<img src="http://www.social-collective.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/SoCol2011BannerNoDate.jpg"/>

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients… by Andrew Davison

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

What are the secrets to building a sustainable community? by Rob Howard

Guest post: Online influence: Social Collective versus the social individual

Made Social on 23 September 2010 | View Comments

In advance of Social Collective, we have been inviting select people to guest blog and join the SoCol debate, hopefully offering a fresh point of view. We have been asking a range of people to contribute, including those working in social, client side, techies, journos etc with a view of building a wider picture. Any questions raised during this process will be addressed during a panel at SoCol in September.

The latest in the series is from Paul Miller, Head of Digital at Cision UK.

Online influence: Social Collective versus the social individual
By Paul Miller

Given one of the definitions of “collective” in my OED – of or from several or many individuals – “Social Collective” could be, should be, a tautology. How can social activity be anything other than collective?

It’s indisputable that social media has ushered in some kind of mediaocracy. Individuals (or at least, individuals in developed, mainly Western economies) now have the power to publish and distribute content to an extent formerly undreamt of. But Cluetrain-inspired ideas of a newly level playing field, in which all sources of content are equal, are giving way to a social media reality in which new gatekeepers have emerged and new hierarchies been established.

These hierarchies can be mapped according to the ways in which content, ideas, memes, conversations, spread across the internet. Those with an elevated position within the hierarchy can be seen to have more influence on the content that is shared and discussed throughout the network, whether as originators or as powerful propagators of the content in question.

HP Labs recently published details of research into patterns of influence on Twitter. The researchers devised an algorithm to assign a relative influence score and passivity score to every user, with “passivity” a measure of “how difficult it is for other users to influence him or her”, based on how likely they are to retweet relative to everybody else. Combining this data with other, more obvious measures of Twitter influence (number of followers, for example) allowed the authors to develop a predictive model that they describe as “successful”.

Twitter’s 140-character limitations and general transparency make it unusually approachable for those measuring network dynamics. At the other end of the scale is Facebook, whose News Feed follows a blackbox algorithm in assigning content among users, one that seems based primarily on communal interests expressed, explicitly or implicitly, on the social network itself. Facebook can be mapped according to content dynamics – provided one can access sufficient data to measure it.

When one looks to measure influence across the two platforms – in the way that Klout, recently integrated with our own JournalistTweets, and the newly launched PeerIndex seek to do – it’s clear that the indivisible atomic unit of the combined networks is the individual. This doesn’t change with a move to incorporate data from elsewhere on the web. Ben Parr writes for our esteemed co-sponsor Mashable; but what leverage he gains from that particular collective, thanks to his behaviour on Twitter, Facebook, et al, he is still best regarded as one individual contributing to that blog.

Given the proliferation of new online platforms over the past decade – slowed, but not wholly stemmed, by recent macroeconomic conditions – it seems inevitable that there will never be a complete solution for determining online influence and its consequences. But that isn’t to rule out successful predictive models. The most successful will be those that predict influence across a range of the most relevant platforms for any given issue – and put the individual at the heart of their calculations.

About Paul Miller
Paul Miller is Head of Digital at Cision UK, where his work focuses on the development of Cision’s digital offerings globally as well as the digital marketing and ecommerce strategies of Cision and a number of its clients. He is the author of numerous articles published in business and consumer magazines and has contributed to several books on corporate communications and risk management.

Paul lectures at a number of UK academic institutions, including the Universities of Westminster, London Metropolitan and Cambridge. He is also a regular speaker at international industry events and conferences, where he has gained a reputation for original and provocative thinking, particularly when discussing the impact of the evolving digital landscape on communications – and on life in general.

If you like this Paul also writes on the Cision blog.

About Cision
Cision (uk.cision.com) empowers businesses to make better decisions and improve performance through its CisionPoint software solutions for corporate communication and PR professionals. Powered by local experts with global reach, Cision delivers relevant media information, targeted distribution, media monitoring, and precise media analysis. Cision has offices in Europe, North America and Asia, and has partners in 125 countries. Cision AB is quoted on the Nordic Exchange with revenue of SEK 1.5 billion in 2009.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

All’s fair in love and work by Rebecca Taylor

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients… by Andrew Davison

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

www.grokable.com
www.twitter.com/robhoward
www.telligent.com/company/news/b/teamblog/

Guest post: What are the secrets to building a sustainable community?

