It’s that time of the year again when Social Media Week rolls into town. Now in its third year, Social Media Week offers ‘a series of interconnected activities and conversations around the world on emerging trends in social and mobile media across all major industries.’

Of course, we at Neoco will be flexing our social muscle and sharing the knowledge with our very own event where we’ll be providing one-on-one sessions to alevialte your social media woes in our ‘Social Surgery’.

Book a session with one of the team and we’ll examine your social media symptoms, getting to the root of your social pain. We’ll endeavor to not only diagnose but also treat your ailments in the time it takes to have a muffin and a coffee

Plus as well as answering all your questions on all things web 2.0, such as what is the best social media platform for promoting my brand? What are the upcoming trends within the industry? We’ll also give patients a takeaway gift to make sure your social media strategy is on the road to recovery.

Ok enough of the sick puns, but you get the point.  In a nutshell a session will provide you with:

• 100% private one-to-one session to discuss your social media concerns
• expert advice relating to your social media problem
• Insight into how relevant, successful brands are using social media to meet their business goals

Neoco’s clinic: MADD – 53 Rupert Street, W1D 7PQ

Surgery times: Tues 14th and Thurs 16th February from 9:00am – 11:00am

Make an appointment email: surgeon@neoco.com

This event is ideal for anyone managing social channels (or in charge of someone who’s managing social channels!) but don’t feel they’re performing at their best. No issue is too big or small for us to handle so schedule an appointment with us now and get social media advice tailored to your brand; remember, it’s not psycho therapy, it’s social therapy!

Email us at surgeon@neoco.com – alternatively you can drop in during one of the sessions and we’ll try and book you in for an emergency consultation.

February 7th was the start of Social Media Week – a series of global events where people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile get brand and marketing types in a bit of a frenzy. The Neoco team was out in full force, attending and participating in the offline/online conversation plus also putting on a party of our very own (more on that later).

If you’ve never heard of Social Media Week, imagine a version of the British Fashion Council’s London Fashion Week but swap models for big hitting brand speakers, designers for Social media marketing “gurus” and catwalks for cool media agency offices / conference rooms. Social Media Week was held for the first time in New York in February 2009 but within a year it had spread from one city to six, reconvening in New York in addition to London, Berlin, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paulo. By February 2010 the week was host to over 200 events worldwide, so expectations were high that this year would see the event break into the mainstream (helped in part by Nokia’s sponsorship, guaranteeing that the week would have its highest ever profile).

Neoco’s social team attended over a dozen events from the VIP launch reception of SMW in Shoreditch to the only Social CRM talk on “Building Customer Love” at the Design Council. The sheer variety of conferences and events meant that my team was hopping from venue to venue for the majority of the week gaining interesting insights into industry developments and of course meeting other Social Media evangelists, brand managers and marketing bods – quaffing champagne cocktails at night and knocking back buckets of coffee by day to keep us going!

Of course the highlight of my week was our agency’s SMW event “Social @ The Social”, where we hosted something a little different from other agencies by shying away from the glut of 8:30am breakfast briefings, seminars and workshops and instead opting to throw a good old-fashioned drink-up for clients, fellow Social Media pros, WAGS and top brands that wanted to know how a Social CRM agency throw-down! Check out our video of the event below:

With New Media Age, Nokia, Ubisoft, Arcadia Group, Sony Pictures, Converse and Barclays Capital representatives in attendance along with a “celeb”-DJ, Hip Hop Karaoke going on downstairs, influential bloggers and pro-ligers the par-tay was a tremendous success which left the whole team nursing serious hangovers on Friday morning!

As the industry matures and becomes increasingly sophisticated, guidelines are key to protect both consumers and marketers and to make sure that everything is open and transparent. Long-term, industry self-regulation is vital in order to negate the need for legislative solutions driven by political expediency.

Both in the US and now in the UK, WOMMA have defined a Code of Ethics and a set of Standards of Conduct in order to set an initial framework through which this self-regulation can take place. Much of this framework is common sense, such as the rules involving advertising to minors. A core element of the Standards however, revolves around disclosure of either identity, relationships or compensation. In short, marketers are expected to ensure that any online contacts they use for promotional purposes are honest and up front about who they are, how they are connected and how they have benefited. Examples of this could be a blogger who had received items to review or who had been given free items as promotional competition prizes.

