Companies and individuals get social media wrong all the time. It’s rare, however, to see the type of PR disaster that enveloped Gillian McKeith yesterday.

If you missed the debacle, here’s a summary:

• A user of Twitter expressed excitement at reading a chapter of Dr Ben Goldacre‘s book, Bad Science, devoted to McKeith’s practices.
• McKeith (or someone tweeting from her official Twitter account) responded to the user accusing her – bizarrely – of bigotry against Americans. (Since McKeith’s PhD was gained in America.) Crucially, she also inferred that Dr Goldacre was a liar. (A very serious, and indefensible defamation.)
• At this point, the sceptic community on Twitter began picking up on the issue – tweeting with hashtags such as #Iherebydefamegillianmckeith and #gillianmckeithhasnophd
• She quickly became one of the top trending topics on Twitter, and as the momentum started to build, she made an incredible move – her tweets moved to the third person, and she wrote a load of tweets that were sharply deleted (They are captured for posterity here). Links to her Twitter account were removed from her official site, and she tweeted “Do you actually believe this is real twitter site for the GM?” Unfortunately for her, the link to her Twitter account is still visible in the source code of the site, at the time of writing.

What could she have done differently?

Assuming that @gillianmckeith is the woman’s real account, or is at least under her control, there are many lessons to be learned from this story.

Firstly, nobody likes a bully. McKeith is renowned for being somewhat litigious and silencing her critics through legal threats. This approach is anathema to the way social media operates, where engagement is key. Your critics provide invaluable feedback, and should be regarded as an opportunity to improve your product offering.

As an example, imagine if she had sent a complimentary book to the original tweeter. Instead of creating the storm that she did, she would have come across as looking to present her side of the story; listening to her critics and reaching out with generosity rather than insults and threats.

Secondly, her response to the crisis was disastrous, to say the least. In claiming that the account was not associated with her (when clearly it had been), she showed real contempt for the online world. Dishonesty and backtracking will get you nowhere, and in any case, the situation had been captured by numerous sources – the caches of search engines, and the screenshots of many users. Links to these spread like wildfire, and will irreparably damage your reputation.

Assuming again that Gillian McKeith (and people working with her) are responsible for this situation, she has given us a prime example of why employing a professional social media management company is money well spent. If you don’t thoroughly understand the opportunities and pitfalls of social media, the damage to your reputation can be incalculable.

Please note that comments do not represent the views of 360innovate. Defamatory comments will be deleted.

Although yet to be confirmed by Twitter itself the brand has created an @earlybird channel which is set to be monetised as a daily deals service.

In December, Dell reported $6.5 million in sales following two years of promotions on Twitter, and they aren’t the only brand using the micro blogging website to advertise and promote their brand, products and services many other brands use the free service as a promotional tool.

Whilst typical brand profiles take time to develop a steady following using the @earlybird channel enables brands to advertise specific promotions to a massive audience. This commercial venture will no doubt be a successful one, not only offering exciting offers it places control back into the audiences hands giving them the power to decided whether they want to be exposed to the advertising or not. There is no indication as to when @earlybird will go live, the tweets are currently protected but noise from Twitter camp indicates that what exactly @earlybird is will be revealed shortly.

For far too long consumer led companies have held the social media throne. Social networks such as Facebook and micro blogging site Twitter have provided them with a direct channel to their target market whilst business to business companies were left somewhat in dust trying to figure out how exactly social media tools could be used for business.

The common misconception held about business to business social media management is that social media is only for young people and Facebook users therefore it won’t work for B2B. Despite still being a commonly held opinion it is entirely false; social media is highly versatile stretching way beyond Facebook, the average social network user age is 37 years old and research shows that 91% of B2B decision makers consume social media. Companies such as Scania, Oracle, and John Deere are all shining examples of how diverse social media is and how it can be used to engage with the market.

