Firms need to stop viewing social media as a marketing “cyber utopia”, an Australian internet expert says, after Woolworths and Westpac became the latest victims of an online backlash.

Facebook users took the opportunity to slam Woolworths this weekend after the supermarket giant called for its readers to complete a sentence.

“Happy weekend everyone! Finish this sentence: this weekend, I can’t wait to: ————,” Woolworths wrote in a post on Friday afternoon.

The responses included: “Throw out the fruit and veg I bought at woolworths only 3 days ago that goes off so much more quickly than the green grocers”, “see a rat running along the back of the shelves … So fresh it’s still running around” and “do grocery shopping wearing a hazmat suit because apparently using deodorant and working at Woolworths isn’s a requirement”.

Not all the comments about Woolworths were negative, with some people criticising the “whingers” posting on the page.

On Westpac’s Facebook page, a post explaining the bank’s decision to increase interest rates on Friday night was quickly slammed.

“Westpac are showing its customers who is really important – and its not the customers!” one reader raged, while another wrote: “Stop paying Gail Kelly and other exec’s such a ridiculous salaries and you might not find wholesale funding so difficult!!”

Commenters also complained their negative posts were being deleted.

In the most recent edition of ‘Currency’ magazine, Chief Executive Officer of Aon Risk Services Stephen Cross comments on how social media may be the next ‘Black Swan’ event for some organisations.

Currency provides insight into topical risk and insurance issues. Currency also looks at matters such as market trends, new products and services, best practices and process efficiencies.

CLICK HERE to read the magazine article

SR7, in conjunction with Aon, provides social media risk management and research services.

If your urges to stay connected 24/7 bring you to hyperbolic declarations of powerlessness, you can now leave the hyperbole at the door.

Results of a new study published in the journal Psychological Science confirm what you’ve claimed for years: checking email and social media is more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol.

Led by Wilhelm Hofmann, a team from Chicago University’s Booth Business School conducted an experiment using BlackBerry devices to test the will power of 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85 years in the German city of Wurtzburg.

Participants were asked seven times a day over the course of a week to identify desires they were experiencing and the strength of said desires.

The team sifted through thousands of responses and came up with some telling results.

Thankfully, the study showed we’re all not slaves to vice and distraction, as the need for sleep and leisure topped the list.

However, next on the list of “self-control failure rates” was checking in with social media, email and work – ahead of the urge to have a cigarette, while sipping on a glass of 12-year single malt scotch.

“Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist,” Hofmann told the Guardian.

“With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one,” Hofmann adds.

“So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”

Read the article on ABC

However it can’t be denied that, despite its IPO and considerable growth, it’s not evolved that much in the past few years either aesthetically or in terms of actual features, although admittedly we have seen some useful mobile apps emerge for the platform. Bearing in mind the rate at which its peers are evolving, and the likely expectations of future users in terms of features, LinkedIn needs to address this and so here are some ideas of how it could develop.

1: Allow users to include media in their profiles

2: Go down the app integration route – but keep it relevant

3: Sell yourself more as a work-focussed social network than a job focussed one

4: Actively discourage self-promotion and encourage communication in groups

5: Please, just improve the aesthetic!

1: Allow users to include media in their profiles

One of the things that profile microsites such as Flavors.me or About.me
 have proven is that, when presenting yourself, visible examples of your work can go along way towards detailing your expertise.

Whilst I understand that not everybody is going to want to share images, video or audio content in relation to their past or present roles, the option for it to be there really would be great. Worked on a video campaign? Add a YouTube video! Listing ‘Photography’ as an interest? Share some of your shots!

2: Go down the app integration route – but keep it relevant

Whilst integration with other platforms and brand apps makes perfect sense for the likes of Facebook and Spotify, where the focus is more on consumers and how they share their tastes, it could be a rocky road for LinkedIn and could easily be seen as a diversion from its more serious, B2B orientated approach.

Approaching the validity of apps from the perspective of users rather than potential advertisers would certainly be a good start – perhaps even working with the B2B focussed companies who favour LinkedIn to develop apps initially could work too.

