Nonetheless is that any reason to depart from a tried and trusted approach that has been with us since the 60’s?  Well, add into the equation that a drive to create fuel efficient cars has led to a harmonisation of design across the manufacturers.  Gone are the different shapes and sizes (do you remember there even used to be cars that only had 3 wheels) and in are the rigidly defined car classes where different manufacturers vary in size by mm.

And this harmonisation is leading to the erosion of brand loyalty.

Cap Gemini reports that in 2002 40% of consumers said they’d buy the same brand again. By 2010 75% of consumers said they were considering at least 4 brands for their next purchase.  The individuality of the brands, a hallmark of the romantic era of motoring, is being replaced by the efficiency of Kaizen manufacturing.

So is it time for manufacturers to re-evaluate how they sell the (realistic) dream and differentiate themselves at the same time?  Perhaps it’s time to make things personal.

Am I talking about the much vaunted online configuration tool.  Perhaps.  But what happens after you’ve configured your dream car?

Either, an online form tells me to ‘request’ a test drive – which means delay and even then I don’t get to drive the car I just painstakingly configured. Or I get sent a brochure that details all the choices I’ve already made. Unfortunately for the automotive manufacturers, given the array of choices available to the average consumer, getting a configured car to the right place just for a test drive is a logistical nightmare and an expensive gamble.  However, this is being attempted in Germany, with large regional centres replacing local dealers. These centres look more like museums than dealerships where the full brand experience is on sale, as well as the cars. The access points to these centres are almost exclusively online but you get to test drive the exact car you configured, or simply pick up the car you’ve already ordered.

A genuine personal service does exist in the UK automotive industry, but only at the top end of the market. Aston Martin and Bentley have been inviting selective audiences to their factory for almost 100 years as it gives people a sense of the creation of their personal space. For a spend of £180,000 you can understand the lavish attention on offer.

Social media techniques are perfect for recreating a sense of personal attention on a large scale and the eCommerce industry was founded on removing elements of the supply chain and passing the savings on to consumers. I’d be much more likely to buy a new car if I could buy the exact car I specified at the same price as the dealer. And, if all the automotive manufacturers are to recreate the great brand loyalty of the past it will be with a personal touch, rather than an idealised view of the product.

Well actually I think I can satisfy both types of reader.

No, there is no guarantee of your video going viral even when you have the heady combination of celebrity and behind the scenes footage.  However there are some simple steps that you can take to ensure that your video has the best possible chance of going viral.

So here are my personal top 8 tips in no particular order…

1.  Know what your audience likes.  This is different to the (false) mantra of ‘content is king’.  It is recognition that one man’s “Later with Jools Holland” is another man’s “X Factor”.  So if you’re after a petrolhead crowd then a Supercar skidding round corners is simple but effective http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L1-TN2XXOk

2.  Know where your audience live.  If you want something to go viral, people have to see it, so make sure it appears where your audience hang out.  So while our mountain biking community videos do well on our YouTube site, they do even better on the specialist site mpora http://video.mpora.com/watch/FxAB0IF8J/

If you want to be really effective then use a community map to identify your seeding sites, giving yourself plenty of time to get the distribution organised before your video appears.  Because then you have the chance of being…

3.  Be first to market.  Simple one this, if you have the content that people want to watch, before anyone else does then people watch your version.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RMT1-gcuqw This video of the SLS appearing at The Goodwood Festival of Speed 2010 was filmed on the first day and released that evening.  As it was the first video to appear anyone searching for festival content in the first couple of days inevitably ended up watching the SLS do the famous hill climb.

4.  Optimise.  Just as you want your videos to appear where people can see them, so you want them to be fully optimised so search engines can see them too.  Getting the right tags and choosing a title and description copy that includes relevant keywords is going to make a massive difference.  Both YouTube and Google have tools that can help you choose the most effective keywords and tags – Google and YouTube

5.  Short.  Short videos get watched in the office and then shared on email.  Long videos get watched… later.

6.  Build your own communities and then you have an instant audience.  Don’t ignore the fact you can message friends and subscribers directly via YouTube every time you put something new up (or when you need to remind them of that excellent video you made a while back).  If it’s a different social network such as facebook or twitter then remember an engaged community is going to be much more effective for getting those views than a larger unengaged one.

