Does your corporate site comply with Twitter guidelines?
November 1, 2010
You have brand guidelines, don’t you? Or, more specifically, guidelines for how your corporate identity can be used?
Many companies do, and post these on their corporate sites.
Here’s a straightforward way of doing it: Yara provide their logo in EPS and PNG formats, explain the meaning of the logo, give us the colour reference, and provide guidelines about the whitespace to be left around the logo.
So you know about asking people to comply with your guidelines, but here’s something to think about: Twitter have published their new guidelines for using the Twitter trademark over the weekend, and these will require some adjustment for most websites. (Hat tip to Social Media Today).
You don’t think of Twitter as corporate yet? Maybe not, but nevertheless, they have a brand identity to protect.
They suggest that you use the phrase ‘Follow me [us] on Twitter’ either with or without a Twitter logo, but that you do not manipulate the logos, use an outdated version of the logo, or create your own button or mark using their logo. And most certainly you shouldn’t incorporate the Twitter logo with your own in any way.
The word Twitter should be spelled out and capitalised; and the word Tweets is to be used to refer to the messages or updates.
This is no more than any company should be doing. Making it clear what is or isn’t acceptable use of the corporate identity – and making those guidelines easily available – is vital, and should be included on any corporate website.
Because of the nature of the Twitter tool, they’ve gone a step further, and say that you should not display a screenshot of any person’s Tweets without their permission. Again, this isn’t a surprising guideline, but it does mean that many sites may need to review their content to see whether they comply with this one.
I’ve revised our sidebar to be sure that we comply with their guidelines, and will be reviewing our web content. Do all elements of your web estate conform, including not only the corporate website but also your other social media outposts, such as your Facebook page?
Transmedia Storytelling, SEO and the Corporate Site
October 20, 2010
For many, the main take-away from the Social Media in a Corporate Context conference in Manchester this week will have been the importance of setting proper, targeted, objectives if you’re planning to venture into social media.
That was certainly emphasised by many of the speakers who were sharing their experiences. As an example, at the follow-on workshop, Cision asked ‘how many sales from a page with 7 likes?… with 203 likes?… with 2037 likes?’
The answer, of course, was zero in all three cases, because Facebook likes don’t easily translate into sales. You do need to be using the right measures, and aiming for suitable targets – which won’t be the same for all companies.
There was a lot of great material shared at this conference; if you weren’t there, make a note to check out the next one. This was my third, and I still came away full of ideas triggered by people sharing their perspectives and experience.
For me, though, there were three slightly different angles of interest in this conference.
SEO and social media
The first is the increasing significance of SEO in using social media for corporates. Now this is probably a conference subject all of its own (and if it isn’t it should be) but I got the clear impression that more people were carefully crafting their uses of social media for search engine optimisation than they used to. And not as an add-on, either, but as an integral part of their communications strategy.
As an example, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance explained that most of their traffic came in from searches using their brand name, indicating that these visitors were already at the bottom end of the Awareness / Interest / Desire / Action sales funnel: aware of them and ready to buy. Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance decided that they wanted to increase the number of people at the Awareness stage, and developed a tactical plan to derive social media content suites from each press release (e.g. 50 tweets, 5 Facebook updates…). Great idea.
And I loved Cision’s suggestion of a ‘keyword bible’, to be used for all communications (yes, including press releases) and to stand alongside the style guide, tone of voice guide and social media policies.
Transmedia storytelling and corporate messages
The second is the importance of transmedia storytelling to convey corporate messages: using all channels available to convey elements of the corporate story, using each medium as appropriate, and telling a consistent but not repetitive story, revealing corporate culture by showing rather than telling, and using each medium to reinforce the story and move it on.
A good example here was Reckitt Benckiser who shared their Powerbrands Facebook game story with us: they use the game to raise awareness of the company among their target audience of students and people in their early careers, while conveying the corporate culture of high performance and innovation through the game. Astonishingly, they have 161,000 monthly users, of whom 60% are in their target audience (and 20% will be in the target group when they’re a bit older). The fact that the game reinforces the corporate culture while their audience is in ‘play mode’ (rather than ‘career research mode’), is a brilliant move.
Journalists and corporate communications
The third is the the changing relationship between journalists and the corporate communicators. Some of the key points made in various different sessions over the last two days included:
- designing the corporate site’s media section for journalists, considering:
- availability of multimedia
- simplicity and speed
- breadth of content
- range of stories
- being aware that journalists might:
- have to create two versions of a story, one for online, and one for print – and that often online comes first, and needs different elements
- source stories from social media (your social media stream and that of others), including taking quotes from social media
- be posting stories during your press conference, so providing them with content (links, images) in advance is helpful
And there were more… We all know that the business of journalism and publishing is changing; it was very interesting to hear from journalists in the field about how the changes were affecting their work day to day.
