I saw a story on GMTV this morning about how we apparently all hate our colleagues. A new report says millions of us get annoyed by our pesky work ‘mates’ – bad news when you’re having to sit in a room with them for the majority of your life!

The list of annoyances include using other people’s possessions, pulling a sickie, talking loudly and leaving desks in a mess. I’m guilty of at least two – I have unfortunately become renowned for my stapler steals and my fog horn voice gossiping about last night’s TV across the office. But messy desks really do grate on me.

I’ve just done a quick poll in our office and the main gripes are loud desk eaters and people who don’t make brews (guilty as charged on the latter, in fact Big Chris recently nicknamed me ‘Nina No Brews’). What are yours? Mine is definitely people who moan, who, according to the report, are lost causes and you should just do your best to avoid them.

Have to say it made me feel quite lucky as I like all my work mates at Brahm – in fact most of them are friends outside the office. There’s a lot of love in this room (got to stop nicking their staplers though).

Stapler: property of Chris Hughes, not Nina Hands!

 Posted by Lady Nina Hands

Blogger relationships and blogger outreach has always been an intrinsic part of any online PR or reputation management strategy.

The blogosphere is over 130 million strong, but it is thought that 95% of blogs are dormant, abandoned and unloved.  That still leaves about 6.5 million active blogs worldwide. 

The challenge for online PR practitioners is to decide whether you are going for a blogger contact strategy of quality or quantity (in effect the long tail versus the short tail) and exactly which blogs are the best fit for your message.

Like any communications channel, you can have niche blogs with limited reach that are really important if you want to access their particular specialist target audience (like, say account planners).  Then there are other blogs that might not have a very impressive reach but their audience is made up almost entirely of influential Alpha Consumers, the first to know, the first to try and the first to buy.

Which means that understanding exactly which blogs are delivering the target audience for your particular campaign is what differentiates sharp shooting online PR professionals from the scattergun approach of less skilled practitioners.

The OnVisible team work with our own data and cutting edge online tools that allow us to target the most appropriate blogs with content that is relevant, timely and interesting.  More than that though we’re bloggers ourselves – we’re part of the community and understand that blogger outreach should be tailored, timely and about creating dialogue.  We track the coverage achieved on our target blogs but whenever our clients are mentioned or discussed on blogs, websites or even twitter, we know about it and we respond.  Acknowledging our blogging colleagues and linking to their site is essential to develop a true partnership.

So yes it’s about sharp-shooting but it’s also about understanding, dialogue and community.  After all, there’s no point in firing if you don’t know how the gun works or whether you hit the bull’s-eye.

posted by gemmaT / Deborah C

In the UK, alcohol brands have for the last decade voluntarily abided by the Portman Group Code of Practice, which seeks to ensure that all drinks are marketed in a socially responsible way and to an adult audience only.

The Code traditionally covered the naming, packaging and promotion of alcoholic drinks, but in 2008 help notes had to be issued to clarify the use of images of promotional staff and consumers in drinks marketing materials, with particular reference to the online environment.

The problem is that online marketing activity can be incredibly diverse, from photos of sponsored club nights appearing on a drinks brand’s website, to youtube, facebook pages and twitter feeds.  But the same obligation to market responsibly applies online as offline – in the case of drinks this means that everyone from promotional staff to punters in photos associated with and endorsed by a drinks brand online must not be, or even appear to be under 25.

In addition, images must not show any association between the drink and social success, sexual success, irresponsible consumption, binge drinking, drunkenness, or ‘show an exaggerated good time’!!!

This doesn’t mean that brands in sectors like drinks which have traditionally been heavily regulated should avoid online activity – just that they will have to work hard to behave engagingly and responsibly.

posted by gemmaT

Last week Gordon Brown was under fire again, but this time being mocked for his most recent, and slightly uncomfortable post on YouTube.

His direct addresses on the Number 10 channel answer current public concerns and questions put to him from YouTube users. This provides a great opportunity for him to show a more human side, and is an excellent tactic for communicating with hard-to-reach groups such as young, up-and-coming voters.

Social media use in politics has recently become a major success story for Obama’s online campaign for the US presidency. His online presence was everywhere – YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. Social media enabled Obama to have direct engagement with the American public, and was a channel for him to present himself as an ‘ordinary’ person; having dinner with people in the community who have sponsored his campaign.

