Five social media trends to watch out for
It has been awhile since I've posted. Have spent much time in China and spare time has been rare. This post is a speech I gave in Shanghai to a mix of Text 100's clients, Shanghai staff and friends. May cover some familiar ground, but thought I'd share....
...Many of us in this room have grown up professionally performing a type of public relations that has changed little over the past 100 years.
We’ve relied on the logic that our job is to get as many eyeballs as possible on our messages. We quite rightly assumed that those eyeballs equalled influence. We’ve slept well at night safe in the knowledge that our column centimetres exceed that of our competitors, our ad value equivalency was higher than the previous year, and Chinese character count was on the up. We put ourselves to sleep to the comforting thud of a big pile of press clippings.
Those things that once gave us comfort are being replaced by an entirely different truth. This truth is one that is hard to deny. People aren’t buying what we’re selling.
Those consumers who once were limited to the big three four media options of newspapers, magazines, television and radio suddenly have access to the world.
We’re living in an age of a perfect storm of business, technological and societal change. These three massive forces have combined, giving today’s consumer greater access than ever before to information.
News is shifting from being a product - today's newspaper, Web site or newscast - to becoming a service - how can you help me, even empower me? A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations.
Consumers want to be empowered to make up their own minds – not be told what to think by a media they don’t trust. In fact, 70% of Americans don’t believe “all or most” media reporting.
People are going to the web in droves. The impact? Print newspaper and magazine revenues are in free fall. Even the venerable New York Times needs to sell assets. The old model doesn’t work.
I had dinner with a journalist recently. He explained that as the China correspondent covering the last US election, he racked up $30,000 in credit card bills. He was working for the New York Times which today employs thousands of journalists. The maths no longer works.
What has changed is that today people build trust in a fundamentally different way.
They increasingly distrust institutions.
They increasingly do trust their peers.
Audiences have become smaller - and they have more choices in a fragmented media landscape. Today, our informed customers aren’t happy to blindly consume what mainstream media is feeding them. Instead they want:
- Participation
- Openness
- Conversation
- Community
- Connectedness
- Real time
To get this, they are turning to
- Social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Xiaonei, etc.)
- Microblogging (Twitter, Jaiku, TaoTao, etc.)
- Digital content sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr, Todou, etc.)
- Shared content creation networks (Wikis, message boards and BBS like Qzone, etc.)
- 3-D and 2-D virtual networks (Second Life, HiPiHi)
- Collaborative publishing platforms (blogs, podcasts, etc.)
This so called ‘social media’ also empowers them to pull the information they want rather than filter through what’s being pushed at them through mainstream media. Social media also empowers them to have their own voice.
One small personal example.
When I found out I was staying in this hotel, I didn’t go to their website. I knew it would be full of beautiful pictures and happy words. I instead went to tripadvisor.com. And read what people who’d stayed here said. Happy to report, that this is the 46th best ranked hotel in Shanghai out of 888 hotels, with an average of four out of five stars. But by example I’ve demonstrated the power of social media. I wanted openness and community, and knew I wouldn’t get it from a corporate website.
It is this cynical audience that you want to purchase product or service. Ask yourself now – are you giving your audience these six virtues? If not, it’s time to take a long hard look at your communications strategy.
And you get this. We all get this intellectually. But it raises a bunch of questions for communicators. Questions over things like control of messages. Over benchmarking, measurement and ROI. Over unethical behaviour in these mediums. And the tough thing is that many of these questions don’t have solid answers because this space is so new and evolving so rapidly.
But the reality borne out by research from all over the globe is that these places are where your customers are going. Your customers live in social media. And if you’re not there too, you’ll struggle. The days of one way communication via conduits such as the media are coming to an end. The winners in the communication battle will be those willing to engage the consumer on their terms.
So, where is this battle being fought and what do you need to know? Here are five social media mega trends that you need to keep you eyes on:
1. The boom of micro-blogging
While many folks are still trying to get their heads around blogging, there’s already a new game in town. Led by US-based twitter, micro blogging is grabbing a considerable amount of attention. Put simply, twitter is a free service that allows its users to exchange micro conversations of no more than 140 characters – a bit like an interactive version of your status in Windows live messenger or QQ. Its applications are practically limitless, and twitter’s more than 3 million subscribers are a passionate, inter-connected force. One example of twitter best practice is US company Comcast who’s Comcastcares customer service twitter is demonstrating to wide audience how its solving customer concerns one tweet at time.
2. The rise (and rise) of video
With cheaper storage and bandwidth, video is rapidly replacing text as the ‘language’ of social media. Sites such as Todou, Seesmic, YouTube and 12seconds are making it easier than ever to share your thoughts and interact visually. With video clip uploading and consumption growing in every market and an estimated 349 million active Internet video users, it’s becoming clear that if you want to reach your audience, you need to have moving pictures. Text 100’s recent blogger survey concluded that 52% of Asia Pacific bloggers wanted relevant video from companies to run on their blogs. Is your spokesperson ready for the spotlight?
3. Social networks will take over the world
It’s been widely reported that social media access has surpassed searches for pornography on the Internet. People are spending more time on social networks – some estimates have it as much as two to three hours per day and Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region. But with the social network gold rush comes challenges. Will unethical practices such as astroturfing and paid for posts potentially damage the reputation of social networks as open and trustworthy environments? Time will tell, but for now you can be assured that your brand is already in a social network – whether you like it or not.
4. Blogs have become mainstream
According to Universal McCann, bloggers impact your brand reputation with 34% of bloggers worldwide posting opinions about products and brands on their blogs and 36% of netizens thinking more positively about companies that have blogs. Blogs have become an essential tool for reputation management. The key is using them to create an open and honest dialogue. Any blog that spins the truth will be found out. The blogosphere accurately reflects consumer opinion – if you’re not managing blogger relations in parallel to your media relations program, you’re missing opportunities.
5. The message is still more important than the medium
Thankfully one megatrend remains from the days of “PR 1.0”. That is that the message is still more important than the medium. Things like blogs, social networks, micro-blogging and video sharing sites are certainly where your consumer ‘lives’ and you need to participate. But participation needs to be relevant and add value to the community. You need to understand the why before the how. Before you go down the social media path, understand your business objectives, understand your audience dynamics, listen to the market, prepare yourself and your spokespeople, then participate. Evaluate. Then do it again.
- Jeremy