It looks likely that the Advertising Standards Authority (who ensure that ads in the UK are ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’ by applying their Advertising Codes) will be extending their non-broadcast advertising code in late 2010.  The Code already covers search marketing and online display advertising, but will soon be expanded to company’s marketing communications on their own websites and other non-paid for space online such as facebook and twitter.

With the Digital Economy Bill also likely to hit the UK this year, the online environment is becoming increasingly regulated – while also increasingly complex and fragmented.  So in addition to visibility and conversation, the role for online PR and reputation management specialists looks like it will increasingly encompass guiding clients through a legal quagmire.

Online PR specialists with backgrounds in digital media, offline advertising or promotional activity are going to be best placed to advise on this as they will be used to complying with ASA Codes.  Which is another reason why having a well rounded team responsible for managing your reputation online is so important.

posted by gemmaT

In February’s Admap magazine, Molly Flatt writes about how social media is forcing marketers to change the way they work:

Businesses are used to time on their terms: time as a method of control – a clearly compartmentalised commodity measured out in the ping of Outlook meeting alerts.  They’re not used to other people’s timescales dictating their schedules, especially when these people refuse to confine their conversations to nine to five on weekdays.

For businesses, slowness means safety: time to plan; time to check legal red tape, facts and logistics; time to cover up the mistakes before they spread.  Social media demands qualities of flexibility, spontaneity and speed that are alien and risky to image-makers versed in composition, rather than conversation.

So slow equals safe, but social media insists on fast.  You can start to see why the traditional Monday-Friday for both clients and marketing agencies is fast becoming a thing of the past in a two-way society where dealing with the latest fallout on twitter just won’t wait ‘til Monday morning.  

The traditional crisis PR approach of taking home with you the ‘in the event of a client emergency dial…’ mobile phone isn’t really going to cut it anymore.  I can see a lot of shift working, two full time people covering one role and weekends in the office in the future for online PR professionals – and their clients.

posted by gemmaT

It’s going to be a very interesting few months.  A general election is galloping over the horizon in the UK and it looks like the fight for hearts and minds is going to take place online.

The 2008 US presidential election was probably the first high profile political event to really utilise online, with 1.5 million volunteers registered online and $600m raised from 3 million people.  Obama’s campaign utilised facebook, YouTube, myspace, flickr and twitter to mobilise supporters and communities.  By the time the campaign was over, volunteers had created more than 3.2 million Facebook profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000 groups, posted 400,000 blogs and generated 14.5 million television viewing hours on YouTube.

Of course, in the UK we have 650 local candidates, rather than just a single figurehead that everyone can really rally behind and smaller digital budgets, making grassroots online campaigning more problematic.

However, online is undoubtedly going to play a role in driving the UK political news agenda for the next few months and is far less controllable than the traditional offline media tools that the parties are used to electioneering with.  The Conservatives seem to be ahead of Labour in the digital race at the moment with their collaborative myconservatives.com versus Labour’s more direct Labourspace, but the spoof Cameron posters popping up all over the internet aren’t exactly helping the Conservatives’ cause. 

That’s the problem with the online world.  It puts the people, not politicians, in the driving seat.  On the other hand, that’s why it’s so brilliant.

posted by gemmaT

Brands need to be monitored, protected and represented online.  Even if your business isn’t very good at the monitoring and representing bit yet, you at least need to get the protection right.

Would you allow a shop to open bearing your brand name and imagery, but selling p0rn?  Or tolerate someone ringing up your customers pretending to be from your brand, while criticising your products?  I thought not.

You need to protect your brand and your trademarks online.  And the best way to do this is to own the relevant online real estate.  Its not just about owning the domain name mybrand.com.  You also need to consider social media sites so you’ll need to own facebook.com/mybrand, twitter.com/mybrand, linkedin.com/companies/mybrand and so on.

The only cost involved is the time it takes to sign up for a free account.  But you’d better get a move on.  Social media sites allocate names on a first come, first served basis and cybersquatters are on the rise.  Someone even beat Heinz to their twitter handle (albeit as an exercise to see how long it took them to notice!).

posted by gemmaT

If social networks are about friends sharing information about their lives, then the next evolution of social networks is for them to have a purpose - social shopping.

From communicating and aggregating information about products, prices and deals to  friend/peer recommendations and even team buying (where buyers group together online to haggle with a retailer on price), social shopping sites utilise the wisdom and experience of a group of likeminded people to result in a better shopping outcome.

We know that individuals trust ‘people like me’, and that they are influenced heavily by people with whom they feel a shared interest or connection. With social shopping, you can find out not only what people who may have bought one particular product have also bought (a la Amazon), but what people with whom you feel an affinity have bought. When this is backed up by community content like forum posts, photos and profile information, social shopping allows like minded consumers to come together and share not only a mutual interest but their opinions and retail experiences too.

In the UK ASOS Life (the social shopping site for fans of fashion retailer ASOS.com) leads the way, combining a vibrant online fashionista community with an insider’s look at fashion, covering behind the scenes at ASOS HQ, beauty tips, competitions and careers advice. 

Even direct mail giant Shop Direct has got in on the act with very.co.uk’s very Network, complete with celebrity forum members and even access to very’s fashion buyers.

