For a small minority, I would agree that this may well be on the cards. The ability to connect with people using little bitesized chunks of information is tempting and may seem easier than sitting down and writing something longer than the typical “update”. However, for the vast majority, and particularly businesses looking to use social media as a tool to reach their customers – shouldn’t we all be? – I would say that this prediction is premature in the extreme.

Indeed, with social media now firmly ensconced among the more established marketing and communications tools, I would suggest that not only will we not see a decline in the role of blogging, we will actually see it grow in importance. If you have a moment, then let me explain why – I guarantee that it’ll be worthwhile.

Blogs will play a central role

Major changes are certainly afoot and I have little doubt that the online marketing industry is still developing rapidly ahead of an undoubted period of consolidation. To make sure that I, and therefore my clients, come out ahead as this is going on,  I am continually looking at the variety of social media which exist, of which a business blog is certainly one. In the future, while the number of potential avenues for social media continues to expand, I still see a blog playing the central role for companies wanting to engage with customers and prospects using social media and general online methods.

For instance, if we take some of the more popular social media tools as examples:

• Twitter – great tool being used more and more effectively but still overhyped in some sectors and a little restrictive. It’s difficult to say everything in 140 characters, so is often used to make people aware of other sources of information or to initiate connections;
• Social networks are proliferating in many different forms from the monsters such as Facebook and the Business focus in LinkedIn through to the niche forums on systems like Ning – they come and go (some quicker than others obviously) but each time a new one takes hold you need to establish a whole new infrastructure and set of contacts;
• Podcasts and video have their own key sites like YouTube or iTunes but in most cases, businesses fail to achieve an independent identity or forum with them alone, although cases such as “Will it Blend?” from Blendtech prove that it is possible.

A blog, however, allows a business to bring all of these other elements together, creates a focal point for a community of customers, provides the company with its own social network hub whatever else goes on in the market and allows it to expand on the information disseminated on Twitter, YouTube or iTunes.

A personal analogy

To put it another way, if I make a personal analogy, if I meet friends in a bar or a coffee shop, then they will get a certain picture of me through a number of different factors: what I am wearing, what I look like, where we are meeting, what I’m drinking, who I am talking to and about what etc. All of these things give a certain picture of me as a person but it is still a superficial one.

However, if you come and have dinner at my home then you have a much more complete view of me. You see where I live, the type of house, the décor, the books and music I’m interested in, the decoration and style of fixtures and furniture, what I cook and what I serve for drinks etc etc. In short, you get a much more complete sense of me when you visit my home because it is much more multifaceted.

To my mind, social networking sites, discussion forums, Twitter etc are all types of coffee houses where you can a first image of me. My blog, however, offers much more of an insight and is essentially the online equivalent of my home.

You need a place to invite people to online

Don’t take this as putting down the other social media tools or indeed other general online marketing tactics – it is just the opposite. All the other elements are great when used in line with a business’ commercial aims, but you still then need to have somewhere to “invite” friends back to online rather than always meet in proverbial bars / coffee houses. That’s where a blog comes to the fore, bringing all the other elements together as well as contributing in its own right.

Think also that as you engage with other bloggers on their own blogs, there is only so much that you can convey when you leave comments, no matter how erudite and pertinent they are. What you need to have in conjunction is a place to develop your ideas further. A place to continue that conversation that you have started – once again, a role that your own blog would ideally fulfil.

Effectively, as you look at the world of social media and the innumerable opportunities that it brings with it, to me it is clear that a blog sits solidly at the core of this activity. Personally, I see it as driving and conducting the online activity that a company undertakes and as the place to develop a community of readers that links from other social media will help grow and promote.

Related posts:

1. Google helping social media? Surely not!
2. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs
3. Social Media – are you ready?

However, it’s important to realise that using LinkedIn can still very time intensive like most social media tools, even if we make the most of integrating our other online tools and sharing information we create elsewhere (as well as on LinkedIn itself). It’s unfortunately true that the business world is littered with people who have tried to take on too much and suffered the consequences – the internet world, because of it very nature, offers us a range of tools and the ability to follow in those footsteps unless we go in with clear business objectives in mind!

Therefore, to gain all of the benefits that LinkedIn can offer without suffering the potential downsides, it’s important to have a clear idea of how you wish to use the tools and what you want to achieve. If you plan and then take action on the back of that, with your business aims uppermost in your mind, you’re much more likely to come out with the results that you are looking for.

