March 4th, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
What makes social media attractive? Evan Williams’s prediction is definitely right. Social media appeal to human’s baser need, which is the desire to socially connect with each other. Social networks as technical solution offer the possibility of globally social interaction. Respectively, the state of interaction between individuals in social media is actually a continuation of the offline social interaction into a digital world. From technical tools, Twitter has somehow fulfilled this baser need of human’s social interaction- shown by its huge number of users. However, I have to disagree with one of William’s comment. Well I think, Twitter won’t need the five extra years to get its tool used by broader public.
February 24th, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
Well, it’s nothing new about social media engagement in marketing and PR. Even in the area of CRM as well as election campaign, social media appears to be a very efficient medium. Now social media also provides protection against salmonella contamination. Recently, the FDA used Twitter, Youtube, MySpace and Blogs to call back potential contaminated foods products. The center of this particular recall lies entirely on the American’s eating habits: the peanut butter. Thus, the coverage of this recall was extremely immense. To this date, there were more than 2.100 recalled products. Richard Stapleton, the head of U.S Health and Human Services Department justified the use of social media in this case as followed:
When the [peanut product] recall issue broke, it immediately occurred to us to spread the message through social media, which we feel is a much better way than using traditional media…
By acting so, the U.S authorities are certainly going into the right direction. Social media has the coverage and the velocity to spread this kind of themes in a fast and efficient way for the respective target group. Hence, it has been shown quite often, how fast information travels in social media, be it the U.S Airways Crash Rescue or the fire of CCTV building in Beijing. Social media channels, like Twitter, are faster and they certainly do provide wider coverage in spreading the news than the classical media. Though, this doesn’t automatically mean that the classical media should be excluded in this kind of recall action. Most importantly is actually, that all available possibilities and strong coverage media should be thoroughly used. Furthermore, this includes of course the platforms of user generated media. From this point of view, the application of social media for epidemical containment is definitely useful. Rick Turoczy also shares positive view on using social media tools in this area:
Hopefully, this is just the first step – rapidly disseminating information – of many for incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into these agencies. With continued adoption, one can easily imagine the possible advances in protecting the populous from disease before it happens – like employing technology similar to Google’s flu trends combined with social graph information. And that’s only one example.
January 16th, 2009 by Sten Franke
Original article by David Nelles
Earthquake, war and flight disasters: Twitter has become a convenient catastrophe medium.
Caution: Consumers are listening. A Tweet with its unpleasant effects.
Google party plane – Google’s flight personal goes nippy.
Beautifully viral – naughty Durex Bunnies + Outtakes.
Nine Inch Nails – make money by giving.
Journalists should be able to handle these Technologies at the latest in 2009.
The wild 70’s in Apple.
Uschi Blum – Love’s slave.
December 19th, 2008 by Sten Franke
The last Friday Flash before Christmas
Social Media:
The complexity of social media (german)
>> Netzwertig.com
Signs of an unsuccessfully social media campaign (german)
>> Connectedmarketing.de
Xing’s acquires Socialmedian – a social news site
>> Readwriteweb.com
>> Golem.de (german)
Miscellaneous:
new trend: Online-Sleepwalking?
>> Telegraph.co.uk
Mr. Yang on the “heat” spot
>> Valleywag.com
Reviews in Pictures (till now only Part 1 and 2 are available)
>> Boston.com Teil 1
>> Boston.com Teil 2
Still looking for a Christmas present?
>> Well, go get personal with Scarlett Johansson’s tissue waste
Twitter specials:
- who spend, how much time with Twitter? >> Tweetwasters.com
- Twitter and Influence >> Twinfluence.com
- Die “wahren” Twitter-Freunde herausfinden >> Twitter-Friends
Another neat collection of Twitter tools with screenshots
>> Ibrahimevsan.de
Spiegel Online is twittering
>> Prblogger (german)
Happy Holidays and A Merry Christmas!
December 18th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Original article by David Nelles (translated by Nils Maier)
Twitter appears to be the “It” place for the application of company’s communication, both for external and internal purpose. A few weeks back, moms and women twittered avidly their outrage against Motrin campaign and recently there is another case making its appearance on Twitter, which proves once again how truly relevant this channel for company’s communication is. In this recent case, Ford – with the help of Twitter – has succeeded in preventing wide spread damages, which could have cost the company’s reputation. The starting point was a letter of notice sent by Ford’s legal department to a privately owned Ford fansite, demanding for $5000 or the site gets shut down. The copyright violations were the reason behind this demand.
