Whenever a brand throws out the old in favour of something topical it gets attention. It is bold, and both the professional and amateur media love it. In the end the numbers will either vindicate or invalidate the experiment, assuming they measure the ROI in a way that reflects reality. Everything else is speculation, informed or otherwise.

Facebook has got to be better than email...

As interesting as the lively debate between the social media exponents and eDM professionals was at the time, it just begged the question: ‘Why not just do both?’ After all, I am sure you won’t get tarred and feathered at your favourite morning coffee do if you dabble in the black arts of using stuff that works.

Social Media and Email: With, not Instead Of

How you can use a social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, et al, is different from the tools available with email, from users’ expectations regarding content and frequency to how the user can interact with the material, and the platform’s restrictions on what can be delivered in what form to whom.

To borrow from Mitch Joel, it is ‘With’ not ‘Instead Of’. Using both social media and email gives you more options, and increases the size of your potential audience. Connecting with customers across multiple platforms facilitates different interactions, and gives the customer the choice of how they want to connect with the brand. Maybe a Facebook fan that finds no value in your updates would actually love the email newsletter, or perhaps the Twitter account amuses them during their work day while they find eDM invasive. Giving the customer the choice can mean that when they opt out of one channel, they might still connect through another.

Building Audiences on Other People’s Platforms

Building eDM and Social Media Audiences

Facebook fans are not really yours; neither are Twitter followers. Without the accounts they are connected to, these audiences don’t exist. Unlike email. There is also little point in building different engagement strategies for multiple channels without cross-promoting them.

Competitions, surveys and other data collection or content driven special events can accomplish both of these goals:

• Making the brand’s audience aware of other touch points and
• Collecting contact details and other information through either a microsite or the brand’s main web presence.

The nature of eDM as a one way communication channel without the ability to demonstrate social proof makes it better suited to direct customers to a range of appropriate social media touch points, where most of the content would be published during the campaign. Cross promotion of the brand’s social media touch points and a call to action that would lead to further entries in the brand’s email database and CRM will generate better connection with and a better picture of the audience.

Promoting campaigns such as these should not be restricted to just eDM and social media. Getting the most out of it requires that other media is added to the mix, be it print, broadcast, SMS, MMS, PR, online display and promotional activity on the brand’s site. However it is executed, there should be two returns to the business:

• More information on the brand’s customers
• More points of contact with the brand’s customers.

Do Everything You Can Do Well

Limited access to resources and avoiding uneconomic channels are the only reasons that should affect what tools are and are not used online. There is no reason to abandon one kind of promotional activity online in favour of another. With so many ways to go online and consume information, arbitrarily limiting a brand’s options in how it can reach and be reached by its customers is not a winning strategy.

Diaspora's Kickstarter t-shirt

Diaspora’s privacy management is based on Aspects. The user groups their connections by a set of personal criteria, and can choose who gets to see which updates, and which stream of content they consume. Grouping people in this way isn’t really new; Google’s other social network, Orkut, employs a similar system, as does their new social project, Google+, with its Circles. Diaspora’s big point of difference is as a federated network. Anyone can take the software, install it on a server, and connect it to other installations, called pods. Now after almost a year and with Google+ live to a limited audience, how has Diaspora gone?

The View from Diaspora

The view from Diaspora

Since launch the development of Diaspora has not stopped. The interface has been improved, Diaspora supports mentions and hashtags in status updates and searches on public posts. Users can post from Diaspora to Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, and anyone’s public stream is available as an RSS feed.

Diaspora has a few more tools than it had at launch that make it easier to share sites and images while not on the site. A bookmarklet and an awesome photo sharing tool called cubbi.es (It saves an image on shift+left click, posts it to your cubbi.es account, into your stream on Diaspora, and can back it up to your Dropbox account as well). But there is one part of Diaspora’s user experience that has been stagnant for a while, and that’s mobile.

Personally Diaspora never really took off within my own social circles. No-one I know in real life, or through other social networks, is currently active within Diaspora. All the people with whom I currently interact on Diaspora, I met there, and they all sit in a ‘People from Diaspora’ Aspect.

