Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: twitter

  • The importance of transparency

    The importance of transparency

    The US Federal Reserve has announced they will release more details from the information they use on determining official interest rates. On the same day the social networking site Twitter is embarrassed when its opaque verified account policy fails.

    Being open and honest is the key component in trust and in turn trust is the bedrock of society. If you can’t trust your neighbour, the local cop or the grocer at the shops then society quickly starts breaking down.

    Many big businesses, particularly those in markets where they are one of a small group of incumbents get away with abusing your trust; they tell an illegal surcharge can’t be waived because “that’s their policy, you can’t change an account because of the “terms and conditions” and that the call centre’s operators name is Janet even though it’s Rajiv and you know that when you call back asking for “Janet” you’ll be told”there’s 35 Janets working in the department right now”.

    All of this we’ve come to expect from big bureaucratic organisations like the phone company, the bank and the tax office. The interesting thing is how many new businesses that are adopting this anti-customer model of operating.

    Rules and policies are fine – as long as everyone knows them, they aren’t too onerous and they are applied fairly and consistently.

    The challenge for all businesses – particularly those taking on incumbents – is they have to show they are more trustworthy than the existing operators. If you can’t show that, then maybe it’s time to think about how you operate.

    Similar posts:

  • What’s a Twitterer worth?

    What’s a Twitterer worth?

    $2.50 per month is what Phone Dog think a Twitter follower is worth in their lawsuit against a former employee.

    As nebulous and ambiguous as Phone Dog’s claim seems to be it appears some price is being created on the business value of social media users.

    To date we’ve seen services like Empire Avenue, Klout and Kred try to measure social media users’ real influence on the different web platforms which in turn allows businesses to allocate some sort of value.

    As social media and the web mature, we’ll see businesses spend more time understand where the value lies online.

    Each platform is going to have a different value to a business. Depending on the market, one person may be worth more on Twitter than on Facebook and similarly a business may put more value on members of a specific LinkedIn group or industry forum.

    What we shouldn’t confuse “value” with is how the services themselves make money. For Facebook, the value comes from the marketing opportunities presented by people sharing their lives while for LinkedIn it’s largely coming from employment related advertising and search.

    Other social media platforms are finding other ways to make money and each will have a different attraction to users, businesses and advertisers. All of which will affect their perceived value.

    That perceived value is the most important part of social media. If users don’t think a site adds something to their lives, then that service has no value to anyone.

    It’s tempting to think that people will object to having a “value” placed on their heads as users, but most folk understand the commercial TV and radio that does pretty much the same thing.

    The real question of how much people are prepared to share online will come when they understand the value of the data they are giving the social media platforms. When users start to understand this, they may ask for more service from these companies.

    What a Twitter user is worth right now is probably different to what they will be worth this time next year, but there’s no doubt we’ll all have a better idea.

    Similar posts:

  • The social maze

    The social maze

    Towards the end of 2011 we saw a surge of stories about companies and employees fighting over the ownership of corporate social media accounts like LinkedIn contacts and Twitter feeds.

    For the social media community this is encouraging as it shows that businesses are beginning understand there the value in online networks. It also illustrates the risks for both businesses and employees when these tools aren’t properly understood in the workplace.

    The employer’s risks

    As social media sites are one of ways businesses communicate with the public, managers have to understand these services are an asset too important to be left to the intern or youngest staff member in the office.

    Should that intern move on – possibly at the next college semester – the business may find they are locked out of the account or it is even deleted.

    Business pages and accounts should be set up in the name of senior people in the organisation and, where possible, administration should be shared by the relevant unit in the organisation (customer support, marketing or whatever).

    The nominal owner and administrators should understand that the account is the property of the business and all posts on it will be work related and not personal.

    When one of the administrators or owners leave the organisation, login details should be handed over and passwords need to be changed. Where possible, the ownership should be changed to another employee – this is one of the current problems with Google+ accounts at the moment.

    Employers need to understand that the professional contacts individuals make during the course of their work isn’t their property, so trying to claim the personal LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers of an employee’s private account probably will not be successful.

    Similarly social media services like LinkedIn are not Customer Relationship Management programs (CRMs) and using them that way, as a company called Edcomm did, will almost certainly end up with problems and a possible dispute.

    Traps for employees

    When given a work social media account to maintain, it’s best to consider it as being like your work email – it’s best to use it for business related purposes only and you’ll have to give it up when you leave the organisation.