Made Social on 10 September 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Rob Howard, aka @robhoward, Telligent’s founder and chief technology officer.

What are the secrets to building a sustainable community?
By Rob Howard

I remember the call like it was yesterday. It was early 2006, and Dell was on the phone asking for our help in starting a blog. Since then, Dell has become one of the most well-known, most written about and most respected online communities.

Yet many other well-known organizations have attempted to replicate Dell’s success, only to fail. So why is it that some communities are sustainable while others are not? Are there tactics and strategies that successful communities use that other communities ignore? Is there a secret formula?

Yes.

Well, it’s not exactly a secret formula, but the following five steps can certainly help you transform your community from stale to effective:

1. Define the community strategy.
While it can seem complex from the outside, building a successful community is simple if you first apply a strategy for executing your online community.

• Understand the audience.
• Define goals and objectives.
• Implement a strategy.
• Apply solutions /technology.
• Measure results.

2. Understand the community life cycle.
Successful communities have a good grasp of the community life cycle. The community life cycle is simply a pattern of how people use, contribute and grow within an online community.

3. Create value by listening.
People come to communities first to solve a particular problem. Whether it is finding people (expert discovery, networking, etc.) or solving a particular problem (support, etc.), successful communities provide value that keeps members coming back.

4. Know the three cardinal sins.
Great community managers know the three “cardinal sins” of an online community:

• Build it and they will come.
• Once I’ve launched I’m done.
• More is better.

5. Measure, analyze and improve.
Dell continuously looks at hundreds of measurements to understand the health of the multitudes of communities they run. They are constantly measuring against objectives and goals based on the specific strategy they are executing.

In my session How to Build a Sustainable Online Community at the Social Collective conference after party, we’ll explore these five topics in more detail, provide some great case studies, and talk through some of the strategies that you can apply to your community. I look forward to seeing you there!

About Rob Howard

Rob Howard is the vision behind Telligent’s product development and innovation and is known throughout the industry as an authority in community and collaboration software. As Telligent’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Howard oversees product development and the company’s technology roadmap. A true pioneer, Howard contributed to the development and adoption of Microsoft’s Web platform technologies, where he helped create and grow the innovative ASP.NET community. In 2004, he continued his vision for customer engagement when he founded Telligent, which was first-tomarket with integrated online community software. Howard also understood early on the value of community analytics, and Telligent was first-tomarket with an application to address this need.

Howard has worked with customers including Dell, MySpace.com and Microsoft, and he is able to help organisations of any size apply the value of collaborative work to their business. An expert at developing enterprise collaboration software, he has authored several books on the topic of software development and speaks at conferences worldwide on the topics of social computing and software development. Howard is a member of the Lonestar chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organisation, and
he earned his Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Baylor University.

About Telligent

Telligent is an enterprise collaboration and community software company. The company’s fully-integrated platform and portfolio of applications transform how organisations listen to, engage and measure interaction with customers, partners, prospects and employees. Telligent powers collaboration for many of the world’s largest brands, including Dell, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Reader’s Digest. For more information, visit www.telligent.com.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

All’s fair in love and work by Rebecca Taylor

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients… by Andrew Davison

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

Guest post: All’s fair in love and work

Made Social on 31 August 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Rebecca Taylor, aka @rebeccaatcirkle.

All’s fair in love and work
By Rebecca Taylor

A colleague recently described me as her “relationship guru”. By this she meant that I approach my relationship with love, patience and just a tiny bit of manipulation, resulting in a happy home where I get what I want 90% of the time. Just call me the man whisperer.

This got me thinking… can you apply the same principles to client relationships as you can to those of a more romantic nature? While I may be a competent communicator at home, I’ve always found client relationships to be more challenging, so by utilising years of pop psychology gleaned from glossy magazines, I’ve come up with four approaches that work just as well on clients as they do on men:

Make them feel important: When you have a partner, it can be easy to spend all of your time with them and ignore your friends. It’s a real skill to make everyone feel that they are equally important to you, but it’s crucial to happy, healthy friendships – and client relationships. No, you can’t just drop everything every time someone asks you for a favour, but you can respond to them quickly and tell them when you will be able to help them. You can check in regularly to show that they are on your mind, and you can spread your activities out so you are often in touch. By treating your clients with respect, you can ensure that they always feel loved.

