Twitter’s Policy Change: Censorship or Aid to Free Speech ?

While many have deemed Twitter’s recent announcement to block tweets country-by-country an act of censorship, even vowing to boycott the social media giant, Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the University of North Carolina, says otherwise.

“Twitter’s latest policy is purposefully designed to allow Twitter to exist as a platform… making it as hard as possible for governments to censor content,” explains Tufekci in a recent blog post.

According to Tufekci, the policy, which proclaims to take down content only within the jurisdiction of countries with imposed legal orders, actually provides tools for advocates of free speech. She argues that Twitter has effectively focused its policy — previously it was forced to take down restricted content from global viewing — and has made its decisions more transparent. A list of blocked tweets will be published with links to original tweets as well as the country’s court order. “So everyone who is not… [in] that particular country can see what it’s about.”

Furthermore, Tufekci explains that users can easily circumvent blocked content in their country by manually overriding their computer’s country setting.  “[By] making such censorship visible and easily circumventable, it is at least giving the global civic society as well as citizens of a country [the ability] to recognize what’s going on and respond.”

See Zeynup Tufekci discuss social media’s role on the Arab Spring at our BRITE ’12 Conference (March 5-6, NYC).

REGISTER NOW!

BY KIM SHIFRIN

The Buzz of Anticipation

Successfully creating a buzz around products is an art that few companies are able to consistently master. Generating buzz is tough to achieve because it spreads mainly by word of mouth and can’t be created by advertising dollars. Recent examples of great buzz generation include the much anticipated Fox show “X Factor” debut, Amazon’s release of the “Kindle Fire” and Boeing’s Dreamliner aircraft that was just delivered to its first customer in Japan. Given that buzz often leads to profits, this is a problem that many companies have been looking to solve. Interesting research on buzz from Brian Uzzi, Professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, sheds light on how to generate buzz and how companies can be more effective practitioners of this elusive art form.

Uzzi used a private survey which asked 180,000 participants about their impressions of “soon-to-be-released” Hollywood films. Uzzi used the results of this survey and the resulting box office success of these movies to better understand buzz and how it relates to profits. From the data, Uzzi found that once buzz reached a certain tipping point–21% of Americans–there was a dramatic increase in box office revenues. But how did the level of buzz reach this point?

Interestingly, Uzzi discovered that buzz is not generated based on an actual experience with a product but more the anticipation of that experience. He found that there was little to no relationship between buzz and advertising dollars spent. Buzz instead was driven by intangible factors such as a catchy trailer or unique film premise that piqued the interest of movie goers. As a result, Uzzi argues that marketing efforts should focus on planting seeds that consumers would ideally spread themselves throughout their extensive social networks.

One company that has been able to consistently plant these buzz generating seeds is Apple. Famous for its tight-lipped approach to pre-release product information, Apple strategically incorporates secrecy to generate buzz about its new products. It was reported that Apple sent the media invitations for its October 4th event that simply read “Let’s talk iPhone.” Within a few minutes the internet was abuzz with anticipation of what the new iPhone would look like and what new features were possibly going to be in included. In this case less was more, and the web was full of anticipation.

While generating buzz like this is great in bringing attention to products, ultimately, the product itself must stand up to the buzz that has been created in order to be successful. We’ve all had the experience of rushing to a theater or signing up for the latest web phenomenon and have had the product not live up to the lofty expectations that we have had. In the end, buzz can’t substitute consumers’ desire for a product that adds substantial functional value.

BY MIKLOS RAIBON

Avoid These 7 Social Media Fiascos

The list of scandals, embarrassments, missteps, and P.R. fiascos tied to social media seems to grow every day.  Everyone knows the stories of disgruntled customers whose online complaints go viral, attracting millions of sympathetic viewers. Or the employees who get companies into trouble with an ill-advised post on the company’s social media accounts. Even a carefully planned ad campaign can stir up a storm of protest in the social media world.What is a business to do? While it is tempting to stick one’s head into the pre-digital sand, the fact is that organizations today face little choice but to engage with a network of customers that is empowered, vocal, and ready to share their own opinions in social media. To prepare themselves, businesses should apply lessons learned by the failures of others.Following are 7 lessons that will reduce the risk of social media failures for your own brand:

1. Don’t try to fool anybody. In an age of social media, you can only fool some of the people for a fleeting moment, until one of them exposes your deception and broadcasts it for the world to see. While companies may be tempted to plant fake customer reviews on Amazon, Yelp, or blogs, the likelihood of discovery is too high a risk, especially for larger brands. The imagined benefits of something like Wal-Mart‘s fake customer blog, “Wal-Marting Across America,”pale in comparison to the damage to your reputation from its exposure.

2. Follow decorum. The first rule of social media training is that the old rules for employees still apply. When an employee speaks, tweets, posts, or shares a photo on behalf of their company, it should be with the same discretion that they conduct an interview or draft a press release. The second rule is that many employees will need to have the first rule drummed into them. Their experience using these same media for personal conversations can lead to some sloppy habits. If you hire an outside agency to run your social media accounts, it is critical to establish style guidelines and an understanding of their accountability – like for the digital agency that was fired by Chrysler after a staff member inadvertently tweeted an obscenity about Detroiters on the auto brand’s own Twitter account.

