Many who work in the Social Media industry (myself probably included) are quick to jump on a company when they get something wrong. The same people are just as quick to praise an amazingly creative campaign that generates a huge amount of buzz and is pretty to look at and cool to talk about. Very few however are as keen on praising the people that get the simple things right, consistently without a song and dance.

Crooked Tongues are a niche online  retailer who specialise in selling trainers (a subject very close to my heart). While they may not throw a huge amount of budget behind Social Media and have no “killer campaigns” so to speak, what they do do, they get right.

Firstly, it is important to note that they are no strangers to the concept of community, they have been running an active forum and blog for trainer geeks since around 2005. With a few years experience, it is no wonder that their Social Media offerings really hit the spot.

Their Facebook page has 4,000 members which may not sound like many, but it is important to remember that it isn’t a numbers game. 4,000 customers who buy regularly throughout the year is better than 20,000 customers making one off purchases. They understand this, and make sure that they offer the community value, in order to keep them returning.

Unlike too many Facebook pages, Crooked Tongues seem consistently present in theirs. Posting links to the shoes they are selling, but also offering advice and adding value. You can see here they community manager offering a discount shipping code that wins back a potential customer:

As well as offering updates on products they sell, they also give the community news about upcoming releases, links to other useful content and comment on customer feedback to keep their community in the know.

On top of the Facebook page, there is a Twitter account with around 2,000 followers. The Twitter follows a similar pattern to the Facebook account, and while they may not be following everyone who is following them, they do get involved in conversations with those who they are following and respond to those who ask them questions.

Social Media is often hard for retailers to get right, especially for the little guys who might not have the budget or resource to put behind it, but this shows how a small online business can really hit the nail on the head. Sure they are after a sale, but as well as the voucher codes and promotions, there is something of genuine value beyond that – and that creates an engaged community of loyal fans.

The reason that mainstream music is losing money is that the labels became complacent, un-reactive and uncompetitive and this never works in the consumer’s best interest. Illegal downloads are not killing the music industry, they are shaking it up, and this is only a good thing.

The music industry has maintained a fairly static business model for the last 50 years, and it is only within the last 10 that it has been required to change. Record labels, if they want to keep up with the file sharers and pirates, need to come up with a strategy.

This does not mean cutting off the internet connections of file sharers (Digital Economy Bill) or taking file sharing websites to court (Pirate Bay.) It means upping your game and an A-Grade example of this happening in action is Stones Throw records.

Stones Throw is an indie hip hop record label that is, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant and forward thinking in the world.

Stones Throw have an incredibly active message board community of around 4,000 fans, with an average post count of 60 posts per user.

They have a facebook page with 21,000 fans, and each receives around 100 likes and 15 comments (around 1/5^th the activity that adidas originals receives from 2.5m fans.)

Their twitter account has 23,00 followers and a Tweetlevel rating of 63 (compared to Universal_Music with a measly 52)

Search for any Stones Throw album torrent or rapidshare file and you will struggle greatly to find high quality versions. This is because they scour message boards, blogs and music communities and get the links removed.

How is this different to what the major labels are trying to do? Well the main difference is that they give something back. Stones Throw have created an incredibly strong presence across Social media and they use this to distribute content to their fans.

You can’t download an album for free but they will often give out free tracks as teasers of upcoming albums, or post the album on youtube so you can stream it there or from their website often before it is released. They also produce a regular podcast and offer exclusive mixtapes to their audience.

The audience reaction? They love the label. Stones Throw explain their actions, and the audience are happy because they have a level of transparency that all the big record labels lack. They are engaged with the brand and happy to pay for the music they love.

This is how I see the future of the music industry, and I think that major labels can learn a lot from Stones Throw’s strategy. Of course it is going to be tricky to scale this method, but if successful, the ones who benefit are the consumers and that in the end will help you sell more music (3 of the last 5 CDs I bought were on Stones Throw.)

So, the power of social networks and online purchasing has been demonstrated again, this time by the battle for the Christmas number 1.

Joe from X Factor - Raging

Poor old Joe ‘teeth’ McElderry… as every X Factor finalist is guaranteed a Christmas number 1, he must be more than a little gutted (although all of the previous winners must feel a little dispensible at Yuletide as at least 3 other finalists also record their No:1 song on the off-chance they’ll win).

Bad pun alert

The Facebook and Twitter campaign to secure Rage Against The Machine was… (wait for it) … a raging success. Sorry. No, really, I’m sorry.

