Most, if not all multinational organisations have a presence in social media now. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or all of the popular networks, most big businesses have seemingly caught up. It does seem however that despite this natural progression for organisations, there is always room for caution.

One key factor that suggests that an element of reluctance exists towards ‘getting social’ is the fact that only 7.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on Facebook themselves, and only 4% have opened Twitter accounts (found by a study by Domo, via Forbes.com). Why is this? The evidence that has persuaded the organisations that have thus far taken the social plunge is that despite industry and market differences, the fact that the modern day consumers live in social networks. Surely the CEOs themselves realise the benefits that can be gained from the unhindered relationships that can be developed between business and consumer, and even particular personnel and consumers.

There could be a myriad reasons why both CEOs are reluctant to join in with social media personally, and why there still needs to be an almost prudent approach when developing a social media strategy for any organisation.

Big business may be scared of social media because of for example, issues relating to transparency. Large organisations may worry that being active across certain social networks may mean that they will have to completely open up to customers about all elements of their operations. This however is twisted logic; before social media existed this was not necessary – so why should it be now? Online consumers are looking for a more human element to the service they receive, and if delivered in the right way a social media campaign can certainly achieve this.

Issues relating to an organisation’s brand, and overall communication approach may also feature in the mindset of an anxious CEO, this is exactly why proper content planning is needed in order to ensure that brand consistency is both retained and communicated appropriately across any networks that an organisations uses. In terms of reputation, businesses have every right to have concerns about reputation damage on social networks. As users of these networks can, for example post negative comments about an organisation that then may be seen by many people on the particular network, then brand damage may occur. A perfect example of how a large organisation has counteracted negative sentiments from consumers on social networks is the case of O2.

The company had huge network issues that effectively resulted in the loss of connection for hundreds of thousands of customers across all mediums. Many of these customers subsequently visited the company website which then crashed due to the gargantuan levels of traffic. The disgruntled customers then started giving the company abuse on Twitter relating to the problems they were experiencing. The way in which O2 responded to all kinds of abuse was key in counteracting the wave of negative sentiment that initially resulted from customers on Twitter. The person running O2’s account did not ‘stoop to the level’ of the abuse and simply answered particularly aggressive tweets with humour. The company started to gain sympathy from Twitter users because of the honest and friendly approach that it was taking, and therefore in a period of just over one day the reach of Twitter conversations referencing O2 with sentiment involving ‘love’ and ‘admiration’ increased massively.

The impact that Twitter had on the London 2012 Olympic games has had copious amounts of attention from various sources of media throughout the games. The social micro-blogging network has accommodated a newly intensified level of opinion diversity never really seen before at a global event of this kind. It is because Twitter has evolved into an opinion facilitating gargantuan, that it is increasingly intriguing to take a look into some of the statistics involved.

According to the official Twitter blog, the total number of tweets that in some way related to the London Olympics exceeded 150 million. This is a pretty staggering figure, especially considering that this data was taken from tweets posted over only a 16-day period. In sporting terms, the Olympics was defined by many mind-blowing achievements, disappointments and examples of personal sacrifice. The moments that were most talked about were measured by Twitter in terms of tweets per minute. Unsurprisingly, the athlete with both number one and number two spots in the table was Jamaican record-breaking sprinter Usain Bolt. Both his gold-medal winning performances in the 200m sprint and 100m sprint achieved over 80,000 and over 74,000 tweets per minute at the time. The top 3 most discussed athletes at the games overall were Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Tom Daley. All of the top ten most discussed athletes were tweeted about over one million times each.

A couple of standout incidents did however also highlight the naivety of some athletes using the social network. Both of these infamous moments of ‘social media hell’ involved racism, and led to both athletes being sent home by their respective nations. It seemed that despite this though, the majority of Olympic orientated tweets were in support of the athletes, and the games as a whole. This ‘general positivity’ may be of particular interest to some, especially when considering the amount of negative press circulating around the social networks in the time leading up to London 2012.

As the Olympics grew closer, I can remember the relatively high level of ‘anti-Olympics’ sentiment relating to the more controversial issues surrounding the games. These issues, such as the apparent ‘corporate dominance’ of the London 2012 Olympics seem to have been almost drowned out by the overwhelming amounts of positivity towards the Olympics as a whole.

One feature of the games that created particularly high levels of conversation were the opening and closing ceremonies, and in particular the individual performers within them. Twitter was experiencing more than 116,000 tweets per minute relating to the Spice Girls at one point (official Twitter blog). If the online conversation continues to grow, as it has done hugely since Beijing 2008, then trending topics in ‘Rio 2016’ will be both extensive in quantity, and volume as more people get connected to Twitter worldwide.

Search engine optimisation has changed fundamentally, and as a result the Internet is maturing. Google’s recent ‘Penguin’ update seeks to punish websites that have thus far been using archaic ‘black hat’ techniques, and reward those that create and publish content that is both new, and can attract a large, interested audience.

