The link between social media, crowdsourcing, creating targeted audiences, generating buzz, and greater online distribution of media assets is beginning to transform the PR and Media Relations industry. While this has been in a growth mode in the US, its rare to see it being acted upon in Europe.

Yesterday, Usain Bolt the fastest man in the world, took part in a charity event on the organised by watchmaking brand Hublot, for whom he is an ambassador. He was on the starting line in front of the Hublot’s Headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland pitting himself against 10 child athletes. Hublot had agreed to donate 10,000 US dollars for each child who reached the finish line before “Lightning Bolt”, and ended up paying $100,000 USD to the Usain Bolt Foundation. LABEL vigorously supported the event in creating new channels and online communications through social media channels, assisting the WorldTelevision ENG, video streaming and media relations team to further the reach and awareness event.

LABEL spent time ahead of the event researching and connecting with influencers, Usain Bolt fans, track and field bloggers , watch bloggers and developing the links to existing fan groups on Facebook for track and field , Usain Bolt and Hublot.

In support of the live event a rigourous set of twitter streams were targeted at influencers and media so they were aware of the event on a day when three seperate news items involving Usain Bolt were reported in the world’s media. One of the basic stratgeies employed is that of frequency and consistency of messaging in both buildup, during and post period of an event. This prolongs the news and captures a long tail audience who is both interested in Usain Bolt and Hublot, while delivering and distributing a set of compelling media assets. While everybody may not see it on the day or tune into a live event, the residual effects of well executed tagging and referencing  will ensure that search results will give it greater audience overtime.

Check out some of the videos from Usain Bolt’s charity race against 10 children at Hublot’s HQ in Nyon, Switzerland.
The Race - http://ow.ly/27xrY
Event Highlights with Hublot’s Ambassador Usain Bolt  http://ow.ly/27xt6
General views from Usain Bolt’s charity race at Hublot  http://ow.ly/27xub
Usain Bolt interview http://ow.ly/27xvH
Interview with Hublot CEO, Jean-Claude Biver http://ow.ly/27xxh

LABEL has put together a list the top brand and company pages of today, drawn upon a number of research sources to identify the trends and tactics that are driving successful consumer engagement in Facebook. Knowing what works and how to behave in this environment is very important so we present the what and how of managing successful fan, consumer engagement and dialogue that also can be applied across other social media as well.

1. It has a goal – and it accomplishes it.
“Presence” is not just about having a Facebook ( fan )page
# What is the goal of your page? Do you want to bring in more foot traffic to your store front? Do you want more visitors to your website? Do you want to simply get more people to know that you exist? Your goal will determine how you use your fan page. If you’re trying to increase brand awareness, you need a lot of fans and a lot of content. If you’re trying to bring in more foot traffic to a physical location, you need to show lots of pictures of your products and push out information about specials and sales. If you want more website traffic, you need to include links to your site and entice people to click. If its a product or brand promotion page you need to introduce compelling and relevant content about the brand – pictures , videos, experiential or special interest information.

2. Its management combines automation and interaction.
There are lots of great applications that will let you post to your fan page automatically, without ever stepping a digital foot onto Facebook. This allows for content distribution. Administrators don’t want to post a blog, then go to Facebook and post it there, then go to Twitter and post it there, then Youtube etc.

3.Networking with other platforms
As published by Mashable
Building a large following requires a network of other platforms, ( content distributors) working in conjunction to drive visitors to your fan page.

Victoria’s Secrets PINK landing page has a link to their Facebook fan page, MySpace (MySpace) profile. They leverage the traffic on their website and pushes them to their Facebook fan page.

# Never expect your consumers on Facebook to find you automatically. More often than not, a consumer will stumble upon the page, either through a friend or from a hub. Connecting multiple social platforms and a hub from the brand website, can help funnel consumers throughout the network.

4. Creating a unique resource
Adapted from Mashable
Some pages are used as connection hubs, but others offer information pertinent to their consumers. They use the information as added value or can’t be found elsewhere to have consumers create a connection with the brand.
# Offering a resource page often allows a brand to target a new demographic, outside of those that already know and love the brand or company.

5. Engage consumers into activities that include participation
# For brands that want fan pages to have added value (a reason for users to join the page, aside from brand loyalty), but don’t want to become a resource portal; offering polls, promotional contests or even coupons specifically to Facebook users will entice consumers to join.
Offering something to consumers to join can help build a large community. Some examples of things to offer: Polls, Competitions, Coupons, Engaging apps, Shareable content etc.

