A few weeks ago, Peter Kim wrote a post about his trip to Ford. He mentioned a few different times that Ford’s initiative of inviting external influencers – several different bloggers from countries including Canada, Germany and China was a bold move and that it was a great example of how Ford delivers on being a social business. I agree.

Opening the doors behind the firewall to external people and being open to feedback is certainly one attribute of a social business along with operational elements like communication, connections and culture as Peter mentions.

External Engagement Initiatives within the Auto Industry

I have always had this philosophy that a social business enables a brand to communicate more effectively with customers, partners, employees etc. and as Peter says “scale” programs such as Ford’s initiative earlier this month. That being said, a natural conclusion of Ford being a social business is that their external engagement initiatives are second to none.

However, a recent report by Visibli, a real-time analytics platform shows otherwise. Visibli analyzed  the top 5 auto brands to see which one of them is most engaging on Twitter, and how they do it. Some of the findings include:

• Honda is more engaging on Twitter than Ford and rest of ‘big auto.’
• Honda does it by targeting the right followers — 45% of their followers are interested in auto-related content, higher than any of the other brands
• Contrary to popular ‘best practice,’ almost 100% of Honda’s tweets are auto-related. Zero variety … but it works!

Further Social Business Considerations

Other than owning a Honda Civic many, many years ago, I have zero visibility into Honda as a company. Are there social business initiatives happening behind the firewall? Are teams collaborating and engaging internally? I really don’t know and I don’t know anyone who works there. But here are a few considerations:

• This is one study from one vendor; and one could argue that a retweet is not an accurate measure of engagement OR at least the the only measure of engagement
• Perhaps Ford is still early on in their journey of social business transformation per Chris Carfi from Ants Eye View.
• It could very well be that Honda just has a stellar marketing team (or agency) and utilizes real-time analytics to provide extremely relevant content to the community – the right content, at the right time, in the right channel to the right customer.
• Increased customer engagement is only one output of a social business – other outputs include an increase in employee engagement, increase in employee productivity, efficiency and sales; innovation, collaboration, etc.

Image credit: planeta

For companies and organisations already reeling from a year in which Australian consumers embraced the social web in massive numbers and with greater levels of intensity, 2012 promises more of the same but with some potential break-out trends.

So how should marketers approach 2012?

What should the leadership teams of large organisations be looking for in terms of building and protecting their corporate reputation in a hyper-connected world?

Below is a snapshot from a detailed paper I’ve written about how I think 2012 will roll out in terms of PR, communications and the social web.

• BETTER USE (AND INTEGRATION) OF SOCIAL MEDIA – Brands that have experimented with the social web will go back to basics and start thinking more strategically how to leverage new media technologies for their business, including better integrating with other marketing and corporate communications.

• ADOPTION OF QUICKER RESPONSE TIMES – As more and more Australians become heavier and more frequent users of social media, so too their expectation brands will respond in a timely manner will grow. Thus companies will need to factor in quicker response times in line with today’s ‘real-time’ marketplace.

• LEADERS WILL ADOPT PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL BUSINESS – Forward-thinking organisations that put ‘social’ at the heart of their enterprise will become the new leaders in an era where everyone is connected and two-way collaborative communication trumps ‘top down’ broadcast of polished messages.

• INCREASED EMPHASIS ON CONTENT MARKETING – The notion of brands becoming media companies in their own right will hit home locally; expect more use of the term ‘content marketing’ not to mention a growing trend for companies tapping journalists, PR people and bloggers to create content on their behalf.

• THE RISE AND RISE OF THE POWER BLOGGER – Blogging in Australia will continue its impressive growth but the big shift will be in the rise of the power blogger – the ‘multi-dimensional storytellers’ who will continue to increase their sphere of influence on and offline as the popularity of their ‘personal brand’ grows.

• CONTINUED DEBATE AROUND ROI – The debate over social media ROI will continue to be a hot topic but more reasoned voices will come to the fore as decision-makers better understand and appreciate what can and cannot be achieved in today’s new media world.

• GROWTH IN CONTENT CURATION – Not everyone is a content creator; with so much information flying around the web, the public will increasingly rely on filters (people, tools or apps) to edit and package information for their consumption e.g. Flipboard, Zite, Storify etc. Expect to also see a rise in influence of people who develop a reputation for content curation.