His use of social media encouraged the public to sign up to receive live election news, through their social media profiles and mobile phones - a clever promise to engage with voters on a personal level.

And hats off to Number 10 for also embracing social media as an instant portal to the British public, but some considerations do need to be made when using it.

After negative public comments on the Number 10 YouTube channel, the option to comment on posts was disabled. Taking a few tactics from Obama’s book, such as better message delivery by Gordon Brown and welcoming comment and debates, could be more successful in encouraging wider public engagement.

With social media, YouTube especially, being used mainly for entertainment purposes, it’s inevitable that the number of unfavourable videos of Gordon; picking his nose and ‘running like a big girl’, will outnumber those posted by Number 10, and will receive thousands more views.

With the rise in social media interest from British politics and such a growing political online forum, could Obama’s winning online campaign be a taste of what’s to come in the next general election? Here’s hoping.

Posted by Sally Barr

Last Friday Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) became the first person to attract one million followers on Twitter.

Twitter is in serious growth (some data even suggests that it is doubling in size month on month) and even Oprah Winfrey (@oprah) has started tweeting.  Since a seal of approval from Oprah can send an unknown author to the top of the best seller charts, heaven knows what it’ll do for Twitter take up among the masses.

Which is all very well, but Twitter users, whether they be brands, celebrities or Oprah fans need to bear in mind exactly who they are twittering to and who they would like to follow them:

Friends?
Customers?
Colleagues and competitors?
Journalists?

Twitter is very similar to blogging in that you can’t control who reads it.  You can only create open and honest content that is most likely to appeal to the kind of people you are trying to attract. 

Ashton Kutcher may have 1M followers, but he is in the business of putting bums on cinema seats.  You might want to be seen as a thought leader in your particular industry sub-sector or as a helpful point of customer contact, which makes it more important that the right people follow you rather than the actual quantity of followers.

posted by GemmaT

If a few people discuss your brand’s latest campaign around the office watercooler, perhaps someone two desks down might overhear the conversation.

But the same number of people posting their views on the net (via blogs, forums and uploads) can in theory be ‘overheard’ by everyone with web access worldwide. Not only that, but their views will remain visible online indefinitely.  

Even if your brand’s marketing activity takes place entirely offline, it’s still likely that it will be discussed online.  And the online environment is about as easy to control as a swarm of bees.

Which means that any marketing activity, however routed in traditional media channels it may be, needs to keep a watchful eye on how it is being received by the online community.  Because not all online buzz is positive.

posted by GemmaT

Facebookers are perhaps unaware that when they upload to the site, according to new terms of service technically they transfer all rights to their content over to facebook.

Facebook made it clear that they had never claimed ownership of material that users upload and the terms were intended to protect content on other users pages should a user delete their own, e.g. in wall to wall conversations.

However this does raise a real question about the ownership of material uploaded to the internet.  Creative Commons licences only go so far in protecting the copyright of uploaders such as bloggers or facebookers and the terms of use of many social networking sites may override any efforts to protect ownership of content. 

In addition, it turns out that the whole thing can still be subject to Human Error as Sweetney found out when a ‘low level production assistant’ at Fox TV, ‘borrowed’ a photo of her dog Truman from her blog and used it in their NFL holiday broadcasts.

Even brands and businesses who chose to upload content to sites such as flickr and facebook need to be aware that they may be technically relinquishing their ownership of this content. 

More importantly, lack of understanding, misinterpretation, ignorance or blatant disregard of licensing by internet users will inevitably result in branded content turning up in entirely unexpected ways and places…

posted by gemmaT

Update, 20/02/09: 

Following a lot of fuss and upset across both online and offline media (including a facebook protest group that gained 121,000 members in just a few days), facebook have returned to their old terms of use.

So (at least for now), the company’s right to your original content expires when you delete your account.

“I believe we’ll have more velvet-rope social networks in 2009 where the tools and the goals match verticals of interest instead of the general commons of Facebook.”
                               - Chris Brogan, Social Media Predictions 2009.

Is the demise of ‘come one, come all’ social networking websites for the ‘average Joe’ upon us? Chris Brogan predicts that 2009 will see an increase in ‘velvet-rope’ social networks, which give like-minded people the opportunity to collaborate online. These sites are already popping up left, right, and centre on the web – and naturally they vary considerably in terms of the purpose they intend to serve and the users they want to attract.