The prominent warned platform was therangerstation.com. This fansite is dedicated to lovers of Ford’s small pick- up trucks. Based in Detroit, this fansite exists for more than 10 years. Well, the reactions regarding Ford’s legal demand were quick to come; the story appeared on the same day in two major car blogs like Jalopnik and Autoblog as well as on Twitter.
It was like a dark cloud of social media brewing over the online reputation of Ford. However, unlike Motrin, Ford has Scott Monty, who is the head of Ford’s social media and he actively reacted in a quick manner over criticisms voiced in Twitter – by continuously tweeting and promising to clear the issue as soon as possible.
Few hours later, Scot tweeted Ford’s official response and provided the link for the official statement of Ford over therangerstation.com controversy. This action was good enough to calm brands evangelists.
Hence, through quick and active reactions from Ford communicator, the virally spread of this issue and online reputation damages for the company were successfully prevented. Certainly, Motrin would have preferred this kind of success. Well, Scott Monty surely took all rules of social media communicator to heart: listen intensively, velocity, deal directly and personally.
In the U.S, Twitter has established itself as a channel for professional communicators. Unfortunately, the case is quite different here in Germany, the discussion revolving around Twitter and its adoption for the company’s communication has just yet to begin. Whether a company should be twittering or not, the examples of past times have definitely shown that Twitter should at least belong to a portfolio of a social media monitoring. However, company’s communicators should not wait too long to get actively engaged in the discussion of microblogging services, where so many multipliers are located like nowhere else.
December 12th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Short and vibrant
Intel published Social Media Guidelines for employees
>> Intel.com
More than 100.000 downloads for Wordpress 2.7 within 20 hrs
>> Boren.nu
Courtesy of Kmart: Bloggers on shopping spree
>> Mediapost.com
Corporate blogs, are they trustworthy?
>> Readwriteweb.com
40 million Americans using Social Networks
>> Readwriteweb.com
Twitter Specials:
Feed your own blog with tweets
>> Twitterfeed.com
List of German Startups Twitterers
>> Deutsche-Startups.de
Have a great weekend!
December 4th, 2008 by Sten Franke
In Germany, it’s common knowledge that many PR agencies, communication companies and organizations as well as the classical media are having such a hard time adopting to social media. Well, it’s kind of giving Neanderthals a moon landing’s instruction and that is how, the brilliant idea of social media from U.S giant industries come across for communications-PR executives in this country. Actually, I might formulate this a bit too harsh and certainly it doesn’t apply to every PR agencies, communication companies and journalists in Germany.
But we can definitely say that a vast majority of communication executives are aware of social media but they just don’t know, how to deal or to connect with it. Although, they only have to follow the four simple fundamentals of communication in social media: transparency, dialogs, authenticity and velocity. The consumer generated communication channels enable journalists, bloggers as well as everyday people to be actively engaged in contributing, discovering and sharing information. Twitter, in particular, offers the optimal vibrant online exchange of information.
The U.S social media relation experts utilize this fact. Hence, the idea of PR and twitter is now continuously being pursued after the 140 character press release coming from Social Media Think Tank. This project is called MicroPR and it aims to provide an exchange information platform on Twitter for companies, agencies and journalists.
As mentioned by Brian Solis and Stowe Boyd, the formula behind this idea is actually quite simple:
PR + Media+Twitter = @ MicroPR
This service should benefit both Media and PR execs. The idea is clear: media professionals are always on the move, looking for answers for their research – company’s figures, business statistics or even expert’s opinions on specific subjects. By using Twitter stream MicroPR, journalists can tweets their questions and hence, build a pool company’s speakers, experts and PR managers.
Brian Solis wrote about the new Twitter service:
Through Twitter, MicroPR connects journalists and bloggers to qualified, targeted PR professionals who can help you with the stories you’re currently writing
And this is how MicroPR actually works in practice:
brian_solis_micropr
In fact, this is not such a bad idea at all, if critical mass of PR specialists and journalists are active on Twitter. Whether this critical mass has yet to unfold in Germany, well I actually doubt it, but who knows, what will be for the coming years? Twitter is for certain, an idea worthy of a follow up consideration, right!?