• THE RISE IN STATUS OF THE COMMUNITY MANAGER – Once the domain of a digitally savvy but inexperienced ‘junior burger’, organisations will start paying more respect to social media by appointing more knowledgeable and senior people in the public-facing role of community manager; expect this person to take on increased importance as their connection with the community deepens.

• COMBATING FACEBOOK’S CLUTTER – Facebook will continue its dominance;brands will need to become more creative and look to provide unique user experiences if they are to stand out from the crowd.

• TWITTER’S GROWING INFLUENCE – Twitter will continue to break into the mainstream consciousness as even the laggards start to wonder what all the fuss is about and join up.

• TRACKING THE RISING STARS – Keep an eye out for Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Flipboard, Tout. How could your brand leverage these platforms?

• WHERE TO FOR SOCIAL INFLUENCE MEASUREMENT & SCORING SYSTEMS? – One of the more controversial talking points among marketing and PR folk this year has been the use (and validity) of online reputation and social influence measurement systems e.g. Klout, Kred, PeerIndex et al. Expect more of the same in 2012!

What do you think 2012 holds in store for Australian PR professionals and the brands they represent?

Image credit: gerlos

“Social command centers” are all the rage today and it’s not without some merit. Many organizations now find themselves in a real-time business environment where news travels faster than sound, and information is set free. As a result, some forward thinking companies have put “monitoring” in place either in-house or in combination with partners. This isn’t enough. And to make matters worse, I’ve seen companies make the classic mistake of buying a tool BEFORE putting any thought into the design that goes into effective monitoring and response, forgetting the 3P’s (People, Process, Platforms). Tech platforms are only one third of the problem.

The media hasn’t helped. “Social Command Centers” as physical spaces ripped from the playbook of NASA have been documented via Dell, Gatorade* and most recently, the Super Bowl. Now, to be clear—a physical space can make listening, engaging and responding in real time effective—but it’s not a requirement. In fact, for the organization who wishes to be able to function in real time for the long haul, it’s the wrong place to focus on. So, how does any organization who wishes to be better equipped for real-time business move forward? Based on some of the work I’ve been doing with our analytics teams at Edelman Digital—below are some high level recommendations for setting up your social command center, without the center.

1) Set Up The Infrastructure

If your organization is not currently equipped to take in large amounts of social signals and process that data in real time—it’s imperative to start with the three P’s:

People

Most organizations forget that any initiative is dependent on people no matter how effective the tool and they forget to start here. Don’t make that mistake.

First, decide how much your organization can invest in terms of training people to both use the tools and have “listening” become either part of their job or the job itself. Go to the organizational design drawing board and begin to map it out. See who has done it before and if you don’t know who has—find help here.

Many organizations will find out that they need assistance in the form of professional service providers. Even here, work on the org design to determine how resources, both internal and “outsourced” work together for maximum integration.

Process

Another area where many “command center” initiatives fail is that they gather the signals, but don’t have the internal process in place to share the insights and intelligence. If your organization has spent money on tools or even people but haven’t figured out how to effectively communicate (internally) what you’re hearing, it’s wasted investment.

A process must be designed which connects multiple stakeholders together who can quickly get information and perhaps more importantly be able to connect with others on interpreting what it means. Internal social networks which act as collaboration hubs, can play a role here—but again, without a process (and the right culture) in place, the tools won’t matter.

A system must be designed here which can quickly get information out to key stakeholders across multiple silos, but those groups must commit resources and leadership to support the process.

Platforms

Not all tools are created equal and some perform better functions than others. There’s no shortage of tools which started as listening and are moving into the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) space, or social publishing platforms that are extending into the monitoring and response category. There are tools which will work with existing enterprise platforms and those which claim to be end to end. There are also technology platforms who will offer services around their tools and those who don’t.

The golden rule when choosing a platform is to remember that a technology company at the end of the day always views their technology as the best solution. We typically recommend comprehensive audits here—as well as bringing together both internal decision makers an key partners together before pulling the trigger on a technology solution. It’s also recommended that SOME thought be put into both people and process before making a decision on tools. The most common scenario I’ve seen is the reverse—which leads to more cost and less efficiency, retrofitting people and process to work with a tool which may have not been the best pick in the first place.

