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Alarming report: Brands leaving themselves exposed through social media mismanagement

Sarah Bartlett — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:24:57 +0000

A recent report by Altimeter has revealed that globally most companies have adopted social media without adequate ongoing management, leaving them open to alarming exposure and potentially uncontrollable risk.

The report, released 5 January 2012, highlighted that in the global proliferation of social media adoption, enterprise companies (1000 employees or more) had an average of 178 social media assets, with varying degrees of management. Such large numbers of assets present considerable coordination issues, but of more concern was the revelation that only 25% of companies offered training to their employees. The result – uninformed representatives engaging with customers on behalf of brands.

Another key failing highlighted was the lack of a business strategy – while 70% of global brand managers stated that their social media efforts met their business objectives, only 43% had a strategy in place detailing how.

“This report validates our concern that there is a considerable lag in the perception of social media as a serious media channel”, said Lucio Ribeiro, Managing Director of social media agency, The Online Circle.

“We consistently see companies, big and small, leaving themselves open to risk. Social media is not a playground. You can also waste a serious amount of money aimlessly ‘playing’ with social media!

The industry has ample intelligence and experience. Combine this with powerful insights into online behaviour, and sophisticated management tools and metrics, and we’re getting very savvy. It’s almost reckless not to be taking this environment seriously.”

Social media crisis costs to business

Symantec estimated (July 2011) that the global average loss from social media gaffes for business is $4.3million (USD). Their survey of enterprise companies found that the top three social media problems that led to crisis were:

too much information shared by employees in public forums (46%)
the exposure of confidential information (41%)
an increase in exposure to litigation (37%).

Over 90 % of survey respondents who experienced a social media crisis also incurred costly consequences including:

reduced stock price (average cost: $1,038,401 USD)
litigation costs (average: $650,361)
direct financial losses (average: $641,993)
damaged brand reputation/loss of customer trust (average: $638,496)
lost revenue (average: $619,360 USD)

In an early report, Altimeter indicated that social media crisis has been on the rise since 2001, yet 76% of these could have been averted with ‘proper’ social media investment (August 2011)

“We’re used to being approached to help recover businesses from crisis as a result of them not managing their social media effectively,” added Ribeiro.

“While individual details are protected, I can say that our work alone has addressed many online brand protection issues that have cost businesses many tens of millions of dollars. We’d rather such otherwise well managed brands adopt the cheaper, more effective and less damaging strategy of being on the front foot – to be on top of their online presence through good management early on.”

The social media experiment is well and truly over

Confirming that the ‘experimental’ period with social media is over, apparent laggard Proctor & Gamble finally conceding last month that Facebook and Google can be more “more efficient” than traditional media (January 2012) with the layoff of 1,600 staff. This social media trend is not about to slow down.

“Given our extensive experience in mitigating crisis through responsible social media management, we feel a sense of urgency in better informing brand managers,” said Ribeiro. “We’ve just released the latest training Social Sessions: Responsible Social Media, to advise brand managers of industry best practice: what we deal with on a daily basis. At a minimum, we’d like to see managers focussing on these five key areas…”

Top 5 things brand managers should be managing in social media now:

A social media strategy based on business objectives aligned with appropriate metrics and goals
An annual social media audit plan including, as a subset, regular Security, Design and Function testing (SDF)
Staff social media Policy and Guideline documents, along with moderation guidelines for daily moderation of assets (owned and earned)
Staff training and certification for regular asset managers (owned, earned and pirated)
A crisis management plan including risk assessment, escalation procedures and contact detail

The Tale of the brand Manager at the Digital Shop

Lucio Dias Ribeiro — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:28:55 +0000

A Brand Manager walked into a shop and was looking at the stuff in the store.

While he was there another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, “I’ll have that digital shop please”.

Can I have that Digital Shop please?

The shopkeeper nodded, went over and gave him a full digital shop. He wrote a contract, gave to the lawyers, and then handed it to the customer, saying, “That’ll be A$5000″. The customer paid and walked out with his digital shop.

Startled, the Brand Manager went over to the shopkeeper and said, “That was a very expensive digital shop. Most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost SO much?” The shopkeeper answered, “Ah, that agency can do Facebook updates very fast, very cool Flash Websites, funny tweets, well worth the money.”