7.  Paid for promotion.  Sometimes a video needs a helping hand to get it moving.  If it’s good then it will maintain momentum even after the promotion has finished – as the word of mouth effect takes hold and the search engines take notice.

8.  Boris Johnson.  Always good for views. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekjIUR3n1C0 We await the Boris Johnson playing with kittens mash up – viral video gold.

At ISM we have been thinking about community maps a lot.  In fact it is becoming a bit of an obsession.  The reason being, is that done right, a community map could ensure that your social media programmes are efficient, effective and targeted and your communities are well managed.

So what are the benefits of using a community map in your social media programmes?

• Using it to define your audience universe will allow you to set meaningful and well thought out targets for community size and engagement
• It will improve the accuracy and speed of your community growth
• It will ensure your engagement with a community is effective, including in crisis situations
• It will help you to make content go viral
• It will enable you to measure success and plan strategically for the future.

So here are some of our thoughts on community mapping and the importance of the Social Cartographer, any questions or comments please get in touch. 

The Social Cartographer, Figaro social media seminar, 1st December 2011

The answer is rather simple, conversation. But, the assumption is that social media monitoring works. Whether Search or Social, the market is awash with “monitoring” companies claiming to be able to identify the “authorities”, enabling brands to “listen” to the existing “conversation” and plan campaigns. Or, for the more advanced adjust campaign content in real-time.

But before we move off social media monitoring into how to build content that influences the chosen authorities and spreads to the widest possible audience, there are two problems with the core dataset that typically establishes the most important authorities. And, by the way, the scale of data necessitates the use of tools.

The first problem is that the majority of social media monitoring tools and techniques, at least for English speaking market, are North American based. As such, a genuine authority in the UK market may simply not have the audience to compete with their North American counterparts. At a keyword level this gives a false assessment of the location of authority. This problem is amplified if a client is operating in a niche market.

The second problem is that genuine authorities rarely operate on a single channel. So, unless the social media strategy was formed in 2008, the data Net needs to include the target brand, their competitors, the market, but also the relationship between different channels from the same source.

Here, at ISM, our solution is to define the market space for ourselves before blindly accepting one monitoring “authority map” over another. By establishing our own market space using both Search, Social and traditional media reference points we can add a qualitative brief to the available social media monitoring tools. While this means a variety of tools need to be bolted together, this approach has produced a number of tangible benefits.

By pre-defining the potential authorities we can monitor them as individual sources – identifying what they are talking about, rather than when they talk about a keyword we are interested in. Listening to them as individuals has enabled us to build our content around a genuine community map and offer content that resonates with the authority and their existing audience. Our focus on the audience doesn’t always match our client’s ambition for their messaging but overall we have improved reach and engagement across our client base.

So to the question of what comes after listening, the answer is definitely conversation. But we suggest that there is much more work to construct the context of the conversation. As with many things in Search and Social the tools are a very important part of the overall solution but there is no silver bullet.

On the one hand it was a brief exploration of the benefits of an engaged community to a brand, combined with a few primary rules and objectives of community management. On the other hand it was also a wake up call for brands that are choosing to ditch the hard graft of community management and engagement in favour of the quick hit of a competition or ad campaign on facebook.

That’s not real social media.

Now don’t get me wrong, acquisition is an important part of any social programme – and anyone that claims that great content alone will bring people flocking to your brand is, in my opinion, wrong or a celebrity – but acquisition must be equally balanced with engagement. They are Ying and Yang, Fred and Ginger, D&C (I could go on…) and at the moment that balance doesn’t seem to exist. Looking at more than 25 international brands running social programmes, 64% seemed to have no community management strategy, complaints are rife and anti-social behaviour is not uncommon (would you expect to find blatant racism on the Walls of 2 household brands, or demeaning sexual references on several others?).

But why comment on this now? Well for two reasons, firstly I think it’s getting worse and secondly because of predicted trends in social media. It seems that there has been a pendulum effect in the world of social media. Two years ago, brands were being very wary of getting involved in social because of the potential dangers of engaging with the customer, but that fear has been overtaken by envy – brands are now looking at their competitors rolling out social programmes and are determined to have a go themselves. Unfortunately we seem to be forgetting to think about community management – how we are going to effectively manage the crowds that are about to descend onto our facebook pages, blogs, twitter accounts and YouTube channels. So our new found friends and customers get sub-standard treatment or even ignored altogether. And the predicted social media trend I mentioned? It is time to start preparing for the phenomena of defriending and unfollowing. As people try to cut down on the noise and clutter on their social networks expect to see social crowds dispersing. Now more than ever community management is going to be vital if you want your community to have longevity.

