The automotive industry is not only a key sector for our business but also a personal passion of mine. Over the last six months, I have seen a few changes and many developments on how dealer groups use social media to engage with their customers and community. Here are some of these gathered insights and some personal predictions on how 2012 will turn out for automotive dealerships. Back in early 2011, when I first started speaking to automotive dealers, I discovered that most of them had just one main Facebook page and/or one Twitter account for the entire dealer group. As a consumer myself, this approach struck me as fairly useless for both dealerships and clients. Why would you want to be a fan or follower of the main dealer group, when the local dealer is where you actually buy the ca

  As you know, I'm a BIG fan of social media. I work with it, I play with it, I love it and I believe the possibilities within the entertainment industry for creative promotion are endless. Channels including Facebook, Twitter & Instagram can open up the entertainment industry giving us, the audience, more touch points and chances to engage that ever before. I like to imagine that in the future  (if its not already happening) studios and writers will get involved to provide back stories or other hidden gems that enhance their stories right from the start of the creative process. Twitter is already being used for movie promotion. Recently I shared some of my thoughts on this with E-Consultancy's David Moth as he wrote a post in response to Kermit taking over Disne

  Social media metrics are vital for all marketers interested in optimizing their brand’s social media strategy, and nobody knows that better than Facebook. The social media giant recently updated its insight platform in order to make it as effective and precise as possible. Some of the metrics we were used with have been removed, and some new ones were introduced. On the 15th of February 2012, the data for the removed metrics has been permanently deleted. We want to keep you in the loop when it comes to Facebook insight data, so we asked our Facebook engineer Alex Gociu to listed and explained the changes: Demographics While the ‘active users’ were all the users who viewed or clicked on any content on your brand’s page, the new metrics introduced the ‘storyteller

  Local councils are no longer strangers to social media. During the last years, most of them gained a clear understanding of its communication and cost-saving benefits. Councils are now actively using social networks and, as many case studies show, the sky’s the limit. So what is the next step? After starting on social media, organisations need to identify how social networking formally fits into the organisational structure. Based on extended research, Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group created a framework containing five structural models of how organisations can integrate social media. Although based on commercial organisations, I believe these models also offer good starting points for local government structures. Below are the five models (taken from Owyang's articl

  The additional security issues faced by the Police service in 2012 were among the most discussed topics at the APComm  conference we took part in November 2011. Commenting on the estimated intelligence increase of 400% during the 2012 Olympics, one Head of Police Intelligence said they were already overwhelmed by the amount of data available online. So are you swimming, treading water or drowning in a sea of data? Police forces aren't the only ones facing the informational flood.  In a recent IBM study of 1,700 Chief Marketing Officers worldwide, 71% stated that top of their concerns was the data explosion... and they were unprepared for it. The 2012 Olympics are expected to be a full-fledged social media event the likes of which the world has never seen before. During

Twitter’s partnership with DataSift has stirred lots of discussion in the online space. While a lot of these conversations focus on privacy issues, the partnership also  highlights how companies are changing their relationship with Social Media. Businesses are now paying serious attention to social media insight and intelligence gathering. Ryan Saver, the Director of Platform for Twitter declared that ‘the market for insights into Twitter’s real-time data is growing and producing thriving businesses’.  Organisations have passed the first stage of social media adoption, where its main benefits could be seen in marketing communications departments. Now, they are also looking into how social media insights can trigger innovation in customer service, recruiting or fund raising.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first blogger to observe there’s recently been a lot of interest in Pinterest. This is the new buzzword in social media and those of you working with us know we try to innovate and build new social media sites into our product as soon as possible. Just as we did within a few days of the G+ launch, we recommend that even if you’re not exploring Pinterest yet, it is still important to understand your audience on Pinterest and how your brand is being mentioned. That’s why you can now monitor your brand mentions on Pinterest using our buzz monitor search. So what do you need to know for you and your brand? In the words of Pinterest, ‘Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that lets you organise and share all the beautiful things you find on the web’.

