Philip Buxton, the former editor of Revolution, has written a great checklist for brands choosing a social media agency:

1. A new approach – since everyone claims to ‘do’ social, look for those seeking to develop new models for approaching it, not those seeking to map on their existing models
2. Technology – everyone claims to have unique talent, to be ‘leading’, to have great clients, and real expertise. Technology, fortunately, can’t be faked, demonstrates genuine investment and expertise, and really can be proprietary and unique. So, which agency has developed/is developing their own technology to support their new approach?
3. Measurement – the true value of real engagement by brands in social media is really hard to measure. I’ll be dropping my bank as soon as I don’t need them anymore because of the way it treated me when I was a student – good social media strategy will have a similarly long-lasting effect. Nonetheless, some agencies are having a very credible stab at it. Just steer clear of the ones who claim it’s that simple
4. Existing credentials – being good at something, in my view, is a transferable skill. Muhammad Ali liked to say that if he’d been a dustman (I’m translating of course), he’d have been the best dustman in the world. I believe him. So, is the agency now claiming to be brilliant at social media brilliant at what it already does?
5. Case studies – trade journalists will tell you that finding people to talk about social media is not a problem. Finding people that have real projects to talk about is a good deal more difficult. What has the agency really done in this area?

My shortlist would be made up only of agencies that tick all five boxes

We would agree with him…

Have a great Christmas…

I can’t believe it’s already Christmas, but here it is so as we’re wrapping up for a few days, we thought we’d take the opportunity to wish you all an amazing Xmas… And so here is Robin and I in a little ‘Christmassy’ video:

The app we used for the message is actually something we’ve been busy over the last few days helping Skype launch in time for Christmas, with a small influencer campaign covering the US, UK, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.

We’ve had a great response so far, with stories from TechCrunch, TechCrunch UK, Girly Gadget, Geekissimo, Pixel y Dixel, Frankwatching and many others.

The video messaging application is available via Skypevideocards.com and also via a dedicated Facebook app.

If, like me, you still haven’t had the time to send some real Christmas cards to your friends and family, why not send them your wishes via a Skype video card.

Happy Christmas everyone!

The Wall Street Journal have a great article on The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World, based on interviews with more than 30 executives and managers.

Consumers tend to trust one another’s opinions more than a company’s marketing pitch. And there is no shortage of opinions online. The managers we interviewed accept that this type of content is here to stay and are aware of its potential impact – positive or negative – on consumers’ buying decisions.

They outline some guiding principles, which we would agree with:

• Don’t just talk at consumers
• Give consumers a reason to participate
• Listen to and join the conversation outside your site
• Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell
• Don’t control, let it go
• Embrace experimentation

It’s worth reading the whole thing – it makes a nice compliment to my Five social media New Year’s resolutions for your business.

Econsultancy have published a good overview of the economic outlook in 2009 for the digital marketing industry, with one of the data sources quoted being Wednesday’s eMarketer report predicting 7.2% growth in UK online ad spend.

Just like the Group M report earlier this month, although there’s bad news for those in the industry who have yet to wake up to the changes that social media is bringing to people’s behaviour, there’s good news for those of us that have:

Time and time again, when we meet with companies, we are asked about social media marketing strategies. Whilst this covers social networks, it is likely we will see a rise in businesses actively trying to engage with users through other social means online.

Tying in with the forecast that social media will continue to grow, is that despite a recessive economy, online marketers will look to alternative ways of measuring success – rather than just a standard ROI model.

This has been mentioned before, but to recap: measurements of success also include customer retention and satisfaction (all the more important in a recession), the rate of customer acquisition and the net promoter score.

Little did I know that setting up We Are Social would lead to such glamorous opportunities. For example, yesterday I was asked to appear on Small Business Advice TV to talk about social media marketing and in particular, the example of Wiggly Wigglers, winners of the inaugural Global Dell Small Business Excellence Award for their use of social media. You can watch the show here:

It’s well worth watching the segments where Heather from Wiggly Wigglers talks about their experiences – they really did deserve that award and it makes a great case study for businesses large and small.