It makes sense that the onus should lie with marketers themselves to regulate their contacts and activities – much as they would clear any other element of a campaign. Equally, key advocates and influencers shouldn’t really have a reason not to be open about being brand ambassadors. However, WOMMA are clear that the purpose of the Standards is not to stifle editorial opinion but rather to make it obvious to consumers when bloggers have a connection to brands or agencies. There is no reason why disclosure should be either complicated or obstructive: it could be as easy as saying: “I was sent this by X”.

During the seminar some of the discussion talked about the idea that in the near future blogs could include a standard “disclosure and relationships” section which clarifies how they work and what marketing they are connected to. Further debate centred around how marketing messages on Twitter could be identified with hash tags such as #ad and #spon (for advert and sponsored respectively).

WOMMA’s work is very much a work in progress so far, but it’s important for the industry to have both a position to debate and a set of guiding principles to aim towards. It’s also a good indicator of a firm’s reliability – after all, if all things are equal, wouldn’t you rather work with a company which has signed up to an industry wide set of ethical guidelines, rather than a company which has no position at all?

The WOMMA Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct can be found at http://www.womma.org/ethics/code.

If you would like to have an informal chat to Benn about ethical Social CRM or WOMMA UK and the work they carry out, contact him here: http://www.neoco.com/benn.

Twitter top tweets from Neoco

One “brand” which seems unlikely to ever disappear is that of Michael Jackson. Last week Neoco held a blogger preview of the Ubisoft game “Michael Jackson The Experience”. A great blogger turnout saw everyone end up shaking a leg… hand… neck… whatever! Tweet number 3 explains just how much value bloggers provide within the current media landscape.

As for landscapes I’ll be seeing a different one next week as I head to the place where all this started: “Sunny” old San Francisco. Can’t wait to see just how social the home team are! In the meantime you can keep up to date with the rest of the team through our Twitter account: @neoco.

Here’s this month’s choice selection of Neoco’s top tweets:

1. Who wants to be the Mayor of nowhere! http://bit.ly/cHD1X9 – death of Foursquare.

2. The Neoco Team scored lunch at Franny’s Pop Up a 6.5/10! Nice food but nothing special!

3. Bloggers add more value than you know. http://bit.ly/cp9w9f

4. A whole host of new TV shows coming out about blogging and tweeting!  http://bit.ly/cPNfiB (RT @mrbennbenn)

5. Some great stats for brands on Facebook. http://bit.ly/buE6Cz

6. Fail to plan your Social CRM campaign – plan to fail. http://bit.ly/a846vX

7. Brilliant. A Life On Facebook on Devour.com. http://bit.ly/ca6nnu

8. Top 3 tips to prevent consumer animosity online. http://bit.ly/cSY5pK

9. In-house teams are not always equipped to manage Social CRM. http://bit.ly/c7bquc

10. Dual consumption of TV and online on the rise - http://bit.ly/9tMvRF

Don't forget the importance of ROI (image: geekandpoke)

I know I should be surprised at these figures, but it more or less bears out what we encounter on a daily basis when talking to new clients. If anything, these results evoke a sense of deja vu from the earliest days of online advertising.

When companies first started to spend money on online adverts (and by this I mean the earliest forms of crude banner ads), no-one truly had a sense of what they were paying for. Firms used different metrics and terminology and you were lucky if you grasped the difference between unique page views, clicks and impressions.

The internet was the wild frontier of advertising – one of our team even remembers staff at a big international ISP being told to refresh pages and click on the ads in order to get the stats up for an advertiser before the end of the month. Gradually though the industry became more professional, standards were defined, and after a little while marketers began to truly understand that many of the traditional ways of measuring and tracking results could be applied to online – but with greater accuracy and precision. As a consequence online advertising in the UK rapidly caught up with, and then overtook, other traditional advertising sectors.

