Choosing a social media consultant should be easy...and now it is. Me, Adam Gray social media consultant click to find out why

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Hi everyone. My blog has now relocated to: www.grayuk.com

Please come and visit at my new home!

Thanks

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This morning I was ploughing through the mountain of emails trying to sift which needed actioning, when I noticed one from a small marketing agency in the North of England.

The email began like this; "About 8 months ago I sent you an email (you might remember it.) It was about how UK businesses are the worst in Europe at staying in touch with their customers. i.e. we lose more repeat business than anyone else."

Clearly "you might remember it" is based on the fact that he believes that I don't get 200 email each day (therefore c. 40,000 since he last wrote), and the fact that he had said "UK businesses are the worst in Europe at staying in touch with their customers" clearly demonstrated by the fact that he sends one email every 8 MONTHS!

When I stopped laughing I considered whether I should send him a note to let him know how he'd brightened-up my day. But I figured that if he could send an email like this, the irony might be a little bit lost on him!

Anyway, my point is, that companies like this are setting themselves up as experts, helping organisations to "get it right".

Is it any wonder the economy's in the state that it is?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!

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These days pretty much everyone who hasn't been marooned on a desert island is aware of Facebook, but I've recently heard some staggering numbers attached to it.

• every day 6 billion minutes are spent using it
• 40 million users update their status every day
• every month 700 million photos are uploaded
• there are more than 300 million active users
• 45 million active user groups
• 1,000,000 developers worldwide are creating applications
• 65 million users access it through mobile devices

So, we can safely say that Facebook is pretty darn big!

But then, so are LinkedIn (47 million users), Twitter (18 million users), MySpace (135 million users), Plaxo and literally hundreds of others. YouTube gets 60,000 hrs of video uploaded every single month, and there are over 100,000,000 blogs on the internet!

Conversations are being had 24/7 about all manner of people, places, things and businesses. Importantly for you, some of those conversations are being had about your industry - possibly even your business.

These conversations are taking place whether you like it or not, whether you're involved or not.

Many businesses are rushing to be part of these conversations. To sell, sell, sell...

But unfortunately for these businesses, this is the world of Social Media, where different rules apply.

Many businesses seem to think that "visit my blog", "special offer" or "I saw this, see what you think" will drive traffic to their website and deliver sales. Well, it won't. What it will do is turn people off.

Think of social networking as an online party. Befriend people, win their confidence by talking to them (with no obvious ulterior motive), give them advice & help where you can. Give, give, give, and pretty soon you'll be popular, trusted and credible...

...isn't this what you work so hard to achieve in your business life?

The fact is, it doesn't matter how many followers, friends & connections you have, what matters is what you do with them.

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For thousands of years, commerce has basically worked in the same way.

Products, services or information have been sold for a profit to those who can’t or can’t be bothered to source them or make them for themselves and a margin has been charged for this – you make the money from selling the ‘stuff’.

But recently, margins for ‘stuff’ have been squeezed, price is more of a concern, clients are doing and making more ‘stuff’ for themselves, everything is changing.

Insurance brokers, retailers, record labels, management consultants, encyclopaedia publishers, and any other industry you can care to think of are under pressure from new ideas, new distribution channels and new technologies. Information is no longer scarce, neither is ‘stuff’, it no longer holds a premium.

The world is changing, no it's changed. People are looking for the next big thing, the vehicle that has been unleashed by Google and the internet, that nobody has yet spotted.

It doesn’t matter which industry you’re in, you need to find this Holy Grail, you need to change what you’re doing, or how you’re delivering what you do to use these new platforms to make it easier for your customers to buy from you. If you don’t, your competitor will – you need to move with the times, because as Seth Godin says ‘we’re all in the fashion industry now’!

But before you run a bath and think about how to take your business online, or reach-out to your customers through social media, or change to a virtual office, remember, the money might not be where you first think it is.

If Google had decided to charge for searches, analytics, gmail etc it wouldn’t be what it is today. The same’s true for Amazon, last minute, Facebook, Twitter et al.

So give a bit of thought to why you business isn’t as profitable as it used to be, is it the recession, is it the offer, or is it just broken?

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It’s the summer holidays, kids are off for 6 whole weeks, and being 21st century children, mine are very computer literate even at 7 & 5 years old.