Expect us to come back to these three topics again, because there’s a lot to unpack in those three alone…
The Social Media Newsroom: X-Factor Style
April 29, 2010
Communicate Magazine’s Social Media in a Corporate Context conference yesterday ran a session examining social media newsrooms in the style of The X-Factor. Yes, really!
If we’d been assessing each of the sessions of the day to see whether they should go through to the next stage, this one would have got my vote.
Naturally, nobody was publicly humiliated and bleeped off stage, but the format of the session was entertaining, and enabled us to see 3 corporate social media newsrooms in some detail, with highlights presented by their ‘owner’, with commentary on each from the panel of 3 experts, and then questions from the floor.
This meant that we could hear from the inside about the issues involved in getting the newsrooms established, which included:
- meeting the requirements of the Legal and Compliance teams
- dealing with the difficulties of using legacy IT systems
- and the organisational difficulties in dealing with large companies with a lot of historical momentum going in the traditional direction.
These issues, which were mentioned several times, received a lot of nods and smiles from the audience, who clearly recognised the situations the speakers had found themselves in.
We heard about the intentions of the companies in moving towards a social media newsroom, and some of the benefits they found:
- projecting good news, and news to interest consumers, not just professional journalists
- supporting a brand refresh, with new brand values including ‘openness’ requiring that this be demonstrated on the corporate site
- significant increase in the number of visits per week – from 5 per week to over 2,000
- decrease in time-to-publish, so they were able to respond faster, which was of particular benefit in managing crises
- the ability to provide embeddable, sharable content for visitors to reuse, reaching their target influencers and spreading the brand message.
I was particularly impressed by the astonishing increase in the number of visits to the newsroom achieved by going social. This, together with the statistics presented by Simon Henderson from Centrica in a later session – that visitors to their CSR blogs visited 11 more pages than the average visitor, spent 8 minutes longer on site and were 10% more likely to return – makes a good argument for moving in this direction.
The experts appeared to be enthusiastic about all the sites, picking up on different good features of each. There did seem to be a slight divergence among the three on whether or not it was a good thing to merge news intended for consumers, news intended for the professional journalist, and content intended for reuse or sharing, with a suggestion that it could be of benefit to have a dedicated area for the professional in case of crisis. Two of the responses that I noted to these questions were:
- the ‘contestant’ (in this case Merran Wriggley from Sony Ericsson) responded that they didn’t mind who was visiting (that is, whether it was a traditional journalist or a blogger) but were much more interested in where their material was used
- one of the judges (Stuart Bruce from Wolfstar Consultancy) later pointed out that one option could be a popup mini-site triggered in case of need, and available from the social media newsroom, to provide a dedicated area for crisis communications.
For me, this was the standout session of the conference, and it’s well worth looking at all three of the newsrooms examined. I’ve included images (just click the image to see a bigger version), but they don’t really do them justice. Why not have a look at the newsrooms (links under each image above), and then let us know which you’d vote for – and why?
The Social Media Master: How Your Company Can Excel at Networking
December 9, 2009
I am a big fan of Facebook and Twitter and count them as the number one effective ways that I market and network with peers in my field. The networks have proven undoubtedly that they are quite successful in connecting with and finding resources for whatever your company’s field of expertise may be.
Although the concept is viral, there are still many companies, large and small, who do not take advantage of the multiple benefits of utilizing a social networking campaign within their media campaigns. There are numerous articles and blogs online that cite the wonderful advantages of using social networking, but until a company actually implements some of these tools and tips, they are simply “ideas” that are waiting to be found.
If your company has the resources, consider delegating the campaign solely to an individual or set of individuals who can concentrate 100% on building a social networking presence online.
They could be responsible for posting blog entries, interacting with others in the industry, answering questions that readers may have or simply researching and finding industry-related news that you can use in your marketing strategy.
Sometimes, it is just as effective to make 1-2 blog posts per week and Tweeting them as opposed to nothing at all. However, building up a viable presence on the social sites will require more than a Twitter post.
I personally have found that companies who interact from a genuine standpoint are usually more successful than those who are not. By that I mean companies who take the time to explain a concept, answer questions directly, respond to comments expeditiously and participate in discussions are more likely to get the attention of their readers than those companies who may make a few random comments on occasion. Readers and social networkers who frequent online networks can quickly tell the difference in the two. Help your company stand out by taking the time to invest in building up a solid networking campaign that readers will come to know and trust.
Once you’ve invested the tools, resources and time in building a social networking presence, be sure to keep it stoked by staying abreast on news and developments that relate to your industry. It’s important for readers to see that your interests and commitment align with theirs and they will eventually come to trust you as a viable source of solid information and knowledge. Your mastery in the social media world is not one that has to be elusive or overwhelming. It’s all a matter of placing yourself in key positions and on important sites to get you and your business noticed. While I cited Facebook and Twitter as two of my favorites, what are your favorites? Do you find that any particular social networking site is more receptive of your business or service than any other?
