We IAB Social Media Council members are all about giving honest, practical advice to brands and practitioners.
This handy little four and a half-minute video from Henry Elliss, associate director of social media at Tamar, provides a perfect intro to blogging for brands… The do’s, the don’ts, the ins and outs, and who’s blogging’s the best in the UK right now. Enjoy!
By Dhiren Shingadia, Analyst, Mindshare
Social Media has so many labels. One of the most familiar and ubiquitous being Earned Media. Recently I was asked about what the cornerstones of what earned media planning should contain? In order to illustrate my answer I produced the “back of a napkin” table shown above.
It’s slightly rough around the edges, but what I’ve tried to do is cover some of the key points/methods/platforms.
Any aesthetically minded individuals are welcome to integrate other planning architectures into it and make it look beautiful.
, senior PR and marketing manager and head of social media council, IAB
This week we launched the IAB framework for social media measurement. Hopefully you’ve seen some of the coverage and the full presentation with all the details, but I thought I’d take some time just to give you a bit more background about why we came up with it, and what we hope having such a framework will achieve.
Why the IAB framework?
First and foremost the strength of the framework lies in its simplicity and memorability – a deliberate tactic to encourage wider adoption within the industry. Of course a lot of experienced practitioners have robust methodologies already in place to measure social, and we fully recognise that these are making a lot of clients very happy the world over! Our aim has never been to suggest the industry is measuring it in the wrong way, but rather in an inconsistent way across the board, which makes it difficult to compare or for the industry to grow as a whole. Read more…
By , Head of Digital Media, Royal Opera House
Pretty much every UK arts organisation now has a full-set of social-media cards: YouTube channel? Check. ? Yes indeed. Obligatory ? Why, yes of course. These combine with Flickr and Audioboo, blogs and wikis, podcasts and video channels to create a new kind of cultural landscape in which an audience member might never need to enter a gallery or auditorium to feel like they’ve seen the show.
But why are we doing it? Just like consumer brands, cultural organisations want to spend more quality time with people who care, or might grow to care, about them. The majority also need to cultivate customer loyalty and develop new, paying audiences. There are also traditional customer-service objectives to fulfil, and aspirations for brand building and international profile. But there are other motivations that make the challenge of creating a cultural social-media strategy more complex to execute, and success more difficult to measure. Read more…
by Rob Salmon, Director of Digital Marketing, Torchbox, Twitter.com/rsalmonuk
Anyone go to Glastonbury and see the Pet Shop Boys or stumble across their performance on TV ? Perfect anthemic festival theatre.
Listening to their 1984 number one smash – West End Girls – got me thinking. Could the lyrics be a vision that describe what you should consider when it comes to a social media strategy? Looking at them literally most definitely not! But with a bit of imagination they can be triggers for important things to take into account…
Too many shadows, whispering voices
Faces on posters, too many choices
If, when, why, what? (OK, I’ve changed this slightly!)
How much have you got?
Have you got it, do you get it, if so, how often?
And which do you choose, a hard or soft option?
Let’s take a closer look from a social media perspective:
‘Too many shadows, whispering voices’
Blatantly a reference to the fact that your brand is being talked about in the social media space. It’s whether you choose to listen.
‘Faces on posters, too many choices’
Faces on posters? They saw the Facebook revolution coming! Too many choices? Oh yes, there are thousands and thousands of social offerings you could choose to utilise.
‘If, when, why, what?’
Now we’re talking. Core strategy questions.
If – is social media something your organisation is ready to embrace? Can it be integrated into wider marcomms programme? Are you clear on who you are targeting?
When – do you have the resource in place? is your wider organisation ready to embrace?
Why – absolutely key. Measuarable objectives that show why you are doing it…
What – and what you want to achieve. Only then are you in a position to think about what to do to meet objectives.
‘How much have you got?’
Good question. You can’t just build it and hope people will come. Can you make funds available to amplify your offering?
‘Have you got it, do you get it?’
More people are. But many more could.
‘And which do you choose, a hard or soft option?’
The soft option is to do nothing.
And what have your customers done to deserve this?!
Rob Salmon will be presenting his Pet Shop Boys infused social theory in a strategy break out group at the IAB UK’s Social Media Forum which is taking place on Thursday 8 July between 3 & 8:30pm. To find out more and book tickets see: www.iabuk.net/socialmediaparty
