Strive Notes

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Markettools has just released a report that reveals that more than two-thirds (68 percent) of online adults say they visit online blogs, communities or social networks, and 33 percent engage in product research online to help make purchase decisions.

It’s more evidence that organisations, especially companies who sell products or services need to get serious about social media engagement.

Many of these people are visiting social media sites specifically to research products and services:

• 33% are doing research to inform purchasing decisions.
• Baby Boomers are significantly more likely than other groups to read or post comments about products and services on these sites (37%).
• Baby Boomers (63%), along with Generation X (59%), are significantly more likely than other groups to visit the corporate websites of product or service providers.

The research shows that blogs, communities and social networks have a direct impact on purchasing decisions:

• 47% of all respondents say that social media sites have influenced their decision to purchase particular brands or services to at least some extent.
• 26% of all respondents actually changed their minds about buying a product or service because of what they read on a blog, community or social network.
• Women are significantly more likely (29%) than men (22%) to change their minds about a purchase because of these sites.

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Want a free ticket to the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo Europe?  It’s taking place in Berlin  on October 21-23. The three-day conference and exhibition is for designers and developers, product managers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, business strategists and anyone passionate about creating a better web ecosystem.  You get free entry to all conference sessions, workshops and the expo (ticket value €1,300).

Neville is giving away his ticket in an FIR Listener Contest. All you have to do is make and post a short video and link to FIR comments.  Click here for full details.  I’d like to go myself, but October is shaping up to be a pretty busy month.

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Here is an excellent example of how having a blog can help a company in a crisis.  Bill Marriott, chairman and CEO of Marriott International, has been blogging since at least January 2007.  He is widely read by employees, customers and the tourism industry in general.  He comments on a range of topics from employment issues, to operations to personal insights like his views on  the Beijing Olympics.

So when tragedy struck last weekend in the form of a terrorist attack on the Islamabad Marriott, in which 53 people died — most of them Marriott employees, Bill’s blog allowed his team to respond quickly. They posted a quick statement of facts within a couple of hours of bombing including a phone number for people who wanted to know information on the guests staying at the hotel.

Then a couple of hours later, while the true extent of the damage was still unfolding,  Bill himself posted a personal comment expressing his own emotions about the tragedy and saluting the employees who were still at the scene doing everything they could to help.  There are more than 200 comments of condolence and support on his blog post.

As Shel Holtz points out, without Marriott’s  blog, the company would have been restricted to traditional channels for expressing itself. They would have issued as news release or perhaps posted a comment on their corporate website.  But this wouldn’t have been nearly as effective in conveying Bill’s own sentiments as his blog post did. And both solutions would have provided only for one-way communication.  The audience would not have had the facility to express their own grief and outrage.

Here are the main takeways:

• Bill Marriott already had an established relationship with readers through his blog who find him to be a credible spokesperson.
• Blogging is nimble so they company could react almost instantly to communicate the facts.
• It allowed people to express their own views and concerns, thereby strengthening the relationship.
• Bill was quickly able to assume leadership in a crisis, despite geography, time zones and other constraints.

Like too many of us, I had my own brush with terrorism on September 11th and I really feel for the people involved in this cowardly attack. I hope companies will learn from Marriott’s example of how to use social media in a crisis.

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• Do I use Hotmail, Gmail or any other similar email service?
• Do I have a Facebook profile?
• Do I store and share my photographs online?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you are already ‘in the cloud’ even if you didn’t know it.

In fact in a recent survey of 2,251 adults, the Pew Internet Project found that some 69% of people online use webmail services, store data online, or use software programmes such as word processing applications whose functionality is located on the web.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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We’ve recently welcomed a new voice in social media to the Isle of Man. Derek ‘The Bandit’ Richardson has just relocated from South Africa and you’ll soon be hearing him at weekends on 3FM.  But when he’s not entertaining Island residents with his take on dance music, he’s pretty busy online. He’s got two podcasts: Switched On, where he looks internet technologies and Sound Republic which focuses on his passion, dance music. He’s got a lot of fans from all over the world (about a millions Facebook friends) and is destined to be a leading light in the Isle of Man social media community.  Welcome Derek!

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The third Thursday of each month, the Isle of Man Social Media Club meets. This month, Third Thursday is tomorrow, 18 September, 12.30 at Paparazzi, Douglas Promenade.  Everyone is welcome.   But should you come?

Anyone who is interested in journalism, publishing, communication, art, media, teaching, learning, Internet, marketing.  In short, anyone who is curious about how humans communicate should come along.

Bloggers, podcaster, Facebookers, MySpacers and Twitterers are all welcome.  Or maybe you are just curious about these online social platforms and wonder how they fit into your life and business.

