Here at 1000heads we’ve always had a very strong belief in the value of honest word of mouth for businesses.
That means good and bad.
Our ethics policy explains that we encourage people to discuss what they *really think* about brands, products and services. They won’t get rewarded for one-note glowing reviews. They won’t be given scripts to regurgitate. As long as their conversation is authentic and constructive (i.e. not an abusive rant), we love it, and generally our clients do too.
Because of course the ‘negative’ conversation is usually the most useful stuff. Maybe not if your only objective in social is to engineer a whitewash of promotional-style blah. But definitely if you want to use this space as an opportunity to learn and grow with your customers, and let them in on the process. It’s an amazing chance to get unbiased feedback about how you’re doing, rather than spending thousands on market research that might produce a skewed result – and if you don’t want to hear it, or do something about it, then you have much bigger problems than a grumbly Facebook page.
It’s therefore great to see the latest research from our friends over at Reevoo, the social commerce crew. Digging into the data around the website review plugins they provide for clients such as Tesco, Sharp and Sony, they’ve discovered that allowing bad reviews to coexist with the good ensures that:
68% trust good reviews more when they also see the bad ones
95% suspect censorship or fake scores when they don’t see any negative reviews
people stay longer on your site, giving you more time to persuade them to buy
people view more pages – only 1% leave your site after seeing one badly-reviewed product
Surely the important word here is trust. It’s the lifeblood of effective social brands – that is, ones that don’t just forge great relationships, word of mouth and loyalty, but ones that make money from their social interactions.
I am currently attracting more sulky looks than usual in my house. They are coming from my 12-year-old son, who feels that my level of strictness has reached stratospheric heights, and that I am in risk of damaging our relationship permanently.
Of course I am not alone in this – every parent the world over would sympathise – but whilst my son has always accepted most boundaries with resigned equanimity, it is my new ‘Technology Rules’ that are causing the strop (which of course, merely serves to mitigate my actions).
The problem is that while I am a big fan of technology, fiercely defending it against those who declare that it destroys family life, social skills and kids’ brains (not if it’s employed sensibly and productively), I can’t keep ignoring the studies which point to the dreaded possibility of addiction and, I hate to say it, what look like the early warning signs in my son (ref. the excessive strop).
via softpedia-static
When he started secondary school recently, I finally allowed him to join Facebook. This really did help the transition (he was more worried about losing touch with his old friends than he was about making new ones), but he began feverishly logging on every morning after a rushed breakfast. Playing his pals on the PSP every night was also becoming more important than his homework. That is, until the ‘Technology Rules’…
What I would really appreciate is some help in all this – and I’m not talking just PHSE classes in school or government guidelines which are frustratingly and peculiarly absent in spite of expert pressure to introduce them.
No, I’m referring to brand involvement. My research shows that not one of the gaming or social media brands is taking the opportunity to engage with kids or parents about this. No social networking sites or games producers are addressing this issue in their CSR plans. Nor are they producing content to help kids and parents make sensible choices.
Crucially, it helps educate kids not yet tainted with commercial cynicism to make healthy choices independent of their parents’ nagging.
Is it really such a huge risk for technology companies to admit and take some responsibility for what appears to be adversely affecting almost every family I know?
Social media are all about the spread of information through networks of individuals. In other words, WOM: people talking.
But what happens when these conversations are curtailed, constricted and controlled?
There has been a fierce debate raging over the past few days – both online and offline – about the relative pros and cons of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in America, and it could have big implications for the future of the WOM industry – not to mention our everyday online lives.
The bill, originally presented to the United States House of Representatives in October 2011, is intended to pre-empt the problem of Internet piracy in the US by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyrighted material.
So far, so simple.
(Flickr: spaceninja)
But what SOPA and its sister bill PIPA (the Protect IP Act) have done is effectively turned a debate on piracy into a pitched battle between two cornerstones of Liberal ideology: free speech and free markets.
The disagreement pits Internet giants such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia against businesses such as television networks, record labels, book publishers and the film industry. The latter want to be able to protect their copyrighted material from illegal distribution over the Internet, while the former wish to enshrine the right of their users to upload and consume content according to their will (within certain legal parameters, of course).
