Mo Elnadi (@MoElnadi), Head of Digital Strategy, The Reptile Group

There are many new applications that make very good use of geo-location and particularly FourSquare check-ins.  A new application called #Hashable, for example, allows professionals to connect and keep track of others whom they met at an event, or make business introductions among their trusted networks.

Waze, on the other hand, provides the driving community with a free SatNav system that automatically updates maps and traffic jams based on members’ check-ins as they drive around towns worldwide, using your mobile phone GPS receiver.

Follow: @MoElnadi for more Social Media tips

See Also: 

Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)

What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)

2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)

A Marketer’s Guide to Social Pull Marketing  - (Part 1 of 2)

Mo Elnadi, Head of Digital Strategy, The Reptile Group

What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services?

Many professionals are currently also using FourSquare to business- network, and discover like-minded people around them at events such as trade shows and conferences for example. The potential to Tweet from within those applications increases their effectiveness and also contributes to this trend.

We’ve yet to witness a big debate around privacy concerns and willingness of mobile users to share their geo-location. An state seems to have been reached whereby users understand that the trade-off is that they now know that, for example, by sharing their location, they benefit by getting more relevant search results and offers.

Marketers need to examine the behaviour of online consumers through studying their ‘intent-driven actions’. Those actions could act as a strong signal of intention, to help brands discover the right moment to engage with consumers effectively as `timing` is key in building intimacy, trust and to  create real value over time. And this is where those applications come in very handy.

By customers declaring  ‘where they are now’ to marketers, they are connecting the physical to the virtual using location-based mobile applications like FourSquare which acts as a powerful signal of intent that says :`I am here. I am consuming your product. So what have you got for me?`

Consumers also love sharing tips about venues through those apps. This sharing concept is very common as an act of generosity by those who just want to help; as they believe that the most generous person among a similar community almost invariably, acquires the greatest influence among their network. Many may be less philanthropic; it could just be a status symbol.   Nevertheless, many marketers believe that this action automatically provides word of mouth opportunities for their brands and venues; as marketing messages get amplified, and promotional materials are shared by users with their friends, who in turn repeat the pattern with others creating a ‘viral effect’ transforming consumers from passive ‘recipients’ to proactive ‘sharers’.

Follow: @MoElnadi for more Social Media tips

See Also: 

Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)

What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)

2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)

A Marketer’s Guide to Social Pull Marketing  - (Part 1 of 2)

Mo Elnadi, Head of Digital Strategy, The Reptile Group

In your opinion Is location-based marketing -mooted as one of 2011′s big trends- a fad or does it have potential to develop into a viable channel for marketers and brands? Is FourSquare already over?

Far from it, location-based marketing is here to stay. What we are witnessing is a paradigm shift both among the marketing community and in consumer behaviour.  Mobile penetration rates and wireless device usage trends mean that sharing your location – whether proactively or not- is inevitable as more GPS-enabled tablets, cameras, laptops and embedded devices are introduced to the market.

As the `check-in` trend becomes more and more mainstream, we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.  There are currently around 5 million users on FourSquare alone worldwide – a figure achieved in less than 2 years.  Such has been FourSquare’s success that  it has  forced Facebook to shut down and re-think its `Facebook Places` check-in proposition and is eating the market share of Google Latitude. It is only a matter of time that this geo-located check-in behaviour will hit critical mass.

One of the most noticeable differences between Social Media platforms and traditional media is the possibility for members to ‘share content’ of different types, including, in this case, their hard-earned FourSquare ‘Mayorship’ status and badges.  They do this in the hope of getting potential discounts and special offers from participating venues and brands. Brands including Starbucks and Dominos Pizza are already offering special discounts to ‘Mayors’ in some participating branches worldwide.

This `Gamification` of real-life actions has proved to be working successfully so far.  What attracts many users is the creation of a fun environment where they can turn their daily routines into a virtual competition and so share their achievements and win rewards.

Follow: @MoElnadi for more Social Media tips

See Also: 

Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)

What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)

2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)

A Marketer’s Guide to Social Pull Marketing  - (Part 1 of 2)

Deepening relationships

Twitter is like any other social media touch point; it is a many-to-many engagement channel that is all about ‘pull’ marketing.  That means discussion, sharing of valuable content, genuine networking, and gradually building long term relationships with existing and potential customers that are based on trust and reputation. This, understandably, takes time and resources.

