Archive for category social media

Australia’s Next Top Model Winner’s Announcement and how community management could have helped

Posted by Julie Delaforce in online communities, social media, social media disasters on 29 September, 2010

On the way up to the office in the lift this morning, I was accosted by a workmate, telling me she’d been thinking about me last night. She’d been watching Australia’s Next Top Model when they made the major gaffe of announcing the incorrect winner! She was checking on the ANTM Facebook Page to see barrage of comments about the gaffe, and wondering how the ANTM team would respond.

How did they respond? They didn’t! They posted a winners announcement and that was that! Admitedly, it would be hard to have a risk management plan that involved that sort of mistake, but with a 45,000 member Facebook Page they should have a community management plan at the very least, which covers how to respond and interact to their fans in general. How should they have responded? In my book, that’s easy:

Playfully admit to the mistake, something along the lines of: “Whoops, can’t believe we did that! This sort of thing happens on live TV though.”
Responded to the many user comments, even if it was something as simple as “Thanks for your comment” to let the community members know their opinions are valued.
Post the winners announcement, confirming the ACTUAL winner.
Later in the evening post an update stating that both girls are fine and happy and know that there could only be one winner (reassuring community members who identify with the contestants that their favourite is okay).

A quick check of the page this morning reveals an endless stream of user comments, with the ANTM message lost. Now that it’s business hours again they could have someone online responding to the comments that have been made overnight. They could create a discussion and direct people there to participate, moving the storm from the wall to the discussions tab. ANTM could then post updates which will be front and centre for new visitors who are likely to see the page today.

The result? With minimal time invested, community members feel they’ve been heard, and understand the mistake has been resolved and the runner up & winner are both happy.

community management, disasters, facebook, mistakes, social media

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Twestival and social media for social good

Posted by Julie Delaforce in social media, social networks on 25 March, 2010

There are many cynics who will say that we live in a hyper-connected world and its actually over-complicating our lives, rather than simplifying them. They say social networking keeps us at home in front of the computer and encourages anti-social behaviour. Some even think that there are too many brands just pushing their advertising messages in social media. Hopefully charity events such as this week’s second annual Twestival will go some way to muting these critics.

On March 25th, more than 175 cities will participate in Twestival, a global charity event. According to the Twestival website:

“Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good. All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.”

At the time of publishing, Twestival had raised over $200,000 for Concern Worldwide, an international humanitarian organisation that provides access to education for poor children.

Mashable.com suggests five ways you can get involved in Twestival:

Attend a Twestival event
Donate online
Bid on the Twestival eBay auction
Tweet your support
Listen to Twestival FM.

Can’t get involved in Twestival, but still interested in how you can do good via social media? There are many other ways you can get involved. It’s no accident that charities are beginning to make their mark in social media, it’s all about community and helping one another, so the two go hand-in-hand.

Charity: Water is one organisation who are making an impact. They do the simple things right: they’re on Facebook and Twitter to bring attention to their cause and encourage viral sharing and word-of-mouth, they have a website with rich content: counters showing how much has been raised for particular projects.

Sometimes its hard for us to relate to big, international causes. Think about how social media has helped during natural disasters, such as the Victorian Bushfires in 2009. Photos and videos were shared on UGC sites which brought attention to the disaster and lead to people mobilising on Twitter to share links to charity donation information. Many showed their support for the victims by joining Facebook groups.

So now you’re inspired to do good, but don’t know where to start? It’s easy for anyone to get involved. Here are some tips on what you can do to help humanity online:

Update your Facebook or Twitter status about a cause to let your friends know about it, don’t forget to include a link to the site of your chosen cause
Show your support to a multitude of charities by signing up to the Causes application on Facebook
Create a Chip-In counter and ask friends to donate to your favourite cause
Sign up to Yahoo! for Good and add a badge for your favourite cause to your website, social network profile or blog

Showing support for a good cause has been made much easier with social media tools and applications. Now there’s nothing from being able to do more to help.

charity, facebook, social media, social networks

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Traditional news vs Social Media

Posted by Julie Delaforce in social media, traditional media on 7 March, 2010

Is there really a war between traditional news outlets and social media? The way we consume media is changing and traditional news is not as trusted as it once once, they need to get smarter in the way they deliver news to consumers to maintian relevance.

