Now the use of #hashtags for PR may or may not be a great idea. Habitat’s recent foray into sofas and politics was pretty dumb, as documented here by Mashable …but if executed sensibly then it can be a great way of establishing followings and getting involved in timely and relevant conversations.

My problem with this general discussion is not in ‘outing’ poor uses of Twitter. This is good: we need to learn from the bad. There’s too much of it about, and the rise of bots and agents are beginning to make Twitter an unnecessarily crowded and noisy place.

But the war on #hashtags seems a little off kilter to me. Take this recent post from Econsultancy on the ‘Seven Twitter Sins’ for example…

Habitat is a great example of #hastag abuse. But is Moonfruit too? Some would disagree ….and the campaign’s phenomenal response suggests it was well received.

To my mind, the notion of Spamming is a difficult one to pin on Twitter usage. Twitter is, after all, a public network not a private network. It’s also free. We don’t own or lease it. Anybody can follow and message anybody else. There are no real restrictions on membership – it’s just a public place. More to the point, Twitter is a service without a well defined mission. You just turn up, sign up and say whatever the hell you want. Most activity is unsolicited and undirected – even amongst friends. It has no rules and this is a large part of its charm.

As such, can anything on Twitter really be classed as Spam?

Poorly conceived brand #hashtag campaigns are just annoying: like strangers who rant loudly in train stations. If they’re irrelevant, useless and untimely then they’ll just be blocked out by users and the firm’s reputation will suffer. Otherwise the issue is hard to mitigate without spoiling everything that’s so great about Twitter.

This response to the eConsultancy post sums it all up quite nicely…

Thanks for a dash of clarity Alex. I’m with you… Twitter #hastags make for a good corned beef sandwich.

We put together this diagram in response to a common request from our clients: HEEEEEEELP!

Having dabbled with Facebook and made forays with Twitter, many brands are now stuck wondering how the hell to get any decent ‘play’ out of their Social Media assets and profiles.

Oftentimes this is down to two basic things: i) a desire to crack on and experiment and ii) a lack of time. And this dilemma (particularly in a large, multi-brand or multi-business unit organisation) usually leads to a mild form of Social Media schizophrenia and diminishing returns.

In other words, when you’re rushing to pilot stuff with a lack of time it can be incredibly hard to execute in an integrated fashion ….which is why the chart above might help.

Here’s the supporting blurb…

First Principles of Social Media and Online PR

Doing Social Media is not an objective in and of itself. Doing Twitter is not a plan. Customer interaction and retention around a theme is. So, the next time some bright spark suggests a Facebook page, take a deep breath and think it through – no matter how exciting it might seem.

Health Warning: ‘Build it and They Will Come’ is Broken

Communications in this new-fangled Social Interweb era is all about building followings, creating conversations and putting your content in the places it’s most likely to be seen. Nine times out of ten this won’t be in and around your own web site. The trick is to extend the value of what you’re doing to other people’s platforms, networks and services. (Or, ‘go with the flow,’ as they say…)

Have a Plan for Social Media

Broadly speaking, you should think of Social Media as a channel: something to use for publishing stuff and/or talking with people (ie, like the telephone, in the hands of a salesperson or a consultant).

As such, use it to support your bigger sales and/or marketing objectives. Twitter can help improve awareness levels, but only if you have something sensible to pin it on. Likewise, Facebook can be a killer community tool, but only if you have something that warrants a group interest.

Content is Elvis

If Social Media’s for you, then content is the next thought. Do you have any? Are you already making some? Can this be remixed in more valuable, useful and Social ways? If Social Media is to add value, then it shouldn’t be done in a vacuum.

Look for opportunities to spin off your standard content assets in new ways, so that they’re capable of playing out on Social Media channels as well as doing all the other things that you normally ask them to do. For example, video and images can be re-thunk so that they work just as well on YouTube and Flickr as they do on your web site and on your trade show exhibition stands.

Think Integration

Whatever the case is, make sure that you publish your content assets ‘home and away’ – both on your web site and on other Social Media channels. This enhances people’s opportunities to see your stuff on their turf.

Your Social Media profiles need to become a core part of your thinking here. That Slideshare channel shouldn’t be sitting in outer space, it should be part of an integrated publishing plan – supporting everything else that you’ve got on your truck.

For example, a seminar can be composed of delegates, speakers, PPTs, video, Tweets, and photos: and publishing these assets using Social Media channels can become part and parcel of your activity before, during and after the event.

Think Aggregation

When you’re done, look for ways to aggregate your content so that it becomes more useful to your audiences. For example, if you’re running grandstand events or conferences, then a Facebook event page could be a great place to bring together your stock of images and videos, so that Facebookers everywhere can find it easily and in one place.

If you’re promoting information-based services, then a subject-specific Ning can be a very useful route into your main site. And customer support apps like Get Satisfaction can also be a great outlet for all of those brochures and manuals that have been collecting dust on the shelf.

Partner content should also be factored in. What opportunities do you have for re-purposing third party blogs, Tweets, images, etc, in your own content services? These things can add real value to your overall story (and help Google to love you a little more).

Go Social: Party Hard

Once your Socially re-mixed content is published and you’ve found useful ways of aggregating it, it’s time to party hard and start sparking up the right kind of conversations in the right kind of places. We’ve written a lot about this elsewhere, but for now the key thought is being relevant, useful and entertaining.

Go comment on other people’s blogs. Follow them on Twitter and exchange ideas about all the good things you have in common. Add value to forums and discussion boards, based on your stock of Social stuff. …and encourage people to share all of your content, all of the time.

Footnote: If You Do This Then Google Will Also Loooooooove You!

Google loves content. Especially keyword rich content. If you can build the type of publishing disciplines outlined above into your core marketing and content programs, then good linkage and great SEO will follow. (We’d also say that Social Media is the new SEO, but that’s another story…)

Any Takers…?

Granted, this is an uber-quick overview of the principles of Social Media content strategies, but it’s a sound one. If you agree / disagree or have something else to add, then please do let me know….!

Meantime, here’s the chart again, via Slideshare:

But with URL shortening comes search problems: links are one of the most important ranking factors used by Google and its search engine competitors.

The more inbound links to a page, the greater its chances of ranking for key terms. Google needs these cues to decide which pages to place in its SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and the largest portion of ranking benefit is often delivered by links.

So, are Social Media link shortening services a force for good or evil?

On the plus side, they are accessible and should still pass credit to the pages that they link to. Most are 301 redirected, which means that Google, theoretically, directs its attention and flow of PageRank directly (rather than to the URL shortening middle man).

But – and this is a critical point – link language is also important.  Google (and other search engines) looks at the words within a link’s anchor tag to judge what a page is about. For instance, a page that has many inbound links that contain the text ‘customised infinity gloves for mums’ has a high chance of ranking in response to an (unlikely) search for that term.

