Read Chris Tomlinson’s latest musing on the subject in Thursday’s Birmingham Post

With election campaigns getting under way I still believe this. If only the political parties did.

It’s not that they’re ignoring social media but at the moment it’s all a bit style over substance.

They appear to be falling into the trap currently occupied by a lot of businesses and organisations who have also “done” social media in recent times but not really got anywhere with it.

The problem is that like others who complain that social media isn’t working, they are focusing more on the channel rather than REALLY thinking about the content.

A common problem with a lot of social media marketing at the moment is that there is too much focus on the channel – the technology and the means of distribution like Facebook, Twitter, iPhone app and so on.

This is probably because the very genre is defined by the channel – the media.

Which is why a lot of organisations think they’ve “done” social media just because they have a Twitter account or an iPhone app.

But the channel is only a conduit. It’s what is sent and distributed via that channel that holds the key to success. Content, purpose, targeting and resource must be well planned to maximise engagement.

For example, last week the Tory party launched its very own Conservative Party iPhone app.

So cool.

Well actually not quite so much. It’s really a mini-brochure with a few little questionable tools built in, like its swing-o-meter showing election results as they come in. Which will be useful for about 12 hours tops on the night.

The detail on its policies is informative but it’s basically their manifesto in condensed, digital format. For more comment, read Mobsessed’s opinion about the Tory app, it’s good stuff.

And this week we saw the launch of the Labour Party’s social media campaign.

This is much more interesting, using opinions expressed through social media and on the doorstep to “inform” their social media activity. I have no idea what “inform” actually means here though. There’s no clue as to what they will do with all this content.

They’ve also given social media training to key campaign staff. The problem again is that it all feels very token-like. Time will tell.

It’s not all negative. There are some great examples of local and national party activists, party members, MP’s and councillors who really do understand it.

But so far no party has an obvious centralised social media strategy bringing together and mobilising all campaigners to truly listen to and engage with the public and key influencers.

What I’m really talking about here is online PR, and as far as I can see it’s here they are missing an opportunity.

Where is their online PR strategy? How are they creating and resourcing active social media engagement on a daily basis with online citizens: individuals, communities, influencers, bloggers, tweeters, publications and so on?

I can’t see any of that happening on a scale akin to Obama in the US for example.

Maybe it’s coming, or already happening. But I can’t see it, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Online PR is a great way of approaching the task in hand because it diverts attention from the channel, Twitter, the iPhone app or whatever to the meat of the matter – the content, community engagement and the direct conversation.

When the main parties get their head around the fact that this is what social media is about then they may see some success from it in terms of influencing opinion and voting intention.

As things stand, the general public are likely to see through token gestures and do what they normally do when it comes to politics – switch off.

Just as it should in other areas of politics, with social media it’s substance, not style, which holds the key to success.

Now, I’ve finally got my LinkedIn status hooked up to my Twitter feed, my blog posting to my Facebook page and can just about monitor everything from my phone.

The last thing I’m inclined to do right now is join another time consuming social network!

Before I got my current collection under control, I barely had time to check my email and when I did it was full of mail from my social networks, alerting me to new activity forcing me to return.

Even with its 146 million captive Gmail users, Google has its work cut out if it is to get enough people using Buzz to make it worth my while.

Google tried before with a social network called Orkut, but failed to make it a global success – so why are they having another go?

Well Google is under attack from the social networks on two fronts.

Firstly, Google sells adverting space and as consumers spend increasing amounts of time on social networking sites advertising budgets are migrating there too.

Secondly, people are increasingly using their social networks to communicate instead of email. Mostly because they want to talk about content and social networks are designed to associate content with conversation.

Facebook is rumored to be upgrading its messaging system to be more email like. The project is code named Titan. Some are calling Titan the “Gmail killer”, which is why Google might be worried.

This also explains why Google has integrated Buzz with other popular networks, like Twitter, Flickr and its own blog site eblogger, but not the more popular Facebook!

Increasingly people are keeping a traditional email address for their professional lives, for colleges and customers, but conducting their personal communication via social networks.

Whether future generations of net citizens want their main email integrated with their social networks or, as Google hopes, the other way round is yet to be seen.

Considering it is the largest media owner in the world, Google is very bad at communicating with its users – which, lets face it, is most of us.

Back in December Google slipped Personalised Search into our lives, but few peopled noticed.

