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I just came across a really interesting article from the Dailymail online from yesterday (via @abisignorelli) that (mis?) informs readers of secret new software that allows companies such  as BT to spy on disgruntled users.

The “secret software” they are talking about is a kind of buzz monitoring tool, which monitors particular keywords across Social platforms and feeds this data back to the brand paying for it. This allows brands to keep track of how they are perceived, but also provides the opportunity for them to engage in conversation with their customers.

This “secret software” is nothing new, buzz monitoring tools have been around for a while, and before this people were able to use services such as google alerts, and even the built in search functionality of many of these platforms (ie Twitter search).

The big questions is: Should people worry about this?

Well the first point to make is that surely people would like help with their problems, no? If I can’t get through to BT customer service, I rant about it on Twitter and someone from BT customer service gets back to me, then they have opened the dialogue. This lets me know that my problem is at least being heard.

Secondly, if you are scared that brands are watching your every move, maybe you need to think a little bit harder about what you share online? Open social spaces are open, and anyone can view your comments, photos, videos etc. You should bear this in mind and change your privacy settings if you want to be more private.

Thirdly and most importantly is that yes, people will use what you say online to try and sell things to you, but people have been doing this for years anyway. It is called targeting, and it is why when you watch a commercial during a football match you get advertisements for beer, shaving cream and sports equipment. Men watch and play football, men drink beer, men shave = targeted ad. If I am complaining about how hard using a pestle and mortar is on Facebook and someone from Magimix gets in touch with me to let me know about an offer they have on their blenders then this is surely a good thing? If I’m not interested I don’t look at it, the same way that I don’t look at the hundreds of adverts I get in my email inbox for Viagra and cheap medicine. When something is highly targeted to a specific concern of yours, is it really spam?

Not everyone has time to sit on hold or find the email contact form. Smart brands know that people are talking about them online and are using buzz monitoring tools to help embrace customers in the conversation. Smart consumers should welcome this opportunity to have their voices heard. The more feedback and suggestions a brand takes on board the better. This pro-active customer care is helping to shape a service that is ultimately better for the customer.

If you just want to rant and don’t want a brand to get involved in a conversation with you, then either don’t post it on social networks, or change your privacy settings.

Labour Pollster Lord Gould says in an interview with Progress last Thursday ‘Modern communication, modern politics, modern campaigning isn’t about brand, it’s about substance. You can’t change the periphery unless you change the core.’

He’s suggesting that when Labour went through its process of renewal in the 90’s it wasn’t just about PR and image, they actually challenged and made fundamental changes to the party.  He questions whether the Conservatives have done the same.

There will be many who disagree on both counts but the point is whether just using PR or marketing to SAY you’ve changed is possible anymore? With social media forcing a certain level of transparency on individuals and organisations, is it becoming more difficult  for  politicians and parties to hide behind spin and image as they present their ‘brand’ and policies to the electorate?

Social media is encouraging a shift in who controls the ‘brand’ in an organisation from the brand owners to individuals – in this case from the parties to the voters and communities.

According to recent research by Nielson 75% of people said they don’t trust advertising while 81% said they did trust recommendations via word of mouth.

So increasingly the thing that is shaping what others think about the party is not the advertising costing millions but friends, colleagues, online influencers, reviewers and bloggers sharing their opinion with potentially thousands of friends or followers.

The internet has allowed everyone to turn critic or reviewer. Social tools such as review websites, blogs, commenting and Twitter allow people to quickly share their opinion, often anonymously.

This, coupled with the fact that information can spread at unbelievable speeds on the internet, suggests that Gould could be right in his prediction in The Guardian that ‘the internet will be a giant force in the campaign’.

So what is transparency? One of the core issues when communicating in social media is trust – something that politicians in general seem to be struggling with.

Social media is growing so fast, overloading people with so much information that they want to know who they should listen to. As Rachna Jain said in her presentation on SlideShare they want to listen to people they trust.