These individual cases show that social media provides B2B companies with the perfect suite of online tools to engage with their online market, and a recent article by eMarketer has revealed that B2B companies are now taking advantage of social media even more so than their B2C counterparts. The article confirmed that B2B businesses have overtaken B2C in terms of utilising the various opportunities available online.  Perhaps because, despite knowing of its multiple opportunities it was never as clear cut as B2C for B2B marketers to approach social media. Yes, there were boundaries and B2B’s had to work hard to overcome them but as a result B2B online marketing and its uptake has evolved at lightening speed.

“Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.” — Mother Theresa

I am by no means a political person, I have only voted once before (in the Scottish election) and I am ashamed to say it was a fairly uneducated vote which I now feel could do more damage than no vote at all. However, because of the growing use of social media I am beginning to learn and understand a little bit about politics, stuff I usually just regarded as ‘grown up stuff’. But now I suppose I have to consider myself a grown up and having felt the strain of the recent recession it has now dawned on me that all this ‘grown up stuff’ has an incredible impact on how I am living my life.

Social media certainly can’t take all the glory for introducing me to the wonderful world of politics; patient friends, family & colleagues have filled me in a lot, magazines (Vogue is surprisingly political), TV, and the BBC website have all played a part in tickling my curiosity. But, in the past week with the run up to the budget and the budget itself I have been paying a little bit more attention thanks to Twitter; the commentary via #budget2010 provided me with an interesting insight into proper political debate. Likewise all the #cashgordon chat, despite maybe being for the wrong reasons did get me on to a website which I wouldn’t have previously bothered with.

A couple years ago in the US election, Barack Obama, showed us how to really use the social media channels to his benefit and I am a big believer that social media played a significant role in the success of his campaign. With the upcoming UK election it will be very interesting to see whether British politicians will follow suit and embrace social media?

Of course all the main parties have set themselves up on Twitter and Facebook. The Conservatives have even gone as far to compile Twitter lists of MEPs, MPs, Peers etc but there is not a whiff of David Cameron or George Osborne; unlike the Liberal Democrats where Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are (apparently) Tweeting on a daily basis; with Nick Clegg even trying to get #asknickclegg as a trending topic.

The benefits and risks facing political parties entering the social media sphere are relatively the same as any business; you can gain the trust, credibility and love of your followers/supporters by being transparent, genuine and engaging them in conversations. On the downside transparency opens you up to criticism, negativity and, without planning, can lead to failure.

Already the Conservatives have seen that social media can go a bit wrong with their Cash Gordon website being  hijacked but hats off to them for embracing social media and any publicity is good publicity, isn’t it? There will always be people out there, pie chuckers I saw them affectionately referred to on the BBC, who will just throw insults without engaging in relevant debate and the freedom of social media tools, in particular sites such as Twitter and Facebook, provide a prime opportunity for this behaviour. But is the risk worth it?

I have noticed whilst looking around all the various Twitter pages, websites, blogs and Facebook pages is that it is all a bit one sided. There is a post or status update then an influx of comments, and of all the comments I read I did not once see the political party respond. Yes, a lot of commenter’s are pie chuckers  but amongst the trash there is some serious points being made and debates being had- and it is from the comments of these Facebook pages that I feel I learnt something about the party policies not from what the party was saying themselves. Which is all very interesting for me but perhaps not what the party would have intended.

Surely they should be delivering the message not us?

What I find even more bizarre about this situation is that politicians go all around the country trying to talk to various groups of people to communicate their message but fail to use these tools which would put them in direct contact with thousands of potential voters. Despite the enthusiasm of others I felt neither inspired nor enticed to comment on any of the online ‘conversations’ the parties were trying to have,  I would feel out of my depth amongst the other obviously more informed commenter’s and if I did comment it would no doubt be a question and why would I ask a question when I know it won’t get answered? There is this excellent opportunity for politicians to talk directly with potential voters and they appear to be failing on all accounts.

