360DigitalInfluence

Thanks very much to the nearly 300 people from across Asia who dialled into our webinar on “Social Media for B2B Companies”, hosted in partnership with the Wall Street Journal Asia and Citrix Online.

As promised we have uplosed the presentation deck to Slideshare and have updated to include links to a few great additional resources that you can use to help your business get started. These links include the following:

• Ogilvy On: Social Media for Crisis Management  
• Ogilvy On: Twitter for Business
• Ogilvy On: Facebook for Business
• Social Media in Asia Presentation
• APAC Statistics and Research (Asia Digital Map Blog)

Hurry! Space is limited for this 30-minute webinar and registration is required.

Join the award-winning Social Media team from Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide for a free 30-minute online seminar powered by Citrix GoToWebinar and done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia.

This webinar will provide concrete examples, action plans and case studies, including:

· 5 key steps for a business-to-business strategy;
· How to build and engage a community of potential and current customers;
· Real-life case studies from successful business-to-business strategies;
· The highly popular – and now extended – Question and Answer section;
· Much, much more…

The seminar will be led by Brian Giesen a senior regional strategist in Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team and moderated by Graham White, Managing Director of Howorth Communications in Sydney.

Join us Wednesday, 3 March at 11:00am (Hong Kong time):

http://bit.ly/aWsvrI

Last week Google announced it’s real time search feature, which I believe is set to forever change the way we think about and use search.

If you haven’t seen it in action yet I recommend you go to the Google home page and search for something topical like climate change.

In the results some movement should catch your eye and there they’ll be - real time search results. Take a moment to just sit back, relax and let the strangely compelling waterfall of information wash over you.

Once you wake from the dull, Google-induced trance you’ll have hopefully experienced an epiphany similar to mine:

Right at this moment people all over the world are talking about you, your business, your brand, your event, whatever it may be, and now as soon as they say it - Google will display it.

So how are we going to influence the conversation and harness the power of real time in 2010?

What do hydrants, voicemails and denial have in common?  They’re all now closely associated with the Tiger Woods brand, according to new research from Nielsen Online.

Today, Nielsen Online provided me with a Brand Association Map demonstrating the impact of the controversy on the Tiger Woods brand - based on analysis of online discussion about Tiger Woods both before and after the controversy.

Not surprisingly, as a result of the recent controversy the Tiger Woods brand has gone from being closely associated with video games, golf and other sports to other, well, less wholesome topics.

While the jury’s still out on how long it will take for the Tiger Woods brand to recover, one thing’s for certain - these less wholesome associations will take far longer to fade away.

For years and years, search has always been the number one reason people go online. Nearly 9 times out of 10 people will start out an Internet session by using Google, Yahoo! or Bing to find a new site or look for information about a product. Advertisers and marketers have spent countless dollars trying to get their attention through sponsored ads.

But, interestingly, new research released from Hitwise earlier this month suggests that in Australia and in other markets across Asia Pacific search may soon move to second most popular online activity - behind social networking. According to the Hitwise report:

Social networks and forums are set to eclipse Search Engines and become the most visited industry for the first time over the coming months, most likely during the weeks immediately before or after Christmas.

The report also shows that search is already the #2 online activity behind social networking in other APAC countries, including Hong Kong and Singapore. Other key findings from the report:

• 11.7% of all visits to social networks originated in Australia
• Facebook is currently the #2 Web site in Australia - and it’s projected to overtake Google
• Search is a popular activity within social networks (MySpace = artists, Facebook = entertainment/utility)
• 26 minutes, 13 seconds is the average time spent on Facebook per visit

These trends could have huge implications on the massive budgets that are spent very day on pay-per-click and search marketing globally. Already, consumers are spending exponentially more time on social networks (27 percent of all time spent online in Australia in the past month was spent on Facebook, according to Nielsen) than search engines.

As more and more brands become not only findable but engagable on social sites, we could start to see social networks as being not only the #1 online activity but the #1 place online where smart brands invest their marketing and advertising dollars to build community and engagement among their customers.