Bearing this in mind, the scrambled, unpredictable syntax of oompa-loompa (shortened) links is not necessarily good for search engines and their understanding and mapping of the web.

Shortened links also create user confusion – despite their brevity, convenience, and rudimentary measurement potential.

Take this link for example: http://bacn.me/8ok. Being from the bacon loving folks at bacn.me, there’s obviously a bit of salty meat promotion going on, but where does it lead? At face value, for all I know, it could direct me to an article on the artistic abilities of the greater bullfinch. It doesn’t – I’d love it to – but the URL tells me absolutely zilch about the page I’m going to be directed to.

Many URL shortening services offer a ‘custom’ option, so relevant anchor text can be added to the shortened url – good for user understanding and search engine crawling – but these features are not commonly used.

And, to add to the confusion, it’s also worth noting that links created on sites where shortened links are most commonly found (e.g Twitter) are not valued by Google as they’re ‘nofollowed’.

’Nofollow’ means that Google won’t pass on any ranking benefit to the destination page – in fact, it won’t even bother to follow the links (even though other search engines may handle them differently).

So, could the rise of link shortening on Social Media sites affect the quality of our search results?

Possibly. If important link cues aren’t available in an intelligible enough format then Google could be directed to the wrong places – unless another means of mapping the web is found.

If users and webmasters continue to link more frequently through services like Twitter, then the paradigm of using links to rank sites could be rendered less important – and more difficult to influence – as the cues are sucked into a vacuum.

Taxing.

It’s still early days but I wouldn’t rule out an algorithmic tweak or an official statement from Google in the near future.

Any opinions?

Further Reading…

A good review of the relative benefits and disadvantages of the main URL shortening services that are available – from Searchengine Land.

Actually, we’d prefer a warm (and friendly) human to a robot, but the right candidate will need to be made of strong stuff. Our clients have expressed a preference for titanium, chocolate and kisses – and we’d also like to add in a dash of Pablo Picasso. You get the picture: long on process/detail, and creative to boot. Experience of PR and Social Media is a must. Particularly when it comes to campaign evaluation.

As you may be aware, we work with go-getters like IBM, Hotels.com, Squiz and other tip top brands. You can check out all of our Online PR and Social Media work here.

We need someone who:

• throws 100% of their energies into growing accounts and delivering unbelievable client service
• can take a project from the point of sale through to execution without a glitch
• is a zealot when it comes to delivering out of sight planning and process materials
• calls their clients every day to check in and give them love, love, love
• has a bag of creative implementation ideas to throw into the campaign mix
• is obsessed with seeing perfectly polished client deliverables
• is driven, driven, driven by results
• thinks client first, agency second and ‘me’ third
• can run and maintain contact reports that scream ROI and value
• …etc, etc

If this is you – and if you’re up for getting in at ground level with one of the hottest properties since the toaster – then drop us a line using the form below…

We’re based in Lewes, East Sussex – 10 minutes from Brighton and one of the finest places to eat, drink and be merry on the planet. (Boy, life is good here!) We work with a bunch of great clients and agencies, helping one and all to win new friends and influence people.

You’ll be working directly with MD Roger Warner as part of his team. He’s a nice guy who promises to help you get everything you want and more out of a digitally enhanced working life.

Did we mention the wonga? £30k+, depending on experience.

We’d guess you’ll have around two or more years of agency experience doing the kind of things mentioned above. We’d assume you’re also extremely ambitious and are up for growing your role quickly within a real pocket rocket of a new-fangled web marketing firm. You may have a degree, but frankly it’s not that important to us. We only really care that you’re a really smart cookie.

See this page here for further information about our Online PR agency…

If you’ve read this far then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch using the form below…

Actually, I don’t mean to disparage PR… PR is an essential part of the communications and marketing mix. I just want to expand on an important point made by Rowan.

It’s this:

If your goal is to influence people through the media then you’re going to need a bigger boat.



You need to be active where they’re most active – in their Social spaces – as well as in traditional media.



(In fact, the media also needs to borrow this boat itself because the point of this little slide show is that their share of attention is fading fast.)

Here’s the PPT. It’s less than 20 slides and contains artwork of the highest calibre. Please give it your time, and let me know what you think…

Though some of the attendees had been dipping their toes into Social Media and the digital sphere, they were understandably wary of the suggestion that Online PR could potentially overthrow the long reign of media relations as the primary PR function. The skepticism in the room made for a lively exchange  – and we do love to provoke debate at C&M, even at the risk of ruffling the odd feather here and there. We’re passionate about what we do, and there’s nothing we enjoy more than talking about it, especially to non-believers.

My presentation at yesterday’s conference may have dragged some people out of their comfort zones, but it certainly got them thinking about the ‘traditional vs Online PR debate’ in a constructive way. I talked about the way we do Online PR at C&M, how this in itself is informed by ongoing changes in web user habits and the flow of information both Online and off, as well as the specialist tools and skills that we employ.

I wanted to get across how Online PR and media relations are very distinct disciplines, requiring different approaches and methods. That’s not to say that the skills learned in media relations aren’t valid and transferable to Online PR (both Roger and I come from traditional PR backgrounds), or that Online PR people can’t work with media relations people. My argument was that Online PR shouldn’t be viewed as an extension to existing PR set-ups, but as a specialist field in its own right.

There were some interesting and pertinent questions afterwards, and strong opinions from all sides. One of the main positive things picked up on was the fact that Online PR allows more tangible proof of ROI (return on investment) – something that traditional PR has never really been able to do. In a time of economic crisis when marketing budgets are being scrutinised more than ever, this is a very topical issue – especially in the motor industry.

I really enjoyed the event, and while I may have antagonised the odd traditionalist with my progressive views and ideas, I hope that at least some of the delegates went away feeling inspired. If you’re interested in my presentation, you can see the accompanying slides on Slideshare.

And if you’re too young to remember the birth of MTV, discover Buggles (the inspiration for this post’s title) here.

As first reported in The Metro earlier this year, Hotels.com has been doing sterling work to help us Brits get ourselves abroad as a ‘right, not a luxury‘ – coining the phrase ‘nanobreak’ in the process. Kind of like a mini-break (only shorter), a nanobreak is a one night trip which allows dedicated fun seekers, day trippers and urban adventurers to cram a well deserved holiday into 24 hours and a slimmer wallet.

Any why not? 2009 has been a bit of a shocker so far. Gordon Brown needs one. Hazel Blears has already taken one. Even I took one in March (I was very grumpy back then). Times may be tough, but we need to fight for our right to holiday and the nanobreak is the perfect relief for battle weary British recessionistas.

So for the next month or so, we’re helping Hotels.com to use a variety of Social Media smarts to promote the cause and get as many Brits as possible packing their bags for a one night stay.

The campaign encourages UK holiday makers to capture a little sunshine and share it with the rest of the world in the shape of a ‘nanolog.’ The idea is to tap in to the nano-Michael Palin in all of us and ask folks to create a series of nano travelogs that showcase the best bits of a nanobreak – in the shape of inspirational, nano-style YouTube snippets, Flickr snaps and Tweets (ie, a collection of little Social Media postcards).

