I’m interested in everything but of course my attention has been drawn to the education tack – it’s kind of my thing!  Last month I was a keynote speaker at the iDocQ colloquium on the subject of academic researchers and social media, needless to say collaboration was a central element of the presentation.

What I presented was a pretty narrow view of the possibilities that the education track can provide during Social Media Week.  We also have use of social media in the classroom, for learning, teaching social media basics, researching social media, connecting and collaborating with other educational providers, the list goes on…

Personally, I have a few things planned for Social Media Week including some research (you’ll see me running around with a video camera – I’ll need to get over my fear of being captured on camera first) and the launch of accredited social media qualifications in association with the University of Strathclyde.  I may see if I can find the time to ‘educate’ businesses on how consumers evaluate consumer reviews… it seems that many still don’t want to use the collaborative power of reviews in business decision making.

However, there is still a lot of scope for opening up the track with some more experimental and experiential events.  What would you like from the track?  What would you expect from an education track at Social Media Week?

The page received over 3,000 likes in four days, upon analysis Cellan-Jones found that the page was more popular in certain countries, particularly Egypt.  The UK and US markets were relatively underwhelmed by the offering but they were targeted in the advertising.  The research highlighted the issue with fake Facebook accounts de-valuing Facebook’s advertising system and poses questions into the value of ‘Likes’.

Personally I don’t think the results are that surprising.  I’ve written on this subject before – about asking for Facebook ‘Likes’.  The Cellan-Jones experiment is relatively similar but it looks at the impact of paid advertising.  I think that one of the main issues here is what metrics we are using to gauge the success of a page.  In this case the number of ‘likes’ has been used as a success metric.  Clearly this research shows that the number of ‘likes’ a page receives is not an accurate indicator of success.

We have a responsibility to get the measurement right – what metrics matter?  If we look at motor vehicles, horsepower is measured.  However horsepower is only important because some bright sparks decided this would be the metric.  Horsepower would mean nothing if performance had not been originally measured this way.  The million dollar question is what metrics should be used in social?

Our fascination with numbers and of course the need to justify social media spend to senior executives has left the metrics of social media on a cliff edge.  I read a lot about metrics and I don’t always agree with what is being said, you probably don’t either.

In the Cellan-Jones study, the paid advertising was indicative of asking for ‘likes’.  The advert generated awareness and the near 3,000 people ‘liking’ the ‘virtual bagel’ page highlights this but the quality and value of the ‘likes’ generated is under question.  The ‘virtual bagel’ page did not earn ‘likes’ in the same way a real brand or business would.  Current customers of these brands and businesses may ‘like’ the page in a bid to increase the intrinsic value of the brand after consumption of the brands products or services.  This ‘like’ is earned and I would say is more valuable.

If you want to look at marketing theory, social media channels form part of the augmented product.  Social media could mean an increase in the brands value in the eyes of the consumer – increasing the bond and consumption of the brands value after (or before) the actual consumption of the product or service.  This view overcomes the narrow view that social media is just for marketing, we have seen it’s not.

The Cellan-Jones study highlighted that people will ‘like’ just about anything and that there is a real question into the types of people generating these ‘likes’ we now need to move beyond social media marketing and ask what the customers generating the ‘earned’ likes would want from the social channels.

In my own work I have been exploring the intangible benefits of social media in the eyes of the consumer.  Such value cannot be easily measured but does incorporate this notion of increasing the value of the brand in the eyes of the consumers generating ‘earned’ likes.  Obviously marketing is important in the development of social media tactics but perhaps we shouldn’t lose sight of increasing the brands value and brand equity in the race to get a million ‘likes’ – who knows who these people are, if even real at all.

What’s your thoughts?  Have you ever found a good example of social media measurement?  This blog looks particularly at Facebook but let’s open it up to the whole social sphere.

In most instances a researcher identifies a potential research topic from his/her life experiences, more so than not in sociological research. My PhD research journey too started with a similar real life issue. I am a very introvert kind of person and I have often realized that in public gatherings, I could hardly interact with strangers in a comfortable manner. I often used to face the difficulty of starting a discussion. I thought, if its so difficult for me to initiate discussions in such short meetings, how difficult would it be for community managers to initiate discussions (read Facebook posts) on a regular and daily basis. When I drew an analogy between my real life problem with that of community manager’s daily activities, it fascinated me. That was a Eureka moment for me as I could identify a research problem which was not only relevant but also interesting for me to pursue.