I suppose one way of looking into Google’s thinking here is that in a sense, they are encouraging the qualities that made pre-Internet journalism successful, and applying it to the age of e-commerce and social media. The key now for improved search-engine ranking for your site is to think, write, publish and share rather than simply looking to exploit a web crawler that searches for keywords and links. This new algorithm has completely changed the philosophy and approach to search engine optimisation that web developers and businesses will have to take, even if they don’t yet realise it – after all, the update was only released in April 2012.

The Penguin update has dramatically diminished the search engine rankings of websites that have not adapted to the change in policy by Google, with many sites falling down the search results as an effect of several years of content negligence and keyword reliance. If you have discovered that your once proud website now appears on page 8 in a Google search then it is pretty likely that you have been caught out by this algorithm change.

You can however counteract this, and ultimately use this fundamental change in search rankings to your advantage. The new rules, which underlie Google’s new ranking policy, are orientated around discouraging ‘spammy’ search engine optimisation methods. These methods used to be cheeky tactics used by many websites in order to improve both search rankings and site traffic.

The opposite is now true for many of the techniques. ‘Spinning’ (i.e. taking something created by another party and making slight keyword changes) is something now picked upon by the Penguin. Keyword ‘stuffing’ was another popular short-term fix several years ago, and whilst the clever use of keywords on your site is important for SEO purposes, it is unwise to simply ‘stuff’ your website with tonnes of keywords in a methodological and unimaginative way.

As we have already mentioned, building relevant content that your audience will enjoy, and potentially wish to share online is an incredibly effective way to re-build your friendship with Google. Blog posts are a great way of achieving this (something I’m doing right now in fact!). Try and write content in your site blog posts that are topical, up-to-date and even opinionated. Remember, this is not a sales technique; it is a way of interacting with the people who are interested in what you do.

Publishing fresh content that your audience can also interact with, comment on and share is evidently an effective tool to use now that the Penguin update is here. The Social Churn publishing element is uniquely efficient in attaining this as it allows you to hand-pick relevant comments from various social networks, and then publish them on your website. If you utilise this you have two instant benefits; you significantly improve your search ranking and also display positive feedback or ‘social recommendations’ on your site, improving both trust from prospective customers and high purchase likelihood.

The Penguin update essentially causes websites to suffer if they fail to innovate, which I can only see as a wholly positive change, which should in time make for a vastly more interesting and content driven internet.

The original clip was filmed on a mobile phone by a 13 year old boy called Jake Goodyear, while he was out on a father and son trip to London’s Richmond Park. The pair later posted it on YouTuube because they found it amusing and it quickly became an over night success and has now been viewed over 6 Million times.

Jesus Christ Fenton In Richmond Park:

Off the back of this famous clip, there have since been multiple remakes of the video, where people have used the audio and put it into a completely new context. Obviously no-one likes it when people directly copy something unique and try to gain credit for it. However remakes of famous viral videos often work because they are playing on the fact that you need to understand the original before you can appreciate the humour in the remake!

Here are a few of my favourites?

Jesus Christ Fenton Lion King:

Fenton Gives Shearer & Dowie The Runaround:

Pirates of the Caribbean (Fenton!):

more suggestions very welcome…

That’s not true, and it’s not true because not all posts are created equal. Think of it this way, your business is not automatically friends with your audience. That only changes if you engage with them. Engagement on Facebook is reflected in three forms: likes, shares, and comments. We’ll bestow 6 tips that will help bump up those interactions….

1) PHOTO’S

They say a picture paints a thousand words, well in terms of Facebook it could be a thousand likes. When scrolling through ever more cluttered news feeds it is big, bright pictures that stop us in our tracks. When it comes to brands, a familiar image is also key. Familiarity in an image is as simple as including your company logo or a face that’s tied to your brand. Including a shortened link for readers to click on, is also useful when it comes to engagement.

2) FILL IN THE _______

Fill-in-the-blank posts are great at sparking engagement. The blanks are essentially ‘platforms’ for people to share their creativity. These types of posts often garner fun and short comments, which then encourage your audience to react and interact. Adding an element of gamification also leads to sharing amongst friends, especially if it involves a competition.

3) PHOTO CAPTION

It’s simple – ask fans to pop on a caption that they have made up to a picture that you have uploaded – a simple concept that garners a wave of responses.

4) QUESTIONS/ POLLS

Most page admins make the mistake of updating their wall without putting much thought into adding a description or ending the description with a question. Asking questions is probably one of the easiest methods to get fans to comment and share their thoughts. It’s a good indicator if you’re looking for feedback or genuinely want to know what people think of a particular product for instance.

5) TIPS

Tips are ideas that fans are able to consume and implement easily. A tip is engaging because it gives value to your audience and therefore makes them more likely to react.

6) “QUOTES”

Quotes are one of the easiest and most popular ways to get likes and shares on Facebook. They tend to get more shares and likes compared to comments because quotes are often inspirational, making it personal in nature.

Have you implemented any of these? How did you get on? Let us know via our Facebook page or give us a tweet @socialchurn

The paper considered how using web-based social networks communities are forming groups by which they can press forward for change in their services from Government, organisation and even businesses.

What they didn’t take into consideration was just how far reaching the power of Facebook is or would be, as we look across the world there are governments that have fallen due to the use of social networks to co-ordinate change.