It’s good to talk: We all have friends that we only talk to on Facebook, but my guess would be that they’re not your closest confidantes. I’m also fairly certain that you wouldn’t communicate with your partner exclusively through the internet, so why do it with your clients? Email is a great tool but it’s very difficult to build up a meaningful relationship without talking. Pick up the phone, talk around subjects, ask questions. If you can build up a dialogue with your clients, they will enjoy working with you more, and be more likely to listen to your advice.

Be helpful: You probably don’t have anything to do with your partner’s place of work, but that doesn’t mean you don’t offer them advice on work-related dilemmas. Likewise, you may not be involved with your clients’ personal lives, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take an interest. Just as you would help them out in the workplace, keep their personal interests at heart as well. Are they moving house? Mention you’ve seen a sale at Cargo. Getting married? Tell them about an upcoming wedding exhibition. You don’t need to be obtrusive, just interested.

Make them think it’s their idea: Decades of advice from women’s magazines tells us that if you really want something, the trick is to make your man think he’s thought of it himself. Clients are no different. Offer suggestions, present plans, drop hints – but treat feedback as if it’s the smartest thing you’ve heard all week. Of course, clients (like men) can be wrong – but if you’re usually supportive, they’ll be more likely to listen to your advice when you have a better idea.

Finally, the best advice I have ever been given is to treat your partner like a friend. When you’ve invested so much in one person, it’s easy to be hard on them when they fail to live up to your impossible expectations. Always remember that boyfriends and clients are just people – treating everyone with respect and kindness is the best way to build lasting relationships in and out of the office.

About Rebecca Taylor

Rebecca Taylor is an Account Manager on the B2B team at Cirkle, working with a number of high-profile food and drink brands. For more of her PR-related ramblings, you can follow her on Twitter @rebeccaatcirkle or check out her posts at www.cirkleblog.com.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients… by Andrew Davison

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients… by Andrew Davison

Guest post: Reaping the social harvest

Made Social on 27 August 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Kate Spiers, aka @wisdomlondon.

Reaping the social harvest
By Kate Spiers

Autumn is around the corner and that means harvest-time. What about the social harvest? Are we actually reaping what we, and others, sow?

After all, socially engaged, always-on communication pioneers that we are, what are we doing all of this social business for, if not to make some gains? So, after all our efforts, what kind of social harvest can we hope to reap?

This isn’t strictly about that elusive beast, social media ROI. This is more about the short-term and immediate benefits we can achieve through our social engagement. It’s about assessing what we have managed to cultivate so far, what’s ripe for the picking, and what can be nurtured and propagated for future harvests.

In a recent CommsChat on social media strategy and planning, it became clear that we all recognise the need for our social media approach to flex and respond to the realtime world as we go along, rather than setting off down a path with a far-off target and refusing to divert. Yes, we must always be clear about our long-term goals, but waiting too long for the endgame to play out is a dangerous tactic. Social media moves fast. We have to reap the goods as we go along.

Get distracted by the wrong measures of success and you risk wasting a glut of data, clues, trends and emotions that in fact, represent an amazingly fruitful crop from our social efforts. So how do we reap the social harvest? How do we know what’s ripe for the picking and when?

There is no set way. But consider the following for reaping your own social harvest and see what you can achieve:

Listening for clues, trends, intelligence – really think about what you’re listening for, be focused about it.
Harvest: Understanding, enhanced context, opportunities

Working your community – Consider who knows who, recognize the power of community, understand who’s on your side, who will support your cause, feed out your message and draw others in. Now work it.
Harvest: Stakeholders, cheerleaders, collaborators

Engagement – Every touchpoint has the power to knit the community a little closer. Reap the harvest by not only engaging but questioning, exploring and driving the quest for new ideas.
Harvest: Reputation, market position, critical mass for your cause

Wisdom – There’s a whole heap of good stuff out there that we can be
learning from every day – are you harvesting brilliant content, insight, ideas and great practical examples? We learn from the bad stuff too – observing mistakes, failure and bad practice not only inform, but provide a perfect opportunity to further our own thinking and question perceived wisdom
Harvest: Continual improvement, advanced thinking, trend spotting

None of this should be at odds with your overall objectives, measures for success, and social media ROI, no matter how you define it. It’s simply a question of recognising opportunities and benefits when they present themselves – and being sure to pick the juiciest ones while they’re at their ripest and best.