These days pretty much all marketers have a grasp of how they can use “traditional” online advertising, though when it comes to anything involving Social CRM and implementing it as part of an integrated multi-channel campaign it seems like a return to the bad old days of blank looks and nervously shuffled feet.

A key element of Neoco is providing ROI from all our activity. It’s crazy to think that in an age of unparalleled accountability through stats, metrics and analytics, so many marketing people fail to apply basic principles of marketing.

Twitter top tweets from Neoco

Neoco has been very active over the last few weeks. Our client Ubisoft released Just Dance 2 which went straight to number one, just as they released the mobile game for Katy Perry’s new single which happens to feature on the game. We also helped out with their disco bus campaign, providing mobile Facebook updates from the bus. Clearwire’s new 4G hotspot would have come in handy that day.

Meanwhile Facebook was partnering with Bing and Skype. The latter deal will now open up a whole new way to engage with individuals through the social networking powerhouse. The question is how are brands going to take advantage of this? Facebook/Skype apps maybe?

Here’s my round-up of the top tweets from Neoco:

1.How the fashion industry is using digital tools to increase ROI – http://on.mash.to/a5s2jv

2.We are sponsors of the BIMA Social Media award in November.

3.Puck Yeah: Clearwire’s 4G hotspot can replace broadband http://bit.ly/9sOpkl – Could make Social CRM engagements on the road much easier.

4.How social search will transform the SEO industry: http://on.mash.to/aILWhJ

5.See film differently – Turning the camera on locations http://bit.ly/dc6NQN – new VW campaign

6.How Republicans are using social media to win mid-term elections | Fast Company – http://bit.ly/aRcdyV

7. Mobile game debut for Katy Perry track http://bit.ly/aveDBU – same track as Just Dance 2 (our client) DLC

8. We think there’s huge potential for new app Instragram and 100k user in one week is proof. Can brands take advantage? http://bit.ly/bSAfI8

9. According to reports, Facebook is trying to work out a deal to integrate Skype’s Internet phone service into the social network’s site.

10. Check out our run down of the best of the week: http://bit.ly/bA7ywO

Topman Denim shot

Our activity included an ongoing social CRM strategy implemented across social channels and relevant blogs, and a micro site for the Denim section of the Topman website, which would become the final repository for all the Topman Denim content.

Beyond the core films we created further video content, including a trailer, behind the scenes clips and an interview with Laurence himself. These would be used to extend the campaign beyond launch. We also ran competitions, tying into Topman’s monthly Fashion Friday events at their flagship Oxford Street store. The key factor was to ensure that we would be able to add new weekly content in order to keep people engaged.

Measuring the campaign has been straightforward, as Topman’s main KPIs were measurable. Six weeks into the campaign and we are at almost 200% of the target KPI for engagement, with another three weeks still to go. This makes it Topman’s most successful online video content based campaign to date. We are also measuring response to the competitions and general feedback across blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Overall feedback to the campaign has revealed the extent to which Topman has now become a global brand, with a very strong following in Asia and the US.

Social media is increasing becoming a factor in how brands communicate with their customers.  The facts are hard to ignore:

- Facebook has over 400 million users worldwide

- 40 per cent of the UK population is on Facebook

- 2.5 million active Twitter users in UK

- Over 30 million tweets per day

- YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world

These are just a few of the social networks out there and there are many more…   However, you don’t have to be signed up to all of them to effectively communicate with your public.  Three regularly updated, channels are better than nine neglected social platforms.  Once you’ve established what social channels best reach your target audience, outlined below are a few tips to get the best out of what’s out there.

5 Social Media Top Tips

Keep updating

Creating a profile page is the first step, not the last.  Content needs to be refreshed, statuses updated, keep on top of it and you’ll find it becomes part of your marketing day.  Even better still is a customised page for your brand that keeps your visual presence uniform on various social websites.

Tone of voice

Social media is an opportunity relate to your audience in a more direct and open way.  Often it’s the personality of the brand or the more human qualities that distinguish your posts from other brands, and in turn will get you a reaction or comment from your audience.  This form of authenticity is in a sense a conversation rather than a lecture or company statement.  Plus you only have 140 characters (for Twitter) so make them count..

