eMarketer have released a new report, “UK Social Media: Joining the Conversation” which is a useful compendium of the latest stats on social media usage in the UK, along with some spot-on commentary and advice from the author of the report, Karin von Abrams:

No commercial enterprise can afford to ignore social media

As part of her research for the report, Karin conducted an interview with me which she’s been kind enough to let me publish here:

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Faris Yakob hits the nail on the head in this month’s Admap:

Understanding how to behave in social media is easy: be nice or leave.

A succinct, simple truth that applies to social situations, both on and offline. However it’s more than just a catchphrase. As background, Faris explains the interplay of relationships, trust and relevance:

Social media is centred on people talking to each other, one to one and one to many, establishing and reinforcing different kinds of relationships.

Advertising has clung to the idea that communication is about the transmission of messages, but most communication transmits little semantically. The function of the interaction is phatic — it establishes and reinforces relationships. Status updates don’t transmit data — they keep relationships alive.

Brands need to find a way to be relevant in social media. Research from Universal McCann has found that people are more likely to believe a random blog post than a TV commercial. As consumers spend more time consuming each other’s content, share of mainstream media will erode.

But thinking about social media with a media buying mindset isn’t going to help. As Russell Davies has observed:

Blogging is mostly a social thing, social norms apply, especially between bloggers. But, naturally enough, when brands want to engage with bloggers they act as though market norms apply; to most brands, blogs are just another media choice.

Social media isn’t media, it’s social, and as Faris remarks, people are both emotional and rational:

Economics has espoused the myth of homo economicus — a rational being, who makes cost-benefit analyses in every situation and will respond to a monetary incentive with an increased
propensity to perform an action. This is nonsense. You can test this: next time someone cooks you a meal, to show your appreciation and encourage this behaviour, leave a tip.

Social and commercial behaviour don’t mix. Acting commercially in social spaces can seem insulting, which is perhaps why corporations have found it difficult to act socially.

Or, as Russell Davies puts it:

When social exchanges and market exchanges are mixed up people get uncomfortable.

This is “an entirely different behavioural grammar for marketers,” so Faris outlines the approach brands should take, pointing out that “the media may be free, but building relationships takes huge amounts of time and attention” which is crucial advice we agree wholeheartedly with — consider the way you relate to your friends and family as you read Faris’ concluding quote from Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford:

It’s not about campaigns; it’s about commitment.

If you’ve got the time, you can listen to Faris talking about these issues in his presentation Be nice or leave: A guide to being social.

Photo by Bash

Last weekend I spent the day at SocialMediaCamp London 09 – organised by the tireless Vero Pepperrell and stacked with a variety of interesting discussions.

Vero herself led an open discussion on “PR agencies want your soul”. Most of us there were on both sides at once – being bloggers ourselves while also working with bloggers on behalf of our clients. Some of the stories that came out were amusing and horrifying at the same time – PRs using Facebook to stalk bloggers they wanted to get in touch with – and some good discussion from what to do if you’re a blogger who received a bad pitch; do you ignore, name & shame in public, or email back and tell them how to do it right? Kerry Gaffney covers it in a lot more detail.

Not that it was all agency-talk. Like social media it was very diverse and the topics abounded from discussion of the fun of LARPing to the perils of moderating adult user-generated content.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a social media gathering if there wasn’t a lot of discussion of Twitter. Kai Turner‘s talk on the genesis of Smack My Tweet Up, the anonymous Twitter Valentine-sending app designed as a bit of fun, was an eye opener. It took only 48 hours from idea to going live, and got several thousand hits by word of mouth alone. I liked both the idea and the turnaround, showing how easy it is to develop quick, fun and useful apps in social media; just like how conversations can be spontaneous, bright ideas can be turned into functioning social applications in the blink of an eye.

One good question asked was how Smack My Tweet Up prevented misuse (but as it was taken in good faith they only had one complaint, this wasn’t a major issue) – and this was a theme that wove throughout the entire day. Perhaps as a sign of the way the social media space has matured there was no worrying or fretting about the lack of control over social media, but a lot of positive discussion on how to make the most of the debate and conversation out there.

Joanna Geary and Lucia Adams discussed the ethics and judgement involved in moderating a liveblog, as they did for The Times during the G20 summit, giving us an insight into how moderation is as every bit an art form as creating content. When there is more than one user submission every second, what do you include and what do you filter to prevent overloading your readers with information? Managing criticism and dissent on your own site while also representing a diversity of views fairly is hard enough when you have time to think about it, let alone in real-time. It also serves a reminder that moderators and community managers are human, not robots, and their judgements need to be treated in that context.

Getting a feel for what a community’s needs are is important, as Lauren Fisher pointed out in a cerebral discussion of Habermas’ public sphere and how it applies to social media. We discussed what happens when those in power or the mainstream media act against the norms of the social media sphere and the backlashes that can result (such as the Brian Cowen nude portraits controversy) and whether social media is a representative reflection of the public sphere in wider society (Answer: probably, and it’s gettting better as social media moves beyond early adopters).

Finally, there was a talk & session on trolls and griefing given by none other than myself, on what happens when someone turns up to the party with the intent of causing mayhem, and how we need to plan and adapt in future.

It was a great afternoon – although some have lamented the low attendance rate and the fact not everyone seemed keen to present (Kat Neville and Michael Litman provide arguments for each side, and Neil Crosby has a good suggestion on microtalks). The fact that only 56% of people who bought tickets turned up is a real shame, but even though not every slot was filled with a speaker, I have to say I was spoilt for choice for a lot of events. I missed some things I regret not seeing, including James Whatley on being the voice of a brand and keeping human, and the guys behind Social Innovation Camp talking about their work.