So here are 5 steps I’d recommend you take when using LinkedIn to make sure that you use it to best effect and that it serves you well (rather than the other way round!):

1. Plan

A stage which is all too often forgotten or skirted over, but if you are going to dedicate time to a marketing tool such as this, then you need to have a plan in place so that you can approach the task at hand in a way which will be successful.

You may simply be on LinkedIn with the intention of having a place to maintain and enhance your business contacts online. This does, however, miss the enormous potential that it offers particularly givenn the opportunity it delivers to mix both general networking with sales development, personal promotion and branding. Whatever the overall goal, making sure that you focus on delivering against that with the time you spend is key.

2. Get your Profile right

Your profile is the core element of your presence and activity on LinkedIn and, with your aims firmly in mind, it’s important to get your profile right. This cannot be a simple copy and paste of your CV but rather an online bringing together of your experience, skills and past in a way which focuses on the future and what you want to achieve.

How you present yourself in your profile and the words that you use are important to ensure that you are found for your target areas, attract people to your profile, demonstrate your skills and ambitions and then work to develop your visibility. In addition to the key text and job areas, don’t forget to make best use of the increasing number of applications you can integrate on your profile page to ensure you highlight these to best effect.

3.Connect and Reconnect

It’s important to have a wide network but, perhaps more importantly, it’s essential to develop one that is going to help you to tap into and deliver in the areas that are of interest to you. As a first key step, make sure that you connect to colleagues past and present as well as clients past and present – that in itself is a very powerful initial base from which to grow your network.

LinkedIn gives you the tools to make this as easy as possible with the ability to tap into your email systems as well as recommendations of people that should be of interest as well as lists of those from your previous companies. With that in place, you will almost certainly have a strong base to work from.

4.Get involved

There are now many different ways for you to get involved with others on LinkedIn – this has really been the key change which has led to its rise in both popularity and utility. These parts of the site allow you to start to interact and connect with the people you are looking to link up with as well as demonstrate your areas of expertise and interest.

The key start points should probably include joining and participating in relevant Groups, answering (and asking) questions in the Answers section and posting updates although there are a number of additional areas which can provide good results too. Each will be relevant to different situations.

5. Get yourself a weekly regime

Our time is limited and social media has the very real potential to eat up time at an alarming rate. To avoid this and make sure that we not only use the site properly but without wasting time in the process, it’s important to set ourselves limits and boundaries.

What I personally recommend as the best way to achieve this, is to set out a weekly regime ensuring that we develop our network, connect with potential partners and prospects, and cover the key areas of the site that will serve us best without racking up needless time online.

In future posts, we’ll be taking a closer look at some of the specific actions you should take to make sure each of the 5 steps serves you to best effect. But in the meantime if you look at your business aims and start to delve into how LinkedIn can help you achieve them then you will certainly be on the right track.

Related posts:

1. Introduction to LinkedIn morning workshop
2. Your Social Media home online

However, with its latest revision of its search engine homepage, I have to say that I feel it has given social media a real leg-up in the world of search and perhaps delivered a timely reminder that the worlds of social media and online search are complementary and indeed inextricably linked, no matter how different they seem at first glance.

What has changed?

Now far from me to complain about having to update yet another of my workshop presentations – after all, that’s why we’re here, to keep you up to date and ahead of the online marketing game – but this really is another key step change.

So what is it that’s changed?

Well, after all that build up, it may seem a bit of a let down that they are not really offering anything revolutionary – in fact, most of this has been around for a while. We have long been able to search subsections of the main Google index, the difference is that these results have now been made much more visible and have been slightly reorganised as well. This makes them much more likely to be used and that in turn will help to promote the types of content they contain much more prominently.

And there’s the rub – although the main index will not be affected, the other essential subdivisions which exist are now going to be more more easy to access. This gives an additional set of reasons – search based ones rather than social media ones I grant you – why we need to ensure that we are participating in the places that will deliver additional visibility.

Where will we see the changes

On Google’s Search Results pages, you’ll now see that there is a left hand column visible which contains details of the different subsections of information which are now available.

For me, there are three which are of particular interest and have a particular resonance as we look at social media and its extending influence.

a) Blogs

Google Blog Search has been around for quite some time – indeed, together with Technorati, it has been a mainstay of searching blogs since I started working with them and that’s been a few years now. However, searchers will now be much more aware of it and instead of having to go in search of the Google Blog Search engine, Blogs will now be a visible option for any given query. People will tend to gravitate to this set of results if they are looking for more recent commentary on their chosen subject. More power to your blogging efforts!

b) Updates

Google has tried a number of different ways to integrate its real-time search sources and this is the role that the “Updates” section is now designed to fulfil. The results is a mix of information coming primarily from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Buzz, etc. and will give you a good start point to try to track down ongoing conversations on topics of interest, including of course you and/or your company. Good to have all this accessible and in one place, I believe, without impacting on the more in depth content from elsewhere.

c) Discussions

The Discussions area that tackles the area in between blogs and updates by looking at content from forums as well as Q&A sites – I’m guessing that this will be constantly extended. This is obviously interesting both as a listening post but also as another way to get your name and expertise as visible as possible – answering questions on specialist sites will tend to lead into interaction with people interested in the same topics and, at the same time, displays your own expertise in the area and the resultant boost to your profile.