Adding Google to the mix

A Google+ Perspective

And now there is Google+. The project has had an awesome take-up rate and already has over 10 million users. A lot of my acquaintances who were on Diaspora but never really used it are now very active on Google+. Whether this is the result of a solid product on Google’s part, or simply of the initial hype, remains to be seen.

Google+ does a lot of things differently to Diaspora (and Orkut) even if there is some overlap of the core mechanics of Circles vs Aspects. Notifications for activity on Google+ are visible while on other Google products, like Gmail and Google Reader, and can be acted upon without returning to Google+.

Eric Schmitt’s “Put your best people on mobile” is obvious on Google+. The project’s mobile experience is awesome on both mobile web and the Android app (which I love). Google+ has a number of other features, the most talked about being their desktop video feature called Hangouts, and mobile group messaging feature called Huddle.

Google+ probably won’t ‘kill’ Facebook. The size of the networks most users have built on Facebook represents a massive switching cost should they wish to migrate to another platform. Google+ will, at least for now, be a second social network, similar to how many people have active LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and other social media profiles as well as their Facebook accounts.

Where Google+ can clearly replace Facebook is on mobile. For ages the Facebook mobile experience has been bad, bordering on malicious. The only reason that Google+ isn’t actually replacing Facebook on mobile for me is because I stopped using Facebook on my phone ages ago. Facebook’s app and mobile website are horribly slow and unstable, and do not offer me enough as a user to make it worth the aggravation to use. Google+’s Android app is the opposite. It is fast, easy to navigate and use, and lets me see public posts by people near me and tag posts with my location.

Why Google+ will expand and Diaspora will remain niche

Diaspora is a solid, open platform that gives the user as much control as they want to take on, and judging from the work the team has put into it so far, will continue to improve. Google+ has a lot of awesome features on launch and has the benefit of the Google brand and integration with their other products. Both platforms have good reasons to use them and both cover areas that Facebook does not. Diaspora is more sensitive regarding user privacy and Google+ offers features that Facebook either doesn’t have, or does badly.

The biggest difference between Google+ and Diaspora is that while both do things that Facebook does not, most people don’t care about the needs that Diaspora meets, whereas those Google+ cover are obvious from the start. There are a few small differences, like how Diaspora sorts posts either by the date of the post, or the latest comment, which Google+ does not do. There are also other similarities, in that both let the user export their data easily and fully, unlike Facebook.

Diaspora does have a future, but it won’t be as large as Google+. Facebook will probably start to fill the gaps that Google+ seems aimed at, and this can already been seen in the rumours surrounding Project Spartan. For now though, Google+ will continue to gain users at a greater rate than Diaspora, and for all its flaws, Facebook isn’t going anywhere.

Content Audit

What Content Works?

This blog is not popular or successful by any real measure. I have been writing for it for over two years as a sounding board and to attract people who are interested in the same things I am. The posts are long, do not include many lists, have a few graphs and generally don’t follow most blogging best practices.

What is the result of this approach to blogging, how does this affect what returning readers read versus what gets the attention of newcomers? What is the most popular content?

Overall Top Five Blog Posts

The top five blog posts from the last 12 months by unique views include a mix of graphs, Brisbane floods, a local football team and a MMORPG PVP/AdWords comparison.

1. Mapping a Query Space
2. Floods, Tourism and Search in Queensland
3. Roar Season Wrap
4. Search Engine Marketing is PVP
5. Floods, Brisbane and What Worked Online

All this list reveals is what was looked at by the most individuals. It sheds no light on whether they liked it, if they read it, or if they muttered ‘wanker’ under their breath and left. It also won’t tell you if it attracted new visitors, or was only viewed by regulars.

What type of visitor?

How new visitors are attracted and what are the differences in what they read compared to an existing audience is a good question. The relationship between the content that brings people to the site, and what they actually read can tell you a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

Returning Visitor Top Five

1. Mapping a Query Space
2. Query Cluster Performance and Competition
3. Twitter Search, Assange and Impure
4. The Network Effect as a Bell Curve
5. Turning Yahoo! into Bing in Australia

New Visitor Top Five

1. Mapping a Query Space
2. Floods, Tourism and Search in Queensland
3. Search Engine Marketing is PVP
4. Roar Season Wrap
5. Football Crowds and Group Cohesion

The posts that attract the most new visitors are different from those viewed by returning visitors. The two lists only share one post, and of the New Visitor Top Five, only two do not relate to recent events – either the Brisbane floods or the local football team. New visitors are more responsive to topical content, while the returning visitors came back for more posts relating to a small number of themes.