The idea behind the Social Media Club is to share best practices, establish ethics and standards, and promote media literacy around the emerging area of social media.

It costs nothing but the price of your meal and you’ll definitely learn something.

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But it seems that the IT industry has been immune to the economic downturn with all indicators showing that things were holding steady in IT budgets.

That was until last week when Forrester Research released its Business Data Services report.

It said that more than 40 per cent of large businesses have cut their IT budgets this year due to the global economic slowdown according to a survey of nearly 950 senior IT managers across North America and Europe. Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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Well that was the week that was.  There’s little more to say, except here is my list of some of the blog posts I enjoyed reading the most over the past week.

1. Jeremiah Owyang makes some good points about why some start ups need to hire PR professionals.

2.  Lee Hopkins gives an excellent explanation of why companies should allow access to social networks.  You need oxygen to breath.  He is so right.

3. Nickop has some interesting observations about the state of the Isle of Man blogosphere.

4. Jeff Pulver celebrates his social media birthday.

5. Kyle Flaherty talks about the importance of listening when it comes to building communities.

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A blog is traditionally written by someone who knows what they’re talking about. However this blog post on blogging isn’t. I didn’t even know what blogging stood for until I recently read a book on the subject, Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

It  has opened my eyes up to the whole world of blogging, and its growing massive impact on several levels – commercial, social, economic, journalistic …

The book developed the realisation that blogging could lead to no less than a new world order, where openness, transparency and direct honest communication suddenly stamp forcefully on the world of spin in which information – and misinformation - is fed to us by others.

This is an interesting statement when made by someone whose career in journalism has recently detoured to also embrace PR. Both professions are often cruelly lambasted for being misleading.

Does blogging turn news reporting upside down and shift the balance of power to the public? Does it rattle the foundations of the edifice in which journalists smugly sit as the untouchable professionals who filter out the news because they think they’re so clever? Is it a revolution that will sweep aside vast media organisations?

Is blogging the ultimate democratic tool in which even the tiniest voice can be heard?  Or is it a ’sad little ego trip’ that, in the hands of the greater public with little ‘establishment’ control will lead to anarchal stabs that will ultimately signify nothing? Is it just a mass of ‘worthless white noise?’

As far as I can see, blogging changes everything and it changes nothing.  The basic problem with blogging is there’s so much of it out there – we’re in blog jam - and so much of it is lengthy (because it’s ego driven) and frankly, boring.

In terms of its impact on journalism, the thing that will keep news organisations ticking is the editorial process that is quite rightly in place partly to keep reporters’ egos in check and write copy the reader wants to read.  There is a team of professionals sifting through copy - editors, sub editors, legal advisers, other reporters - it is read and re-read before it hits the page to ensure it is interesting and correct.

Being interesting and correct are two critical elements that are missing in the blogosphere, meaning how do you trust what you’re reading? You can’t.

As for PR, the profession still has a very valuable place in news delivery, I see it as the flip side of the coin to journalism.  Business people are often so busy making business that they do not see the story they’re sitting on – nor can they necessarily communicate it effectively - and this is where the PR comes in. There is a sea of PR professionals out there who are delivering stories to busy reporters. Again, accuracy and interest are two critical elements of message delivery.

But this doesn’t mean blogging has no place, on the contrary.  Businesses realise this and are harnessing its power. Big corporations have teams of people whose sole employ is to seek out and responding to blogs about their company.

A whisper of something going wrong with a gadget on your new mountain bike could develop a momentum of blogging that could wipe out any benefits of an expensive advertising campaign.  Be honest and apologetic about the misbehaving gadget and be seen to make amends and it will do wonders for the loyalty of the customer base.

The clever PR will advise their client to get a blogging area of their website to attract comment - both positive and negative - and help companies to see that not having a blog on their website is seen as evasive and therefore damning in itself.  The reporter might sniff out some interesting stories via blogs.
Blogging must be taken seriously by everyone - organisations, professions, journalists and PRs – anyone that’s in the business of communication, which is just about everyone.

It may be a refreshing and a truly democratic tool, but blogging will by no means lead to the demise professions such as journalism and PR, not least because everyone, just everyone, is time poor and the last thing they need is more to do.

Apparently worldwide there are 120,000 new blog posts created every day, that’s 1.4 every second, and guess who’s just added to that?

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It was last November when I first wrote about Google Android. At that time the company had just announced the launch of an open source mobile phone platform that would put it into direct competition with both Microsoft and Symbian.

But what set them apart was that they issued it under an open source licence.  Android stacks software as a Java-over-Linux platform, and when it was launched many industry pundits said it would form the basis for a whole new generation of mobile devices.