So if you want to know more take a look at the presentation above, watch theSocial Media Engagement: Crowds and Communities video or find me on twitter or LinkedIn.

It seems as though the master plan from Google has been to build up the Google+ community before adding on the brand pages – presumably in order to make the network a lot more appealing for brands and providing extra impetus for them to put their hand in their pocket to pull out their advertising dollars (I do of course mean pound sterling).

On launch day, Google announced that 20 companies including Angry Birds and Pepsi already had pages, but one day later many more had already signed up from newspapers (including the Independent and The Metro) to Automotive companies (step forward Mercedes-Benz).

So what we do know is that a new feature Direct Connect should make it possible for users to visit Google+ pages without a single click.  Precede a brand name with a plus sign and apparently you’ll go straight to their Google+ page (ie search for +Angry Birds).  This could be a great feature but unfortunately it has only been activated for a few chosen brands, so we can’t get excited about it just yet.

So the million dollar question is what happens now?  We are familiar with grandstanding ad campaigns playing out on facebook and competitions running on twitter but what should we expect from Google+?

As we wait and see, the most immediate question is, are you or the brand you represent about to start a Google+ brand page?

In summary, facebook have expanded their facebook pages analytics to go beyond merely telling us about what is happening within our facebook pages – number of fans, number of interactions and page impressions – to giving us a detailed breakdown of how the whole facebook community has been reacting to our content, whether they are members of the facebook page or not.

This means as a marketer we can now use these new facebook insights to analyse the viral effect on fan pages.

Firstly we can see the number of unique “friends of fans” – which effectively sets out our potential marketing universe for each of our facebook pages (although it can be expanded with advertising).

Secondly we can look at outreach. How many people actually saw our content and whether they were our fans (organic) friends of fans (viral) or have seen our advertising (paid).

Thirdly we can easily analyse who is actually responding to our content via the “Talking About” metric.

So we now have a clearly defined potential market, we can see our saturation of that market, and how effective that has been. That’s a big deal.

New Facebook Insights – initial observations

The demographics of your facebook pages don’t tell the whole story – It has been very interesting to see the shift in demographics between fans, outreach and engagement. One of our own pages showed a significant imbalance in male / female membership (60/40) but the demographic of people actually seeing our content was at a parity. However in terms of reacting to the content we saw that the male female split had not only reverted to an imbalance but the imbalance had been exacerbated (70/30) in favour of the male audience.

The graphs cut through the noise – We have seen some unusual graphs amongst the expected results, for example, where organic outreach has increased over time and viral outreach has decreased over time until the graphs have crossed. This seems to be suggesting that fans are progressively seeing more content, but it isn’t getting passed along to their friends – why? We can see that activity on fan pages are very high, so it seems to be a very engaged community, and therefore we would expect EdgeRank to be categorising our content as people’s “top stories” – so why is the viral element going down? A check of the talking about graph tells us the truth of the matter. The number of active participants is falling, or in other words, a core part of the community is getting louder and louder, but the core is getting smaller. Time to engage with a wider spread of people on the fan pages!

Practicalities of the new insights for fan pages

One of the most exciting aspects of the new facebook Insights will be the ability for marketers to gauge success on fan pages with more accuracy. For campaigns where the aim is for brand visibility outreach would be the key metric, for content quality and engagement “talked about” should be the measure, and for overall effectiveness perhaps look at the ratio between friends of fans and outreach.

I will also be keen to study some effects from a big splash facebook campaign.

How viral will advertising, an app or a competition be? How much engagement? How much longevity (outreach and engagement) will there be from such activity? And more importantly how will that longevity and engagement compare with the slower burning, everyday facebook activity. Could there be a few surprises here too?

Let us know your thoughts on the impact of the new facebook insights for facebook pages on Twitter.

The theme? Forget about your fan and follower numbers. Social Media is fundamentally the same as any other marketing channel. You need to understand the audience, build and compelling message and retain the audience.

The challenge is to know what success looks like, and to be sufficiently knowledgeable quantify it.

