Hear yes, See yes, Speak NO

So the truth is out, the footballer is named and shamed officially (in Parliament no less) and now everyone will leave him alone, stop talking about it and go back to trying to dish the dirt on the next celebrity.  Or will they? On Twitter today the hashtag #superinjunction this morning says otherwise.

It seems to me that this super injunction fiasco has really been about what we don’t know rather than what we do. A Twitter account holder by the name of  Billy Jones, (@injunctionsuper) embraced the chattering cloud of gossip element of Twitter and revealed the list of people who had taken out super-injunctions on 8th May.  This was complete with the reasons why the injunctions were in place, including in this case that it was Imogen Thomas and Ryan Giggs who had had an extra marital affair.

Celebrity =public property = public right to know

This caused a self righteous uproar from the online populace- how dare anyone pay to hide information from us, in this open age of freedom of tweet?! Once people knew that there were injunctions in place it has been a scramble to find out the details.  But why should we know the details? A footballer, or a celebrity personality has had an affair is hardly a headline that the people of Britain haven’t seen before.  This story has become less about the people in question and more about the public believing they have a right to know, and how we consume, share and discuss information.

Pressure and the press

The BBC pointed out the day after that the fact that a super-injuction even exists is not supposed to be public knowledge, but a protected secret.  The Mail Online said the outing of the information online ‘exposed the total inadequacy of court rulings which gag the press – but have no effective control over what is published online.’  The Sun, however, (and Imogen Thomas) were still unable to get the gagging order lifted yesterday, the Guardian reports, despite everyone already knowing anyway.  The ‘go on you might as well let us report it now’ attempt followed the Scottish Sunday Herald publishing a badly disguised photo of Giggs on the front page of the paper, which might as well have left his eyes uncovered.  Mr Justice Eady explained his reasoning to be that at if least some privacy can be preserved then he would endeavour to make that so: ‘For so long as the court is in a position to prevent some of that intrusion and distress, depending upon the individual circumstances, it may be appropriate to maintain that degree of protection.”

Justice prevails?

Now while Justice Eady is right that the level of intrusion would be much worse if the press were allowed to report the details, you can’t gag over 70,000 people tweeting about something, but that is exactly what is being argued by those who took out the injunctions.  How dare Twitter know about this? Twitter is lying and so on.  If I had forked out to cover up a misdemeanor I would be complaining more to the provider of the clearly failed injunction- it is not Twitter’s fault that someone with a Twitter account knows something they shouldn’t- the injunction didn’t work.  So Giggs decides to sue Twitter, making a small flame a massive bonfire. The Mirror reported on the action against Twitter, including a statement from Imogen’s PR man, the well known Max Clifford who thinks that suing Twitter was the wrong move, and that ‘the footballer’ should ‘stand up and be counted’. The Telegraph also reports that Max thinks it was the injunction that made the affair public knowledge, as Imogen never intended to speak up.

So why try and sue Twitter? Twitter don’t remove tweets based solely on content, and therefore seemingly protect this freedom of tweet. See this post by Shea Bennett on whether the super injunction Twitter account has been gagged, for more details on how Twitter have responded.  It is interesting though, that at this point on 10th May, (prior to the news that Twitter were potentially being forced by the player’s lawyers to reveal the identity of the Tweeter) it was thought unlikely that the player would sue.  Twitter today have tweeted from @twitterglobalpr ‘For all those who might be curious, we continue to not comment on rumors.’ This may seem like a strange statement for those who turn to Twitter as a rumour mill, however there are many of us who use Twitter for business, debate and conversation that does not involve celebrity gossip.

Super-injunctions and search

The impact of super-injunctions on search so far is very interesting.  To start with, it almost seemed like Google were stopping auto-complete sharing more information than it should but controlling the filter when users typed in ‘imogen thomas’ or similar.  This is discussed and explained in excellent detail here by Shaun Anderson.  Will Google have to be more careful about suggesting associated phrases in auto-complete now that the information is public knowledge? As Shaun says ‘only Google knows’… but I doubt that Google can be gagged.

Gagged and blinded

Some have argued that what we don’t know can’t hurt us; and if we don’t share it we can’t be penalised, but what if you’ve just heard it on the Twitter-vine? Are you then party to breaking an injunction? The jury is still out on that one.

