The Web Pitch

After two months of promise and hype, Apple will finally ship its iPad tablet in the US in early April, and to other markets shortly afterwards. Apple’s new device hopes to make the consumption of digital media easier. The iPad is able to browse the web without the need for a keyboard or mouse. Movies and music can both seen and heard on the device. Even eBooks can be purchased from Apple’s new iBooks store. Marvellous.

However, from watching the video above, are consumers really willing to pay for online news and entertainment, that they currently get for free on the web today?

Nielsen recently asked more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries, and the answer was ‘maybe.’ 85% of surveyed people prefer free content to remain free. However, participants did report, that many would consider paying for certain categories of digital content.

Looking at Nielson’s graph below, consumers are most likely to pay for movies, music, games and current TV shows. This is good news for Apple and other developers of Tablet devices. In contrast, consumers are least likely to pay for ‘user generated content’ such as podcasts and consumer generated videos and blogs.

The success of the Apple’s iPad, will likely depend on whether everyday consumers are happy to trade in their existing books, magazines and newspapers for digital equivalents. These items have become somewhat of a commodity, and many people are happy to access content from a variety of online sources for example, Google News for free. However, Rupert’s Murdoch’s News Corporation, will soon charge for online newspaper content, ending the “free online news” culture that many observe on the web today. This will likely have a big impact on Google News, which currently aggregates free news content from Murdoch’s news empire.

It is interesting to note from Nielson’s research, that there is indeed a place for “paid digital content.” However, the content will need to be of a sufficient standard before consumers are willing to hand over their hard earned cash.

• 78% of participants felt that if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or TV service, they should be able to access the online version for free.
• 79% of participants stated that they would stop using a website, if it started levying charges to access content online.
• 62% of participants stated that they should have “full control” over their purchased content. In other words, they want to be able to copy and share it with their friends and family. 

2010 will indeed be an interesting year for hardware devices and the content that powers them. Whether consumers are willing to ditch their newspapers and magazines for their digital counterparts, and pay for news content is still yet to be seen.  Newspapers and books are cheap, portable and don’t require batteries to power them. The same can’t be said about tablet devices! Also, I wonder how many people will actually travel around with these devices? I suspect many will end up living at home.

Will you be getting a tablet device this year?

You can read Nielson’s full report below

Nielson – Paid Online Content –

A very tongue and cheek response to last year’s Socialnomics video. Very amusing!

The growing list of online social media sites makes choosing the right channel complicated. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn and beyond, which social media outposts will net the most bang for the buck in terms of customer communication, brand exposure, traffic, and SEO?

The CMO’s Guide To The Social Media Landscape is a great guide to print and pin up! It helps to identify the right channels to use. Great work!

A CMO’s Guide To The Social Media Landscape –

I love this presentation from Barbra Gago. A timely reminder on why creating good content truly matters. The presentation looks at how it can be shared with your customers, how it adds value, and some main do’s & don’ts to think about. Genius.

One of the challenging areas of social media is understanding how “social tools” can be effectively used within the business. Today, companies such as Dell have made Twitter a core part of their toolset, not only in providing brand awareness, but also a key revenue generator for the company. However, how will social tools evolve in the future? What will these tools look like within five years? Should organisations invest time now in social media adoption, or simply ignore as it as a passing fad?

Gartner, released their social media predictions for 2010 and their insights provide an interesting vision, on how social tools may interact with the way employees choose to work in the future.

Here are Gartner’s five best practice predictions for social software:

1. By 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.

3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.

4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modelled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.

5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilise social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

Social networking replacing email within four years sounds outrageous! But how many organisations are ready to embrace social technologies within the Enterprise? Technology is one thing, but certain members of staff will also need training to get them up to speed. “Digital natives” who enter the workforce may indeed be the ones that push companies to adopt social tools beyond the firewall.

Microblogging applications such as Twitter are being used more and by companies all over the web. However, to address privacy issues, start-ups such as Yammer have produced Twitter clones that are able to broadcast updates that can only be seen within the organisation. Gartner certainly sees this trend taking off yet further.

70% of IT-dominated social media initiatives may indeed fail. Why? Because many IT departments have traditionally failed to understand the needs of the business. Typically, they have built vast networks that are locked down. For social tool adoption to succeed, these big structures will need to be redesigned. A job easier said than done!

Smartphones are becoming more and powerful. But also the User Interface (UI) is becoming easier to use too. Widgets and small apps, now replace complex programs and connect to a variety of cloud based services. People are not only social, data is also going that way too.