Anyway, for the past week, I’ve seen mountains of Facebook updates, YouTube comments, tweets, retweets, @replies etc, all cajouling and egging each other on to download the Rage song and stop the EVIL that is X Factor. And it worked (although I didn’t buy either song, for the record).

Did people really care?

Now, I agree that X Factor has taken the fun out of the Christmas No:1 slot. I agree that mostly what Cowell gets the winner’s to trot out are crimes against nature – I mean, a Hannah Montana song. Seriously?

But I don’t think a lot of people jumped on the Rage bandwagon because they actually care that much about this. If they did, would they not have preferred getting a current, underrated band or artist to the top, one signed to an independant label and not to Sony?

People like being part of something

I think people jumped on the bandwagon because they like being part of something. A movement. They like being part of a community.

They like feeling that by joining together they can make something happen. Online communities give them power, peers and a voice. Whether they are actually bothered about what that voice is saying is another matter.

To me, that’s the power of social media. It can join people together because they like being connected – and that’s more important than whether they care that much about what they’re connecting about.

A good news blog post…

After a successful 18 months using social media to develop a community and change driving behaviour in West Sussex, the initiative has now been widened to cover the whole of Sussex.

Needless to say, we’re chuffed our social marketing baby is growing up and spreading its wings.

A big thank you to everyone involved, especially the team at West Sussex for being a great client. I also want to say a big thank you to our in-house team of social media analysts and outreach specialists.

Now stop reading this and get on with some work.

Qube’s very first client project – over 6 years ago – was a ground-breaking social media campaign for Connexions Sussex to help engage young people online and encourage their participation. We have continued to work with young people online ever since with other clients including West Sussex County Council, East Sussex County Council, Sony BMG, Electronic Arts and Greenwich University.

This experience has helped us hone down why social media should be at the heart of any council’s strategy for engaging with young people.

1. Efficiency: Connect with young people in the most cost effective way
Social media allows you to create and engage with communities of young people online – something which is easier, much cheaper and possible on a much greater scale than in real life. It removes the difficulty of creating real-life communities across wide geographic areas, of hiring infrastructure or equipment. Using social media to communicate means huge savings in design, printing and media costs. It means faster reaction to young people’s needs and enquiries.

2. Reach: Engage with young people where they actually are
Today’s young people – often known as Digital Natives – have grown up using the internet and social media to connect with each other. The numbers of young people using social media are vast and increasing. It is completely natural to them and increasingly their media of choice, while TV and printed media are all in decline. Trust in advertising is also declining – they see it as a broadcast, one way activity with no opportunity for response or interaction. They increasingly build their opinions and make their choices based on their friends’ and others people’s views online – even when they are strangers.

3. Improvement: Converse with young people and create better services
Having a two way conversation with young people enables the Council to listen to the views of young people on a regular basis and understand how they feel about the services they are offered. It allows their participation in the creation of better services and ensure money isn’t wasted on services which they don’t like or want.

4. Reputation: Proactively manage the council’s reputation where young people are talking about related issues
Social networking sites, Facebook, forums, blogs, Twitter are all places where young people talk about issues that matter to them. These often will include issues such as jobs, education, what’s happening in the local area. Where these conversations become negative about the Council it can effect the Council’s reputation, particularly if left without response. There is the opportunity with social media to ensure that not only do you know about these opinions but that you can change them into positive actions.

Controversial, perhaps, and we’re not suggesting banner and display advertising doesn’t have merits.

But - and it’s a big but – people are still reluctant to put money into social media outreach because they feel the case for it hasn’t been proved.

We’re lucky enough to have run a social media campaign directly benchmarked against a banner ad campaign to get real results.

What we found out was fascinating…. check it out:

http://www.qubemedia.net/banner-ads-social-media.php

Agree, disagree, interested, not interested… let us know what you think.

‘Billions could be saved’ in public services revamp, according to an article in The Guardian this week.

David Brindle looks at how billions of pounds could be saved if public services were rethought on the basis of themes rather than organisations according to the Total Place programme which is being piloted  in 13 areas of England.

Sir Michael Bichard, Director of the Institute for Government, who is overseeing the scheme, said “One of the problems is the way central government organises itself, in silos, makes it difficult to construct other ways of organising on the ground. We have policy silos, funding silos and inspection and regulation silos. We have to get beyond that.”

This got me thinking about how we can get beyond silos in public services.

Could it be that social media is the way, not only to break down silos within a public service organisation, but to break down silos between organisations.

Could social media transform how public services are delivered and improve quality and save a fortune into the bargain.

How can social media help?

