Author Archive

Social Media: Just Too Much Chatter

Along with social media has come a whole lot of noise.  It’s not new to lament the fact that  people are sharing where they are going, what they are doing, what they are eating.  Maybe because I’m making a living at online marketing, because I believe passionately in the Internet’s potential as the great equalizer of all people, I’ve turned a blind eye. But you know what?  I’m ready to admit it.  I’m done.

Sure, I respect the fact that it’s cheaper than counselling to share each new thought as it arrives in your head.  It’s all fine and dandy in a personal, kumbaya kind of way.  But being in the audience is a bit like witnessing a drunk with a microphone at a wedding.

Maybe what’s really stuck in my craw is the fact that all this noise is trivializing the most revolutionary communications tool the world has ever known. Facebook and Twitter, love ‘em or hate ‘em, have shrunk the world.  Sometimes the profundity of that gets lost in a neighbour’s description of lunch.

Look, I’m not trying to rain on the parade of those that want to replace a daily phone call with hourly, or minute-ly, updates about their lives.  I just wish we could segregate the conversations better.  Thank goodness for tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite that help us to organize our streams.  I wish there were tools to better organize conversations on Facebook.

Daily, I speak with business clients that say Facebook and Twitter are not for them. Sometimes they’re right.  Most often, they can’t see the power of the medium for all the clutter blocking their view.  I’m not saying marketing is the highest purpose of social networking. The only thing worse than making these platforms a forum for exchanging tales from the lunchbox is making them ad platforms for brands.  But at Magnify, we work only with clients who have a genuine story to tell, that are willing and eager to provide context and value. Isn’t that at least as worthy as your neighbour announcing the arrival of a new pimple?

Would love to hear how you are managing the noise to signal ratio on social media?  Have you found any great new tools?

All the best,
Moyra

Tags: chatter, facebook, Social Media, Twitter

Taking Facebook Privacy Into Our Own Hands

At Magnify, we talk a lot about privacy online. Often, it’s a debate that reflects the many valid points of view that are surfacing daily online and in traditional media. Much of the controversy surrounds Facebook. Is Facebook truly out to protect user privacy or have they been intentionally burying default settings? Who knows? The legalities alone are mind numbing nevermind the moral implications.

Does it need to be this complicated?

Here’s the thing. Facebook is about sharing your personal or business story with a hand selected group. Why not take privacy matters into our own hands and broadcast personal privacy guidelines to friends? I’ve done it here simply by adding a para under my photo.

It would be even easier if Facebook dedicated a space for this and included default text such as

This profile is where I share personal information with friends. Please do not share any content you find here.

or

Hey Guys, My life is an open book. You are welcome to share anything you find here with anyone you find there.

or

This is where Acme Business shares news, tips, and discounts. Feel free to share any of the content you find here.

What matters in my mind, is that your FB tribe knows the intent of your profile. (I’d argue it’s a good idea to define the purpose and parameters of every social media profile, whether you make them public or not.)

The risk remains that your “friends” won’t observe your wishes. All the more reason to pay attention to who you let into your tribe. Personally, I’d love to know how my Facebook friends view their content and I’d be more than happy to respect their wishes.

What do you think?

Best,
Moyra

5 Questions About Resourcing a Social Media Strategy

I’m attending the Canadian Public Relations Society conference in Regina.  Lots of great PR practitioners here, many of whom work for municipal and provincial government, and other large organizations.

A common question keeps popping up.  How does my organization resource an online social media strategy?

The question is understandable, given that many marketing and communications teams are working with reduced budgets and increased demands.  Here’s the thing, an online strategy is not a bucket to be filled.

Every online strategy should be designed to match the internal resources (e.g. the available time and skill set of your existing team) and/or external support (e.g. budget to hire content creators or strategists).  There is no point sketching out a comprehensive social media plan that will chew through content faster than you can create it.

Here are five questions to ask before designing your online strategy:

1)  Who is the person in-house, or a subcontractor, to lead the online initiative?  How much time do they have each day or each week to manage the project.
2) What is the skill set of the project lead?  Does the strategy need to allow time for training, either formal (training by an experienced strategy team, workshops) or informal (via free webinars, books, reading online).
3) Are there others who can contribute content? What time do they have available?
4) What are the objectives for the online campaign?  If the goals are too ambitious for the available resources, consider developing a multi-phase plan.  Appeal to management to gradually increase resources if realistic benchmarks are met along the way.
5) Is the person or team running the online strategy empowered to be responsive?  Are they authorized to answer questions and engage with target markets?  When a question is asked that requires information from another department, or a language translation, how fast can it be acquired?

