Real World Social Business’ – RNLI at the Seaside

Social Media at The Beach

Yesterday I went to the beach to enjoy our two week long British summer. Once we’d found a parking space, we (I) carried the entire contents of our home minus kitchen sink, the short distance from the car to the beach. Struggling along the promenade, kids straining at the (virtual) leash I saw the last vacant spot on the sand and headed towards it. “Hi how are you today?” I heard a voice say. “Are you going to build a nice sandcastle?” the same voice said to my 4 year old. Peering around the pile of towels, goggles and assorted balls in my grip I saw an RNLI lifeguard talking to my son. He was highly engaged in conversation with her as the topic was ‘how to build the best sandcastle. The girl next to her then asked my wife if she wanted any info on safe swimming for kids, which of course my wife did. What kind of a mother wouldn’t want this information. Impatiently tapping my foot, the cynical marketer in me was counting down the seconds for the goal conversion to occur, i.e. donate some money. It took 6 minutes for my wife to finally walk away, nearly as weighed down as I was, by donation /sign up forms.

This is nothing new in ‘real life’, however social media have allowed this commonplace tactic to occur in the digital space. All organisations, businesses, brands, SMEs and charities need to make a profit. It’s their ‘raison d’etre’ whether said profit goes to shareholders or good causes.

This will never be overtly communicated though. In fact mentioning the fact that a business is an actual money-making business these days is a heresy. Organisations want to ‘be your friend’, ‘tell you a story’ and share ‘the moment’. They definitely, DEFINITELY don’t want to relieve you of your hard earned $$. Yet.

Social media now allows organisations to enter in to that same conversation as my wife and son had at the beach:

Summary

1. Location – we were at the beach, therefore a related subject is beach/sea safety, for which the RNLI are an authority.
2. Weather/season/relevance – It would be fairly pointless those nice ladies from the RNLI standing in that same spot in mid-December.
3. Conversation / engagement – Had they just asked us to give them some money we would have completely ignored them. They asked a pertinent question, at the right time and began a relevant conversation. This applies exactly the same in social media.
4. Conversion – They weren’t there just to have a chat, they had targets and goals. With any social media activity you should also have a firm idea of the purpose of the conversation.
5. Awareness – Even those people that walked straight past couldn’t have failed to notice the RNLI branded tent and branded paraphernalia. Not all (hardly any) social media activity will lead directly to a conversion – it’s largely an awareness thing.
6. Value exchange – in this example, the RNLI gave us some useful advice on beach and sea safety with a helpful booklet for us to keep. That’s value for us so we may reciprocate by ‘liking’ them on Facebook or even signing up to a monthly direct debit.

You can donate to the RNLI (who do incredible things and save lives here

How The Crown Prosecution Service Views Social Media

I’ve recently been to two social media events, one in London full of the great and beautiful of social media and one in the more regional Bournemouth. Both included sessions by legal firms giving talks on the legal issues of social media. Neither had many answers. Social media has many pitfalls, for brands, for employees or just the general public. This is the first of three posts to explore where we stand with social media. This first covers criminal law and the Crown Prosecution’s perspective on social media (in the UK). Next time we’ll look at what the Advertising Standards Authority says for brands and then a look at social media policy’s for brands.

How The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) Views Social Media (Initial assessment)

“12. Communications sent via social media are capable of amounting  offences and prosecutors should make an initial assessment of the content of the communication and the course of conduct in question so as to distinguish between:

(1) Communications which may constitute credible threats of violence to the person or damage to property.

 

(2) Communications which specifically target an individual or individuals and which may constitute harassment or stalking within the meaning of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 or which may constitute other offences, such as blackmail.

 

(3) Communications which may amount to a breach of a court order.

This can include offences under the Contempt of Court Act 1981 or section 5 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. All such cases should be referred to the Attorney General, and via the Principal Legal Advisor’s team where necessary.

(4) Communications which do not fall into any of the categories above and fall to be considered separately (see below): i.e. those which may be considered grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false.

 

13. As a general approach, cases falling within paragraphs 12 (1), (2) or (3) should be prosecuted robustly where they satisfy the test set out in the Code for Crown Prosecutors. Whereas cases which fall within paragraph 12(4) will be subject to a high threshold and in many cases a prosecution is unlikely to be in the public interest.

 

14. Having identified which of the categories set out in paragraph 12 the communication and the course of conduct in question falls into, prosecutors should follow the approach set out under the relevant heading.”

If social media is your job then I can’t recommend enough that you read the whole document here.

Top 100 Social Media Brands

Ive been searching for this for ages; a list of the biggest brands making the most of social media. It has been compiled by Vitrue and posted on their blog.

The list includes all the names that you would expect (Apple, Disney, MTV) and heavily features all American brands. I don’t have a problems with this. After all, the worlds biggest brands are from the USA as are the worlds biggest social media brands (Digg, Facebook, Techcrunch). I’m not sure whether Vitrue chose which brands they wanted to monitor (include list) or monitored different social media channels to find the most talked about? Surely brands who’s demographic are also the bulk of social media users will be the most talked about? Brands whose target market is the over 5o’s will never have as much online chatter about them but surely this doesn’t make them any less of a brand? They say “We apply a series of algorithms to reflect the frequency of usage, the size of the social media environment, and the magnitude of the conversation. The result is a single numeric score for each brand: the Vitrue Social Media Index (SMI).”

I’d like to have actually seen each brand’s SMI. Crucially, we don’t know if this is positive or negative chatter which only adds to the slight ambiguity of this study. See my post on Buzzdaq which was an attempt to dynamically monitor brand names. However everyone likes a good list and this one has been a long time coming.

Enough already – heres the list (top 50) – For the full top 100 visit Vitrue

For more insight read Adage’s blog

1. iPhone
2. CNN
3. Apple
4. Disney
5. Xbox
6. Starbucks
7. iPod
8. MTV
9. Sony
10. Dell
11. Microsoft
12. Ford
13. Nintendo
14. Target
15. PlayStation
16. Mac
17. Turner
18. Hewlett-Packard
19. Fox News
20. BlackBerry
21. ABC
22. Coke
23. LG
24. Best Buy
25. Honda
26. eBay
27. Sharp
28. Lincoln
29. NBA
30. Pepsi
31. General Motors
32. McDonald’s
33. General Electric
34. Walmart
35. NFL
36. Mercedes
37. BMW
38. Samsung
39. Nike
40. Subway
41. Dodge
42. Pandora
43. CBS
44. Mercury
45. NBC
46. Disneyland
47. Last.fm
48. Toyota
49. Cadillac
50. Chevy

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