There’s a great video produced by Socialnomics which state some great social statistics its well worth a look at but here’s the figures they claim

• Social Media has become the No.1 activity on the web (its overtaken pornography)
• 1 in 5 divorces are blamed on FaceBook
• In the US 69% of parents are friends with their children on FaceBook
• There are babies in Egypt that have been called FaceBook

Social innovation in political terms relates to the process by which individuals can press their social demands by means of social interactions. It is aimed at improving
well being. It covers wide fields which range from new models of childcare
to web-based social networks, from the provision of domestic healthcare to
new ways of encouraging people to exchange cars for bicycles in cities or the development of global fair-trade chains.

We at Social Churn are even offsetting our Carbon footprint in response to the growing social call for sustainability.

Here’s an interesting Infographic taking a look at peoples attitudes and behaviors, what are your thoughts?

take a look at more of the findings over at http://www.fishburn-hedges.co.uk/social-media-customer

Over 75% of consumers trust – peer recommendations while less than 15% trust advertisements. Is it any wonder so many companies have jumped on the bandwagon, branding themselves via Facebook, Twitter and corporate blogs?

Nearly every company has adopted a website but what is interesting is these sites are merely a static representation of that business- bar blogs any updates go unrecognized or have no impact. Twitter feeds spew out mainly irrelevant data, Facebook widgets don’t allow you to publish comments from your page but having these widgets on your site means that a prime piece of homepage real estate is not working for you.

You can probably see where i’m going with this, the pitfalls outweigh the benefits, in fact to boot they have zero SEO benefits but there is a widget of some sort on nearly everyones website but for what purpose?

Here’s an example of a page with a Twitter feed (top right corner) as you can see it has not been recognized by Google even though it mentions the term given in the search…

This is how Google sees a Social Churn widget…

We want to bridge that gap, tying together the world of Digital and Social together.

Companies must develop a customized way to find influential content on the web about their brand — and this doesn’t start with measuring the influence of people or whacky campaign ideas, it all starts with identifying influential content. Instead of by page and over-all number of likes or followers, one’s influence should aptly be measured according to how likely a post is to show up in a search plus how many other sites with relevant keywords are linking to that specific page and the credibility of the influencer for a specific campaign / topic.

You also need to engage your potential customers. It isn’t enough to simply set up a widget that spews out your timeline, who would sit and read that? It’s all about engagement and interaction, making people feel part of the process, well ultimately valued.

Have we inspired you to ditch your bog standard widget? Get in touch if you would like a demo and see how publishing and Social Churn can help you

Over recent years there has been a rapid rise in the adoption of Social Media by all business sectors. However this is where it then seems to stop for the large majority of companies. It’s as if companies are merely setting up Social Network accounts because it is what people expect them to do, so they do it for the sake of it. In many cases this approach is often more harmful to the company than good. Dabbling in Social Media and not staying on top of it often just causes the company more hassle and creates frustrated customers.

Through talking to companies on a daily basis, it has become clear to me that a lot of companies have still not grasped the value in developing a strategy that will justify an ROI. This is often because they have dabbled without any real guidance, focus and direction. Once you know what you want to achieve with social then the ROI soon becomes apparent.

For Social Media to be successful for your business you need to open up and enter into conversation. Social Media is always a two way relationship. If your brand is not where your customers are then how can you expect to:

• Nurture your following – build your reputation/audience/brand loyalty
• Customer Service – keep existing customers happy
• Market Research – provide you with insight
• Create Interest – to run promotions, create social interest and conversation
• Social Commerce – for sales purposes

One aspect that is clearly becoming apparent is to use Social Media to manage and nurture customer care.

A recent study by SocialBakers discovered that “an incredible 70% of questions from Facebook fans are ignored which completely contradicts the interactive nature and purpose of social networks. What´s even more alarming is that 25% of global companies go as far as closing their wall on Facebook to prevent fans from asking questions at all.”

I personally hate it when big companies impose change on users without asking and I hate it more when they decide who can see it and what they can do with it.

So this morning we tested it, we sent an email to the address provided and it went straight into my Facebook other messages account – I like that it makes it quicker for me to get  messages and emails in one place.

However the problem is that my user name is public but my email is private with a little bit of guessing I was able to create a spam email to my business colleague (to test the theory of course) then send an unwanted email with the words spam on it and it didn’t get filtered. So it doesn’t appear to have the same security features we are used to with Gmail etc.

I don’t like that so if you want to change your profile setting then I suggest you change it to be hidden.

Here’s how to change it:

1. Go to your profile page. Click the “Info” link under your profile picture.
2. Scroll down to the Contact Info box in the middle of the page at the bottom. Click “Edit.”
3. You’ll find a section called “Emails.” This is where you can add/display your email addresses. If you don’t want your Facebook email displayed, click on the circle drop-down menu to the right of the email address and select “Hidden from profile.”
4. To display your other email addresses, click on the circle drop-down menu to the right of the email address you want and select “Show on Profile”
5. Save changes at the bottom

My advice is that you keep the email account but change to settings to be hidden, use it if you want, it works well but be careful because it can be easily spammed

We’ll let you know more when we know it