Google is always fiddling, or ‘refining’ as it calls it, with its algorithm, the one that determined which sites we see at the top of our search results pages.

Usually you need to be a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert or a real geek to spot the changes, or follow Google’s official blog.

But now even normal people are noticing that their search engine results are becoming very different to those of other people – even when they search with the same words!

Basically, Personalised Search means that once you have visited a website, via its results pages, Google is now more likely to offer you the site again, in future search results.

Now, if you’re an advocate of personal privacy, an international terrorist, or part of an organised crime syndicate you already know that Google records you’re every move and you’ve worked out a way of turning its tracking off.

However, those of us who don’t fit into the above categories have not really been that bothered. But now that Google is using this information to choose websites for us, perhaps we should be bothered.

Fundamentally, I use a search engine to find websites I don’t already know about. I have other mechanisms for recalling websites from previous interest; bookmarks and news feeds (RSS) for instance.

And whether my own previous misjudgment in site selection is a good way of determining what sites I see in the future is highly debatable too!

You can of course turn off personalised search, but it is now on by default and few users will be aware of this or work out how to turn it off. Previously you had to be logged into iGoogle to get this ‘useful feature’ but now everyone is unwittingly lumbered with it.

This makes it very difficult to prove money spent on SEO is justified. If everyone is getting different results, how can you know your SEO is working?

Alternatively, the unsuspecting client, who visits their own website on a regular basis, might think their SEO consultant is doing an amazing job, as their site seems to turn up on every relevant search they do.

So if you’re site has suddenly become number one in Google, for your targeted keywords, but this hasn’t turned into an avalanche of website visitors – and of course you’ve read this, you will now know why.

Being presented with death and suffering, before you’ve even left the house, is a bad way to start a day, but guilt wouldn’t let me turn it off.

I then started wondering why valuable plane space was taken up, flying a Kate Adie wannabe with camera crew, to the scene of a disaster just hours after it had happened?

Did the piece-to-camera clips really need live earthquake scenes behind it?

We’ve all seen the aftermath of an earthquake before – piles of rubble and human bewilderment.

The Haitians have complained that too many US soldiers have been flown in with guns, but I’d be complaining about the army of men with cameras.

I know broadcast media help galvanise aid, but unless one of the dozens of ‘news’ videos features your family, what useful information do they actually provide?

With over 280,000 members, “Earthquake Haiti” is now the largest group on Facebook.  Let the sceptics of social networking take note: not only are people using social media to find missing loved ones, but using it as a source of on-the-ground information.

More harrowing is that by searching for #helphaiti on Twitter, you’ll find tweets of longitude and latitude with request for food and water – grim.

What finally made me turn the TV off, was when Simon Cowell appeared!

I love it when rich people want to ‘give something back’ as long as it’s not actual the money they made, and they get plenty of publicity thrown in.

I feel sorry enough for the people of Haiti, without some piece of pop pap, to induce my sympathy.  I’ll give to the cause, without getting something in return.

However social media is not immune to the words ‘band’ and ‘wagon’.

Birmingham tweeter, @stevegerrard (not the footballer), promised to donate £2 for every comment he got on his blog.  Not the most altruistic of Twitter marketing as many of the comments, now removed, pointed out!

Last week saw the blogosphere speculate that Twitter’s meteoric growth might finally be ending.

According to web monitoring company, Compete, traffic to the micro-blogging website has flat-lined, suggesting its world dominance may not be so assured.

Quantcast’s numbers told the same story. Since its peak at 29.2 million users in July09, Twitter traffic has dropped down to 23.6 million U.S. unique visitors, a loss of nearly 24%!

But before the social media sceptics start celebrating by regurgitating theories on the faddish nature of social networks and the vacuous nature of their inhabitants, it is important to know a couple of things.

Firstly, unlike other social networks, Twitter is not popular with teenagers. It is this age group that is notorious for migrating from one network to another.

Teens don’t tweet.

Possibly because it requires brevity, but more likely because it requires an understanding of what might actually be interesting to other people!

Younger users may have simply got bored with Twitter and its many shortcomings as a chat room or perhaps realised it is full of grumpy old people like me.

But those of us who don’t use it as a chat room have found increasing ways to share content, galvanise public opinion and exact social media revenge on bad customer service.

(Oh – and it’s great for slagging off the X Factor too).

