Saturday is a strange old day! for some reason a sense of calm and a time for reflection descends upon many.  I guess in today’s world any day the markets are closed is a good day, less headlines of economic woe, bank catastrophes or whole countries hitting the wall!

The burning questions for many are how bad will it get? will our business survive? will I keep my job?  Economic downturns, although negative,  do have plus points.  Think about it, as pricing for travel goes up people drive less which means less petrol, less emissions and a respite for our planet.  Less flights overseas which means more audio and video conferencing a plus for companies in this space and of course better for the environment, less train travel which is good for anyone that suffers a daily commute having to stand squashed into a large tin can!

There are ways to win in an economic downturn, it affords us the opportunity to restructure our businesses and focus on that which is important, ‘ROI’.  I watched a great video from Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday on ROI, a truly inspiring chap, perhaps we should get him to give traders and shareholders a pep talk before the markets open on Monday!?

ROI - Return on Investment.  A hugely important question to ask around any activity a company performs.  So if you are in marketing put all of your upcoming campaigns on the table and for each one ask these questions:

1. What is the purpose of this campaign?
2. Who are we targeting?
3. Can we measure the effectiveness of this campaign?
4. Will this campaign generate revenue? how will you know any revenue increase is due to your campaign?
5. Does this campaign make the job of selling easier and more effective?
6. Can I show definite ROI figures?

These are general questions, businesses should be asking many more but If you can’t answer these simple questions with any clarity then stop what you are doing!  Build campaigns that are trackable, measurable and most importantly show an ROI.

What other questions should businesses be asking?

6Consulting specialise in social media monitoring and are proud to be a UK focused Radian6 Authorised Agent, if you would like to see a demo of Radian6 please get in touch with us here.

It’s here at last, the return of Xfactor, 3 months of singing joy, the good, the bad and most definitely some ugliness going on.  6Consulting love XFactor so much we have taken the bold decision to monitor the show within the social sphere using Radian6.  The info below (stats) were collected via the Radian6 Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Platform.

Week one was very interesting, so heres the run down.

Top 4 videos:

Ant & Seb

Ant & Seb have become the most viewed audition so far this season, a classic viral video which saw peak viewing times on Monday and Tuesday morning, both days seeing well over 100,000 views.  The video was posted by 55 different people.  The stats are as follows:

Views: 436,032 in 7 days
Comments:1,783
Unique Commentators:1,585

Rachel Hylton

Rachel Hylton had the full XFactor treatment complete with background sob story.  An amazing voice and a close second in viewing figures, we expect to see more of her over the coming weeks. The stats are as follows:

Views: 330,688 in 7 days
Comments:1,834
Unique Commentators:1,456

Alexandra Davies

Alexandra Davies was third most viewed XFactor video this week peaking at 74,090 views.  The young 16 year old gave a good audition.  The stats are as follows:

Views: 74,090 in 7 days
Comments: 300
Unique Commentators:265

Dreamtime

Dreamtime is a personal favourite of mine, a classic XFactor audition with huge viral potential sadly not lived up to.  The stats are as follows:

Views: 39,849 in 7 days
Comments: 130
Unique Commentators:126

6Consulting specialise in social media monitoring and are proud to be a UK focused Radian6 Authorised Agent, if you would like to see a demo of Radian6 please get in touch with us here.

Andy Larks talks about Dell’s marketing strategy and how social media is all important. It should be noted that the listening aspect he repeatedly refers to is via the Radian6 social media monitoring and engagement platform that we here at 6Consulting specialise in.

This is a re-post from the Radian6 Website

With the ease of use of Web 2.0 social media sites consumers are now publishers and broadcasters. They have the ability to share their opinions, needs, complaints, and ideas in a way that is not only immediate but permanently recorded and easily spread. Consumers are no longer whispering amongst themselves. They are shouting from the tops of mountains. They are shouting out to brands.

But are their favorite brands listening to them? And if they are listening are they then engaging in such a way that:

- maintains or grows that brand’s reputation,
- improves a customer’s experience,
- helps someone learn more about a product,
- solves a problem,
- positions properly against a competitor
- delivers valued content
- enables and/or thanks a fan
- encourages participation in that brands future success

But is the act of listening and engaging, in general, good enough? It’s certainly a great start. But the act of embracing the social web in this way begins to create a whole new set of challenges.

For a moment, imagine way back in history when businesses got their first phone. Customers could call them to place orders but they could also call to complain, get help, give feedback etc… So, naturally, departments within companies got phones as well to answer these different types of calls and used a new feature to transfer calls between them. This worked so well that these companies began to grow and with growth came the need to add more phones and more staff. And with more staff meant the need to assign calls to the right people within departments based on skill, availability, language, territory etc… It also meant an increased load at times and a challenge to ensure calls were answered quick enough to maintain or increase client satisfaction. And so it goes. It’s the sophisticated contact centers of today that show us where it can all end up.