6. Respond to consumers enquiries by providing a consumer services or social response
# For brands that want fan pages to have added value (a reason for users to join the page, aside from brand loyalty), but don’t want to become a resource portal; offering polls, promotional contests or even coupons specifically to Facebook users will entice consumers to join.

Brand or company responsiveness should be underpinned by services that provides a needs and relationship based response. Facebook, Twitter, social media efforts are defined to the end user as a social place – a place where they expect (and demand) interaction from the business, organisations or brands. That’s why they are on your fan page in the first place.

7. It’s not a dead end. Engage them to do something.
Major brands are beginning to go out on a limb and make social sites their corporate websites # Skittles. Provide a follow through action for the fan (i.e., potential or existing customer) to do something, move onto somewhere, to your store front or your website, traditionally known as a call to action.

Based on your goal in having the fan page, what is the next step you want the fan to take? Be sure to provide the information for taking that step prominently.
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8. It has personality.
The fun of social media is getting to show that your organisation, business, or brand has a human side.
Do not write ad copy. No one wants to read lifeless, monotone sentences.
Think about where you are: Fan page updates are smack in the middle of someone’s news feed. You’re sandwiched between the photos of someone’s family or friends photos and an event invitation to a dinner party.

9. It’s consistent. Content and Consistency
“content is king” and “consistency is king”
In traditional advertising, it’s called frequency.
In branding, it’s called top of mind awareness.
In social media and relationship marketing it’s consistency.
Based on the frequency of communications and compelling content.
# And it is so critical to social media success “ Consistency breeds loyalty, and loyalty breeds true fans.
LABEL recommends a frequency of an update approx * 15 days. (Based on a frequency of update of Facebook’s top performing brand or product pages)

10. It embraces its fans ( those who “Like” it )

“One of the points Mr Zuckerberg was making was that the web has become a lot less anonymous and Facebook is definitely positioning itself as wanting to be the owner of that information,” said Maya Baratz of the Huffington Post. (Given Facebook’s growing and highly influential size the Huffington Post online publication has dedicated a whole section of its site to news surrounding Facebook which you can read by clicking here.)

Zuckerberg told developers at the f8 conference that the experience will mean a more personalized, social, smarter Web. As quoted from an another article on Huffington Post “Facebook is spreading its wings to the broader Web with new tools that will allow users to see personalized versions of websites they visit elsewhere.

The move could change the way people experience the online world, though it could come with deeper privacy implications. By accessing Facebook’s tools, websites will be able to customize the experience based on the list of friends, favorite bands and other things users have shared on their Facebook profiles.

“The Web is at a really important turning point now,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the F8 conference for Web and software developers in San Francisco. “Most things aren’t social and they don’t use your real identity. This is really starting to change.”

In its first steps Facebook has changed the semantics surrounding fans “people who like this” – has replaced the former term of “fans.” Facebook has added these new features to its site,

If you haven’t noticed these changes in the past few days take look.

In conjunction with this step it also launched the concept of what it calls Community pages. The concept of Community pages is to revamp users’ profiles to emphasize the pages for bands, books and businesses that users have become fans of. Facebook has started prompting users to essentially combine the two ( a users “Faned” page , and their profile page ) So if you listed The Clash in the “favorite music” section of your profile, Facebook will now ask you to join his page, if you haven’t become a fan of it already.

Facebook has also announced its working to eliminate the FB Connect ‘brand and replacing it with OAUTH – OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard that allows users to share their private resources (e.g. photos, videos, contact lists) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their username and password.

Its also working on projects such as social plugins whch they call GDP (granular data permissions) and continuing to work on user privacy settings.
Zuckerberg said Facebook made sure that its new tools don’t intrude on their privacy. Users’ preferences won’t be logged unless they choose to press the “like” button on websites. If anything, Zuckerberg expects the “like” tools to give people more control over what they want to share with their online entourages.

If users embrace it, Facebook could gain valuable insights that could help it sell more advertising, potentially rivaling online ad leader Google Inc., which typically tailors ads based on keywords in search terms and Web content.

“If I were Google I would be really scared because Facebook might end up with a lot more intelligence than them,” said Alain Chuard, Founder of social marketing firm Wildfire. “Google is just an algorithm, but Facebook could rule the Web.”

So there’s obviously and lot more planned for the near future as the battle for social dominance increases. I wonder what Google will do now since its Buzz launch looks like a knee jerk re action to Facebook’s growing importance and it incremental loses in market share of audience time and visitation online?

Monkeys with Typewriters – Myths and realities of social media at work.

