Posted May 22nd, 2012
by Eva Rohrmann
I appreciated the straightforward guidance on social media strategy that Rick Mans, a guest contributor to WSJ.com’s CIO Journal outlined in “How CIOs Can Take Charge of Business Social Strategies.” Mans, the social media lead at Capgemini, noted that “most work required to become a social enterprise is about changing mindsets and cultural acceptance,” rather than providing and integrating tools. To be a successful social enterprise, Mans offered five recommendations, from not ignoring employee training, to creating policies that guide employee participation, not police it. I think that his advice for CIOs could also be relevant to CCOs as they implement and refine their strategies for social media engagement – internally and externally.
WSJ.com: How CIOs Can Take Charge of Business Social Strategies
Tags: Social Media
Posted in Social Media
Posted May 18th, 2012
by Damien Dupont
Before today’s IPO, the biggest story around Facebook for co-founders not named Mark Zuckerberg was the 2010 film The Social Network. While Mark Zuckerberg continues to dominate coverage, I was curious about coverage of his Facebook co-founders, so I took a look at how the media profiles of Christopher Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin have fared lately.
Of course Mark Zuckerberg’s media presence is far and away beyond anything around this group, but a couple of numbers might serve as a baseline for comparison. Using Factiva’s intelligent search capabilities, I created a search of highly relevant mentions of Zuckerberg in relation to Facebook and to Facebook’s IPO. In the last 8 days (May 11-18) he’s received 9,209 media mentions regarding Facebook, including 2,114 in social media. In the two years previous, he received 42,287, including 7,442 in social media. When specific reference to the IPO are included, I found that over the last 8 days 73% of references were related to the IPO (55% of social media references), while over the previous two years 38% were IPO-related (38% of social media).
What about his co-founders? The least well known, Dustin Muskovitz and Christopher Hughes continue to stay out of the Facebook media spotlight, with Hughes totaling just 9 highly-relevant media mentions over the last two years and Muskovitz 3. Out of those 12 combined mentions, 11 came in the last eight days.
The story is a bit different for Eduardo Saverin. His media exposure has always been far ahead of that of Hughes and Muskovitz, and has skyrocketed thanks to recent events. In the two year period ending May 10, 2012, Saverin received 1,221 mentions (including 420 in social media) related to Facebook’s IPO. That’s a mere 8% of Zuckerberg’s total. But in the last week news broke that Saverin had renounced his American citizenship, leading to all manner of speculation due to the fortune – and taxes – expected for him from the impending IPO.
This twist in the Saverin storyline propelled greater media coverage. In the previous two years, Saverin registered 1,333 English-language media mentions related to Facebook, while in the last 8 days the total 1,958 such mentions. That’s 21% of Zuckerberg’s total and an increase of 47% in one week! And considering that Muskovitz and Hughes totaled 198 mentions in the last eight days and 1192 in the two years prior(when not restricting mentions to highly relevant IPO mentions), Saverin moved from 10% more mentions than the pair over two years to having almost ten times as many.
From WSJ’s Digits: Facebook Investors’ Worth on IPO Day
Tags: Facebook, measurement, media analysis, Social Media
Posted in Damien Dupont, Measurement, Social Media
Posted May 10th, 2012
by Eva Rohrmann
Last week I had the opportunity to go to Houston to speak at a Factiva client event. I discussed how corporate communications’ responsibilities for reputation management, understanding the fragmented media environment and measuring communications program results are influencing our planning and products for communications and PR professionals.
It’s always great to meet customers – especially when they are an engaged, dynamic group like this one. I took the opportunity to ask them several “flash poll” questions to get a sense of their outlook on a few topics. Some of the “findings” included:
- When asked, “Are you an advocate for new ways to measure communications results?” 66% said Yes.
- 75% agreed that social media is an opportunity to enhance corporate reputation. However, only 12% are “engaged and delivering results,” while 66% are still evaluating how to participate in social media.
- When asked whether Tools, Skills or Time is the greatest challenge when managing corporate reputation in today’s fragmented media landscape, 42% said it was a combination of all three.
There was one question everyone agreed on: managing, protecting and enhancing their firm’s reputation is their number one priority.
Tags: brand reputation, measurement, Public Relations, Social Media
Posted in Corporate Reputation, Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media
Posted May 8th, 2012
by Barry Parr
In the summer of 2011, Netflix was the future of video and its stock was at an all-time high. Within a quarter, the company lost two-thirds of its market value and its strategy was a shambles.
Between July and October 2011, the company unbundled its DVD and streaming services, increased its prices for the second time in a year, announced that it expected to lose a million customers and that it would spin off its DVD service under the brand “Qwikster”, and then canceled Qwikster less than a month later.
Netflix’s stock price has not recovered.
Netflix was trying to mitigate some powerful strategic threats in the summer of 2011, but the company lost control of its message.
I charted Netflix’s Dow Jones Insight Media Index (IMI) for 380,000 news stories since last July. Since October, Netflix’s IMI has returned to its summer 2011 levels, but the company’s stock price is stuck in the doldrums.
The Netflix debacle is more of a strategic than a communications fable, but there are some clear lessons for marketers:
- Think ahead. By delaying the inevitable unbundling until the last minute, Netflix maximized the pain for their customers and themselves.
- Keep it simple. Netflix was founded on a principle of simplicity, but Qwikster was just baffling.
- Own your name. Someone already owned @Qwikster on Twitter. This expensive error signaled a lack of preparation to the markets.
- Think twice before doubling down. Netflix followed its unpopular unbundling with a baffling spinoff.
Tags: measurement, media measurement, Netflix, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Barry Parr, Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media
Posted May 1st, 2012
by Eva Rohrmann
What did people spend the most mobile phone time doing in the first three months of this year? Using mobile social networking apps. Average daily minutes on social networks increased by 60% versus the same time last year, tying with News and surpassing Games. A new study by Flurry, which provides mobile app developers with usage analytics, was examined by Thomas Loftus for WSJ.com’s CIO Journal, and he recommends that executives developing a social media strategy, “don’t forget to take mobile social into account”.
WSJ.com: New Study Shows Boom in Mobile Social Networking Usage
Tags: Facebook, Flurry, LinkedIn, media strategy, Social Media
Posted in Mobile, Public Relations, Social Media
