Challenges of the Real Time Web
The concept and impact of the real-time web on marketing is that as information systems improve, connections become faster and cheaper, and people spend more and more time connected to the Internet we will reach a stage where many more marketing campaigns will need to be planned, conducted and monitored in ‘real time’
This is not possible with conventional media – once you have booked a TV ad or a poster site you need to use it – you need to create a poster or an advert ahead of time, and it can’t be changed if circumstances change.
With social media the campaign can evolve over time. The real time web concept suggests it could evolve minute by minute if need be.
In order for marketing to move that quickly there are a number of challenges:
- Real time monitoring and analysis
- Understanding the objectives
- Responsibility and control
- Flexibility and agility
Real time monitoring and analysis
This will be essential, monitoring of social networks and web analytics will have to produce relevant results in real time. This is not that difficult, many systems can do this right now. The problem is the analysis of that data. This will have to be performed faster than ever before. At the moment most intelligent analysis has to be done by human analysts and it will be a while before computer systems can match their level of understanding and insight.
Understanding the objectives
As a marketer, if you are reacting and responding in real time to developing situation, it is essential that you understand what the company line is on any subject and it is vital you understand what the organisation is trying to achieve. This is easier if you are responsible for marketing strategy, but more difficult if you are not, or if you are working for a third party such as a marketing agency or PR company.There have already been a number of incidents where third parties have made questionable decisions in the heat of the moment and ended up working against their client’s best interests.
Responsibility and control
Similarly, whoever is carrying out real-time marketing will need to have the responsibility to make marketing decisions as there will be no time to refer them back to a higher authority. They will need to be in control of the marketing budget for the campaign and in turn, control mechanisms will need to be in place to quickly and seamlessly control them.
Flexibility and agility
Given that the real time web will require quick reactions, decisions and deployment of resources, marketers will need to be flexible and agile to survive this environment.
The move to the real time web presents a number of unique challenges for the organisation, brand and marketer – but it’s shaping up to be an exciting, dynamic and rewarding experience.
Social Media is Dead – Long Live Social CRM
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:
- take in all the data (unstructured, raw, semi-structured) from our listening and interaction
- analyse that data for what’s important and meaningful from the customer’s point of view
- feed those insights into the organisation to create better outcomes (or to enhance the successful existing outcomes)
- 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?
This post was written as a contribution to the SoCol debate part of the run-up to Social Collective 2010 – 30th September 2010
Overcoming Social Media Hamsters*
Social media is very addictive, it’s very easy to… hang on… just received a direct message… oh… ha… LOL… Now where was I? Oh yes, social media is very addictive and can dominate your working life if you’re not careful. You can also find yourself interacting with the same set of people every day. Whilst spending lots of time on social media with your friends is not necessarily a problem, if you are using social media for business then it’s definitely an issue.
Have you ever watched hamsters? Some hamsters will spend a few minutes a day on their wheel, happily getting some exercise and stopping after a while. Less happier hamsters will get on their wheel with a determined look on their furry face, a glint in their eye and with gritted incisors. And they won’t get off the wheel till they are exhausted, or the darn thing breaks.
This is like some social media users – they spend hours on Twitter or Facebook, conversing with the same few people, often about the same few things. We all know people like that – or are you someone like that, a social media hamster? Again, this is no great problem if you have plenty of free time, but if you are using social media for business, then you will need to deal with this behaviour.
Before you send for Freddie Starr, there are a few simple steps you can take. Set limits for the amount of time you spend on social media – time is money, and the more time you spend in the social media world, the more it costs you – so look at the results you are getting for the time you spend. What would be the effect of halving your time on Twitter, Facebook etc? Make sure you are getting a return on your time investment, or you are not a social media professional, but a social media fan.
And widen your contacts – don’t get trapped in the wheel. Set yourself a target to make contact with a number of new people every day. Re-tweet, like, quote, and comment. Follow new people every day. Talk to people from outside your industry, not always to your peers.
It’s fairly easy to be… oh… that’s funny… must reply to that… oh, good one! So, as I was saying it’s fairly easy to get stuck on the wheel – make sure you overcome you inner hamster.
(*I misread a tweet and found the perfect title for a blog)
Content needs paying for, but is a paywall the best solution?