The most engaging use of social media I have seen so far is the Democracy UK Facebook page. It was set up by Facebook so not a politically run social media page but, still, attention should be paid to their way of interacting and encouraging engagement from visitors. Perhaps politicians don’t want to become too transparent for fear of vulnerability, just like my opening quote suggests, and yes they should just do it anyway. Social media is potentially one of the most powerful tools they have in their pockets but to really achieve its maximum effect political parties need to take risks, join the conversation and engage with the potential voters. If the Democracy UK Facebook page demonstrates anything it is that there are people online who want to discuss, debate and connect providing political parties with the perfect opportunity to converse with potential voters and listen to their constituents.

Facebook groups range from the heart warming to the down right absurd.There are groups to bring back retired chocolate bars, prevent bus services being cancelled, share stories of being a student, to commiserate the engagement of Russell Brand and on a more serious note to show support for charities; no matter your hobbies, passion, religion or opinions I imagine that there would be a Facebook group out there for you.

Although the number of groups on Facebook is reaching silly proportions and in many instances people join them only to never contribute anything ever there are the rare occasions when a Facebook group amounts to something more than just a giggle; actually doing a good deed or gaining momentum to the point where it brings around action.

One of the first Facebook groups that quickly became a national campaign was one set up to ‘bring back the Wispa’ chocolate bar. After several thousand fans joining the Facebook group and several other online petitions cropping up the people at Cadbury finally took notice. Cadbury spokesman Tony Bilsborough said: “We have noticed the web interest for some time and the consumer passion has undeniably swayed our opinion to relaunch Wispa” (BBC), demonstrating that Facebook groups have significant power not only for the consumer but also the corporations, think how much money Cadbury saved by not having to invest in research and development?

Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No. 1 is probably one of the most publicised Facebook groups so far. The group called for fans to buy RATM’s 1992 single “Killing in the Name Of” in a bid to challenge the X Factors dominance of the Christmas number one. As a result  of this online campaign “Killing In The Name Of” secured the Christmas number one spot beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry and to date the number of Facebook users supporting the campaign has reached over 1.5 million. Amazing as it may seem that this small group page went on to be a highly debated topic, featured in the 10 o’clock news and powerful enough to keep XFactor off the most coveted No. 1 spot of the year, it is no real surprise. The very nature of Facebook is centred upon sharing and the entire set up of the website is dedicated to everyone knowing what everyone else is doing, therefore the potential for snowballing viral campaigns are very high.

Someone else looking to utilise the wild fire effect of Facebook is the administrator of the  “Camera Found at Edinburgh Hogmanay Street Party 2009/2010″ group, a group set up with the sole intention of finding the owner of a lost camera using the pictures on memory card to identify the true owner. This is not a one off either, there are several similar altruistic groups across Facebook helping people locate their lost items. A brilliant and very kind use for a Facebook group, I guess the majority of lost and found items end up on EBay, and one which relies very heavily upon the ‘word of mouth’ sharing aspect of Facebook- after all you don’t exactly search for “lost camera” on Facebook do you? What is so nice about this is the element of community, people joining a group to help someone find their camera and amongst the 80,000 revellers that attended the Edinburgh Hogmanay party they were able to.

Whether it’s reuniting a camera with its owner, sharing your views with the world or campaigning for a company to act in a certain way Facebook groups have incredible potential. There is, of course, power in numbers and where else to find numbers than on one of the most popular social networks in the world Facebook.

User generated content refers to content on a website or similar form of media which has been produced, written or compiled by the users of that media/website. The greatest example of user generated content is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is produced, maintained and regulated by its users; it is the fifth most popular website in the world (Econsultancy) and although it has been subject to several practical jokes it still remains a trusted source of knowledge and information.

The various ways a brand can integrate user generated content within their online presence are;

• Web Forum
• Branded social network
• Open comments on the blog
• Review section
• Video/photo galleries
• Brand wiki

Web Forum

A forum is a place for people to talk and discuss various matters. They are commonly characterised by topic and are created by fans of that particular topic/product/service. Brands can use a forum as a place to talk with and connect customers encouraging them to  discuss the product/service and post questions giving the brand a means of providing additional customer service and technical support.