3: Sell yourself more as a work-focussed social network than a job focussed one

It’s undeniable that although many people who are happy and secure in their jobs use LinkedIn to build relationships and source ideas/knowledge it is still widely perceived as a place you’d only spend serious time on if you were looking for a job.

I think LinkedIn needs to push harder against this perception – perhaps selling its features such as ‘Groups’ and ‘Answers’ more aggressively as being beneficial for everyone in the business space.

4: Actively discourage self-promotion and encourage communication in groups

Whilst Linkedin’s groups are a great idea and often thrive, there are many, many cases of them simply becoming overrun by posts from self-promoting individuals (often linking to dull and highly derivative blog posts) and eventually abandoned.

Whilst I’d hate to see the groups overly moderated, I still think that administrators need better advice and tools to help promote conversation and discourage dead-end posts.

5: Please, just improve the aesthetic!

The sad truth is that compared to its peers LinkedIn is something of an eyesore – its home screen is text heavy, littered with ads and overly complex to the point it feels like it’s trying to be about five different things at once.

Bearing in mind most of its us use it at work and are already often overloaded with information on a daily basis, I think a cleaner, simpler interface has to be a serious consideration for the future.

Read the article on The Next Web

When it comes to public safety, forward-thinking government agencies are beginning to look at social media as a support tool for improved situational awareness.

The very nature of social media’s open communication and crowdsourced information provides a powerful tool for public safety agencies. Take, for instance, the Twitter user who unknowingly tweeted in real-time about the Osama Bin Laden raid, or the Florida deputy who used Facebook to negotiate a standoff, or the kidnapper who found time to update his Facebook friends.

A 911 center supervisor recently spoke about the role social media played during a mall shooting. While police units established a perimeter around the mall and assessed the situation, they tried to sift through conflicting reports on the shooter. A 911 dispatcher jumped on Twitter and Flickr, and was actually able to obtain photos of the shooter, posted by witnesses inside the mall. Imagine the value that information provided to the incident commander and tactical operators on the scene.

Is Emergency Response Via Social Media Feasible?

To understand the spectrum of social media applicability and the challenges it poses to public safety, it’s helpful to think how the public safety context is different than traditional social media usage. First, public safety is event or incident-driven, whether for prevention, reaction or investigation. Second, public safety is really a unique form of customer service in which the expectation of service is very high, everyone expects to receive the same level of service, regardless of his frequency of use or willingness to pay for it, and the cost of failure can be astronomical.

Think of it this way: You may feel comfortable posting to a brand’s Facebook Page and not receiving a response for a few hours or maybe even a day or two. However, if your local emergency center planned to monitor calls for help via Twitter and Facebook, it would face major concerns. Therein lies the challenge for public safety — how do you effectively use a powerful set of tools for gleaning real-time information, without incurring huge cost and liability, not to mention, set unrealistic expectations for the public?

Where is Social Media Emergency Response Applicable?

When public safety agencies take to social media, they must remember two factors.

• The direction of the communication (i.e. the agency pushes outbound information to citizens, the agency draws on inbound information from citizens, or mutual, two-way communication).
• The timing of the communication with respect to an incident.

For example, a local police department sends an emergency notification through Twitter, alerting citizens to poor road conditions due to inclement weather. In this case, emergency notifications through social media are outbound. Conversely, decision support relies on inbound input from citizens. Public safety agencies monitor information streams, selectively engage users if the situation dictates, and then develop a course of action.

Emergency 911 centers (or their international equivalents) are typically designed as the communication hub — or customer service center, if you will — for two-way citizen emergency communications. Therefore, they’re also a natural fit for social media engagement.

However, with limited exceptions, these centers do not typically welcome technology beyond caller ID and some basic location information. Efforts like “Next Generation 9-1-1” plan to equip centers so that they may receive a wide array of media-rich content. In the meantime, individuals post photos and videos of unfolding events to social media platforms. Many of these individuals will never even contact 911 directly, assuming that other witnesses have already done (or will do) so.

Would Public Safety Face Any Challenges?

It is becoming increasingly important for emergency responders and other officials to rapidly access and make sense of relevant social media to provide a better picture of the incident and surrounding area (i.e. situational awareness). However, emergency responders are unavailable to mine these social media sites, and often, the 911 center will be too overburdened with incoming calls to do so either.