Only those brands that realise such different dynamics will thrive in this unique and ever-changing ecosystem where customer engagement happens in real-time, not only between a brand and its audience but mainly among those audiences.

In other words, a brand’s ultimate goal on Twitter is not just to talk at or even to its followers, but to facilitate the right engaging environment for those audiences to communicate with each other. To enable them to share tips, get inspired and discuss the brand products and services, which will ultimately shape their purchasing decisions. Users of social media trust the aggregated opinions of others much more than official corporate messages.

Proving Social Media ROI?

In the current recessionary environment, marketers are under constant pressure to justify their spend.  Twitter is a crucial tool to build the brand reputation by showing value through public 140-characters messages but it’s important to realise that Twitter is a long-term investment in shaping customer perception about a brand

Real Social Media ROI can only be measured by digging deeper into how the brand online reputation, sentiment and customer advocacy has evolved positively over time, while executing a well-planned overall social media strategy of which Twitter is part. It should be regarded as a piece of the bigger social marketing puzzle.

Twitter vs.  Facebook

It is not a case of either/or. Both social media services can play a crucial role for a brand. The trick is to build and adopt a holistic approach that would integrate and harmonise Twitter and Facebook as well as other activities on other social media channels. And, in turn, link this to other online and offline efforts.

Follow: @MoElnadi for more Social Media tips

See Also: 

A Marketer’s Guide to Social Pull Marketing  - (Part 1 of 2)

Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)

What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)

2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)

With a quarter of a billion engaged users worldwide, and growing daily, there is no doubt that Twitter is effective as an instant communication tool, and even influential when it comes to reaching the right audiences for a specific brand. But many brands are still failing to realise the difference between mass-broadcasting messages and the full potential of this real-time communication tool, which allows for two-way communication with their target end users.

Given their classic ‘Push’ Marketing backgrounds, by continuing to operate in a traditional ‘broadcast mode’ or perceiving Twitter as a one-to-many mass media channel, organisations are missing out on opportunities to both gain invaluable customer insight and build stronger social media relationships.

How to get more out of Twitter
For marketers to reap the benefits of this popular social media service, they need to focus on three main strategic activities:

Listening: By knowing what existing and potential customers are saying about their brands and gauging their sentiment, marketers will build a wealth of detailed customer insight that would be invaluable when it comes to defining social media strategies or taking marketing decisions in near real-time. This can be done by using professional monitoring tools, or depending on a brand’s in-house resources and skills, by hiring a professional specialist agency.

Engagement: By getting genuinely involved in relevant discussions on Twitter, a brand will quickly build its reputation and position itself as a thought leader in its specific industry sector. A good start is to be useful to -and generous with- its customers, using techniques such as special offers, and sharing valuable product tips, recommendations and advice to help customers compare products throughout their decision cycles.

Supporting: Twitter is also a great tool to identify those who need help using your products or services, and to see what customers are sharing with others about their overall experiences of your brand including after-sales service satisfaction. Knowing about both negative and positive experiences in a timely manner, then following a professional strategy to deal with such situations is crucial. By getting in touch with those customers, effectively solving their problems and maybe sharing more tips, marketers can easily switch public complaints into a positive word-of-mouth situation for their brands.

Follow @MoElnadi for more #SocialMedia tips

See Also: 

Twitter: Building Relationships and Proving Social Media ROI  – (Part 2 of 2)

Location-based services: A Fad or the Future of #SocialMedia Marketing? (Part 1 of 3)

What is the future of location-based service? Does it really lie in local search or services? (Part 2 of 3)

2 Location-Based Apps That You Can’t Live Without (Part 3 of 3)

To misquote the movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn we’ve seen events in recent weeks that have ‘started out with a climax and worked their way up to an earthquake.’

The climax came during the recent emergency session of Parliament when Prime Minister David Cameron said he believed that ‘the free flow of information’ was a major problem when it comes to dealing with civil disobedience on the scale witnessed in the recent London riots.