With answers to these questions in hand you, or your strategy team, will be in a much better position to design a digital strategy that sets everyone up for success.

Good luck!
Moyra

Tags: resourcing social media strategy, Social Media, strategy

Are Online “Communities” Inspiring Real World Connections?

This past weekend, I indulged in lattes and newspapers.  Everywhere I looked, alongside articles about Twitter and Facebook, there were stories about people craving connections with one another in the real world —  the rise of community gardens, secret yoga gatherings, communal screenings of the “Lost” finale.  In an interview with the Globe & Mail, Christopher Hawkins, founder of www.sharingbackyards.com said it best, ”people are starting to see it’s not a big deal to be connecting with strangers.”

Feels like a tipping point. But why now?  Are we just coming out of our cocoons realizing that it’s sort of a drag there’s no church on Sundays, regretting that we traded the pub on Thursday night for a brisk walk on the sea wall?

A few years ago, Patrick West wrote a fascinating book called, Conspicuous Compassion.   West theorized that our public displays of emotion (wearing ribbons, joining rallies, laying flowers to mark the death of a celebrity) are an expression of our desire to connect. “We desperately seek a common identity and new social bonds to replace those that have withered in the post-war era.”

I have to wonder if the Internet, that frontier land of random connection, has allowed us to test drive these bonds, permitting us to reach out in an environment where the risk of rejection is mitigated by scale and anonymity. Might the world wide web have readied us to reach out to our real world neighbours?  Wouldn’t that be rich?

So much of what is happening in the social media sector is cloud shoveling.  Self declared thought leaders. “Benevolent” geeks building “safe” neighbourhoods that compromise our security and disrespect our very identify.

Might the greatest output of all that computing power, plastic and fibre wind up being the imperative it is creates in us to venture next door and invite our neighbour over for a cup of tea?

- Moyra

Tags: communities, Social Media, social networking, trends

Location Based Advertising-Shaking The Ground We Walk On?

Recently, I attended the DigiBC and Wavefront AC session, “Location is Key to Mobile Marketing Success.” The industry is a abuzz about Location Based Advertising and as session moderator Sandy Fleischer (Fjord) observed, “LBA was the only game in town at SXSW.”

For good reason.  After 50 years of brands bombarding us with advertising we may or may not care about, the concept of receiving value rich “smart ads” for products and services located close to where you are standing or embedded in GPS maps is beyond exciting.

It’s also got me wondering.

What if advertisers and platform creators, punch drunk with new LBA business models, spam the heck out of our devices? If I am walking along the street and suddenly 15 text messages soar on to my iPhone, those Ginsu Knife ads might start to look good. Too obvious? Will never happen? I wonder.

Maybe it’s not 15 ads. 2 or 3 may be enough to rankle. I appreciate that certain ads may be triggered by my action, rather than simply by my location. And in theory, I like the idea of receiving information and special offers tailored to my buying habits. Embedding these ads on my GPS device feels okay, perhaps even desirable.  However, my phone is an intensely personal portal for everything from family photos to business and intimate communications. My tolerance is low for anyone who trespasses there.

I’m also curious to see how location based advertising impacts traditional advertising. Look how user generated content has altered the way some brands, large and small, shoot their television spots. Will national TV/radio/print ads with little if any regional customization feel irrelevant? Or will those broad reach ads be the wide end of a sales funnel that ends with high context, individualized LBA? Will media buyers buy differently, slicing and dicing national campaigns in response to the demands of hyper location-centric consumers? Will the production process involve more versioning than ever so brands can target ads to consumers in tighter categories, more clearly defined locations?

What do you think?
Do you think those positioned to benefit from location based advertising revenue will spoil the party by spamming consumers with ads?  Will LBA alter traditional media?

The ground is shifting and no matter where you are standing, it’s exciting to watch!

Best,
Moyra

Tags: ads, advertising, LBA, location based advertising, media