The Social Media Week session Social Media Monitoring + Facebook + Quora showed that there’s still limited understanding of the new kid on the social media block. Quora has proven to be something of a marmite – the Telegraph loved it while Techcrunch writer Vivek Wadhwa quickly dismissed the hype. Post-Christmas, tech journalists and PRs seemed to be falling over themselves to sign up – maybe there was a national crisis over how best to use up the turkey leftovers –  but whether or not it’s over-hyped, Quora is a tool that PRs can’t afford to ignore.

One point that came out of Citigate’s Phil Szomszor’s talk was the moderation aspect of Quora.  Many of us have been baffled by the apparent randomness of Wikipedia moderation and hearing reports from yesterday’s audience of similar inconsistencies, not to mention the much reported Robert Scoble debate, it seems inevitable that we’ll have teething troubles with what is – let’s remember – a system that’s been up and running for less than a year.

Ultimately, Quora can’t be ignored – big brands should be using it for reputation management and customer engagement, smaller ones could benefit from getting their names out there, while us PRs need to bear in mind that a lot of journalists are tapping into it as a source of information. Don’t forget though, while comparisons to other social media are somewhat flawed – it performs a rather different function to Twitter for example – many of the same rules apply. Remember to fill out your profile, engage, and of course maintain full disclosure at all times. Now, what shall we ask next?

It adds a whole new layer to the job search. But whether or not you actually want a new job, developing a presence on the social Web will only benefit your career down the line. Here are a few ways to make sure your professional appearance on social media will help your career advance. Read more on the Johnson King blog.

The Facebook and Twitter for businesses event at Social Media Week 2011 saw Mark Shaw and Julie Hall up on stage to discuss strategy for establishing a successful corporate presence in social media. Although the platforms are different – Twitter is a “cocktail party”, while Facebook is “an invitation into someone’s front room” – the message was broadly similar: interaction with users is key.

Mark kicked off with some interesting Twitter stats:

• Twitter has 300,000 new joiners per day
• There are 200 million accounts
• 57% of FTSE 100 companies have a Twitter account
• 72% of these have not used their account to contact customers

What is the point of a Twitter account if you are not going to interact with customers? Highlighting the importance of using a Twitter presence for communication, Mark cited the Costa Coffee page (drawing gasps from the audience).

To state “We’ve finally arrived on Twitter” and leave it at that for three years certainly comes across as more than a little bit lax. It seems that Costa have missed the brand development boat with regards to Twitter. By interacting with customers, brands have a great chance to present their corporate personality, rather than remaining as a faceless vendor of goods. A search of Twitter reveals hundreds of people currently Tweeting about Costa Coffee, a perfect opportunity for the company to interact with them, address any issues and promote brand loyalty.

So, it’s high time brands ditched the notion that social media is simply a tool for blasting their ‘fans’ with self-serving updates and flipped it on its head – it should be all about listening and it’s about giving back to your fan base.   In essence, be less pushy and more helpful.

The first step is to learn how to find out what people are saying about you out there in the digisphere.  Twittersearch.com is great place to start –just tap in your brand name to get going.  From there, the key is to respond, respond, respond!   Your fans (or critics!) are bound to feel more valued if you engage with them directly, and this will almost always generate more conversation about your brand both online and through that holy grail of PR tools – word of mouth.

You can step up your game with tools like Twitter Analyzer – basically Google Analytics for Twitter – which provides all kinds of useful data you can use to enhance your Tweeting strategy.  This blog post from @BenTremblay should point you in the right direction.

While Twitter is clearly the new digital ‘must have’ for any organisation looking to harness the power of social media, the nature of Facebook makes it generally more suited to consumer brands or generating hype around specific events.  Our advice would be to think carefully about whether it’s the right medium for you before jumping in and setting up a group.

The overall message we came away with was that it’s time to get brave with social media – the key to success is to humanise your brand’s digital persona.  So, drop the corporate language, give yourself the freedom to respond to messages instantly and don’t get hung up on perfecting everything that you post.  If you can crack this change of mentality, you’ll soon start reaping the rewards.