So how do we measure this social behaviour? See our presentation below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.

The new rules will bring about a radical change in the financial services industry. For the first time, IFAs will need to collect fees directly from their clients.

It is likely that IFA’s will prefer to deal with wealthier clients to achieve higher consultancy fees, leaving the general public with and increasing knowledge gap and no obvious place to turn for independent financial advice.

So what can financial services companies do to engage directly with their customers? Social Media can help, and here’s how.

Click through to see a summary of the presentation.

IFAs are not only vying with one another but with the burgeoning field of innovative financial services companies such as short-term loan site Wonga and price comparison aggregators that are already engaging consumers in new and rewarding ways. Moreover, with less than 15 percent of consumers seeking out professional financial advice, charging for what was once considered “free” services won’t help.

IFAs can take control of their conversations with customers through social media—the intersection of PR, marketing and product and customer service done in full view of the public. Done poorly, it can damage the brand, done properly it is a direct conversation with the consumer that can help solve issues, identify areas for product improvement and development and create loyalty. And, with 43 percent of consumers buying financial products based on recommendations from friends and family, satisfied customers can help bring in more clients.

With the social consumer maturing, the appetite exists for financial services companies to reclaim and extend their market.

Do you agree? Let us know in the comments or get in touch with us.

In the fast-moving world of social media, there are a whole host of social and digital innovations that can help boost retailer efforts in the social sphere.

Here are our top 5 tips to supercharge your retail marketing.

1. Put QR codes in retail stores: Then send your customers straight to Facebook. It’s a great way to tie the physical world to the online world, and to convert retail store footfall to online traf fic. Consider Diesel Jeans, which enabled store customers to “like” pairs of jeans by scanning a QR code . These Likes appeared on their walls, and in their friends’ news feeds, making what might have been a casual wander through the store a much more meaningful exchange .

2. Facebook deals: QR codes activate customers already in store, but Deals can pull them in off the street. Facebook’s Deals programme gives retail stores the ability to create loyalty schemes, offer straight discounts, charity donations and more. Savvy retailers can even create their own Groupon-style offering, giving them much more control over the deal. Not only will Deals increase footfall, it will ensure each activated deal is broadcast to further potential customers on Facebook providing invaluable exposure.

3. Reward successful purchasers socially with a discount: Multiply all the hard work done by your other retail marketing channels, and reward online purchases with a further 5 percent discount if they share on social media channels. Or give an even steeper discount on their next purchase in exchange for a social media share. Hey presto – customers become happy evangelists.

One interesting model that has recently arisen is “ Pay with a Tweet ”. The program me lets users buy and sell products online with the leveraged values of their social networks. Sellers place a “Pay With A Tweet” button on their site, which lets buyers log-in to their Twitter or Facebook account to post about the product in exchange for receiving the product for free. It’s recognising the value of the potential exposure each of your customers can offer you.

4. Treat your existing communities like VIPs: Loyal customers who have alr eady connected with your brand – whether in retail stores or online – are worth treasuring. Give them deals and access to events that you wouldn’t give to anyone else. That will push th em even further along to genuine brand advocates – and once you have enough of those, your social media influence will grow exponentially .

Case in point: when The Outnet , the upscale clearance site of designer fashion e-tailer Net-a-Porter announced a first anniversary birthday sale in which anything on the site would sell for £1, they designed the campaign so that users would share the sale with friends bringing in new customers. But many long-standing customers of the Outnet and Net-A-Porter complained that such a sale should have been open to them first. How different would the reaction have been if these loyal customers had got the first run of the sale, whilst a second sale was targeted to all?

5. Use you social community for demographics research: Ask and you shall receive. Don’t be afraid to ask your social media community what they want to see from your brand, and in your stores. What products should come next? What should go on sale? It’s free, targeted and incredibly useful retail marketing research.

Take Dunkin’ Donuts, the US donut chain, which has been running a “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest for the last two years. Fans were tasked with coming up with an original recipe for the chain’s next donut, whilst the public were invited to vote on their favourite donut on Dunkin’s Facebook page. At the close of last year’s contest, fans had submitted over 90,000 donut contest creations—who said brilliant retail marketing ideas always have to come from head office?

Does your client or business leverage social media in their retail marketing? How are they including the bricks-and-mortar retail stores? Chat with us on Twitter .