Although the vast majority of law-abiding citizens agree that Internet piracy is A Bad Thing, many equally believe that it is not the place of government – any government – to control and restrict what they can access on the Internet.
On the other hand, companies, brands and individuals who produce copyrighted material do not want to see their goods trafficked and bandied about (either on the internet or in the so-called ‘real world’) by others who are not them.
Which puts us somewhere in the middle.
As a word of mouth company, we are committed to the spread of information and ideas around the world. Equally, we are committed to our clients and their very real need to keep their goods and services protected from those who wish to abuse them. The question here, then, is whether the proposals put forward by SOPA and PIPA will help protect both agendas. This is a question that does not as yet have a clear answer.
What is clear is that by limiting the number and type of interactions a web user can experience, the checks and controls proposed by these bills may inadvertently stifle the sort of innovation and creativity that is such an integral part of the online world.
But then again, SOPA and PIPA have got people talking – and this itself may help drive change where it is most needed.
Waterstone’s was founded by Tim Waterstone. It’s his chain. Hence the possessive apostrophe that indicates ownership. To remove it is to remove ownership (OK, he doesn’t own it anymore, but you know what I’m getting at). To remove it is an affront to the English Language. To remove it is to offend everyone who has ever written a sentence correctly.
Apostrophe – unemployed
To have a new Wiki is an admission that we have failed. ‘We’ being the proponents of the correct usage of the English language. The excuse tripped out by the chain is that the change will ‘simplify internet searches and email’. Balls. It’s just. Plain. Lazy. It’s kowtowing to the kids who can’t be bovvered to learn the rules. What happened to the three R’s? They only ever appear now when I scream ‘Arrrgh!’ at seeing another erosion of the language like this one. What happened to educating children? Where did this ‘attitude’ come from? I hate it.
To be fair, the High Street is already sending mixed signals – see Boots (founded by J.Boot) vs. McDonald’s (founded, as we all know by one Ronald McDonald – son of an old guy who had a farm). *And* as my hippy tutor at Uni used to say: ‘Language is a free-running river’, so as a grumpy old man I should adapt and move on. But I can’t. Presumably every Waterstone’s (I refuse to drop it!) has books on the shelves whose sole purpose is to inform the reader about correct grammar and the use of the apostrophe….is this going to cause a paradox and make the Universe collapse in on itself? Well no, but it begs an interesting question. Is someone going to go through all those books with a black marker and erase the apostrophe chapters?
So to all those children (and several adults) who refuse to use the apostrophe correctly I say ‘Meh’. I use and always will use the English language in the correct form. The rest of you are Dummies.
What do you think?
Cool, or not?
Technology for technology’s sake perhaps?
Next, this one from Miss Jaqui Hill, is BELIEVE IT OR NOT, nail varnish – for men.
We’re filing this under WHAT NOW?
Seriously.
And if that’s not enough, here’s a handy ‘how to’ video, for those of you who are still slightly unsure about this entire concept -
Finally, and this is by far and away our favourite entry from last week, the British Heart Foundation have recruited Vinnie Jones for this tongue in cheek but potentially life saving PSA video -
To the beat of Stayin’ Alive? Perfect. Hat tip to Ryan for finding that one…
New Twitter. Sorry, not NEW Twitter. I mean New New Twitter, right? No? Right, what’s that? FLY Twitter?
Ok, Fly Twitter it is.
Confused?
Watch this -
The upgrade brings along all sorts of lovely things, such as a cleaner UI (nice), the ability to embed tweets (hurrah!) and BRAND PAGES (but we’ll come back to this one another time).
OK, so we know that isn’t exactly news per se [the upgrade has been rolling out to Twitter's users for around a month now] but now that penetration is hitting critical mass it’s time to revisit that favoured Twitter topic of ours – the Twitter background!
But with Fly Twitter, that super swishness is lost and instead, things are hidden and it looks a little bit like this -
So how do we fix?
There’s still a bit of white space to play with on Fly Twitter (not much mind) so let’s utilise that and give visitors a nudge in the right direction. Like so -
Tug at the window at the right of the screen, and slowly but surely the image reveals itself.
And there’s the info we want to share.
