Challenges of social media with speaker notes

Social Media
Lessons, Challenges & Opportunities
Dena Walker
Digital Planner
Irish International
Wednesday 1 February 12
Hello. It’s really love to be here speaking to you today. I hope that I can keep you awake - I know it’s been a long day
for you all.
I was asked to come here today and talk to you about “Challenges, lessons and opportunities of Social Media”. I’ve
taken that title quite loosely, so please don’t expect a load of boring lists about “here’s a challenge, here’s how you ﬁx
it”. I can promise you that when you go live in Social Media, if you’re not already, you will meet more challenges than I
can predict here.
Instead what I have aimed to do is tell you about some very core challenges associated with social media and what
they mean for you - so that you’ll hopefully be able to tackle them effectively and go on to great things.
I’ve got a couple of real life examples woven in too, which should hopefully be interesting.

Who am I?
Digital Planner
NOT a “social media guru”
So, who am I?
Well, I’m absolutely not a social media expert, guru, seeder, inﬂuencer or whatever buzz word you want to apply.
Anyone that tells you that they are is a liar and I would advise you to steer clear.
I’m just someone who uses social media, professionally and personally. My day job is looking at user behaviour and
the marriage of that with technology, so that my clients can speak to their audience in the most relevant digital
channel and format. Or as is often they case, not speak to them at all - just monitor social media, which is just as
valuable and sometimes your best course of action.

you obviously know that “digital” is important, and here’s a taste of what is happening online in ONE MINUTE.
Mad, no?!

What does “social media” mean?
Social media is a plethora of channels, across a range of platforms. All enabling users to SHARE.
That’s really what makes social media special - sharing. It’s that simple.
Sharing can be great for your organisation if it’s stuff you want to get shared. And not so great when it’s the stuff you
don’t. It’s a double-edged knife that way.
But understand the users - their channel speciﬁc behaviours, general digital behaviours, and their motivations etc is
what will get you ahead in social media.

What does “social media” mean?
Online
technologies and
networks that
people use to
share opinions
insights,
experiences and
perspectives
with each other
Social media is a plethora of channels, across a range of platforms. All enabling users to SHARE.
That’s really what makes social media special - sharing. It’s that simple.
Sharing can be great for your organisation if it’s stuff you want to get shared. And not so great when it’s the stuff you
don’t. It’s a double-edged knife that way.
But understand the users - their channel speciﬁc behaviours, general digital behaviours, and their motivations etc is
what will get you ahead in social media.

Image Source: Gapingvoid.com
Emerging tech has brought about massive social media adoption- smart phones driving it further.
But what it’s also done is change our behaviour. After 100 yrs of being told what to think/feel/believe about brands
we don’t trust them anymore. We’ve all been let down by a brand or organisation at one time or another, so why
should we take it all at face value?
No. Nowadays we want to question, challenge, discuss what we’re told before we’re willing to believe.

Image Source: Sokleine on Flickr
What Social Media has really done is demonstrate how empowered our audience has become. They have just the same
tools at their disposal as we do. And in a lot of cases, they know better than we do, how to use them!
To get them to spend their time with us (ie give us their attention) we need to have a genuine story to tell - one that’s
relevant to them.
But they don’t want to just listen to our stories, people want to have a conversation with us about them. As with any
good conversation we must also listen more than we speak - get to know your audience - what they feel, what their
motivations are and what you can do for them.
Don’t say just anything. Maybe even say nothing - don’t ever forget that just as TV or outdoor or Direct Mail might not
be the right medium for your messaging, such is the case with social media! Sometimes, listening might be all you do.

An empowered audience
Having a story to tell
Listening more than you talk
Being relevant
Two-way conversation
Image Source: Sokleine on Flickr
What Social Media has really done is demonstrate how empowered our audience has become. They have just the same
tools at their disposal as we do. And in a lot of cases, they know better than we do, how to use them!
To get them to spend their time with us (ie give us their attention) we need to have a genuine story to tell - one that’s
relevant to them.
But they don’t want to just listen to our stories, people want to have a conversation with us about them. As with any
good conversation we must also listen more than we speak - get to know your audience - what they feel, what their
motivations are and what you can do for them.
Don’t say just anything. Maybe even say nothing - don’t ever forget that just as TV or outdoor or Direct Mail might not
be the right medium for your messaging, such is the case with social media! Sometimes, listening might be all you do.