And maybe, in that fruitful harvest, you’ll find your ROI, right there.

About Kate Spiers

Kate Spiers is founder and director of Wisdom London, a creative communications consultancy. She is obsessive about engagement, connection and really, really compelling communications, no matter what the channel. Kate blogs at Wisdom London and tweets from @wisdomlondon.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

Guest post: The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients…

Made Social on 26 August 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Andrew Davison, aka @AndrewJDavison.

The web might be dead, so what does this mean for our clients…
By Andrew Davison

People have been in quite a stir since the Wired article “The web is dead…long live the internet” was published. Avoiding a discussion on the merits of the argument, the main takeaway from the article, that people are spending more time inside ‘walled garden’ communities, is one that I don’t think can be disputed. It seems customers everywhere are choosing convenience over the idea of freedom the internet was originally designed around.

How we got here is balance between the natural human desire for instant gratification and maturation of economic forces driving the internet. In 18 years we’ve gone from an internet that was used primarily by academics and individuals to share research, to a vast universe where internet giants offer us better, quicker and easier, in a desperate attempt to win our attention, data and in many cases money.

Grandiose statements aside what does this mean for the vast majority of companies that want to excel digitally? I believe there is a great deal of opportunity for businesses to do what they set out to do, offer excellent service to their customers and a customer experience better than their competitors, they just need to be creative about it.

A digital presence, whatever it includes must be well integrated with all aspects of the business and it may be the case that a business would do better living inside one of these walled garden communities, be it Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the networks that allow companies to engage and interact with their customers. I’m not saying companies everywhere should ditch their website (although I’ve been known to argue this after a few drinks too many) but for the vast number of SMEs and trades people that have no chance of competing for a decent search placement and can’t afford extensive PPC campaigns, this is a way to compete.

Either way, before implementing businesses need to step into the shoes of their customers, to understand their environment and work out what they are looking for in terms of a user experience. Nine times out of 10, this is where things fall apart. This disconnect has given an army of web designers, SEO ‘experts’ and social media gurus years of easy money and has left SMEs everywhere wondering what the hell to say on “this Twitter thing”.

So this is my bold proposal – agencies everywhere should ban designers, techies and digital planners for initial meetings with clients and instead invite in psychologists, sociologists and researchers. Let them dig into what makes the company unique and the wants, needs and circumstances of the customers so they can produce a plain English list of problems and opportunities which they can move forward. If done the other way there is a risk that the agency will invent a problem to fit the solution they would like to build rather than inventing a solution to fit the problem that needs to be solved.

I want to know – How do you deal with the planning stage of a project? Do you disagree with me passionately? Don’t be shy….let’s discuss.

About Andrew Davison

Andrew Davison is currently a Digital Strategist at Ziggurat Brands, a London based branding, packaging and more recently digital agency that has spent the last 25 years creating award winnings work for Tetley, PepsiCo, Wall’s and Gatorade to name a few. In the last year they’ve extended to offer a full range of digital services to further support the brands they create and Andrew has been brought on board to help with this transition.

Andrew is at the start of his career having graduated last year with a Diploma in Computer Science from the University of Kent. While their he scratched his entrepreneurial itch running a business providing SMEs with digital consultancy and development. As a strategist he now enjoys following the fast pace of the PR/digital/tech world and using digital concepts to solve brand problems.

He can be reached at @AndrewJDavison almost any time of the day.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model by Michelle Rodger

Guest post: “The Talk”

Made Social on 24 August 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Mr Tweet himself, Max Tatton-Brown, aka @MaxTB who’s talking the talk…

Social Media: “The Talk”
By Max Tatton-Brown

Now, you may be wondering why we’ve called you here for this family meeting. But all will become clear. I just want you to know that your marketing manager and I love you very much and we wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.

But what we’re about to say may come as something of a shock.

By now, you’ll have noticed that you’re going through various changes. And not all of them are entirely pleasant.

Of course, you’ve started noticing girls, which is perfectly natural but beware that they may not always be honest with you.

But of course you’ll want to do your best to smell and look good for them. But don’t get carried away, and don’t pretend to be something that you’re not.

Sometimes, you might do something silly. It may seem tempting to try and push the blame on someone else. But if you really hope to grow up, it’s best that you’re just honest with everyone and honest with yourself.