In many cases, the information they deliver will still be available via the main search results, however, we will be able to filter out the rest if we want and this will be of value to those managing to appear prominently in each section.

Oh, and as a last point, if you were wondering where the “only pages from UK” (or your own country search) had gone for your local search option, that’s over in the sidebar now as well.

See what works for you

This isn’t particularly going to change companies and individuals from non users to avid evangelists all on its own, after all, there are so many great reasons to engage in the social world without extra visibility on Google necessarily swaying it.

However, it is an excellent step forward in highlighting the different types of information that are available on the web and it will make the whole area more visible to the 70+% of online searchers who use Google on a regular basis.

So check out these new offerings from Google and focus in on those that you would want your business to be found for – hopefully you’re already doing so but this will make the job of tracking your success even easier. While, as I stated at the start, this is hardly a new strategy, it is nevertheless more important for visibility than ever before.

Related posts:

1. Facebook and Google: social media versus search?
2. Your Social Media home online
3. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs

Let’s remember: at the end of the day, all of these tools from business cards, conferences and magazine advertising to search engines, emails and Facebook marketing, are merely being used to communicate and help convey a message. The message is the key element. However, the benefit that social media offers is that it does it in so many different, and interactive, ways … and it is these that our target audiences are gravitating towards more and more.

Integration still isn’t the norm

It is therefore somewhat disappointing – even disturbing – to see a recent survey carried out by Unica and reported in eMarketer. In it, they report that only around 40% of blogs, social networking and microblogging (Twitter essentially) activities are run as part of integrated campaigns.

I realise that to some this might seem quite positive, but it leaves the vast majority of social media activity sadly isolated and essentially stifled by being restricted to a single focal point. It also means that activities such as email marketing or offline marketing never get the extra boost that social media could easily bring to them.

Table from eMarketer

Even, as a startpoint, the use of a blog would be of great benefit to companies. Blogging continues to be an awesome comms tool for any business looking to promote its services and demonstrate its expertise. It also sits very comfortably at the centre of a social media campaign, linking and coordinating the information and indeed the people involved. However, the same is also true when it comes to other online marketing (and of course also offline marketing) activities as well.

Having an online space that you control where you can interact with clients and prospects is the ideal follow up in any campaign – try it with a blog, I think you’ll like it.

Coordinate from the start

Ideally though, it’s better to think about what’s the best sort of integration from the outset. Taking the different elements in isolation will inevitably lead to a fragmented approach – at worst, it can be actually negative if conflicting messages are sent out through the different media. Get them working together, however, and you can greatly increase the effectiveness of all parts of the campaign – a perfect case of the sum of the whole being greater than the individual parts.

Although ideally we want to design a campaign so that they can be best placed to work in parallel, this isn’t always going to be possible particularly for smaller companies. So what I’d probably recommend is that you do a bit if thinking about it beforehand and “Think Big, Start Small and Do it Now”!.

Make sure there’s a reason for linking up

However, it’s important not to try to create tie ups just for “integration – sake”. Earlier in the year, being a bit of an American Football fan, I watched the Superbowl and the multi-million pound TV ads during the breaks which hopped onto the bandwagon and linked through to a Facebook page rather than their website.

All well and good – great even – other than most of them left it at that. The integration went that far and little further with no clear reason why we were directed there as opposed to their website. No community activity or special call to action that only a Facebook type environment could achieve. Nothing. That’s not really integration – that’s wasting money.

So don’t try to integrate these things just because you have fallen for the Shiny Object Syndrome where you just feel that you have to get involved with social media without having a full reason why. There are lots of excellent reasons and benefits to be had, just identify the ones that will work best to achieve the goals that you have.

Start small but do start

While my Superbowl example is clearly reserved for those with an ability to spend which is outside of the reach of most, there are many ways to integrate social media – create a blog which is integrated into your website and allow you to interact with prospects attracted by your marketing, add social media links to your email marketing or press releases, or set up some “listening posts” to tap into the conversations already ongoing.