Secondly, we need to remember that there are “lies, damn lies and website statistics”. A fall in traffic to Twitter’s own websites could simply mean that more tweeters have migrated to using phone and desktop applications; a sign that the Twittersphere is evolving, not retracting.

Frankly, it is the basic functionality of Twitter’s own site that leads many a debutant tweeter to give up before accumulating enough followers to make it rewarding.

We may well see the site transformed in 2010 as it is widely rumoured that this is the year that Twitter intends to monetise its success – perhaps sick of the jokes about it knowing how to spend money but not make it.

In fact, Twitter is reported to be hiring new developers to help transform the site into a commercial entity.

But stories about its negative growth won’t help this course.

However, if there are truly less people using Twitter than before, it must be because it is transforming from a place where narcissists and their voyeurs can meet, to a more credible news and opinion sharing platform.

Perhaps the Tweeters are separating from the Chavs?

For example, my cousin is a doctor and it’s impossible to have a conversation with her lasting more than five minutes without it turning into a medical analogy of some sort.

I’m like that with social media, though I admit to sometimes feeling slightly ashamed to be making a comparison between marketing and saving lives! I apologise in advance!

Take the current weather crisis blighting lives and ruining our economy.

Many are blaming it on the poor supplies of salt grit. This is why I love Britain – we spectacularly fail to deal with the recent snowfall and all we can do is rant about the lack of salt as being the cause of everything going down the pan.

Richard Madeley himself has used Twitter to launch a “foul-mouthed” attack on his local council for running out of salt grit, which he says has stopped him getting to important meetings.

“Grrr:still no sign of any gritters here.Looks like our council’s f***** up again” he ranted.

This is just one, celebrity example of the effect the snow has had this week.

Many others, including myself, understand his frustration.

However, it makes me feel annoyed for a different reason. Is it really the lack of salt grit that’s to blame?

Is it not the lack of a more widespread ‘entrepreneurial’ infrastructure in the UK that would mean we could get on with business (as usual) whatever the weather?

Social media technology and communication enable us to work in a much more proactive and reactive way. So even when the roads are closed we can still keep on working. I may have been snowed in but it hasn’t stopped me getting the job done.

I’m not saying that it solves every problem (roads are vital!) but it helps to keep people working and for businesses to be successful. Too few businesses and organisations are set up to take advantage of digital and social media quickly in times of crisis – whether it’s a snowstorm or a Twitter storm.

Collaborative working can happen virtually whether it’s realtime text conversations or video sharing/conferencing. The solutions exist and don’t need to be expensive or complex.

Digital is a key solution to problems like the snowfall we’ve had this week. It reminds us of the importance of initiatives like Digital Britain. It also highlights how really we can’t wait much longer.

If business and society as a whole were set up better, and integrated digital to a greater extent, people like Mr. Madeley wouldn’t have to miss important meetings any more – whilst also alleviating some of the stress on the suppliers of salt grit!

But thanks to social media, I find that I’m not alone.

I hate every nauseating minute of the show. From the insipid voice over to the hackneyed ‘old spice’ music, through the endless regurgitation of clichés, that make footballers sound intelligent, right up to the gurn inducing, blart infested melodrama that is the vote.

Yes it has been a “journey” for me too Dermot.

The only way to get through it, is to follow the xfactor hash tag on Twitter for reassuringly clever sarcasm about the minute by minute happenings on the show.

(For the uninitiated – people label their tweets with a # label in order that it can be found by people like me!)

Yes there are lots of ‘Go Joe’ tweets from the mindless, but interspersed with them and the blatant advertising tweets, are funny and intelligent observations, far more entertaining than those of the bland judges.

But then I discovered the #ratm4xmas tag and found my kindred X Factor hating spirits, who are saying “no” to the cult of Simon Cowell.

The tag led me to, what is currently the most popular discussion group on Facebook,  ‘RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS NO.1’ .

The idea is that by synchronized online purchases of a track called ‘Killing in the Name’ by the rather appropriately named band, ‘Rage Against the Machine’ – we can knock X Factor off the Xmas number one slot.

I’ll let others explain why X Factor is a cancer on the music industry and as I work ‘in marketing’, I’m in no position to point out the immorality of playing on the aspirations of the nations susceptible no-hopers to be rich and famous or indeed laughing at the mentally ill in the auditions.

The important thing is that, instead of shouting at the TV, I can now use social media to vent my frustration! In fact, I’m feeling much better already – proving the cathartic nature of blogging and its power to spread the word of resistance against the Karaoke King.

