Can social media be applied to the public sector and politics?

I was asked recently on this blog how the principles of social media could be applied to the public sector and, specifically, politics. That got me thinking, a rare occurrence. I thought that being negative would help focus my mind - why couldn't you use social media tools to engage people in politics? That thought lasted a few minutes before I was resolved; social media is hugely relevant to politics and the proof is in the Obama pudding. Below are the key points to my response to the question posed by Oranjepan (apparently a “A balding, ginger primate verging on extinction” from Reading, you don't meet one of those every day!):

Politics is about people not words

How can you engage your voters if you don’t understand what they want? You must speak to them in a way that is conducive to their needs – too many politicians speak through soundbite and never actually listen, too interested in their own voices and pomp (yes that is a disservice to grass roots politics where more people are genuinely interested but mainstream politicians like Gordon Brown and David Cameron have a wider influence)

Engagement requires direct contact

Putting a leaflet through a door does not mean you’ve engaged with someone – engagement only happens when somebody responds to you, implicitly or explicitly.

Passion breeds interaction

Engagement involves concerted effort – you can’t just say “well I tried”; if you believe in something make others feel that passion – communicate it regularly and don't expect everyone to respond at the first hurdle. Creating true conversation takes time and effort, nature and nurture

Build it and they will come!

Use advocacy – when you find someone who is listening and responding, ask them if they would like to be more involved & reward them for their effort – doesn’t have to be money! The power of advocacy is huge and people respond far better to "people like me" than a politician they have no direct relationship with.

Make it easy for people to interact with you

Allow people to share information, make it easy for them to pass on what you are saying. Create a blog, allow people to track it; set-up an RSS feed so people can have your content fed to them in a convenient way; use social bookmarking tools to enable people to post your content around their social networks. Open the communication channels and make sure you respond; I recently sent an email to Patricia Hewitt via her website and received no response, making me dislike her and what she represents even more. Why bother having a "Contact me" section if you have no intention of replying?

Embrace the online channel

You want to see a good example how social media can influence in politics? I give you Mr Barrack Obama, President of the USA. Check out his official website and follow the social media links. This helped him engage with millions online, many of whom never embraced politics before. Here is a handy chart that my fellow blogger Oranjepan kindly sent me:

Team Obama's intelligent use of social media to engage a diverse online audience was instrumental in achieving two political milestones; record numbers of people using online to engage with the election and record amount of money raised online to fund the campaign.

Granted, Obama will have had far greater resource than local politicians but the principles are the same. People are not interested in grandiose rhetoric about solving the problems of a nation, they want to here policies that will deliver tangible results and that are relevant to their lives. Social media provides one of the channels to achieve 1-2-1 communication and build personal relationships.

In my opinion, there is no reason why social media can't be applied to politics. However, i would urge budding politicians, at whatever level, to tread carefully. Social network are not there for your manipulation; if you misjudge the culture of the community you can do your reputation a lot of damage. 

Engagement is about listening and sharing, not pushing your agenda. Take time to understand who your audience is, then spend time monitoring where they talk and what they talk about. Only when you are sure you have something positive to contribute should you join the discussion.

If you are genuinely interested in what people have to say and what to engage in dialogue with them, you could use the online space to build an effective community and influence the voting public.

New ways to engage - contextual advertising

This week i'm taking a look at engagement from a different angle to widen the perspective of this blog. Following the great debate kicked off by Google's announcement on behavioural targeting and the ensuing furore from the privacy brigade, i wanted to tackle the role of contextual advertising online.

I took the liberty of interviewing (by email) Greg Caswell, Head of White-Label Sales @ Mirago and regular contributor to the Chinwag UK Netmarketing discussion group. What follows is his stream of consciousness from my random grilling:

 

James: 

"Hi Greg, how does contextual advertising differ from behavioural targeting?"

 Greg: 

"Put simply contextual advertising is about showing adverts that relate to the content of the webpage while behavioural targeting is about monitoring a consumers internet usage, the sites they visit and showing adverts that relate to those.

 

In more detail contextual advertising delivers adverts based on the content of the page, without the publisher having to ‘manually’ add a specific advert to a particular page. The words on the page are scanned by software which uses linguistic algorithms to extract the themes (context) of the page. Advertising is rendered within the page, based on those themes. As the user is likely to have landed on that page because they are interested in it, they are also likely to be a good match for the products or services within the related adverts. 

 

Behavioural targeting renders adverts on the basis of the historic browsing patterns of the user who is visiting the page. The adverts are therefore rendered on the basis of the type of content the user has been viewing, rather than on the context of the current page they are visiting. Unless the behavioural implementation relates to a login mechanism, confusion can arise when the same browser is used by multiple users."

 

James: 

"How does contextual advertising sit with privacy concerns?"

 Greg: 

"As a contextual advert is rendered on the basis of the (server side) content of the page, no cookie information is required by to deliver the ads. There are therefore no significant privacy issues. Behavioural advertising on the other hand, relies on storing a user’s browsing history which requires the use of cookies to do the tracking and obviously raises privacy concerns."

 

James:

"What are the advantages to the customer?"

 Greg:

"The advantages for the consumer is that they will be shown adverts for products and services that are relevant to the content which they are viewing, and as they are more than likely to have chosen to look at this page, then they are more than likely to find the advertisements relevant too. Also there are no cookies, so no spying on their off-site behaviour.