    If you’re being held out as a representative of the business, as we see in the Phonedog_Noah dispute over a business Twitter account, then it’s best to set up a private account for your own use and not use the business account after leaving the organisation, even if they don’t ask for it when you leave.

    On sites like LinkedIn and Facebook you should change your employment status as soon as you leave an organisation to make it clear you’re no longer working there. If you’ve left on bad terms, resist the temptation to insult your former employer when you change your details.

    Staff using social media have to be aware that can be held accountable in the workplace for things they do on their personal online accounts; sexual harassment, abusing customers and workplace bullying through a Facebook or Twitter account can all result in disciplinary action.

    In many ways the disputes we’re seeing on social media services reflect what we’ve seen in many other fields over the years – the ownership of intellectual property, professional contacts and even access to websites have all been thoroughly covered by the courts over the years and there’s little in these disagreements that would surprise a good lawyer.

    With all business disputes though, it’s best to resolve them before lawyers and writs start being involved. Clearly defining and understanding what is expected of both employers and staff can save a lot of cost and stress.

    Similar posts:

  • Tony Delroy’s Nightlife: Our digital reputation

    Tony Delroy’s Nightlife: Our digital reputation

    December’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife looked at the risks of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Along with being a great way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues using online services can have some unexpected effects.

    Program podcast

    A recording of the program is available from the ABC’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife webpage. You can listen to it through the site or download it and listen to it as a podcast.

    Topics covered

    Tony and Paul covered a range of topics including the following questions;

    • Are we living in the social media age?
    • What is social media is?
    • Why people use social media?
    • How some folk have come unstuck using social websites?
    • Can doing the wrong thing hurt your reputation or career?
    • What the risks are during the christmas party season?
    • Are there too many social media services?
    • How businesses can really use them?
    • Where will these services go next?

    Listeners’ questions

    We had a great range of questions and comments from listeners and those we promised to get back to included how to shut down your Facebook account and the link to report abuse on the service.

    Reporting Facebook abuse

    If you’re being harassed on Facebook, you can report misuse at Facebook’s Help Centre. Their page includes instructions on dobbing in underage users, blocking irritating people and how to use their privacy settings.

    Deleting a Facebook profile

    Leaving Facebook is not easy, so on the Netsmarts website we have the detailed instructions on deleting your Facebook account.

    Note with these instructions that you need to disable any applications you may have installed on Facebook before deleting the account. When you go to the Applications page you may be shocked at how many things are connecting to your page.

    Do we have too many social media services?

    Tony asked if we have too many social media platforms.

    This is a topic we’ve covered previously on the website and while there’s no doubt many of the services around today won’t survive, some will become increasingly become important.

    Next Nightlife tech program

    Our next program will be on February 9 next year. We will probably have some spots over the summer break and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know about them as soon as we do.

    Similar posts:

  • Is the social media business model dying?

    Is the social media business model dying?

    Is the social media business model dead?

    The frenzied rush to release new features such as Facebook’s latest changes, along with Google’s updates to their Plus platform, may be the first indication the big social media business model is broken.

    Driving the adoption of social media services has been the value they add to people’s lives; MySpace was a great place to share interests like bands and music, Facebook’s is to hear what was happening with their families and friends, LinkedIn is for displaying our professional background and Twitter keeps track on what’s happening in the world.

    Now the social media services want to be something else, Facebook wants to become “a platform for human storytelling” where you’ll share your story with friends and friends of friends (not to mention the friends of your mad cousin in Milwaukee) while Google+ wants to become an “identity service”.

    The fundamental problem for social media services is their sky high valuations require them squeezing more information and value out of time poor users by adding the features on other platforms; so Facebook tries to become Twitter while Google+ desperately tries to ape Facebook and Quora.

    Adopting other services’ features is not necessarily what the users want or need; you may be happy to follow a Reuters or New York Times journalist on Twitter for breaking news but you, and them, are probably not particularly keen on being Facebook friends or professionally associated on LinkedIn.

    If it turns out we don’t want to share a timeline of our lives with the entire world but just know how our relatives or old school friends in another city are doing, then the underpinnings of the social media giants value may not be worth the billions of dollars we currently believe.

    This isn’t to say social media services themselves aren’t going away, it could just be that the grandiose dreams of the online tycoons where they become an identity service or a mini-Internet are just a classic case of overreach.

    For Google and Salesforce, whose core businesses aren’t in social media, this could be merely an expensive distraction, but for those businesses like Facebook it could be that Myspace’s failure was the indicator that making money out of people’s friendships isn’t quite the money maker some people think.

    Similar posts: