TheWayoftheWeb

For businesses, there are a couple of main ways to use social media for marketing purposes. One is to simply use the tools to get permission from fans and followers to feed out information and links, generally driving traffic back to your main site.

The other way is to engage with consumers and the public to use social media for something which could in theory benefit all parties, and boost the market the business operates in.

One example of the feed approach is Dell Outlet, which essentially streams details of the latest Dell offers onto Twitter. Followers interested in buying a Dell can opt-in to receive those messages.

An example of attempting to build value for the business, the public, and the market as a whole is a campaign starting today by building company Rok. Rather than feeding out information, the company is promoting a campaign to reduce VAT on property repair work from 17.5% to 15%. Obviously that has a benefit for any building company, including Rok, but it could also benefit the general public who might be encouraged to improve their current lodgings rather than risking more debt by constantly moving.

And they’re using the main routes for a campaign like this – there’s a campaign on the Downing Street petitions website, there’s a blog , a Twitter profile, a Facebook page, and the most interesting aspect in reaching people who might be useful networkers for the campaign, a Linked In group.

Neither route is wrong for a business – Dell Outlet has made direct revenue for Dell, and as an Opt In To Follow option, only those people interested will be receiving the messages, and they can opt out anytime – plus it’s surrounded by other Twitter and social media accounts and efforts which take a more mutually beneficial approach. And it’s that mutually beneficial approach, as used by Rok, which seems to be the growing future of marketing campaigns (As opposed to marketing which is built into the product itself). It’s quick, it’s easy, and it has benefits for the company concerned, the public, and potentially other groups and organisations could also come out in support to build awareness. The question is whether the Government is in a position to listen and act on the growing volume of direct contacts from the nation?

I’ve had to find time to try and make sense of the argument presented by The Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, but going by an article on Paid Content, it’s going to be a fruitless task.

It seems that ‘Making Good Society’ will warn against recycled news and that the Government has to guard against media being owned by the few, with levies on Google to fund new media.

And evidence of that?

It says four publishers control 70 percent of the local and regional press, three companies – BBC, ITN and BSkyB – produce national television news and just four companies have nearly 80 percent of the commercial radio market. Apparently 100+ local and regional newspapers vanished last year:

“The advent of free newspapers, the emergence of 24-hour television news and the popularisation of online and mobile platforms have all contributed to a far more volatile and unstable environment for news organisations.”

So the arguments for taxing digital news aggregation sites are that print,TV and radio are owned by a tiny amount of companies, and local newspapers need propping up despite the fact people are looking elsewhere?

*confused*

If people are increasingly looking online for their news, then where’s the stimulus for more online news products from a wider range of people? Where’s the suggestion to open up media production, which is far more possible online than ever before? I could start a TV station today on a video streaming site, a radio station by streaming over IP, or any number of text publications, but the biggest challenge for most of these is the cost.

Solving the problem of local newspapers vanishing:

Here’s the idea I’ve been thinking about to solve the problem of local newspapers dying off and leaving a gap in useful local news and information.

Fund an online resource for local news and info – if you’re finding money to do it, then use it to either pay someone at the hub of a local community, or fund ways for them to be able to effectively monetise what they do. Encourage it by people who already exist in the community e.g. librarians, schoolteachers etc who have access to IT equipment, and potentailly news gathering volunteers.

And then allow anyone who doesn’t have internet access to request print copies in person, by text or phone. Forget the cost of printing newspapers and instead use a flyer as a starting point and build from there.

That way you can attempt to kickstart local news sites across the country with a tiny amount of resource, with existing equipment, and with the ability to also reach those who require print for the time being, until eventually everyone ends up online. Plus the information will be more relevant and interesting, and less commercially orientated to please advertisers.

And it’ll hopefully inspire a new generation to try to serve communities by providing information in an engaging way, rather than luring them into a profession which has less and less opportunities as time goes by – after they’ve invested time and money to get into it.

Personally, I’d quite like to know more about what’s going on in the local area, but I’m barely sat still long enough to read a paper, let alone pay for that content on a daily/weekly basis for the percentage which is of interest to me.

But give me an online and smartphone resource I could use to find out the things I really want to know about e.g. local gigs, football games, motorsport, road closures, council tax rises, but leave the rest, and I’d pay a small amount for that so I could check up on it at work or on the train.

Link it into booking tickets, contacting the local council, or watching highlights of the football with pre-roll advertising, and it’d have the chance to make even more.

That’s the future of local services.

I’ve beena  big fan of Twit.tv for quite a while, and I’ve always been intrigued by the business and technology set up that allows Leo and his team to achieve all that they do, so it’s well worth some time watching this video by Jonathan Marks (Which I found via James Cridland).

Inside Leo Laporte’s TWiT Cottage, Petaluma from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

It’s amazing to see a growing number of production and distribution mechanisms in audio, print, tv etc, and to see what elements of their strategy and implementation might be shared by the business I work for, and what we might be able to learn from them…

If you’re familiar with social networking it can be easy to scoff at the latest report of the non-digital native world failing to understand the benefits of the connected world. But sometimes, being ahead of the curve can carry a cost.

A U.S. University Professor was recently suspended because of a Facebook status update on what was intended to be a private page for family and friends. Similarly in the UK, a joke on Twitter led to an arrest under the Terror Act and a lifetime ban from an airport. And in a related privacy matter, a school appears to have been using anti-theft software on laptops issued to students to spy on them.

But all of these might appear to be isolated cases against individuals or small groups – and some might argue that publishing anything remotely contraversial is foolish, even in jest, on a public platform, whatever your privacy settings – and events like this one don’t help.

But there are far more insiduous happenings taking place which can affect all of us – how would you feel about the fact that Facebook and Twitter Usage Could Raise Your Home Insurance Premium by 10%?

Or that banks are mining social media sites for personal information which can affect your credit score?

You can argue that telling the world about your location, or revealing any financial information justifies the data collection – although the suggestion that some Facebook application exist purely to collect this data surreptitiously has to be somewhat alarming.

But given that social media and social networking is so new and quickly evolving, and that there’s no proof that mentioning your location, your new purchase, or joking about your future actions has any relation to reality, it’s important to remember that traditional institutions still have the tendency to believe anything published as factual evidence. Even as half the UK population converses via Facebook, it appears we’re all still cast into the role of rebels on the fringes of society who need to be aware of laws, regulations and risks that haven’t moved anywhere near as quickly as they should in the face of the ever-increasing rate of change.

The problem isn’t that the world can’t move quickly enough to build a logical framework which facilitates individuals, businesses and governments to a reasonable level – the problem appears to be that none of the people in a position to do it have the knowledge/incitement to bother, and so we’re left with a legion of the internet-enabled complaining about the inability of the internet-challenged to wield power correctly.

The question is what will you do about it?