I guess the message at the end of day is that integrating your marketing is always going to benefit you and reinforce the messages that you want to get out there. Do plan in advance but at the end of the day do … do.

Related posts:

1. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs
2. Who owns YOUR social network?
3. Your Social Media home online

Essentially, a number of stories appeared in the newspapers blaming UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg for a whole host of different things. Rather than leap to his defence, one Twitter user took a far more creative approach and started a hashtag named #nickcleggsfault to encourage people to come up with their own suggestions! A classic viral situation if every if  saw one!!

It certainly worked and there has been a constant stream of tweets blaming Nick Clegg for all manner of things as you can see below:

Amusing and yet also telling in the way that we, as the public, now have these types of outlets to voice our opinion on the national press (or indeed anything else) in this curious way … immediately and quite, well, vocally.

Anyway it continues to trend today (ie. is one of the most used terms hash topics) so I guess that this particular meme will run for a while yet.

Now, if only I could come up with something similar for an integrated marketing campaign I’m currently working on. Nothing so far unfortunately. Maybe that’s NickCleggs Fault as well … who knows?

Related posts:

1. Social Media in the UK General Election
2. Google helping social media? Surely not!

For many, the scary part is that it feels like walking into the unknown. The idea of handing even part of the control of our marketing to the very people we are looking to appeal to and attract fills us with dread.

But don’t worry, you’ve actually been doing it for years.

It is exactly the situation we are in when it comes to “Word of mouth” – something that has been the lifeblood of many a small (and not so small) business down the years. What happens? People share their opinions on you and your products with friends and colleagues.

Well, social media is doing the same – simply on a larger scale by tapping into tools which give us the ability to do that online and share with hundreds / thousands of people at the press of a button. That just got scary again, didn’t it?

More Control with Social Media

What social media does give us, though, is the ability to track what is being said and find where those conversations are taking place – something which is seldom achievable offline.

Approached correctly, it gives us the chance to participate in how those messages about us are being communicated, avoiding the digital equivalent of ‘chinese whispers’ or worse where we are unable to deliver a balanced view of … whatever. To a certain extent, we can influence what’s being said rather than simply leaving it to run its own course so, in many ways, we’re in a better position online!

The problem is that most companies don’t make the most of the opportunities that these tools open up to us. They don’t have their “listening posts” set up even at a basic level with tools like Google Alerts, an RSS reader, TweetBeep  etc. – when they don’t know what’s being said, they really can’t hope to influence it.

Essentially, we leave ourselves open to the potential downside of social and refuse to accept any of the benefits – now, that is what I call scary!

Get Listening

So first things first – before taking those first tentative steps into new areas of social media (or putting on your size 12s and a nice thick blindfold and jumping in, as if often the case) get your listening posts in place and be ready to use the information that you gather.

Even if you are already active, it’s never too late to start and the benefits are still all out there for you.  Essentially it’s up to you – the conversations will continue to take place anyway. That’s the issue nowadays – there is little we can do but embrace the changes that have been taking place and participate!

It’s that or be left behind and that does put us fairly and squarely back in “Scary Land”!

Related posts:

1. Social Media – are you ready?
2. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs
3. Your Social Media home online

During the Workshop session, we briefly looked at some of the key areas to consider when using LinkedIn to generate contacts and business – essentially, the session acted as an introduction to our LinkedIn Business briefing sessions and gave an overview of the key areas of focus such as:

• How to use LinkedIn to get the best results
• Customising your profile: key elements to include
• Using LinkedIn’s apps to use your other Social Media content
• Connect and reconnect: building your network
• Positioning yourself and getting yourself known
• Use the technology available to you
• Creating your weekly LinkedIn regime

The feedback has been great, so thank you all for that, and given the enthusiasm with which the LinkedIn element has been received, we are looking to extend that part of the session at our next event to include more information of how LinkedIn can be used most effectively by businesses and individuals alike.

The video  element setup and run by Video Shoot Productions Limited and we are looking forward to seeing the business exposés they filmed and how they might be used on Business Blogs and YouTube as starters!

Finally, another vote of thanks to our hosts at Kinnarps Reading (Office Furniture) and we look forward to seeing you at the next event.

No related posts.

For me, not being a particularly political animal at the best of times, I will probably be most interested to see just how much use of online social media there is going to be, particularly following the footsteps of its heavy usage (and, at least in certain quarters, its success) in the US Presidential election campaigning of 2008.

