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Archive for April, 2009

Aston Martin Brandjacked On Twitter

09.04.16

Aston Martin joins a long list of people and organizations to have been brandjacked on Twitter.

A fake account, AstonMartin, has attracted a reasonable (though not huge) following while posing as an official account. My attention was drawn to it when the account retweeted one of my posts about a recall of older car models by General Motors. Re-posting negative messages about competitors didn’t seem to fit the image of a luxury brand that positions itself well above the cars produced by GM. The tone of some responses to other users also seemed somewhat more sarcastic (and wrong – GM doesn’t own Aston Martin) than one would expect.

When asked, the person behind the account would not confirm whether it was an official Aston Martin account, instead directing me to check the account’s profile (which gave the impression that it was official):

My suspicion was furthered when I noticed the account automatically posting links featuring the words “Aston” and “Martin” (an unfortunate coincidence for Aston Villa manager Martin O’Neill):

A quick query to Aston Martin’s media line confirmed my suspicion (fellow Torontonian Ben Lucier also inquired). Press Officer Kim Lawrence Palmer replied:

Dear Mr. Fleet,

Thank you for your email. I am afraid that this isn’t the real Aston Martin, and I am pursuing Twitter to remove the page. We do however have an official Facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Aston-Martin/15678718354?ref=ts

Kind regards

Kim

Takeaways

No real damage has been done to the Aston Martin brand, and the response from their public affairs unit indicates they’re moving to shut the account down. In future, though, how can companies avoid brandjacking incidents like this?

Monitor your brand

There are many, many listening tools out there. Monitoring and listening are foundational pieces in a modern web strategy.

Be proactive

Task someone in your organization with claiming your company’s profile name on new services that emerge, so that accounts like this can’t appear.

Set policies

At the moment the identity of the Aston Martin account owner is unknown (and may remain so) – we don’t know if it is someone external to the organization, or an overly keen employee. Regardless, organizations should establish clear policies on what practices are and are not acceptable, so employees have clear boundaries within which to operate.

Consumers beware

Lastly, as social media users and practitioners we need to remember to confirm identities before taking things at face value. Until we have more robust means of confirming identities, make sure you’re certain that a particular profile actually represents a brand – look for contact information you can use to confirm, or links from other corporate properties to the profile.

Your thoughts?

Posted in: Twitter

Tags: Aston Martin, brandjacking, fake, Twitter

8Comments

The Communicator’s Challenge: “We” Are Not “They”

09.04.16

Last week I briefly touched on a big issue that, on reflection, is the bane of communicators across various disciplines:

Communicators plan activities to reach our key audiences. However, we often don’t represent those audiences.

We may not be the same demographic as the target audience. We may not have the same interests, or hobbies, or lifestyles, or problems.

That problem is exacerbated when it comes to social media. As new research shows, social media practitioners have a different perception of social tools than do “average” users.

They don’t build networks like ours
They don’t consume information like us
They aren’t influenced by online events like us
They don’t care as much about corporate involvement in social media as we do

“We” are not “they.”

There’s no doubt that these tools are powerful. The Dominos Pizza uproar of the last few days is a prime example of the potential of social media to derail a company, while you only need to look at companies like Dell, Zappos and others for the postitive potential of these tools.

However, as I’ve evolved from purist to pragmatist, it’s become more and more clear that we are way further along the curve than they are.

That means we need to be careful. Just because we think something is cool, catchy or relevant, doesn’t mean they will.

In an ideal world we would take concepts out and do market research around them. However, as communications budgets shrink in a recession this becomes less and less feasible.

On our own web properties we can run A/B tests to see which concepts and messages work better. However, in the world of social media that’s more difficult. Throwing out different messages on Twitter to test them, for example, might be awkward and ineffective., and quite frankly anti-social.

That’s why the first step of social media engagement – listening – is so important. Not just listening to the things you want to hear, either; listening to everything about your brand and how people feel about you and learning from it. There are plenty of tools to help you do that, too.

By listening and learning, you can help to close the gap (a little) between them and us.

What do you think?

