BuzzNumbers

Is Social Media A Fad?

noreply@blogger.com (mitch) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:02:00 +0000

5 Ways Banks Are Using Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (mitch) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:44:00 +0000

Has your company, or personal brand adopted social media yet? Do you tweet, engage or communicate with your customers. Have you begun to innovate and find new ways to reach your audience?

"Many banks have started using social websites to help them with everything from healing the financial industry to promoting their latest credit cards. By embracing the most popular tools available, the industry has also been embracing the best of what social media culture has to offer, and smaller, community banks seem to be leading the charge when it comes to social media innovation." - via Mashable.

Some of the most interesting engagements are coming from organisations where you least suspect it and from industries that usually resist change most. Banks are a good example as they have a business model and marketing model that has been relatively unchanged and uninterrupted for a long time, but they are starting to do some very interesting things online.

Watch. Learn. Engage. Social Media Monitoring is a great way to begin your social media engagement by understanding the conversations that are taking place. You wouldn't walk up to a group of strangers in a bar and start shouting opinions, but you would listen to their conversation and look for ways in which you could positively contribute.

If you want to give your organisation a presence online and start joining this growing community, talk to BuzzNumbers today.

Proof that social media is killing print magazines

noreply@blogger.com (mitch) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:12:00 +0000

via cartridgesave.co.uk

10 Things Social Media Can't Do

noreply@blogger.com (mitch) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:59:00 +0000

via whatsnextblog.com

Amid the endless pronouncements about social media -- often shortened to "social" these days by consultants trying to sound like they know what they are talking about -- is the reality that social media is not a solution, or a sure bet.

Social media can't:

Substitute for marketing strategy
A Twitter campaign, or a Facebook page that announces your weekly specials is not a marketing strategy.

Succeed without top management buy-in
Social media requires a way of thinking that includes willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback, and trust employees to talk to customers.

The culture of fear (of job loss, of losing message control, of change) is ingrained in corporate cultures. Top management has to want to change.

Be viewed as a short-term project
Social media is not a one-shot deal. It's a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation, and change that requires time to bear fruit.

Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly
One of the complaints about social media is that it can't be measured. But in fact there are many things that can be measured: including engagement, sentiment, and whether increased traffic leads to sales.

Those results can't be produced or measured in the short term. Like PR, social media marketing often produces its best results in the second and third year.

Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies
A successful social media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital, and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience, and the best social media marketers now have more than 10 years of experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content, and contests into online marketing.

You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience--a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation
Social media can sometimes provide quick results for a company that's already a star. When a well-loved company like Zappos, or Google employs social media, its loyal fans and followers pay attention.

However, there's a lot of desperation in a lot of corporate suites these days, and many companies seem been convinced that a social media campaign can provide a quick fix to sagging sales or reputation issues. Sorry, nuh, uh.

Be done without a realistic budget
Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content, and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn't come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing.

Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce, creating style sheets that integrate with the company's branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.

Guarantee sales or influence
Unless your effort can pass the "who cares" test - and most simply can't - your social media efforts will fall flat.

And unless you know how to drive traffic to your contest, video, blog, event, etc. you'll have little more than an expensive field of dreams.

Be done by "kids" who "understand social innately"
You can climb Mt Kilaminjaro without a sherpa guide, but why would you? Experience and perspective can make the trip easier, or even save your life.

Companies trying to run social media without experienced consultants waste time, money, and reputation on their efforts. And then, sadly, many decide that this new-fangled approach doesn't work.

Replace PR
No matter how great your website, video contest, blog, Twitter strategy, etc. you still need publicity. Or you may end up with a tree falling in the forest, and nobody hearing it.

Social media can make or break you

noreply@blogger.com (mitch) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:47:00 +0000

MANY business people have already recognised the power of social media and are poised to exploit it commercially at every opportunity.

One may have a new summer line of swimwear, another a fresh menu from the restaurant kitchen, another has a sudden shipment of Asian artefacts, another is offering Mother's Day discounts on facials and manicures.

With just a quick Twitter, these businesses can let all their followers know about the deals and get business pumping again.

But businesses that didn't monitor the various social media out there now - Twitter, SMS, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, blogs - could find themselves in enormous trouble because of the rapid, or viral, way the message is spread.

In fact, some could find themselves out of business within a month, according to David Eldridge, the chief executive of UK-based global marketing and analytics company Alterian.

"Social media has exploded and this means that the information people use to make buying decisions has changed," he said.

"It's not just what businesses put out there but also what people say in response.

"Feedback is instantaneous and if that feedback is bad then reputations and credentials can be damaged in minutes."

Mr Eldridge cited two recent examples of how the use of YouTube brought undone two powerful US organisations.

The most famous was a YouTube video made in jest by two Dominos Pizza staff who performed gross acts in the kitchen while preparing takeaways.

The food never made it to customers, but the video reached millions while Dominos reacted with all the corporate zeal of a stuffed mammoth.

While eventually the pranksters were sacked and faced felony charges, Dominos' reputation was trashed because of its inertia.

Ignoring a legitimate complaint about damaged baggage brought United Airways undone.

Early last year, musician Dave Carroll stopped off in Chicago on his way to a gig and saw the case containing his $2300 guitar being manhandled by the baggage handlers.

United chose to ignore his claim for $1200 worth of damage, until several months later when he wrote the song United Breaks Guitars and posted it on YouTube.

As one commentator said: "Revenge is a dish best served with country accompaniment."

"The first thing that businesses have to understand is that they're not the ones with sole control of their brand, because customers now talk about their experiences to a wider audience," Mr Eldridge said.

Not only did businesses need to respond quickly to what was being said, but they also needed to be careful about how they responded, he said.

It meant listening to what was being said about them, and what was being said about competitors.

"Fix customers' services issues, change marketing messages if they don't resonate," he said.

It also meant learning to interact with -- and not interrupt -- customers and clients.

"If you do a search of the world's top 20 brands, you will see that 25 per cent of the entries are user comments," Mr Eldridge said.

Further, buyers prefer these comments over the information the businesses put out, he said.

"Fourteen per cent of people trust advertisements, but 90 per cent trust peer recommendations. It's important to put the brand image out there, but it's equally important to monitor what's being said," Mr Eldridge said.

via news.com.au

3 ways to handle online criticism

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:27:00 +0000

Source: Wall St Journal,. "3 best ways to improve your reputation online"

These days, a great danger lurks just a few clicks away: the online review. By Googling your company's name, anyone can read and track your business's performance – including missteps, poor service or less-than-stellar products.

Protecting your company's reputation is now a 24-hour vigil. Negative reviews – whether they're merited or not – can turn away potential customers and vendors, and reflect badly on your company's brand.

The good news is that small-business owners can be proactive in securing positive reviews by asking satisifed customers to share their experiences. But what if it's already too late?Here are the three best ways to improve your online reputation:

1. Reach out immediately to dissatisfied reviewers. Their negative comments don't need to be the end of the conversation. Small-business owners should attempt a dialogue, experts say, as complainers might improve the review or take down the post. Oguz Ucanlar, president of SpaForever LLC in Chicago, managed to turn around bad reviews on Yelp.com by contacting the aggrieved posters. He apologized, explained the situation and offered the reviewers discounts or a free massage. The result? One bad review was deleted, and the spa's overall rating went up. "I take it really seriously," he says. It also helps that Yelp now allows business owners to respond publicly to any customer comment, giving others a window into how the business treats its most finicky customers.

When a bad review surfaces, an apology goes a long way, says Lisa Barone, co-founder of Outspoken Media Inc., a Spring Hill, Fla., Internet marketing company. "Most people just want to be heard," she says. "They just want to know you're listening and you care, and that you're going to try and fix it."

Keep in mind that a negative review can sometimes be helpful. Case in point: an online customer of Nationwide Candy LLC of Albuquerque, N.M., complained after she received the wrong bubblegum product. Turns out, the candy wholesaler had posted an incorrect image on its site. "It just casted a bad image on us," says Ken Hanson, its general manager, who immediately corrected the error.