Indeed, you may find some difficulty finding your voice and it may even break. In a worst case scenario, it could give way when everybody’s looking and make you look something of a fool. Don’t worry, it may be embarrassing but you’ll come out the other side stronger.

Don’t be afraid to get out there and talk to people – nobody likes the chap who turns up to the party only to stand in the corner in silence. Especially when their friends are out having a whale of a time.

Sometimes people will make fun of you and have a laugh at your expense. Don’t just ignore them, stand up for yourself! But if you start to hear the same criticism from serious sources too, it might be worth trying to address the problem itself…

Despite all this advice, you can be sure of this at least- one day you’ll look back on these experiences and laugh at how little you knew despite the confidence you had in your convictions. But that’s okay – everyone is going through the same process and we’ve all been there before.

Just be careful whose advice you take and remember one thing.

Do try to have fun.

About Max Tatton-Brown

Max is a technology PR consultant at Wildfire. He tweets here and blogs at maxtb.com and the Wildfire Tech PR blog.

Max is a brazen early adopter- if there’s a beta, he’ll do his best to get in it and work out what the point is. Proudly, he is perhaps the only PR in history to secure an interview through Google Wave- apparently being able to embed a live weather forecast within the conversation was a deal-clincher.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM by Eric Swain

Guest post: Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model

Made Social on 16 August 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Michelle Rodger, aka @tartancat.

Sshhhh; Social Media is a Feminine Model
By Michelle Rodger

There’s a sense of jollity, frivolity and fun about social media. Hilarious virals, finger-on-the-pulse news, gossip and conversations. There’s a buzz, it’s addictive, an open and inviting channel to new friends, adventures and business opportunities.

What’s not to love?

But there’s something hitherto unspoken about social media. Behind all the smoke and mirrors hastily erected by so-called ‘gurus’ (don’t get me started on that, it’s another blog – or three – entirely) there’s a very simple means of understanding why it works. And it confuses me that no one has yet divulged the explanation.

It’s oft whispered through highly-glossed lips, but never uttered by their 5 o’clock shadowed counterparts; the shocking, unspeakable truth is this – social media is a feminine model. Yeah, stick that one in your pipe!

I don’t want you to think this is a feminist rant. It’s really not. I’m not a feminist, in fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. This isn’t about political posturing or positive discrimination, it’s simply an observation.

Come with me on this, I’ll explain;

Business traditionally, for centuries, has been masculine. It’s generally male-dominated, particularly at a senior level. It’s about the sales, the profits, closing the deal, driving a hard bargain, winning over adversity, cutting out the competition, stealing market share, climbing over others right up the career ladder, working and playing harder than the next man.

But social media, well it’s different. It’s about sharing, nurturing, encouraging and supporting, connecting. There’s a warmth, a desire to help, a desire to give of yourself and share knowledge and experience for free.

It’s about rewarding loyalty and building a community around you as a person, as a business and as a brand.

Now before you start shouting at your screen or stop reading this blog, give me a minute to explain. I’ll be upfront and honest here: I have nothing concretely evidentiary to back this up. I have nothing more than my – feminine – instinct and experience, and an inherent curiosity to uncover the “why” (everything is so much more simple when you understand the “why”, don’t you think?)

But consider this; who are the males who do well on Twitter? For example, you’ve got the obvious ones, the Pete Cashmores, Chris Brogans and Trey Penningtons, the Ashton Kutchers, Stephen Frys and Perez Hiltons. But why are they so successful? What is they’ve got, what have they found, leveraged, branded as their own?

It is this; they are in touch with their feminine side. They get it. They have adapted to social media with narey a glance back at the traditional business models. They connect, engage, chat and gossip, share what they know and how they know it, they give of themselves generously every day.

Even the egotistical Dragons – topically in the news this week for their money-grabbing approach to angel investment – have softened their approach to build their social media personas. Duncan Bannatyne (when he’s not trying to attract more followers with dream-filled hashtags) and Peter Jones are spending time on line talking about their families, sharing pix of their holidays, RTing SMEs and wannabe entrepreneurs and promoting charitable activities. Who would have thought?

