyone to buy your book on your first visit.

Try and add value to the discussion, raise interesting points,  answer questions, promote similar topics on other websites. By doing this, you will understand the industry from your markets perspective, from there you may be able to identify anything that is missing or an opportunity. Then you can look at creating a blog or starting a discussion about that opportunity, giving something new to the community.

Always been open and honest about who you are, what you do and who you work for, do not lie.

Be careful when you engage otherwise you might land your company in trouble, read this post on how an agency damaged a relationship with FedEX via twitter for proof.

Monitor

Remember the Re-Search you did earlier? Well do it again and keep on doing it, things change, new discussions appear that you may not be aware of. After that, do it some more, enough is not enough!

Commit

This now leads nicely on to commitment, which I am not sure whether you need to commit to it before or after, I have put this last as you will be reading this before implementing it, so if you think it would take too long to implement a social media campaign, then you need to re-evaluate your objectives.

Social media is not a quick fix and takes time for you to build up relationships and an online audience takes time to build.

Some companies have found they do not have the time to blog on their own blog, the way they get round this is to invite members from industry who participate online to blog for them! Imagine that, you can get someone to help promote you brand for you. Brilliant

Engage, Engage and do it some more!

Please add your thoughts and comments, I would be grateful for the feedback.

Thanks

Now whilst this technology is being improved, we have something new on the scene, A company called On Demand Book LLC created the Espresso Book Machine (ESB).

The ESB is essentially a printer that can print any book it has in its library in minutes.

On Demand Books (ODB) replaces the inefficient and centralised supply chain for the distribution of books, with a radically decentralised direct to consumer retail model in which content is fully distributed electronically at point of sale and converted into a paperback book.

It was voted best invention in 2007 by Time Magazine

Jason Epstein has written an excellent post on An Autopsy of the Book Business where he is quoted as saying:

“The only way to save the book industry is to get rid of all the books.”

So what does all this mean for us?

Well, I like reading, but do not always have the time or patience to visit a book shop or wait for an online delivery (I live in Dubai so shipping takes a while and you generally need a few hours to get into a mall and shop), so it would be great to be able to just stop off at a Book Machine and be able to print what I want, when I want quickly.

From a business perspective, this could easily allow magazine publishers as well as book publishers to offer their consumers the option to access the via a new medium which could lead to an increase in sales and therefore could also increase advertising revenue.

What are your thoughts?