Changing existing IT policies, educating the workforce and allowing the use of social tools within the Enterprise takes time. There is no silver bullet for deployment and effective use. However, early adopters are likely to see increased collaboration and agile working practices. Whereas, in some sectors such as regulatory bodies, the changes will be less profound.

But what do you think? As social tools open up and evolve, will we one day replace corporate mail with Facebook Mail?

You can read Gartner’s full press release here.

Are you looking for a great way to raise your profile or that of your business? Well, LinkedIn offers a great way to share your business experience in a more professional way. If you’ve never used LinkedIn, but have heard of others using it and aren’t sure what it is, Common Craft’s excellent video will provide a great overview.

Inspired? Excellent! I have been using LinkedIn for many years and have found it to be an excellent tool. It can help you build your professional network and market your services.  If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, don’t worry. I’ve included a LinkedIn starter guide to help you begin. Take a look below:

Microsoft’s Mel Carson and all round good guy, has released an excellent Social Media White Paper this week.

Mel works within Microsoft’s Advertising Community Team, which has been engaging with online advertisers through social media since 2006. The document entitled, “Learn and Earn” tells the story of how the Advertising team embraced social media to connect with the advertising community. Well worth reading.

During my time at Microsoft, I modelled the MVP Award Program Facebook Fan Page on the Microsoft Advertising Fan Page! So thank you Mel and team for the inspiration!

Read the document in full below.

Learn and Earn – Social Media White Paper – Microsoft Advertising –

Welcome to Social Media Week! This week, conferences are taking place simultaneously in New York City, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paulo. The overall goal of Social Media Week is to advance the use and understanding of social media and the impact it has on culture, business communications and society. Also, it is a great opportunity to meet other bloggers, tweeters and thought leaders in the social media space.

I attended a talk entitled “Social Media in the Enterprise” at Cass Business School earlier this week. Each speaker had 10 minutes to present their thoughts to the assembled collective of approximately 40 people. The remainder of this post are the notes I made from listening to each of the speakers. I hope you find it interesting.

Alan Patrick from Broadsight, kicked off the event with the challenges social media faces when looked upon by Enterprise. He looked at three areas where it can present a Return On Investment. These include:

• Innovation (Crowd sourcing and buzz catching)
• Operational Value (Sales, and reducing operating costs)
• Speed to Respond (Business agility, JIT and the speed to react to market changes)

Alan’s presentation can be seen below:

Umair Haque presented an enlightening talk on how organisations can be improved. He argued that today’s Enterprises are built around an outdated structure of rigid hierarchies – this structure is no longer efficient. Creativity is stunted and thus these organisations can be termed “Peak Organisations.”  A new dynamic structure could be the answer. Today’s social media tools allow the most skilled individuals to lead, not just the the hierarchal manager. Gifted leaders emerge organically. Therefore, do we need leadership at all? Social tools allow us to connect to people with the knowledge to help us make decisions that maximise value

Benjamin Ellis’s talk focused on how people are the key component in business. However, most Enterprises are scared of going social. (They associate social as a term relating to a “lack of control.” They prefer using email, as it is the quickest method to get your point across in the shortest time. He went on to state that businesses also spend a lot of time examining ROI. However, in the businesses that Benjamin has worked with, ROI actually meant Randomly Oriented Integers! .   Social Media, (if not used with caution) can cause more problems than solve answers. Knowledge and access to information could be withheld. For social media to succeed, the tools have to be simpler than using email.

Mat Morrison delivered a presentation detailing the research that he has carried out within organisations. An interesting insight from his research showed that, if an organisation grows organically, a few people within the company are actually the most connected to other parts of the organisation. If they are removed, the network fails. Therefore, some level of design planning is required to ensure that everyone within the network is “properly” connected to everyone else. Therefore, if some people are removed, the rest of the network does not suffer. Mat also juxtaposed market norms versus social norms. Employee social capital is good for the business, especially if they tweet about the company and products. However, it is difficult to account for all the positive benefits that it can bring to the balance sheet.

Mat’s presentation can be seen below:

Dr Sue Black described her live case study on how she used social media to raise awareness and funding to save Bletchley Park. Since the war, the historic site has fallen into disrepair. Through an adhoc Twitter campaign, Sue managed to get support from London Twitter users to raise awareness. Twitter also proved to be a disintermediary.  She managed to reach out to Stephen Fry, without the need to go through PR agents or other traditional “blockers”. Fry, visited Bletchley Park and used his public image to further spread the message. Sue’s (part time) campaigning, saw her blog traffic jump to over 8,000 visitors! Her success was due to her passion, and her ability to use Twitter to find and connect with people who were equally likeminded about the cause, and were able to help.