Don’t get me wrong, social media is awesome. When it’s done right it has the power to be a phenomenally powerful
messaging channel for you. But it’s not a panacea.
I can’t stress this enough - Social Media should always be considered when you’re developing your communications
strategies, but don’t be afraid to rule it out if it doesn’t feel right.
Because when you’re in it, you’re committed. It’s like a marriage - you can’t be half married. You’re in or you’re out.
if you’re in, do it well and the rewards can be great.

(I’m WAY over stating it, but it can be pretty cool!)
Don’t get me wrong, social media is awesome. When it’s done right it has the power to be a phenomenally powerful
messaging channel for you. But it’s not a panacea.
I can’t stress this enough - Social Media should always be considered when you’re developing your communications
strategies, but don’t be afraid to rule it out if it doesn’t feel right.
Because when you’re in it, you’re committed. It’s like a marriage - you can’t be half married. You’re in or you’re out.
if you’re in, do it well and the rewards can be great.

So, what should you
know before you start?
Image Source: An Untrained Eye on Flickr
Social media is not without its limitations. These are the biggest challenges you’ll face with it - people think it’s a
magic bullet. It isn’t.
When you know and understand the challenges, you can address them.

The limitations of social media
Partial Source: Measuring ROSI by BBDO
1. Control
Just ask BP or Nestle or Eurostar!
You need to “manage” a situation. You’ll never be able to control it.
2. Tool
Ticklist - FB? Tick. Twitter? Tick. YouTube? Tick. Blog? Tick. You will FAIL!

1. You don’t control your
brand
Users own social media,
not brands
People will give you
exactly what they think
you deserve
If your motivation is to
enforce control, STOP!
You will fail
1. Control
2. Tool

1. You don’t control your
brand
Users own social media,
not brands
People will give you
exactly what they think
you deserve
If your motivation is to
enforce control, STOP!
You will fail
2. It is nothing more than a
tool
It is not about ticking off
a list
Figure out what your
story is
Make it a story based on
truth
Tell your story, before
someone else does
1. Control
2. Tool

Lesson One: Say nothing at a price
The internet has a LONG memory. When you say nothing you’re at the mercy of Google and co. While Social Media is
very popular and people spend a lot of time with it - Search is still king!
In late 2008 there was an Irish Pork scare. THREE YEARS LATER 3 out of the top 5 search results for Irish Pork are about
the scare. Given that barely anyone goes “below the fold” when they’re searching for information - this means that
people are going to get some pretty conflicting information about Irish pork.
Any organisation that finds themselves in this situation will end up leaving your consumer/customer/audience
confused - if what they see in search results conflicts with what you’re telling them, will that make them trust you any
better? Maybe not. Probably not. It’ll make them question it at least.
By not being there to inform and manage the situation there you’re giving yourself a mountain to climb when you do
start - it takes time to climb up search rankings!
You also stand to lose a LOT of money!

Over
THREE
years later!

Surrender ANY control
Leave your consumer confused
Relinquish your “right to reply”
Set yourself back
Lose money!

By saying nothing you’re allowing everyone else the freedom to say whatever they like.
If you get involved you can at least try to nip a problem in the bud. Or turn a bad situation to your advantage. When
the ripples are good ones, instead of a crisis, you can even make a good one better!
But you have a duty to exercise your right to reply. Especially when you’re dealing with public service information -
trust in govt and pubic sector has never been lower. It’s imperative that correct information is out there!
If you don’t have a social media presence in a channel where something is “breaking” - then see if you can get
information to the most inﬂuential of those involved. Preferably the ones that are defending you (if there are). Or
perhaps just agree to meet with the inﬂuential detractors offline - work to make them advocates... or at least less
vehement detractors.
Whatever you do, don’t ignore social media.