November 28th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Dell continues to engage in social media. The success story off ‘idea storm‘ motivates to do more. In Jeremiah Owyang’s podacst Vice President Communities & Communications Bob Pearson shares his positive experiance Dell made by engaging in digital customer conversations.
Last week we could read the first rumors about Dells Sales numbers via Twitter. Bob Pearson confirms that they haven’t made 500K$, they even broke the 1 million Dollar via selling used PCs via Twitter.
Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing
Jeremiah Owyang discusses how web tools and social media enable companies to connect with customers.
Executive Video Interview: Why Dell Continues To Use Social Media
Check out the podcast:
November 28th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Angry twittering moms can cause serious damage to the company and brands online reputation. The U.S Company Johnson and Johnson got the taste of it recently from a mass of outraged and twittering moms. The creative approach of the marketers on the subject strains caused by a baby carrier/sling and Motrinas the perfect problem solution, were found way too offensive by the majority of moms. After all, for moms, it is more about the undeniable powerful bond of being close to their babies whenever possible and less about sore muscles caused by carrying them.
The storm of outrage started in particular through Twitter and You Tube, where young angered moms exchanged their opinions about the offensive and disrespectful ad. AdvertisingAge gives a short overview about how it all started, from one posting up to masses of protest against the brand:
The beginning of the end for the Motrin push probably came Friday (14.11) night, when Los Angeles blogger Jessica Gottlieb said she was tipped off to the ads and started expressing her outrage over the campaign on Twitter, where she has 1,018 followers…On Saturday (15.11), Katja Presnal (4,221 Twitter followers), a New York blogger and proprietor of online children’s clothing store Skimbaco, collected tweets from offended moms and edited them into a nine-minute video on YouTube titled “Motrin Ad Makes Moms Mad,” which had been viewed 21,000 times as of today.
The Motrin campaign got off on the wrong foot with the wrong bloggers, namely mommy bloggers, which led to an immense danger of the brand’s online reputation in within only 2 days after the campaign kicked off. So basically marketers and PR executives should always keep in mind, to take each posting seriously, because it does not take much of influencer for an issue to end up as a crisis.
This communication crisis of J&J shows that Twitter has become a great a challenge for communicators in the realms of issue and reputation management. No other medium has this kind of online influencer’s concentration.
The marketers responsible for the advertising had no other choice than to pull off the campaign after that PR disaster and issued a public apology to all the offended women.
As I mentioned in my previous posting, most companies take social media as a relevant channel after they fell flat on their nose and not before. So I am quite curious, if in the future J&J would take social media more seriously into their communication efforts.
May 13th, 2008 by Marcus Lauks
With immediate effect, the ethority GmbH & Co. KG includes the web service Twitter und large networks such as Xing in their monitoring and advisory portfolio. According to NZZ (Neue Züricher Zeitung), the number of twitter users has doubled within the past six months. But also the many-to-many communication within the online communities of major networks becomes increasingly important for the social media analysis.
With this extension, ethority is the state-of-the-art provider in the field of social media analysis. Micro-blogging and communication in online communities within the major networks produce a flow of information which should not be underestimated and which has to be evaluated accordingly.
Nils Maier, Director Business Development and Operations at ethority, states: “Monitoring the micro-blogging service Twitter enables us to be directly located at the pulse of sentiments and opinions of the consumer generated media. Not only the ordinary internet user has discovered Twitter but also journalists and news agencies increasingly use this service in order to spread information within the web. This development indicates that ‘twittering’, as a type of communication channel, will establish itself more and more and, thus, becomes highly interesting from the perspective of social media analysis. A specific field of application for the twitter survey is the utilisation of received information as a leading indicator for the issue management. In the United States, it is customary that companies keep an eye on twitter. On this point, see also Michael Arringtons experiences with Comcast. We have modified ethority’s range of services in order to provide our clients with an overall insight into web 2.0 communication. Hereby, overall means not only the conventional websites, weblogs and online communities but also network communities and twitter streams. “
