It was in June that HabitatUK learnt the power of social media when they jumped on Twitter and used trending topic hashtags (the most tasteless was the Iran Election) to push signups to their marketing database and furniture discounts . As the blogger who broke the news, and then watched it break all records on Social Media Today, I am very relieved to see them back on Twitter. The case has been used as a benchmark of the cynical use of hashtag spam, been written up on countless posts, news stories and talked about on Twitter. Even though HabitatUK apologised through me via another blog post, and then promptly blamed their intern as the cause of the hashtag spam, they didn’t respond back on Twitter. Until now.
Blog
Honesty is the best social media policy
When considering your personal or a company or a corporate social media strategy, one of the key cornerstones should be honesty.
Why?
* Because so much advertising, marketing and PR involves spin, stretches of truth, hyperbole and wild claims.
* Because in social media, authenticity and honesty are valuable commodities.
* Because you can’t “buy” honesty.
Are you marketing to your ego?
David Meerman Scott will be at the next Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) event to talk about how marketers can “understand social personas and stop wasting money and resources”
David has many case studies on his blog and his book World Wide Rave, but the post that leapt out at me takes it one step earlier in the process referring to the marketplace being the outside world and not your office.
His question to all of us marketing in the new era:
1. Do you market to your ego? Or to the external marketplace?
2. Focus on your buyers, not your bosses.
3. The marketplace is the outside world, not your comfortable office
Social media accountability is a two way street
Accountability has been a big by-product of social media going mainstream. Companies are now being held accountable for bad behaviour, shonky customer service and dubious ethics by the blogosphere, and by the visibility and search-ability of social conversations across social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. The old, impenetrable castle walls of faceless, anonymous corporate brands are in the process of being dismantled by the dispersed people power of social networks. The PR spin doctors can no longer control the message.
On the whole, social media has built a culture of authenticity, transparency and trust. So what happens when anonymous bad behaviour is demonstrated by the blogosphere?
A social media elevator speech
As today was designated Recycle a Blog Post Day, I decided to go back to my very first post, which was written to explain web 2.0 as a digital trend to a traditional advertising agency I was working for at the time. The only thing I’ve changed is the title and added and substituted “social media for web 2.0 in the post
One of the first questions people ask me about digital trends is “What’s so great about social media?” The easiest way to describe it is to use the 30 second elevator speech.
How Facebook privacy is being eroded for advertising
Facebook signup continues to grow at exponential rates across the globe. In three months since April 2009, they’ve added another 50 million users If you’re looking for statistics on Facebook’s infiltration into individual countries, the CheckFacebook site provides great stats about Australia.