SURVEY ALERT!

We’re in two minds about whether or not you should delete negative content from your social media accounts.  If the content is offensive then fair enough, but what about dealing with constructive criticism?  Should your response be made publicly on you Facebook wall or Twitter feed, or is it better to switch to private messaging?  Let us know what you think by voting in this poll.

Yesterday, I attended Pay Attention! Social Media Listening Done Right event as part of New York’s Social Media Week. I was drawn to this event because lately, everyone seems to be drowning in a sea of information, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or in their email inbox. True to its promise, panelists offered advice and best practices for finding and analyzing the useful information amidst the clutter. You can read more about the event at the Johnson King blog.

Social Media Week 2011: From Silicon Roundabouts to a Silicon World

Technology companies, particularly internet-based ones, possess innate, global potential.  When a product can be accessed or downloaded via the web, the barriers-to-entry for international expansion are dramatically lowered. Or so goes the theory. In reality, availability in itself does not equal customers. Even if the product is good enough to sell itself, businesses need to attract attention to it so that people are made aware of its existence. Quite obviously, this is even more the case for non-internet companies, for hardware vendors and complex systems that require on-the-ground implementation. Yet how can businesses do this without spending a fortune on marketing?

We attended the ‘From Silicon Roundabouts to a Silicon World’ breakfast session in London which aimed to look at this issue, examining how businesses can use social media to move into new markets and build international brands.  The panel was hosted by Aleks Krotoski, tech journalist and New Media Sector Champion for UK Trade and Investment, and featured Wendy Tan White, Founder and CMO of Moonfruit.com, Mel Carson, Community Manager for Microsoft Advertising and Ash Choudhury, UK Head of Digital Marketing at Nokia.

Discussion was spread roughly across two main topics: 1) Why you should use social media and how it can help you and 2) How you should use social media. Let’s look at these themes in turn.

Why should you use social media?

Little time was devoted to the obvious benefits of social media.  After all, everyone knows by now that social media channels provide opportunities for building brand awareness and for community development, allowing users and customers to engage. More significant were the anecdotes about real experiences.  Wendy Tan White, for example, described how Moonfruit has used Twitter not only to build a community of followers and potential customers but also to attract press attention. The subsequent coverage resulted in huge SEO benefits for relevant keywords, rocketing the site from p3 to p1 of Google in both the UK and US, and providing it with an accidental but very welcome international launch pad.

Ash Choudhury debated the pros and cons of proactive versus reactive social media strategies, noting that it’s a learning process for us all and that a definite transition needs to happen within most companies, as they come to understand that these channels play a vital role.  At Nokia, he points out, this level of transparency is exciting, particularly for their R&D team.

Another key reminder was that social media is not just a marketing tool but an opportunity to build products of real value. Social gaming company Zynga, currently valued at $5.96bn on SharesPost, is a prime example of a business that has built its value entirely off the back of other social platforms.

How should you use social media?

The recurrent advice was to use social media as a listening device as well as a podium for putting across your own views. In order to get the most out of your Twitter feeds or LinkedIn groups or Facebook pages, you have to be reactive as well as proactive.  Of course the aim is ultimately to drive people back to your own web properties, to make them read your blogs and learn about your products and to turn them into a customer.  But as Mel Carson identified, that doesn’t mean you try to lock them in. Few people appreciate relentless self-promotion so it’s important to diversify your output.

As in any business endeavour, you have to know your own audience.  Ash Choudhury stated the importance of supplying your users with something they want to access, comparing social media campaigns to dinner parties.  His point was that if you’re going to invite people over, you ought to make sure that you’ve got something they like on the menu.