What did they read?

In this case, finding out which content held their attention is more useful than what was viewed by the most people. Google Analytics’ bounce rate is often used to determine what content engages. However it is most valuable if you want to know how many people clicked another link. It won’t tell you if they read the post and then left, or if they exited on seeing the wall of text.

Google Analytics Advanced Segment

The lists below were generated using a number of Advanced Segments, selecting traffic by type and a visit duration of greater than 60 seconds. The aim is to determine if the content was engaging and matched their expectations, motivating them to read it.

Overall

1. Mapping a Query Space
2. Query Cluster Performance and Competition
3. Floods, Tourism and Search in Queensland
4. Floods, Brisbane and What Worked Online
5. The Network Effect as a Bell Curve

Once visits shorter than 60 seconds are removed, a number of posts from the unfiltered New Visitor list no longer appear. This implies that most of the posts that attract new readers don’t always get them to stay.

Returning Visitors

1. Query Cluster Performance and Competition
2. The Network Effect as a Bell Curve
3. Mapping a Query Space
4. Twitter Search, Assange and Impure
5. Floods, Brisbane and What Worked Online

Out of the top five posts that returning visitors viewed, four of them also appear on the top five list of posts viewed for longer than 60 seconds. On the data here, there is a strong link between what this group will visit, and what they will read, at least for a little while. The same is seen for new visitors as well, at least for the time frame chosen.

New Visitors

1. Mapping a Query Space
2. Floods, Tourism and Search in Queensland
3. Roar Season Wrap
4. Search Engine Marketing is PVP
5. Floods, Brisbane and What Worked Online / Football Crowds and Group Cohesion

Taking it further

There is so much more that could be done from here. At best, this is a summary, an indication that there is something to look for. A number of things to follow up on, or further questions to ask are:

• Use a larger number of pages
• Examine behaviour for different traffic sources
  • Do new visitors follow more links?
  • Do returning visitors leave once they are up-to-date?
• Depth of visit by group?
• What is the median time on page for each group?

Google Analytics can provide a lot of information. While there are some limitations to what it can tell you, for broad analysis of trends it is more than adequate. The most important thing is to know what the right question is.

Brisbane Roar Season Crowd Average

*Not counting rescheduled games played at Skilled Park.

Brisbane Roar is through to the Grand Final, and the tickets for this game are selling very well. The crowd numbers have not always looked so good this season though. I wrote a blog post near the start of the 2010 – 2011 A-League season, about Brisbane Roar, and their crowd numbers. Now that the regular season is over, I can compare the 2010 – 2011 season fairly to previous ones. The crowd figures from the season don’t flatter the team, especially considering their unbeaten record, and just how well they played.

Even ignoring the two games played at Skilled Park due to the floods, the average is less than other seasons that featured only mediocre performances on the field.

Roar Crowd Average by Team

But is it enough information to get an idea as to what will get people to come to the games? A quick look at the average attendance by opposing team and by day would suggest that Sunday games and games against the Gold Coast team bring in the best crowds.

Brisbane Roar Average Crowd by Day

Small Dataset Problems

Unfortunately the dataset is pretty small, and as it turns out, the higher averages for Sunday matches and Gold Coast United are both due to single games. There is only one game on Sunday from the regular season, and the crowd was above average. Gold Coast United was also the team with the single highest attended match of the season, at over double the average for the season. The only reason Saturday did not average higher than Sunday was because of a number of below average attendances for that day.

Average Crowd by Team and Day

A Rebound

The Brisbane Roar have certainly improved their crowd figures from the previous season, but have not yet been able to match the 2007 – 2008 crowd numbers. Considering that this is the club’s most successful season on the field in its short history, this is unfortunate.  With a higher percentage of home games being held on Saturday night this season, along with the team’s great performances on the pitch and a substantial reduction on ticket prices, the club seems to have started to rebuild match day attendances.