Great opportunities to tell great stories Over the past few weeks, I've read a lot of responses to Facebook’s announced rolling of Timeline for brand pages on the 30th of March.   While most are quite enthusiastic, others are predicting the beginning of the end for Facebook -and for civilisation as we know it. Personally, I think this is the next step for brands to become closer and more relevant to their fans.  Intelligent use of cover photos, the ability to pin posts and to create a story about the company is a great opportunity for any brand to breathe life into its Facebook identity. Time to illustrate  The timeline feature allows brands to go back to their ‘birth’ and fill in company milestones - awards, news, and product launches etc.  AGA Rangemaster –one of

Social media has been embraced by communications teams as a way of building two-way relationships with organisations’ audiences. Listening to what is being said and sending out status updates is the output you, me and the rest of the world see, but in order to achieve long-term success social media must be embedded much deeper into  management structures. I discussed this topic with executive managers and CMOs from many organisations that are successful in social engagement. Based on their insights, I drafted a 6 pillar model of social media management: Strategy provides the overall direction of what social media can achieve for the organisation- it needs to be led from the top and involve the whole organisation Processes enable teams to collaborate with defined roles and r

  The use of Social Media (SM) in the educational setting is on the increase and will only become more popular in the near future.  Although most university representatives agree that social media is a great resource to engage with the student community, few of them readily acknowledge the risks associated with it.  As higher education institutions (HEIs) increase their social media usage, will they be able to effectively keep track of their SM assets? As an ex-lecturer from the HE sector now working in social media, I was interested in digging a little deeper on how SM is being used and managed within UK universities.  My initial conversations with around 40 university representatives (Marketing directors, External Affairs Officers, IT Manager, etc.) provided some interestin

  In our day and age, an organisation which isn’t ‘social’ is the equivalent of a white tiger: extremely rare and critically endangered. Mostly prodded by their ‘social’ audiences and stakeholders, companies have adopted social media and are now reaping its benefits. Social media engagement cannot be avoided, but companies should be aware that it can also cause major losses to companies.  Symantec’s 2011 Social Media Protection Flash Poll proves this point without any doubt. The research surveyed 1225 big enterprises (over 1000 employees) worldwide. Findings showed how pervasive social media risks have become:  94% of respondents experienced negative consequences related to social media. In one year the typical company suffered an average of 9 social media incid

Yet another social media sports scandal was recently sparked by Connor Brown’s  Twitter outburst. As the subject received vast media coverage and is trending on social media, Sheffield United’s reputation comes under threat. Social media gives sportsmen the chance to use their own words and to talk about their off-the-field interests. An Athlete’s social media popularity enhances both their own individual brand image and that of the club. Wayne Rooney has 3,926,302 followers on Twitter, his tweets ranging from his play and the latest football news to his food preferences. Although his profile doesn’t show the club logo anymore, his followers are primarily Manchester United supporters. Social media can bring huge PR benefits to sports clubs and it is no wonder that a club

  Social media started as a marketing tool, but where will it end up? In most organisations, the first people who picked up on social media were in marketing teams. Why? Besides marketing types’ general tendency to keep up to date with all that is cool and hype, they spotted social media as a way to push out good content and engage with eager audiences for very little additional costs. Since then, in many organisations responsibility for social media remained with the marketing team, which means that messages are well-crafted, thought through and aimed to please the recipient. But as the social audience matured, they started to identify how they wanted to use social media for their own purposes. The public now knows that someone in the organisation is listening, so many

  When we started building corporate social media management software, the perils of social media were almost unknown to most organisation decision makers. Two years later, directors are slowly getting their heads around the internal and external social media risks and their potential impact on the organisation. Given the numerous social media disaster stories circulated over the news, this lag in grasping the social media perils might seem surprising. What prompted attention towards these issues? While in the beginning social media was seen as solely the responsibility of marketing and customer services departments, IT is now getting involved. IT departments know a lot more about internet safety, and as they become aware of inter-departmental sharing of social media usernames a

Trolling and racial slurs on social media are becoming everyday occurrences. Many people seem to believe that behaviour deemed unacceptable in any other situation is perfectly fine when it takes place on social media.  Unfortunately, catching the culprits who hide behind the anonymity of online profiles is very difficult, as the recent case of Nicola Brookes has shown. But as police forces are becoming adept at using social media, the situation is taking a turn for the better. The reaction of West Midlands Police to the racist tweets that followed the England – Italy match is a great example of the improvement. In the aftermath of the game, some fans took to Twitter to vent their frustration and issued racial insults at players Ashley Young and Ashley Cole. West Midlands Police p