I’m of the opinion that if you do something that you don’t want anyone to find out, it is probably the most important thing you’ll ever reveal! Trying to cover up a mistake is worse than the fact that you’ve made it in the first place.  I’m human, I’ve done things I’ve regretted- I do not presume to place myself in a position to judge.  I do think, however, that if you mess up you should own up and then there is actually a chance that things will eventually heal.

Differing viewpoints

Obviously my opinion isn’t the only opinion here at Bloom so I asked around for people’s thoughts.  There are some strong views:

‘I think the whole thing was purely down to Ryan Giggs’ refusal to face the consequences. He isn’t a big enough star for anyone to have given a monkeys about him. If he had done nothing, I can’t see many people being interested, he certainly doesn’t have the public appeal to sell paper as much as someone like David Beckham or Wayne Rooney.I feel sorry for his wife and kids, but have no sympathy for him. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the attempt of a aging footballer trying to create a buzz before his retirement-I can’t image it will be long before a “Giggsy tells all” story appears in a paper.’ Andrew Markham-Davies

‘A classic example of the ongoing war between freedom of speech and personal privacy. Celebrity journalism has been the battleground where this issue has been most closely fought since we all became obsessed with reading trash like OK Magazine; don’t confuse the medium with the issue at hand.’ Stu Turner

‘How about people stop doing things they’ll be ashamed of and want to hide?’ Sara Galbiati

‘I use Twitter for industry news. My friend has just joined Twitter to follow the ‘reality fame hunters’ that seem to take up so much of our time and distract us from our own dull little lives! I guess she uses it to find out the ‘real’ (if you can call it that) things that they get up to and the whole truth not the slanderess pap you read in trashy magazines and red tops. Apparently Holly Willoughby’s Twitter followers were the first to find out about the birth of her baby – she tweeted the news 20 mins after giving birth before the media could get their grubby little hands on the ‘breaking story’!! Ria Evans

Q & A with our head of Development and Innovation:

Me: ‘What do you think about the use of Twitter to break the super-injunction (and effectively the law)?’

Dan Akers: ‘Gossip is the oldest social network in existence… It’s never been controlled by law.’

Me: ‘Do you think freedom of Tweet is above the law?’

Dan Akers: If 1 person turns up outside parliament and starts protesting, the police arrest them.  If 10,000 people turn up, the police do their best to control them and move them on.  Same thing.’

Me: ‘Do you feel sorry for Ryan Giggs?’

Dan Akers: ‘Not even 1%.’

Today the BBC has reported the Prime Minister has described what is happening as ‘unsustainable, with privacy law evolving through judgements and information circulating on the internet’ and MPS are agreeing that the ‘law is not working’.

Could it be that gags will be removed in future and the un-handed press and Twitterers released to report and tweet their worst? Or perhaps this super shhhhh law will go the other way and become more powerful.  I for one will follow the developments with interest, and be curious to see the reactions of both sides of the arguement, gagged and gagger alike.

Facebook Groups used to be a way of connecting with all of your customers/clients/members to update them on events, services, deals and news about your brand. They chose to become a member, and they could leave whenever they liked. They could share the group with their friends and they could post on the group wall for all members to see. This sounds a lot like how Facebook pages work? It is, in fact it makes complete sense for brands to use pages over groups as they have even more features and benefits in terms of external open graph integration as well as within the Facebook network.

Out with the old, in with the new

BUT, Facebook seemed to have missed a trick with how they introduce this to their customers, and how they manage this transition. We first heard about the change from old groups to new groups in October, and then it was only the benefits of new groups that Facebook focussed on, not what you do or what the impact is for old group administrators. This first update explained that new groups had been brought in to enable sharing with smaller gangs of friends and family rather than loads of people at once.

There is another issue with the new groups as well, namely that people can add you to them without your permission. Facebook’s argument is that your Facebook friends should be real friends, and therefore you should trust their judgement on whether you should be in a group or not. Basically any of us with more than the average 100 or so friends are going to have some email overload issues. Techcrunch addresses this issue in an entertaining commentary here.

Small groups good, big groups BAD

New Features include being able to chat with everyone in the group at once and email notifications that Facebook claims can eliminate the need for a mailing list as members are emailed when people post updates. This all sounds great for small groups, e.g a local youth club, sports team, book club, family group etc. Doesn’t sound quite so useful for brands who have a healthy collection of members of their group in the hundreds or the thousands! If you have tried the new group format you’ll be aware that it simply doesn’t work for larger groups, and this has clearly been done on purpose to force brands over to pages and to keep these groups focussed on communities. While this is actually a logical step if you think about it- keeping the marketing and commercially driven interaction in one place and the community and personal ‘private’ (as much as can be achieved on an online social network!) it really astounds me that while Facebook want brands to start using pages they have not currently enabled the transferal of members to Likes!