Such was his concern that the Government is actively considering the banning of free use of Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools such as BlackBerry’s BBM during such emergency situations.  Later this week there is an official meeting with Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry to discuss logistics of just such a proposal.

So social media stands in the dock accused, and in my opinion the power to ban represents a very dangerous step and a clear threat to UK democracy in the digital age. Having the power to stop people from using social networking sites because some irresponsible thugs happened to use those tools to organise looting and criminal activity is like thinking of needing to ban London buses because of a single bus accident!

As someone who contributed to the Jan25 Egyptian revolution through effective use of social media channels, I’ve witnessed first-hand how ineffective such government shut downs could be in tackling the problem at hand; we now have proof that blocking real-time mass communication services at the Government’s discretion is definitely not the best way to tackle the issue. And it’s a slippery slope. In fact, such potential restrictions to freedom of speech threaten to cause lasting damage to British democracy and could even affect the freedom of rights of internet users elsewhere in the world as other governments decide to follow suit.

The fact is that social media tools are just another communication channel -exactly like mobile phones or email- and can be used for both good and evil. For example, during the riots and using the same tools to organise criminal activity, the public was also alerting other citizens and the authorities through hashtags in real time, as to where looting was breaking out, and even built an interactive Google map of the affected areas.

In truth, Brooks may yet go: swept out by the torrent of public moral outrage, the grumblings of the News Corp. board or the tactical business need for appeasement through another public sacrifice as the crisis builds. But what then? The moribund BSkyB deal – booted into the long-grass of regulator reassessment by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt – looks increasingly unlikely to succeed; some predict a News Corp. retreat from the UK newspaper market altogether. A sea-change in the fortunes of Murdoch, the landscape of the press and the entire public perception of the media seems inevitable. And along with it, other power-wielding groups such as politicians, regulators, industry bodies and even the police will increasingly feature in the spotlight of public opprobrium and re-assessment.

As journalistic ethics are scrutinised more closely than ever, how can PR firms, as participants in the way our media function, ensure they maintain the kind of ethical standards demanded by an increasing sceptical public newly armed with instant access to social and digital media? Just as the working practices of journalism and public relations share similarities, so too are our ethical considerations aligned.

But they are not identical. Journalists have a primary duty to serve the public; PR firms, their clients. Sometimes, journalistic duty has to transcend sectional interests, even – as we have seen in the downfall of News International – loyalty to proprietors or business. A PR firm could not, in good faith, act against the interests of its paying customers. Are we to judge one set of working ethics as superior to the other? Cross-sectoral comparisons are of little use; each sector should be assessed on its own merits and record.

Nonetheless, Public Relations cannot function outside the public interest. We are all part of the same society; we all benefit from markets that are transparent and free of distortion, and a public climate of institutional confidence rather than suspicion. On practical professional terms, journalists and PR consultants alike succeed – or fail – on the trust with which they are received by the world at large. They transgress that trust at their peril.

Last Friday I attended the BBC Social Media Summit, the event was packed with academics, social media consultants, and journalists.

One of the questions that recurred frequently throughout the digital panel discussions was whether journalists should rely on social media to break news as fast as possible, or stick to conventional methods of verifying news, lest they spread false or inaccurate information.

I found this discussion interesting, given that the BBC relies increasingly on Twitter as a news feed and to flag reports on the social network and especially as I had a similar debate during another conference with Cisco at which I was guest speaker earlier last week.

The fact is that Social Media channels are connecting the public and journalists in ways that were not possible a few years ago however, so the question shouldn’t have been addressed as an “either/or” discussion.

A more productive discussion would have been how to best verify sources on Social Media instead of attempting to compare the two types of information as different media competing with one another. I believe firmly that the two methods complement rather than compete with each other.

Social Media is here to stay and it will only grow, further shifting and fragmenting our media consumption patterns. The genie is out of the bottle and the public will increasingly share and take account of stories as they develop on Social Media, believing it offers needed timely information and transparency.

In other words, I’d rather get timely real-time information about emerging events such as the Japanese reactor explosion, a possible Tsunami warning or the latest development in the Egyptian revolution, than wait few hours until someone in a newsroom verifies every single number or name before it reaches me. A good example would be Esra Dogramaci’s presentation on how Al Jazeera used Social Media channels to collaborate with Egyptian protesters at Tahrir square.