Academic literature in marketing domain highlights that role of individual marketing manager in a phenomenon has received less attention from researchers, while the focus has always been on the phenomenon and its impact on brand / organization. It made sense to me as, we hardly appreciate the chef who prepared the food, instead we discuss about the ingredients. But, it needs to be understood that it’s the chef who decides what should be added and how much to ensure tasty food. Similarly, community manager of a brand is a key resource who understands the brand and would play a key role in deciding on right content strategy that brand needs to follow to ensure satisfactory customer engagement. So, I adopted a “process-oriented” research rather than a “variance” approach to unravel the content generation process phenomenon that community manager follows to generate content on a daily basis for their brand.

As limited literature support was available, I chose a phenomenological research design wherein I am interviewing community managers to understand the activities they follow to generate content that is engaging enough.

So far, it has been a great experience and I am glad to find some similarities that exist in how community managers approach the content generation process, which I suppose would be a great learning resource for the future generation.

Author bio

Anandan is a PhD student from India. His research interests are social media marketing, community building on social media, content strategy in social media, measuring RoI in social media, etc. He has published couple of teaching case studies on social media content strategy which are registered at Richard Ivey School of Business. He has also published research papers in international journals. He could be followed here: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.

After the success of last year’s SMWGla we have a big responsibility on our shoulders to make this year’s Social Media Week even better.  I’ve had my thinking cap on the past couple of months and I’m moving in a direction of experiential social media marketing – If everything pulls together this will be pretty special (keep your fingers crossed for me).  In addition to this I’m planning on launching my accredited social media courses that are being developed in association with the University of Strathclyde.  An exciting time!

On a side note if you are in one of the other host cities and want to collaborate on a multi-city project please get in touch!

KILTR is also set to return with the KILTR Hub.  I had a fantastic time at the Old Hairdressers last year and we will be there again.  This year we will be hosting a series of KILTR member events and you can come meet the KILTR team during the week – drop a line to us on the KILTR network if you have an idea event idea to run via the KILTR Hub.

It’s not just all about what we are doing… You can get involved too!

If you are in the social media business you can run an event, if you fancy being a volunteer then sign up and help out or if you want to learn a little about social media then keep an eye out as the events are registered!  Event registration opens on June 5^th.

Here is the link to Get Involved.

There is also a chance to win a trip to a Social Media Week city of your choice – love this idea (have something similar planned myself) but if you use Instagram.  #instagramyourcity here is the official line:

‘As part of the global festival that is Social Media Week, taking place in 14 cities this September including our very own capital, we’re asking you to represent London and capture it’s unique British beauty.

In the coming weeks, Social Media Week will launch the Instagram Your City website, which will pull together the best photos from across September’s host cities.

One “Best-in-Show” picture will be selected from these. Once selected, the winning contestant will be given the opportunity to travel to any Social Media Week city of their choosing during the September 24th – 28th event.’

Get Instagraming!!

Hopefully see you all during Social Media Week!

As a student I rarely attended lectures and when I did I wanted to commit suicide after 10 minutes…  I’m not a sit and listen kind of gal but I can if I have an internet connection!  Which is also something I’ve had to get used to during presentations and lectures… It can be daunting hearing the tap tap of keys or fingers on tablets when you’re talking.

So, back to the millennials.  We are often criticised at the university level for not teaching about social media.  At Strathclyde we don’t have one module on social media (yet) but we do teach around the subject.  Millennials are one such subject.

Millennials are today’s contemporary consumers and their attitudes and behaviours disrupt business practices and require brands to change…

…The technology facilitates this but it’s not the technology that disrupts, the disruption is created by the way in which individuals choose to use it.  Social media is behaviour driven.

Here is a link to my Prezi (please note I’m still getting to grips with Prezi – if anyone wants to give me a few pointers then please send me a mail!)… And I hope you don’t get motion sickness

Notwithstanding my personal loathing on posting private and often heartfelt emotional information on social media, it does happen – constantly!  I’m fighting the urge to take a few screenshots of the best ‘you really shouldn’t have posted that’ posts from my feeds – but I won’t.

So, why do people post their innermost thoughts on social media (for the world to see)?

Way back in the day – 2004 to be precise, Ridings and Gefen found that people participate in virtual communities for six reasons: (1) exchange information, obtain and transfer information about a topic, (2) social support, obtain and give emotional support, (3) friendship, to make friends, (4) recreation, for entertainment, (5) common interest, love the topic of the community and (6) technical reasons, technical features in the community.  However friendship was the main motivating factor for participating.  I can see that.  I understand that.  People post because of friendship, exchange information and provide emotional support.  Sure.