Don’t keep talking about yourself

Keep your communication varied and interesting.  You don’t have to keep pitching your product or service, as this can get repetitive and may switch people off your updates.  Remember not all news is newsworthy to your audience.  Do your followers or fans want to know about your admin issues?  Probably not, however they may want to know about a new innovation in the industry or a funny viral video that relates to your line of work.

Use multimedia platforms

Social video websites like YouTube are a great way of demonstrating how a product works in its optimum context.  This can aid the marketing efforts no end if produced correctly and with a bit of imagination.  Plus these videos can receive valuable feedback as well as integrate with other social platforms.

Make all your channels work for you

Combine the reach and high usage on Facebook with the status updates of twitter.  Also post YouTube videos of events or product demonstrations on your Facebook page.  Your social media can work together to provide a cohesive message for all you’re company communications.

Here at Neoco we can identify, consult and look after your businesses social media requirements.   Having worked with leading brands like Topman, Nationwide and Ubisoft – we can help you get in on the social act!

Lovely pastries from the Foxcroft and Ginger

On Wednesday last week, Soho experienced the first (of the new series of) Neoco breakfast event, which took place downstairs at the funky Foxcroft and Ginger. We were delighted to see the RSVP’s roll in – until the point when we realised that we would have to turn a lot of people down… If you were one of them, we are sorry! The details for the next event are coming soon so please do get in touch and let us know if you can make it and we will make sure to get your name on the list.

At 8.30am (we will have a later start the next time, we promise…) it all kicked off. Apart from offering amazing coffees and homemade pastries, attendees were given food for thought on several different aspects of the digital and online social environment with Brad Little from Nielsen as the first speaker. Brad gave a comprehensive overview of the ‘value of social collection’ and several examples of how organisations will benefit from incorporating social into advertising and marketing campaigns.

Attendees enjoying speakers and breakfast

Next, we listened to Claire O’Connell who joined us from Facebook. She explained how social applications have grown rapidly, and how different brands apply these tools onto their website and into their marketing mix to increase their reach and build communities. Last but not the least was our own Benn Achilleas who gave his perspective on why organisations need to seriously consider their social CRM and identify how they can make best use of the social environment, tailored for their own specific needs.

The event was hosted by Steve Barton (thanks Steve!) who is a key figure (with Benn) of the Word of Mouth UK association – he regularly contributes to the social and digital debate in the UK and abroad. If you are curious to find out more about WOM UK and their work pop over to www.womuk.net.

Claire O'Connell from Facebook talking about Social plugins

We want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all who came along and made it such a memorable event! If you missed out, or want to recap on all of the fantastic insights then the speakers’ presentations and also a video of the event will be available at neoco.com in a few days time!

We at Neoco have always liked to embrace new technologies and whenever something new or exciting comes out we naturally get excited. This happened with the iPhone, which we now make applications for, and this is bound to happen with the iPad.

The rumour of an Apple tablet has existed for over a year and now that it’s soon to be reality, developers must look at ways they can create applications or adapt their current ones to best fit the new format. Thankfully, the iPad runs the same operating system and contains the same frameworks as the iPhone and iPod Touch so many developers can immediately get to work. The transition, however, may not be as simple as might be suggested by the fact that they both run iPhone OS.

It runs iPhone applications doesn’t it?

It’s well known that the iPad will run most current iPhone applications. Some won’t work due to hardware differences, some because of changes to the underlying frameworks.

The lack of a camera, which many expected to be included, means that all the fun photo adjusting applications become boring (since you must use an old photo form your library) and augmented reality applications (like those that point you to the nearest Tube stop as you look through the camera) obviously cannot work. GPS seems to only be included in the 3G model, so again like with the iPod Touch, this rules out turn-by-turn navigation programs for many people.

Some changes to iPhone OS 3.2 have curiously broken code from past versions. This is presumably an effort to improve the range of functionality, yet in the past they managed to find ways to do so without forcing developers to re-write their programs. Case in point: the Media Player Framework. It’s not clear whether this is just an iPad issue or whether it will affect all devices upgrading to 3.2, but essentially, the mechanism to play a video won’t work. In the past, the only way to play a video was to launch a full screen player. Now you will be able to play videos in smaller boxes, but you have to do so in a different way. Fortunately even if your application featured heavy use of videos, this should be easy to correct.