Examples of brands using forums; BT, Nintendo and Joomla!

Social network

Social networks are the likes of Facebook and Bebo where friends can connect with one another the platforms allowing them to easily talk online, share content and generally interact with other users of the website including brands. A growing trend is the establishment of brand run social networks  where fans of that brand can connect with the company and other fans allowing them to share experiences, keep up to date with the brand, get exclusive promotions and interact with the people behind the brand. Although creating your own social network  gives you greater control and flexibility it is possible to create a similar community on any exisiting social networks; Asos demonstrate both options by having their own community page and a very successful Facebook page with over 170,000 fans.

Examples of company specific social networks; Asos, Reebok andToyota.

Blog

A blog is an online diary or web log, they are increasingly being utilised by businesses to communicate with stakeholders, however, a blog shouldn’t be a one way street it is there to engage users and encourage feedback. Although not entirely user generated a blog is an ideal place to encourage customer feedback, ideas and conversation and in that sense it is a tool for generating user content. For efficient use of commenting facilities minimise the moderation of comments where possible, respond to any comments left and actively invite readers to get involved by posting their thoughts and comments.

Examples of company blogs engaging with readers; Econsultancy, Playstation and Spotify.

Reviews

Many websites, in particular ecommerce sites, are now providing review facilities providing customers with the chance to provide feedback on the product or service that they recieved. User generated reviews and recommendations are one of the most powerful selling tools for any business  so having positive reviews posted beside products can play an influential role in the decision making process of a potential customer. There are many ways for reviews to be displayed in a website, with most content managed systems it is fairly simple to turn on a review facility, there are also companies such as Feefo who follow every sale with an email requesting feedback which is then displayed on the website adding further authenticity to the review.

Examples of review facilities; MyWardrobe, American Apparel, First Direct and Comet

Video/Photo galleries

On your website you can provide a gallery displaying videos or photos submitted by customers. A gallery could be used in conjunction with a competition, as part of a review facility or simply to show off the product/service. The benefit of having user generated photos and videos is that it can be used across several channels, within the website, on the social media profiles and on a dedicated YouTube channel for videos.

Examples of user generated galleries; Firebox, Oxo and Asos (again!)

Brand Wiki

A company wiki can be utilised for internal use as an effective and affordable alternative to an intranet. Users create, amend and edit the content within the wiki so its not something a company would want to let loose to the general public but along with being an excellent hub for employees to post information and communicate with one another. Within Wikipedia many larger (or reknowned) companies will have a page, it is impossible to completely control the information posted on the page, however, you can ensure that the information is factual, up to date and non slanderous. For any issues with the company wiki read this blog post.

The Pros and Cons of it all

Using and promoting user generated content is an excellent way to engage with customers and can in many cases be an excellent source of inspiration for improving or marketing your service or product. Further to this user generated content can form an integral part of an advertising and online marketing campaign; many companies including Doritos, TMobile, Asos and Oxo all use customer made videos and photographs in some form of marketing material as a means of selling their products.

Of course whenever a company invites people to generate content they are running the risk of receiving a bit of negative comments, to curb this many opt to moderate comment and reviews facilities ensuring only the ‘good’ ones get through. Doing so can have a negative effect; you run the possibility of no one commenting or alternatively no one trusting the comments being made. Instead of moderating consider allowing negative comments to be posted and read by one ‘n’ all but ensure that you respond to it. By engaging upset customers you are showing that your company accepts its mistakes and seeks to learn from them. Look to BT on Twitter who actively enage with customers having difficulty with their BT service turning a nasty situation into an incredibly positive one.

For any company seeking to encourage user generated content the best course of action is to have a set of moderation guidelines and procedures in the case of negative comments or publicity ensuring that everyone understands how the publicity and comments are to be dealt with.