Several larger agencies have established dedicated units (often within police departments) to provide real-time intelligence. Real-time crime centers operate in several major U.S. cities — notably, New York City and Houston, TX. These centers have access to powerful data aggregation and decision support tools. The New York City Police Department has created a social media unit within its intelligence division.

Traditionally, the data used by these crime centers was more static in nature and limited to the various databases maintained by the city, such as the police department’s records management system, the municipal court information system, permits, etc. This is not the case with social media. Officials can glean valuable intelligence from social media posts across dozens of online platforms. Additionally, this data can emerge from many a dynamic scenario. Consider the foreign tourist who posts a photo of a suspicious package in Times Square, or the concertgoer who shares a video of a crowd fleeing a shooter.

In addition to valuable intelligence-rich posts, people share thousands of well-wishes or anecdotes that, while thoughtful, provide no useful information to public safety officials and obscure the posts that could enhance emergency responders’ situational awareness (see the most recent shootings at Virginia Tech). The amount and velocity of social media traffic and “background noise” is so extensive that it is nearly impossible for intelligence analysts or emergency managers (let alone a busy 91-1 center) to consistently provide real-time information to first responders.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Social Media in Strategic Communication project seeks to apply analytics and advanced data solutions to social media in the same way it has improved video analytics and other operational intelligence.

As social media continues to exponentially grow, so will the sheer volume and type of content. Public safety will be forced to develop solutions that better automate today’s mostly manual response efforts. Hopefully, information sharing between the public and public safety agencies will improve and, ultimately, lead to safer communities.

Read the Article on MASHABLE

Key Benefits
- Gain an introduction to the what, why and how of social media
- Analyse case studies from some of Australia’s leading companies
- Learn tips and pointers you can use immediately
- Understand how this is affecting your industry
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Volume 63. No. 11

The internet, and specifically social media, has disrupted the traditional mass media business model, and in doing so, has created vast and wide ranging complications for the modern day executive and board.

On the surface, social media appears to belong solely in the sphere of marketing. However the reality could not be more different. Modern corporate governance must include an understanding of social media and how it is driving change across all industries.

The rush to engage in ‘social media marketing’ has come at the expense of research, planning and gaining an understanding of the implications of embracing this new medium. The modern communications paradigm poses significant risks to businesses in all industries.

To read the full article click below.

Dec_2011_Risk

The company has come under a significant amount of controversy after radio personality Kyle Sandilands made disparaging and insulting comments towards a News.com.au journalist.

Several advertisers dropped their support for the Kyle and Jackie O program – a report from The Australian suggests 60% have left – but Video Ezy has not done the same, leading to a number of complaints on its page.

Read the full article by Patrick Stafford from SmartCompany click HERE

The project will identify and analyse the key trends, risks and opportunities shaping social media usage in Australia.

This survey is an opportunity to participate in a landmark study into the use and application of social media by Australian businesses and governments.

The State of Social Media Survey takes only five minutes and your input is critical to providing a greater understanding about social media usage and behaviour in our market.

Please click here to participate in the State of Social Media 2011 survey. The survey closes midday on Thursday 3 November.

About the Social Media and Communications Summit

The Summit is for any business leader who is serious about building successful brands online and offline, taking a holistic view on future business opportunities, and wanting to steer an intelligent course in the constantly shifting social media landscape.

Research conducted by Cornell University has offered ground-breaking evidence that suggests that poorly managed short term forays by companies into the ‘daily deal’ space will have dire consequences when the dust settles.

The paper ‘Daily Deals: Prediction, Social Diffusion, and Reputational Ramifications’ uses in-depth quantitative data captured over an 18 month period to mathematically analyse changes to revenue and social media reputation following businesses’ use of deal-of-the-day sites Groupon and LivingSocial. Research found that businesses’ use of discount based sites resulted in a decline of their reputation by 10% in the following six months.

This article originally appeared on the PRIA website.

CLICK HERE to read it in full.

Written by Anthony Mason (Manager – Digital Research and Analysis)