People often mistake social media such as Facebook or Twitter as a marketing channel or dismiss it as fluffy or just for kids, but to do this means missing out on the amazing opportunities that social media offers.

Social media is not a marketing channel – it is a new approach to running organisations or doing business. Social technology is transforming how organisations communicate internally and engage with the public and how they develop and manage services.

Our experience with clients has shown that staff used to connecting at home with friends with sites such as Facebook are now demanding similar ways of connecting with colleagues at work.

They don’t want to be limited by telephones, voicemail, emails or intranets. These are all expensive and slow ways of communicating in today’s office. Email inboxes are clogged up with spam, people routinely don’t answer their phones or even check their voicemails. Intranets are often static, management driven, document libraries with no communication opportunities attached.

Engaging the public

Then in terms of engaging externally, social technology gives staff at every level of an organisation the potential to communicate directly with the public. No longer does it make sense for central communications departments to funnel all communication through them for approval.

But, more importantly, the public don’t want to hear the sanitised versions of communication that often come from central departments – they increasingly don’t trust them.

The reason is that they often don’t match with their understanding of the organisation. Their opinions are not limited to what they are told by the PR department – they take on board what others tell them. In the past this might have been just their friends or family. Now social media gives them access to a vast range of opinion well beyond their close circle – and people are beginning to trust what they hear, even from strangers.

They expect the information from organisations to fit in this context. They want to hear from people who are ‘on the ground’ in organisations. They want to talk to them, ask them questions, hear their opinions.

Brands of the future

This is what makes up ‘brands’ these days. It is no longer the glossy advertisement which creates a brand – it is a culmination of the services/product delivered, the advertising, people’s opinions, views from staff and more.

Marketing Guru, Seth Godin said: “We are all marketers now.” He’s right. What he meant was, instead of all marketing and communications being created and channelled through one dept, we are all – across the organisation – now able and have a responsibility to communicate directly with our customers/citizens.

People of all levels and in all departments can and should be communicating with the public. How they do their jobs within the organisation will be better for listening, understanding and talking to customers.

Breaking down silos

All of this means that social media can and is breaking down silos. Traditionally different functions are converging within organisations.

In a new social media world, PR is marketing is customer service is marketing is market research is marketing is public engagement is advertising is… you get the picture.

Marketing and PR departments need to change their function into Community departments with a remit to grow and cultivate a community of like-minded people who want to interact with their organisation. This department will support and coordinate the communication by staff in every department with the public.

Social media thinking should be at the heart of all new public service reorganisation because social media puts the citizens and the front line staff at the heart of future public services.

The basic principal of social media marketing is to engage people.If charities engage more people, more money will be donated.

But fund raising is only part of the picture for charties – they also have a cause (eg stopping cruelty to children, protecting animals, supporting victims of disease, providing supplies for those in need.)

So whilst raising funds is fundamental, there are other considerations like:

• service delivery
• membership engagement
• providing space for peer to peer support
• recruiting volunteers
• raising awareness
• behaviour change
• lobbying governments and so on.

This is where social media excels over other types of marketing. Used properly, it can reach millions of people and more importantly, engage them.

The great thing about charities and not for profits is that they have what it takes to engage people by their very nature and people want to be involved with them.

A recent Social Media for Social Causes study published on Mashable indicates that major donors aged 30+ want to be involved with their charities conversation about the following:

• organizational impact
• success stories
• learning more about the organizations they are participating with
• want information on causes they care about
• want information on financial accountability

The study also showed that donors want to interact with organization experts and with other donors.

This post is co-authored by Qui Diaz, Beth Kanter and Geoff Livingston, authors of the Community Philanthropy 2.0 survey and they state that:

“ What we found was a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits to participate as trusted providers of credible information and ultimately cultivate the next generation of major donors through the social web”

Pretty powerful stuff and quite compelling?

OK so there’s the theory and the research but what about non profits actually using social media successfully? Here are some examples I found from around the web, but please feel free to add to the list and spread the word.

Let’s start big with the seemingly over used example of Barak Obama’s presidency campaign using social media to gain votes and raise funds (I say seemingly ‘cause it was so successful I don’t understand why the whole world hasn’t jumped right on the band wagon) Check it out:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/12/04/felesky-rahaf.html

Charity : Water has successfully raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors. This case study outlined by Mayank Dhingra explains how they use social media for relationship building, maintaining transparency, experimenting with new things and stakeholder involvement. Great stuff

http://mayank.name/2009/07/26/social-media-case-study-charity-water/

And here Qui Diaz lists a myriad of ideas and ways to donate time and money to charities. Really good for ideas and getting a feel for how the not for profit sector can benefit from using social media.

http://mashable.com/2008/12/17/digital-charities/

Back in the days of paper and ink, publishers would make books, documents, reports, newspapers etc and the people who wanted to consume them would purchase them for a price that covered the retailers’ and publisher’s overheads.