In return, Hotels.com will reward the best of the bunch with an extended nanobreak in Rio (in conjunction with TAP Portugal), and runners up will each get a whopping £200 voucher for their next Hotels.com booking.

Our goal is to promote a very (very!) worthy cause and to help Hotels.com to drive up its number of nano summer bookings.

For further information about the campaign, check out the Hotels.com nanolog pages. You’ll see we’re using a broad selection of Social Media tools and widgets to present all the best British nanologs.

Campaign content, creative and production credits go to us. Design is by the very talented team at Hotels.com.

Behind the scenes there’s a whole lot of influencer analysis, monitoring, dashboarding and keen, creative implementation work from us, but you get the picture. Anyways, enough already. I’ve got a (nano) bag to pack…. Adios!

Here’s the result.

If you look closely you can see the strings that move my head and hands. Andy, meantime, really is as charming as he sounds on the phone. Rowan tells a lot of good jokes that make us laugh, and displays her outstanding grasp of grammar. Robin is wearing a shirt-and-tie-and-combat-shorts combo – and he thought he got away with it. And Mike… well, as usual, Mike is operating at the Vanguard of stuff that only Futureheads understand. (He also keeps a USB Owl on his desk, loaned to him by Rowan… but this doesn’t feature in the video as it was running algorithms at the time …and I think the fluffy thing on his lap is actually the knee of his raggedy old jeans – although I may be wrong.)

So, without further ado… Meet the C&M team:

And… here’s a little bit of what makes us all tick:

If you’d like to hire us for weddings, funerals, or bah mitzvahs, then please do get in touch via the comments box below.

Or, if you’re great like IBM, Hotels.com, Plain Lazy, Squiz, and our other much-loved clients and you want to do some challenging, valuable work in the world of Online PR and Social Media, then please do get in touch.

(PS: big plug for Jane. She’s brilliant. You can also follow her via @stylistbrighton and her Stylist Brighton YouTube channel. Recommended.)

This ‘101’ beginner’s guide will walk you through the Social Media campaign process, with practical tips and philosophical approaches, including:

• Putting the ‘public’ back into Public Relations
• Social Media as one big conversation
• The importance of researching your audience
• Some useful research tools
• The art of engagement
• Social Media campaign success stories

So wise up, read up, and get with the Social Media game…

The Online PR Agency Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Campaign Execution

Overview

This short paper gives you a ‘101’ view on how to research and implement a basic Online PR / Social Media Campaign.  Specifically, it offers some best practise advice on how to use Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and the Blogsphere for successfully seeding campaign ideas.  (If you’re a Facebook or LinkedIn addict don’t worry:  we’ll be writing a separate paper about Online PR in Social Networks very soon!)

Part 1: Social Media Campaign Philosophy

“The skills required in the Online world are very different to those practised in traditional Media Relations.”
Roger Warner, MD of C&M

It may have been said before, but I’m going to say it again: Online PR is putting the ‘public’ back into ‘public relations’. Gone are the days when us PR people have to rely on a third party (i.e. the mass media) to get a message ‘out there’, because Social Media has opened up a wealth of opportunities for talking directly with your customers. And for this we use a Social tool set and a more human approach.

But this also means that we assume direct responsibility for what is said, and are liable to take the flack if we say something offensive or inappropriate. The phrase ‘outreach’ has been banded about a lot in relation to Social Media and Online PR campaigns lately – but we try to avoid it here at C&M. ‘Outreach’ seems to imply a one-way, outbound transaction with external parties (it’s a term often associated with the disenfranchised – homeless people, drug users, etc.), whereas our best work is all about give and take on a very intimate level. Talking to Joe Public is an entirely different ballgame to media schmoozing, and should always be approached as a conversation rather than a pitch.

Social Media Campaigns – Just like a face-to-face chat, but online.

Once you get your head round these essential differences, Social Media campaigns can be a huge amount of fun and massively rewarding – in a much more personal, direct and measurable way than, say, seeing an article placed in a magazine. It’s not about firing off press releases, sucking up to journalists and counting the column inches, it’s about starting a dialogue, that should – if you do it right – take on a life of its own,  distribute your message, and drive warm blooded web traffic.

Part 2: Social Media Campaign Research

“True friendship consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and value.” Ben Jonson

The best conversations in life are those we have with like-minded, interested, interesting people who are good at listening as well as talking. The same goes for Social Media conversations, so don’t waste your time and energy on someone who really isn’t bothered about what you’ve got to say.

In most cases, the quality and relevance of your followers/friends/contacts is more important than the quantity. It may look impressive to have a 1000+ Twitter following, but how many of them are actually contributing anything to your cause? And who they are and where they come from is often less important than how they can help you.  In Online PR terms, your media can be a customer, a partner, a consultant, a member of staff or a reporter – the important thing is that they care for you and are able to extend the conversation around your brand.

Identifying the right audience is the first step to good Online PR practice, and there are hundreds of tools out there to help you do it. Here are just a few of our favourite research tools for Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and the blogsphere, plus some general notes on monitoring and managing potential contacts.

Part 3: Social Media Research Tools for Online PR Campaigns

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Twitter

• Twellow is a really useful directory of Twitter users, because it lets you search people’s bios as well as their names. So for a UK-specific campaign that’s promoting new web design technology, you could type in “Web Designer UK” to get a list of relevant users.
• Tweetbeep is a bit like Google Alerts for Twitter. It allows you to set up keyword specific searches that can be turned into alerts or RSS feeds so you can receive alerts whenever someone is Tweeting about a specific subject. The tool’s advanced search also letsyou can also specify a location: for example ‘500 miles from London’ would show you any tweets on your chosen subject sent within that radius.
• Twitter Karma is particularly handy if you’re taking on an existing Twitter account that needs some TLC or if your current profile is in need of a follower overhaul. It shows you who is following you back and which of your followers you are also following. The main advantage of Twitter Karma over FriendorFollow (another popular Twitter housekeeping tool) is that you can speed up this process by bulk following and unfollowing.
• When deciding whether to follow someone on Twitter, we also take into account the velocity, sociability and lucidity of their tweets, as well as the obvious number of followers and weight of second-order followers. Twinfluence is a good tool for measuring most of these things.

Flickr

• The most straightforward way of searching for suitable Flickr contacts is within Flickr itself. The ‘search for members’ function allows you to find people by their interests, which makes it easy to target relevant people. Of course, users may not put all of their passions into their bios, so another way to approach it is by tracking down photos on a certain subject and tracing them back to their creator.
• For a photography competition we’re currently running with Plain Lazy, I used Compfight to find pictures of skaters, surfers and other relevant communities. It shows you a big page of thumbnails on your chosen search query – and this is much easier and less time consuming to browse than Flickr’s own search engine.