I’ve had an old PC kicking around for some time and thought that this would be a perfect toy for them to use over the summer. For the most part the kids use mine or my wife’s mac, and it must be said that even the kids can tell the difference between the Windoze/Mac experience, and would rather use a Mac. So, with nothing to lose I installed Linux (Fedora) on the machine to replace XP. And the result is a thing of beauty. The interface is professional and intuitive, kind of like a Mac (only better), without all those playschool colours of vista and XP, and the machine is lightning fast (booting-up in just 15 seconds!

So why would anyone pay £300 for Vista and MS Office, when one can get Linux and OpenOffice for free. It’s the same thing only free...and better. This is of course, the power of marketing.

But with the freedom, information, and honesty of the internet (which ironically Microsoft themselves have helped create) there’s nowhere to hide poor value and poor product, so there may be trouble ahead for Bill’s boys!

Well, my point is that this is a metaphor for all of our businesses. If we don’t offer value, quality and service then our days are numbered, because now it’s so easy for our customers to find a better/cheaper/more proactive supplier and when they do, we’re history.

I know that Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world... but the history of the IT industry is littered with stories of giants falling. IBM, Netscape, Yahoo to name a few. Microsoft are living on borrowed time, 10 years from now they’ll be a niche provider of ‘old’ technology, whilst everyone else has moved over to cloud computing and the Googlesque world of remote computing. The new world of web enabled business favours small nimble companies rather than leviathans.

Watch-out, enjoy some of the dinosaurs of today, they'll be extinct soon!

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I know that social media is starting to be seen as a legitimate channel for marketing spend for organisations both large and small, but how do you measure the return on investment?

Well, up until relatively recently social media has been viewed as a long-term brand building exercise in much the same way that mass media advertising has. It’s a vital spend, but very difficult to quantify what the benefit is.

Until now…

There are now a number of social media monitoring platforms which listen to all blogs/platforms and alike, and allow you to look for trends, and see what’s being said. This is very exciting as it means that you can start to monetise and measure your presence in social media, and begin to see some sales return.

The three main areas that this offers benefit in are:

1) research – the opportunity to listen to what people are saying about your products and services WITHOUT having to worry about the effect that asking the questions might have, or whether you’re asking the right questions.

2) competitor analysis – see what the market thinks of what your opposition is doing. Can you learn anything from it, and what’s selling well, what should you avoid doing.

3) sales – people don’t just use social media to tell everyone they’re having a cup of tea! Lots use it to ask for opinions of what they should buy. Simply pass these enquiries to your sales team to close – bingo.

We are about to begin working to BAA at Stansted, and have had an initial look at social media comments, currently running at 3000 per month. This can be an invaluable source of honest and most importantly, current feedback.

The exciting thing about all of this is that you can now place some metrics on your social media exposure.

Enter the dawning of a new age!

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Just over 15 years ago I closed the door for the last time on my first business venture. A massive learning curve, and a massive waste of my time (and money).

In 1990 I managed to find some Angel backing and launched what was arguably the finest showroom in London. We retailed the best hi-fi at any price, and we’re talking about a serious price – our best system (CD player, amplifiers and a pair of speakers) cost £115,000, our best speaker cables cost £10,000 (no, really), we even had a £9,000 pair of headphones. The showroom was kitted-out in the most sumptuous style and was positioned right opposite Harrods. We had the best sounds, the best showroom, and the best location.

So why didn’t it work?

I made an all too common mistake. I confused my opinion with fact. I believed that my viewpoint was the same as everyone else's. I thought, because high quality music reproduction was a passion of mine, it would be a passion of the well-heeled folks who visited our store.

The experience taught me a lot of lessons which still shape my thinking. I engage focus groups, carry out research, and use sampling before I make any decisions for myself or my clients. At all costs I must avoid another similarly spectacular failure!

But looking back on the whole affair, I think that it illustrates some very interesting reasons why so much of today's marketing doesn’t engage with its audience. We need to recognise that our customers are different from us. We need to make sure that we don’t make assumptions about their viewpoint, their knowledge level, and most importantly we mustn’t for a moment think that they care about ANYTHING that we do or say. Because the chances are they probably don’t.

So next time you write a PowerPoint presentation, don't start with the company history and your CV, start with the exciting stuff, what you're going to do for their company, how much you can save them, what your big idea is.

Think about what the audience might want to hear, NOT what you want to say.