But there is a difference between reporting and journalism. Social Media is a very valuable tool for reporting; however journalists still have the responsibility to verify facts and sources. I don’t see a contradiction between doing both well.

Increasingly we are integrating ever more sources to form our view of the world. And part of this is choosing to harness the wisdom of crowds, breaking news in real-time, whilst information is refined, verified and analysed by editors and journalists for the evening bulletins.

Share your feedback with @moelnadi

Much of this professional posing is disingenuous. The reality is that in business – any business – you want to show your competitors in the worst light possible. That’s competition.  But overtly negative campaigning can backfire as it clearly has the potential to actually turn off the people who you are trying to convince that you are the good guys.  You need to consider carefully whether to use it as a tactic and always default to taking the high ground, lest you risk getting tarred with your own brush.

But to be effective a marketing campaign has to make its target audience understand the advantages of one product or service and disadvantages of another. Indeed, in media relations this may actually help the journalist understand the competitive ecosystem on which a company is trying to understand, analyse and report. If you are promoting the advantages of Open Source, for instance, it would be remiss not to have a clear explanation of the disadvantages of proprietary environments. The issue is how is that to be achieved?

After all, the UK press loves a bit of controversy not to mention negativity because it sells publications online or offline and so high tech PRs inform the media every day about unsavoury or previously hidden aspects of their client’s competitor’s activities or products. But technology  journalists or bloggers normally know exactly who they are talking to and understand their motivation. These are the `sources` that  journalists have always gone to great lengths to protect and so planting information in this way can get the result you want – copy that plays to your strengths and your competitor’s weaknesses – without the source being revealed. That’s a tradition that works very well for both sides

But in the Burson-Marstellar Facebook vs Google case it was the covert nature of Burson-Marstellar’s actions that was the problem.  Even if the information they were passing on was correct, hell hath no fury like a journalist or blogger misled.

The key issue is that the PRs actions should be transparent to the journalist or blogger – i.e. they know who you are representing so they can judge the veracity of what you are saying before editing it and presenting it to the public.  That’s the power of media relations – it’s based on the assumption that the journalist or blogger is a filter and the Western tradition is that is the filter that delivers truth and accuracy.

So Burson-Marstellar’s big mistake and why they are reaping the whirlwind of both flack and hack opprobrium is that they crossed this line.  They concealed the fact they were acting for Facebook and those they talked to now feel their professional reputations have been besmirched.  And as a journalist or blogger your prime currency is the ability to educate and inform correctly.  If you have been deliberately compromised in doing so by a third party that makes you very mad indeed. As Burson-Marstellar is finding out to its cost…

A deep understanding of the development and implementation of Digital and Social Media communications is one of the foundation stones of contemporary PR consultancy, allowing people and businesses to actively engage with one another instantaneously and measurably.

Our resident Social Media guru and head of digital, Mo Elnadi exemplifies this approach. Mo recently attended his long-awaited graduation ceremony for an outstanding MBA with distinction in Digital Strategy awarded last year. Therefore, we’ve all doffed our virtual mortarboards to Mo for gaining some very special letters after his name.

Even more recently, Andy Smith created the 2011 Peer Index ‘Social Media Power Players’ list taking in heavy weights from across the industry. Taking it in his stride and looking to rapidly prove his expertise beyond the four walls of the lecture theatre – it should not come as a surprise as to who went straight into the top 40! Beginning to develop doffing neck pains, we applaud Mo again for another brilliant accomplishment.

Never ones to resist a challenge this has spurred a recent in-house competition here at Reptile Towers to see who can improve their PeerIndex score most significantly. Whether the crowning title of ‘Reptile Raconteur’ acts as the main incentive or the large and perfectly chilled bottle of bubbly waiting in the boardroom we may never know! Results from the Reptile runners and riders will be posted in the next couple of weeks.

Lest we get a little too Mo-centric it’s been a fantastic week of achievements for Chameleon’s sister company Komodo too. They are currently finalists for three separate prestigious awards being recognised by the SABRE organisation for their work on Tesco and the Royal Norwegian Embassy and being a CIPR Outstanding Small Consultancy to boot.