YouTube

As with Flickr, it’s often easiest to search for photos rather than users, and for this I recommend using Google’s advanced video search, which gives you more options than YouTube’s own search engine. (Note – I’m suggesting that you leave the YouTube environment to conduct YouTube searches here.) This also allows you to turn your searches into RSS feeds, so that you can monitor new content via your RSS reader app without needing to go back and do new searches each time.

Blogs

To identify relevant blogs, we use a combination of Google blog search and Technorati, and then rate their influence manually using sites such as delicious and by counting the level of backlinkage and extent of connectivity within blogger communities. We also use Linkdiagnosis.com to validate the quality and relevance of the backlinks.

Another Great Multi-Purpose Tool

For an all-round handy tool, Social Mention is a Social search engine that pulls content from across all Social Media. This is especially useful if you don’t have time to search each platform individually.

The Influencer Monitoring Dashboard

Once we’ve identified the users and communities to target, anything with an RSS feed gets plugged into our campaign Influencer Monitoring Dashboard (we use Netvibes, but any RSS aggregator would work), so that we can keep tabs on new activity in real time. The Influencer Monitoring Dashboard is also where we collate all our keyword searches for blogs, news sites and any other relevant online communities. (If you’re interested about how we do this and what a Dashboard looks like, then just email us or tweet us at @contentmotion and we can share some examples with you.)

The C&M Influencer Monitoring Dashboard

Part 4: Social Media Campaign Implementation

“A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.” Truman Capote 

Once we’ve identified the communities and individuals to target for a campaign, it’s time to start talking. There’s no secret formula or etiquette Bible for getting this right – we just rely on our instinct and approach it as we would any sensible conversation. You wouldn’t burst into the middle of a club you had just joined and start shouting about yourself without getting to know people first, and the same rule goes for online communications. 

Our advice here is to just be friendly and polite, contribute to existing conversations and be up front about why you are there. If you’ve done your job right in the identification process, it shouldn’t be too hard to get people listening.  Another key thought here is utility.  People are more likely to listen to you if you have something useful to contribute to a discussion – which in practice means servicing their agenda in the first instance and not yours.  In this context, a blog comment or a forum post will address a need – it won’t be an advertisement.

Social Media Campaigns in Action

Here are some examples of recent Social Media Campaigns that have worked well for us, and some tips as to how we implemented them.

Twitter

A recent campaign we worked on with IBM proved that Twitter can be a real force in Online PR, especially for niche campaigns directed at tight-knit communities. The aim of the campaign was to drive sign-up to a virtual event inside IBM’s Virtual Forbidden City and for our Twitter activity we took a two-pronged attack: enlisting the help of IBM staff and brand influencers to spread the word on our behalf, as well as targeting potential event attendees directly. We didn’t need a massive following to create a buzz because having a small but well-connected and active community was just as effective.

As well as talking about the event, we did our best to make our Tweets interesting by sharing news stories, replying to relevant questions and generally interacting. The campaign was a success, with the majority of traffic to the main site coming from Twitter.  (You can check out the full case study here.)

Flickr

We’re currently working on a photography competition with Plain Lazy, that’s using Flickr as the host platform. To get things going, we started leaving invitations on relevant pictures, asking the photographers to add them to our competition pool and explaining the campaign incentives (great prizes, etc). We mostly chose pictures that already had a number of comments, so that the note would also be seen by the previous commenters in their Flickr activity feed. After a few days, the campaign took on a life of its own and photos started appearing in the Flickr pool without being directly invited.

YouTube

In much the same vein as Flickr, YouTube is all about the comment box – although the main disadvantage is that web links are disabled in YouTube, and comments tend to be less friendly and constructive than in Flickr. In other words, it’s less of a conversational environment than Flickr, making For an upcoming competition with Hotels.co.uk, we’re getting around this by making a promotional video that will be hosted on a dedicated Hotels.co.uk channel, and can also be posted underneath relevant videos as a ‘video response’.

Blogs

Perhaps the biggest minefield of all Social Media interactions, blogs also have the biggest potential for reaching a large audience, and coverage tends to be longer-lived and carry more weight than most flash-in-the-pan Twitter stories because of the backlinkage they carry and their general permanence. But how to talk to bloggers without being perceived as a self-promoting PR menace?

For the IBM Virtual Forbidden City event, we used our Influencer Monitoring Dashboard to monitor activity on the blogs we’d identified as relevant and influential in our initial research and analysis. Whenever a related post came up, we’d then leave a (relevant, appropriate) response, along with a link to the event site – or we’d alert our IBM team to do likewise). This not only helped drive traffic to the site and signups, but it also resulted in follow up blog posts, comments and Tweets about the event.
 

Conclusion: Social Media Campaigns, Sorted

So, with a few handy tools, a bit of imagination and a willingness to research the playing field and get stuck in, there’s really nothing that scary about running Social Media campaigns. Think of it like blind-dating: find someone with similar interests and hobbies, work out a suitable place to meet up, remember your Ps and Qs, and don’t spend all night talking about yourself. If all goes to plan, you’ll be engaged before you know it…

Delphine Remy-Boutang, Worldwide Social Media Marketing Manager, IBM Software Group
(You can follow Delph on Twitter via @DelphRB….)

Social Media Campaign Background

C&M and our PR Agency partners Text100 have been busy since the start of 2009 as the Online brains behind IBM Software Group’s Social Media action.

In our first project together we were charged with helping IBM to showcase all of the development smarts behind their Virtual Forbidden City, a breathtaking Second Life-like representation of a Chinese world from five hundred years ago.

IBM has more than a decade’s experience in creating successful cultural heritage projects, including the Vatican Library, the Pietà, Hermitage Museum, Eternal Egypt, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The creation of the Forbidden City as a Virtual World is designed to show how IBM can flex its software, hardware and consulting expertise to deliver large scale Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) that are capable of serving a variety of B2B and B2C application interests. In this example, IBM’s technology is being used to provide lasting cultural experiences that preserve learning and have a real social impact.

Social Media Campaign Challenge

As IBM’s Social Media Agency task force our challenge was two-fold:

• Help IBM to reach out to new (Online) audiences and educate them about IBM’s capabilities in the SOA arena
• Make this message – and the work done on the Virtual Forbidden City – relevant to a B2B audience

The Social Media space is relatively new for IBM. The over-riding project goal was to prove that Social Media could be a relevant channel in terms of lead generation and awareness campaigns. Under this brief, we devised a simple series of ‘Executive Briefings’ inside the VFC – and our challenge was to persuade people who normally dress in suits (and sandals) to create an avatar and let themselves loose for an afternoon in the virtual company of IBM’s development team.

Further information about the event and how it was positioned for prospective attendees can be viewed HERE!

Social Media Campaign Planning

From the outset the campaign plan was 100% Social and based on sound Online PR tactics. We used Social Media channels to build relationships with core IBM influencers who would be capable of helping us to spread the campaign message to the farthest (but most relevant) parts of the Web.

