Digital Chameleon Blog

Tips for planning a social media strategy

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:29:00 GMT

I've started a monthly column for Beautydirectory.com and will share the first one with you here:

Your audience is spending an increasing amount of time on social networks. Social media is the biggest trend across all online categories and, according to Nielsen, Australians are spending an average of 7 hours a month on social networks. That’s more time than any other country! Over 70% of active online users in Australia are on social networks. Nielsen has identified a social media divide, where “Facebookers” are spending significantly more time online overall than “non-Facebookers.” In Australia, Social media is used equally by males and females, and women age 18-34 and 35-49 have the highest index of social media use.

How much time is your brand spending in social media? Probably more than you may think! The time to actively join the conversation and connect with your target in these environments is now. The opportunity is to leverage the ability to connect on a one-to-one and many-to-many basis, taking advantage of your audience’s network of networks. Not sure where to start?

The IAB in the U.S. suggests that the process includes four main steps:

1) 1) Set clear and measurable objectives and strategies

2) 2) Understand your audience motivations and behaviour, especially in social media

3) 3) Develop a creative approach for your brand in one or more social platforms

4) 4) Define your success metrics

Social Media planning is different from traditional online media planning in several ways. First, social media programs can be more flexible than campaigns with hard start and end dates, and can extend well beyond finite dates. Second, pricing models can be flexible and map to your specific campaign goals. And finally, social campaigns can have owned, bought, and/or earned components and delivery is not guaranteed, but based on user action. A recent study by Nielsen and Facebook (Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression) revealed that while earned impressions (brand mentions that are broadcast or shared by users) have the highest level of impact, they rarely provide the reach of paid advertising and therefore a strategy including a mix of both paid and earned social impressions should be considered.

Here's some homework – if you’re not personally involved in social media (are you on Facebook? Do you tweet?), get online and sign up. It’s the first step in becoming familiar with how social media works.

Accountable AND sustainable

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:34:00 GMT

We hear a lot about "the flight to accountability," and the benefits of the online medium for advertisers. Many of our clients are selling cross-platform solutions – i.e. a newspaper, magazine, TV, radio brand as an integrated solution. How often we are asked the question, “How do we compete with the performance networks?” The answer is you don’t.

If you don’t have the volume of inventory to compete in that arena, you must develop strategies for high value opportunities that move you well beyond the performance conversation. Chances are if you’re a “legacy” brand, you are in this for the long run. Scale and profitability are important. Don’t chase the small, inefficient, hard to execute campaigns which de-motivate your salespeople and negatively impact your business. You need to figure out sustainable ways to add value to your advertisers, as well as to your own people.

Do you know who you're selling?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:33:00 GMT

Do you know your audience?
If you’re selling a cross-platform brand, can you articulate the differences between your online/offline audiences? Are they different people? How many of them consume all of your products v. simply via one channel? How do they use the different channels? Do the demographics skew differently for your online v. print Entertainment sections? Have you gone beyond demographics online to understand the psychographics (or at least the interests and behaviours) of your audience?

If you can’t answer these questions, it’s time for a meeting with the research department. Only by understanding how the various pieces of your brand puzzle work will you be able to determine the most interesting, innovative and appropriate solutions for advertisers.

Wired magazine on the iPad

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:15:00 GMT

I ran across this interesting example of what Wired and Adobe are doing to recreate the Wired experience on the iPad today on Ben Coopers blog

Friction between online advertising buyers and sellers

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:32:00 GMT

Something troubling that we're seeing in our training sessions is increased annoyance on the part of online media sales reps with agencies – almost to the point of animosity. It seems to come from frustration, and not understanding how to work with agencies due to cumbersome structural issues on both sides. And I know the agency side has its issues with reps as well.

While there needs to be some amount of friction between buyers and sellers, the feelings we’re seeing go beyond the norm. The problems are felt most acutely by sellers who are bundling online into a cross-platform package and trying to get to the right people within the agencies to make any traction.

So there are a few issues: no consistency in terms of how and to whom a cross-platform proposal should be pitched (your digital guys talk to my digital guys, or you talk to your regular agency contact?). Second issue is that there is no standard in terms of agency structure (digital silo, traditional silo, or integrated?), and thirdly the publishers are still sorting their structures (do our digital guys only call on digital agencies, and you stick to your print/radio/TV buyers and try to pitch cross-platform?, etc.). This is a challenge that will continue to evolve along with the digital media industry. In the meantime, acknowledge the reality and develop strategies that work for you.

Is your staff skilled up for digital?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:32:00 GMT

DIgital is still growing and shows no sign of stopping. Media owners and agencies are sorting the integration of digital with other media platforms. While many companies "trimmed" training budgets during the GFC, equipping your staff with the knowledge they need to adapt to the ongoing changes in media and marketing (and their jobs) goes beyond typical training. We're not talking about another Time Management course that no one has the time to attend. We're talking about the strategic cultural and organisational shift that has to take place in your business in order to compete moving forward.

