FRANKthoughts

During the last six months we had the pleasure of having around 300 people join us for a two hour social strategy session followed by drinks at FOG. As the year comes to a close we would love all the people who attended to have the presentation handy and the people who missed out to have a taste of the action.

FRANkademy has three parts:
1. twitter for brands.
2. Blog networks eg. Nuffnang.
3. Social business strategy case study – Melbourne’s GPO.

So here it is. Please feel free to comment, suggest improvements, share and tweet if you find it useful.

The improved FRANkademy will be back next year. If you’d like to be notified please put your name + email here.

Thank you everyone. We had a blast.

Many brands are already using online to the max. A combined effort of search, content and social profiles can get your website noticed, talked about and shared. But maybe social media isn’t for everyone?

I believe this is what’s happening while you sit on the fence:

1. Your competitors are moving in and away – Are your competitors on twitter yet? It’s safe to say one of them is already using these tools. It means that they’re getting the following and attention that could have been yours. They’re also becoming more advanced, knowledgeable and familiar with future tools and marketing techniques making the gap between you even bigger.

2. No investment means no return – Do you own assets or are you paying rent? When no investment is made in the social space and all you do is pay for traffic the only return you see is the return you paid for. Social media is an asset. It GROWS in value. It means your money is invested rather than spent. Two years after starting this blog many of our new business prospects find us online without us paying a single dollar on search.

3. Missing out on word of mouth and traffic – Do you have an opinion about your industry? Do you have specific knowledge you can share that will help people? If the answer is yes then you have two options. Talk to people at bbq’s, networking events and elevators or choose to do the same thing online. Social media is conversation. It’s a place for you to demonstrate value, teach, help and foster an interaction between your customers. You’ll be surprised how powerful one post can be. Social sites are also the top traffic referring sites: 20% is the amount of loyal traffic Facebook brings in as a referring site, making it the most valuable source of traffic.

4. Spending resource and money – Research, customer service and product testing cost a lot of money. What if you can reduce this cost by 10%? How about using the resources you have in a way that saves time? Social media is a great research, testing and customer service tool. Take a look and discover what people are saying about your brand right now?

5. Internal communication, education and innovation suffers – How many of your employees are on social networks? How many of them are encouraged to talk about you online and have the tools to do so? It’s safe to say most of the people you work with have a presence on at least one social network. If you’re not in it you’re missing out on them communicating and sharing your brand with others. You’re also not providing self expression on the company blog or the opportunity to learn from others in the company. Innovation is a word that comes up a lot when talking about business advantage – when there is no place to communicate ideas and opinions in the company, it takes longer to innovate.

6. Missing out on talent – Every business needs to get young talent in. Most of them now communicate online and use these tools for work. If you don’t have a social media play you might be missing out on the best talent out there. The last three people employed by FRANkVizeum came from a social network/blog interaction. Our positions are usually posted on twitter and linkedin which makes the process of finding the right person a lot easier (and cheaper).

7. Not fishing for knowledge – The internet (i can’t believe i’m writing this but hey) is an ocean of knowledge. But you need to talk to the fisherman to catch the best fishes. Other people in social mediums are fishing constantly and if you’re not there you’re not enjoying the most up to date knowledge available. If you’d like to know more about social media and how to start a social business strategy you’re invited to RSVP for the last FRANkademy for 2009.

What do you think? Are these points valid? Do you have any other examples for the cost of inaction?

Yesterday i made it to Marketing Now @ the Sofitel in Melbourne. The flavour of the event was “How to use Social Media and Online Marketing to reach customers directly, and keep them.” Here’s Dave and myself courtesy of David Armano, as are all these shots gratefully borrowed from his twitpic

Some spectacularly credible speakers sharing their wisdom yesterday were Gavin servant of chaos Heaton, Laurel silkcharm Papworth and Darren problogger Rowse.

As someone who is hungry for social business learnings i found Laurel and Darren (unfortunately i missed Gavin) both generous and inspiring. I came away enriched and wondered why every seat wasn’t filled. The entry price was a $100 donation, $50 of which went towards thankyou water so it was all very affordable and worthy. One of the concepts Laurel touched on was COI, the Cost of Inaction…worth bearing in mind.