There seems to be a lot of books that are be published about social media, the new digital marketing paradigm, and they are  propagating as fast that the exponential growth of social media and networking. Most are, unfortunately, the non-descript how to do, or dummies guide to social media or how to use particular tool or a book rushed to print on hype. For the most part these serve their purpose but will be outdated by the time they publish or contain nothing more that are dry set of repetitive studies presented as a mind numbing, blunt string of wide eyed testimonies that say the “times are a changing”.  I must say, save the print and spare me the drudgery please.   Then I also must concede, I am not the target audience or buyer of such books.

Jemima Gibbons recently published book, Monkeys with Typewriters is quite different to those aforementioned book types. Its a new and refreshing read, a sparkling gem in a field of proliferating drudgery of “read this now and it will change your life” books. It also poignantly marks the period we are experiencing.

I must admit I do have a few books about digital convergence, digital economies and communications on my bookshelf . These are time markers that articulate what they see as present behaviours and guide future directions,: Being Digital,  The Cluetrain Manifesto, Convergence Culture, Groundswell, and Secrets Of Social Media Marketing to name them. Monkeys with Typewriters is potentially another time marker, intelligently drawing upon history, the present and piecing together a jigsaw picture of trends. At it’s centre lies numerous informative and insightful conversations and stories. What’s profoundly different about his book is that is a narrative woven out of these conversations with about 50 thought leaders and practitioners the world of social computing ( and I must confess that I am one of the interviewees), written around their personal situations and personalities , their thoughts and experiences almost like investigative reportage. The actors in the narrative are drawn from a cast of influencers; startup CEO’s, corporate executives, academics, specialists, and noted pioneers in web 2.0. The narrative is structured into a framework of six defining trends or behaviors that mark the change in communications, information and the psychologies that are driving the flow of change.  What it presents is a rich tapestry of current thinking and practices that harness the power of open information flow in the realtime web.

There’s no doubt, we do live in a time of somewhat profound and chaotic change in communications, knowledge and information flows. Borders are increasingly only geographical, businesses and countries are transforming and we are more connected than we ever have been before. Making sense of chaos and change is often quite hard as there are many factors at play. Monkeys with Typewriters is a must read if you want to make sense of the inter connectedness and how to behave in this new brave world.

As Jemima concludes in her wrapup  about Wise Monkeys “Social media is not about technology. It’s about people, relationships, and conversations. The web is the enabler. If you can engage with and value this network and incorporate its collaborative properties.. then you are one step closer to business zen : an intuitive, harmonious and enlightened working environment.” I couldn’t phrase it better myself.

Here are some links to buy the book and Jemima’s Monkeys with Typewriters blog

When in logged into my Gmail a few nights ago I got a screen that introduced me to Google’s Buzz. At a first glance I skipped over it not wanting to go to deep into a distracting setup that stopped me from doing what I had originally set out to do : check my email . In hindsight I am left questioning whether Google’s BUZZ has any buzz? Buzz will probably have impact on the digital marketing world overtime but its not that apparent at the moment. However, we should take notice of this change.  Buzz is a service that aims to compete in the social networking space not unlike the services of Bebo, Orkut ( owned by Google) Facebook, Twitter to take on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, across devices like the PC and mobile phone.

What Buzz is attempting to do is add the social networking features in the burgeoning number of Google’s services, over the top of the existing number of contacts a person has in their Gmail accounts. It has 97million users at its disposal to do this but it does pale in consideration of Facebook’s 400 million users, Myspace’s 130 million user and Friendster’s 115 million users. Google’s published rationale for Buzz is to work a more centralised and sorted approach to social services, sorting out the noise and organising information into a a relevant experience for users.  On its blog it says  ” With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you’re up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today’s world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it’s increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations. ”

At the moment all the sentiment on the airwaves of the net, is that people have invested alot of time in developing their Facebook profiles and friends and their Twitter profiles to want to pull out of these platforms. Here is one observation I had of myself and one that I think is also being spoken about by Buzz critics. I am used to using Gmail for email, behaviourially I go there just to do that : email. I go to Facebook for other reasons , I rarely actually go to Twitter, but access it via another platform . I think changing these behaviours will be hard for Google to do unless it provides a real efficiency. It has said that Buzz is built on all the open API’s so there’s nothing to stop it creating Twitter and FB connections and adding them as services overtime too. The question is will it work? Can Buzz change people’s behaviours ?

The other side to this is its business case. It obvious that Google is trying to hedge into social search to monetize social networking in terms of semantic and geo targeted advertising . It has long been locked out of Facebook and not privvy to the masses of consumer behavioural data that Facebook has been accumulating and only recently coming to terms with and being able to create some intelligence out of it.  This is potentially a huge market. Google can calculate  and index underlying semantics and intelligence surrounding peoples conversations, interests, geo location using this information for a more targeted  and semantically driven array of advertising services.