2. Flood search engines with content you can control. Use digital media's reach to your full advantage, says Evan Bailyn, founder of First Page Sage LLC, a New York search engine optimization company. Mr. Bailyn says he often helps clients put "good publicity on top to knock bad publicity off the first page" of search engine results. To do that, he suggests releasing press releases through prnewswire.com or pr.com and building Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts since these social-media sites show up high on search results. "The overall strategy is inundating the Google results with as much good or neutral content as possible so that the bad seems like an anomaly," Mr. Bailyn says.

3. Appeal to bloggers to review your company or your product. Getting others to weigh in can be an effective way to generate neutral or positive reviews to counteract negative ones. Influential bloggers in your niche market can bring instant credibility to a company. If you already know bloggers in your industry, read or reach others by simply scanning their blogrolls, a handy list (typically placed in the sidebar) of potential contacts. Alert them to news about your product or service as a first step in building the relationship.

While it's controversial, some business owners say they've improved their reputations through sponsored blog posts. Netfirms Inc., a Web-hosting company in Markham, Ontario, is paying $10,000 to SocialSpark.com, a marketplace for paid reviewers, and to about 60 bloggers to write 200-word reviews of its new Twitter service. "The more positive feedback that we can have, the better," says Dan Feferman, its product specialist and community manager. Other sites to consider are PayPerPost.com, SponsoredReviews.com and ReviewMe.com, Mr. Bailyn says. Costs can range from $15 to $150 per posting. While some business owners liken sponsored posts to traditional ads, keep in mind you could turn off potential customers. To prevent that, make sure the blog post contains a disclosure that it's a paid or sponsored review.

Why Social Media Matters to Professional Services Organisations

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:46:00 +0000

I gave a presentation this morning to the APSMA Community on "To Tweet or not to Tweet: Social Media impacting the way we do business"

It was a pleasure to be on a panel with such experienced and knowledgeable indiviguals as

Kate Gibbs - Managing Editor, The New Lawyer
Robert Beerworth - Managing Director, Wiliam
Suresh Sood BSc (Hons)(London), MBA (UTS)
David Bushby - Boardroom Radio

You can view my introductory presentation below.

Why Social Media matters to Professional Services

View more presentations from nickhac.

B2B Social Media Usage Profile

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:47:00 +0000

Social media give a voice to buyers who can now describe their experience and disappointment to a global audience. And, wow, are they saying a lot. Forrester surveyed more than 1,200 business technology buyers and found that they exceed all previous benchmarks for social participation.

B2B marketers, eager to know how social media fits into the marketing mix, can use the Social Technographics® Profiles of business decision-makers to design marketing programs that not only capitalize on emerging social behaviors but also fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between B2B buyers and sellers.

What's The Social Media Usage Profile Of Your Customers?

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:38:00 +0000

Forrester research has put out a new tool for research into understanding how your customers are using social media... have a play!

Social Media Monitoring in action at Sydney University

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:51:00 +0000

A humorous example of Social Media Monitoring by Sydney University. Makes you wonder, who else is listening?

It seems all sorts of organisations are looking at Social Media Monitoring. Does your company have a Social Media Monitoring process in place? If not be sure to give us a call at BuzzNumbers, we are Australia's Leading Social Media Monitoring company and would be happy to help you put a Social Media Monitoring policy in place

Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:22:00 +0000

Computers may be good at crunching numbers, but can they crunch feelings?

The rise of blogs and social networks has fuelled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. For computer scientists, this fast-growing mountain of data is opening a tantalizing window onto the collective consciousness of Internet users.

An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world’s unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data.

This is more than just an interesting programming exercise. For many businesses, online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency that can make or break a product in the marketplace.

Yet many companies struggle to make sense of the caterwaul of complaints and compliments that now swirl around their products online. As sentiment analysis tools begin to take shape, they could not only help businesses improve their bottom lines, but also eventually transform the experience of searching for information online.

Several new sentiment analysis companies (including BuzzNumbers) are trying to tap into the growing business interest in what is being said online.

“Social media used to be this cute project for 25-year-old consultants,” said Margaret Francis, vice president for product at Social Media Monitoring Company in San Francisco. Now, she said, top executives “are recognizing it as an incredibly rich vein of market intelligence.”