Equipping your staff with digital knowledge and skills is a prerequisite to making that shift. An HR director at a global agency group recently told me that ALL of their traininig budget for the next year would be spent on digital. We're well beyond the resistence phase, surely you see the writing on the wall by now?

Should we be looking beyond media for good online salespeople?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:31:00 GMT

t’s a fairly easy step forward for a media professional (whether seller or buyer) to add digital to their skillset

The chosen ones?

I recently read an article by Doug Weaver from Upstream Group in the U.S. about the buzz in the online industry when Carol Bartz (former Autodesk CEO) was appointed CEO of Yahoo!. Seems the industry saw Ms Bartz as “…a software company veteran, not used to the fast pace of the Web 2.0 world.” “She doesn’t know our space.” To that I’d say that many digital media salespeople would be less frustrated if they had a more of the sales skills needed by those selling enterprise software into large organisations. The biggest challenge faced by online salespeople is often navigating through the complicated maze of agency and client structures to find the people who understand what they’re selling, and/or hold the budgets (unfortunately, they’re not always the same people!).

Doug’s point was that the interactive industry tends to be insular and “self-referential,” believing they have some sort of divine gift of unique knowledge and skills unavailable to anyone outside the industry. How dare Yahoo! give the role of CEO to someone from the stodgy old software industry – or heaven forbid from packaged goods or the manufacturing industry! The naysayers tend to overlook the required leadership skills that quite frankly many “interactive media–only” folks just don’t have.

This concept makes its way down into the sales ranks of online sites. Everyone’s looking for “2-4 years of online experience,” which then grows into 6-8 years of experience - ten jobs later! Let’s start looking at people with sales skills in other industries, within other media, or a fresh new face right out of University.

I think we’re in a better position in Australia than the U.S. is on this point. Have you noticed that most of the major sites in Australia now have ex-outdoor execs in top sales/commercial roles? Unlike in the U.S., where the online industry began with “pure plays” like Yahoo! and MSN, Australia’s major sites were offshoots of established media companies reaching across platforms. It’s a fairly easy step forward for a media professional (whether seller or buyer) to add digital to their skillset – and to conversely add a fresh perspective to the online world, based on their non-digital media experience.

We surf the internet. We swim in magazines

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:30:00 GMT

I saw the new "Magazines - the Power of Print" campaign in the June issue of Vanity Fair and ripped it out because I actually read it all, and thought it was good! It's a creative and well written campaign. Bravo to the industry for finally stopping their hand-wringing, taking off their white gloves, and aggressively telling us why they'll survive the internet.

I admit that I did snicker at the suddenly-converted magazine execs in the video I posted on this blog last week - all at their polished mahogany desks with their rarefied views of Manhattan. Any way, here's the first paragraph from the print ad I ripped out:

We surf the Internet.
We swim in magazines.

The Internet is exhilarating. Magazines are enveloping. The Internet grabs you. Magazines embrace you. The Internet is impulsive. Magazines are immersive. And both media are growing.

See the press release for the campaign here.

What should an interactive magazine be?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:29:00 GMT

"Interactive magazines are designed to compete for the attention of online readers, not print readers."

With all of the focus on iPad and eReaders lately, I was interested in a study on "interactive digital magazines" that recently came out in the U.S. While most "digital magazines" are simply replicas of print magazines, "...interactive digital magazines are an entirely different species," according to Josh Gordon, author of "The Case for Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines." Really?

OK, let's beat this tired horse one more time in light of the plethora of eReaders hitting the market. Maybe magazines have one more chance to make this model work.

The platforms for "digital interactive magazines" include internet, mobile, private networks and "other personal screens." The study looked at eight magazine publishers who are successfully selling advertising in these interactive editions, and is the first study to compare reader use of interactive digital magazines to other online media.

In addition to competing for the attention of online readers, the other main features that separate interactive digital mags from "digital replicas of print magazines" are that they're designed for easy interaction between readers and the magazine, beyond one-way content delivery; and they contain ads that readers can interact with.

I looked at some of the examples included in the study and felt like I was in that TV series where the 2010 guy wakes up in 1976 and has to pretend he doesn't know any more than they do about how things turn out. "Every article in Grand magazine is embedded with social media sharing tools for Facebook, Twitter, Digg and more." Another lets readers "post on the publications daily blog." Is that new?

Aren't the features which separate interactive digital mags from print versions the same features that separate web versions from the print magazine? Haven't we been telling magazine publishers for years that the "digital interactive" versions need to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the interactive medium? Why are we still so stuck in the old familiar models? Do we really need to "flip through" a digital magazine by pretending to turn its pages with our mouse?!