2) Analyze For Meaning

Data. It means nothing without analysis. In order to even get to any kind of meaningful analysis, you mist first set up the right filters and taxonomies. Your company for example may have a product name which also comes up in other industry conversations in total unrelated context. Once the right taxonomies and filters are in place, it requires brains to detect patterns and extract any kind of meaningful insight from the data. These brains are not just the data analysts but also people across your organization who should be pulled into the “command center” and tapped for their area of expertise. Individuals from R&D, customer care and even HR can be relevant here.

3) Optimize Content & Engagement Tactics

There are really only two immediate actions any organization can take from having a command center infrastructure in place. The first is to optimize any form of communication asset which goes out. The second is to optimize any form of engagement (example, talking to anyone in a forum, social network, or commenting on a publication). Both content and engagement tactics are informed by the social intelligence captured, disseminated and digested by the designated individuals who are part of the command center ecosystem.

Content and engagement tactics can happen across a number of digital and real world properties. Traditional media, (mainstream), Hybrid (blogoshphere), Social, (networks and forums) and Owned (apps and corporate sites).

4) Monitor & Measure New Signals

If you’re going to invest in a social command center (without the center), you’ll need to be able to measure and report progress, not only intelligence. Every piece of content and every interaction should be designed to create a ripple effect or reverberate a signal which your command center should be able to pick up and track back to the source.The source should be connected to your efforts whether ranging from correcting inaccurate information, to levering social channels to rectify a bad customer experience.

Everything we do in the digital space sends a signal. Some are faint and some get picked up. As part of a command center construct, an organization should design it so it can not only trace signals back to their origin, but connect them to business objectives.

It’s worth noting that as with everything else attached to the word “social”—a command center construct is not a magic bullet nor a solution for your business problems. However, it can be an effective move your organization makes in calibrating it for real-time scenarios which is becoming all too frequent as a result of social technologies and the behavior it influences. Today, your customers, employees and competitors can send signals in real time. My hypothesis here is that within the next 5-10 years, nearly every organization will have some kind of system like this in place which works to their benefit.

*PepsiCo is an Edelman client.

One thing is clear from this year’s research: It isn’t your CEO.

Globally, only 38% of informed publics think CEOs are credible spokespeople. That’s down from 50% last year.

On the other hand, trust in a ‘Regular employee’ showed a dramatic rise from 34% last year, to 50% this year. ‘Regular employee’ trailed only academic, technical experts in the company, and person like yourself as the most credible spokesperson your business could put forward. You can view all of this data on slide 21 our global trust presentation.

We’ve been talking about social business here and elsewhere for a while, but for me, no single piece of data has made a more compelling case for social business.

In a world where employees, whether technical experts or regular folks, are a company’s most credible spokespeople, every business simply must understand how to organize and empower employees to interact successfully in social media.

We have some practical thoughts what this means and how to make it happen, but the bottom line is that it’s time to expand social thinking from brand marketing and communications to the whole enterprise. That won’t happen overnight, but as the Trust Barometer shows, it’s important that the journey begin.

Edelman’s London office is hosting a panel discussion on Social Business on the 14th of February. The event will be held at 105 Victoria Street London , SW1E 6QT, 8:30-10:30am.

You can register and find more details here.

Image credit: Lars Plougmann

Go Where The Community Is

Many companies limit themselves to participating only in Twitter and Facebook because they assume this is where their community is participating. In reality, communities exist everywhere and conversations are taking place in many more embassies than most brands would even consider entering. Take the time to do an audit of the social space to determine where the community is currently engaging and to find opportunities for community growth. Leveraging insights from an audit could open a brand up to more engagement opportunities through forums, blogs, and even niche communities like Instagram and Pinterest.

Know The Community

Before diving into a community headfirst, research and evaluate the community to identify common themes and issues. Each community has their own unique set of needs and issues, and as a community manager you’ll find that you often encounter the same situations over and over again. Some of the most frequently seen issues and conversations include; competitor brand bashing, cyber bullying, brand innovation requests and customer service inquiries. To help better manage each of these situations, create a running FAQ document with a list of all common community issues and questions. For each situation that you experience frequently, have a suggested response plan in place so you can easily engage in an efficient manner.

Authentic Voice In The Community

It is important for the community manager to have an authentic voice and identity within the community. A community manager should be a natural fit in the community, and the brand voice should reflect that of their personal tone. Community managers should establish a brand identity that is authentic and recognizable to community members. Community managers can make their voice more personal by pulling in content from experiences, responding to small talk, and speaking naturally with the community while using common lingo and mannerisms.