The tourist looked at the agency in the far corner. “That one’s even more expensive – $10,000! What does it do?”
-” Oh, that one’s a Social Media dedicated agency; they can manage your Social Media strategy, Risk Mitigation, Customer Service integration to Social communication – it can even save you from an online crisis. All the really useful stuff,” said the shopkeeper.

The Brand Manager looked around for a little longer and saw a third agency in another corner. The price tag around his neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, “That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does he do?”

The shopkeeper shrugged and said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t actually seen him do anything, but he says he’s a Social Media consultant.”

Facebook rolls out secure browsing changes. Here is how to save your app

Luis Fernando Tinoco — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:01:09 +0000

It came with five days of delay, but today (05/10) Facebook has followed its roadmap announced last May and rolled out important changes to apps and brand pages tabs.

This set of modifications only affects apps’ background coding – there is no interface change (visual) or new user facing feature, and for this reason it is not getting much media attention.

But the Facebook changes are drastic and, in simple words, will make you app unusable if not followed through.

Just test it yourself.

This morning, a number of high profile pages were presented with the warning below instead of their glossy app tab.

Facebook Apps on non-secure server are now being blocked for a big number of users

The main breaking change is that all apps have to be stored on secure servers – those with a valid SSL certificate installed.

From now on, when a user with secure browsing (HTTPS) enabled, and that is the default setting affecting the majority of people on Facebook, lands on a tab stored on a non-secure server, the warning above is presented.

Even though savvy users may find a way around it, there is no easy link to proceed and access the app anyway.

More than that, Facebook hasn’t ruled out banning the app altogether, even for users not on secure browsing, as the safety of personal information is more and more sensitive to the social network.

“We may announce other steps in the near future that will limit the distribution of Apps on Facebook that do not support Secure Canvas or Page Tab URLs”, the company has announce on its Developers blog.

If your app has been impacted by the secure browsing issue, the solution is not too hard to implement.

The 2 steps – The Online Circle‘s suggestion to accomplish the fix:

Purchase of an SSL Certificate and installation on the server where the app is stored (or migration of the app to a secure server);
Update of the apps settings on Facebook to reflect the new secure URL.

The secure browsing change is not the only breaking modification introduced by Facebook today.

The other changes are more likely to impact only complex apps, but may still be causing your tab to malfunction or totally disappear.

The links below will provide plenty of resources and documentation to understand the issues and act on it when appropriate.

And this is not all.

A new 12 months schedule of major changes has also being announced. The mark-up coding language used by hundreds of thousands of apps around the world, FBML, will be no longer supported from 1st January 2012 and totally phased out by 1st June 2012. So if you want to keep your audience engaged and protect your investment on Facebook apps and landing tabs, go on and make sure your provider is up to date with the rapidly shifting platform changes happening on the world’s biggest social network. Or drop us an email at The Online Circle, we would love to help your page!

What are the most expensive Keywords in online media?

Lucio Dias Ribeiro — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:33:54 +0000

Paid, Owned and Earned Media - Defining Digital Strategies

If you are familiar with the concept of Owned, Earned and Paid Media you understand that Google Pay-Per-Click (PPC) can play a colossal role for your Social Media seeding campaign.

But just how much is too much?

I thought it would be interesting to share with you a study from Wordstream.com which shows the most expensive keywords in Google AdWords.

The 20 most expensive keyword categories with the highest search volume and highest costs per click, thereby netting Google the most money, are:

Insurance (keywords in this category include “buy car insurance online” and “auto insurance price quotes”)
Loans (keywords include “consolidate graduate student loans” and “cheapest homeowner loans”)
Mortgage (keywords include “refinanced second mortgages” and “remortgage with bad credit”)
Attorney (keywords include “personal injury attorney” and “dui defense attorney”)
Credit (keywords include “home equity line of credit” and “bad credit home buyer”)
Lawyer (“personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defence lawyer)
Donate (“car donation centres,” “donating a used car”)
Degree (“criminal justice degrees online,” “psychology bachelors degree online”)
Hosting (“hosting ms exchange,” “managed web hosting solution”)
Claim (“personal injury claim,” “accident claims no win no fee”)
Conference Call (“best conference call service,” “conference calls toll free”)
Trading (“cheap online trading,” “stock trades online”)
Software (“crm software programs,” “help desk software cheap”)
Recovery (“raid server data recovery,” “hard drive recovery laptop”)
Transfer (“zero apr balance transfer,” “credit card balance transfer zero interest”)
Gas/Electricity (“business electricity price comparison,” “switch gas and electricity suppliers”)
Classes (“criminal justice online classes,” “online classes business administration”)
Rehab (“alcohol rehab centres,” “crack rehab centres”)
Treatment (“mesothelioma treatment options,” “drug treatment centres”)
Cord Blood (“cordblood bank,” “store umbilical cord blood”)

When I am asked about ROI on Social Media I like to consider that if your Earned and Owned media presences have been created and maximised, you reduce your reliance on Paid media. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sometimes also pay for some extra attention, but it certainly means you depend less on these paid channels. And, because AdWords and other programs like it are based on an auction system, competitiveness and costs for them will continue to be driven upwards.

Generating ROI based on traffic – a simple formula

Let’s assume you are in the Real Estate industry and you want to decide between the immediacy of Pay-per-click and the long term benefits of Social Media and SEO.

You consider investing in Pay-per-click and generate immediate traffic.

If you generate about 1,000 visits a month paying $50 this equates to $50,000/month

If you invest the same amount of money across your Owned media and start to generate the same qualified traffic you have built yourself a long term asset and you can therefore amortise the investment over time.

This is an easy way to start a polemic on ROI in Owned Media versus ROI for PPC.

Which side are you on?

Social Media – How to influence in Social Media Communication

Lucio Dias Ribeiro — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:31:00 +0000

If you are employing Social Media in your marketing arsenal, you don’t just want your say to be supplementary to the discussion; you want your voice to be heard, repeated, shared and appreciated—and your message to be powerful and influential.
This is a presentation I’ve created for one of our clients at The Online Circle and I’m sharing here with you.

Persuasion in Social Media

View more presentations from The Online Circle

Feel free to download and use it with attribution
Cheers
Lucio

Lots of friends on Facebook? Think again.

Lucio Dias Ribeiro — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 02:43:15 +0000

Having friends only brings benefits.

The more the best!

However there is a limit.

A study at Oxford University compared the size of the human brain, specifically the Neocortex, the area responsible for conscious thought, with other primates. Researchers crossed this information with data about the social organisation of each species over time, and have come to the conclusion that 150 is the maximum of friends a person can have.

For you to maintain a friendship with someone, you need to memorise information about that person (e.g.name and details of her character), which are triggered when you interact. For some reason, the brain does not contain data on more than 150 people. The relationships that go beyond this number will inevitably be more casual rather than friendship.
Other researchers went further and found that, within this group of 150, there are a series of concentric circles of friendship: 5, 15, 50 and 150 people, each with different characteristics.

Finite Circle
The brain contains no more than 150 friends, divided into groups.

Intimate group
5 friends – is the intimate, with whom you speak more – and would not hesitate to call at dawn or call to borrow money. For Aristotle, 5 was the maximum number of true friends.

Group of empathy
15 friends – people are very important to you – if any of them died tomorrow, you’d be very upset. This group may include people from work or friends of friends.

Typical number
50 friends – is the number of friendships maintained by most people, and also the average size of early human groups .

Limit
150 friends – Maximum that the brain can handle at once. These are the people whose names, faces and features you can memorise and trigger if necessary. The curious thing is that these circles had been mentioned by philosophers such as Confucius, Plato and Aristotle – and are also present in various forms of human organisation. In classical philosophy, 5 were already considered the maximum number of close friends that anyone could have.

Apart from football and footy (here in Australia) , 12 to 15 people is the amount of players in most sports. Fifty was the average number of people hunting in primitive communities (as the Aborigines here).

But even with so many practical examples, no one can explain why our friendships limit is 150 people.

So, next time you find someone with more than 150 “friends” on Facebook or Google+, think again.

Cheers

Lucio