Migration from friends to likes

Brands who used to use Facebook as a ‘person’ rather than a page have already gone through an update similar to this one when Facebook decided this was not a good idea, which I do actually agree with, especially since they enabled brands to ‘use Facebook as Page’ which enables real professional interaction on the network that page owners were crying out for. So if Facebook were ok with transferring the friends of a brand over to a page to become ‘likes’, why is it not willing/able to do the same for members of brand groups? If you weren’t aware that you could do this and you have been using Facebook as a person rather than a page then see this really useful blog post by Lisa Barone which covers the group upgrade and links back to her previous post on the Facebook Business Page Migration Tool.

1000 members? = 0 likes

So Facebook recognised that business needed to convert friends into likes, but what about members? What if you’re one of these brands that have been steadily gathering members to their groups and in some cases, on Facebook’s encouragement, invested in pay per click Facebook ads to recruit more members? Well Facebook say that groups will be offered the opportunity to upgrade or archive. This may sound simple but actually lots of groups will find themselves being automatically archived if Facebook don’t deem them to have been recently active, and there have been reports of groups upgrading but losing all their members. For an excellent step by step breakdown of out with the old groups and exactly what that means for you, Mari Smith has hit the nail on the head.

Facebook’s happy though, what’s the problem guys?

Facebook find positives with the new groups, but so far no one that I can find is satisfied or pleased with the way old groups are being abolished. There are of course the usual groups and pages like this one set up within Facebook to complain, and although these happen every time the social network changes something, this time I really agree. It just seems really strange that Facebook would be so actively unhelpful to businesses that have actually had a media spend with them; it is now a social-people AND a social-business network and while it seems to embrace that one way it turns its back with the other.

Don’t LIKE it? Lump it.

When businesses talk about effective engagement via social networks with their clients one of the most regularly quoted themes is that listening to the end user of their product or service and then improving it based on that recommendation is the most effective result. This pleases current customers as they feel valued and listened to, and recruits new customers as the current ones have something positive to shout about. Why then, is Facebook so set on updating all the time but telling people to lump it rather than LIKE it?

My advice would be to create an official brand page pronto and get suggesting your old group members ‘like’ it before you suddenly find your group archived and your members zeroed.

YouView has finally stepped from the shadows today and unveiled some pretty serious plans for next year. The service aims to update Freeview to compete with more interactive offerings from established TV providers such as Sky and Virgin, whilst allowing viewers access to free on demand services such as the iPlayer and 4OD.

It’s being backed by some big players including BBC, Channel 4 and ITV but what I think is most exciting is the potential change this could mean for TV advertising and media consumption.

From the information that’s been revealed so far YouView could potentially offer media producers the opportunity to ‘sell’ their shows direct to the viewer through a Pay Per View or micropayment subscription model (either by channel or program). This could could mean the end of annoying ad breaks forever. Potentially.

There is also talk of an app store on the service, further expanding the possibilities for interaction, collaboration and, well who knows?

This is another step towards true integration of television, radio, the internet, apps… It’s an exciting move away from just selling a service toward giving people a truly tailored, interactive experience. It means advertisers will have to work harder and take inspiration from online advertising to create successful contextual ads. In short it sounds awesome.

Is social TV just around the corner?

There is an excellent article on The Guardian if you’re as excited as I am and want more!

Indeed we believe that what is called by many; ‘the web’ or ‘the internet’ will soon be a social media dominated domain and marketplace; giving much more ‘control’ and influence to your audience as opposed to your ‘corporate’ office.

Being a high growth opportunity, it’s also a ‘bandwagon’ that many traditional and digital agencies seem to be attempting to jump on without properly understanding (or perhaps believing in) its potency …. and associated risks. Clients are also hesitant to engage without a more tangible appreciation of its benefits. This results in dabbling, that ultimately debases the business case and credibility in the approach; particularly when the provenance in such a revolutionary technique is limited and clients hesitate with RoI not easy to identify … quickly!

I may be rightly(?) considered biased in this view, although would suggest that, as one of the Media Agencies that already has a number of social media client campaigns running (together with a Dadi Award for a social media campaign), we have a privileged insight that provides an experienced perspective.