Obviously this isn’t the best workaround available (and is still very much a work in progress), but it’s a start.
Got any ideas on how you might use your [brand's] Twitter background?
Becoming a social business is not quick, easy or cheap. You can’t do it with a campaign, a Facebook page or a set of guidelines.
It is worthwhile, but like anything worthwhile, you have to work really hard to achieve it. And with social business, you have to keep working and evolving, every day. It’s a living, breathing way of being – not a manifesto or a solution.
This means that the biggest challenge aspiring social businesses face is not budget, structure, aptitude or knowledge.
It’s culture.
This has been borne out again and again in our experience working with companies of all sizes and from all industries. The only common thread between those that manage to integrate a social is that they are willing to spend time and effort on helping their people really understand what a social approach means and allowing them to collaborate in its design and adoption.
In David Carr’s recent 10 Enterprise Social Networking Obstacles, ‘a command-and-control culture’ sits at number one. Although elements of c-and-c can be useful and even essential in enabling some big companies to disseminate social practices, the sentiment is spot on. If you don’t tackle the roots, the flowers won’t bloom.
In her video on a 2011 study of 2000 global companies, IBM’S Vice President of Social Business Sandy Carter outlines the top four barriers preventing social business success. They are security; adoption; culture; and compliance, but it’s culture that really holds companies back.
This should be exciting rather than disheartening. It’s the difference between having a facelift and adopting a healthy lifestyle.
If you want to know how to have good conversations as a business, learn how to be a good conversationalist in your personal life.
Business ‘conversations’ no longer require special weird PR speak. They do not need you to suspiciously hoard and drip-feed information, or create an elaborate mail-out, or identify a problem or issue that needs to be solved before you begin. (Not that they ever did – we just convinced ourselves otherwise for a while there). They require the same qualities of all good conversations: curiosity, listening, quietness, empathy, follow through.
The stuff that is both simple and surprisingly hard.
Learning to do it all better isn’t a bad New Year’s Resolution. And London’s excellent School of Life is offering a number of classes from now through March on How to Have Better Conversations, at £30 a pop. Here’s the blurb:
Our lives are so often filled with superficial talk, from office chit chat to commentaries on last night’s television. How can we have conversations that inspire us to think in new ways, that stimulate our curiosity and that prompt us to say things we’ve never said before? How should we talk to our lovers? How can we deal with difficult conversations both at work and around the family dinner table?
Join us for a class about the art of conversation. We’ll be exploring its history, drawing lessons from top talkers like Doctor Johnson and Woody Allen. We’ll investigate the psychology and philosophy of conversation – what works and what doesn’t – as well as the assumptions we make about other people that stifle mutual understanding. And of course we’ll put the ideas we explore into practice.
Come along and discover how to make the leap from mere idle banter to enriching and adventurous conversation.
My simple suggestion for January is to book one for yourself – even better, to go as a group of colleagues. I’m making space in my diary for March. They’re selling out, so do it fast.
It’ll probably result in a million times ROI than attending yet another social media conference.
NB Thanks to our own lovely Emily de Groot for the idea.
The Google Zeitgeist is always one of our favourite ways to review the events of the year before and, if you missed it this time ’round, here it is again and, aside from the clunky ‘Look! This is how you use Google+!’ messaging throughout, it’s definitely worth three minutes of your day.
We’re wrapping things up here at 1000heads HQ [both literally and figuratively] as we prepare to head off for a much-earned festive break. Our Custom Crackers are in the post, the mince pies are in the oven and it’s time to close up shop until the New Year.
We’ll be back up and running on January 3rd but, until then, enjoy these three videos that came out of our last 3 Cool Things session: one festive, one colourful and one so deep and meaningful, we think it’s the perfect way to end the year.
Jimmy Kimmel: “I gave my kids a terrible present..”
- the video says it all
Dulux: let’s colour!
This project is over six months old and is still going strong. Hats off to the Dulux team for continuing this work, all over the world.
This last video did the rounds a little while back but, as we come to the end of the year, still seems as fresh and as pertinent as ever. Hit play, skip the ad and then enjoy -
The greatest speech ever written
Merry Christmas one and all and, from all of us at the ‘heads, have a smashing New Year!
Bad reviews are good for business