Monitor Existing Communities

Content creation and ideation are some of the most time consuming tasks for a community manager. Community managers should utilize features like Facebook and Twitter lists to help curate content and invoke inspiration. Personally, I “like” more than 800 brands on Facebook so I can understand how other industries (big and small) are engaging with their communities daily. Each of these brands is sorted into custom Facebook lists by industry and practice on my Facebook account. Throughout the day I refer to these lists for inspiration and to evaluate best and worst practices.

As a community manager, what tips do you have to share?

Image credit: kdonovan_gaddy

With the overwhelming amount of content available throughout a given season, the challenge for those managing social media for teams, media outlets and blogs is not a lack of content to populate those channels, but rather how to prioritize and manage the content in order to add value for the community.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a priority for every organization, as there continues to be an abundance of play-by-play updates spamming peoples’ feeds on any given game day.

Teams, media and bloggers should keep a couple things in mind when deciding how to manage in-game content.

First, a significant number of followers are already watching the game in-venue or on TV, so to add value to their second (and third and fourth) screen experience, it should include information beyond what they know from watching the game. Second, the key to effective engagement is delivering the right content through the right platform to the right people at the right time. That means creating a multi-platform strategy that allows some people to follow every play while others get fewer updates but that include more meaningful content.

Here are some tactful ways to manage in-game fan engagement through social media without spamming feeds with content that lacks value:

Host an In-Game Live Blog

Teams, media outlets and blogs that use their blogging platform to create an in-game thread for each game have the opportunity to post updates, photos, video, stats and pre-and-postgame quotes in real-time on a platform that exists away from fans’ feeds. Their social media channels can promote the live blog in a timely fashion so those who want to be exposed to that level of content and interaction during the game can do so, and those who don’t are only seeing a handful of updates versus a non-stop stream of play-by-play. The blog can also be archived and promoted after the game for those who missed it and want to access the content after-the-fact.

Host an In-Game Live Chat

Similar to the in-game blog, the in-game live chat provides the opportunity for like-minded fans who want a high volume of content and interaction around the game to engage in that conversation on platforms, such as Cover it Live, that exist away from their social media feeds. Just like the in-game blog, the in-game live chat can be promoted through all channels in order to drive awareness for those fans that choose to opt-in to such an experience. Also similar to the in-game blog, teams like the Los Angeles Clippers are archiving the chats and promoting them after the game for fans who want to relive the action.

Create a Dedicated Twitter Feed

If organizations believe their followers are intent on getting a steady stream of live in-game updates via Twitter, it’s beneficial to create and promote a dedicated channel specific to that effort, so the fans that opt-in to follow that channel know exactly what they’re getting and are open to their feed being dominated during the games. Kansas Athletics created @KUGameday to give fans live updates during games and it promotes the channel periodically through its other platforms.

Develop a Gameday Mobile App

Many outlets and teams, such as the San Francisco 49ers, have developed mobile apps specifically designed to enhance the gameday experience. Users have the ability to follow along through play-by-play, stats, video, photos, conversations and more. The mobile app is another platform that can be promoted through other channels in order to reach those who want to opt-in to such an experience.

Use Twitter and Facebook Very Strategically

The beauty of the platforms listed above is they are truly opt-in experiences where users want to follow the game in real-time and there’s nothing else competing for their attention. That’s what makes in-game updates via Twitter and Facebook tricky… sure, the user has opted to follow the team, media outlet or blog’s updates, but doesn’t necessarily want those entities to clog his or her feed with hundreds of in-game updates during the game.

On Facebook, there’s a reasonable expectation to get some pregame content, a halftime update and the final score plus all the relevant postgame links and information, but that’s about it. Unless something extremely newsworthy happens during the game, Facebook content should be pretty limited.

On Twitter, it seems reasonable to provide a few updates per quarter or half updating the score and some key stats and notes that provide context and add value even for those who are watching the game. One team that does a great job of that is the Portland Trail Blazers through their @TrailBlazersPR account. In-game updates always include relevant notes, stats or breaking news such as injury updates. The fans following that feed, even if they’re at the game, are getting added value from it.