CRISIS HITS
0 Hour

Hour 6
Twitter
Blogs
FacebookCRISIS HITS
0 Hour

Hour 12
Sharing
Mass Media
Hour 6
Twitter
Blogs
FacebookCRISIS HITS
0 Hour

Hour 18
Hour 24
Mainstream
Editorial
Hour 12
Sharing
Mass Media
Hour 6
Twitter
Blogs
FacebookCRISIS HITS
0 Hour

Hour 6
Twitter
Blogs
FacebookCRISIS HITS
0 Hour
Damage control
Right to reply
Less misinformation
Potential advocacy

3. Reach does not mean
attention
Fans, followers, likers =
people formerly known
as the audience
Potentially more
valuable
Potentially imaginary!
DO NOT chase numbers
– work to create
advocates
3. Reach/attention
Fans/followers/likes etc are just the social media equivalent of eyeballs pointed at the TV while your ad is on. It can
mean more in social media though as the user as self-selected - i.e. given you permission to tell them your message.
But you don’t know how many of those “eyeballs” are looking at your messaging. It’s easy to like a page on Facebook.
It’s easy to hide one from your news feed too.
4. Winning advocates
This takes time! Relationships aren’t built overnight.
You might have some natural advocates - ﬁnd them! Build relationships with them ﬁrst. Then work with them to
recruit more and build relationships with those too.
Keep your promises and you’ll get more.

3. Reach does not mean
attention
Fans, followers, likers =
people formerly known
as the audience
Potentially more
valuable
Potentially imaginary!
DO NOT chase numbers
– work to create
advocates
4. Advocates are hard won
Positive word of mouth
is your holy grail
You need advocates for
this
They’ll talk about you
when:
You over deliver
You under deliver
3. Reach/attention
Fans/followers/likes etc are just the social media equivalent of eyeballs pointed at the TV while your ad is on. It can
mean more in social media though as the user as self-selected - i.e. given you permission to tell them your message.
But you don’t know how many of those “eyeballs” are looking at your messaging. It’s easy to like a page on Facebook.
It’s easy to hide one from your news feed too.
4. Winning advocates
This takes time! Relationships aren’t built overnight.
You might have some natural advocates - ﬁnd them! Build relationships with them ﬁrst. Then work with them to
recruit more and build relationships with those too.
Keep your promises and you’ll get more.

5. It requires some maths!
Volume x impact = word
of mouth
Volume is easy
Impact is determined
by:
Where
What
Who
Source
5. Maths
Volume = frequency of exposure to your social media activities
Impact = action taken as a result of exposure to your social media activities
6. WOM
Talkability is NOT a real thing. It’s not even a real word.
Don’t go after “loads of mentions” for your initiative/organisation - work to get the RIGHT kind of mentions.

5. It requires some maths!
Volume x impact = word
of mouth
Volume is easy
Impact is determined
by:
Where
What
Who
Source
6. Word of mouth is not a
cure-all
Do NOT chase “buzz” or
“talkability”
Negative versus positive
word-of-mouth
Understand different
kinds of word-of-mouth
Experiential
Consequential
Intentional
5. Maths
Volume = frequency of exposure to your social media activities
Impact = action taken as a result of exposure to your social media activities
6. WOM
Talkability is NOT a real thing. It’s not even a real word.
Don’t go after “loads of mentions” for your initiative/organisation - work to get the RIGHT kind of mentions.

7. It WILL cost you!
Culture = Trust and engagement is what social media is about. You won’t get this by paying lip service. People can
smell disingenuousness a mile away. Your online, and social media, behaviour needs to be true to your culture. This
might mean a cultural change - not an easy task!
Good Ideas = they can come from anywhere. Not just your agency (I’m doing myself out of a job here!). GMP did a 24
hour tweetathon (as we’ll see later) to show people what they deal with in a single day. Great insight into an often
maligned service that created community pride and engagement.
Data = Get to know your audience. I’ll keep saying it. If you don’t know them what you say will be off target. It’ll have
less impact and less effect.

