Digital Marketing Strategy, Social Media training courses, digital strategy, online marketing, mentoring, consulting
As more and more people I work with are moving some of their communications to Facebook and expanding what they’re doing they have various needs. If you can do any of the below, let me know by emailing damien < at > mulley.ie with subject: Facebook Work
Last weekend Donncha hosted a photowalk with photobloggers. Pat O’Neill of D4 hotels fame brought Donncha and Montenotte Hotels together for this. (I helped slightly)
Photo owned by M. Burrows (cc)
This is a nice example of earned media: Bring photobloggers to your hotel, give them content (this time a view) and enable them to do what they like doing (taking photos). Lots and lots and lots of photos and good sentiment and blog posts circling around your hotel. When SEO and Google Ads start to fail or become more expensive than the cost of a room, you need to up a gear or do something different. Course if you have a speedboat that some photobloggers can hop on, even better!
We’re a while yet from the idea of earned media in Ireland as extolled by Graham Brown, Helge Tennø and others but we’re getting there.
Internal blogging is also good for an organisation.
The dangers of social media for ad agencies. It basically says they are not involved enough and will be left behind.
Making an iPhone App? Some tips on what works.
Some videos to help with creativity.
Facebook Mobile usage up 300% in the past 12 months.
Social networks accounted for 21.1 percent of all online display advertising impressions in the US as of June
Crowd doesn’t like what you did, ask the crowd to make a better suggestion. Kodak gets the public to name their new camera.
Big big article here on what works for SEO and the level of importance of those factors.
I’ve run a good few blogger events (apart from the Blog Awards and Web Awards) including Collision Course, the Bord Gais meets the bloggers event, Show and Tell and a few others where bloggers meet companies. A few more events are on the way.
Photo owned by AndYaDontStop (cc)
Some personal experiences, your mileage may vary:
Invite interested bloggers, not bloggers who have “readerships”
The numbers game is poison. If you are inviting people because they are read by x hundred people instead of them writing well informed blog posts then you might get an uninformed message out to x hundred people. Go for quality, not quantity. Quality travels further. Invite bloggers or Twitterers who you think would be interested in what you are doing and have people who read or follow them that would like to be informed about what you are doing. This means you have to do research and find out who writes about what. Ask other bloggers to help you with this if you don’t know. Also, open the event up to those not on your list if you have spaces. Meet people you don’t know anything about. Saying that, I’ve seen some bloggers who have come along to an event and professed they have zero interest in the event, despite them approaching me or the company to come along.
Personally invite bloggers
Don’t send a mass email with everyone BCCd in. If you think bloggers will find value in the event, start as you mean to go on. Know something about them already, isn’t this why they are being invited? Send an email to each one and for the love of god don’t do a mailshot or copy and paste the same email to each of them. Bloggers and Twitterers are also on IM to each other and ask each other if “so and so PR company” emailed them about an event. You know what’s really nice these days? Personally written notes or cards. Not enough do that. Despite the digital world, many bloggers treasure the analog items.
Give them something of value, as in content
Freebies, yeah, great. Not a lot you can blog about if you get something for free. Give bloggers something they can give to their readers. New, interesting content. An interview, a video of a new drinks cocktail, facts about the company’s new product about to be released. The CEO asked questions that were sent in via their readers.
Give them more control than you’re comfortable with
Don’t suggest a hashtag for the event, let them suggest it. If you are going to run a competition with bloggers or Twitters, get them to use their creativity. They know their audience more than you. They’ll know what will work best in terms of quizzes or the like. Even ask bloggers privately about the way to structure their event. Collaboration works best.
Give more then was expected
Steve Jobs does his one more thing. Do the same. Bill 4/5ths of what will happen at the event. Something not known is nice when presented. A staffer they were not expecting, news before anyone else, test kit for a new product.
Don’t ask when they will blog about this
This is probably obvious but you now and then get “I’m sorry to ask this but my boss wants to know when you’ll be doing a blog post on this” from someone. I once got asked when writing for the Sunday Tribune could I let them know the word count of an article I’d be writing after coming to their event. If bloggers don’t find it interesting they won’t blog it. If you push someone to write then you’re commissioning an advertorial and you’ll get some half-assed job too.
Meet more people for each event, not the same people
They’ll get sick of you, you’ll get sick of them, they’ll get sick of each other. There are plenty of bloggers, invite new ones to your next event. The circuit is starting to happen where the “usuals” are at every event. Spice it up.