As a bit of a foodie bore I spend a lot of my online life reading and salivating over food blogs. The Guardian newspaper have one of the best food sections around and their online offering really pushes the way in terms of how a good old fashion paper newspaper can get digital and enhance the user experiance even for those of us who sorely miss the rustle of a broadsheet.

The Clickalong series is a fantastic program run by Allegra McEvedy, one of the nicest celebrity chefs around, and based on a program where amateur chefs are in their kitchens cooking together in real time by refreshing their browsers.

Here’s what it entails:

Clickalong is a unique online cooking experience allowing the nation to cook alongside our resident chef in real time. It’s easy - Allegra devises a new, never-before published recipe, you gather the ingredients together and set up your computer in view (or shouting distance) of your kitchen worktop.

Then follow the live, illustrated step-by-step guide and clickalong until culinary success is achieved. Allegra is right there alongside you to answer any questions as the pace quickens.

Then we eat!

The series is so successful that the comments come in at a speed of knots and they have set up a very successful flickr page where the clickalong amateur chefs post photos of their own creations

Maybe we should start our own one with the unusual dishes of our respective countries of residence.  Pigs brain in a sweet plum reduction? Anyone?

We at Ogilvy believe they should, as long as they have a strategy and/or  objective behind it. We have blogged about them here and here.  Always there must be a strategy, and not to do it for the sake of doing it.

Here’s an interesting blog discussing whether your B2B organisation is even ready to engage social media in the first place - a checklist of points.  How many of those points apply to your company?  How often has someone said to you, “Our competitor has a Facebook page, we must have it too.”?

Common sense, most of those points and I think they also apply to all businesses, and not just B2B.

Point #10 raises the most pertinent question for me. How many marketers and PR folks today are ready to listen, talk with their customers, rather than the old-school marketing world of “talking to”, or “telling” their customers?  How prepared are we?

Here is a copy of a column that I recently wrote for the Australian Financial Review on ways that marketing and public relations managers can tell a real “expert” from someone who’s not quite there yet. This was written slightly in jest, so feel free to leave a comment if you have other suggestions.

Do a quick Google search on “social media expert” and you come across a plethora of sites with comments such as this: ”Half the people on Twitter claim to be ’social media experts’. Where did they all come from and what is the criteria for expertise?”

It is a fair question, particularly as so many companies are seeing (and being told by a growing army of “social media experts”) that social media is the shiny new toy for strategic communications. So what are the criteria for expertise? How do you pick the real expert from the person who has just decided that his pastime should be his profession?

Here’s a checklist that might help:

1. The person must be able to show demonstrable results that involve real metrics, not just the number of followers they may or may not have on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Hint: Kyle and Jackie O have a lot of Twitter followers. Do you want to let them loose on your marketing?
2. They should be able to point not only to other people’s success - Obama’s election, Telstra, Dell, JetBlue and so on - but some of their own. Hint: ask them if they have ever been faced with a campaign that was not working and how they turned that around.
3. They must have a methodology and strategy tailored for your company. Hint: if their plan solely consists of setting up a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a blog, then be very, very scared.
4. They must have been active in the social media community for a long time. Six months on Twitter makes you a beginner, not an expert. Hint: check how often their blog is updated and how active they are at responding to posts.
5. They must have a system for measuring the effectiveness of any campaign - and followers or friends or hits isn’t it - and the ability to change strategy if things are not working. Hint: if they look blank when you ask them about Plan B, ask them to shut the door on the way out.
6. There needs to be a support team to monitor your brand and your program. Hint: if your “expert” is doing it all, then you are either paying too much or your expert is a one-man band living on hope.
7. They must be able to define social media. Hint: talking about Twitter, YouTube and blogs is not the correct answer.
8. They need to tell you just how much work is required by you and/or your staff to ensure that social media contact is effective. Hint: everyone will talk about conversations; the real expert will talk about the necessity for frequent, meaningful conversation that rarely involves promoting your business or your product. Yes, it is time-consuming and that is costly, but done properly it is close to being the best research you will get.
9. Make sure they know the strengths and weaknesses of the major tools that are available. They should know when to use Buzz Numbers versus Radian6 versus Kaava and not be wedded to a particular technology. Hint: ask them about Nielsen, Buzz Numbers, Radian6 and Kaava. If they look blank, do the door trick again. \
10. Be wary if they extensively quote the Cluetrain Manifesto (the equivalent of the Old Testament) or Seth Godin or give you 50 complicated slides running on about tribes. Hint: this means they are still learning about social media, which is good for them but bad for your campaign. 
11. You constantly see their names in the comments section of marketing blogs bashing other people’s campaigns, or other people in general. Is that the type of person you would feel comfortable representing your brand in public?
12. If the answer to your question about what to start in social media is anything other than “Listen“, keep looking.
13. They must not call themselves a social media expert/ninja/jedi/guru. The social media landscape changes so quickly that the term social media expert is something of an oxymoron. The space is continually changing. Expertise in one area may be valuable one month and totally outdated and useless the next. Hint: not so long ago people were raving about - and paying $US580 million - for MySpace and now it is sooo last year.