Thousands of fans are following their favorite teams every game day through social media and content from teams, media outlets and blogs. In an age where competition for attention is at an all-time high, it’s critical for those organizations to create targeted, multi-platform strategies in order to reach the right people with the right content and manage the in-game social media experience tactfully.

Image credit: clydeorama

By now you’ve probably had more than your fill of analysis from the many, many products and announcements revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Now that I’ve had a few days to decompress, I thought I’d do something slightly different and provide a few insights from a social perspective.

It’s hard to believe we’re already ticking in another calendar year. So, as usual, I got to thinking about the shifts I think companies need to make in their social media activities in this year.

These aren’t necessarily trends that are already happening (although I’d like to say they are), but they’re certainly where my head is at and hopefully where others are, too.

Here are six shifts I hope to see in social media use by business in 2012.

Better objective-setting

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a slow maturation in the way companies develop their objectives for social media. My hope is that this will continue in 2012. That means fewer companies treating fan or follower growth or video views as goals, fewer made-up numbers and more focusing on business outcomes – sales, cost savings, customer/employee retention etc.

More effective measurement

As companies get better at setting objectives for social media, they’re going to need to get better at measuring against those new objectives. That means shifting focus away from anecdotal evidence and simple outputs, and looking at indicators of the behaviour you’re looking to drive. It also means taking a closer look at the reporting of that measurement. See my recent post on five ways to improve your social media measurement for more on this.

This will be accompanied by increased realism over social media results. I’m currently reading a book that points to a multi-national company having 27,000 Twitter followers as an indication of social media success. Let’s face it, that’s unlikely to move the needle for lots of companies. As companies focus-in on reporting business objectives, we’ll see a continued shift away from high-fives over anecdotes and minor wins and a more hard-nosed focus on what really matters.

Improved Integration

Key to measuring more effectively, but with far, far broader effects, integration (and the breaking down of silos) will become even more key in 2012. The smart organizations have already figured out that social media works best when supported, and supporting, other forms of communications; look for more companies to mandate a silo-busting approach over the next year.

Strategic content planning

As organizations increasingly adopt the role of media companies in their online communications, watch for content strategy to receive greater focus in 2012. That means shifting from a “we have to fill these content slots” approach to one that carefully considers the objectives of each piece of proactive content and why it deserves its place in the content calendar. Sometimes it might be to drive community engagement; other times it might be to drive business conversion, and so on.

Increased search focus

An increased (and improved) search focus sits alongside more strategic planning of content. It means broadening the scope of how you target content, from point-in-time to point-in-lifecycle – thinking about what people are looking for at their stage in whatever process you’re targeting, and helping them through that and on to the next stage. That could be a stage of the purchase cycle, it could be a stage of the support process, or any number of others that you choose to focus on (thinking back to objectives).

Focusing on the less-shiny object

This is a big bucket of all sorts of increases, but my hope is that as companies move away from shiny-object snydrome in 2012 they start to take a more sophisticated approach to the less-shiny objects – policies, processes, listening, crisis plans etc – or, more formally put, to social business.

For me, this is an exciting time. I’m jazzed to see more mature use of social media help it to evolve into a more powerful tool for organizations – “life after likes“, as David Armano puts it. This is the cool stuff – the stuff that will move the needle and add real value for companies.

That makes the non-shiny objects the shiny ones for me.

Image Credit: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com

Here’s a question for you: Should you let conversations in social media direct your business?

If you’ve worked in the social media space, that seems like a pretty straightforward “yes”, right? I mean, we’re always talking about how listening and responding is critical.

What if we ask the question a couple of other ways:

Should you always let conversations in social media direct your business?

Should you let individual conversations in social media direct your business?

The answer isn’t quite as simple now, is it? All of a sudden, we’re facing potential (hypothetical) situations where, every time someone doesn’t like something, you change things around to make them happy, or where a single outspoken voice gets priority over a potential majority who could want something else.

All of this goes to say that while listening is central to social business, you need to frame the decisions you make based on that listening appropriately.

Let’s take two examples:

1. Customer Support

I’m of the general mindset that you should try to help every customer who needs support (you don’t tell your call centre not to answer calls from certain customers, do you?). But what about when a customer asks for something that, if applied to everyone who asked, just wouldn’t be feasible? Do you change your company’s approach based on one person’s request?
If you’re a B2B company with only a few major customers, then perhaps you do.
If you’re a B2C company with hundreds, thousands or millions of customers, though, then probably not – you’d end up bankrupting your company.