Last week’s genius viral hoax was feminine led. Cleverly designed by men, it was approaching social media from a feminine angle – we all know a “Spencer”, the office tosser. And before we knew it was a hoax we cheered her on, the underdog, applauded her efforts to stick it to the man. We felt for her, wanted to support her, offer her a job with our companies (I know, I certainly did) and we RTd furiously in righteous indignation. And when it turned out to be a joke, we laughed, we didn’t take it seriously, we didn’t feel like fools, we respected the smart marketing effort and talked about its success.

The generosity of spirit across the social media spectrum is truly overwhelming (I for one am surprised and thrilled daily) and your success – as a man or a woman – depends on your inherent ability to nurture.

About Michelle Rodger

Michelle is the founder and ‘Top Cat’ at Tartan Cat Communications – a new voice in social media and communications.

A former national newspaper journalist, Michelle understands what businesses need to do to get their message across, and has harnessed the social media agenda to drive new ways of communicating.

At Tartan Cat, Michelle develops and delivers social media and communication campaigns for a variety of companies from the corporate and financial sector through to new business start-ups. Previously she has helped companies such as the NHS and the MoD to utilise communication as a growth strategy. Michelle is a prolific twitterer (@tartancat), and has built up a strong following becoming respected for bringing professional journalism to the social media arena.

As a former business founder of an award winning tech company, Michelle now uses the knowledge and experience this gave her to deliver guest lectures in Entrepreneurship at Stirling University as well as at numerous corporate events throughout the country. Michelle was an enthusiastic supporter of Napier University’s Centre for Entrepreneurship for three years and was a Lead Teaching Entrepreneur.

Michelle has written a weekly business column for Scotland on Sunday since January 2008. In the past she has contributed business features to both Up and Unlimited magazines, and enjoyed a controversial, weekly column for Scotland’s first business newspaper – Business AM.

A former Director of Paisley and District Chamber of Commerce, she was also on the Board of Reid Kerr College in Paisley.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Guest post: Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM

Made Social on 10 August 2010 | View Comments

The latest in the series is from Eric Swain, aka @ericswain.

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM
By Eric Swain

Social Media is a crap term. Always has been. Certainly for the purposes of business and certainly increasingly as we understand the social landscape better.

The term “Social Media” is a mere label that is too focused on the tools. And because of that it is imprecise and insufficient for our purposes in the world of business. It doesn’t really fit what we are trying to achieve. What does it mean for us? Community management? Facebook marketing? Twitter offers? YouTube videos? Social PR? Content marketing? More? All of them?

It’s too broad and fails to get to the heart of the matter.

Businesses are out of the loop.

In today’s commercial landscape we need to recognise that our customers have adopted (at astonishing rates) social networking practices and are carrying on conversations about us, our products, competitors and industries. Without us. Happily without us, actually. In fact, after years of being fed a load of marketing crap (who believes that that soap powder really is “new and improved” anyway?), consumers are disinclined even to trust us. We need to pay better attention.

Today we as businesses are presented with an opportunity to use the social networks to help us truly service our customers; to truly follow the old cliché adage that “the customer is number one”. We have an opportunity to actually put the customer at the centre of the business; to give them the involvement that they increasingly demand.

Social CRM

Customers control the conversation. How does the company respond? Social CRM (or becoming a social business) means moving beyond listening and engaging with customers to gleaning real, actionable insights that will help a business make their customers’ experiences better – better customer service, better communication, better support, better marketing, better products.

Social CRM is about creating organisation-wide processes and structures to:
1. take in all the data (unstructured, raw, semi-structured) from our listening and interaction
2. analyse that data for what’s important and meaningful from the customer’s point of view
3. feed those insights into the organisation to create better outcomes (or to enhance the successful existing outcomes)
4. and then deliver those better outcomes.

It’s a cyclical process that demonstrates to customers that we value them and are paying attention.

The best marketing strategy is to deliver a remarkable customer experience. Why not let our customers tell us what that is?

About Eric Swain

Eric is Managing Director and Co-Founder at the agency Spice, where he helps companies make sense of a brave new world where the customer controls the business ecosystem and the conversation.

He’s been knocking about the place for the past 20 years as a consultant, director, or head of sales, or marketing (or both) for companies from tech start-ups and mobile app developers to vending machine brokers.

Once described as “smart, good looking, athletic, persuasive and brilliant” on the back of an anonymous feedback form, Eric is enthusiastic about real, honest communication and enjoys writing his own online bio whenever he gets the chance.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went