Posted in: communications, monitoring, public relations, social media

Tags: communications, listening, monitoring, public relations, research

5Comments

Higher Volume, Different Approach

09.04.15

Plenty of people have written recently about the recent influx of people to Twitter and how this is changing their perception of the service. I’ve given my take on it – essentially, that Twitter is what you make it – if you don’t like what you see, change it.

Still, the fact remains that with additional numbers of people using the service, people may find them connected to much higher numbers of others on Twitter. With that comes new challenges associated with scaling the way you use the service.

Organizing your Twitter stream

Tweetdeck is one of the best tools out there for managing large and/or diverse numbers of connections on Twitter. Not only can you create groups out of your followers; you can also set up searches to track the conversations around topics that interest you (if you can’t download Tweetdeck, try Tweetgrid – a browser-based variant).

One of Tweetdeck’s default columns is the “All Friends” column, which (no surprises here) shows all of the people you follow on Twitter. Early on, I found this to be my most frequently-used column for staying on top of things.

“All friends,” less value?

As the number of people I follow has slowly increased over time, I’ve started to find that column less and less useful. In fact, every time Tweetdeck refreshes at this point, I get about two or three screen lengths-worth of new updates – more than I can possibly keep up with. What’s more, an increasing proportion of those messages tend to be irrelevant to me. I hate to think what it’s like for people who auto-follow others, and who follow thousands more than I do.

I wondered how other people deal with this, and whether they still find the “All Friends” column at all useful. So, after musing about whether I should be cutting back on the number of people I follow, I asked:

I got a bunch of responses back, which were revealing:

Interestingly, there appears to be no correlation between the people who follow high numbers of people and those who no longer use the “All Friends” column on Tweetdeck.

User	People followed	Use “All Friends” column?
Hamishknox	47	No
jltoronto	75	No
_sarakate_	267	Yes
commoncentsmom	320	Yes
Monicakozak	374	No
HumSurfer_buzz	572	Primarily groups/search
martinwaxman	595	Yes
astroboy	699	Yes
athletetraining	887	No
michellekostya	1010	Yes
andreastenberg	1131	Yes
adamcohen	2385	Yes
unmarketing	21119	No

Personally, I plan to keep the column. I also plan to continue to be fairly judicious in who I follow.

Do you find yourself having to deal with this kind of problem? Do you find yourself following more people nowadays?How do you go about organizing it?

Posted in: Twitter

Tags: twitter tweetdeck

2Comments

PR Isn’t The Enemy

09.04.14

Surrender Once again, the last couple of weeks have seen the public relations industry dragged through the mud by a high-profile blogger. This time it was Robert Scoble, first via Blog Talk Radio then again on his own blog. Naturally plenty of other people piled-on, although few were even remotely constructive.

I could go through Scoble’s anti-PR rant line by line, picking his argument apart (and I nearly did), but to do that would be to miss the point of what he’s getting at.

The public relations industry is plagued by people who spam journalists and bloggers, and play the numbers game in an attempt to generate media coverage.

Is it the norm? I hope not. I’d like to think not. Regardless, it happens and it’s painful – both to the recipients of the spam pitches and to honest practitioners like Shel, Todd and myself.

I’m not going to disagree with Robert. The PR industry does have its share of bottom-of-the-barrel practitioners. Sad but true – every industry does. Unfortunately, the media/blogger outreach side of PR (yes, dear people, there are other sides) involves interacting with the people who have an audience, so these people are highly visible.

Here’s where I agree with Scoble about media and blogger outreach:

PR people should find out what journalists are interested in before pitching them.
PR people should find out how journalists like to be pitched (and, yes, sometimes that may involve emailing them to ask).
PR people should tailor their approaches to people. That includes the medium they use to approach them.

I could get defensive about Scoble’s rant (and for a while I did – hence I’m coming to this late). However, the fact is that there are many bad PR people out there. I see them every day in my inbox, and if you have any kind of following on your blog then the chances are you do too.

The reality is, though, that PR isn’t the enemy. Bad PR is the enemy.

Unfortunately, there’s not too much we can do about them (which isn’t to imply that we shouldn’t try). The fact is, they’re unlikely to be the ones attending IABC, CPRS or PRSA training sessions. They’re not the ones reading the rants against them on Scoble’s site. And they’re probably not the ones reading this post. They’re busy building their next mass mailing for a client who, unfortunately, doesn’t know any better.