It only starts after the event
This is all about relationships being built. It’s not a marketing thing in the traditional form nor is it traditional PR. It also has customer relations thrown in. Use each event to learn more about those coming along. See can you use your contacts to help them out. Know a friend in another company that can get them access to a musician, have you got a sports star you use for events that they’d love to interview? Just even add them to Facebook, Twitter or leave genuine encouraging comments on their blog. See what they come back to you with as well and accept their feedback and suggestions, which leads us to…
Listen and act
You’re get some good feedback at your event and suggestions about things you might want to try. If you can, act on them. You’re bringing people together who are good at expressing opinions. See what you can do to show the bloggers that you are doing more than listening.
Hello hello. It’s been a while since this blog was updated. Mulley Communications is currently banging out the hits 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and has gotten to the stage where the Inn is full, workwise.
So we’re busy, very very very busy and will be for the next 3 months at least. Please don’t be offended if we turn you down for work. If you have something really interesting though, sure one of us can sleep less so we won’t slam the door in your face.
Meanwhile, there are a small number of people we recommend to have a chat with if you are looking for help with your online communications/marketing/PR.
Keith Bohanna is an Internet Consultant. He was there when it started, not saying he’s old or anything like…
Nick McGivney is also someone very much worth chatting to in anything online marketing/pr related. He also scares the hell out of the advertising industry and sometimes doesn’t even charge them to do it.
Hopefully it’ll mean we can do more blog posts too!
These are my personal opinions and not those of my employer, oh hang on…
Lots of people are now social media experts in Ireland. Twitter is overflowing with them. I got reminded of this by Fergal’s post. Are these social media experts all experts or are they jesters?
Photo owned by time4coffee (cc)
Some things to consider:
Are they a jester because they are now twitter consultants, yet are on it just three months? This tool is handy for finding that out.
Are they a jester because they tell companies to follow the influencers?
Be they on blogs, Facebook or Twitter. Social media means everyone is an influencer because everyone is connected to the rest of the world in a few steps. Gunning for people with good blog traffic, good blog subscribers and thousands of Twitter followers means you will miss the ones at the edge that start the trickle that start the flood. Go for quality, not quantity.
Are they a jester because three months ago they were Web 2.0 experts?
9 months ago they were business coaches, 18 months ago they were business strategists and two months time they are going to be cloud computing experts?
Are they a jester because they call Twitter users Tweeps and use all these new names?
Using made up words can sometimes be a sign that they can’t evangelise themselves in existing business segments. I’m not too comfortable myself even with social media, beats Web 2.0 though.
Are they jesters because they insist on “managing” your presence?
Why don’t they trust you to run your Facebook, Twitter or blog?
Are these social media ninjas jesters because they are afraid to offend in case they might lose a lead?
Standing your ground means some people won’t like you. Reputation management is not about making everyone like you.
Are they a jester because they are also a coach?
Aren’t coaches people that work in sports or those that tell politicians the best way to lie? A coach is someone who trains someone but never lets them out of their control, right? A coach works with zombies, no?
Are they a jester because they write bullshit posts like this?
Hiiiiiiiiiii!
Brilliant post from Edelman Digital. It’s not a numbers thing. Not about followers, not about the “influencers”. As Jason says and says so well:
what we need to offer our client is the opportunity to become trusted influencers themselves
YouTube is blowing away the competition in the UK.
April UK online video views were up 47 percent to 4.7 billion from the year before, clocking up 971 million ad views in the process, comScore says. But the winner is clear – YouTube is still swallowing the lion’s share of views, with videos watched 2.4 billion times in the month, up 58 percent from last year.
Face to Face will always beat banner ads, social media ads and whatever comes next but each iteration, we do get closer using tech to that face to face power.
Got your Facebook username? Well done. Make sure the Facebook Page doesn’t outrank you in Google though.
We’ve created a page listing PR companies in Ireland. It’s one long flat page right now but we hope in time to create a proper directory listing all of these and their various presences online. If we’re missing some or some of the details need changing, leave a comment, send an email, arrange a photoshoot outside our office…
A good point was made to me of late and that is of companies afraid to join the online web community for fear of the reaction. They highlight the bad cases. For some that’s just an excuse. It’s the headache to avoid sex, right? And? Here’s the sad fact of life: Even Mother Theresa was hated. The cow.
A good point was made to me of late and that is of companies afraid to join the online web community for fear of the reaction. They highlight the bad cases. For some that’s just an excuse. It’s the headache to avoid sex, right? And? Here’s the sad fact of life: Even Mother Theresa was hated. The cow. That’s just humans for you. Hiding from this though means you hide from the 99.99% of people that will be neutral towards you/like you/love you. If you want to mix with the real world then you need to stick your neck out.