Brands listening to and engaging with the social web, or what we like to call, answering the “social phone”, quickly face the same challenges. They are expected to:

- answer or engage quickly because commenting activity usually happens in the first 24-48 hours
- operate in multiple languages and filter content by region so issues and opportunities can be addressed locally
- cover all types of social media be it blogs, forums and opinion sites, picture and video sharing sites, online mainstream news and emerging media like Twitter and Friendfeed
- prioritize by what’s going viral or who’s the most influential in order to be the most effective and efficient
- analyze trends in order to help calculate ROI

So keeping all this in mind, we find it particularly exciting when we get to work with a company that believes in listening and engaging with their community, that shares our vision as to where this is all headed, and that wants to see this become a natural part of any company’s mix of valuable customer channels.

One such company we are excited to be working with is Dell. And it’s through their use of our social media monitoring and engagement platform today that’s helping to generate wonderful feedback as to where to go next (See Dell’s blog post: “Dell and Radian6 - It all starts with listening.” ) Assignment of tasks amongst a workgroup and the ability to track and audit engagements are just a few of these key features.

Conversations about thousands of brands are happening every minute of every day. People are expressing needs, sharing opinions, sharing ideas – hoping to be heard and in many cases, hoping to connect. Dell has decided to be part of the conversation, to assist and to share – and we are proud to be partners in helping make it happen.

What about your company? Can you hear the shouts? And remember – “everyone loves a good listener.”

Cold calling has been served notice, a new era beckons and with it an altogether different way of working. Social networking has arrived and will soon replace cold calling as the predominant method of prospecting in business.

I have profoundly changed the way I do business and have firmly embraced social media and the networking possibilities it has created. To that end I have reduced to a very small percentage the amount of time I spend cold calling. Read the full story

Is your social media identity being stolen?

I haven’t put a blogpost out for a week or so as I have been playing with some new social media tools and writing for my book (watch this space). So there I was suffering from social media overload and unable to sleep when it struck me (as I am sure it has others) that companies still don’t protect themselves correctly.

There has been a great deal of talk in the media of late about personal identity theft. You chuck out your old bank statements, some low life wades through your potato pealing’s and fag ends, retrieves the discarded documents, steals your identity and takes out a loan in your name. The result is bad credit and a huge waste of your time solving the issue. If, like me you live in the UK, you can be as careful as you like, but when the government loses the details of all 25million parents it doesn’t matter how careful you are.

One would have thought then, that companies would be equally as protective of their brands online. I am afraid to say they are not. So, are big companies (and small for that matter) aware that their identity or brand name may end up being used or squatted on by others?

Because this kept me awake, like the argument on social media vs cold calling, I decided I would find out just how slack these companies are and conduct ANOTHER test!

Let me give you an example. I know not everyone uses Twitter, but lets face it whether it is Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or any other so called social media platform you don’t want someone taking your name in vain.

I remember the legal wrangles over domain squatting (still happening today) because some shark decides to take your name or brand, use it and hold you to ransom to buy it back. Now what I am going to tell you does not mean I advocate this in anyway, in fact using someone else’s brand or name in this manner is like stealing to me and needs appropriate punishment, but I am going to name and shame a few well known organisations. I have registered some well known brands and institutions on several social media platforms, if any of them notice this blog, or the fact that I have set a profile for them they can have it back free of charge, no hassle, I only want to prove their stupidity for not having done it themselves.

Lets take Twitter as our case study. Their terms and conditions state:

1. We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

Fantastic, I am safe then. Anyone can use my name and when I am ready to wake up and use social media I get in touch with Twitter and WHAM! I get my name back, perrrfect.. Well not exactly! How long have they had your identity? who has been following them? how many people? have they Tweeted in a positive or negative way? has ANY damage been done?

The name and shame role call - people/companies without a profile (well they have one now cause I registered it!)

1. Magners - Irish cider brand, incredibly hip and cool summer drink, very big in England
2. Bulmers - Irish cider brand, incredibly hip and cool summer drink, very big in England
3. Micorsoft - Global software company. I thought I had struck gold here but look closely at the name!!
4. Harrods - probably the best known department store in the world!
5. ITV1 - one of the largest and oldest TV channels in england!
6. Cherirblair - Tony Blair’s (ex PM) wife!!
7. Primark - another huge department store chain
8. AsdaWalmart - just a small company (Walmart is the second largest company on the planet)
9. Sysco - 33rd largest company on the planet
10. Centrica - in other words British gas

The list goes on. What is interesting is the spread of companies, celebs and brands. Take Harrods for example, how on earth could they have missed this? who is in charge of protecting them against this sort of activity?

I understand that some may argue as to why on earth they would want a Twitter profile and I don’t want to appear biased towards one platform or another, therefore I checked out the names above on other social media with the same result.

So who is to blame? the company? the agency? or should social media sites build in a protect list of global brands? it would save an awful lot of legal paperwork, cost and heartache, but in my opinion someone within these organisations is liable for the mistake.

Companies need to keep up on what’s happening, or employ someone that can. Protecting your identity, be it personal, company or brand is important, there are individuals out there that will spend hours searching for names, registering profiles all in your name. Some may wish to write about how great you, your company or brand is, others may not.