Now that the The Times’ paywall has launched, it’s an interesting time to see if ‘paying for news’ will payoff for publishers.
At the moment there seems to be two camps…
In the red corner the journalists are complaining about the free nature of the Internet which is removing the value (and money) from their profession.
In the blue corner (which seems to be quite a lot bigger) are readers who say: “Why should I pay someone when I can get news for free?”
So as a consumer of news – stuck in the middle – here’s my pennyworth.
It is very clear that if humans are spending their time and using their skills to produce something then they need to be paid. A journalist cannot pop into Tesco and attempt to pay for the week’s shopping with a list of twitter followers and a few #ff mentions. There needs to be a way of converting these ephemeral things into cold hard cash which means someone (i.e. me) is going to have to pay.
Therefore it makes sense for a newspaper which is used to charging for the production of its news in the physical world, to want to start charging for news in the digital one.
There needs to be a way to monetise news content, so that publishers can continue to pay journalists, reporters and their entire empire of staff and so maintain production of this content.
If getting paid is the problem, is having a paywall the solution?
The main problem I see is that of understanding what ‘news’ is. Just as not everything on the Internet is free, not everything in a newspaper is actually news. Equally, not a great deal of the ‘news’ bits of a paper are even written by that newspaper with many articles being agency copy, or mildly rehashed copy from other places. In fact a large percentage of original copy in a paper isn’t really ‘news’ at all, it’s columnists writing opinion pieces – and this is where the paywall arguments become interesting.
Articles written in-house by experts who understand their field do provide ‘exclusive’ content but, most of the content of your average paper is available from so many other places I can’t see the point in paying for it.
If there are only two bits of The Times I actually want to read today and Mr Murdoch is going to charge £1 for the entire online content, then each article is costing me 50p. The fact there are 100′s of other bits available is irrelevant. If I don’t want them, then they are worthless.
So, has The Times got it right?
In my view, no. The problem with the paywall system is that it is trying to impose the Newspaper model of selling onto the Internet. The Times assumes that people want to buy the whole paper and read it cover to cover – just like they do with their normal daily paper. But on the Internet everyone can be more picky. If we don’t like Robert Peston’s view on the economy we can always find someone else we prefer. If we don’t like AA Gill’s reviews we can read someone else’s. The Internet gives us the freedom to be promiscuous with our reading habits and The Times’ paywall is trying to stop us.
Take for example the interview with Lady Ga Ga by Caitlin Moran which was in The Times about a month ago. My wife who is a big fan of both artist and writer, decided to actually buy the entire paper (£1.50 I think) solely on the basis of this single article. The vast majority of the paper was left unread (and indeed, still folded).
This is a huge waste of money and resources and the current paywall model seems to be trying to translate this waste onto the Internet.
So what is the solution?
I feel what we need is a system allowing us to pay on a per article basis, (probably around 10-20p) and for us to get a nice monthly bill itemising what we had read and charging us accordingly – A bit like, oh, our mobile phone bill!
Papers could then sell individual articles at 10% of the cost of the paper rather than try to sell an entire paper. Given the reduction in manufacturing and distribution costs a consumer reading 2 articles at 10p will probably generate as much profit as the buyer of a whole paper.
The best analogy I can think of would be the ‘Now that’s what I call music’ albums. Why on earth would you pay £9, £10 or even £15 for a 2 CD pack which had 4 tracks you wanted and 34 you couldn’t care less about when you can download the four tracks for 99p each from iTunes and leave the rest of the rubbish behind?
Journalists whose articles were sold in this way would be able to measure (and be measured on) how popular they are and how much they actually contribute to their paper. Maybe a meritocracy amongst journalists will be the result?
The main advantages I could see would be;
- I can read one article from The Times, one from The Guardian and maybe one or two others – for less than a single subscription to either paper.
- The papers will know which of their contributors are paying their way.
- Contributors can promote their content on blogs, twitter or facebook and actually be helping themselves and their employers to earn a living.
- If there was a referral system (like adsense or similar) then other sites and blogs would actually have incentives to link to the original content rather than attempt to steal the content and republish it – if you make linking to content profitable then why steal it?
- Just as iTunes has increased the number of tracks sold and the amount spent on music, then a pay per article system may actually increase the amount spent by consumers on news.
What about the poor ‘news’ team whose content is available anywhere and therefore ‘worthless’?