Of course, it all helps to shift handbags and gladrags : - )

posted by gemmaT

The Manchester Evening News reports that players for Manchester United and City have been advised against using Twitter, on the basis that 1) content posted by players could be taken out of context by the media and 2) since there are so many fake twitter profiles around, if none of the players are allowed to tweet, fans be certain that any player they come across on twitter is bogus.

The risk of staff twittering off brand is obviously an issue for employers, whatever their business may be.  If you happen to earn your living as an actor in a high profile film franchise for example, there isn’t much in your working life you’ll be allowed to tweet about.  Tom Felton, who plays Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise is limited to tweeting the Potter related news that he’s getting his hair dyed blonde (again) and talking about crisps and the weather in case he gives away a Top Secret plot development.

If you’re not sure what your own company’s approach to staff members disclosing information on social networking sites, tweeting or blogging should be, then the BBC’s own editorial guidelines on personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites  and IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines are good places to start. (both links via Roo Reynolds)

posted by gemmaT

Marketing Sherpa’s Popular Media Study, reporting on their study of social media use by US consumers, looks at a group they’re calling Max Connectors - people with more than 500 social connections.

Max Connectors are especially valuable targets for online marketing activity because they can spread a positive brand or product experience so widely.  A great example of a Max Connector is blogger and technical evangelist Robert Scoble, who has over 111,000 followers on twitter.  Not bad for a self proclaimed geek.

Persuading these Connectors to engage with brands and companies through social media channels means giving them something for their trouble, something that they can in turn share with their own connections.  This might mean exclusive access, perhaps in terms of online content, sneak peaks at new features or products or the opportunity to contribute to product or service development.

A while ago I contributed to Neil Perkin’s excellent ‘a presentation about the community, by the community’ crowdsourced presentation.  Neil suggests that every online community has Super Users; high authority, highly active people (Max Connectors by another name).  But my point was that community has layers – and you should respect them all:

Although Super Users or Max Connectors are undoubtedly valuable targets for social media activity, the Sidekicks, who might write niche blogs with limited reach or have a smaller circle of connections can be really important if you want to access their particular specialist niche target audience (like, say, anesthetists).  So size isn’t everything!

posted by gemmaT

It looks like 2010 is going to be the year when ‘digital’ stops being seen as an optional channel for communications activity and starts becoming an integrated, inescapable part of any communications campaign.

Because the internet is not simply about websites, facebook campaigns or emails, it’s about the framework within which we are increasingly living our lives.  When was the last time you called Directory Enquiries?  Popped a photo in the post to a friend?  Looked something up in an encyclopaedia? 

But I bet you use the internet for the majority of your news and weather, arranging nights out, keeping in touch with friends and family, planning and booking travel…the list goes on.  The internet is now such a fundamental part of our everyday lives that to ignore digital channels (and by digital I mean to include gaming, mobile services and so on) in any communications campaign would be negligent – because they have simply become part of how we live our lives.

In the Digital Natives, entering adulthood right now, we are seeing the first generation to grow up with the internet and global communication as a fundamental part of their everyday lives.  They’re used to being on control and doing things across multiple platforms and expect brands to participate in two-way communication with them on their own terms.

It seems inevitable that as older Digital Immigrants continue to embrace connected communication, anyone who sees The Internet as merely a communications channel like radio or TV will be left behind.  The world has changed – so must we.

posted by gemmaT

It might only be December 7th, but its not too early to start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions from an Online PR point of view.  May OnVisible suggest a few for you?

1) Ensure that how your brand presents itself, reacts and behaves online is in line with it’s offline persona – which means that you need a joined up strategy which embraces your brand’s blog, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and so on to deliver consistent messaging and tone of voice.

2) Because engagement in the online environment is about having conversations, not making speeches, make sure that you are listening as much (if not more) than you are talking online.

3) Embrace and celebrate your colleague’s take-up of social media – but implement and communicate clear guidelines about personal use of blogs, social networking and other third party websites where they identify the author as an employee of your organisation (the BBC’s guidelines are a great example).

4) Allocate online responsibilities (and preferably targets) within your organisation – whether this is liaising with your online PR agency or twittering and blogging directly, someone needs to have the-buck-stops-here responsibility for how your brand behaves online or its easy to push it to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list.

5) Think quality not quantity – better to have 50 engaged enthusiast followers on twitter than 500 eccentrics, better to produce two insightful, content rich, well linked to blog posts a week than five half hearted attempts.

posted by gemmaT

The online world is one big global community, right?  Not always.  Online PR is about getting your brand talked about by the right people, in the right places – and if these people are very culturally and geographically specific, you might be well advised to look for online PR experts that really know and understand the same.

Its not about geographical proximity to your target audience – its about having an innate understanding of a particular online neighbourhood and the cultural norms associated with it.  So if you only want to talk to Mums in the North of England, hiring an online PR agency in San Francisco might not be the best place to start (although as an office full of Northern Mummies, OnVisible would love to help!).  Likewise if you are specifically targeting new Moms in Washington USA and come to see us, we’re likely to recommend you use an online PR specialist with on the ground Mommy Blogger contacts in the DC area.

In a virtual world where brands are without borders, the ability to act virtually, work globally and think strategically online is crucial and in the majority of cases, its not about where you are based, its about how you engage.  But sometimes nothing beats a little local knowledge.

posted by gemmaT