Social Media Monitoring services allows customers to monitor blogs, news articles, online forums and social networking sites for trends in opinions about products, services or topics in the news.

In early May, the ticket marketplace StubHub used Social Media Monitoring tool to identify a sudden surge of negative blog sentiment after rain delayed a Yankees-Red Sox game.

Stadium officials mistakenly told hundreds of fans that the game had been canceled, and StubHub denied fans’ requests for refunds, on the grounds that the game had actually been played. But after spotting trouble brewing online, the company offered discounts and credits to the affected fans. It is now re-evaluating its bad weather policy.

“This is a canary in a coal mine for us,” said John Whelan, StubHub’s director of customer service.

Jodange, based in Yonkers, offers a service geared toward online publishers that lets them incorporate opinion data drawn from over 450,000 sources, including mainstream news sources, blogs and Twitter.

Based on research by Claire Cardie, a Cornell computer science professor, and Jan Wiebe of the University of Pittsburgh, the service uses a sophisticated algorithm that not only evaluates sentiments about particular topics, but also identifies the most influential opinion holders.

Jodange, which received an innovation research grant from the National Science Foundation last year, is currently working on a new algorithm that could use opinion data to predict future developments, like forecasting the impact of newspaper editorials on a company’s stock price.

In a similar vein, The Financial Times recently introduced Newssift, an experimental program that tracks sentiments about business topics in the news, coupled with a specialized search engine that allows users to organize their queries by topic, organization, place, person and theme.

Using Newssift, a search for Wal-Mart reveals that recent sentiment about the company is running positive by a ratio of slightly better than two to one. When that search is refined with the suggested term “Labor Force and Unions,” however, the ratio of positive to negative sentiments drops closer to one to one.

Such tools could help companies pinpoint the effect of specific issues on customer perceptions, helping them respond with appropriate marketing and public relations strategies.

For casual Web surfers, simpler incarnations of sentiment analysis are sprouting up in the form of lightweight tools like Tweetfeel, Twendz and Twitrratr. These sites allow users to take the pulse of Twitter users about particular topics.

A quick search on Tweetfeel, for example, reveals that 77 percent of recent tweeters liked the movie “Julie & Julia.” But the same search on Twitrratr reveals a few misfires. The site assigned a negative score to a tweet reading “julie and julia was truly delightful!!” That same message ended with “we all felt very hungry afterwards” — and the system took the word “hungry” to indicate a negative sentiment.

While the more advanced algorithms used by BuzzNumbers, Jodange and Newssift employ advanced analytics to avoid such pitfalls, none of these services works perfectly. “Our algorithm is about 70 to 80 percent accurate,” said Ms. Francis, who added that its users can reclassify inaccurate results so the system learns from its mistakes.

Translating the slippery stuff of human language into binary values will always be an imperfect science, however. “Sentiments are very different from conventional facts,” said Seth Grimes, the founder of the suburban Maryland consulting firm Alta Plana, who points to the many cultural factors and linguistic nuances that make it difficult to turn a string of written text into a simple pro or con sentiment. “ ‘Sinful’ is a good thing when applied to chocolate cake,” he said.

The simplest algorithms work by scanning keywords to categorize a statement as positive or negative, based on a simple binary analysis (“love” is good, “hate” is bad). But that approach fails to capture the subtleties that bring human language to life: irony, sarcasm, slang and other idiomatic expressions. Reliable sentiment analysis requires parsing many linguistic shades of gray.

“We are dealing with sentiment that can be expressed in subtle ways,” said Bo Pang, a researcher at Yahoo who co-wrote “Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis,” one of the first academic books on sentiment analysis.

To get at the true intent of a statement, Ms. Pang developed software that looks at several different filters, including polarity (is the statement positive or negative?), intensity (what is the degree of emotion being expressed?) and subjectivity (how partial or impartial is the source?).

For example, a preponderance of adjectives often signals a high degree of subjectivity, while noun- and verb-heavy statements tend toward a more neutral point of view.

As sentiment analysis algorithms grow more sophisticated, they should begin to yield more accurate results that may eventually point the way to more sophisticated filtering mechanisms. They could become a part of everyday Web use.

