Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

From riots to dinosaurs – how digital continues to amaze me

September 22nd, 2011

I am a student from Birmingham City University, working at Reform on my placement year. A couple of months into my digital year in industry there are few things that have struck me…

When I tell people I am working in digital for my placement year, a common reaction is to imagine a fantasy world, impregnable, with very techy people playing around with code on computers.  I don’t think that could be further from the truth at this moment in time. Digital is becoming more and more crucial to daily life and I for one welcome this.

Social media was recently blamed by many for enabling the London riots. However, I think the key point to remember is that it’s not social media itself that is the problem, its how people use it. For all the Blackberry messenger organised rioting, there were also some fantastic campaigns on Twitter and Facebook which help to restore faith in humanity, focusing on communities cleaning up and coming together.

This is the kind of reassurance that digital can provide, and it even extends to nations. During the earthquakes in Japan, Twitter, Facebook and Skype all helped families to reconnect and confirm the safety of loved ones. Analogue phone lines could not cope with the extreme high levels of people trying to contact each other, but digital platforms enabled contact and granted peace of mind in times of immense trauma.

And what about the power of social media to spread fantastic stories that would not be heard otherwise? The best example in the last few days is the story about one man’s experience with Marks and Spencer’s customer service. In case you haven’t already seen it, one customer who was overcharged for a sandwich was told in response to his complaint that he would receive a gift card in compensation. When he didn’t receive his gift card he asked politely for a hand-drawn picture of a smiley dinosaur to be included with the gift card (presumably as a joke?!). Wonderfully he actually got what he asked for, including a message apologising ‘unfortunately art was never my strong point…’ Check out the picture of the dinosaur – it’s actually quite good!

Digital is connecting more and more with the real world and we get to hear about real people and their experiences so much more than we ever could previously. What I love about the digital industry is that it’s volatile, it’s unpredictable, it’s challenging and it’s here to stay. Another plus is that apparently I’m a computer genius now that I work in digital. (It is worth bearing in mind that this is coming from my mother who is amazed because I know Ctrl+C…).

By Karen Hawey at Reform

The ‘super-injunction phenomenon’ – is your digital reputation under attack?

May 11th, 2011

It can take years for a celebrity to build their reputation, but it can all be undone with one tweet.

Whether that tweet is written by the celebrity or not, the nature of the beast is that this tweet can spread so quickly that it very soon becomes common knowledge and, to all intents and purposes, fact.

So, how can celebrities manage their reputation online? Who is responsible for making sure that the image they are creating for themselves in the public eye is reflected online?

Who is responsible for reputation management?
There are two key people who need to be involved in both creating and managing a reputation – the celebrity themself and their management team. They both need to share a clear strategy on how they are going to build and maintain this reputation both on and offline.

Celebrities are brands and brands are alive 24/7. People don’t stop talking about you on Twitter or Facebook outside of office hours, which means that these kinds if channels need to be monitored 24 hours a day. Just like a celebrity can’t choose whether to be famous or not when they wake up in the morning, they also need to be in ‘celebrity mode’ online, constantly building their brand. If they don’t, they risk undoing all their hard work.

The other party who needs to be involved is the celebrity’s management team. I am constantly terrified at the lack of time and investment that agents, PRs and publicists put into their celebrities’ digital presence. I understand that this is a whole new world with different rules, but online reputation management is not a choice anymore, it is an essential part of their job.

So, to all celebrities and their management teams, my advice is this.

1. Take it seriously
If your brand comes under a cyber attack – a wave of negative publicity – it is very often too late to limit the damage. Tweets are in the public domain forever and it is impossible to ask everyone to remove their posts.

Reputations can evaporate in seconds. The speed in which this gossip spreads is astonishing. It is human nature to gossip and all Twitter does is give people an opportunity to listen and participate in it on a massive scale.

