Plan to communicate in 2009 and beyond

2 juillet 2009 · Classé sous Com, marketing, social media, web · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Obviously, Twitter and social media monopolize communication blog posts these days…

imedia_connectionLately, three posts about communication planning and strategy caught my eye. They were all dealing, in some ways, with the Twitter effect on marketing and communication.

First, Sean Cheyney writes about The 5 newest interactive trends: How will they affect you? and explains how Twitter can be really interesting to do some branding. He also deals with how social media affects organizations’ communication reminding us about Domino’s Pizza late case.

Then, Evan Gerber wonders How to succeed across the social media spectrum…  He warns marketers and communicators about the fact that using social media to communicate is not as easy at it seems… Failures can do a lot of harm as they keep bouncing back to you on the web for years afterwards…  He highlights the three following points :

  • Pick channels with built-in controls and monitor your message to see where it goes
  • Create messages that can be easily shared or retweeted, ensuring consistency
  • Smaller, dedicated social nets can be used to test marketing messages

To complete this overview, you may find interesting to read about communication planning mistakes : 6 stupid media planning mistakes
By Jim Meskauskas. This post gives a good reminder of some basic principles of planning and communication strategy. In that respect, I find the following quote relevant about social media :

When putting together a media or marketing plan, be sure you’ve enabled the audience speak and that you are equipped to hear. But also differentiate your placements accordingly. Some should be for talking, others for listening. Not all media vehicles or the environments within them are suited for each — some are suited for both. For example, search or a resource tool is for talking; social networking sites are a great place for listening; a blog can be good for both. But the creative brought to bear will tease out which can be used for what. Few media plans are so huge that you can’t determine which is which in time for a plan’s launch.

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Future of social networking

19 juin 2009 · Classé sous Com, marketing, social media, web · Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

future_soc_netIn the direct line of the two previous articles about twitter, Francis Bélime’s latest post drew my attention to a great presentation about the future of social networks by  Charlene Li.

Among the many different observations in her presentations, she mentions the problem of dealing with mulitple identities and identifies the need for a plateform grouping all information coming from social network. In the comments, the following questions (and Li’s answer) deserve attention : how is “social data” backed-up ? and who’s the owner of such information ?

To follow-up on twitter and the future of social networks, here are a few other posts worth reading :

And on social networks :

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Gender issues on Twitter?

11 juin 2009 · Classé sous Com, marketing, social media, web · Tagged , , ,

harvardFollowing my previous post about Twitter, I read a report on a Harvard study about how and why people use Twitter.

The findings were surprising, as the survey’s authors put it…

It seems that there are some kind of gender issue in the way that men who twit have generally more followers than women. Here are the main conclusions of this survey :

  • Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women
  • They found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman
  • On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women – men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know
  • Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days
  • the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets

One thing is sure for me… I do not understand more why people twit after that… I just realize that a lot of people probably tried it and … left it.

As the authors write it in the introduction of their post :

Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter’s purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing tool?

More to read about the Twitter phenomenon :

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Will twitter change anything :-)?

8 juin 2009 · Classé sous Com, social media, web · Tagged , , , , ,

twitterBy some coincidence, two articles or posts about Twitter crossed my digital sphere at almost the same moment… A few (geek) friends have tried to convince me that this will / would change my life… or at least the way I see it… I must say that I haven’t been convinced yet!

In time magazine, the cover story is about how twitter will change our lives… and the author, Steven Johnson, is convinced that this new way of communication brings us back to the essential… 140 characters-updates about the substance of your life for your followers… Althought he was skeptical at first, he seems to have changed his mind about this way of creating “ambiant awareness” of what’s happening in your network. The fact is, we cannot just simply ignore the millions of people twitting every day… They must find something (essential?) to it!

In February, Julian Dibbell asked almost the same question in Wired magazine… and wondering what Twitter users find in such a media that doesn’t already exists in SMS, blogs, chat…

Identifying Twitter’s comparative advantage, in other words — the compelling, real-world need that it alone among social media best fulfills — is hard. So hard that a recent blog post by legendary web-tech guru (and avid twitterer) Dave Winer all but conceded Twitter’s core appeal might remain forever shrouded in the ineffable. “There’s something there,” wrote Winer. “The challenge is to figure out what it is.”