Moving onto the millennials debate – they are more open and lack privacy and security issues.  Now if you believe the age based demographic on the millennials concept, I would be a millennial.  Clearly I am not open and do not lack security and privacy concerns – I’d rather give my left arm than post my ‘feelings’ on social media.  Obviously I am not including blogging (for professional reasons) in this…

Does this really help with understanding why people post their thoughts and feelings on social media?  A little.  We begin to see a picture forming – we like make friends, we seek information and we like to give and receive emotional support (a little bit of self-gratification).  But.  We still don’t really understand the emotional and physiological benefits/responses of posting our lives on social media.

Researchers at Harvard University (Tamir and Mitchell) have begun to fill this gap.  Disclosing information about ourselves is shown to be intrinsically rewarding.  The study was completed in two parts.  First participants were hooked up to an MRI machine and asked to answer questions about their own opinions and questions about other people’s opinions while their brain activity was monitored.  In the second part, the researchers explored how important it was to have an audience to the self-disclosure.

The research found that the brain regions associated with reward — the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA) — were strongly engaged when people were talking about themselves, and less engaged when they were talking about someone else.

To put that into context, the researchers found that the act of disclosing information about ourselves activates the same sensation of pleasure in the brain that we get from eating food, receiving money or having sex.  Clearly there will be varying degrees but the results from the MRI scans indicate that our brain considers self-disclosure to be rewarding.  In this study, participants would even turn down money to talk about someone else, finding more pleasure in talking about themselves.

Exploring if self-disclosure was rewarding because you get to think about yourself or if it requires an audience, the research found that we get a greater reward when we share thoughts with friends and family than when they were told their thoughts would be kept secret.

So, we share to feel good.  Tamir said: ‘I think it helps us explain why Twitter exists and why Facebook is so popular, because people enjoy sharing information about each other’.

We are intrinsically motivated to share our thoughts and lives with others.  I suppose it’s the same offline, we share our lives and thoughts with friends.  The difference is the number of people we can reach with that ‘thought’ on social media and the fact that it’s written down, in a picture, audio or video.  Either way we share because we receive pleasure rewards.

I’m now mentally trying to explore the pleasure rewards I got with writing this blog… And you can read a copy of the paper here.

Please welcome Siobhán McGinty as my first guest blogger.  I ‘met’ Siobhán last year and we have been in contact ever since, she is an inspiration to all researchers starting out on their doctoral journey.  She has accomplished so much already!  Well done Siobhán!

Hello all! Jillian kindly asked me if I would be interested in writing a guest blog post a few weeks ago. It was an offer I was honoured to accept having followed her PhD journey since I stumbled across her wonderful blog back in September 2011.

To introduce myself, my name is Siobhán McGinty, and I am situated in the National University of Ireland, Galway. I am currently in my first year of my PhD in marketing, and am being supervised by Dr Elaine Wallace. Prior to pursuing my PhD research, I completed a Bachelor of Commerce and a MSc. Marketing, at NUI Galway, both to first class honours standard. Jillian asked me to discuss my current area of research, as well as the trials and tribulations I have faced since beginning my PhD journey – something I think is very important for PhD students to do. So here we go….

Without going into too much detail, my research, entitled Brand Innovation Through Social Networks, is rooted in social media and it investigates the influence of network structure on the development of consumer-brand relationships in the online arena. My research, which will be largely driven by network theory and techniques, will take on a multi-method approach incorporating social network analysis (SNA) and netnography.

I have faced two major hurdles since beginning my research: motivation and developing an advanced knowledge of network theory.

Motivation: When I learned of my successful PhD scholarship application, I was living on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. There, I spent my free time sunning myself, trekking and skydiving, among other things. Coming home to do a PhD was the last thing on my mind, but I knew it was the right thing to do. The move from Australia to Ireland was quick (and painful), and it took me a long time to settle back into Irish life, especially when all my travel buddies were posting the most amazing photos of their continued travels on Facebook. However, I have gradually overcome my move home. Everything happens for a reasons – and at the end of the day, Australia is not going anywhere, right? I do not regret my decision for one minute. Hindsight tells me Facebook deactivation would have been wise!

My second motivational issue is regarding the new way of learning a PhD programme requires you to adopt. Coming from a taught master’s programme, I found it difficult to motivate myself in the outset. Thankfully, I have a wonderful supervisor who should be awarded a PhD in pep talks. I also have the support of a top-class Marketing Department here at NUI Galway. Outside of university, I have made a conscious effort to keep up my past-times. It is difficult at times, but I know failure to maintain a balance will result in frustration.