Tactically, we wanted Influential bloggers, Twitterers and groups/communities to learn about the event, get excited and communicate it to a wider audience on our behalf.

These tactics were straight out of the PR and ‘Acquisition’ handbook. We needed to raise awareness, drive traffic and have people sign up. Since our targets were extremely niche (IT Architects with a proven interest in SOA and enterprise Virtual Worlds environments), our strategy was to identify our influencer targets on a one-to-one basis, talk to them up front, and prove the value of what we were trying to do in a way that was meaningful to them – so that they in turn felt compelled to spread the word to their own audiences.

Social Media Campaign Research

Research and analysis was essential to the success of the campaign. Whilst we had an excellent platform for our work (an online, virtual version of one of the world’s most popular tourist sites) the boundaries for engagement were narrow.

With this in mind, and in line with our standard campaign approach, the first part of the project involved a large amount of ‘Influencer Research’ and target planning. Using our full Online PR kit bag, we establish which blogs, forums, Social Network groups, and Twitterers would be most fruitful in terms of our initial engagement.

These broke down neatly into two camps: ‘IBM Evangelists’ and ‘Technocrats.’ Our research provided a platform and a series of target lists for both, which ended up as extensive Excel spreadsheets that ranked each type of target by relative ‘Influence’ value to our campaign. As with all our work, the emphasis was on the person’s ability to spread our messages effectively. In PageRank-fashion, we produced a series of ‘top 20’ lists of influential IBM employees, partners, customers, pundits, groups and communities, and Online media.

The next stage was to plug all of this information into our (bespoke) Online Influencer Monitoring and Engagement Dashboard (see below for a screenshot).

The Dashboard – which is an essential tool in every one of our Online PR Campaigns – became the basis for our implementation work with IBMVFC. It gave us a real-time view of all of the relevant conversations in which we needed to participate, as well as an immediate view on what our key targets were talking about at any given moment in time.

Social Media Campaign Execution: Twitter Central in Five Weeks

Once the campaign web pages (and registration process) were launched, we were ready to go. (Incidentally, we created all of the creative content and Online properties for the campaign.)

We had five weeks between launch and event.

Twitter was chosen as the central tool for communicating the campaign to Influencers and prospective attendees because it gave us the quickest way to establish relationships and build a following around the event activity. You can check out the campaign Twitter profile here.

Alongside the campaign registration pages and our Twitter profile, we built a variety of Social Media channels to enable people to take our content and repurpose it for their own uses. These included a YouTube video channel with event previews, and a Flickr profile to share images of the VFC environment.

We also used a Twitter hashtag (#IBMVFC) to enable us to ‘stream’ any conversations around the event. This was applied liberally throughout the campaign by us, and all attendees and Influencers were encouraged to do likewise whenever they were Tweeting about it.

Once these properties had been established, we went into hardcore ‘implementation’ mode.

The campaign Dashboard was the primary tool for monitoring and listening to our Influencers and all of the Online conversations around the VFC and SOA-related themes. Whenever we found something relevant, we got involved, providing helpful or interesting contributions to the discussion rather than simply promoting our own ends or ‘spamming’. We responded to forum posts, blog comment threads, Tweets and re-Tweets. Our goal was to raise awareness of the event – particularly amongst our target influencer community – and to create conversations about the event which would drive traffic to the sign up pages.

A key part of our execution work involved working with the IBM client team to help them use the same tool sets (especially the Dashboard) and join in with the engagement / conversation work. We also relied on a variety of traditional marketing channels such as IBM’s internal comms network for Intranet posts about the event, internal newsletters, sales team mailings, and good old fashioned media relations. All of this helped us to create buzz and excitement amongst the wider IBM network and our target influencers.

Social Media Campaign Results

As part of the project, we presented full campaign metrics back to the global IBM Social Media Marketing team and also to our Social Media Agency community via a Measurement Camp meetup in May. You can check out the slides we produced for Measurement Camp below (they contain full campaign results data)…

IBM VFC Social Media Campaign Measurement      

View more OpenOffice presentations from Roger Warner.

We aced our registration target by a factor of two, and we narrowly missed our attendee numbers. A host of blue chip prospects attended the event.

Along the way, we also…

• Drove 4,000+ visitors to our campaign pages (we doubled our target)
• Generated 20+ blog posts about the event
• Established a Twitter following of over 350 (very) niche followers
• Drove 700+ views of our campaign YouTube videos
• Drove 200+ views of our campaign Flickr images

Did we deliver on our objectives? Yes, but there were lessons learned. See the Slideshare PPT for more on this score.

Our campaign categorically proved that Social Media is ripe for niche, B2B, special interest communications activity. We delivered a bunch of relevant, warm leads with whom IBM is now in discussion in high ticket solution areas. What’s more, at the end of the process, we handed over a whole kit bag of assets that can be reused for future Social Media work: a living Influencer Dashboard, a stack of Influencer target lists and a live Twitter following packed with people that really care for IBM solutions.

Unlike reality TV, new Google tricks get us genuinely excited here at C&M. Quite a few new-cool-things have been added – although only to a limited series of domains at first. Many of these changes are in response to the challenge of sprightly search-engine-upstarts who could pose a threat to Google’s search supremacy.

Throwing down the gauntlet are (among many others):

Wolfram Alpha: Hyped as a Google beater, but still quite a different beast. Go and sample its utopian streets and avenues – or just type something in. It speaks another language, based on a different grammatical system. English. Basque.

Mahalo: A ‘Human Powered’ search engine, results are filtered through user participation and involvement. Good idea but, alas, the results aren’t great….yet.

Twitter: Not strictly a search engine – but it’s real time updates are appealing for some searchers and newshound journos, as opposed to the more static default Google SERPS.

Google has responded with:

Support for Microformats: An extended, semantic, form of meta data, that allows extra meaning and context to be displayed in response to a search engine query. For instance, a search result for a specific product search may contain a review rating – a bit like a mini website preview rather than a description.

Added search options: Results can now be categorically filtered. Much of this functionality (e.g – search by date) was previously available through advanced search. Other new bits ‘n’ bobs like the ‘wonder wheel’ add an extra visual and semantic edge to searches – along the same lines as Hakia.

So what does this mean and, two weeks on, how are things looking/changing/(brace)evolving?

At the top level, this means that users are given more scope for customisation of search results (arguably bad for SEO), rather than being, effectively, lumped with the ten sites that Google chooses. However, this isn’t really anything new – a few months back, ‘SearchWiki’ was introduced, allowing results to be deleted and adjusted (using the two icons at the side of each result).

In my humble opinion, it’s unlikely that the majority of users will take much notice – at least not for a while. Of course, the web amigos (and amigas) will embrace these changes like their lost daschund that’s just returned after five gruelling nights in the hills; others will just click on. Web literacy still has to catch up before there is any behavioural or, even, psychological change.