I don’t suppose the 20 million lemmings that like the X Factor can be beaten, and I know few of them are likely to buy ‘Killing in the Name’ for the Nan’s xmas present, but it will be fun to try.

1. The rise of the social media strategy
2. The year of the social media policy
3. Mobile social media goes mainstream
4. Social media sharing up, email down
5. Integration, integration, integration
6. Social media data drives creative and offline strategies too

Read our report “Social Media Gets Serious – Key Trends in 2010”, where I take an in-depth look at each one of these predictions and outline what businesses and organisations can do to stay ahead and get the most from social media in 2010.

Let us know your thoughts too.

Read the full report: “Social Media Gets Serious – Key Trends in 2010”.

In this blog report I look back on 2009 and identify some key trends for social media in 2010, outlining how you can implement them to achieve your goals in the coming year.

Still learning to use the “telephone”?

The rise of social media marketing has been prolific to say the least. It wasn’t that long ago we were saying things like “You won’t catch me on Facebook, it’s a waste of time. Why would I want to know what someone has had for breakfast anyway?” or more simply, “How does this new-fangled thing work?”.

A wonderful analogy is that social media is at a stage similar to where the telephone was in 1915. Back then, businesses were terrified of allowing their employees to use the phone, many banning it outright afraid their employees would go rogue and cause all sorts of trouble, inviting litigation. If we’d stuck to that approach where would be now, I wonder.

The potential for social media is similarly great, but it has been held back so far by the exact same attitude. How many businesses and organisations still ban their employee’s access to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on? The vast majority as it happens. But the tide is definitely turning.

Over the past few years we have seen businesses start to make more “calls” via social media, some even letting their employees use it for business use! Some have gone on to use it even more strategically – targeting, monitoring, responding, recording and analysing their social media activity. Many though are still trying to figure out how this new-fangled thing works and, crucially, what the real benefits are.

2010 looks set to see many businesses really getting to grips with social media and understanding its strategic importance – either on its own or as a slice in the marketing pie.

Time to get serious with social media

The fact is, at the end of 2009, social media IS mainstream, like the telephone. Check out just a random selection of 2009 stats:

• According to a social media study in 2009 by Neilsen, social networks and blogs are now more popular online activities than email.
• If Facebook were a country, its population would be the 4^th largest in the world, just behind Brazil, Russia and Japan.
• 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns – with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.
• 78% of consumers trust recommendations from friends rather than brands.
• Over-50s are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook.
• Twitter is changing the face of journalism and content distribution

Businesses are now taking it seriously and some are over-hauling their marketing strategies accordingly. Those with a good social media strategy are getting some serious results.

6 key social media trends – and how you can stay ahead

In this report, we have identified 6 of the biggest predictions for social media in 2010 as follows:

1. The rise of the social media strategy
2. The year of the social media policy
3. Mobile social media goes mainstream
4. Social media sharing up – email down
5. Integration, integration, integration
6. Social media data drives creative and offline strategies too

So what does this mean for your business? Here we look at each of these trends in turn, and outline how you can keep ahead of the curve.

1. THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

2010 will be, as one commentator has described, “the year social media goes corporate” as businesses accept that customer behaviour really has changed for good and their business needs to change as a result.

We will see more and more businesses and organisations developing sophisticated social media marketing strategies. They may have created a Facebook Fanpage or Twitter account and maybe thinking, “well that hasn’t done much, what a waste of time this social media lark is”.

Well it is a waste of time if it’s not done properly. A robust social media strategy is vital for it to be successful. For one, it needs time and resource dedicated to it, and I’m not talking about giving the responsibility for social media to the work experience guy in the corner. (Habitat tried that and epically failed in the process!).

Social media require serious attention and respect – and it looks like this particular penny will finally drop in 2010. If you are seen to be shabby in social media you won’t be taken seriously. This is now true for small and big brands alike. Customer expectations are changing and they expect you to be just as available, accessible, respectable and trustworthy in social media as in any other area.

The 7 key considerations of a good social media strategy are:

1. Objectives

Be clear about what you are aiming to achieve: revenue, sales, brand awareness, customer service, database development etc

2. Target audiences

Who and where are they in social media?

3. Channels and platforms

Which ones are right for your business to operate in?

4. Influencers

Who are the people/organizations/media owners you should engage and focus your online PR efforts on?