Well it does seem strange that any pay-per-read system might actually switch the priorities around. Instead of being news first and columnist padding second, this system probably reflects a switch of priorities in supply and demand. There are many ways to find out what the FTSE100 is doing but only one Jeremy Clarkson (thankfully) so the paper that ‘owns’ him has a commodity that no-one else can replicate. Any paper needs both but instead of the news team subsidising expensive columnists it’ll be the expensive columnists who’ll be expected to draw readers towards the ‘public service’ news element.
Will The Times Succeed?
Well I hope not. Not because I don’t like Mr Murdoch or because I don’t like paying for content but because I think the paywall system is bad in the long term for content payment in general and we need to find a model that best matches the way the Internet user actually uses the Internet.
Spicing up a microbrewery chain with a shot of Social Media
Spice has recently revamped the web presence of The Old Brewery and The Greenwich Union – a microbrewery and pub chain – resulting in a tenfold increase in their web traffic in the few weeks since their relaunch.
By combining the latest social media marketing tools with a modern contemporary feel to the web sites they are showcasing their award winning ales and fabulous venues to a far wider audience.
For more information about The Old Brewery follow:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/oldbrewery
Visit the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/OldBreweryGreenwich
Web site: http://www.oldbrewerygreenwich.com/
For more information about The Greenwich Union follow:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreenwichUnion
web site: http://www.greenwichunion.com/
Case Study
When The Old Brewery (and its owner Meantime Brewing) got in touch with Spice they had virtually all the elements they needed to have the perfect business – a great award-winning product range and two fabulous pub venues in the heart of historic Greenwich. What they needed was the extra marketing skills to let the whole world know about them.
As more and more beer companies are merging into faceless brewing giants, producing ever more similar and anonymous beers, the rise of the microbrewery has been a bright spot in the beer world. These small companies are passionate about their product and are determined to show the world how great real beer can be and how it can rival wines and spirits in its depth, complexity and enjoyment.
The Meantime Brewing Company is one such microbrewery and they wanted to bring their products to a wider notice than their small band of dedicated and enthusiastic customers in Greenwich. So they asked Spice for help.
Rather than simply tinkering with a website or two (as many web design agencies might do) or running an expensive, short term, PR campaign, Spice and The Old Brewery opted to use the Internet and the growing social media scene as a launch pad for an integrated, long term, marketing promotion for the business.
“All businesses need a great looking web site to capture and enthuse customers but on their own they only have a limited benefit” says Paul Smith, Marketing Director, Spice.
“Without a sustained campaign to help people find the business and convert those web viewers into customers – and customers into fans and advocates -a website is little more than an electronic brochure.”
“The advantage of working with Spice, is that we have a range of skilled experts, who can not only create a website worthy of the company’s aspirations, but who can also promote the business through social media interaction, search engine optimisation and search engine advertising”
“Without these other activities, any website is in danger of being left unnoticed by potential customers. If a website fails to capture attention, the business loses a huge opportunity for growth. It is essential that any Internet presence is integrated with the company’s marketing strategy and with other on-line communication tools, so that it can fully achieve its goals.”
The results with The Old Brewery speak for themselves. Within weeks of the re-launch of their websites there had been a tenfold increase in website traffic and The Old Brewery were developing a growing active fan base on both Twitter and Facebook.
These social media sites are ideal ways for The Old Brewery to communicate with their customers and get honest, instant feedback. The interactivity and real-time nature of social media allows businesses to truly communicate with customers, rather than simply trying to push a bland marketing message. With so many faceless brewing chains around, it makes a huge difference to customers to be able to talk to a company that really cares.
The Old Brewery are determined that this early success should form a foundation on which to further grow their business and feel that these impressive early results show the huge potential for an integrated web and social media campaign supporting their business plans.
The Power of Social Media
Social Media is a powerful communication tool. Do it right and you can measure the success straight away. Do it poorly and you could cause long-term problems – which is why it pays to involve an experienced agency to help you exploit the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls.
Using Spice has allowed The Old Brewery to focus on their expertise – brewing and great pubs – whilst Spice employ their skills in web development and social media marketing (along with drinking great beer!)
For more information on how Spice can develop your business through Social Media speak to Karl Meyer, Associate, Spice – karl@spice.co.uk