At about the same time Google announced its $10 million Android challenge to reward developers who built great applications for Android.

Click here to see the big money winners.

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Astonishingly few companies within the UK are benefiting from the advantages that come from world class accredited service management. This talk presents a distillation of the best practices in IT service delivery. We will touch on existing and developing global IT standards, and IT performance aspirations including ITIL v3 and related best practice methodologies

About the speaker
Peter Wheatcroft is a management consultant, currently tasked with improving the management of IT departments in a number of prestigious blue chip companies.

While a director at Alliance & Leicester plc, he achieved World Class status for their IT services.  He has also been instrumental in the provision of world class service delivery for companies in a number of industry sectors including process control, retail, travel & leisure and healthcare.

Holding chartered status as both an engineer and IT professional, he is a fellow of BCS and the IET Institution of Engineering & Technology as well as a fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and the British Quality Foundation.

Venue:     The Claremont Hotel, Douglas
Date:        Thursday  18th   September 2008
Time:       Doors opened at 18:00 for an 18:30 start.

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How do newspapers choose which case studies make their pages? What’s the difference between pitching a feature to the FT and a column to the Mailon Sunday? On September 9th 2008, the folks at the:101 are giving people the opportunity to sit down with experienced BBC and national journalists to find out!

The latest Nationals Pitching Day is taking place 9 September in London, and there are a few places left. The workshop focuses on providing practical skills that enable PR executives to pitch any journalist with confidence. Using interactive exercises, role play and Q&A sessions, it will provide insights into:how to craft attention-grabbing email pitches who to call on a national newspaper and when tailoring pitches for blogs and websites using news wires and regional press as a gateway to nationals and more.

About the trainers:

Neil Aitchison is a freelance radio, broadcast and online journalist whohas spent many years working with BBC Television, BBC Radio and BBC Online.

Catherine Cooper is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph, Observer, Sunday Telegraph and Guardian newspapers, as well as a range of women’s and parenting magazines.

Linda Jones is a freelance journalist with almost 20 years experience. She regularly supplies stories to the likes of the Daily Mail, Daily Express, News of the World, Guardian and Telegraph newspapers.

Sally Whittle has been covering business, HR and training for almost ten years, and today regularly contributes to broadsheet newspapers on a range of topics, including charities, technology and small business.

The workshops will take place at 44 Portland Place in London on the 9th September and run from 9.30am to 5pm.

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Jeff Pulver is encouraging us to take part in Blogday 2008 and I figure why not?  It’s a great way for us all to check out different blogs and maybe learn a thing or two.  So here are my five blogs (non-PR)  to celebrate BlogDay.

1. Special Little People provides aromatherapy products for children. Blogger Janine Wood shares how she uses scents in her own life as a mother.  She has a nice writing style and reveals quite a bit about herself and her life.

2. I love reading Dan Santow’s blog Wordwise.  It’s chock full of expert information on writing style and grammar.  Everyone who reads or writes English should subscribe to Dan’s blog.

3. I’ve been following the Invincebelle blog for the past few months.  It’s an online community for women who live and work in a multicultural world. Its goal is to provide both personal and professional development for women who work.

4. I’ve been incredibly impressed with the Ramsey Daily Photo blog ever since I found it a couple months ago. This blog has an incredibly active community and showcases this photographer’s incredible creativity.

5. I’ve been following Rita’s Musings ever since she launched the blog a couple of years ago. There is no central theme. She doesn’t update often. But this blog gives a window into Rita’s world and me feel that I’m still connected to her even though I now live thousands of miles away and haven’t seen her in years.

Happy BlogDay 2008 everyone!

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Media Week is reporting that Johnston Press, owners of Isle of Man Newspapers, has seen advertising revenues plummet by 21.0% year on year in the first seven weeks of the second half of the year.

Total revenue fell 6.3% to £293m for the first six months of 2008, year on year, while operating profit fell 15.6% to £81.6m. Interesingly, the group reports that digital revenues grew by 52.1%, but I suspect they were starting from a very low base.

The company said it has cut costs by £7.6m in the first half and will continue to do so.

Well cost cutting is all well and good as long as the quality of the reporting doesn’t suffer. Management needs to ensure editorial staff is sufficient in both number and ability to turn in the content that that readers need.  Otherwise they’ll leave in droves and advertisers will follow them.

I’ve seen a real change in the Examiner’s business pages since reporter Julie Taylor left several months ago and haven’t heard anything about a replacement being sought.  The Editor’s post too has been vacant for some weeks now, but Richard Butt will soon be arriving to take the helm.

It’s comforting to know that Isle of Man newspapers is one of the most profitable outfits in Johnston Press’s stable.  Hopefully the cuts here won’t go much deeper.

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