We are big supporters of social media and its brand building qualities;  it is the perfect channel to ‘connect’ with your target audience and push your message. However, once you have your hundreds of followers and fans how do you convert them into a sale? According to a recent publication by MediaPost,  at its core social media works best when relying on good old fashioned marketing tactics promotion and customer service.

Your social media campaign should aim to increase brand awareness, drive customers to the website and convert the follower to a sale. The MediaPost article using data published by Razorfish states, “of those who follow a brand on Twitter, for example, 44% said access to exclusive deals is the main reason. And on Facebook and MySpace, 37% cited special deals as the main reason they have “friended” a brand”. As the stats tell us brands must be enticing customers to their websites using promotions and discounts doing so will increase brand interaction and encourage customer loyalty.

Using social media platforms to give customers added value such as insider hints, tips and additional information regarding products can push customers onto your website and help the decision making process. The correlation between such brand engagement and providing above average customer service is high. Big brands such as BT are utilising social media platform Twitter to provide immediate and relevant customer service, e.g. within minutes of a complaint about their service is aired a message is recieved by the complainer asking for contact details with someone dealing with the response as soon as possible saving you the time and effort of phoning and sitting on hold!

Online customer service from BT

However, as we touched up on in our Habitat Getting It Wrong post for a successful online marketing campaign you must strategically plan a course of action. Many businesses and brands may rush into setting up social media profiles on the premise that it will ‘be good for the brand’, however, as this post has hopefully communicated there is more to social media than building brand awareness and that it takes a little more than having a big brand to entice friends/fans/followers to your website to purchase.

Twitter has recently introduced Twitter lists to all their users allowing them to classify (or list)  followers in seperate groups.

It is fairly easy to create a group and add people to it, but why the need for it? Well, they are there to enable users to recommend lists of followers for other users to also follow.

So, how can a business use Twitter lists?

Firstly, businesses can create an employee list and encourage all the brand followers to follow the employees also. The benefit? It groups together everyone associated with the brand which makes it easier for customers, fans or stakeholders to follow all the employees of their favourite brand, from a corporate perspective making the employees equally as popular as the company allows the brand message to reach a wider audience and allows the brand personality to shine through, see NME magazines employee list. For larger companies creating numerous employee lists based on geographic location, office location or department will help to put the customer in touch with exactly the people they want to speak to.

Secondly, it can allow businesses to give customers a little bit extra by compiling lists of Twitterers that they feel will be of interest or relevant to the service/product they are buying. For example if you are selling bathroom suites online perhaps you could create a list of decorators or DIY shops that also appear online, a sort of recommended Twitterers almost. The main benefit this could bring is by establishing your Twitter account as a bit of resource for your industry and opens up the possibility of creating relationships with the companies or individuals on the list.

Thirdly, use Twitter lists to manage fans following enabling them to connect with other fans in their geographic area or sharing the same interests. For example the NHL has created NHL fan lists, they did so by send out a tweet to all their followers asking them to tell them what team they supported accompanied by #myfavouritenhlteam. As a result the NHL Twitter account has 20 lists of different fan groups and is in the process of asking Twitter to allow them the ability to have even more. The result being that NHL have turned their Twitter account into a mini social community where fans connect with other fans.

Fourthly, if you are hosting an event or are an events company then the Twitter list can be used to group together attendees of the event, this allows potential attendees to see who will be present and gives those within the list to socialise with one another prior to and after the event itself.

In conclusion there really are many different way a business can utilise the Twitter lists, with a little thought and creativity they can provide benefit to any business and hopefully this blog post gives you a starting point.

In a survey conducted by Mzinga & Babson Executive Education it was revealed that of the businesses adopting and incorporating social media into their marketing mix only a mere 16% are in fact measuring the ROI from the said social media activity.

This very low figure is no surprise. After all given the varying degrees of expected returns it can be very difficult to accurately measure the success rate of social media.