“I see sentiment analysis becoming a standard feature of search engines,” said Mr. Grimes, who suggests that such algorithms could begin to influence both general-purpose Web searching and more specialized searches in areas like e-commerce, travel reservations and movie reviews.

Ms. Pang envisions a search engine that fine-tunes results for users based on sentiment. For example, it might influence the ordering of search results for certain kinds of queries like “best hotel in San Antonio.”

As search engines begin to incorporate more and more opinion data into their results, the distinction between fact and opinion may start blurring to the point where, as David Byrne once put it, “facts all come with points of view.”

Source: NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/technology/internet/24emotion.html

How Many Social Media Channels Should Your Brand Be Using?

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:29:00 +0000

I sent an invite to a past colleague of mine to be a friend on Facebook just recently and he sent me back an interesting email, which in essence said. ” I only have time for one social media channel (it happened to be LinkedIn), so don’t be offended if I politely refuse, but if you want to communicate through LinkedIn, I am more than happy to”

This was both refreshingly honest and revealing about the social media “avalanche” that invites us to participate and sweeps past us every day.

So this begs the question, how many social media channels should you be using for your company? There isn’t a simple answer to that question but it is more a matter of the resources that you have available, both in time and money to engage in Social Media effectively.

Some of the big brands engage in more than ten. See the Report on the Top 100 Brands Engagenment With Social Media and my insights from the report.

So how many “Social Media” Channels are some of the top brands using?

Company         Number of Channels      Resources
Starbucks        11                                        6 Staff in The Social Media team
Toyota             7                                          3 Staff
SAP                  10                                        35 Staff
Dell                   11                                        Not Available

“So these are  the big brands and they have the resources” I hear you say, well that is true, but that shouldn’t stop your company or organisation starting to use social media, because the benefits are significant,organic and viral.

Your customers are participating in these channels and they want to talk to you. Are you listening to the conversation?

Source: Jeff Bullas Blog

Facebook, Twitter skills now wanted in workplace

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:21:00 +0000

The landscape of today’s job market is shifting and the shift favours individuals who are savvy in social media.

Increasingly Job postings on a number of Australian, Canadian and American websites include Twitter and Facebook requirements for applicants.

For Exampl

Mosaic Sales Solutions describes the "key characteristics" of its ideal market training specialist as "an avid user of the Internet, blogs, Twitter and/or has a Facebook page or other social networking account."
Valtech Technologies seeks a scrum master/project manager whose critical responsibilities will include "social collaboration including work spaces like Wiki’s, blogs, Twitter, etc."

That’s listed right above "proven ability to establish clear and effective objectives and milestones."

Kevin Stoddart, vice-president with executive search specialist Robertson Surrette in Halifax, said it is ironic that many of the companies that once worried about lost employee productivity because of time spent on Facebook are now requiring it as a skill.

"It’s not a requirement for every position. If someone is hiring a finance professional I don’t see the relevance, but social media skills are important for jobs in tech business, sales, public relations and media."

That’s because social media networks provide cost-effective ways for companies to put out their message and provide information to people in a personal, one-on-one way.

"Companies want to know if we are using social media as a recruiting tool and (the) answer is a definitive yes," he said. "Our use of Facebook has faded in favour of LinkedIn, but tomorrow it could be something else. The websites and platforms may change, but social media is here to stay."

Over time, he said, social media skills will become important to everyone — not just those in marketing and communications.

"Social media will become very accepted and even if you’re an IT person or an accounting person, long-term, you will need to be able to use social media and be able to communicate on behalf of your company," Mr. Van Rossum said.

In the meantime, if you really love Tweeting and Facebooking, there are plenty of jobs requiring only that.

A sampling of job postings on Monster.com: "Social Media Ninja," "Social Media Strategist," "Director of Public Relations and Social Media" and "Conversation Manager."

These kinds of social media jobs began emerging about six months ago, Van Rossum said. Most of them are six- to nine-month contract positions with companies looking to have a social media strategy set up for them.

This social media craze among employers is creating some complications for job applicants and employees, Mr. Van Rossum said, such as blurring the lines between personal and professional lives.