The rest of us – the ones with a conscience, who do their best to target their approaches to the people who will thank them for their pitches? We’re left to raise our hands, point out that we’re not all black sheep, do our best to educate others and then go back to doing good work for our clients.

Posted in: pitching, pr, public relations

Tags: pitching, pr, public relations, Robert Scoble, spam

29Comments

Misleading Magpie Ads = Unfollow

09.04.13

A while back there was a minor uproar around the launch of Magpie, a Twitter-based service that offered to pay users in exchange for placing ads into their Twitter stream. Fast forward a few months – this weekend Read Write Web’s Marshall Kirkpatrick published an alarming post looking at some of the companies that have chosen to advertise through this service. Some of those listed include Apple, Skype, Flip, Box.net and others.

I don’t subscribe to the extreme view that Twitter must forever remain untainted by ads, however the nature of the ads that Kirkpatrick revealed is disturbing.

Do you see what I see? I see ads worded to clearly imply the person in whose stream they appear both purchased an Apple product and liked it.

In my eyes that’s misleading and deceptive. It hijacks the trust that people establish with others online and uses it to falsely recommend products.

One of the reasons that social media is so powerful is that people trust other people like themselves. These ads play on that trust and abuse it.

I’m trying to shy away from implying blanket rules for people using social media tools (one of the lessons I learned from the ghost twittering saga recently). So, rather than tell others what to do, I’ll tell you how I react.

If I see someone with Magpie-sponsored ads in their feeds, I start to feel I can’t trust what they say.

When I see companies like Apple, Flip and Skype using these tactics, I lose respect for them.

On either side, would you want people reacting to you that way?

As Marshall concludes, “to the advertisers out there – is this cynical scheme the best you can do to engage with all the new ways people are communicating online? That’s pretty bad.”

Posted in: ethics, Twitter

Tags: advertising, ethics, magpie, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Twitter

11Comments

Social Media Monitoring – Disturbing Or Useful?

09.04.08

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a thought-provoking post today over at Read Write Web, looking at social media listening platforms like Radian6 and their role in companies’ online outreach.

I found Marshall’s take surprising. Talking about his experience with Comcast representative ComcastBill responding to one of his tweets, he says:

“An extensive machinery of tracking, delegation and analysis stood between Bill and my little Tweet. Maybe it has to be that way, maybe it’s a good thing – but there’s something deeply disturbing about it too.”

Marshall also uses several phrases throughout his post that raise the question of whether services like Radian6 are somewhat creepy:

“There’s something that feels condescending about these kinds of services. Why can’t the marketers using them learn how to use the web, like the rest of us have?”
“It looks like it’s just you and them, but behind them there’s a curtain covering a whole mess of cogs and pulleys, analyzing you in different ways.”
“It’s kind of a modern day horror story, isn’t it? Web 2.0′s potential benefit for humanity tragically sold short by social media because it fell under a fog of marketing software.”

While Marshall does acknowledge the other side of the argument, I got the distinct feeling that he isn’t comfortable with the idea of CRM features being used in a social media setting.

Here’s the other side from my perspective.

Many people want companies to use social media tools to connect

Research released yesterday shows that 40 per cent of social media users are using these tools to connect with companies. What’s more, a quarter of users feel better about organizations engaged in social media.

Simple search tools don’t scale

As Marshall points out:

“The fact is, subscribing to a search feed for relevant terms in various search engines just isn’t going to scale for larger businesses.”

As volume increases, so does the complexity of responding to people online.

It’s no longer just one person – it’s a team
Higher volume means people on that team aren’t going to remember everyone immediately
An excel spreadsheet to report online conversations just doesn’t cut it

With scale, comes coordination

Once you reach a scale that requires a team-based approach to online engagement, you need to make sure that:

Things don’t fall through the cracks
You don’t double-up on people

That means you need a workflow management system, whether it’s integrated with your search tool or not. Of course, from my perspective it’s much more efficient to combine the two. You need a tool that:

Lets you assign tasks to people
Record the approach you’ve taken to engaging with people
Lets you store, rather than lose, the institutional knowledge of past interactions

Efficient reporting matters

While many practitioners aren’t paying much attention to measurement, I think it’s critical. If social media is to avoid being the first part of budgets to be cut, we need to demonstrate results. That means reporting on that measurement. Once you scale up, you need to find an efficient way to report on what’s happening in order to demonstrate results.