In short, the day rocked. For more SMC stuff be sure to check out the #smclondon tag on Flickr, Twitter, Qik and Slideshare. Big thanks go to Vero and all the volunteers who helped make it such an engaging and informative day and I look forward to the next one!

On Thursday the week before last, we were proud to host MeasurementCamp on its one year anniversary (if you’re interested in the details, Jordan Stone and Kevin Maguire have written up the event)

Billed as ‘an open source movement to make sense of social media measurement’, it sprung out of a panel discussion on measuring social media where Will McInnes and myself crossed swords on the subject, but unfortunately without bringing much enlightenment to the audience. Will, as he often does, decided something needed to be done, and MeasurementCamp was born.

As you can see from the photos above, we’ve come a long way since the original Measurementcamp last April, hosted in room above the Coach and Horses pub in Soho. This time, we invited our friend Josh Hallett of Voce Communications who was over from the US, and as result it looks like MeasurementCamp has now turned into a global movement. We think that’s a pretty fitting birthday present…

On Wednesday last week I attended the OpenGov conference:

A practical one-day conference to discuss the challenges and opportunities of social technologies to enable engagement, collaboration, and transparency in government

In a previous life I was a bit of an eDemocracy obsessive – so it was good to spend a day getting back into it. It seems things have moved on considerably in the last few years – the views that were previously held on the ‘outside’ seem to have seeped slowly into the ‘inside’, which is great news. However, there still seems to be a real lack of significant successes to point at (as well as a lack of consensus on what ‘Open Government’ actually means).

The conference was covered live by Andy Powell and has been written up by Carrie Bishop, so I won’t go into the day in detail, but Alex Butler’s contributions were a real highlight – both during her speech and in her refreshing interactions with the audience throughout the day, especially in response to Harry Metcalfe’s talk about Jobcentre ProPlus.

It was also great to meet some interesting people during the breaks, including Dave Briggs, Steph Gray, Paul Evans, May Race, Tim Davies and Paul Clarke. I’m looking forward to next time…

Photo: Phil Sheard

Last Tuesday NMK ran a debate entitled “What Happens to Online PR” – it was packed full of the great and good of ‘Online PR’ and, aside from the debate, it was a great to have a chance to catch-up with everyone.

The evening has already been covered in depth by Roger Warner, Jed Hallam, Jo-Rosie Haffenden, Drew Benvie, Sarah Beavis, Lloyd Gofton and the organiser Ian Delaney, but the point I made in my intervention on the night seems to have been lost.

Much to my delight, the PR industry seems to be taking a very myopic view of the current state of play (as evidenced by PR Week’s coverage of the event). It fails to realise that there is a great game afoot, one that involves all of the advertising and marketing industry, that will be merciless on those that fail to adapt.

Above the line, digital, PR, direct marketing and even media agencies are converging towards the same place, and due to the rise of digital, the battle has been raging for a few years now. Up until recently, the PR industry has been relatively immune from its effects. This will not continue. Agencies of all colours are realising what the future will bring, and are making plans to adapt.

However, just as over the last ten years digital agencies stole a march on above the line agencies by building bigger, better and more motivated specialist teams, thereby innovating faster and developing a critical mass of best practise that accelerated the gap between them and their offline competitors, so conversation agencies will do the same to PR agencies (and, I have to say, to the digital and other agencies also trying to catch-up).

To use ourselves as an example, who else has a team of twelve entirely focused on innovative, creative and effective social media marketing and communications? Each day and each new hire widens the gap between us and those in pursuit.

To quote from Roger Warner’s write-up of the evening:

The people who will write the book are those who make the first convincing moves and are happy to invest and invent. We’ll be delivering best practises in beta mode whilst Big PR is watching on the sidelines.

Update: PR Week finally wakes up:

PR agencies are facing up to a growing threat from the adv­ertising sector after the car giant this week picked MindShare to handle [...] digital PR and social media strategy.

‘The advertising industry is focusing its guns on PR bud­get, so our industry is def-in­itely at a crossroads,’ said Katy Howell, MD at Immediate Future. ‘We must step up, educate our clients and widen our reach to include marketing and digital departments.

‘If we do not, there is every likelihood that the PR industry will not exist in five years. We will become a commodity within the bigger, more powerful, media and advertising organisations.’

Update 2: Brian Solis has some further thoughts:

By now, many organizations realize that the success of their brands will be determined online. Yet other than this almost universal consensus, little else about digital has been decided. Its scope is constantly expanding and its growth potential has every marketing discipline jumping to adopt some part of digital as its own turf. “There is all kinds of competition popping up [for digital] and it’s putting a squeeze on communications professionals,” says Brian Solis, founder and president of FutureWorks, a digital PR agency. PR, ad, and direct marketing agencies are all looking to carve a niche in digital as their conventional channels become increasingly irrelevant. With traditional ad revenues decreasing in value and news outlets shuttering, the most viable avenue for future revenue is digital. But the race to capitalize on digital has pitted many of these agencies against each other, especially as the boundaries between marketing, advertising, and PR blur online.

Update 3: Campaign, the advertising industry’s bible, chimes in:

Digital advertising and social media are quickly converging and, while PR is reaping the rewards inside this new space, how long will it be before others muscle in? Already, Beattie McGuinness Bungay, DDB and VCCP are among UK agencies fine-tuning PR and social media offerings and others will quickly follow.