If there are negative comments there are going to be positive comments too, probably way more. Being afraid of potential negative comments ore reactions and allowing them to dictate online reactions will poison your company.
Photo owned by Phillie Casablanca (cc)
Maybe companies should have more faith in not screwing up? However if they do mess up, they need to realise that being genuine about what happened and communicating it will help an awful lot.
There are tonnes of cases of companies getting the crap kicked out of them online. I’m an example myself for having a very short fuse with companies that invade my email or online space without having manners. People think life is too short to get worked up, I think life is to short to let some fucker walk all over you and let them off because they’re thick or invariably, lazy. That’s me, not you.
Anyhoo… a subtlety about being online is that while a screwup can cause an online riot, it can cause just a mild stir too or nothing. Bloggers screw up from time to time and sometimes there are outcries and threats of hate-sites and then people move on, something else happens to catch the magpie eye. People understand screw-ups and if t can be relayed to those online why the screwup happened and that there is genuine regret, most people will say “That’s grand so”. It also helps if you are already active online and are known to people before the screwup. That’s the biggie. Before you do anything, try and not be a stranger. Be known by being there in some way. Emails to people complimenting them on what they do, comments on their blogs. Genuine commentary, not commentary to tick a box next to “Being there”.
Another way of being there is to start interacting on Boards.ie or create a space on IGOPeople and gently get involved there.
Dominos and the issues with staff doing horrible things to their pizzas got worldwide attention within hours due to the virality of YouTube and Twitter and Dominos responded quite quickly with their own YouTube video. Dominos were not on Twitter or YouTube or had much of an online presence before this, that’s now changing. Were they online and had a presence they probably would have known of this sooner and reacted sooner. The event would still have happened but maybe it would not have spread as much. Imagine if Dominos just released a press release?
For very large companies/brands, your first adventures in opening yourself up to the world might end up with lots of people shouting at you for years of crappy service or that 1% of crappy service when 99% of it was great. Think of the tech support hotline where you might get someone ranting and raving at an agent about some computer issue and then they end it with thank you. Initially your customers might need to vent.
At the recent blogging event in the EU Commission’s office EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom spoke via video to a load of bloggers and talked about her first few blog posts got hundreds of negative comments from anti-europe people. She addressed some issues and ignored some of the madder stuff. She kept blogging and slowly more and more of the comments became more positive. The people that ranted for probably not being listened to up to now realised they were being listened to and became more constructive.
If you as a company realise a percentage of your customers are pissed off at you and so this is a reason for not opening up, then maybe the transparent nature of the web is not for you. Ownership is changing, copyright is changing. People feel loyal to brands and companies and give over energy to support their following and so feel they have a little ownership of the entity. Owners look after what they own.
We live in a prudish world where what we do on our free time and then stick up on Facebook might be used against our employers and so our employers don’t want you to do this. Imagine if instead they said “so what?” and told anyone complaining that they fully back their employees. Online, we, the ones that play around here a lot, we do say the “so what’ bit.
So please, join, accept, return the comments, screw up, don’t screw up, have fun and benefit.
D4Hotels introduced a special offer back in January of hotel rooms with free broadband for just over €20 a night for select rooms at select times. News first hit about this on Boards.ie and spread like wildfire online before getting picked up by the tradtional media. It got huge attention when their marketing person appeared on the Pat Kenny show to talk about the offer and with what sounded like a rookie mistake or nerves or perhaps stupidity, she said all rooms were at that price, which wasn’t true.
She got dragged back on air the next day and got roasted by Kenny. Lots and lots of apologies and dozens of complaints. Online however, they not only got the communications right, they upped it with direct interaction with people who booked the offer and people who were considering it. Someone called Pat from D4Hotels came along on Boards.ie and started answering questions. Then switching people to better rooms and following up on stays to see were people happy.
Photo owned by cherrylet (cc)(Not actual pic of hotel)
And when the special offer ran out? Well, with the momentum slowing, they introduced a special discount for those using Boards.ie. (Go here and the code is BOARDS) And the momentum kept going again. The discussion thread on the Bargain Alerts forum on Boards.ie got locked yesterday after 23 pages of interactions and 100+ posts from Pat but not before the hotel set up their own blog to keep the interactions going.
Recognition is deserved for Pat and others in D4 Hotels that did this. More of this sort of thing!