That reporting needs to go beyond traffic numbers. If that’s all you measure, you’re missing out. Tools like Radian6 let you look at things like:

Sentiment breakdowns
The type of content being written about your company
Share of voice
Themes in topic content

Efficiency, not profiling

Is this profiling? Only in an aggregated sense. Yes, there are notes associated with online mentions, but not in a sinister way – in a way that makes it possible for companies to engage in the way that people increasingly want them to.

What do you think?

Posted in: monitoring, social media

Tags: listening, Marshall Kirkpatrick, monitoring, Radian6, social media

22Comments

New Research Provides A Social Media Reality Check

09.04.07

CNW Group and Leger Marketing today announced the results of new research into social media use in Canada (disclosure: CNW Group is a client).

The research provides a useful insight into social media trends along with some of the challenges that social media faces, but also sheds an interesting light on the differing perspectives between practitioners and regular social media users.

The top-level results are available online now. The full results will be released in a webinar on April 29 (register through the site).

Some key findings:

49 per cent of social media users use social media at least once per day
31 per cent of users agree that social media is more credible than advertising
61 per cent are researching products to purchase
36 per cent depend on social media to help them with purchase decisions
40 per cent are “talking” to or learning from specific organizations
About one-quarter of users feel better about an organization that is engaged in social media
89 per cent of users say they use social media the same or more than they did last year.

Once you dig down into these top-level facts, though, it gets more interesting.

User/Practitioner Gap

Social media is highly influenced by practitioners. For example, 19 per cent of social media users say their opinions are influenced by social media outlets, while 53 per cent of practitioners said the same – a significant difference. Similar, though smaller, differences show through in responses to other questions.

The implication of this is that practitioners often think that other people find social media to be more credible than they do in reality.

There’s a gap between social media practitioners’ perceptions and those of users. However, given the time that social media has been around, the proportion that are influenced by social media is a good start.

Measurement is uncommon

Practitioners are generally only using broad objectives – there is a lot of room for improvement.

As well, few practitioners using social media tools are measuring what they do, and even fewer are going beyond looking at traffic. Interestingly, few managers are asking for this at this point. You can differentiate yourself by proactively digging deeper.

Room for improvement

While practitioners have a higher awareness of social media and its uses, they still think they, and organizations could use it better.

Few practitioners have a dedicated budget for social media
Few are monitoring social media (which astonishes me – I see it as a foundational piece for social media engagement)
Few practitioners are using social media for community building – most use it for marketing (although the lines blur in my eyes

Interesting stuff.

Which points stand out for you?

Posted in: social media, trends

Tags: mesh09, social media, statistics, trends

18Comments

Expectations Can Make Or Break You

09.04.06

I mused publicly earlier today about two recent mis-steps by high profile figures, and why the blogosphere came down like a tonne of bricks on one of them and not the other. As I was doing so, the answer came to me:

Expectations are critical.

People have lower expectations of TechCrunch than they do of a well-regarded Forrester analyst. So, when one made a mistake, there was a chorus of disapproval. However, when TechCrunch published a rumour that Twitter was in late-stage talks with Google and was subsequently forced to ~~admit it wasn’t true~~ revise their story, there was barely a murmour. The expectations were different.

Take that thinking and apply it to yourself. It’s easy to type words into your computer and make youself out to be wonderful, but can you match the expectations you raise? Do you preach about bad pitches then go out and spam bloggers? Do you give advice on transparency but fail to follow through? Do you put yourself up as an expert when you have little experience?

I avoid writing about some topics, or write posts that question rather than advise, because I know less about them. On other topics, however, I’m more confident and am happy to write about them.

Think hard, because if you raise expectations and you don’t meet them, people will react much more negatively than if you did the same thing without talking yourself up beforehand.

Posted in: best practices

Tags: expectations

7Comments