Traackr: Spotting the King-Whisperers
November 6, 2009
Noon here means nearly breakfast time over in the States…
How heroic, then, of Derek Skaletsky to spend an hour taking us through the Traackr system – before breakfast.
And what an interesting hour it was for us. Traackr – in case you haven’t had the opportunity of a demo yet – launched their Authority List product at DemoFall09.
We all know that people are talking about you and your products online, or at least about your market and their issues with your competitors – or even just complaining about the problem that your product or service is intended to resolve.
Listening to what they’re saying is highly recommended. You can find out what they like/don’t like about you or your products, and about those of your competitors. You can maybe even uncover what the real problem is that they’re trying to solve – and how you can improve your product to meet that need. It’s like having a full-time focus group.
But who are your target audience listening to?
We all also know that some people have more powerful voices than others. These come in a variety of guises: some people are broadcasters, with a wide reach; others are conversationalists, who spark discussion; some are expert commentators on a topic, and seen as authorities in their area; others are connectors, who put topics and people together in an interesting way. Some are just plain mavericks, who touch on a topic briefly and move on to the next. And the different outlets people find to share their views have an effect too – some people have a strong video voice and impact but don’t use the written word; others talk a lot on one network about your topic, but very little on another.
And even the smallest voice can have a big impact online – if it whispers into the right ear.
This is the idea at the heart of the Traackr system.
The origins of the Authority List lie in a tool that was available a few years ago to help people assess their own influence on the internet. I’m sure you know the kind of thing; we’ve almost all played with tools like that to see how we’re perceived. (What, no-one’s even done an ego-search on Google? Not sure I believe you there.)
Then someone had a inspired idea: turn the thing around so that it could identify the people with influence, and sell that information to those who need to know.
That’s you. The business that needs to know what is being said out there, so that they can then connect with those people, and maybe influence them in turn.
Gaining the ear of the king
This isn’t a new idea: if the customer is king, finding the right online influencers is like dealing with the royal favourites and courtiers, who potentially have influence over the king.
There’s been much debate about how objective online influencers can be when presented with goodies and freebies, so consider carefully your approach to the influencers, and bear in mind that courting the courtiers has always been a complex and sometimes dangerous affair in the cross-currents of a royal court.
But Traackr looks like a good implementation of a solution to make finding the right influencers possible – even easy.
You, the client, set up a project, agree how many influencers you want to identify, and work with the Traackr team to identify relevant keywords. (Not always as easy as it sounds).
The Traackr search engine then finds people who discuss these topics online – and then tracks those individuals across all their other outlets.
This, I think, is the really exciting bit: pulling together all the places where that person has an online presence to provide a unified view on that individual.
When complete, the information is available via an online dashboard. You can see a list of influencers, and a breakdown of type (activist, reporter and expert) and location. Each influencer has a profile page, detailing their latest posts, which social outlets they use, the extent of their network and their score (reach, resonance, and relevance). It’s up to you to make the connection, but you can note on the profile how well the contacts have gone, and what your next steps might be – the beginnings of a relationship management system.
Traackr doesn’t assess the sentiment of their discussions about you/your products, but at this point you know who the key relevant influencers are, and since you’ll need to tailor your contact approach to each influencer, you’ll want to check them out individually yourself anyway. And you do need to know the bad as well as the good news…
Questions?
Can you track the effect of your contact/s with the influencers? That’s the point of Traackr’s Performance Report, which tracks the changes in coverage from those people from week to week.
Can you change your keywords? Once the report is generated, you get an interface to the Traackr system which lets you run a live search on keywords before setting up a new campaign, to be sure that you’re picking valuable keywords.
Are the influencers self-selected? Only by dint of their own efforts to become influential – the influencers haven’t volunteered to be included. All the material on their profile is publicly available, just not all pulled together in one place like this. As I said: this is the most exciting element of this tool, and Traackr does have plans to provide access to these pages for the influencers, so that they can make use of it too.
Wouldn’t it be helpful to have some idea of sentiment? I think it would, and this isn’t provided by the Authority List. I think you’d like it all: who the key influencers are, whether they are generally positive, negative or neutral about your keywords, and how this view changes over time – and even what triggers the change. Your contact with them, some independent event, a contact with a competitor, a discussion with another key influencer…?
Couldn’t you do this yourself? Well, yes of course you could, though it would be time-consuming. And the Traackr team have found that their system has identified powerful influencers in places it wouldn’t necessarily occur to you to look. You just need a bit of imagination to work out how to approach these unexpected influencers in ways they’d appreciate…
Thanks Derek!
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