Culture

Culture Good Ideas

Culture Good Ideas Data

The biggest challenges?
Image Source:Gizmodo
One of your biggest challenges will be to get stakeholder engagement.
You might experience technophobes and social media skeptics. You have to kill this with information.
Information and experience - get them onto social media so they can see it for themselves.

Stakeholder engagement and buy-in

Resource and funding

Content planning

Content planning
Guidelines

Content planning
Guidelines
Creating a social strategy

Content planning
Guidelines
Creating a social strategy
Getting started!

Getting the green light
• Build a business case
• Identify resource and
budget required
• Engage key stakeholders
• Clarify rules of enagement
• Minimise risk
16
Image Source: Nathan W Bingham on Flickr
Build a business case! Why is this right for you? What will it cost to do it? What could it cost you if you don’t?
Minimise the risk for them to say yes!
To do this you need a cohesive strategy - a plan of action!

A social media strategy
What do you want achieve?
How will you make it work?
How will you know if it has?
How will you evolve?

What do you want social media to
Engagement?
Attitudinal shift?
Increased footfall?
Increased awareness?
Decrease complaint volume?
Create advocacy?
Are you clear about your goals?
Image Source: Atomic Shed on Flickr
If you don’t have a clear reason to be, then you probably shouldn’t be doing anything.
Sometimes, it’s OK just to listen and monitor what’s going on. You might not be ready to establish social media
presence - that’s OK. It might not be right for your organisation - but ALWAYS listen. Then you’ll be ready if/when
things change and your do need to start building a presence.
Listening will uncover the “why” of social media for your organisation. And will continue to tell you why... or why not.

Where should you do it?
Where is the conversation
happening?
How appropriate is it that
you join in?
What is your presence in
this channel designed to
achieve?
Are you absolutely SURE
you should be there?
Monitoring should also tell you the “where” too
Only pick the channels that are relevant. If it’s not appropriate for you to establish an active presence in a channel -
look for other ways to get your message there. Look to your advocates - are they there? Can they help you?
Remember the point about the ticklist? Use your insights to help you establish why you should be in a channel.
If relevant, just pick one channel and operate within that singular channel with EXCELLENCE.
When you’re ready, and ONLY IF it’s right, then you can scale up to other channels.

What will you do there?
What are you going to say?
What format will it take?
Will you be proactive or reactive?
How will you keep it fresh?
How will you tell your story?
You know why and you know where, but how about the “what”?
Think about what you’ll say and how you’ll say it.
What does your audience want/need to hear from you? What are the key commentary themes about your organisation/
area of interest?
Social media is absolutely not about ﬁnding new, “free” channels to push out advertising messages through. Do that
and I guarantee nothing will come of it. People will ignore you.
Make sure you’re sending out the right information in the right format. At the right time - a quick note on automated
messaging, beyond automatic sharing your blog posts, avoid it if you can - people ﬁnd it disingenuous and you’ll get
bitten on the arse sooner or later with a mis-timed message that is at odds with tone of the channel at that time.

Rules of engagement
Tone of voice
What will and won’t
be discussed
What users can expect
from you
How you expect users
to behave
SLAs
Escalation procedure
21
Image source: Alexandra Ferguson on Etsy
It’s OK to establish your own rules of engagement.
You have to take into account the user behaviour of a particular channel and make sure it’s not at odds with that - but if
there are things you can’t discuss online that’s OK. Tell people why and they’ll accept that. If there are times that you
will and won’t be available to respond - tell them, they’ll be OK with with too.
If there will be instances when you have to remove user content, say from your Facebook page, make sure they know
why. And don’t just remove it without comment - tell your community why it’s removed. So they don’t get annoyed and
hopefully fewer people will make the same mistake again.

How will you know if it’s worked?
How will you measure this?
What are your KPIs?
What does success look like?
Image source: Richard Moross on Flickr
MEASURE what you do. Gina’s going to talk through this more in detail tomorrow. But I can’t emphasise it enough!
But you don’t have to measure EVERYTHING!
Just because you can, doesn’t always mean that you should!
If you’ve ﬁgured out the “why” that I mentioned earlier, then your KPIs should be linked to that.