Flickr Credit: Benjamin Ellis  Dr Black and I talk to J G Rae at the event

Adriana Lukas’s talk looked at how social media can act as catalyst for business. However, she pointed out that transforming companies from within is going to be difficult. Not everyone is convinced at how social tools can help the business. Some departments may not understand them and therefore may support the use of them. Thus, she suggested it may be an idea to deploy the use of social media tools secretly and completely independent of the IT department as a “skunkworks” project. Build a successful pilot, before proving the worth of it to others in the business. (This scares me). The idea here is that the creativity and “openess” that social media brings, does  not affect existing business processes.  A classic line from her presentation read “Wave good-bye to business cases, say hello to case studies.” Those who want to change are not the ones building the barricades!”

Finally, David Terrar presented an opposing view to Adriana’s talk. Rather than deploy an “under the radar” approach. David, discussed that the way forward was to get management buy-in, before deploying social tools. His overarching point, social tools MUST work together with existing business processes. Over time, the social tools will help to modify existing business processes as their value is demonstrated. He went on to show examples of how social tools have been successfully applied to large businesses such as Cisco, Swiss Re, and ICAEW. 

Overall, it was a very stimulating evening of discussion surrounding Social Media, and how people view it both internally and externally to the Enterprise.

A big thanks to all of the speakers and especially Alan and Patrick for putting on the event.

Andy Serovitz posted a very interesting blog post on how Coca Cola have devised a new set of social media principles. Coke have developed 10 “Principles for Online Spokespeople” which make good sense for other brands to follow.  You can read the main set below.

1. Be Certified in the [Coca Cola] Social Media Certification Program.
2. Follow our Code of Business Conduct and all other Company policies.
3. Be mindful that you are representing the Company.
4. Fully disclose your affiliation with the Company.
5. Keep records.
6. When in doubt, do not post.
7. Give credit where credit is due and don’t violate others’ rights.
8. Be responsible to your work.
9. Remember that your local posts can have global significance.
10. Know that the Internet is permanent.

Watch Andy’s interview with Coca Cola’s Adam Brown, on how they developed the social media principles.

Coke’s complete policy document can be found below. At three pages, I like this a lot!

Coca Cola’s Online Social Media Principles –

Trendsspotting posted their annual Social Media Trends Predictions earlier this week. Predicting trends is a dangerous business especially in Social Media. However, the slide deck does offer some very interesting insights from a variety of social media commentators. I have included some of the ones that I found interesting in this post.

Across many of the predictions, Trendsspotting identified the following trends that are “suggested” to influence Social Media in 2010: Mobile, Location, Transparency, Measurement, ROI, Privacy. Though, you could argue that these same trends were visible in 2009.

Pete Cashmore from Mashable predicts:

Fuelled by the ubiquity of GPS in modern smartphones – location sharing services

Geo location of our "social movements" – Twitter, Facebook, blog comment, videos that we post.

Augmented Ready – cool technology, but will it be useful?

Social gaming and virtual currencies  – Will big players seize the mobile payment opportunity?

Expect personal privacy – or rather its continued erosion to be big in 2010

David Armano – Blogger Logic and Emotion predicts:

Social media begins to look less social… more "exclusive"  – getting value, while filtering out the clutter.

Firms will look to scale and uncover cost savings by leveraging social media e.g.  Best Buy’s Twelpforce

Firms will have a social media policy  – social media to social business

Mobile becomes a social media lifeline

Sharing no longer means email – content producers will use other means to distribute their content e.g. iPhone and Android apps.

Marta Kagan – Managing Director, US Espresso Brand Infiltration predicts:

Real-time reviews will scare the pants off many a brand & foster a new ‘radical-beta’ mindset.

Tracking & Alerting" become the new searching.

Business finally admits that social media ain’t some fad for kids and B-list movie stars.

Dan Zarrella – Social & Viral Marketing Scientist Hubspot predicts:

With augmented reality and mobile social media, the real world will be important again.

Micro targeting and personalization – business will begin to leverage the wealth of data we share about ourselves to deliver individualised messages.

 

2010 will certainly bring in new applications and services, though whether they will “push the envelope” of brand engagement will yet to be seen.