2. Product and Service Insights

Let’s say you’ve got your listening program set up. Do you listen to each individual opinion that is out there on the web?

Of course not. You’d end up constantly in reactive mode, responding to customer “insights” with no overarching strategy and no ability to plan for the future.

Approach Insights Strategically

I think the time where large companies will begin to take a more strategic approach to leveraging social media for insights is fast approaching. Note: I’m not talking about losing the human touch when it comes to interacting with people, and I’m not talking about removing flexibility from front-line social media staff, but more in how companies approach distilling social media conversations into useable takeaways.

Take Insights in Aggregate

When my team tells me that “there’s a lot of conversation online” about topic X, my first response nowadays is “how much”? If the answer is just a few mentions, then my response is to keep monitoring, see if things escalate and begin to prepare in case they do. If the answer is “hundreds” or “thousands” of conversations, then we know we need to react immediately.

The same applies to mining for insights. Taking individual pieces of feedback can be useful for illustrative purposes, but unless you’re just looking for ideas to inspire (or to pass the hours and hours of free time you clearly have), you need to step up a level and identify the key trends.

Test Your Assumptions

Tom Webster gave a great presentation at BlogWorld recently where he talked about the need to “do your own work.” In this context, it means not just assuming that something you’ve gleaned from other people is correct – you need to test it for your business.

Tom also made the great point that social media are themselves a biased source of data, so to be sure of your insights, you need to test them outside social media.

What does this mean? It means that you need to move from shift from reacting to customer feedback to testing to ensure that the reaction to those reactions would benefit your business. Of course, once you implement changes subsequently, you should be monitoring for the reaction to those changes, developing more insights, testing… and so on.

My hope is that the time of the “let’s all sit around a campfire and pretend that businesses need to respond to every single piece of feedback” people is coming to an end, and that the time for strategic insights is upon us. Some social media practitioners are ready for this; others aren’t.

Ask yourself: where do you sit?

Image credit: webtreats

Anyone who predicted December to be a quieter month due to the winding down period before the holidays couldn’t have been more mistaken. After much anticipation and speculation, this month saw major changes rolled out across the four biggest social networking platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube. Hopefully this end-of-year timing will give users and developers some time to adjust before all launching headfirst into continuing our exciting work in the New Year.

Twitter

This month Twitter launched a big change to their user interface called the ‘Let’s Fly’ design, now readily available for the web app, mobile (Android and iPhone) and launching for iPad apps soon. This new design helps users ‘Discover’ new content and interests, and offers a shiny new lay out for brands, which is a first for Twitter. A few great add-ons included in this new layout are the ‘jump to the top’ function (no more endless scrolling!) and ‘tweet details’. Tweet details allows users to tap a tweet and immediately find out more information such as the full page, shared multimedia, linked web pages and the number of retweets and favorites the particular tweet has received.

To find out more information on the new mobile design, follow @Twittermobile with offers tips and updates from the team. To see how the button layout has changed into the five new and easy to use functions (Me, Home, Connect, Discover and Tweet) watch this video brought by Twitter here.

December Updates:

• 8^th December: Twitter Launches Brand Pages; The ‘Fly’ Design
• 16^th December: Twitter Launches TweetDeck as Web App
• 21^st December: Twitter available in four new languages: Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and Polish

Facebook

The much anticipated Facebook Timeline was rolled out to users this month. This big change was first rolled out New Zealand and is now available for users across the globe. Currently, users must opt-in via the official Facebook link to swap their layout from the old version. The biggest addition is of course the cover photo which is the most eye-catching feature of the page and thus important for users to choose wisely – especially once it is rolled out to brands.

Posts made by you are now called Your Stories this is because the content you share on your page now comes in different formats. You might share what you are currently listening to on Spotify which groups together, the Places, Events’ and Pages you like/attend/visit will also be grouped together, making your profile easier to manage and control. One of the biggest changes I noticed is that there is a distinct lack of the ‘Wall’ which used to be the biggest feature for many users. Posts are dotted around the Timeline which make up a week based on time, rather than just one wall than you continuously scroll through. It’s kind of like a very personal RSS feed.