This metaphor extended nicely to international expansion. The tastes (and of course languages) of customers vary enormously from country to country, especially when looking at the BRIC countries. In Brazil, the most popular social network isn’t Facebook, it’s Orkut; in China, people don’t Google or Bing but do Baidu searches instead. Local knowledge is essential for any business that hopes to leverage social media for new ventures.  Recognising a global strategy is needed to drive social media overall. Mel Carson pointed out that for him personally, it’s really helped being based in London – social media isn’t just about the US, it really is global, he joked.  It’s an interesting debate, with the UK being centrally located between major time zones, we may just find it becomes the dominant force in driving social media.

So is social media enough?

All three panellists were keen to stress the positive effect that social media can have and were sufficiently experienced to recognise the difference it has made to the current technological resurgence, compared to the boom and bust days of the late nineties. But when it comes to the difference between B2B and B2C campaigns, Wendy Tan White was right to emphasise the fact that although social media is useful for building awareness, when building B2B relationships, it is no substitute for personal contact.

Day two of NYC’s Social Media Week 2011 included a Comedy Central panel discussing how social media played a pivotal role in organizing, promoting and as a result, the success of Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear event. After Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announced on-air on September 17, 2010 that the rally would take place in Washington D.C. on October 30, 2011, Comedy Central had just six weeks to not only engage audiences and build hype for the event, but also encourage attendance and drive participation. Given the short time line, they turned to social media vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook to drive awareness every step of the way, leading to successful results that not even Comedy Central executives expected. Read more about this panel discussion on the Johnson King blog.

We attended a fun Social Media Week session last night called 10 Ways to Suck at Social Media, which had the giggle-inducing hashtag of #10suck.  Hosted by Luis Carranza, head of Social Media Marketing at Chemistry, the talk started off with an appropriate compilation of a variety of the internet’s favourite ‘Fail’ videos – including this classic –  the point being that while certain activities may seem like a good idea at the time (although we at JK struggle to see how doing backflips from pogo sticks could ever be a good idea), the outcome may not always be what you expected.

So here’s our favourite ways to suck at social media that Luis covered:

Being an eager beaver – this sucks because doing too much in too many places is unrealistic and unnecessary, even if you had money to spare. As this diagram shows, there are a very, very, very large number of social and digital channels available out there – and getting involved in every single one would mean the quality of each conversation ends up being very poor, and often, misguided.

Turning a deaf ear – this sucks because not listening is possibly the biggest social media faux pas. Don’t turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to what is going on within the world of social media – find out what is being said about your brand or client. Good or bad, by making yourself aware of public perception, it allows you to react, respond and if the comments are good, even retweet.

Asking too much – this sucks because people won’t get involved if they need to do a lot. A good example of this was a recent Dolmio campaign, which saw the Italian cooking sauce company ask for clips to be put online with the winning clip appearing on TV. A good idea and a worthy incentive you may think, however, even with a wealth of coverage, only a measly 52 people entered.  Asking people to plan, make and edit the video, as well as find votes was just not a feasible request. As a result of a limited number of options, Dolmio was left with a poor advert and most likely, red faces.

Losing it – this sucks because once you’ve lost all control of the conversation, that’s when disaster is most likely to strike.  For a truly spectacular social-media-meets-PR catastrophe, look no further than the Nestle vs Greenpeace Facebook debacle. Under growing pressure from environmentalists and faced with angry fans threatening to boycott their products on their Facebook fan page, Nestle chose the hostile as opposed to harmonious response. The subsequent war of words resulted in a flurry of bad publicity and a large number of disgruntled fans. Note to self – don’t lose it on social media.

Underestimating – this sucks because if you underestimate the power of social media, you won’t be effectively listening to the online conversation. Take United Airlines for example, who underestimated the power of this little video – which was about United Airlines breaking someone’s guitar – and ended up costing United a 10% stock price drop. As Luis very eloquently put it – the $3000 guitar that was broken ended up being a $180million guitar for United, all because they underestimated the power and effect of social media.

To sum up the theme of the event, social media can never be 100% positive towards a brand, but suck it up, ride the wave, and embrace the world of social media. Most importantly, don’t be afraid of sucking – it’s better to dip your toe in and give it a go than be entirely absent from the social media world.