According to Rory O’Connor, Randi Zuckerburg of Facebook believes that ‘expert’ journalists still have their place, people still want an unbiased news source. I completely agree with this. However, the fact remains that many people trust news they hear via their friends more, so if a friend recommends they read a news story, chance are they will. The chart below (from eMarketer, retrieved 7 February 2009) shows that Australian consumers place trust in peers well above both TV news and newspapers. Interestingly enough, online news is also trusted above TV news & newspapers. None of this indicates that people believe journalism is no longer relevant.

In Australia, it seems many traditional news publications feel as though they’re in some sort of war with social media, and rather than embracing it, they simply want to discredit it. But the public has embraced social media, and so traditional media needs to as well to continue to be a relied-upon source of information. Many news outlets are missing out on a great opportunity to find breaking news stories on social media sites such as Twitter. When natural disasters occur – such as the recent Haitiearthquake or last years bushfires in Australia – the news is actually breaking on Twitter as people are able to share updates from their mobile phones whilst on the move. Eye witness reports appear online long before a TV station can secure an exclusive interview, and by the time it makes their 6pm broadcast, it’s old news. This being said, just because something appears on Twitter, doesn’t make it credible, and this is where traditional news has its strength – they have the resources to conduct further research and provide broader and more insightful information. But it needs to be delivered in more thought-provoking and non-traditional formats (no that doesn’t mean a slideshow that will generate 100 clicks for your news site).

Social media provides opportunities for deeper engagement with news content. Imagine, an article is published on a news website, the popularity of this article is based on how many times it is shared (via bookmarking, Facebook & Twitter shares etc.) AND read, rather than a traditional page view metric. The newspaper publisher creates a poll on the popular story to see what more information consumers want on this issue. A follow-up story is published, it is even more widely shared as the consumers feel valued by the newspaper publisher and they tell even more of their friends about it. Ultimately news outlets control what issues we’re privy to, but imagine if the general public were allowed to do the agenda-setting rather than media agencies? There would be MORE news publications, but they would be focussed on smaller niches, be more relevant and we’d end up with news we actually valued!

Traditional journalism still has it’s place. There are naysayers out there who will argue that. But we DO still need an unbiased source for our news. To remain relevent I believe news needs to be delivered in more convenient formats (at the moment that may be via Twitter or a Facebook Application) and cater to smaller, but more engaged audiences by supplying niche news.

heritage media, journalism, media, news, social media, statistics, traditional media

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Social media 101: What is social media?

Posted by Julie Delaforce in introductory, social media on 27 February, 2010

You’ll find many meanings of social media online, and there’ll never be one definitive explanation. For me social media is quite simply defined as:

“People having conversations online” (Kagan, 2008)

The internet used to be a one-way (broadcast) communication tool, websites were more like interactive brochures, a way of disseminating information. There were some exceptions to this, with traditional online forums/bulletin & message boards, and relay chat, but those formats were not mainstream, were not integrated into online communications and still only allowed for one-to-one or one-to-many communication.

The online/digital space has now become a many-to-many communication tool, with online dialogue or the ability to interact with others online. THIS is social media, it’s not necessarily separate to what the internet is, but a term coined to more easily define what it’s evolved into. It’s also sometimes called web 2.0 or new media. Email is becoming obsolete, as people use social networks and instant messaging to contact family, friends and colleagues. You can even communicate with businesses online, mostly via Twitter (a micro-blogging platform) and Facebook, who have a ‘Pages’ for businesses to set up their official presence on the social network.
A few of the most popularly used types of social media include:

Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, Bebo
Blogs, Micro-blogs – WordPress, Blogger, Twitter
UGC – YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr
Online communities – forums, Whirlpool, Essential Baby
Wikis – Wikipedia, WikiHow
Social sharing – news, bookmarking & tagging – Digg, Delicious, Reddit
Information aggregators – RSS readers, Google Reader
Virtual worlds & gaming – Second Life, World of Warcraft

And that’s just a VERY small sample, Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism gives a more comprehensive overview of the myriad online communication channels and methods.

Social media has become very pervasive, for any business not yet using it as part of their marketing, communications and customer service mix, Social Media Revolution (YouTube video link) should act as a wake-up call.

“Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”