Lesson Two: Tell your story in the
right place
Clearly deﬁned
social media role
Clearly deﬁned
channel roles
Story to tell
Two-way
communication
Award winners!
Suffolk County Council Trading Standards: http://suffolktradingstandards.wordpress.com/

A strategy isn’t something static
Don’t just work it up, put it in a lever arch ﬁle that gets shoved into a cupboard. Or print out an impressively complex
info-graphic that just gets posted on a wall.
Treat your strategy as a living thing - it will grow and change over time.

Lesson 3: Be willing to adapt
25
Objectives:
Improve community
engagement
Reduce costs
Make communications
more interactive
24 hour Twitter marathon
Hyper-local
No clear role for Facebook
GMP at set-up.
Basically, it was cheaper community outreach!
They had nice ideas to get awareness and ignite sharing. They could even be hyper-local with station speciﬁc twitter
accounts. Nothing’s more relevant than a break in two streets away!
But they didn’t know what to do with Facebook - it had no clear role (their ticklist wasn’t working!)

And then...
26
Manchester Riots
August 2011
Then England went a bit mad for a few days, last August.
Suddenly they had an opportunity to turn their social media assets into a genuinely useful, real-time service to their
community.
Less cuddly community outreach. More “this is what’s going on now” so that people felt lest afraid and panic was
minimised.

27
Engagement & Reassurance
Image source: Ben Proctor on Storify and GMP on Flickr
During the riots - there were real-time updates, so people felt reassured. Compare this to other cities, especially
around Tottenham, where there was a lot of vocal criticism of police and ﬁre services for lack of information.
After the riots, they kept the community involved. They “named and shamed” those convicted (just as they would
traditionally do in the press) and even explained why.
They listened to feedback about this from the community and adapted their activity after it - when they made mistakes
they held their hands up (no pun intended) and learned from it.
They also used YouTube to keep people informed, on a more detailed level, from senior members of the police force -
the community could see that GMP were taking social media seriously and it was paying dividends.
Community engagement was high enough for GMP to launch “shop a looter” via Twitter and (now with a reason to exist)
their Facebook page - integrating Flickr and Youtube content.

27
After the disturbances

27
After the disturbances
Driving community action
Responding to feedback
Implementing change
Admit to mistakes!

Ongoing iteration
28

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase Listen to what’s being said
Key commentary themes
Channel identiﬁcation

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase
2. Activity scoping Clarify roles for channels
and content
Map to objectives
Allocate resource & budget

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase
2. Activity scoping
3. Operational framework Communication guidelines
Crisis Preparation
“Rules of engagement”
Escalation procedure

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase
2. Activity scoping
3. Operational framework
4. Content planning What you say
Where you say it
What format to say it in
When you say it

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase
2. Activity scoping
4. Content planning
5. Measurement
What you will measure
How you will measure it
How it will be evaluated
What you want to see &
when

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase
2. Activity scoping
4. Content planning
5. Measurement
6. Activity Get going!

Ongoing iteration
28
1. Discovery phase
2. Activity scoping
4. Content planning
5. Measurement
6. Activity
Constant
appraisal &
iteration

Take a bit of a leap of faith
29
Image source: Great Beyond on Flickr
All the theory in the world will only do so much. With social media there comes a point when you just need to get stuck
in.
You’ll never really understand it until you are in it.

Start small, learn and grow
30
Image source: InteractiveMark
Don’t feel like you have to do it all in one go. Start small, make some mistakes (and you will!), admit them, learn from
them, then grow when you’re ready!

Questions?
31
Image source: Eleaf on Flickr
Any questions?
If you have any afterwards, drop me a line any time...

Questions?
31
Image source: Eleaf on Flickr
Twitter: @curlydena
LinkedIn: Dena Walker
Any questions?
If you have any afterwards, drop me a line any time...

Challenges of social media with speaker notes

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Challenges of social media with speaker notes