With all the different types of social media; blogs, Facebook, viral emails, etc and the different returns each can offer, along with a company’s own desired return, things can get a bit complicated. The best course of action when approaching any social media campaign is to plan and establish specific expected ROI’s. For example:

• Increase traffic to website
• Increase business contacts
• Get people talking about the brand
• Have people saying positive things about the brand

Traffic

Measuring the audience of your social media campaign or the level of traffic being directed from a particular social media activity is perhaps one of the easiest aspects to measure.

Any standard analytic tool should be able to show the following:

• Unique visitors
• Page views per visitor
• Time spent on site
• Frequency of visit
• Conversion rate
• Bounce rates

…letting you see where your traffic has came from (Facebook, Bebo, corporate blog…), if they are engaging with the website (how high is the bounce rate, are they spending a long time are they returning, etc), and whether the traffic is being converted (are they emailing you, are they going to the contacts page, etc).

Blogging platforms (such as WordPress) social networks and email marketing software, will also provide you with some form of analytic’s allowing you to see how many people have been exposed to that particular piece of social media.

The value of such quantitative results is of course high, however, it only provides a small snapshot of the full return any social media campaign will offer and provides a starting point for discovering the true ROI of your social media campaign.

Measuring Interaction

Knowing the levels of traffic may be very interesting, however, it doesn’t give much substance. The beauty of social media is that it gets people talking to one another and if you are investing in social media you want to know how well your target market is interacting with your brand on all these various platforms.

Measuring how users interact with your brand can be done in various ways; the most basic, albeit time consuming, way is to simply keep your eyes and ears open.

Of course an indication of the level of interaction on the blog can be established from the number and quality of comments being left- this also applies to social media profiles such as Facebook and similarly a quick search on Twitter will reveal all the various conversations where your brand is mentioned. Twittbeep is a handy tools that alerts you of any mentions of your brand and/or profile within Twitter.

Who is talking about you & what are they saying

Once again this is a case of keeping your ear to the ground.

Using alert tools to view mentions of your brand is an effective way to monitor who is talking about your brand and it gives you the opportunity to respond. Google Alerts is one of the most popular, and free, alert tools available.

In terms of measuring who is talking about you and what they are saying the potential returns are increased brand awareness within your target market and the development of a dialogue with potential or existing customers, a potential by-product is the identification of any issues which may affect company reputation.

Benchmarking your social media campaign is the best method of measuring results. Developing a set of questions relating to the specific returns you expect and then performing a monthly audit willreveal how successful the social media campaign has been in terms of not only quantity but also quality.

Quality over Quantity

Many people tend to be weary of qualitative measurement as opposed to quantitative. Quantitative research produces nice safe numbers that appear to be more trustworthy and reliable, however, people do not know the quality of these nice safe numbers. The phrase “quality over quantity” is very, very true, especially in terms of measuring a social media campaign- or any form of marketing campaign for that matter. Tables and graphs telling you how much traffic has landed on your website from Facebook, Bebo and MySpace can mean nothing; knowing what your audience is saying about your brand and how they are interacting with your brand is without a doubt far more valuable.

So when approaching any social media campaign do not become complacent when measuring- although it appears that around 84% of businesses don’t measure at all anyway! Ensure that along with looking at the figures you perform serious analysis on the quality of the traffic and level of interaction.

Are you interacting with the right market? What are people saying about you, are they saying anything at all about you? If you don’t know the answer to these questions then you don’t know the true return on your social media campaign.

Some interesting Twitter news coming from the Internet Advertising Bureau today, the title of the post pretty much gives the main gist of it away – eight out of ten Twitter users use the micro blogging website for business purposes. Rather than Tweeting about what we’re eating for dinner we are Tweeting business in a bid to increase sales and brand awareness.

With this fact in mind it is no surprise that last week Twitter announced plans to launch a commercial account service which aims to help businesses to increase profit through the website.

The initial stages will see the introduction of fee based services and the creation of business-oriented application interfaces to provide a commercial layer over the social network.

Until this all kicks off check out the Twitter 101 for all the business related advice:

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