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As discussed in previous posts, it is a given that the old models for, well pretty much everything, have been swept away by the online revolution, and Google in particular. The biggest challenge that businesses both large and small have to face is not from their competition, but from this new online order.

It used to be the case that customers were local and what you told them they either believed or didn’t – either way, they would have had a tough job sourcing an alternate supplier or proving you wrong or right. Now, when you offer your services to a prospect they can go online, establish the truth and find 50 suppliers who offer exactly the same service as you in a matter of a few seconds.

If you’re writing a book you can buy the computer from America, get it proofed in England, get it printed in China and get it shipped globally without ever even getting your hands on it…so how exactly can an old established publisher compete in this global market which is only ever a click away?

Like the publisher we could of course pretend that the internet isn’t there, and hope that the problem goes away. Or we can think about how we can use the internet to add value to our offer, how we can exploit what it’s best at – spreading ideas and sharing information.

1 – Is your website really just a brochure online? Before the internet, a brochure was the vehicle used by organisations to talk about themselves. It was an opportunity to explain what they did, and why.

Does this sound like your website? The problem is that nobody wants you to tell them how good you are, to be credible, they want you to show them. So if your website is a collection if pages which simply detail you products and services, your history, and your contact details you’re simply making noise, not adding value. All of your competition is saying the same thing: great service, 10 years experience, unparalleled industry knowledge… there is no point of difference. I’ve never been to an Indian restaurant which doesn’t proclaim “Finest Indian Cuisine” on the menu – and because they all say it, nobody believes any of them.

To be believable you must show people why you’re good – package-up some snippets of your knowledge and give them away to visitors to your site. It will help you win their trust and it will establish you as an expert.

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...there was an advertising man who recognised that the rise of mass media opened-up a whole host of opportunities to sell things to unsuspecting prospects. He was smart enough to see a great opportunity. If he could interrupt these prospects repeatedly in their day-to-day lives when they weren’t expecting it he could influence their behaviour, and make them buy his client’s products – often even if they didn’t really want to, or need them! That man was Leo Burnett, the father of advertising. He built a global empire which was extremely good at influencing mass market behaviours.

After Leo Burnett came a tsunami of great advertisers - David Ogilvy (Ogilvy & Mather), James Walter Thompson (JWT), the Saatchi’s and countless others, each of them bringing their own style & flavour, and each of them building on the ideas of Leo Burnett.

The basis on which each of these organisations operated has been in essence the same since Leo Burnett began this kind of advertising; to produce eye catching ads, which through the platforms created by mass media attract people’s attention, and influence their behaviour (usually to purchase). And, since Leo himself first wrote copy for Cadillac in 1917 the techniques employed by advertisers have worked, and worked well.

These proven techniques have informed other types of marketing and promotion – and they have all been based on the same premise. Talk often enough to a large enough group of people, in ever more creative ways and a proportion of them will listen to what you have to say.

Of course there will be those who argue that this isn’t the case, and the dynamics of direct mail, advertising, evens and direct sales are fundamentally different, but there’s not. They are all based on the assumption that a portion of the people to whom you are trying to talk aren’t listening, or actively don’t want to listen, and that this wastage is inherent in any campaign or marketing strategy, and that this is part of the cost of the campaign itself. And until recently there’s been no believable alternative market model for how to promote products and services.

The problem with this old model is not that it doesn’t work, just that we can no longer make it work because that natural wastage has become so large that campaigns are not financially viable in the way that they used to be.

The reason for this is that the amount of choice available to the audience to just too great. Hundreds of TV channels, thousands of radio stations, millions of websites, billboards, hoardings, door-to-door flyers, direct mail, email, text messaging, mean that there are simply too many avenues. Too many avenues for the audience to bear, too many avenues for us to manage. No longer can an advert in the back of the Sunday paper guarantee to bring anything home. Despite the profiling of the readers/listeners/views/traffic, it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for two reasons.

i) the internet has enabled each of us to be individuals rather than one of a crowd. Yes, the global village is a much used term, but the fact remains that if you are passionate about something, no matter how obscure, within the global village there will be plenty of others who are passionate about the same thing. And you only want to know about things that you care about.

ii) the audience has become really good at ignoring our messages. Can you remember your favourite ad on TV at the moment? Probably not. Can you remember all the ads you drove past on your way to work? Probably not. That’s because you tune them out. They’ve simply become wallpaper.

The reason that you choose to tune these ads-out is because you have higher expectations, you want to have ads which are of interest to you, showing products which you do want to buy from brands that you do care about.