Google is also well aware  of the mobile advertising potential surrounding both mobile use and geo location. There are critical statistics surrounding mobile use and social networks ( lets look specifically at Facebook )

• There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

• There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

The Buzz service is only open to or limited to Gmail users or through Google’s mobile phone , but knowing Google this will not stop just at Gmail. Remember Google got into the consumer electronic space via moblies , why ? Not to build devices but to protect it revenues into the future.  People are moving away or adding a smart phone in addition to their PC, and in the developing world the PC isn’t the connection to a digital world, the smart phone is. So mobile advertising is critical for Google’s growth or maintenance of its business revenues in the mid to long term.

We have seen social media destinations like Facebook or Qzone , Hi 5, Twitter grow at exponential rates in the past few years and take of the form of the new giants and the “Colossus”, Google, is now stepping in with a bid to compete for the consumer attention in social media. Google is no small player and has in recently shown it will flex it muscle and take on the giants or Microsoft and Apple. Buzz possibly has the potential to be a ” Game Changer” if they get the adoption equation right. The game change will not only be for the established Social networks  but for many small startup companies. Take for instance Foursquare or Brightkite who are rapidly gaining popularity these maybe shadowed and pushed into the margins very quickly or get bought as Android and if Google’s phone gains greater market traction. As Google says on the Google phone , “Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question “where were you when you shared this?” can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place” with a Buzz overlay on Google maps.

Sadly Google Buzz on the iPhone is a clunky experience.
My thoughts. Buzz will take a long time to take off. Its hard for people to change old habits if there is no significant increase in efficiency or simplicity.Its a play for social search for targeted advertising tat will become increasingly important, and  Buzz mobile may be the real mid to long term winner.

To view the Buzz offer you should take a look at the Google Blog.

The rise of the importance of the  Facebook fan page has become an integral part of companies social media campaigns or presence. Its not hard to understand why. Facebook is the web’s most popular destination after Google ( it is number 1 in Indonesia, Philippines , Malaysia and Singapore )   where the average user spends in the order of 33 minutes per day and its registered user numbers are upwards of 350 million. As the use or entry to a brand’s website are in decline due to a shift in how consumers use the web this days it makes common sense to to add Facebook into the online marketing mix. With number of brand, star, cause or business fans ranging close to 5.3 billion , that means News Feeds to user’s pages are carrying  a range of  brand content and updates.

View  a full review of Facebook’s internal statistics

Last November  “The Big Money” part of Slate Magazine,  ranked  50 brands that they see as making the best use of Facebook. The ranking is based on factors like number of fans, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity and fan engagement, not just numbers of fans. According to “The Big Money” Coca-Cola is ranked as the brand that makes best use of the social network thanks to its “organic fan-centric page without a corporate feel” and some extremely good apps the currently coin the phrase “Share Happiness” in a campaign to boost the diffusion , awareness and contact with the brand in social media.

On Facebook currently  there appears to be no common thread to a brand campaigns or successes in appealing to users. Brands such as Starbuck’s , Papa John’s Pizzas, TGI Fridays all have gained large numbers through a tactical “promotional friending” or free food and drinks in exchange for friendship amongst other tactics. Others with very popular ratings either use the channel for fast paced entertainment updates, customer interactions and feedback, user polls, and contests. “Flavour tournaments” have driven large fans bases for food brands and beverage brands  where consumers have been asked to create or give opinions on developing new flavours. The winners in this type of engagement are Pop Tarts, Mountain Dew, and Vitaminwater.

Here are the Top 10 as presented by The Big Money with the current fan numbers as of today:

IKEA’s Facebook Propagation Planning Campaign has used the concept of tagging in an online competition to support the opening of a new store. Some call it a genius use of one of Facebook’s inherent functions. While some of the best campaign strategies in Facebook are simple, and nothing should be simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition. Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms in a store Ikea was due to open.

“People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!”

Nespresso makes excellent use of Facebook Connect, Facebook Share and Facebook Fans for its latest commercials featuring George Clooney and John Malkowitz. This is an very well executed integrated campaign that combines traditional TV with the choice of an episodic conclusion online ( that’s not necessarily new ), and then adds the full Facebook services into the online site to ensure and viral distribution via Facebook Friends and Fans. The campaign, while not visible on the online site in the US due to the protection of George’s image, is in full swing across other parts of the world and Nespresso is working its Facebook fan base in a totally engaging way surrounding both its product, coffee machines and its iconic George Clooney commercials.