[...] And just so, too, by forcing users to commit their thinking to the bite-size form of the public tweet, Twitter may be giving a powerfully productive new life to a hitherto underexploited quantum of thought: The random, fleeting observation.

Well, to say it frankly, millions of people use it and nobody knows why :-) … I hope Twitter users … THEY know! Personally, I still have some trouble to consider adding an important amount of staff to read… when I don’t even have time to read throughout ONE Time magazine every week :-(

But… oh, well… I’ll probably end up twittering in a few months… the same way I said I’d never blog…

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Multitâches – multiécrans

29 mai 2009 · Classé sous Com, enseignement, social media, teaching, web · Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Dans son article très fouillé du 26 mai dernier, Hubert Guillaud se demande si nous sommes multitâches. Il fait notamment référence aux étudiants en salle de cours qui sont capable de jongler entre l’activité “humaine” dans la classe, animée par le professeur, et l’activité parfois intrusive des écrans qu’ils ont à disposition (téléphone portable, écran d’ordinateur, …).

class_mobileSi la sollicitation de l’extérieure de la classe a toujours attiré les étudiants plus ou moins motivé par un cours (ne me parlez pas du vendredi après-midi ensoleillé… à 4h30, dernier cours de l’après-midi ! Celui-ci a souvent été le plus dur à suivre… et à donner !), je m’aperçois également, comme Hubert Guillaud, que nous avons gagné en compétences multitâches avec les nombreux objets interactifs qui nous environnent. D’aucun arrive à mener une conversation téléphonique en répondant à un SMS et consultant leur mail en direct sur l’écran de leur PC… (si, si, j’y arrive aussi parfois, lorsque mon interlocuteur s’écoute parler :-).

Si cette compétence multitâches était traditionnellement réservée aux femmes, il me semble que même les hommes, quand ça les arrangent, en sont capables. Nous n’avons pas trop le choix, sollicité que nous sommes au quotidien.

Ainsi, je pense qu’en matière de communication, que cela soit dans la classe ou plus largement face à n’importe quel public, il convient de se rappeler que nous n’avons que quelques secondes pour tenter d’attirer l’attention et faire passer un message. Beau défi mais au combien difficile à relever lorsque le message doit faire passer des choses complexes.

Bonne lecture !

Pour aller plus loin :

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Social network marketing

11 mai 2009 · Classé sous marketing, social media, web · Tagged , , , , , ,

imedia_connectionIn his post on May 7th Tom Hespos reminds us how social network naturally build themselves around social influencers. For example, I know that, lately, I’ve been relying on my friends’ opinion and advice before buying a new CD or going to watch a movie… like many others…

The biggest challenge for a communicator or a marketer is then to reach those influencers where they are… within their network, in order to reach the whole network…

Well, well… it is not as easy at it seems… right !?

In that perspective Denise Zimmerman’s post, published a day before, cannot be ignored. 4 signs you’re a social media failure decribes how marketing in the world of social networks can be difficult. Examples of great companies which failed to reach their marketing goals through social media advertising or branding are here to remind us how important it is to “Plan for success, prepare for failure“, as Denise Zimmermann puts it.

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Web 2.0 basics and transition

30 avril 2009 · Classé sous Com, corportate blog, web · Tagged , , , , , , ,

After a few articles about communication campaigns around teaching jobs, I come back here with one of the theme I have been blogging quite a lot in the beginning of the year : corporate blogging and podcasting.

  • corp_blog_guideHere is a very comprehensive document giving the basics about corporate blogging and this will definitely be very useful to start blogging in organizations … like mine ;-)
  • You could also add the following step by step guide about podcasting which will give you a good view of podcast production (plan, produce, publish, promote your podcast).

Then, generally about web 2.0, on ReadWriteWeb Bernard Lunn wrote an interesting article called “mapping the current web transition” which puts the current evolution of the Internet in a historical perspective. It seems we are now deeply merged into web 2.5… a transition between “old” web 2.0 and web 3.0…

Take time to read this article’s comments… they are real adds-on to the reflection about web 3.0 … 4.0…. and more…

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