Heidi Allen Digital Strategy

Every year more and more businesses turn to social media to get their message out, many are not sure on the return that they are getting or the effectiveness of their strategy.  Hubspot publish a yearly report on the cost effectiveness of some of these methods.

Traditional ways of getting your message out there (outbound shotgun approach using newspaper adverts, direct mail, flyers, tradeshows etc) can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for small companies. Inbound marketing (where people opt-in using social media such as blogs, facebook, twitter) provide new and very efficient ways of reaching an audience.

As an example, I do some work for a not for profit organisation BodyInMind.org (in fact we make no money at all) whose main aim is to disseminate high quality research on the topic of pain research.  Using social media has proved a very effective means of not only reaching a niche audience but of enabling them to spread the message further.

If you are looking for marketing advice this report will give some good pointers as to what is effective and why. Along with evidence as to which platforms work best depending on what it is you are looking to do

Did you know that the average corporate social business program is only three years old? Some companies are already defining best practices. Alitmeter have produced a superb report on how to prepare for social business. It’s free. It’s very good.

Some points that I pulled out from it are here.  The full report is at the end.

Many companies are looking at using the latest social media technology, yet most have not prepared for the threat of social media crises, or the long-term effects on business. To become advanced in the use of social media as an organisation there are four recommended steps. First, develop business objectives and establish governance, then get organized by establishing a team and a process to deal with crises. Next, connect business units to increase coordination and reduce duplication. Finally, weave real-time market response into business processes and planning. Advanced companies prepare for social business with the following four internal requirements:

1. Baseline Governance and Reinforcement: Established and reinforced a corporate social media policy that allows employees to participate professionally
2. Enterprise-Wide Response Processes: Defined processes for rapid workflow and engagement with customers in social media
3. Ongoing Education Program and Best Practice Sharing: Fostered a culture of learning through ongoing social media education
4. Leadership from a Dedicated and Shared Central Hub: Organized in a scalable formation, with a cross-functional “Center of Excellence”

Social media crisis management strategy

As part of a company’s digital strategy, a crisis management strategy- including an escalation plan for dealing with negative comments should be formulated including outlines of rules responsibilities and possible actions

A social media crisis is an issue that arises in or is amplified by social media, and results in negative mainstream media coverage, a change in business process, or financial loss.

Crisis can be categorized according to 3 severity levels:

Level 1: crises that result in negative coverage in mainstream media
Level 2: crises that result in negative coverage in mainstream media, and a significant response or change by the company
Level 3: crises that result in short-term financial impact.

In the majority of cases crisis can be prevented or diminished with thorough preparation and staff training.

Source Altimeter report (August 2011) Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally

Causes of Social Media crisis primary stem from the exposure of poor customer experiences, poor influence relations or violations of ethical guidelines.  Most companies that suffer from a social media crisis lack proper social media internal education for employees.

The Social Business Hierarchy of Needs

These recommendations are organized by dependency – much like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Companies must first meet baseline needs at the bottom of the pyramid before moving on to the next set of requirements.

And here is the most excellent report.  THANKS Altimeter for making it freely available.

“Getting support from my managers and Ministers to venture into social media has been a bit like taking my Dad to the Big Day Out….”

Respondent comment, Nielsen Social Media Study, July 2010, public sector survey

This latest Nielsen report is now available for download.  It was recently presented in conjunction with Community Engine in Sydney which I attended  – see my comments on the initial reactions here: Nielsen and social media use in Australia.  Here is the report in full.  It covers:

1. Australian business’ investment in social media
2. The social media activities conducted by business’ in 2010
3. The barriers to business investment in social media
4. Experiences and outcomes to date

I am interested in businesses – whether in health care or outside – who have been able to adapt and change to the new digital online environment and use social media tools.  This slide share by the board of innovation (that’s quite a board) gives some examples – whether I agree with all of them or not, it’s good to see what people are doing.

A twitter conversation as to merits of using social media for high value journals took place recently.  High value as in top medical journals in the world, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM. I have no idea of their subscription rate, but would venture a guess at a gazillion.

This conversation centered around accessibility of articles – free articles (also known as open access) means they can be shared, whereas subscription articles, means that the journal makes money but only subscribers can read them.

The story goes like this: A bunch of juicy looking articles come up in my email – one set  is from the Scientific American Journal Mind (part of the Nature group of journals now – Nature also being highly esteemed in research circles), the other is NEJM.

I click on Scientific American and get a bunch of  ‘accessed denied’ ‘log in’ ‘subscribe’ rude messages to each and every article I click.  The shame of it is, I would have shared it to a twitter and facebook network – mine and a research network, Body in Mind. They would have had double whammy exposure.  But I couldn’t access them, so I didn’t share.

Then I read NEJM articles – the first two articles I clicked were both open access. I read. I shared.

Here’s the clever bit -and what they are currently navigating – they have a subscription model (they still need to make money to run the journal) and they have open articles, using social media to enable us to share.  BUT, not all to the full advantage. The better the use of social media, the greater their exposure, the greater their chance of more subscriptions.

Discussing this conversation recently with a Journals Publisher at Elsevier this is a big deal at the moment in journals publishing. So, for publishers especially, this twitter conversation is worth a squizz, it is between me and @DrVes – an advisor to NEJM, amongst other things, blogger, expert user of social media in a clinical and research context. At his suggestion I have gathered the tweets. NEJM do some things well, some things poorly, and some almost a criminal waste of opportunity to share their expertise. (in the tweets below SM = social media)

and so I did go to the NEJM facebook page to see if they had interacted with any of the people who had commented on the facebook page. Each link they post generates a shed load of comments by readers (seriously, loads). To my utter surprise there were no replies from the NEJM.

Go on @NEJM – do some podcasts, blogging, real time social media.  Please.

My friend, Sharon Ghatora, told me about a recent trip to her local hairdresser (and she has fabulous hair).

Stevie English Hair, is in the trendy part of Sydneytown of Glebe (think overpriced student digs, coffee shops, winebars, and a bookstore which still stacks books on the floor). On arriving, you register your details not by pen and paper but by iPad. Then, you sit down and choose which magazine you want to read, on your iPad. Classy.

Turns out that Stevie English is also on Twitter, and Sharon was already following them (no, I don’t know anyone else who follows their hairdresser on twitter):

I started following them when I heard about them. I was talking to Stevie when I went in, he immediately tweeted me ….. The next day the hairdresser who actually cut my hair followed me and asked me about my new do

As a case study for personal service & what you can do with an ipad and twitter in a working day, that is not bad.