Network Theory: The second hurdle is related to network theory.  As Newman explains, ‘the scientific study of networks…is an interdisciplinary field that combines ideas from mathematics, physics, biology, computer science, the social sciences and many other areas.’ Becoming familiar with network theories and techniques has taken hours of background reading, but I am now reading academic work on network theory with relative ease. To aid my understanding, I have attended a conference on complex systems which took place in NUI Galway in November of last year. I have also attended an Advanced Microeconomics course in NUI Galway which covered network theory. I will further develop my knowledge of network theory when I spend a term researching in the University of California, Riverside next autumn.

My research is being funded through the prestigious Hardiman Scholarship and the University of California Reciprocal Exchange Program. As mentioned already, this September will mark the beginning of a six month research term in the University of California Riverside under the supervision of world-renowned researcher Professor Donna Hoffman. There, I will work alongside Professor Hoffman in her virtual lab at the Sloan Centre of Internet Retailing, and become fluent in the art of measuring online consume behaviour. I will also work with Professor Robert Hanneman, a widely-published author in the area of Social Network Analysis, in order to deepen my knowledge of the technique.

I would like to thank Jillian for inviting me to write this guest post – who knows, it may be the first of many. I wish her all the best in her future – she is a bright young lady with a shining future ahead of her.

S7SBH6MPSGHG

OK, let’s get this back on track…

We were chatting about ‘engagement’.  I’ve always proclaimed that engagement is severely overused and not accurately defined for the context of social media.  Interaction possibly but engagement means something deeper and active.  Not fleeting and almost passive.  In our chat David felt that social media is not really that engaging (unprompted by me).  I agreed.

I have to add for sake of clarity that there will be people who are actively engaged but the predominant bulk of fans, followers, or whatever you want to call them will not be actively engaged.

So, why does social media lack engagement?

There are a few answers to this.  The first is the medium itself.  Each social media platform is different, the philosophy and psychology behind the platform different, as well how the engagement [interaction] is facilitated.  Essentially engagement or potential engagement runs on a continuum from low to high which is moderated by the speed of posts – I’ll not go too deeply into this just now as it’s a whole research paper in its own right.

The second is how users engage with the platforms, their tactics for engagement.  A lot of people are still reliant on traditional broadcast communication tactics.  People are not engaging.  What is being published lacks engagement and then people are disheartened because ‘social’ is not working.  For instance in this month’s Harvard Business Review it was reported that 25% of all tweets are not worth reading!  So if they are not worth reading they won’t be worth replying to.  It is a balance to get your authentic voice right.  What makes you interesting?  What makes you different?  Why would people want to engage with you?

We only engage with and adopt information that is of relevance to us.  Simple.  The other question is are we information providers or are we providers of experiential play.  Back in the day before social media became the marketing medium of choice experiential marketing was popular.  Having been working [or studying] social media since the beginning of its climb to popularity I have been quite surprised about the lack of experiential marketing initiatives.  I thought the two went hand in hand but as I said before traditional broadcast marketing has been the emergent winner of social media tactics.  Is this about to change?

I was happily surprised when I was talking to David that he also thought that many social media tactics lacked engagement.  The O Street team had set themselves a task of making social media engaging and actually making a real impact on the physical world.  I wasn’t at this event but I know a few people who were and the reaction was positive.  Here is a quick press release from the team…

‘For a while now, we have been feeling the ‘social’ has been
disappearing from ‘social media’. Everyday there seems to be a new way
to connect with people online (pinterest and tout being two of our
recent favourites). However none seem to be increasing the amount of
face–to–face, shoulder–to–shoulder camaraderie of the old fashioned
version of socialising.

So we started exploring how we could use social media technology to
impact on a real–time, tangible, social setting. as the saying goes,
‘any excuse to have a party’.

Named ‘o here’s to…’, we launched a live twitter campaign to celebrate
people’s wishes and toasts for the new year. Coinciding with a party
in our studio, for each tweet a dram of our national drink was raised
then dutifully emptied (overseen by a qualified whisky ambassador).
tweets were projected live at the event’

Here’s a video of the night…

People who were not at the event were tweeting in too and having a direct impact on what was happening in the physical space.  The event was an experience for those who were there and also for those who were not.  The event has also received quite a bit of attention and has now been nominated for a Scottish design award for the best item of self-promotion.

Obviously businesses can’t constantly run this type of event but it paves way for a new type of engagement which has lasting effects in the virtual and physical worlds.  It is experience in its true form and is actually engagement.

The people who tweeted could see a direct change, an action, in the physical space.  When we tweet a brand we don’t really see any direct impact, maybe we get a tweet back but increasingly we don’t.