It will take a while for the billions of web pages to catch up with most of the changes. Even finding a representative query for this post was tricky.

While some of us are infuriated with the SPAM, irrelevance, or just plain dullness of the ten results that fall onto our screens in response to our keyword demands; others won’t take too much notice. Sometimes people can be strangely resistant to the new, even if it makes something easier or better, providing that ‘something’ was never too much of a problem in the first place.

It’s easy to get caught in the internet bubble but l don’t think these changes represent any immediate, or significant, change in the way the general public searches…yet.

Poor Susan.

Agree / Disagree?

Broadly speaking, we’re divided into Content/Creative, Analytics and Project Management – but because we’re an inherently inquisitive and enthusiastic bunch, everyone likes to pitch in to a bit of everything when they can. 

Now we’re after more of an all-rounder who can rise to the many and varied challenges that crop up in an Online PR Agency on a daily basis. By the very nature of the business, it stands to reason that we’re more likely to judge applicants on their online presence than by their CVs, at least in the first instance. 

We need to know that whoever joins the team is already ‘gets’ the whole Social Media/Online PR thing – whether it’s on a professional or personal level is less important than having someone who is fully immersed, and versed in online ‘etiquette’. If I Google you and all I get is an unloved blog or incoherent Twitter stream, you’re not going to make the cut.

Having said all that, the CV is still important, not least because it is in itself a promotional document, and we are after all in the promotional business. If you can’t adequately plug yourself, you’re unlikely to be able to do a good job for someone else. This considered, it staggers me how many are still submitted with shocking typos and grammatical errors, especially for a job that expressly asks for writing aptitude. 

What we want to see is a pithy and succinct pitch that sums up your skills and experience and gives us some idea of your writing style. You’re applying for an Online PR job, so it’s fine to write in an more informal Online PR style. There are plenty of ‘writing for the web’ tomes out there, but really if you are web-minded enough it should be pretty instinctive.

And when all is said and done, that is what it boils down to: instinct. As a recruiter, you are forming a first impression about someone from two sides of A4 and, these days, a stack of web links. Regardless of how many ‘A’ grades or sparkling references someone has, your instinct will tell you whether they are the right kind of person for the job, based on the personality that does or doesn’t shine through. 

It’s exciting to be on the front line of this next round of hiring as the company continues to fly, and I’m really looking forward to introducing the next bright spark in due course. Watch this space!

Photo of Retro Boxing Gloves by Respres on Flickr

For the copywriting purists out there, some of these content concepts can feel brutish at first …but our advice is always to work it. Content Optimisation can be the difference between a campaign that sticks with a top 10 Google ranking and one that sinks without a trace.

One popular misconception is that ‘if you write lots of great content then Google – and the rest of the Interweb – will take care of things.’

In many ways this is true. The best way to get people talking about you and linking to your pages is to create a body of stuff that sings and is audio/visually arresting. Creativity is always the platform. But (and this is a big ‘but’) you need to get with the Content Optimisation tip if you really want your work to fly.

If Marcel Proust were alive and blogging today, he’d score highly on content and volume. Swann’s Way is a thousand rambling pages of incredible ideas. But in the first instance I doubt that Google would like it as much as we readers do. (OK, I have to admit, I’m currently stuck on chapter three – but that’s another (slow) story.)

From a pure search and crawl perspective, Google tends to enjoy simple pages that have a basic structure and repeat one or two central ideas ….a lot. (In the example of this page, that’s CONTENT OPTIMISATION. Yes, C-O-N-T-E-N-T O-P-T-I-M-S-A-T-I-O-N.) Google is an unsophisticated beast in this respect.

Happily, the principles of Content Optimisation are simple. Anybody can get with the program in quick time, and doing it well should never come at the expense of brand equity or creativity. (I’d hold up our own Online PR Agency Services page as a good example of how to do it well – we’re an ‘Online PR Agency‘ …you follow?)

If you’re interested in the science of Content Optimisation, then check out our Don’t Panic best practice guide to Online PR. You can grab it as a free download via Scribd (below). It’ll give you a a series of simple tick lists for doing great online content …plus a bunch of creative ideas for good Online PR execution.

Oh, and if you read it, then do tell me what you make of it. Feedback makes me happy

We’ve come a long way in the marketing industry since those misogynistic days, and watching the series has made me appreciate the kind of creative job I do even more. I was especially tickled by a scene in the second episode, where one of the male characters is giving a new PA the grand tour, and tries to encourage her ambition by saying that a few female copywriters do exist, even if only to write about ‘Lady’ products.

Thankfully noone at C&M is about to imply that my contributions as the token girl in the office should be so restricted, but it does raise an interesting (if out-dated) point about how all our brains are wired differently and sometimes suited to different tasks. Whether it be a male/female, radical/traditional or experienced/freshfaced combination – every member of a creative team will come to a campaign with a unique mindset and that’s exactly why it’s so important to bounce ideas around rather than working in isolation.

This is really just a ‘note to self’ that the best creative ideas are the ones we come up with as a team, all guns blazing, and that different perspectives are a good thing. As an agency on the cutting edge of this new thing called Online PR, there are no hard and fast rules or tested theories for what we’re doing, and we need to keep our heads together to make sure we’re crusing in the right direction.

That’s why every campaign we do kicks off with an ‘all hands on deck’ ideas-generating session. Thanks to the brainstorm-friendly C&M retro sofas (another leaf we took out of the 1960s Ad Man book) these are invariably pretty productive. Gotta love them vintage sofas. Now all we need is for everyone to follow Roger’s lead with some old-school snappy-dressing and we’ll be away…

Common sense is delivered via a bunch of sensible quantitative metrics for measuring Social Media effectiveness, broadly around notions of traffic acquisition, conversions and ‘coverage’. The report breaks this down by result: traffic measurements, actions, conversation, relevancy, credibility, and interactions – all of which can be used, matrix-style, to assess whether or not a campaign is sticking or gaining play. This tool set will give clients in every sector a sensible view of how to measure their returns.

Importantly, the report doesn’t provide guidance on softer brand benefits like sentiment or share of voice, both of which can be broadly viewed as comparative exercises, and are now being served by a variety of paid for monitoring tools.

As we’ve described elsewhere, C&M thinks this distinction is important, and one that speaks to a rather muddled view of the marketing possibilities that Social Media can provide.

In short, when it comes to planning Social Media campaigns, we ought to be asking not what Social Media can do for us but what we want to be doing in the first place.

Social Media is, without doubt, creating a mass of exciting opportunities to interact with consumers, listen, learn and influence. But tactically speaking I find many people still blinded by the glamour of it all and not focused enough on objectives.

‘Doing a Facebook’ doesn’t constitute a well conceived campaign that can be measured. Driving awareness, acquisitions and conversions does. As does using Social Media for learning and education.

The IAB metrics provide us with some sensible ideas for measuring tangible outcomes, and I applaud them. At C&M we use them all the time – we generally get paid when we drive signups, purchases, etc.