Whereas social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook can be accessed by anyone, new-wave exclusive social networking websites such as Diamond Lounge and Squa.re. involve a rigorous application process or ‘invite only’ registration designed to attract wealthy elitists. One of the most well-known sites guilty of this is ASmallWorld - a social networking website set up in 2004 for digital A-listers dubbed ‘MySpace for millionaires’ by the Wall Street Journal – a good sum-up in my opinion!

Such sites have opened up a world of opportunity for brands to reach their target audiences. For example, designer clothing brand Diesel sponsored ModelsHotel (a private social network for professional models described as a ‘digital velvet-rope’) and offered free products to its users so they could be seen ‘out and about’ endorsing the brand. Brands have done this sort of thing for years – offering free products at events and awards ceremonies etc., however these exclusive social networking websites have changed the way in which they are able to do this.

Other social networking sites filter their user base through specific criteria in an attempt to collaborate professionals with common industry and business interests. An example of this is Sermo - a social networking website that brings American physicians together to share insight and opinion, and to generate discussion around topical industry issues.

Last month, The Labour Party launched its very own social networking website as part of its general election preparations (potentially happening this year). Labourspace can be accessed by anyone, and encourages people to post their own campaigns and generate supporters by telling their friends.  According to the website “If you start a campaign which gains the most popular support your ideas will be bought to the attention of senior Labour politicians - your campaign could give you the opportunity to change the world!”.  It’s an interesting concept and I’m interested to see if it helps engage more people with politics and the level of influence it will have.

Either way it’s a clever tactic by Labour, opening up two-way debate, interaction and engagement with the party – not to mention the database possibilities.

At OnVisible, we’re scoping out the potential of micro networks for a number of clients, in many ways the benefits are obvious – the ability to bring like-minded people/stakeholders together regardless of geography, to facilitate debate, interaction and early engagement – but it’s important to establish whether there’s a real need and to ensure we’re not reinventing the wheel when there are scores of networks out there already that you can tap into and benefit from.

There are several network-building tools (Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine) to help kick start a customisable social networking website for whatever purpose. Whether it is a virtual space for individuals to meet and converse with neighbours, for marketers to interact with consumers, or for businesses to share insight and knowledge with other organisations - the opportunities are endless. 

One we’ll be watching.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

There’s a massive array of social media tools and networks out there and it seems to me that there’s also a perceived pressure among digital natives to be actively involved in all of them.

But perhaps we are starting to enter an age of more Discerning Social Networking.  Which means not only sharing our lives and interacting only with the groups we really care about, but using and integrating only the social networking tools that really work for us.

For example, I tried out Twitter 18 months ago but at the time it didn’t really do much for me.  So although I still keep my eye on a few Twitterers via RSS feeds, I’ve deleted my account.  I have profiles on facebook and LinkedIn with links to my personal blog, but I’m not on myspace or bebo.  I use flickr, but mostly via a feed into my blog’s sidebar as well as using RSS to view my friend’s latest pics. 

In short, I’m choosing to use the tools that work for me and interacting with them in whichever way suits my needs best.  Maybe the ways in which we chose to interact with social networking sites will become as important as the actual social interactions which happen via them? 

posted by gemmaT

One of the Swampies emailed me about my post on spring cleaning in social media, commenting that it had made her think about how the whole concept of privacy is actually becoming outdated.  She reasoned that if privacy is being replaced by a more open, online society happily broadcasting their lives via flickring, facebooking and twittering, the politicians of the future will be digital natives, used to both sharing and seeing outrageous content online.  Which might make the tabloid ‘splash’ a mere footnote in history in a more permissive online society.

But perhaps the tabloid press will be fondly viewed as pussycats compared with the cumulative tiger power of bloggers and citizen journalists (digital natives themselves), unhindered by the laws of libel and with cameraphone always at the ready.  With information (however true it might be) able to be disseminated across the globe in minutes via an electronic version of chinese whispers, the potential for inaccurate or sensational reporting is immense.  And unlike traditional newspapers, today’s blog post isn’t going to be out of mind by tomorrow as fish and chip wrapping.

So not just individuals but brands too are going to need someone to watch out for their digital reputation.  Someone to watch their digital back.  Someone like us.  : -)

posted by gemmaT