All communication is a marketing communication, including customer service. This is even more critical in public spaces like the Internet. However there are still a number of important points to be considered when determining if a response is needed, and what form it should take.

• What is the nature of the complaint?
• Where is the negative commentary taking place?
• What is the company’s relationship with the affected parties?
• Who is exposed and potentially will be exposed to the negative commentary?
• What action, if any, has already been taken on the issue?

What is the nature of the complaint?

Reasonable, articulate or funny negative commentary can have the greatest impact through credibility and potential to spread. Inarticulate, abusive and unreasonable complaints usually do not gain much traction, and will attract more attention if they are given attention.

Where is the negative commentary taking place?

A brand’s presence on the Internet is not limited to a single site any more. Most brands have a fragmented presence spread across a number of platforms, sites and mediums, either perceived as being under their control, or operated by a third party.

Dealing with complaints in managed spaces, such as a Facebook page, will more often require direct action than a comment on a small community forum. Legitimate complaints can be an opportunity to explain or demonstrate a product, answer a frequently asked question or express a brand value to the touchpoint’s audience. Any response given does create a reasonable expectation that should another issue be raised in that space, the company will need to address it too.

What is the company’s relationship with the affected parties?

The more involved the customer is with the company or brand, the less likely they are to be a troll and the more the relationship is worth to the company. However, new customers with legitimate complaints should not be ignored.

Who is exposed and potentially will be exposed to the negative commentary?

Does the negative attention have a large or small audience? Is it indifferent, supportive of the brand or hostile? Someone saying bad things about a brand to other people who already agree and are not your customers should probably not be your first priority. Trolls trying to start a flame war with brand advocates are another situation that probably does not need direct engagement.

What action, if any, has already been taken on the issue?

Customer complaints, legitimate or otherwise, often have a history. Social media is not always the first point of contact between the brand and the customer. Often there is a history to any complaint. Ideally the complaint would have been resolved before it entered a public space, but sometimes these things happen.

Very rarely will a brand benefit from engaging with a troll. The attention will often make the problem that much worse, and give them more credibility and consequently attention. While potentially almost any form of content can reach a huge audience online, not every tweet, post, video or blog will. Dealing with legitimate problems in a public space can be an excellent opportunity to to explain or demonstrate a product, answer a frequently asked question or express a brand value to an audience. Responding to trolls does not support any of these objectives. Choosing who to respond to, where and how is an important part of a Social Media Engagement strategy, and should be treated as such.

Social media is just people being people online, but with better tools. Nothing has changed in their behaviour; it is their ability to be found and heard, and find others who think the same that is new and significant. Social media and the internet amplify the voices of those who publish content online, whether they love you or hate you.

Sometimes people will say things that businesses would prefer them not to. The internet has made it easier than ever to publish and spread this material. Sites like Facebook and WordPress make it easy to tap into an existing audience, or get indexed by Google and appear in brand searches. When a product or service has a branded social media presence or community, it can give them access to a highly relevant audience for their dissatisfaction, ire and angst, which can disrupt the business’ promotional activity and damage the brand.

It is hard to completely avoid this risk without losing the benefits from fostering conversation and building online communities. Here are a few ways a business can prepare to address these problems if or when they arise:

• Anticipate the negative responses and plan on how and how not to respond
• Make internal stakeholders aware of what can go wrong
• Communicate response plans and processes internally with key stakeholders
• Ensure that those with the authority to respond in negative situations are easily reached
• Make staff aware of relevant policies

If no thought is given to what might go wrong, there is a greater risk of the company responding badly, and inflaming the situation further. Planning for problems that may arise before the fact ensures that the business’ response will most likely be timely, articulate and appropriate.

The capabilities of the Social Network do dictate what content can shared, how this will happen and with whom, how many and what they will be doing or seeking to do at the time. The selection of Social Network should not determine what the campaign is, or what it’s goals are. The idea of forming a ‘Facebook strategy’, or a ‘Twitter Strategy’ is limiting, and yet persistent.

Markting campaigns are planned around a strategic goal. The tools needed to implement it should be chosen to match the objectives in terms of level of engagement, content and audience desired. Pursuing a ‘Twitter Strategy’ where internal Communications policies will limit engagement, or engaging with bloggers via a ‘Blogging Strategy’ without the resources needed to produce enough content to maintain momentum is just a plan to fail.