But there’s work to be done on the rest of it. Sentiment analysis and brand monitoring isn’t yet a perfect science with tools like Brandwatch, Radian6, Social Radar and Attentio. Pretty pictures aside, they provide value as a comparative benchmark amongst brands but they need to sharpen up in terms of the quality of their data sets. We find that manual analysis is often more effective (if more expensive).

(Measurement on this score is, however, being driven by the Social Media industry itself in the shape of initiatives like MeasurementCamp…. and we agencies need to be doing more to establish the tools and frameworks for it.)

From C&M’s point of view, the best approach to measurement is driven by objectives. Different outcomes should be driven by different metrics. Broadly speaking, we divide these into four areas:

1. Acquisition and conversions (campaign-style work): for which the IAB report provides a great template
2. Influencer discovery (establishing which parts of the Interweb we should be tuning into and working with): analysis of who’s saying what, and which things we should care for, as a platform for our work
3. Brand monitoring and conversation (listening and interacting): understanding what’s being said about a brand, in a fast, actionable format
4. Broader activities that touch on other non-traditional marketing areas such as Customer Support and Sales: for example, using Social Media for sales prospect intelligence in B2B environments and managing service and support enquiries

Each of these objectives is fundamentally different. The IAB metrics, naturally, speak to the first. For the others there’s no silver bullet, but much of it is obvious. Support costs can be measured. Lead nurturing can be assessed in terms of deal closure time. Conversations can be tracked and charted around notions of sentiment, and influence can be established in some very tangible, quantitative and Google-like ways (eg backlinkage. followings, relevancy and PageRank).

Which leads me to IAB’s Weird Media Science…

Of the objectives described above, only the first fits well within a ‘Media’ mentality. In a nutshell, it’s a mistake to assess the value of Social Media purely in terms of bottom line Media spend measurement. This mindset is born of the Media Buyer and sits nicely within their comfort zone, but it’s not the only fruit.

The IAB report intro nicely summerises the approach:

The most profound difference is that Social Media has added a participatory element where an individual not only receives information but has the ability to take part in the creation and distribution of content.

This kind of assessment makes my skin crawl and suggests that the IAB still has a long way to go if its to grasp the full potential of all this ‘Social’ stuff. In short, Social Media isn’t really Media and the language the IAB uses to describe it betrays its heritage and its need to place Social Media in a convenient box that doesn’t require too much thinking on the part of Marketing Managers.

Whilst the world needs to know that Social Media has a ‘participatory element where an individual not only receives information but has the ability to take part in [it],’ its real value can only really be understood by people brave enough to imagine a Media-free environment where the most important currency isn’t a brute (transmit and receive) transaction between consumer and billboard, but in the myriad of conversations, communities and dialogues that are occurring with or without the help of a Media spend. And this is the stuff we need to be getting our arms around…

In my view, this type of measurement is unlikely to come from the Advertising fraternity: they’re too busy trying to build another microsite and/or TV spot. But more on this later….

In a nascent business, labels are important because they allow us to make a break from the past and they help us to describe the ‘newsness’ of what we’re doing.

A year or so ago ‘Social Media Agencies’ were ‘Digital Agencies,’ ‘Digital Agencies’ were ‘Search Marketing Agencies,’ and ‘Online PR Agencies‘ didn’t really exist. (PR Agencies, meantime, seem happy to stick with being PR Agencies, aside from a few brave souls who have the guts to strike out and rebrand themselves).

A year of so ago not many brands were getting overly excited about YouTube, and Social Networking was the preserve of nerds. Today all this has changed. (And we say thanks to folks like @StephenFry for kick starting the transition.) Social Media is without doubt the most important trend in marketing since the Interweb became broadly accessible. And it’s all new, new, new.

Right now, as I’ve written elsewhere, there is something of a land grab going on to establish the right kinds of models to deliver serious marketing and communications services to brands who are are sensible enough to be making steps in Social Media. As of today, the race is on to prove lasting commercial value in using Twitter for Traffic Acquisition, Blogging for Buzz, and User Generated Media channels for Brand and Reputation Monitoring. That this will happen there is no doubt. Everything in this domain is measureable, accessible and very, very direct and cost-effective.

As such, the Marketing 101 Handbook demands that those delivering services in this area position themselves in new ways. Agencies everywhere are looking for opportunities to shed their skins. SEO is old hat and rather boring. Web Consultancy even more so. Slower moving agencies are also shedding staff as bright young things see new opportunities to strike it alone and make a dedicated play in this space.

What we’re left with is a bit of a semantic soup as firms large and small tussle for different ways into the Social Media and Online PR story. Those with SEO backgrounds will tell you that Social Media breeds good link equity. They are right – it does. Web Consultancies and Digital Agencies will tell you that Social Media opens up new opportunites to deliver new services to customers. They’re also right – it does, in spades. Big Advertising Agencies will tell you that it creates great new opportunites for branding – and they’re right too. As are traditional PR Agencies who see Social Media as another outlet for Media Relations-type services with bloggers.

From a client’s perspective, however, this is a horrible muddle of terms, concepts, and roles and responsibilities. And it’s not going to improve any time soon. No doubt, the right solution for them is to single source all of this service capability from one supplier. The problem is that this Babelfish doesn’t exist in a mature form just yet, and won’t do so until we’re well and truly on the other side of this recession. Large agencies need to be either sat on a stock pile of cash or a little bit mad to be investing in new, hybrid things right now.

So we’re left with a bunch of very capable, very smart, and relatively small firms getting their knickers in a twist (and getting into heated debates) over labels and the like for the forseeable future. All of which doesn’t particularly help a brand when it comes to navigating new fields and getting on with the business of marketing.

From my perspective (and from a client’s perspective) this maelstrom is actually very important. It’s going to separate the wheat from the chaff. PR Agencies that promise digital but can’t deliver will be found out. Digital firms that claim to run PR-like services without proper teams behind them will also lose. The winners are likely to be the big boys with the guts and the wallets to match, and the specialist agencies (like ourselves) who bite the bullet and jump in at the deep end.

For the record, though, I’d like to say that most of the new breed of agencies are in the same game and anything and everything that gets labelled a ‘Social Media’ or ‘Online PR’ campaign or service is, essentially, the same thing…

Here’s why:

• SEO is no longer a technical discipline. It’s all about great on-site content and the ability to spin this and other interlinked content snippets across a (Social) network to valuable parts of the web. I’m not making this up, Google is. For this reason, SEO’s are now firmly in the business of PR and content marketing (ie, Online PR is a new SEO). Sound content strategies will drive organic traffic acquisition.


• Social Media Marketing isn’t about building Facebook pages. It’s all about using new Social platforms to listen, learn, participate in conversations, and serve customers in new ways. It’s also a tactical play to help gain content distribution. And this, ultimately, is a traffic acquisition thought. If done well, it (conversations and content distribution) will also have a very positive effect on a brand’s Google ranking. For this reason, Digital and Social Media Agencies need their practices to be rooted firmly in the realms of SEO. In other words, the best Social Media plays will be SEO plays by proxy (and PR principles will drive them).