2. Have a plan – the best form of defense is continued preparation
Most of us invest in software and technology to protect the things we love the most – smoke detectors, burglar alarms and virus protection. If you have a brand or reputation that is worth saving then you need to invest in someone to develop a plan on how you might manage an attack on your reputation and to be able to respond intelligently 24/7. They need to live and breathe social media and have a true understanding of what the celebrity is trying to achieve.

3. Start NOW

Blog post by Rosie Sayers, Strategy Director at Reform

Google and Bing to Add Twitter Tweets in Search Results… Is That a Good Thing?

October 22nd, 2009

News came out yesterday that claimed both Google and Microsoft Bing are going to include a bit more tweets from Twitter in their search results.  The search marketing world was abuzz, with comments and ideas for how they can expand their search marketing capabilities and how Bing and Google will benefit greatly from these “real time” updates being integrated in their search results.

Really?  This is good news?  Perhaps I should tweet it to the contrary.  I say, hold on a second.  How relevant are most people’s tweets to the general public anyway?  Lets have a look.  Bing is already doing a beta of this in the US.  All I can say is that it’s good that it’s separate from the real results. 

Google’s blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html tells me that with Twitter integration, I can now find up to date snow conditions at my favourite ski resort.  So I tried to look for the “weather in Chamonix” and “weather in Whistler” on Twitter Bing (http://www.bing.com/twitter/).  Which by the way is the same as http://search.twitter.com for the most part.

One had no results, the other had ONE.  And it wasn’t even of any use.  No real time info, just some person tweeting that the weather was nice…. yesterday – so much for real time.  

Lets try something more commercial then… what’s more commercial than insurance!!  Here the results are split between blatant sales pitches (that came from automated twitter accounts and have links that redirect to affiliates) and people’s every day lives – such as one that reads “I just got car insurance, what up yall!!!”  True story, not mine.

Don’t get me wrong, Twitter has a lot of use for people that already know you or your company, your brand, etc, and want to know more or be kept posted – such as our Reform Digital account that lets followers know the second this blog is posted (quite ironic I know).  But if you’re a complete stranger that happens to query something related to this page’s content, I’d rather you find this posting in the search results and not the much briefer condensed tweet – which will of course put this lovely page an extra click away. 

While I know many brands have taken advantage of Twitter, to launch unique offers to users who “follow” them, in some ways like the email lists of old – putting this sort of thing on the regular search results sort of defeats that purpose.  Brands lose out from the quality of direct connections that are more likely to convert, and users lose out by seeing a wave of search results that get valued by the engines, but don’t really have much use in most instances. 

From the user end, will it open more Twitter accounts?  Maybe.  Critics such as Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital believe that Twitter already has the users who want to use it.  For the most part, he feels “everyone who wants to publicly tweet is already doing so”.  And I agree.  But, I do think there will be a wave of new accounts and more traffic for Twitter with this search engine integration. 

Brands, advertising, just like the profiles that went astray when mainstream media looked at MySpace and Facebook as revenue generating opportunities.  Its one thing to make sure your brand reserves their presence, and I’m all for proactive campaigns – but there’s a difference between a Tweet about a product offer from a person I know and a search result featuring a tweet from a stranger that tries to befriend me.  Can I really trust the latter? 

One positive that Bing’s Twitter integration claims to have is that it will only expose the tweets from the last 7 days.  This is a good start, as the last thing I want is an archive of tweets muddling up the index in Bing or Google for that matter.  On the other side, all the tweets I see in the results are pretty irrelevant.  Only time will tell I guess.   Twitter can be easy to spam also, which is why I liked the fact that it wasn’t fully integrated in search.  And it’s very easy to post an article and just get loads of accounts to link up to it.

Some articles cite that you can get real time weather, news opinion from regular people and sports information now that Twitter will get integrated on search.  Hmmm, I could get that stuff online already.  This just makes sure I get to see everyone who bangs on about it and thinks I care.  Lets see how Google fares. Good luck.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

Update: Here’s what the US version looks like (for those that can’t see it).

Bing Twitter Homepage in US