 

James:

"What are the benefits to the advertiser?"

Greg: 

"The advertiser knows that the content they are placing adverts against is relevant to their business or proposition, and that readers of this content are more likely to be receptive to these messages than if they appeared on unrelated content. Response rates to targeted advertising are higher than those from untargeted adverts."

 

James:

"What examples are there of companies using contextual ads intelligently?"

 Greg:

"We worked with Travelmail last year where we matched travel advertisers to the content that was being viewed, so as an example you could be viewing a page about holidaying in Thailand and so the adverts around the content would be from advertisers who either offered holidays, flights or tours to Thailand. Far more relevant than a consumer seeing ads for ski holidays, which could happen with no contextual targeting, where the advertiser is just appearing within the Travel section."

 

James:

"Crystal ball – how do you see the industry evolving?"

Greg:

I think that there may be a future for behavioural targeting, but this will be on individual sites or within specific login areas of sites, and where the customer has opted in, but personally I believe widescale behavioural advertising will disappear due to the huge ‘Big Brother’ privacy issues. 

 

Contextual is independent of where you have been, it purely attempts to supplement the place you currently are with relevant commercial content. It is therefore likely that Contextual will continue to evolve into the space ‘targeted’ by behavioural. There is of course scope for a hybrid delivery mechanism, as in individual site tracking, but the taboo of behavioural may have an affect on that trend.

Interview ends.

My view is that contextual adverts can engage customers far better than other targeting because the personal relevance is high. Couple that with the ability to search within the ad for real-time content to fine tune the personalisation, there is great potential to increase click through whilst delivering good service.

Join the debate and tell me what you think about the potential of contextual advertising as an engagement tool.

Thanks to Greg Caswell from Mirago for his time & contribution.

 

Dialogue is better than monologue: building engaged communities online

Month 2 in the 2009 Social Brother diary room….

I’ve been locked in a cellar with only my iPod for company as I write a presentation for the Retail Week eCommerce Summit on 17^th Feb @ which e-inbusiness is the Associate Sponsor. Yes, a shameless chance to further our global domination plan by drip feeding our knowledge and experience to innocent bystanders!

For those of you who have ever given a presentation to a demanding and savvy audience, it can be quite a daunting task. Not only do you have to provide a voice of authority and knowledge, you have to be engaging and interesting. I’ve always prided myself on being able to keep people’s attention but that’s usually fuelled by some premium ales and the odd Jack Daniels, or two. I was set the challenge by Sarah, our Head of Corporate Marketing, and Steven, our Sales & Marketing Director – what should we talk about that is current, topical and relates to user experience and the use of technology to drive online conversion?

After two days of spiritual meditation in an ancient Buddhist temple in the Himalayas, entering into a zen like trance (anyone seen Monkey Dust?!), I came up with the thread of building engaged communities online by creating a buzz for your brand. Before the corporate bingo police come rushing in, that’s not just marketing waffle. I’m not trying to cram in agencyspeak to sound uber-modern. I genuinely believe that this is the key challenge for online brands in 2009 and onwards; how do you excite and interest your customers to build a community that actively engages with your brand? This week’s blog looks at what I mean by an engaged community and the power of advocacy in helping brands grow a community organically.

Yakety yak – what is an engaged community!?

Noun

Engagement (plural engagements)

1/ connection or attachment, the point at which two or more things are connected

2/ a feeling of understanding and ease of communication between two or more people

An engaged community is a group of people who have a common interest in your brand, who interact with each other and your company to access interesting, relevant information and share it across their social networks. Each member contributes to the community but some are more active than others and take leading roles. Your community requires support and your main challenge is to provide them with the tools & technology to use your content when, where & how they want. The community thrives on nurture and nature; your nurture to provide advice & guidance and moderation when needed to help the members, nature for your members to grow the community organically via their personal connections and advocacy and most importantly, on their terms.

Encouraging advocacy

This is about dialogue, not monologue. When you have engaged with customers, you can talk to them regularly and update them with relevant information. You can signpost them to important announcements and build a personal relationship. Then you can encourage them to share your content with their contacts and other social networks. By rewarding and encouraging, you gradually build up a base of brand advocates who trust you, like what you offer and will tell their connections. Check out how well Wiggly Wigglers has done on Facebook at linking product enthusiasts. Heather Gorringe has really embraced social media and put her customers at the heart of the communication – I have told hundreds of people about them because of this, who could have told hundreds more. As Diana Ross said, we’re in the middle of a chain reaction….

Putting this into practise – visualising advocacy

Below is a Blue Peter special sketch of how the One-to-Many power of advocacy can positively impact brand awareness (and eventually conversion and other KPIs) by dialogue:

This is all very top level stuff but it does illustrate the power of engagement. If brands look to social media as the cure all for the tough economic and trading conditions, they will be missing a beat. I think people need to encourage engagement, giving their customers the tools & support to interact with their brand and content on their terms, when, where and how they want. Social media is just one element of this, albeit an important and hugely exciting one.

What do you think? Is engagement the new black, or are you one of the doubters? If you want to hear more, please come and listen to us at Retail Week eCommerce Summit on February 17^th @ Millennium Gloucester in London.