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Do you talk to your clients (and staff) in a way which totally fails to engage them? They you have a list of features/benefits/facts which you must mention, no matter what? Do you believe that the person you’re writing to (client or not) cares about your widgets?

Well, they don’t.

The sad fact is that the only person who cares about your business is you and if you come at your communications from a position of knowing that the recipient would most likely rather be doing something else, then there’s a chance that you might be able to hook them.

Don’t list points which you think make you sound important – how long you’ve been trading, how big you are, how much growth you’re experiencing. Think about what their questions might be, and answer those.

These are the rules of engagement for the modern world.

Demonstrate that you have some sensitivity for their issues, and that you know how to solve them. Once you’ve shown them how good you are (rather than told them) there’s a chance that you can win their confidence, then, you’re off and running!

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I really struggle to understand why some organisations can be such luddites! Each year they produce a new brochure/website/direct mail campaign, and each year they hope that it will revolutionise their sales – in exactly the same way it didn’t last year, or the year before, or the year…

Anyway, I wondered why when it comes to design and marketing the client rarely asks what ROI can I expect, or what can this do for me. Instead they ask how much will it cost, and what have you done for others previously!

The irony is that these days, with the paradigm shifts happening on a monthly basis, there really IS NO PREVIOUSLY. The whole market is virgin, and very few businesses or agencies seem to understand that the proven model on which we base our marketing behaviours is irrelevant.

Google is the fastest growing company in history, from 0 – $125bn in just 10 years, and they didn’t do this by copying what others have done, or doing stuff the old way.

Throw away the rule book, throw-out the baby with the bath water, and really look at what’s going-on, then think how your business can capitalise on this world of possibilities.

Good luck, and goodnight!

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If you’ve not yet seen Google Wave, you should have a look.

Email isn’t a good way of communicating really, it’s simply an electronic version of the postal system… 

Imagine recreating written communications using the functionality of the internet as a basis, rather than the functionality of the horse and saddlebag… 

What you have is Google Wave. Currently in Beta testing, this promises to offer email, forums, blogs and wikis all in one. It will probably change how we communicate on line for ever… for the better.

We all remember 15 years ago saying “email… what’s the point?”! Don't make the same mistake with Google Wave.

Well Google Wave, you heard it here first (or perhaps second!)

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The Apple WWDC has finally answered all of the fundamental shortcomings of the iPhone. 300 hrs standby and 10 hours talktime, video recording (and editing), MMS, cut and paste, voice control, and soon turn-by-turn satellite navigation.

I shall look forward to watching Apple’s quest for domination of the entire technology market continue!

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but in these days of recession, where redundancies are commonplace, credit terms are being stretched, and a general feeling of worry seems to pervade every corner of the workplace, why are your “loyal” staff lacking the commitment that they should have? After all, you’ve been good to them for years haven’t you?

Well, you may well have paid them, but in the 21^st century that isn’t enough. People have unlimited choices, and can have their CV distributed to the four corners of the world within minutes if they’re of a mind to.

If you don’t communicate effectively with them; explaining what you’re doing and why, helping them to share your vision and making them feel included, there’s little chance they’ll be there for you – why should they be?

Imagine Company X.

It’s been manufacturing widgets for years, and whilst it is proud of its past, it has been very keen to keep it’s employees happy. Everyone in the company has enjoyed healthy bonuses, and the last two decades has been a boom time in the widget market much like the economy as a whole. This has meant that a relaxed atmosphere, a happy and committed workforce, and a string growth have been hallmarks of the company.

However, the last 18 months has not been quite so easy. Increased competition from China, a slowdown in the global market for widgets, and clients taking longer to pay has meant that Company X has had to make some redundancies.

Because the company hasn’t explained why they’ve made the redundancies, the remaining staff fear that they’re going to be next, they feel in the dark – they didn’t know that the company was in trouble until some of their friends lost their jobs.

There’s now a tangible sense of low morale amongst the workforce, and despite the fact that much of the dead-wood has been removed and savings have been made, there seem to be other problems emerging. Things are going from bad to worse.

After what could have been cleansing for the business, other areas are starting to crack; increased absenteeism, reduced commitment, increased staff churn, even graffiti in the toilets all help to make the company look and feel like it’s the end of the road.