I personally feel that the experiential aspects of social media have massive potential.  While content curation is great for when we need good information sources, the internet and social media is both for information search and play.  Consumers want to be involved in experiential marketing this was proven before social media and in this O Street case study.

Social media provides a much more manageable medium to facilitate experience which can be impacted by a global audience.  Gamification has risen to popularity and in many of the research reports that are produced on social media we see that competitions are highly sought.  Maybe consumers are not after the competition per se but the experiential aspects that normally surround social media based competitions.

Has anyone else run experiential marketing initiatives via social media?  What’s your thoughts on creating more experience and less broadcast?

You can find out more about O Street here.

I’ve finished my PhD.  I suppose that’s the most important thing, it’s certainly been a long time coming. As I type the full thesis is being proofread – no pesky typos for me! I’m very happy that I’ve got to this stage and I can see the end in sight.  Just one mammoth thesis defence and then I’ll be Dr Jillian Ney.  Let the celebrations begin.  The journey to get here has been incredible.  When I was writing my acknowledgements I got a little teary thinking about all the people who have made my doctorate journey so special.  I’ve been one lucky lady and long may that continue!

I’ve also attained a new position as Head of Research at the Scottish social networking site KILTR.  The main basis of the position is to use consumer insights to drive development of the network, I really want to say community.  KILTR has a great community feel.  Last night was the international launch of KILTR during Scotland Week in the fair NYC – I really wish I was there in person but I had the next best thing, Livestream.

You too can watch the KILTR launch here   

Today it was reported that KILTR signups increased 800% yesterday.  Amazing! Welcome to the network…  If you want to find out a little more about KILTR you can here or if you wish to join me in my KILTR community you can connect with me here.  Come pop by and say hi.  It’s not all tartan and bagpipes! Or can I add, just people in Scotland.

When you look at the philosophy or psychology behind social media (for example, Karakas, 2009) you being to see that social media is more than marketing.  You also see that consumer voice holds the most power but I know many brands remain sceptical about this… Lack of control is always going to be an issue.

To me the new concepts of authenticity, transparency and openness suggest a new ethical approach to business which incorporates listening, utilising, and capitalising on freedom of voice.

We all know by now that there is nowhere to hide in social media, it’s going to come out whether you like it or not.  It is how you respond and handle it that matters.  So in developing my own business offerings (yes, the PhD is nearly finished) I decided to take another look at ethics and social media and how this can be incorporated into my business.

As I said before I see ethics and social media going hand in hand, a new wave of business culture.  Out with the corporate social responsibility and in with daily ethics.  Practice what you preach day in and day out.  Social media doesn’t allow you to hide if there is something off between what you say and what you do, there probably will be some ‘social’ mention about it.

So, ethics, business, and social media…

I had the pleasure of taking a workshop led by Phil Birch (@BirchBusinessIQ).  Phil has written a book called Ethiconomics (@ethiconomics) (Amazon link).  The workshop, based along the lines of the book but with extra oomph, got me thinking about what I want to achieve, my values and how they can be incorporated into the fabric of my business.

Now, I have a lot that I hope to achieve, I won’t bore you with specifics but let’s just say I have a lot to do.  It is a bit daunting but the way in which Phil split up the workshop and worked through the Ethiconomics principles helped me no end.  I see what I have to do and where my personal values and ambitions fit into the values, missions and business offerings.

It becomes a lot easier to ‘sell’ my ideas because they are part of me and incorporate my passions and values.  I knew they always would be part of the business but what the workshop allowed me to do was to put everything down and speak about where they all tie in together.  And it’s always good to run it all by another person who has great industry experience.

So where do the ethics (and social media) fit in?!

Working through the workshop you are introduced to ideas of authenticity, transparency, values, vision… The workshop didn’t just cover ethics in business but ethical leadership and how you, as the business owner are integral and drive the culture.

Does this sound familiar?  All terms are associated with social media.  The good thing about building the business on this foundation is that there should be no transparency or authenticity issues and this can easily be conveyed through social media.  The business is based on sound structure.

I also have a sense that what I believe in social media pushing businesses and brands to take account for their ethical and business cultures is true.  There were overlaps through the session.  So not only was it informative to my business but reinforced what I feel about social business cultures in general.

I left the workshop feeling really positive about taking the next step.  I’ve been working with Phil since and his enthusiasm for not only his Ethiconomics but my own business and the overlaps between the two has been great encouragement.

I don’t often do this but if you are looking into ethics or ethical leadership then I would recommend you speak to Phil.

And I would just like to say a big thank you to Phil!