When it comes to data and information protection risks and compliance, companies still have a long way to go. This seems to be the main conclusion of recent research studies across Europe and the US. But will organisations adapt fast enough to face the growing number of  threats, such as the ones coming from social media? In March, PWC and Iron Mountain published the conclusions of their first European Risk Maturity Index. It was the result of a survey of 600 mid-sized companies (250 to 2500 employees) in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Hungary. The index is based on a weighted risk maturity excellence model comprising four separate elements: strategy, people, communications and security. Scores in each of these areas are applied to individual companies, with a s

Local Government can’t afford human errors on social media. But can they avoid it? We think so. One of the most frequent causes of social media scandals is related to representatives of an organisation tweeting or posting out inappropriate content form the organisation’s social media accounts. When this type of misstep happens to a government organisation, besides embarrassment and loss of prestige it also generates tedious internal investigations. On the 7th of July – a Saturday evening, from the official Walsall Council Twitter feed a tweet mocking Education Minister Michael Gove was sent. It linked to an image of ventriloquist Ray Alan's dummy known as 'Lord Charles'. The first Twitter statement from Walsall Council came a few hours later: their account had been  h

Social media’s impact on the bottom line has convinced managers it needs to be integrated in the organisation’s business strategy. While this integration usually focuses on the upside of social media, how about trying to assess what could go wrong? Recent events in Australia might soon force managers all over the world to take notice. The risk register is an organisation’s way of identifying and documenting the potential risks that cover all areas of the organisation that have the potential to: Cause injury or ill health to individuals Result in civil claims or litigation Result in enforcement action Cause damage to the environment Cause property damage/loss Result in operational delays Result in the loss of reputation Social media can cause both loss of rep

During the past three years, I saw social media usage spread across organisations of all types and sizes. From corporate giants and start-ups to police forces and local councils, each sector found its own uses for social media in areas such as marketing, customer service, intelligence gathering or product development. As the social media immersion is led by the younger members of society, there is no surprise that education institutions were among the first to jump in. Craig Russel from The University of Leicester recently published on his blog a comprehensive dataset of UK university social media accounts. His first conclusions on the data are as follows: “Most universities only operate in two, three or four social media communities. I expect that the reasons for this are mainly down t

By Carl Sautereau, Head of Customer Engagement, Luminar Most companies in the leisure industry have Twitter or Facebook accounts, but many don’t actively manage or monitor them, believing that having a presence on a social media platform is sufficient to be called a strategy. It isn’t. Not just because they are missing out on the opportunity of attracting and retaining customers, but because a poor social media strategy can lead to disaster for a company’s brand – worse in fact than not having a social media presence at all. Some companies choose to control all of their social media activity from a central marketing department. If you pursue this strategy, you have far greater reach per post than if your social networking activity is split into smaller groups or regions.

Protecting its reputation is core to Experian’s business. With the growth in social media, it has had to balance the desire to embrace the latest communications technologies with the need to limit any potential risk to its reputation through ill-thought-out posts or, worse, deliberate sabotage. “With social media, the biggest problem is loss of central oversight,” admits Caroline Bromley, Security specialist at Experian, “We wanted named individuals to take ownership of each account, as this offers the twin advantages of every account keeping its specific business focus, as well as helping us with accountability. But with a lot of people authorised to manage social media accounts on Experian’s behalf, the danger of potentially harmful posts increases, and the more robust the a

The HMV live blogging about employees being given the sack has highlighted some major issues and for the first time has shown the deficiencies in how organisations manage and control their social media activity. It was obvious that senior management did not have any idea how powerful the backlash on social media would be from their own employees. The majority of organisations limit their social media management to either manual searching for mentions of their name or having a listening tool to automate this process, but this only covers the external risks of social media. Even this is often unstructured and poorly managed. It is the internal risks that have been highlighted in this case. The internal risks of social media are clearly not understood by either the senior marketing team