We only have to look at recent media history to identify the power of social media campaigns …. or perhaps the catastrophic lack of them; that really stand out to emphasise our view.
Take for example, the troubles Toyota had with its car fault recalls, the Catholic Church with their scandal of child abuse and much more topical at present, BP (and its CEO!) and their (public) ‘trial’ in the Gulf of Mexico.

We can assume(?) that its not arrogance or ‘care-less’ that inhibits their engagement, so I would consider that each of these has quite powerful traditional media agencies fighting on their behalf (albeit, one may question the Catholic Church’s abilities here!) Even with these powerful lobby groups, their corporate reputations and images have been hugely tarnished with the result that their ‘value’ and pulling power has been fundamentally debased.

Today, there is nowhere to hide, yet the tools and techniques exist to pro-actively engage with and openly address such critique. Effective Social Media campaigns could and would have made such a positive difference to these enterprises and their challenges; even if simply considered from a Corporate Social Responsibility perspective.

The bottom line is that, the traditional ‘push’ mentality of corporate messaging is no longer good enough (on its own) to engage with your marketplace and stakeholders to maintain brand, image and reputation, particularly in tough times, let alone promote products and services.

Engaging with your stakeholders and creating effective digital dialogue with them, whatever their views, is vital for future enterprise sustainability. Obviously this is easier done when the message(s) and engagement is positive as opposed to critical. However, treating the audience with due respect and engaging with debate can be so powerful not only for image, brand and reputation management, but also for new product/service development, strategic market positioning and even simply growing market share.

Clients must be prepared to change their approach to their marketplace and provide professional resource to effectively engage with the dialogue created. Such a challenge must not be underestimated.

I for one, long for the day when we get beyond those mind-numbing (and cosmetic) TV Ad campaigns with a related call to action web-site where we are supposed to have fun with some kind of trivial engagement.

Lets stand up and be professional about it.

And clients ….. please start to appreciate that ‘push’ is no longer good enough on its own; even though that is what you have traditionally been comfortable with. Your target audience now has a voice to which you are called to respectfully respond and engage …. ie ‘pull’.

Ignore it at your peril, because ‘pull-push’ IS the way forward and ‘dabbling just doesn’t cut it.
Just take a look at the Wikileaks debate today ….. so who is in control?!? ……….

Recently though I have come across a business in Leeds that seem to have social media engagement all sewn up (these guys aren’t a Bloom client, they’re small local business who are making big waves locally). So as with all things I thought that rather than tell you how to engage, I would show you, and along the way perhaps help you see for yourself why the strategies this business is using are so successful.

Millies Fresh & Organic (On twitter as @MilliesLeeds) I first came across Millies when I moved to Leeds 9 months ago, my bus used to pass by the shop on my way into town. Once I stopped taking that bus though I have to admit I didn’t give the shop much more thought. It was many months later when I saw a competition they were running retweeted by someone I followed locally, you see Millies have been giving away some great prizes to their milestone followers, and this has led to them getting some fantastic twitter coverage. The prizes were good enough that I decided to follow them, and check out their site, and blog. Pretty soon I decided to visit the store (and bought the most amazing cheese, if only I could remember which of their selection it was). Following their tweets I then started to see other offers that they had, and recently the offer that they had available for their beauty room, I booked in sharpish, and had a brilliant experience with their beautician.

What have Millies’ done so right?

I have never tweeted @milliesleeds and not got a response, they offer great information, never tweet unless they have something to say, and are always friendly and helpful. In fact they behave online just as they do in their store. What’s more they go out of their way to provide great service, and they link their online and offline conversations. When I went to the beauty room Emma, the beautician already knew where I was hoing on holiday, because I had tweeted it and Millies had joined the dots…seamless integration really doesn’t get any better than that!

Replicating Millies’ Success

The only way to really replicate what Millies have done is to really care. You can’t fake the sort of enthusiasm that they display about their customers and what their store offers. If you find logging on to twitter to be a chore, or you don’t enjot actively talking to your customers you will never get that relationship with them, and will never reap the benifits that can be gained from real social media engagement.

The kind of social media strategy that makes someone want to blog about how great your social media strategy is doesn’t come from any amount of training or advice from “social media experts”, it comes from the simple desire to talk to your customers, engage with them, and understand what they really want. Really it’s no different from what the best businesses have been offering in store for years, it’s making your customer feel special.