It was a fun half hour. Thank you to Russell Goldsmith and Dell’s Kerry Bridge for inviting me to contribute.

Our friend Faris, who’s in London this week from NYC (we hope to catch up for a beer), has written a review of Groundswell, which I’ve also been reading. He makes a point which could have been taken from our “why we do it” page:

Man is a naturally gregarious animal. It is the very essence of human beings: doing things together defines us. It’s why we have such large frontal lobes: modelling human behaviour in groups is recursive and quite amazingly complicated. I have to consider how what I do affects you and how that affects her and how that affects you and I, and so on, ad infinitum, a mise en abyme of cause and effect endlessly reflecting back on each other. It’s why we have language: it allows us to more effectively act in groups.

In a nutshell: we are social. Faris continues:

you need to know about this stuff. It’s not going to go away and it is going to affect your business. The very nature of advertising is changing in response to an audience that can create and propagate ideas.

We couldn’t agree more. It’s probably too late to order it from Amazon in time for Christmas, but in the meantime check out Charlene Li, one of the co-authors, who recently gave a talk at Google covering the topics in the book. It’s 45 mins long, but worthwhile watching, so get your favourite festive beverage and settle down to watch:

More importantly, as Faris says: “get out there and start being social” yourself.

The photos and the chatter from last night’s Twinterval tweetup. As you can see, a festive time was had by all. Until next time…

That’s it, the 5th edition of LeWeb, the largest web 2.0 conference in the world, is now over; much has already been said by the likes of The Guardian, about the nonexistent wifi at the event or about how the place was so freezing cold they had a sauna installed at the back. What you probably don’t know yet though is that on the basis LeWeb’08 was taking place at the newly refurbished 39,000 sq meter artistic hub Le 104, which used to be a Parisian mortuary, an historic place where you could find more than 600 coffins and 150 hearses on the move, it’s not such a surprise the place was so cold…

But LeWeb was so much more though than a cold place and it’s no wonder that for the past five years more and more entrepreneurs, web 2.0 people and brands alike have registered to attend the conference…

Recession was pretty much on everyone’s mind during this 2008 edition of LeWeb, as was the search for investment from young entrepreneurs wishing to launch their new big ideas. What’s interesting is that all speakers actually seemed to agree on the fact that the economic downturn will ignite many new ideas and that it is very likely that those companies that will be the most known in 10 years or so will most likely have been created during this recession.

Take Viewdle, for example. A couple of hours before Viewdle were announced as the Gold Winner of LeWeb’08 the start-up competition, Marissa Mayer, Google VP, Search Products and User Experience was talking about video face recognition and explaining how recognizing a human face as a person on a video was still a few years away. Marissa mentioned that technically it was possible but because of the sheer volume of videos now available on the Internet, and how many people look alike, it was proving difficult. Viewdle won the start-up competition with their facial recognition digital platform which allows you to easily index and search video assets. A pretty amazing technology and a proof that it is still possible to come up with great ideas and technology.

Marissa Mayer also covered the notion of social search: when you go to a conference for example, you ask like-minded people about where is the best place to have diner, which hotel to stay at. Those are ’social searches’, they happen all the time in real life but right now there isn’t a simple way of doing this online and it seems that this is going to be a focus for Google.

Social searches, using Twitter to talk about the conference, L’Oreal mentioning that brands are part of the conversation,  Paolo Coehlo explaining how he uses his social media to interact with his fans and how he even invites some of them to have diner with him; it’s interesting to see how technology is enabling us all to refocus on the most human thing: conversations. And I guess this is the strength of LeWeb: it’s all about being able to meet a network of over 1,500 people from 30 countries, being able to share our vision of the Internet, the Web 2.0 and the future alike with those people.

LeWeb’08 is over and I’m already looking forward to the 2009 edition!

ps: check out Loic’s blog post about the organizational issues encountered at LeWeb.