5. Content

Remember, social networks are tools. Without creating the right content you will be disappointed with the results. It’s all about conversations, innovation and creativity.

6. Sentiment

Respect the environment you’re in and understand how your audiences want to be communicated with in social media.

7. Social media rules of engagement

When, how and how often? There are likely to be different rules of engagement between social media channels – it’s important you understand this and get it right.

2. THE YEAR OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

Yes indeed, it’s looking like 2010 is likely to be the year of the social media policy (sorry, I can’t make that sound any more exciting!).

The fact is if your business currently bans access to social media, it doesn’t mean you can stop employees using it. They can still access social networks via their mobile at work and use it freely at home. Without clear company guidelines for social media staff may not recognise that an ‘innocent’ negative comment on a social network related to their job/customers could actually have significant consequences for the business.

So with this in mind – and if only for peace of mind – establish a social media policy. What are you waiting for? Sounds grand but depending on the size of your business, it doesn’t need to be complex – just certain rules of engagement, expectations and consequences of misuse built into employee contracts – similar to those that already exist for email and so on.

You can build in the “use of social media for business purposes” to job descriptions. For example, you could make it a requirement of the job to answer customer queries via Facebook or Twitter.

As long as you have a robust social media strategy and policy in place, social media can only benefit your customers and your business. You wouldn’t tell your employee’s to stop using the telephone to talk to customers now would you…?

3. MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA GOES MAINSTREAM

The digital marketing industry has been heralding the ‘year of mobile’ for years, but guess what – it’s actually here! Social media usage has driven a totally new way in which we use our mobile phones.

2009 has seen a massive surge in the numbers of people who own a smartphone, and 2010 will see this grow exponentially. This means we have mobile internet and social media applications accessible wherever we are – and we are using them.

More and more people are getting used to using mobiles to do the sort of things we’ve just got used to doing on a computer. Things like shopping, surfing and searching the internet, playing games, blogging, Facebook and so on.

This presents opportunities for businesses and organisations to be available wherever and whenever customers (and other audiences) are looking for your products, services or related subjects. Mobile-ready shopping carts for retail businesses will be seen more and more in 2010 – social commerce opportunities are huge.

Mobile-optimised websites are a must for all businesses. But so is having a presence in social media, outside of your own website – social networks, applications etc.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA SHARING UP, EMAIL DOWN

We have already seen in 2009 that social networks have overtaken email as a preferred communications method. 2010 could well see a further drop in the use of email as a way of engaging with audiences. People are now less likely to forward, or ‘share’ an email to friends (unless there is a big (usually financial) reason to do so). However, they are now much more likely to share social media content to multiple friends or followers.

So, use email where it is appropriate by all means but don’t ignore the fact that social media are key channels for sharing and recommending content. This is only set to rise in 2010.

5. INTEGRATION, INTEGRATION, INTEGRATION

We are already seeing the rise of third party applications allowing us to integrate our social media experience (e.g. Tweetdeck, Friendfeed, Google Wave, status integrations and so on). This looks likely to continue with the big players taking more of an initiative than that already taken by third party entrepreneurs.

This will increase the efficiency with which audiences will be able to interact, update and share social media accounts through perhaps just one application. Increased efficiency in social media means more ease of use – which means wider adoption, for example by more diverse audiences. This means that social media activity will effect even more change for your business.

6. SOCIAL MEDIA DATA DRIVES CREATIVE AND OFFLINE STRATEGIES TOO

The increase in the adoption of social media means that more and more target audiences are interacting online revealing attitudes, behaviours, wants and needs like never before. This means that the social media landscape is a rich source of audience data.

The use of social media data and intelligence for social media strategy purposes is obvious. What, till now, has seemed less obvious is the fact that this data can be used for offline and creative strategies.

Data and creativity have fought a long-standing battle. Social media, however, looks set to break down some of these barriers with more creative campaigns – online AND offline – using social findings and conversations as their basis.

Social media activity is a hotbed of realtime market research data and insight. By monitoring your business online and the behaviours of your target audiences in social media environments, you can generate current market insights that are invaluable across marketing channels and disciplines.

Looking ahead

Here I’ve looked at just some of the most likely trends for social media in 2010. It is by no means an exhaustive list and simply type “social media trends 2010” into Google to find out many more. If you would like more advice or information on any of the above, please do get in touch below.

Simon Heath is Director of Friend.