Once you have Timeline, you have seven days in which you are able to check it out, move things around and test your preferences before you click Publish. Once published,  your Timeline is live to all your friends and you cannot go back to the old version. You are able to delete, hide or add anything you wish to your Timeline. The Timeline homepage you can see how many of your friends have currently implemented Timeline, and check out their pages for inspiration!

December Updates:

• 6^th December – Timeline is rolled out in New Zealand
• 15^th December – Timeline rolled out Worldwide

Timeline rolled out for brand pages yet to be determined

Google+

It’s a month on from the launch of Google+ brand pages (November 7) and a lot has happened since then. Notable events include Britney Spears becoming the first Google+ page to top 1 million users and the release of the 2011 Google Zeitgeist list (of which the elusive iPhone 5 is listed). On December 19, Google+ added three new improvements to its platform to primarily aid the management of brand pages. The finer detail of publishing content has been improved dramatically in which page admins are able to ‘graphic-equalize’ the publisher stream. This means that you can manage your streams down to the minute detail (in order to create the most optimized stream for your brand and its audience). A slider tool allows you to choose how you wish to filter you posts into the main content stream to increase visibility/impressions.

The next update is the improvement made to page management. Along with Buddy Media who was been selected last month as official launch partner, it looks like Google+ pages are finally taking off in terms of content management. You can now have up to 50 admins on your brand page by ‘Adding a Manager’ via the page settings. This new feature also allows you to ‘Transfer Ownership’ which you can pass on admin rights from yourself to a new user. This is useful for when a community manager is stepping down from the page and needs to pass on all relevant information. The limitation of 50 admins per page also means more security control over the page. The other feature that makes the page management easier is the new notification flow that allows managers to communicate and keep abreast of all page activity at all times.

December Updates:

• 12^th December – Further integration between Gmail and Google+
• 14^th December – Google+ expands ‘on-air’ Hangouts
• 19^th December – Multi-admin control
• 19^th December – Adjustments for Volume Control to ‘Circle’s feature
• 21^st December – Google+ Pages showing as primary search result

YouTube

For a big part of this year the questions on many people’s lips has been what the heck is Cosmic Panda? This month, it appears that YouTube has now unveiled this radical new look this month for its more than 800 billion users worldwide. Shishir Mehotra, the VP of product development for YouTube, highlighted the reasons for these changes:

“We’re trying to take what we see as the best of TV and the best of online and bring it together”.  This makes sense considering the way in which users are now consuming videos online more than ever and the ever rising social integration with TV.”

The first thing I noticed when logging on is the stream in the middle of my homepage. I can now ‘subscribe’ to other channels which will feature in my feed as well as already getting updates from my Google+ circles. My YouTube and Gmail account are also even more closely aligned.

Channel pages have also changed and are now much slicker, with the addition of larger video screens, several new layout templates (creator, blogger, broadcaster, everything – screenshot below) and customization options. The ‘Video Manager’ allows you to edit your videos with text, audio, transitions, annotations and a cutting tool. You can also personalize your homepage with the video suggestions with the ‘Recommended For You’ lists. It seems that this updated focus on social integration might be YouTube’s aim to make the website a place users spend longer periods of time by networking rather than a short-lived hotspot for watching a five minute videos.

There are also new additions to the Analytics toolkit, where the reporting facility has been made easier for users. YouTube have now included a ‘data filter’ in which you can now categorize by content, location and time. The graph facility has also improved, the data granularity is more focused; you can now pin point data daily, weekly or monthly in a specific date range. You can also compare your data by charting Viewers directly next to Unique Viewers. For even more information on ‘What’s new’ in YouTube Analytics click here.

December Updates:

• December 1^st – YouTube takes web remake live

A Focus on Integration

In conclusion, it appears that these huge networks are looking for ways to improve user-friendliness and add integration options. Twitter’s focal points are on shareability (with newly embeddable Tweets), extending their focus to brands and also strengthening their ‘discover’ functionality, continuing to cement Twitter as the ‘news source’ in the social media landscape. Facebook is focusing more on the visual nature of pages, shareability, third-party integration and the bringing together of old and new data. Facebook is also concentrating on making the platform all-inclusive. Google and YouTube are further integrating their services and will continue, it appears, to incorporating the results in enhanced search functions more than anything else.

Image credit: Luxuryluke