This is where the issue of transparency becomes important. In one sense it is easy to pretend to be someone else online, to put about false information or have a hidden agenda. You can’t see / meet the person, so to an extent you have to believe they are who they say they are.

As Wayne Sutton says, transparency is ‘I’m giving you an honest non-biased opinion or truth when I write or cover a particular topic. Online this can mean that, I am who I say I am and that my reason for posting or having a discussion about a product, brand or service does not have any hidden agendas.’

To build trust people may search for them in Google, cross check information or follow what others say on Twitter or a blog making it easier to be caught out. If people discover that you were not being completely transparent  - even about something relatively minor – it can start to erode the trust.

With this change in the balance of who people trust, it is becoming more and more important for the political parties to engage with influencers online, be transparent, honest and authentic and so build the trust with the voters.

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.)

Qube recently ran a benchmarking survey into Social Media use, attitudes and budget in the travel industry.

With nearly 100 key players in the industry taking part from travel organisations large and small, Qube has gathered key insights into how this sector views and engages with the challenges and benefits of Social Media.

Social Media Benchmarking

81% of marketeers and directors in the travel industry say they use Social Media due to pressure from customers. And despite the fact almost two thirds of respondents felt Social Media was important for the future of their business, nearly 50% still use non-expert staff to deliver Social Media marketing.

Platforms

Bebo and MySpace, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the least popular social networks for marketing activity within the travel industry, while Twitter is by far the most popular tool in use for this sector.

Setting Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Whilst there are many ways to measure Social Media activity and quantify ROI, difficulty in measuring direct impact of sales was far and away the greatest reason cited for not engaging with Social Media marketing.

Interesting, a large proportion of respondents don’t actually set any Key Performance Indicators for any of their current digital marketing activity.

Round table event

Qube will be releasing and discussing the full benchmarking report at the Social Media for the travel industry round table we’re holding on the 17^th February.

This is a chance for people in the travel industry to discuss the findings of the report and talk to each other about the particular challenges travel companies face in this ever-evolving digital era.

If you work in the industry and would like to attend, you can find more details here.

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.

PSFK have released a new report on Good Brands, if you want download the full report click here.    This report has been compiled by shortlisting all brands that have been mentioned the most across their trend reports and then they have asked a panel of industry experts from the Purple List to vote on which they thought were ‘good’.  Good being based on an average score for innovation, responsibility and community.

No suprises that brands like google and twitter appear up here but brands like The Good Magazine, Ikea and Amazon are not so likely winners.  (check out the Good Magazine as a particularly interesting brand)

PSFK also have pulled out what they think the most common traits are of the winning brands and it makes interesting reading for those social media believers among you as many of these traits come part and parcel with adopting a more social approach to branding and business.

Utility – Aim to enhance your usefulness for the consumer. In doing so, look not only at your product or service, but the eco-system that surrounds it.

Experimentation – Constant innovation is the essential element of growth. Continual- ly push the boundaries of your offering and create ancillary products.

Design – Premium aesthetics coupled with consistent delivery wins every time. A premium experience can be applied to any product or service, no matter where it sits on the price spectrum. Make your audience feel valued, encouraging them to include you as part of their identity.

Community and listening – Create a sense of community for your customers. Actively engage them and listen to what they have to say. They are the best source of guidance for improved service.

Change the model – Look at your consumers’ eco-system of needs and change your business model to suit them.

Beyond the 30 second ad – Of the top 100 largest advertising spenders in 2008, none of them made it onto this list. Instead of spending money on advertising, leverage the existing community that’s involved with your brand to promote your products and services.

Environmental priorities - Brands in the lower half of the list lose points prizing innovation over environmental responsibility. Build in sustainable practices wherever you can in your brand’s eco-system.

I think its a worthwhile exercise to judge your own brand – or your clients brands – against these traits and determine where you are, and where you want to be on the ‘Good Brand’ or sociable brand scale.  Then think about how social media can help you get there