3. Balance oversight with speed. Training and guidelines does not mean you can run every tweet, wall post, and image upload by a committee of legal advisors scattered across your company. An executive at Citi told me that he finally got the company to reduce the 20 legal sign-offs required to post to Twitter when he sent senior leadership a calculation of the cost of each tweet. In a world where customers expect instant replies and interaction, companies need to strike a balance between oversight and speed.

4. Pay attention to tone. Customers expect a more personable voice in social media than on a corporate website or press release. So your social media guidelines need to cover not just what you share, but the tone in which you share it. This should include guidance on how to handle irate or unreasonable customers, as well. Using a condescending or sarcastic tone with customers is always a bad idea, as Nestle learned when a tit-for-tat dispute with a customer on its Facebook wall led to widespread criticism and the departure of fans.

5. Know which tools are not under your control. Some social media channels are controlled more by the account holder, and others are controlled more by the public. It’s important for businesses to understand the differences as they start to engage customers. For example, Twitter hashtags (words anyone can use to join a topical conversation), are extremely public. Starbucks learned this lesson when it launched a print ad campaign to promote twitter conversations around #top3percent and found it hijacked by a labor activist’s criticism of the company.

6. Invest in customer service. In an age of social media, good customer service is often the best p.r. money can buy. The worst social media fiascoes stem from customers telling tales of terrible service – from Jeff Jarvis’s “Dell Hell” blog posts, to the “Sleeping Comcast Technician” video on YouTube, to Dave Carroll’s viral music video “United [Airlines] Breaks Guitars.” Customer service used to be an easy place to cut costs during lean times. But now, businesses should realize that investing in decent quality customer service is a direct defense against the worst risks to their brand.

7. Test launch any big changes to your communications. A number of social media protests have arisen not because of companies’ digital marketing, but because of changes to their traditional marketing. Think of the outcry when The Gap tried to change its logo, or when Tropicana tried to change its packaging, or when Motrin ran an ad about back pain from babies that moms found unfunny. Companies should consider pre-testing any major changes to their brand identity in order to gauge customer response, or else launch them with any understanding that they may need to be yanked quickly if customer complaints spiral out of control.

No Heads in the Sand

In an age of social media, brands no longer live in a 24 hour news cycle. It is more like a 24 minute news cycle.  This demands speed, nimbleness, and thoughtfulness on the part of business.

Opting out of all social media is not the answer. In fact, many of the most flagrant social media “failures” have stemmed from old-fashioned “offline” screw-ups that get talked about much more by customers now that they have a powerful public voice of their own.

So be aware of the hazards to your reputation, and remember these 7 lessons as you bravely navigate the risks and rewards of engaging with customers in a world where everyone now has a virtual megaphone.

BY DAVID ROGERS

This was originally posted by David on his BNET.com blog.

Note: Image courtesy of flickr user, Chris Daniel

Visa’s Commitment to an Audience First Approach

Visa’s global chief marketing officer, Antonio Lucio, centered his key note speech on the first day of the BRITE ’11 conference around Visa’s journey from traditional marketing to a new model, guided by the principals of online communications and social media, an “audience first” approach. In response to today’s changing media consumption landscape he noted that,

Thirty-percent of our media weight is going to digital. Now we have a justification to take that to 40-percent.

Antonio has restructured Visa’s advertising strategy to begin with a strategic media plan, targeting consumers at digital sites where they spend the most time. Based on this plan, the company then begins its creative development along the following three principles:

• Sharing is the new giving
• Participation is the new consumption
• Recommendation is the new advertising

At the end of his talk, Antonio exclaimed, “I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and I have to say I’ve never been as excited to be a marketer as I am today with all the changes and all the opportunity that technology provides.”

BY MATTHEW QUINT

The Value of Great Social Customer Service

Called “the most famous customer service manager in the U.S., possibly in the world” by Businessweek.com, Frank Eliason (a BRITE ’11 speaker) is a social media pioneer. Frank, formerly the well-known voice behind @ComcastCares, is now SVP of Social Media at Citi where he and his team are using social media to humanize the brand and build a dialogue and rapport with customers.  While at Comcast, Frank built an incredible amount of customer loyalty and industry admiration through customer service work using social media.

The changes Frank has found through social customer service go beyond just answering a few complaints via Twitter.  ”Many people don’t realize that ‘social’ will really change the dynamics of your whole company,” Frank told cms wire.  He noted, for example, an occasion a few years back where the NHL playoffs blacked-out and customer calls and complaints started coming in.  Through searching Twitter posts, Comcast realized within just a few minutes that the problem was caused by a lightning strike affecting the sports network. Frank estimates that because this allowed Comcast to make a quick adjustment to its automated call center message, the company saved around $1.2 million by avoiding what would have been extended customer service calls.

And just this month at our Sobel-BRITE “The Network Is Your Customer” panel discussion (video below), Frank spoke about the importance of the people behind corporate social media initiatives. “I don’t connect with a logo.  I connect with people.  If you look at the most successful [companies] in social media, you know the people behind it.”

Hear Frank Eliason speak at our BRITE ’11 conference (March 2-3, 2011). Register now!

BY MATTHEW QUINT