These days however, readers are used to consuming information, news and opinion online for free. The main problem with this is that the publishers don’t make much  money from giving things away for free.

It is very hard to suddenly start charging for something that people have become used to receiving for free, it will only serve to create a black market (piracy) or push your customers to alternative, innovative (and free) sources (you can ask the music industry about this one). There are however ways that you can charge people for content online, here are three interesting methods publishers are using to charge for their content online:

E-Consultancy – You can get a great selection of content about the digital world from the E-Consultancy website, and a lot of it is available for free. They offer samples of reports so you know exactly what you are getting, and you can purchase individual reports for £150. You can also subscribe for £195 and get access to all reports. This approach shows people the value of what they can get from membership before placing the barrier there.

Financial Times – The FT offer a staggered subscription package. You can access 2 articles a month as a guest and 10 if you sign up. Standard subscriptions get you access to all the articles and archives, while premium will get you everything plus a digital copy to put on your mobile reader. This approach offers a level for everyone. You won’t be stopped from looking at the odd article, but to read it daily you must pay for the privilege.

Economist – The Economist allow you to view most of the articles from their latest edition for free. If you want access to the whole site however, including archives, audio stories and the search feature you must pay for the subscription. You can read it weekly for free, but if you want to do any research, you need to pay up.

These examples raise two interesting points. The first is that you can no longer charge for everything. If you want to get people to become card-carrying, fee-paying members of your community, you have to offer them something genuinely of value – for nothing.

The second is that there is no perfect model yet. The days of simply paying for a newspaper or magazine and getting a hard copy are gone. There are hundreds of different monetisation models, and the publishing industry needs to work out which ones work best for different types of media and audiences. It is however very refreshing to know that publishers are not simply sticking their heads into the sand in the way some other industries have approached digital media.

I had an interesting debate with Jo from The Argus (@brightonargusjo) and various others on Twitter earlier today regarding councils and how they spend their money. Specifically, with regard to Brighton and Hove Council looking for a Social Media Officer (you can see their job ad here, if you’re interested).

When we saw the job ad go up for this role yesterday, our first thoughts here in the Qube office were:

• Good on them – it’s about time and really forward thinking

and

• They’ll be lucky (to get one person, on that salary, who can deliver the complexities of a social media strategy for the council, build and manage online communities, engage with the public and deal with the politics and everything else this role will entail)

So it was really interesting for us to see @brightonargusjo’s reaction to the job on her twitter feed:

“Hiring someone to do it’s like hiring someone to send emails. It’s just another way of talking to people.”

“A lot of people will object to their tax being spent in this way.”

Now, I don’t want to go over the whole debate we had (quite difficult over Twitter with a 140 character limit, as it turns out), but there were a couple of points made about social media that I think are really important to address – especially in the context of the public sector.

1/ “it’s just another tool to talk to people”

Jo and a few others felt that the public sector shouldn’t have social media officers any more than they should have a dedicated email or phone officer. I couldn’t disagree more.

Councils, more than anyone else, have a duty to engage with people. What better way to research, understand what people want and encourage two way debate than by utilising the social web?

I’ve lost count of the number of people in organisations who say to me “oh, we’ve got a Facebook Group / Twitter account… but it doesn’t work for us.” (that’s why we developed our social media audit service).

Social media isn’t just another tool – to think it’s just about ‘sitting on’ Facebook and Twitter is to completely miss out how effective integration of a social media strategy into your marketing, research and customer service can be.

Developing and cultivating a community online is hard work and requires dedicated resource.

2/ “But why hire someone separate, rather than getting existing team to use?”

Because in the same way that you need a marketing director or manager, you need someone who is strategically thinking about how social media should be most effectively used to engage with the public (or your customers if you’re private sector).

Yes, everyone in your team should be involved. But someone needs to lead them.

This rationale is the same as people who don’t think you need professional copywriters. Everyone can write, can’t they? Why would you need to pay someone to do it? (This is a mistake organisations only tend to make once.)

Finally, Jo from the Argus tweeted earlier: “the council tweeter job debate was really interesting -thanks to all for a good head workout.” … I couldn’t agree more.

Interested to know anyone’s thoughts in 140 characters or more