Philip Sheldrake

Dell Social Media Predictions 2013

// March 1st, 2013 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations

I enjoy Full Gesture Communication™ in Unaugmented Reality™ (#fauxtrademarks). As amazing as social media is becoming, it's still no full substitute for eye-to-eye interaction. I met the co-founding CTO of Yammer this week, Adam Pisoni, and our conversation came to life immediately in a way that I don't believe would be as easy to kindle pixel-to-pixel.

Here's an interesting question I think. Can you distinguish in your mind the kinds of online relationships you have with people you see physically from time to time from those you've yet to meet? I believe you probably can, and probably do.

This topic just cropped up again for me this morning. It may be a sixth of the way through 2013, but Dell has just published a little slidestack quoting some pundits, including yours truly, on some development aspects of social media this year. Geoff Livingston is quoted as saying: "I really believe in events. Online becomes much more substantial when someone meets you face to face. Try to create ways to meet your stakeholders in person so you can cultivate a deeper substantial relationship."

Do you think digital technologies can help crack this nut? How? When?

Social Media Predictions for 2013 from Dell Social Media

Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide

// January 7th, 2013 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Social business, Technology

[Originally posted to Euler Partners.]

We kicked off our New Year speaking with the eConsultancy team about the upcoming update to their successful Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide 2011. Here's a rundown of the questions Amy Rodgers put to us and our responses.

1) What are the most important trends occurring in this market?

Maintaining one system for external social media management and workflow, and another system for "buzz monitoring", and another system for enterprise social networking looks increasingly disjointed. We have media to communicate, and we communicate to influence, and influence flows are the lifeblood of mutual understanding, knowledge building and decision-making. Maintaining technological islands for influence flows with one group of stakeholders (eg, customers) distinct from another island for influence flows with another group of stakeholders (eg, employees) effectively 'misses the trick'. It fails to recognise that today's organisations must strive to be more than the sum of the payroll. (more...)

Internal communications discussed on CIPR TV

// September 14th, 2012 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations, Social business

The latest episode of CIPR TV went out live yesterday afternoon, with plenty of interaction from the audience. The programme's guests are Jenni Wheller (@jenniwheller), Internal Communications Manager at SSP UK, and Mike Grafham (@mgrafham), Head of Customer Engagement at Yammer.

I think you'll agree the audience's questions and the guests' responses make for an interesting show. Rather than repeat anything covered in the show, I'll just take a few paragraphs here to make another observation.

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Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR, by the CIPR Social Media Panel

// July 9th, 2012 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Content, Digital Media Relations, Measurement & Analysis, Public Relations, Technology, Website/New Media

After three months of social collaboration involving two dozen authors, we're just a few days away from publishing Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR (Amazon UK). The authors, all members of the CIPR Social Media panel or friends of, decided that that there was a need for a handbook that covers the full gamut of issues facing the PR practitioner in 2012.

Incredibly, Lord Sugar provides the endorsement for the front cover :-)

I'm delighted to have authored two of the chapters, Chapter 17 on real-time public relations, and the final chapter looking at the future, beyond social media.

Here's the introductory video featuring CIPR CEO Jane Wilson, and then the Table of Contents. Read the CIPR's press release here. Pre-order your copy today!

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Reputation and Wikipedia

// January 6th, 2012 // 10 Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Digital Media Relations, Public Relations

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup]

What does the Wikipedia entry for your organisation / client / brand say? What about brand references in other entries? All cosy on the Wikipedia front? And recognising that a neutral point of view (NPOV) is one of Wikipedia's "five pillars", you have resisted editing anything where your neutrality is questionable. Right?

Let's face it, Wikipedia is amazing. I had the pleasure of attending the Wikipedia 10th birthday party in London last year and I wasn't the only one there who admitted to not appreciating Wikipedia's potential back in the day. Seriously? A website anyone can edit?! Yeah right, that'll work. Not.

And yet today Alexa ranks Wikipedia the sixth most popular site on the web. Search for a company or brand in Google or Bing and there's the Wikipedia entry tempting you with its neutrality, familiarity and ease of use. The Wikipedia community plays a significant role in brand reputation.

This week, one of my favourite Conversation contributors, Stuart Bruce, spotted Member of Parliament Tom Watson's interest in Wikipedia and PR practice. He found Watson's contribution, Wednesday, to a Wikipedia talk page: (more...)

What our publics are telling us

// October 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Measurement & Analysis, Public Relations

Public relations is about influencing and being influenced, right? You know, the two-way symmetric model to affect mutual understanding. Right?

Well, from my experience, the vast majority of practitioners are looking to exert influence but invest considerably less time divining insight from stakeholders and feeding that back into the organisation to improve decision-making.

For the best part of this week I've been in Miami hanging out with the members of ESOMAR who invest their entire time trying to work out what's going on in the minds of customers and prospects.

ESOMAR describes itself as "the essential organisation for encouraging, advancing and elevating market research worldwide". With more than 4,800 members from over 120 countries, ESOMAR emphasises its members' contribution to effective decision-making.

This particular conference series is focused on how social media has transformed market research. There have been two main thrusts so far...

Firstly, consumers have become increasingly reluctant to participate in 'traditional' marketing research approaches. Seriously, why should they bother? And if we're all egged on with the promise of some kind of reward or prize, how interested are we in responding accurately, diligently? (more...)

The Role of PR in a Digital Age

// October 6th, 2011 // 6 Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations, Technology

I'm in Kiev this evening preparing my presentation for tomorrow's European PR Congress 2011. I'm the first session of the day so I have the challenge of exciting the delegates, with getting some energy in the room. I was fascinated by the enthusiasm from the audience when I presented last month in San Francisco, so it'll be interesting to compare the two.

Now, I was briefed by event organiser Marina Starodubska (General Director, Partner, Mikhailov&Partners.Ukraine) that social media in Ukraine has not yet gained the momentum it has in Europe and the USA for example. She estimates that household broadband Internet penetration is just 26% [updated following the first comment below]. Interestingly, however, according to Total Telecom in July last year: "Ukraine as a whole had 55.60 million mobile subscriptions... putting penetration at 121.2%."

Whilst I haven't been able to find a breakdown of feature phones and smart phones, the waiting staff in the restaurant this evening indicated that such devices are booming. In the car to the hotel I also noticed that Nokia is investing in quite a big outdoor advertising campaign here for its feature and smart phones.

My stack for tomorrow is included here. The majority of the slides are taken from the longer stack from last month's Dreamforce, so if you took a look at that, you might not want to take the time here. But it's more the narrative I intend to tailor for this event. The emphasis tomorrow is simple – Public Relations, as defined by the Excellence Study, has a very bright future. (more...)

Social Media Analytics

// October 3rd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Communities/Social Networks, Measurement & Analysis

Are you savvy when it comes to social analytics? If you're a PR practitioner, the answer to this question must be YES.

Marshall Sponder visited London last week as part of his tour promoting his new book, Social Media Analytics – Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics (ISBN 978-0-07-176829-0). Having read a draft manuscript of the book, a quote of mine appears on the front cover: "Ignoring this book is akin to ignoring your market."

There is no better independent authority on the tools and techniques than Marshall. Whilst some pundits simply maintain lists of social analytics vendors with some basic feature comparison tables, Marshall has actually used many of them for real. Moreover, he has a peculiar ability to prod the vendors and the engineers that build these services, to get under the hood and separate the actual capabilities from the marketing claims.

Marshall is not, however, a public relations practitioner or management consultant. This book does not provide a strategic framework for the integration of social analytics into your organisation. It does not address important issues such as privacy (of customers, employees and the wider public) or ethics. It doesn't attempt to define a detailed taxonomy of the analytics services out there, or make this a comprehensive market review. (more...)

How many Tweets make a Like?

// September 21st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Communities/Social Networks, Measurement & Analysis

If you're looking for an acid test as to whether an organisation is centred in this social world, as to whether they have a marketing and communications strategy that integrates social media cogently and coherently rather than bolts it on, listen out for questions like this:

How much is a tweet / retweet / follower / friend / like / +1 / comment / whatevermetickle worth?

If this is the kind of question they're asking then, in my opinion, they simply don't yet 'get it'. If you're feeling particularly wicked, take your pick of one of these to respond to their question and see if they take you seriously:

• $0.23 per hundred
• A 'like' is definitely worth somewhere between 2 and 3 tweets; sort of around 2.42
• A comment has an engagement quotient nine times that of a 'friend'
• If you're in tech, then a +1 is currently five times more potent than a RT, but the reverse is true for other markets
• That depends if you're B2B or B2C
• Well, can I ask, is there any yellow in your logo?

In The Business of Influence (Chapter 5) I include the following table, titled "Maturity of influence approach". (more...)

Socializing the enterprise. Are you?

// September 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations, Technology

Post written for the CIPR Conversation Friday Roundup:

I adopt the US spelling of socialize here because I'm doing the roundup this week from San Francisco where I'm attending the Dreamforce conference, a conference dedicated to this very theme.

Dreamforce is the annual Salesforce.com conference and with 45,000 registered delegates this year it is now, or so CEO Marc Benioff assures us, the largest corporate tech event of its kind. There is a palpable enthusiasm for the theme, regularly articulated as "awesome" by the American delegates.

[Disclosure: Salesforce.com is paying me to be here.]

Salesforce.com advocates a three-step approach to socializing the enterprise, in no particular order: (more...)