The Social Media component of a marketing strategy, from publishing content to actively cultivating a community of activated customers, won’t rise or fall on the Social networking site chosen. The success or otherwise will rest on the resources allocated, the quality of the content and how the brand sits in the consciousness of it’s stakeholders.

The idea first surfaced in the media after Frank Farina’s sacking and was repeated as each older player left. This meme was very persistent and effectively framed the conversation around the changes to the club for the rest of the season. Players that used to be lauded by the supporters were now labelled unprofessional, past it, and a bad influence on the club by the very same fans.

What is interesting is what was not discussed as the club let go of their more experienced players, many of whom used to be fan favourites. The discussion was not about why the management were making these decisions, or how this will affect the club’s chances of making the finals; it was dominated by the alleged ‘drinking culture’ of the senior players, fuelled by rumour and loose rationalisation.

It was interesting to see how discussion about events within a community can be shaped so much by a simple meme. Most of the conversation by the fans and media around the club as its team roster was changed was framed by the ‘drinking culture’ meme.

A simple meme that can be summed up in a memorable phrase can shape conversation about events and brands. An idea that resonates and helps to create an easily understood context for the way events unfold will almost always spread. Once a meme gains traction with opinion shapers, it will be repeated by both those who embrace it and oppose it, and this will just help to perpetuate it.

Framing the conversation has been important in politics ever since a popular vote mattered. Today online it is still just as vital for guiding opinion. Ideas can spread fast, and, thanks to the volume of information generated each day and the nature of a lot of social networking sites, are not always visible at the start.

As with any other channel, online interactions and content do shape the way discussion around any given subject will develop. Using the Internet to publish content to this end helps to incorporate it in the conversation. From news articles to audio and video, content will be linked to, referenced and commented on. Producing content gives interested parties an opportunity to try to frame the conversation. The success or failure of the attempt rest entirely on how well the content resonates with those who have the authority, both formal and informal, to spread the meme.

A company’s public face is controlled using tools like advertising, public relations and community and social engagement. Some organisations go beyond media and actively use every point of contact between a customer and the brand. These companies treat every interaction with themselves and the rest of society as a form of marketing communication. Often a football club has limited control over the actions of contractors like stadium staff. Unfortunately these people have a direct impact on the product experience of all customers, both casual and loyal. Through both their impact and the minimal control the brand has, this can be a real critical point of failure.

The A-League has been promoting itself as a game of passionate fans. Imagery of large crowds standing, shouting and cheering has filled the advertising material in print, outdoor and on TV. As a brand, it has promised that the A-League can be as exciting and intense an experience as any of the international leagues. Rivalries between clubs have been fabricated and promoted and a lot of photos taken of packed stands and fans wearing a lot of merchandise. To stand out in Australia, the A-League has chosen to become the fan’s game, crammed full of passion and excitement.

But you won’t find passion and excitement in the crowd at Suncorp Stadium. Thanks to the over-zealous activities of stadium security and a muted home end, the match day experience watching Brisbane Roar fails to deliver on the A-League brand promise. At the most important point, the money spent to market the Brisbane Roar and the A-League is wasted. The product is not the same as the one promised.

It is here in the grounds where the Brisbane Roar lose control over the brand and the product. It is not the club, but the actions of the stadium staff that have the greatest control over the product. Though they are not tied to the club directly, they become its public face every home game. This is where the dissonance surrounding the advertised message and the actual experience really sets in. You cannot build a brand on the imagery and language associated with European football club culture and then have security tell people to sit down and shut up. As long as stadium staff behaviour is at odds with the marketing message, the money and effort taken to get passionate fans into the grounds is wasted at the point where reality does not meet expectations.

What this means for the club and it’s relationship with it’s fans and the community is still unclear. For a few groups, the stated rational behind not supporting the Roar was the clubs links with the Qld Lions Football club from the NSL. With the last of the ties, barring the tenuous link from the name and the colours, will this change? At first glance, yes, with the departure of Lawrence Oudendyk, the club has no real current links to the Lions and the history that has put off so many. Personally, I doubt this will make a difference, at least without any positive action on the part of the club.