Since the creation of social media platforms, like Facebook, businesses have asked “how do we make money off of this?” Now, there’s proof that the money can flow with unique campaigns, harnessing the network to impact direct sales. It took a couple of years, but Social Media Week 2011 shows that social commerce has arrived. Read more about the panel discussion on the Johnson King blog.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to a very interesting Social Media Week session called ‘Sweet Retweets.’  In it, Sue Keogh and Christine Cawthorne, parted with sage advice for writing content specifically for Twitter and Facebook.  The presenters have a wealth of experience in the field, having created social media content for sites like the BBC, Yahoo! and AOL.

Although the overriding sentiment I took away is simply to use your common sense – never rush something out via Twitter, make sure your spelling and grammar are 100%, keep it relevant – there were some additional tips to help make more of an impact with social media activity.

For example – don’t be abstract.  A tweet or blog headline might sound clever, but if it doesn’t tell the reader what it’s about, it could risk missing the target audience.

Include lots of punctuation.  Often tweets read like a stream of consciousness, making them difficult to process.  Heavily punctuating a tweet makes it simpler, straightforward and to the point.

And, perhaps most importantly, social media is all about engagement, so tweets and updates should encourage engagement – by asking questions and using ‘you’ to refer to the audience, making it more personal.

Although there are still no hard and fast rules as far as social media is concerned – something that makes it such an exciting area – it’s been interesting to take a step back and closer at the science in making social media engagement more affective.

Do you have any of your own ‘dos or don’ts’ you’d like to share?

Jonathan Mathias, Account Manager, Johnson King

Johnson King kicked off Social Media Week in London today, attending a session on how to protect reputation in a digital world.  Though much of what the session addressed ground we cover frequently, I was pleasantly surprised at some of what was discussed.  Tim Luckett, who heads up Hill & Knowlton’s Issues and Crisis team, talked at length about why digital media matters and what can happen to companies if not taken seriously.

It’s no secret that the digital world can affect all brands, and this is of course magnified when companies aren’t careful and properly prepared to address these channels – particularly when staring down the barrel of a PR crisis.

The ‘olden days’ saw most of us PRs heading off crises by issuing press releases, calling news desks, and holding press conferences.  That has all changed though as social media has come onto the scene – the speed, transparency and public nature of, as well as access to these channels has fundamentally changed the way in which we respond to news.  Put quite simply, news spreads like wildfire on digital channels and you only have to look to high profile disasters such as the BP Gulf oil spill, which topped the twitter trends list in 2010, to see how damaging social media can be if not properly managed.

What’s more, much of today’s major news is now breaking on social media channels first, and at breakneck speed – take the US Airways Hudson River plane crash for starters, which saw Twitter break the news first.  The speed at which this news not only breaks, but also escalates within a manner of seconds can make it extremely hard, if not impossible, for companies with no fluid social media strategy in place to keep pace.

To make matters more complicated, the nature of crises has also changed over the past few years, with digital media often helping to create these situations.  Candace Kuss, planning & interactive strategy at Hill & Knowlton, had most of the audience laughing, showcasing one spoof and ‘hacktivist’ prank after another.  My favourite, which most of us know and love, is hands down the @BPGlobalPR twitter feed started by activists protesting BP after the massive oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico.  But, I hadn’t heard about the Chevy Tahoe ‘make your own ad’ campaign and how terrifyingly wrong it went for Chevy in the end, after it invited visitors to create their own commercials on YouTube.  What these show is how amazingly real, and scary at the same time, these spoofs can appear.

So, what can we do to mitigate these situations?  First things first, develop a digital media strategy if you haven’t already.  Luckett pointed out that this should be integrated with traditional media channels and we couldn’t agree more – dust off the shelves and look to those ‘old school’ tools like press releases to help support the campaign, and you’ll find it’s not only easier but much more successful.  And remember, the cornerstone of any digital media campaign is knowing your audience and listening, learning, and engaging frequently with them – and when you do, always be human and transparent.