I think that it’s fairly safe to assume that there will be much use (and abuse) of the tools that are available and that social media in general will be much more prevalent than in previous UK elections. Of course, this is in part due to the fact that, in 2005, only blogging was really approaching mainstream use – the other tools that will undoubtedly be employed such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were either still in their infancy or still a twinkle in their founders’ eyes, as was the case with Twitter. The difference this time round will be very noticeable … everywhere!

Shorter Timeframe – Different Approach

How and where will vary, and one element that will impact this will be the timeframe involved here – rather than the many months of build up during the US presidentials, here there is only a month until election day and therefore the choice and application of social media will need to be careful. The gradual building of a mass following to distribute messages to will not be easy to achieve in such a short space of time, even though social media can deliver a very strong and immediate effect.

Much more likely is a “guerrilla marketing” approach with everything being examined in minute detail by many more people than previously had been the case. Expect YouTube to be flooded by all sorts of commentaries and videos supporting all sides in all sorts of different ways. At the same time, I imagine that Twitter will be the place to go and follow “lively debate” on any and all subjects connected with election. At the centre of all this will still be a heavy usage of blogging and an increasing use of Facebook as a hub from which to develop further activity.

What is undeniable is that we will have unprecedented access to information and detail on everything that happens and, thanks to social media, will also have the ability to share those details instantly as well as interact with others and with the debate in general.

As for us here at Social Media Directors, we’ll be keeping our eyes open and will report back on anything in the use of social media that we believe is worthy of highlight!

Related posts:

1. Social media use in the election
   - definitely Nick Clegg’s fault
2. Facebook and Google: social media versus search?
3. Your Social Media home online

Not really Armageddon for Search

Well not really, though we are entering an interesting phase, even if it isn’t the cataclismic event that I’m sure the film industry would manage to turn it into if they had the chance. Simple measurement of user hits remain somewhat skewed because of the very different nature of the beasts – Facebook is designed to be heavily used as a full on “destination site” with each member spending significant periods there, whereas Google is more a doorway to the web rather than a final destination in itself.

Nevertheless, the increase we see from Facebook in the graphic above is certainly impressive and currently shows little sign of slowing down as both membership and usage continues to increase. We can therefore be certain that this type of trend is likely to develop further as we go on before probably flattening out – at exactly what point that happens remains to be seen.

Implications for Businesses

But does this show a real power shift in the online marketplace and, if so, where does the real power lie? Equally, how can we, in the business world, tap into and use these tools for our own purpose?

In Google’s case, we are in general well versed in the benefits that it and the other Search Engines can bring in the form of Search Engine Marketing, both from a Pay Per Click and an organic Search perspective. When it comes to Facebook, however, we are still on a learning curve, much as the network itself is. The other Social Media platforms are also adding to the complexity of the situation facing us, as we battle to ensure that our brand, services or products remain uppermost in our target market’s mind.

So it is really Social Media vs Search? Not really … as with all elements of marketing, it comes down to ensuring that we cover all avenues that our current and prospective customers use, online and offline. This may be to research purchases, keep up to date with news or simply for pleasure. But whatever it is, we need to be aware of what their activities and requirements are in each so that we can plan and adapt accordingly.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, that’s actually where the real power lies – with us as users and consumers!

Related posts:

1. Google helping social media? Surely not!
2. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs
3. Social Media in the UK General Election

In this particular one, whose figures come from Burson-Marsteller’s Global Fortune 100 Social Media Study the part I found particularly interesting, you will see at the top of the graphic. It reports that when it comes to European based companies in the Global Fortune 100, 86% of them use one of the 4 major social media tools identified (out of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and RSS) – that puts them right at the top of the global league. However, in contrast, when it comes to European companies employing all 4 of them, only 15% confirmed that they did, this time firmly at the bottom of the list.

What does this tell me? Well, purely at a top level (and what else could it be?) then I would have to summise that these companies appear to have a general understanding of what social media can do for them but are unwilling to fully commit with a fully integrated campaign. This may be unfair – after all, I consider that Facebook is more applicable to B2C companies, thereby skewing figures against B2B – however, such as it is.

One other element, not shown in the graphic but forming part of the original report, that also surprised me was that only 25% of the European companies ran a corporate blog – again, very low when you consider that business blogging is very much mainstream and the benefits have been consistently proven when they are well run. Maybe we should get in touch with one of our Business Briefings on Blogging to see if we can help!!

Anyway, here is the graphic sheet in question although, given its size you might like to pop over to Flowtown where you can find it blown up rather bigger than I can mange here.

Related posts:

1. Social Media – are you ready?
2. Your Social Media home online
3. Google helping social media? Surely not!