Then there is the size. Yes, it can run iPhone applications at their native resolution and, yes, it can scale them up to fit more of the screen, but both forms result in an appalling user experience.

At first it might be tempting to just increase the window size to take up the entire screen and leave the rest of the interface in the much the same form, but it should be pretty obvious that this will not make for an attractive application.

Because of these points and more, it is clear that users will expect developers to make iPad-specific applications. In fact, not just iPad-specific applications, but universal applications that work across the range of Apple mobile devices.

Design and interaction

For all their systems, Apple publish Human Interface Guidelines that describe how they envision all application user interfaces and behaviours. For the iPad they say that a few things need to be different from the iPhone/iPod Touch paradigm:

Orientation

If you spin the device round into any orientation and the interface must follow – this happens in a few iPhone applications, but far from all. Curiously, it sounds as though Numbers form the iWork suite for iPad will only work in landscape.

UI

You shouldn’t just make it bigger. As stated above, with such a large and rich screen this would make your application unappealing on the iPad. But it’s not just a case of aesthetics – Apple want applications to look more like the things they act model from the real world. Their Contacts application, for instance, is modelled after a pocket address book. Naturally this won’t make sense for all applications, but Apple is trying to encourage designers to think slightly beyond the traditional iPhone OS interface elements.

• Downplay controls such as buttons and drop-downs
• Avoid full screen transitions – present information in place where possible to improve the overall visual stability
• Use high quality, physically realistic graphics
• Present lists and their detail views together – e.g. the mailbox list and email preview are on the same screen side-by-side in Mail on the iPad
• Reduce modal interfaces (these interrupt the user flow) – e.g. avoid alert message pop ups by presenting responses inline

Having said that, developers shouldn’t attempt to make desktop-style applications – Apple still maintains that across the iPhone OS family applications should each perform one main task in a clear and concise way. I.e. an application shouldn’t sprout new features – only a new interface – and shouldn’t deal with a file system model of opening and saving files (all changes made to something should always be preserved, and only loss of data such as deletions should ask for explicit confirmation).

Actual Multi-touch

The iPhone and iPod Touch have had multi-touch technology for years, but in very few applications, beyond games, is it used. This is probably because there are few situations where it can be put into practice in a meaningful way on the small screen. With the iPad, Apple is encouraging a more touchy-feely approach to applications.

The crux of this? Lots to redesign for existing applications, lots more thinking/sketching/prototyping before making new applications.

Another worry is the increased fragmentation of hardware and capabilities of the devices an application is expected to run on. Fragmentation is one of the much maligned facts of the Android platform. There are so many Android devices with differing screen sizes and system resources that it is hard for developers to accommodate all forms. The beauty of the iPhone OS family used to be that it was simple but now you have 3 iPhones, 3 iPod Touches and 2 iPads, all with varying capacities. With new models coming out almost yearly, it’s foolish for developers to only focus on the latest systems and cut off the millions who bought one just last year.

What exactly is it for anyway?

All in all, Apple’s choices for the iPad suggest that they’ve carefully thought through what sort of niche the device sits in. The fact that it runs iPhone OS is great for developers as there’s not too much to learn and great for users as it will feel natural to those who have used iPhones or iPod Touches. They haven’t overloaded it with hardware features and focused on the software. Despite being both a hardware and software manufacturer, Apple have explicitly stated that it’s hard to compete in hardware – they will be matched very quickly by others. It’s software where they can claim to stand out above the rest.

It’s a little less clear what this niche is though… The iPad is too big to carry in a pocket / have with you always. In contrast, an iPhone would barely leave your side. The iPad isn’t the most convenient things to hold and you probably can’t use it with one hand or on the move. In contrast, you can type a text message on the iPhone with one hand while walking. Its giant screen will wow you, but will your eyes get tired of the bright light and colours after reading more than a few pages?

So be certain of one thing – the iPhone is going nowhere and will remain popular. But will the iPad succeed? We think so if the developer community can build great applications as they have done for its predecessors.