During my recent trip to Singapore, I had the opportunity to grab coffee and have a chat with Ben Koe, Employee #3 of JamiQ, a new social media monitoring service which is currently in beta.

I’ve asked Ben a few quick questions about the state of social media across Asia Pacific, what companies should do first before jumping in, and how JamiQ will be different from the array of social media monitoring services currently on the market:

Q. How would you characterise the digital landscape here in Asia Pacific?
Asia Pacific contains some of the most densely connected communities in the world which makes it one of the largest opportunities for digital marketing. However, marketers are still undecided about the effectiveness of engaging online. But this is understandable, while we are certain about the large population that connect online, there is no one best way to reach them.

In order to engage successfully online, marketers need to flip their logic around. Instead of the traditional method of identifying the best media to communicate through, brands can now be their own media. Corporate blogs, community forums, YouTube channels, etc. are all affordable means for companies to establish their presence online and build communities around them. 

Q:  Across APAC, we are seeing an increased interest in social media. Before jumping in, what should organisations do in order to generate real results from their efforts?
Organisations need to take a step back from the hype and observe their brand online. Listening to what’s being said by their customers in the region is the most critical exercise one can perform. The ability to listen gives you the intelligence required to craft an effective communication strategy. Just like how you wouldn’t bother selling in-car stereos to people who take the bus, you need to know what your customers want; and most of the time your customers will not tell you directly, they’ll be telling their friends online.

Too often, marketers are communicating what’s on their agenda completely overlooking the “truth” being talked about on forums or being ranted on blogs. Once you know what your customers or the industry is talking about, you then can make better judgment and strategy for engaging them for your brand before consumer-driven perception takes over.

Q:  How will JamiQ be different from some other social media listening services?
JamiQ’s chief advantage is its reach. This is the foundation of social media monitoring. Just like a search engine, the more web pages the engine can cover the better a service it is. If you read the fine print on some social media monitoring services you’ll find that some claim to have indexed 12 million blogs, another 20 million, and others 100 million. So who’s giving you the full picture?

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Wouldn’t it be great to have a sixth sense when you go out shopping, knowing which tissue paper is environment-friendly, immediately getting the reviews of a book you’re flipping through in a bookstore, or more controversially, immediately knowing the background of a person you meet in the street.

How will digital cameras and mobile phones of the future possibly look like?  Or while reading a newspaper, you can get immediate related videos shown to you, without having to have a computer screen with you?

I came across this clip on what some MIT engineers have been working on.  Something right out of  Minority Report.

How we interact with computers and mobile phones and information, and how they all affect our decision making, will definitely evolve, if this technology becomes mainstream.  The real kicker is that to produce this technology, it doesn’t cost more than your average mobile phone!

While this technology may take some time before becoming commercial, the lesson here is that this technology underlines the importance of our work in social media and word-of-mouth.  People will have easier and easier access to information, in their daily decision-making, and we must be able to provide them with the right info.