• PR, for the bright sparks among us, is no longer about smile and dial and emailing a press release to a reporter. (No, that’s just media relations… year in year out.) It’s an opportunity to change the game and start offering services that combine all of the above into one, concise package. Doing content and relationships, and being ‘Public’ is, after all, part of PR’s heritage. Those agencies that are boiling down the best of it into a model that’s based on digital (SEO) smarts and progressive experimentation with Social Media and ‘Conversations’ are now capable of delivering some extremely exciting things.

In the meantime, one category will emerge out of all this as a winner. It might be Online PR, it might be Digital, it might be Social, or it might be something new (Social Public Digital Optimisation anyone? : )… but quite frankly that’s for the future.

For now, we need to get ahead and start delivering (and measuring, and proving). The labels we work under are important signals of change, but they are just a harbinger for 2010 and beyond. One thing’s for sure though: those who don’t step up and make the necessary changes – to their own branding, staff and skills – will be left on the sidelines as we others plough on.

Now, I know there’s a stack of smart people out there who feel strongly about this, so please do let me know your views… Labels: important or not?

We’re based in East Sussex, UK.

Despite the meltdown of the global banking system, we’re growing fast – and we’re hiring!

We really need a shiny, dynamic Online PR consultant type – someone who:

• Takes Twitter to bed
• Loves LinkedIn
• Maintains a rip-roaring blog
• Gets turned on by Google Analytics
• Writes a great headline (and sub-head, and body)
• Knows how to distribute, agitate, and generally get stuff into people’s faces online
• Understands the basic mechanics of SEO, web development, social media, and the rest
• Can successfully convey groovy web ideas to skeptical clients
• Argues about this stuff at the pub on a Friday
• ….and inspires maximum love and adoration in clients and colleagues alike

If this is you – and if you’re up for getting in at ground level with one of the hottest properties since the toaster – then drop us a line using the form below…

We’re based in Lewes, East Sussex – 10 minutes from Brighton and one of the finest places to eat, drink and be merry on the planet. (Boy, life is good here!) We work with a bunch of great clients and agencies, helping one and all to win new friends and influence people.

You’ll be working directly with MD Roger Warner as part of his team. He’s a nice guy who promises to help you get everything you want and more out of a digitally enhanced working life.

Did we mention the wonga? £25-30k, depending on experience.

We’d guess you’ll have around two or more years experience in doing the kind of things mentioned above – either in-house or at an agency. We’d assume you’re also extremely ambitious and are up for growing your role quickly within a real pocket rocket of a new-fangled web marketing firm. You may have a degree, but frankly it’s not that important to us. We only really care that you’re a really smart cookie.

See this page here for further information about our Online PR agency…

If you’ve read this far then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch using the form below…

Generally we’ll be talking about what the hell all this new-fangled Online PR and Social Media stuff can do for your bottom line… and how we’re helping folks like IBM to do great things. But, more than anything else, we’d love to hear what you’re doing with it. Much has been said lately about best to tackle it… So I’m really keen to know how brands are building new systems and processes to exploit the Online domain.

I’ll also be taking part in a panel discussion on Wednesday, entitled “Buzz Monitoring – How to Ensure you know what people are saying about your brand in social media, and what you can do to influence the conversation.” This one starts at midday, and I’ll be joined by a bunch of great people, including Tom Nixon of NixonMcinnes, Simon McDermott of Attentio, and Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Innovation at Orange.  Should be fun and learning, in equal measure.

Andy Keetch, my six foot five side kick and ace C&M consultant will be with me for the duration of the show.  Do stop by if you’re visiting… the coffee’s on us.

People want it, but they want to get it right, and it scares them. Here at C&M we are firm advocates of the common sense/jargon-free approach to Social Media and are on a mission to take all of the wizardry and witchcraft out of Online PR campaigns.

Clients are clambering for a piece of the Social Media pie and asking our advice on getting the most out of tools such as Twitter without abusing them. But whenever these conversations come up, the big question on everyone’s lips seems to be ‘how do we measure this stuff?’ It’s another major factor that complicates the whole Social Media process and is an extra worry for clients.

When you are used to dealing with press cuttings, circulation/listening figures and advertising value equivalents in traditional media PR campaign statistics, the relatively unfamiliar territory of Social Media can seem intimidatingly difficult to quantify.

The issue of measurement is a hot topic in the New Media and PR communities at the moment, with open movements such as the Social Media Measurement Camp springing up to discuss ways of capturing the effectiveness of Online PR campaigns.

At the last one of these gatherings, we heard from Beth Granter at The Good Agency and Robin Wilson at McCann  Erickson who shared recent experiences of Online PR campaigns and how they went about measuring and reporting their results.

One of the key things that came up was how important it is to establish the parameters by which the campaign will be measured before you even get going. To turn the question back on the client and ask what they are hoping to achieve from engaging with Social Media in the first place makes it much easier to present meaningful reports once the campaign is in full swing.

This process is more straightforward if a campaign has specific goals in mind – e.g. event/membership sign-ups, purchases, conversions etc. But when you are in the realms of a more general branding/awareness effort, it becomes trickier to quantify. In these early days of Online PR, we have very few high profile campaigns against which to benchmark ourselves, making the various stats and reports seem somewhat lacking in context.

So How Do We Measure Social Media?

As well as the obvious measures such as number of followers/posts/comments – which can be manually counted – a whole range of tools are available for calculating the effectiveness of every kind of Social Media activity. For example, Twitter Grader, Twinfluence and TweetStats will give you a handle on the weight and reach of your Twitter campaign, whereas Flickr has its own built in stats package (pro accounts only) to rate picture views etc.

Companies such as Brandwatch and Radian6 offer a more formalised approach to the process with their all-encompassing measurement packages, but it is possible to capture most of the information yourself, albeit in a more piecemeal fashion.

At C&M, we find that taking a campaign ‘snapshot’ at regular intervals is the most practical and useful way of tracking campaign success; whether this be daily, weekly or monthly depends on the overall duration.

Presenting this information to clients is another important factor to get right – you want to give as much relevant intelligence as possible without it becoming unwieldy and overwhelming. Our preferred format includes a ‘quantitative’ segment for the above statistics, plus a more traditional PR-inspired ‘clippings’ section to give a feel for what is being said. This gives clients something more familiar with which to identify, whilst also showing a more balanced picture between the volume and quality of coverage.

Of course measurement isn’t just about making clients happy, it’s about learning what works and what doesn’t so we can improve our campaign tactics in future. And in these early days of Social Media and Online PR, it’s all about the learning and evolving. So as things continue to change and develop, we’ll keep on sharing our thoughts on the subject, but by all means do tell us yours as well – we’re all ears…