I would say that the majority of marketing directors out there are tussling with the concept of infusing social media into their businesses and brands. With a few exceptions the results so far are indifferent and yet if they’d broken away from the slavery of emails and meetings their understanding could have been mightily accelerated. I wonder if in 12 months the same speakers are assembled there will be a queque to attend?

Moving on…i took the opportunity to promote Nuffnang by stickering the venue at strategic points as in the photo…nicely spotted by Mr A.

For those who missed the event here’s Darren talking about how to promote a blog. This is from his blog not yesterday’s session, but similar content. Laurel’s presentation is available here. Many of her slides are minimalist and need Laurel to do them justice but my favourite slides are 18-24 inc. Judging by the comments flying in on twitter David Armano’s session is along these lines.

The social business challenge as we see it here at FRANkVizeum is to take social to market pitched at a level that integrates a brand’s current investment in paid for media activity and does not leave marketers thinking “What are you talking about?” and “How is this possibly relevant to my brand(s)?”  We have our social media infusion process, some case histories and we run our free FRANkademy session each month to introduce social thinking within a traditional media context. It’s working for us and our clients and i would encourage any brand with just their toes in the water to dive in and splash about.

Anybody who went to MarketingNow (or didn’t) want to add their thoughts?

A year ago, I hadn’t heard of Nuffnang and yet next month I am very honored to be on the judging panel of the inaugural Nuffnang Asia Pacific Blog Awards.

All thanks for our partnership with Nuffnang must go to David Lee, my fellow Director in Nuffnang Australia. Dave approached Ming and Tim, Nuffnang’s co-founders, about our potential involvement, about 11 months ago and since November 2008 we have been building Nuffnang’s blog advertising community in Australia. Today we have over 1,000 bloggers who have signed up to our network with ads seen by 90,000 people daily.

However our numbers are dwarfed by the collective might of Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines who have over 100,000 blogs with ads seen by 3 million people daily.

The awards have created a frenzy with over 400 bloggers, plus partners, being flown to Singapore for a grand Gala Dinner and accommodation at Nuffnang’s expense. The sponsors are Pringles and The Singapore Tourism Board.

There are 12 blog awards in total Best Blog Shop, Best Food Blog, Best Fashion Blog, Best Parenting Blog, Best Travel Blog, Best Geek Blog, Best Celebrity Blog, Best Entertainment Blog, Best Original Blog Design, Most Influential Blog, Best Hidden Gem and the top award of Region’s Best Blog.

Nominations have closed so now it’s down to the serious job of judging.

As the need for sound social business strategy becomes more apparant in Australia its fascinating to observe how brands are trying to engage with bloggers. Australia is at a relatively early stage of development in terms of engaging the blogosphere and it’s good to be at the forefront of the understanding process. The key consideration in social media is to originate and sustain a healthy dialogue with the view of building a long term relationship.

The challenge for many brands is to recognise this and not to approach the blogosphere with the intent of ‘taking’ or ‘using.’ The opportunity is to give and share, as with any healthy relationship.

The inaugural blog awards is part of Nuffnang’s commitment to our blogger community and i can’t wait until i visit Singapore for the first time in October to witness first hand the raw energy of our Nuffies.

A big shout out to everyone who attended our fourth FRANkademy on Friday, for what was another very successful social media session.  Thanks to MCN, Hardie Grant Publishing, Yaffa Publishing (AdNews), Carat, iProspect, Keep Left PR, Propeller PR and Austereo for their input and participation.

A special thankyou also goes out to our friends at Nuffnang, for making the big trip from overseas!

The session covered off a broad range of topics, including:

An introduction to the size of the opportunity social media presents
The importance of having an integrated social media strategy and not ‘grabbing at the tools’
What is Twitter?  Who is using it well?
Blogging, Blog Networks and Nuffnang Australia case studies
FRANkVizeum’s approach to bought/owned/earned media – a working case study

For anyone who missed Friday’s session and would like to attend our September event, please RSVP here and we’ll look forward to seeing you!