"Facebook pages aren’t about business, they’re about you as a person, but how people perceive you as a person will ultimately impact how they perceive the place where you work," Van Rossum said. "It’s a very complicated challenge."

What is Van Rossum’s advice to job applicants? Use social media to search for jobs and use your own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to protect your "brand" image.

Social media competency might still be worth a small mention on a resume, but Mr. Stoddart believes within a short period of time it will be so commonplace it will be like including such startlingly unimpressive capabilities as Microsoft Word savvy or email literate.

Source: TheChronicalHerald.ca

Better Business Decisions and the Scientific Method

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:42:00 +0000

In most interactions, we take a defensive posture. We try to defend the brand, or our turf or our job. The problem with defense is that it's static. The best way to get smarter, to embrace and to cause change and to triumph in times of market turmoil is to adopt the scientific method.

Ask yourself, "what do I believe that's wrong? How can I change the way I do things? What works? What doesn't?"

If you enter a conversation looking for something to test, measure and ultimately change, it's likely you'll find it. That change makes you more competitive, and you continue to cycle past your competitors. On the other hand, if you enter a conversation concerned about maintaining the status quo, it's likely that this is exactly what you're going to do.

Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward.

Source: Seth Godin, The Scientific Method

For Companies, a Tweet in Time Can Avert PR Mess

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:53:00 +0000

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

A growing number of businesses are tracking social-media outlets such as
Facebook and Twitter to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential
public-relations problems.

Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., among others, are
deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and
blogs. They're also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies
for social media.

One morning last December, Scott Monty, Ford's head of social media, saw
Twitter messages alerting him to online comments criticizing Ford for
allegedly trying to shut a fan Web site, TheRangerStation.com. The dispute
prompted about 1,000 email complaints to Ford overnight.

Mr. Monty, who joined Ford the previous July from an advisory firm
specializing in social media, didn't wait to learn the facts. He posted
messages on his Twitter page, and Ford's, saying he was looking into the
matter, adding frequent updates.

Within hours, he reported that Ford's lawyers believed the site was selling
counterfeit goods with Ford's logo. He persuaded Ford's lawyers to withdraw
the shut-down request if the site would halt the sales. By the end of the
day, he Tweeted that the dispute had been resolved.

Jim Oaks, who founded TheRangerStation in 1998, credits Mr. Monty with
resolving the problem so quickly. "My relationship with Ford has been
better because of this," he says.

Mr. Monty's response won plaudits from social-media watchers. Ron Ploof,
founder of consulting firm OC New Media LLC, posted a case study of the
incident on the Web, to show clients how companies can use social media to
their benefit.

"Social media have magnified the urgency of crisis communication," says
Shel Holtz, a communications consultant in Concord, Calif., and co-author
of "Blogging for Business." He says seemingly small incidents can quickly
spread into bigger PR problems via the Web.

PepsiCo intensified its social-media efforts last November after employees
saw critical Twitter posts about an ad in a German trade magazine for a
diet cola, which depicted a calorie killing itself. A popular commentator,
whose sister had committed suicide, asked, "How could Pepsi do this?"

A Pepsi spokesman quickly posted an apology on his personal Twitter page.
So did Bonin Bough, who is Pepsi's global director of digital and social
media. Mr. Bough, who was hired for the job in September, says the incident
prompted Pepsi to create a corporate Twitter profile; in May it launched
The Juice, part of the networking site BlogHer.com.

Monitoring a corporate image in cyberspace is a daunting task, even with
technological help. Tracking software can identify hundreds of posts daily,
and managers must decide which could prove troublesome. "If you start
seeing a lot of people retweeting it, then you know" to pay attention, says
Marcus Schmidt, a senior marketing manager for Microsoft Corp.

Some companies use the information to shape responses to news. On July 13,
a Southwest Airlines flight from Nashville to Baltimore made an emergency
landing in Charleston, W.Va. Southwest's six-person "emerging-media team"
scanned Twitter, Facebook and other Web sites for passengers' reactions --
and found mostly positive comments. The Southwest employees quickly posted
Tweets praising the "great work by crew and customers onboard."