I applaud Josh Gordon for conducting this study on magazines that are successfully selling advertising in this space, but I always go back to thinking that we're far from cracking what a "digital" magazine, newspaper, or advertising should look like. But it's still early days. What were the first TV commercials but an announcer standing in front of a camera reading a radio ad? As fast as technology is changing, I'm afraid that's where we still are - but it will be an exciting space to watch.

Magazines get aggressive

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:28:00 GMT

What is media any more?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:28:00 GMT

Are we so uncertain about what media is now because we can't figure out how to sell effective advertising on all of it anymore?

There has also been a lot of buzz about comments Joe Talcott (Chair of the Australian Association of National Advertisers, and head of marketing at News Limited) made at a forum held by the AANA (as reported in The Australian), comparing banner ads to beer coasters.

"The internet is not a medium," Mr Talcott said. "It's a place where people do stuff." "There ís media on the internet, no question," he said. "No one sits down to 'watch the internet.'"

"Social networks should not be compared with TV and radio; they should be compared with socialising," he said. "To some degree, banner ads are like pub coasters - they're ads that appear when you're socialising and I reckon they get about the same amount of attention."

Talcott said online activities such as banking, online shopping, research for online shopping, even time spent on Facebook should be excluded in research tracking time spent online. This sparked a heated debate on Ben Shepherd's Talking Digital blog.

We hear so much from social media gurus in T-shirts, that it's kind of refreshing to hear from a grown up marketer once in a while. But isn't media simply content that people can read, watch, search and comment on? Are we so uncertain about what media is now because we can't figure out how to sell effective advertising on all of it anymore? Many media owners are like deer in the headlights of ad networks selling commoditised inventory, social media sites, and Google. "Given so much traffic to almost all sites comes from Google, you have to think that many sites are serving a role as a brandless information fulfillment channel rather than a trusted media brand that is turned to by a loyal audience." (Ben Shepherd, Talking Digital).

I see too many media brands that get caught up in fear and uncertainty about the exponential increase in competition around them, and don't spend enough time aggressively hammering home the benefits of their brand in the market. What makes your brand/site/offerings special? Who is your unique audience and how do they use your site? How do you measure your audience? Show me case studies of successful campaigns.

We've been telling the story of the changing media landscape, due to digital technology, a lot lately. Debates like the above highlight the confusion about what media is becoming - even among digital industry thinkers. So, if "digital" is relatively new to you, don't be put off by this - none of us really understand where media will end up - but we can all be part of its evolution.

The Australian launches digital edition for iPad

Fri, 28 May 2010 02:16:00 GMT

The Australian is the first newspaper in the country to launch a digital edition for the iPad. The long awaited device launched today in Australia - the first country outside the US to launch the product. One million iPads were sold in the US in the first month it was available.

The digital edition has pages that "turn," as they do in the physical newspaper. I'm still to be convinced that this is the best model for extending media brands onto such readers, but the evolution of such products will be very interesting.

The cost for this edition will be $4.99 per month, and apparently advertising has sold out to Commonwealth Bank, Optus, IBM and Emirates.

Read the full story from The Australian here.

Social media can work for any size business

Wed, 05 May 2010 01:55:00 GMT

Listen to an interview with Erik Qualman, the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business.

"The power of social media is that transcends business, regardless of if you're big or small."

Like any other marketing tool, it all depends on who your target audience is and what media they're consuming.

In this interview Erik covers:

Why businesses have no choice but to use social media
What areas of social media to focus on if you have few resources
He also tells us his four key steps to effective social media
How to differentiate yourself if your customers buy purely on price
Your customers are telling you what you need to know
How social media strengthens personal relationships

World-of-mouth

Mon, 03 May 2010 02:52:00 GMT

A recent Citibank survey over U.S. companies with fewer than 100 employees found that these businesses are not effectively leveraging online tools to drive their business. One of the most surprising findings was that while 63% of those surveyed say word-of-mouth is the most effective way to market their business and find new customers, 81% are not using social media because they don't view it as a form of word-of-mouth.

Actually, they should be thinking of social media as "world-of-mouth," in that it can significantly increase exposure for a brand across the social networks of their customers/fans/followers, and potentially the networks of their friends. This study shows that many businesses are not adding new tools to their traditional marketing mix because they're not sure how to use them, or because of inexperience with technology. The good news is that 30% of those surveyed intend to use social networking sites in the next 12 months.

To the 70% who still won't be using social media - don't let lack of knowledge, or fear, stand in the way of leveraging a potentially powerful marketing tool. Educate yourself, or enlist someone who understands the space to help you. It will pay dividends.

NYT says a quarter of ad revenues coming from digital

Thu, 06 May 2010 08:15:00 GMT

The New York Times Company has reported a Q1 profit, with solid growth in digital advertising revenues (up 18 percent), offsetting an expected but rather significant decrease in print advertising across the board as revenue dropped 12 percent. Digital made up just over a quarter of total ad revenues. The NYT will soon be charging for some of its content. Read more here from TechCrunch