Had the staff been on side, it could have been a very different story. An on-going campaign to engage and excite the staff could have helped them to feel some ownership of the business, and been sympathetic its plight. Hell, they might even have solved the problem for Company X.

Staff who know where they’re going and why are more committed, and work harder than those that are simply remunerated (no matter how you dress it up as a package of employee benefits). Staff want to see how their contribution helps the company achieve its goals, and they want to help shape the future of the business too, they want to have a voice and have it heard.

In a recession, they way to make businesses strong isn’t to cut staffing costs, but to maximise value from those overheads, by getting people to work harder, faster and better. And the easy way to do that is to make them want the company to succeed.

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This morning I presented a version (in part) of Seth Godin’s thinking that he explores in “Sliced Bread and Other Marketing Delights”. The presentation examined possible reasons as to why advertising and marketing doesn’t seem to be as effective as it has been in the past. It also explored the rise of social media and how the power of “Permission Marketing” might be harnessed to get our message across to people who actually want to hear it rather than those actively don’t!

Following the presentation there were some interesting discussions, and whilst everyone acknowledged that the marketing they were doing wasn’t as successful as it had been in the past, they seemed to think that at some point in the future things would change back, and “normal service would be resumed” - but, like Cuba, we might have a VERY long wait!

I think the problem that we all face is that the internet and in particular Google, has changed the landscape to the extent that none of the old paradigms are necessarily true. And it is this directionless world of uncertainty in which we now operate. What we know is that the old order doesn’t hold water any more. What we don’t know, is what the new order looks like!

Organisations recognise that placing sub-standard ads, in sub-standard no longer yield results in the way that it used to, but they still chug-on regardless, afraid to throw away the rule book and do something which gives them a competitive advantage.

We all know that clients & prospects now have huge, and very little time. The last thing they want is more wallpaper that they can ignore.

Act now - before it's too late!

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A friend has just lent me a great book by Jeff Jarvis (he who almost killed DELL) - which points to trends in not just online communication to to business models in general. How we've been doing stuff up to now, just isn't going to work from now onwards and this book explains exactly what can and does happen when you cede control to your customers - and how you can't manage this process, but how you can roll with the punches.

A good read, and one that everyone who has an interest in business/communications/design should read.

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Well, just had a very interesting meeting with a chap who is a bit of a Blogging/Tweeting/Facing expert. The interesting thing is that social networking doesn't seem to obey many of the rules of conventional marketing and communications, and he outlined why.

I think that I have the beginnings of a plan for how we can produce an integrated strategy for an employee comms issue being faced by a client. This idea of social networking, and the self policing attributes of this seem to be an obvious solution for the varied problems the client is currently facing. High absenteeism, low morale/commitment and lack of understanding of the business.

The strategy will focus on researching the staff to understand their needs/preferences/understanding and to prove that the beliefs that the management have are in fact correct. Then working-out some key discussion points which we will distribute via the social framework we employ and will form the basis for the beginnings of a dialogue between the employees and the board.

The size/spread and variance on roles of the workforce means that we not only need a cost effective delivery mechanism, we need one which will not preclude anyone from having a voice.

I shall report back to let you know if it works, but any guidance for anyone would be most welcome!

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...well, here we are. 

I'm Adam Gray and all of my work is based in communications (design and Marketing rather than telephones & IP). I work with some great guys, and I think that my colleagues and I have some pretty smart ideas. We don't profess to have all of the answers, but, we can normally find a great way of making ourselves and our clients understood efficiently.

But, however much we know (or like to think we know) the world of marketing and communications is changing, and changing fast. Many of the old paradigms have been (or are being) swept away. The old channels of Advertsiing, DM, websites, brochures etc seem less and less relevant as time goes by. With Twitter (and all of its plugins), Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Plaxo, Blogspot, Google's many tools - and countless other social and networking applications there are a plethora of new ways of reaching-out to talk to people.

Add to this all of the different ways of accessing this Web, email, iPhone, Blackberry and Chumby to name but a few, the landscape is both crowded and confusing.

And, whilst some forward thinking clients and agencies are embracing these new opportunities, to the best of my knowledge there is no grand unifying theory about how these modules can be leveraged to maximum effect. Granted, there are loads of blogs and writers, loads of facebook communities and twibes, but everyone seems to have an opinion about some, but not all of these.

I hope that over the coming months people will use this blog to share their tips, experiences and resources so that we can all start to offer our clients a new way of talking to their clients.

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