Linda Rutherford, Southwest's vice president, communications and strategic
outreach, says she might have reacted differently if passengers had been
more critical. "We would still be complimentary of our crews, but we might
not emphasize that as much," says Ms. Rutherford, who added responsibility
for social-media initiatives last summer.

Some companies are training staffers to broaden their social-media efforts.
At Ford, Mr. Monty plans to soon begin teaching employees how to use sites
like Twitter to represent the company and interact with consumers.

Coca-Cola Co. is preparing a similar effort, which initially will be
limited to marketing, public affairs and legal staffers. Participants will
be authorized to post to social media on Coke's behalf without checking
with the company's PR staff, says Adam Brown, named Coke's first head of
social media in March.

For now, that job falls to Mr. Brown and three staffers. Last fall, Coke's
software spotted a Twitter post from a frustrated consumer who couldn't
redeem a prize from the MyCoke rewards program. The consumer's profile
boasted more than 10,000 followers.

Mr. Brown quickly posted an apology on the consumer's Twitter profile and
offered to help resolve the situation. The consumer got his prize and later
changed his Twitter avatar to a photo of himself holding a Coke bottle.

"We're getting to a point if you're not responding, you're not being seen
as an authentic type of brand," says Mr. Brown

How to disagree online...

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:20:00 +0000

The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago, writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do—in comment threads, on forums, and in their own blog posts.

Many who respond to something disagree with it. That's to be expected. Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there's less to say. You could expand on something the author said, but he has probably already explored the most interesting implications. When you disagree you're entering territory he may not have explored.

The result is there's a lot more disagreeing going on, especially measured by the word. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier. The structural change in the way we communicate is enough to account for it. But though it's not anger that's driving the increase in disagreement, there's a danger that the increase in disagreement will make people angrier. Particularly online, where it's easy to say things you'd never say face to face.

If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages.

So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy: How to Disagree

Source: How to disagree

How Social Media has changed Corporate Communications

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:03:00 +0000

Corporate Communications 1.0

In the past we have had in had 2 narrow pipes to get information in and out of our organisations.

We have used PR, Advertising, Marketing and Events to get messages out of the Enterprise. We have used Customer Support & Market Research to get messages about our customers back into the organisation.

Corporate Communications 2.0

With the advent of the Web and Social Media, conversations that used to happen around water coolers and at the bus stop and at a mates BBQ and Industry Events are now happening online. They are archived, they are searchable and they are able to be datamined.

Back-office employee's are answering customer complaints and questions on websites, consumers are providing corporate information to each other without the organisation becoming involved.

Messages are bouncing in, out and around the organisation at a blistering pace, experts have coined this "The Permeable Enterprise".

This creates an enormous challenge for Corporate Communications and Media Relations departments. Tracking communications across all these channels requires way more time, skills and effort than even a team of skilled web experts could manage.

This is where companies turn to Online Media Monitoring companies to track, analyze and report these messages as they happen.

BuzzNumbers CEO Awarded Hot 30 under 30 Entrepreneurs (SmartCompany)

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:06:00 +0000

BuzzNumbers CEO Nick Holmes a Court has been awarded SmartCompany Hot 30 under 30 Australian Entrepreneurs. Congrats Nick!

Clare the Kings Cross Bogan generates more than $200K in equivalent advertising dollars in social media.

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:54:00 +0000

May 25th, 2009 (Sydney, Australia) – BuzzNumbers, Australia’s first social media intelligence service, has been tracking conversations about Clare Werberloff online and in social media since the video went viral on Monday last week.

BuzzNumbers found that more than 41,186 conversations have occurred online on Australian websites since Monday last week, which have generated more than $200,000AUD in equivalent advertising dollars on Australian websites and social media destinations alone.

BuzzNumbers reports that 41% of the available 41, 186 online conversations about Clare took place in social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, whilst a further 27% of conversations occurred on blogs and forums, and 12% on News sites.

The top five Influential destinations online that contained conversations or mentioned Clare Weberloff were Facebook.com, Twitter.com, NineMSN.com.au, News.com.au, and InTheMix.com.au.

