Social Networking

How social are you?

When John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly described ‘the web as platform’ at the first Web 2.0 conference back in 2004, they predicted applications would be written for the web rather than the desktop, and that user generated content would be harnessed to create value and collective intelligence.

Over the past five years applications that enable social interactions, whether business or personal, have experienced exponential growth. Social media activities include socialising, fact-finding and entertainment of various kinds. Social Media is changing the balance of power in business, offering customers with a new channel through which to voice opinions and engage brands, while also providing a new channel for the sales and marketing mix.

Today, a Google search for ‘social media’ will return around 625,000,000 results. Social networking leader Facebook has over 500 million members and has grown by 40% increase in the last six months alone. Microblog site Twitter has 105 million user accounts, 15 million of which are active and generating an average of 27.3 million tweets per day. There are around 126 million blogs online (as tracked by BlogPulse) with 70% discussing brands.

In a new Foviance whitepaper, we look at ‘Social Media and Customer Experience: a perspective on the landscape’. We examine who uses social media, its impact on business, how companies are beginning to engage via these new platforms, and how we can expect social media to evolve in the future.

 Download your copy of ‘Social Media and Customer Experience: a perspective on the landscape’ today.

This whitepaper was announced in the Foviance September Newsletter

I was at Digital Surrey’s monthly networking event last week to listen to @JamesFirth talk about the implications of the recently passed Digital Economy Act. Whilst this should be of interest to all of us, if I’m honest I was somewhat in two minds about going. In the end, I did go and I’m glad I did. And here’s why: Read more…

By Billie Andersen

The 2008 American presidential election was ground-breaking for a number of reasons; notably that it was the first ‘social media election’. Then in 2009 came the controversial Iranian election where social media played a different, but debatably equally important role. Social media is set to play an equally important role in the upcoming UK election. The question however, is whether the potential of such channels will be realised by any of the parties. Read more…

By Billie Andersen

Even if you’re not a Facebook addict or regular Twitter user, you’ll know how difficult it is to escape social media. Why? Because social media is revolutionising the way that people consume content.

Social media is opening new channels of communication between brands and customers and there is a lot of potential in the social web that marketers can tap into. For example, a study earlier in the year by Penn State University showed that 20% of all tweets mentioned a brand name. Sales and marketing professionals need to be aware of these significant media consumption trends so they can tailor and target their messages as effectively as possible across a changing landscape. Read more…

Welcome to the latest edition of the Foviance newsletter. In this issue we focus on the continuing evolution of social media and its impact on customer experience.

On that subject I am delighted to introduce Guy Stephens who joined Foviance this month from Carphone Warehouse, where he helped improve the customer service function by utilising social media channels. He is now advising Foviance customers in the same field as part of our wider social media offering.

This month Guy has written an article considering the implications of time in the immediate worlds of the Twitterati, Billie keeps tabs on the often torrid relationship between social media and technology, while Jonathan attempts to steer dazzled app fans clear of the permanent beta trap. Finally Catriona backs calls to ensure professionalism and standards are developed as we all grow up in the social media spotlight.

I would be very interested to hear from you directly with any feedback or subjects you would like us to cover.

Paul

In this issue:

Twitter: to SLA or not to SLA?

Don’t fall into the permanent beta trap

Seven year itch for social media?

Industry Action Required – Sharpening social media practice

By Billie Andersen

Social networking and technology, such as mobile and computers, are very much an item these days but it’s still not clear exactly who ‘wears the trousers’ in this passionate relationship. The rise in popularity of social networking is fundamentally changing the development of technology. But in its turn, emerging technologies are continuing to shape the ways in which we communicate and use social networking. Read more…

By Billie Andersen

There’s probably very few people who would have missed the travel disruption caused by a certain misbehaving volcano grounding planes in the northern hemisphere and turning airports into ghost towns or hotels. Thrown into the mix there are confusing accounts of which flights have and have not been cancelled and when airports will be closed, all being made worse by a second eruption. Due to the high volume of people trying to reschedule travel arrangements, websites have been breaking left, right and centre and call centres have been inundated, making the whole process an administrative nightmare. Read more…

By Chris Holmes

Facebook turned six recently and celebrated the milestone by giving its homepage yet another makeover, this time to “improve navigation to and discovery of commonly used features”. Six years is a long time on the interweb but, even still, Facebook has made impressive and significant gains in that time. It currently sits at number four on the list of biggest names on the web (behind Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, respectively) and with over 350 million users (and growing fast) it is poised to very soon become number three. It’s become the “face”, as it were, of the social media space, if not the brain. Read more…