Founder and CEO of BuzzNumbers Nick Holmes a Court was impressed by the spread on conversations online, “It’s been great to track the spread of conversations online about Clare over the last week. She is this year’s Corey Worthington. It just shows how powerful a medium the social web is, particularly the amount of revenue it can generate for an individual or company through exposure.”

Sources: TechWiredAU, MuMbrella

"It doesn't hurt to ask" - Seth Godin

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:54:00 +0000

Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.

If you run into Elton John at the diner and say, "Hey Elton, will you sing at my daughter's wedding?" it hurts any chance you have to get on Elton John's radar. You've just trained him to say no, you've taught him you're both selfish and unrealistic.

If a prospect walks into your dealership and you walk up and say, "Please pay me $200,000 right now for this Porsche," you might close the sale. But I doubt it. More likely than not you've just pushed this prospect away, turned the sliver of permission you had into a wall of self-protection.

Every once in a while, of course, asking out of the blue pays off. So what? That is dwarfed by the extraordinary odds of failing. Instead, invest some time and earn the right to ask. Do your homework. Build connections. Make a reasonable request, something easy and mutually beneficial. Yes leads to yes which just maybe leads to the engagement you were actually seeking.

Seth Godin: It doesn't hurt to ask

Actionable Business Intelligence From Online Conversations

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Actionable Business Intelligence From Online Conversations is a presentation we have been presenting at a number of Media/Marketing/Technology/Digital events in sydney.

If you are interested in BuzzNumbers presenting at your event, contact info@buzznumbers.com.au

Buzz Numbers Actionable Business Intelligence From Online Conversations

View more presentations from nickhac.

Gartner Reveals Five Business Intelligence Predictions for 2009 and Beyond

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:07:00 +0000

A 2009 Gartner Group paper predicted these developments in business intelligence market .

Because of lack of information, processes, and tools, through 2012, more than 35 per cent of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets.
By 2012, business units will control at least 40 per cent of the total budget for business intelligence.
By 2010, 20 per cent of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered via software as a service as a standard component of their business intelligence portfolio.
In 2009, collaborative decision making will emerge as a new product category that combines social software with business intelligence platform capabilities.
By 2012, one-third of analytic applications applied to business processes will be delivered through coarse-grained application mashups.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=856714

Coming to Cebit? Get Free CeBIT.AU entry with WebCiety & BuzzNumbers

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:56:00 +0000

BuzzNumbers is excited to announce that we’ve been selected to exhibit at CeBIT in the showcase Webciety pavillion.

We’ll be joined in the Webciety area by other exciting Aussie web companies, such as HiiveSystems, SaaSu, Tjoos, Siteflex, Travellr (who won the wildcard spot) and many more - a dozen in total actually.

Since Webciety is a part of the broader CeBIT show, you’ll need to register for CeBIT to be able to get in and have a look around. The good news is though, we have a special promotional code, which you can use to get FREE entry to the show, saving you $65+GST on the normal ticket price.

To reserve your ticket and save the $65, simply go to https://www.mycebit.com.au/rego09/ and when prompted, enter our special rego code, webcietyca09.

Hope to see you there!

Coming to Cebit? Come down and see BuzzNumbers @ Webciety Cebit

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:59:00 +0000

If your coming to Cebit, be sure to come see BuzzNumbers at the Webciety at Cebit.

"Webciety, a vibrant and informative multimedia display of the power and potential of the Internet for today's working and social worlds, will bring the Internet home to CeBIT Australia 2009 in Sydney next month after proving to be one of the smash hits at this year's CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany.

CeBIT Australia's Webciety pavilion put the spotlight on today's Web-based society, featuring mobile Internet, wikis, communities, blogs, microblogs and other interactive Internet services which are making our lives increasingly digital.

The concept behind the Webciety Area is to show the Internet at work by using the tools of the Internet itself - essentially creating a "walk-through" Internet."

Visit: http://webciety.cebit.com.au/

Look forward to seeing you there! Cebit starts Tuesday, May 12-14th.

BuzzNumbers makes Top 100 Aussie Startup Index (TechNation)

nickhac@gmail.com (Nick HaC) — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:38:00 +0000

BuzzNumbers was this month nominated to the Australian Top 100 Startup Index.

You can see the full list on TechNation.com.au