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14 ways to generate revenue and equity with Social Communities |
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Social Media Monetization for Publishers
Publications require a community of readers and advertisers to make money. Advertisers need to be able to understand and measure brand interaction to spend money. Readers on the other hand require good content. These basic ingredients form the backbone of the majority of publishers:
1) Good content
2) Quality readership base
3) Compelling advertising packages
4) Justifiable ROI
A profitable publication provides their readers with high quality content that they both enjoy and benefit from. The readership that this generates (web traffic) is then converted into direct revenue from advertisers wishing to contact a particular group or demographic that reads the publication in question. 
The social community platforms supporting the publishing sector operate under the same principals and apply the same industry standards and practices to ensure that they make money and provide a healthy return for advertisers and publishers alike. In addition to this of course, they must support and enhance the revenue of your offline publications.
Consider your social community platform as a direct extension of your offline publishing business; it builds the brand equity of your publications, whilst at the same time providing your customers with greater access to your content and your advertisers with additional advertising options and greater measurement of their advertising spend. As such your social community should be considered as an extension of your brand that provides an integrated media and advertising platform between the online and offline worlds.
As part of an integrated media strategy, the supply chain benefits are clear. By providing online presence in tandem with your offline publications, you can position your titles with a clear differentiator to your competitors. You can also use your combined offline and online presence to negotiate a better rate from your advertisers, giving them a greater reach in terms of readership and clearer measurement of their contact with your readership thanks to your social media platforms.
When you position your Social Media platforms in your normal day to day media sales presentations you have a wider scope for negotiation and a greater potential value proposition for your advertising clients. Your Social Media platform can help you generate revenue with:
1) Digital Spend - Direct online advertising on your social media platform only.
2) Improved customer yield – better deals by offering online & print as a package.
3) Providing substantiated readership figures for print – Use online reports to substantiate demographics, readership and engagement.
4) Delivering competitive advantage – Winning an advertisers business by offering an integrated and holistic campaign solution that they can measure.
5) Offering premium readership products and services.
6) Using industry techniques such as “arbitrage” and “data correlation” to build revenue
Of course with the additional value of a social community is that your brand is continually active which also servers to promote your offline publication in much the same way as a corporate website with a large volume of traffic promotes the company to which it relates.
Communities based around publications are best suited to niche markets, where content is not readily available through other online sources. Your journalistic expertise in these areas enables you to provide direct value to your customers and engage them in your title on a more regular basis. If upon evaluation, your current print publications meet the following general criterion then you may benefit from deploying a social community platform.
1) Your title appeals to an niche market or demographic
2) You provide quality journalism based around a particular subject matter
3) Advertisers want to directly contact, sell to or influence your readership base
Consider your social media platform in the same way that you consider your print publication; if you follow the same rules and apply them to your social community platform you will be able to monetize your community easily and build valuable equity into your business by expanding your capabilities and increasing your competitive advantage.
One of the core benefits of social media is that your older content can still generate advertising revenue for you. Unlike a publication where you have a fixed number of pages per issue, when it comes to online, your previous issue content can still generate page views for you all year round, resulting in additional revenue.
Certainly don’t believe the naysayers that are saying that print is dead, it most certainly isn’t and I would hate to think of a day where I couldn’t pick up a newspaper and read it. Media is certainly changing however, and in order to stay competitive and to help measure and justify an advertisers spend, digital platforms where users are actively engaged with a title, go a long way to substantiating your offerings.
Print publishers are wrestling with how to monetize their digital assets to their full potential. It is clear that when publishers can demonstrate brand engagement with their “Readership Community” rather than simple display advertising, they will most certainly be more appealing to marketing managers that themselves are now required to quantify ROI from their marketing spend. More on socialmediame.com
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Top 15 Twitter Influencers in Dubai (sort of, ish) |
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The Top 15 Twitter Users & Influencers in Dubai (that have the word Dubai in their profile)
It’s a tricky one to work out – who is who on Twitter – who is worth
following and who should be paid lip service. One thing is clear is
that those people (Mention no names) that are quite clearly using
automated tools to only drive recruitment are not faring well in the
influence space. Why – well there are a multitude of reasons but I
guess it starts with how the hell you actually measure Influence or I
suppose “Tweetefluence” in the first place.
 Diggs Wefollow (and we can’t get access to the algorithm so this is
hearsay) seems to measure influence based on the number of users that
respond to your tweets, click on your links, add you to lists and the
conversations you are having. It’s interesting to note that one of the
most influential users on Twitter in Dubai “ADNATION”
www.adnationme.com www.twitter.com/adnationme
doesn’t have a million
followers but does have a lot of conversation threads going on – what
does this mean for Twitter in communications departments – well I
suppose it’s the same old mantra – conversations are king when it comes
to twitter and social media.
This is not to say that automated tools don’t have a place, we use a
mixture of automated tools and scripts in combination with a developer
account to try and work out who we want to engage but I can assure you
the majority of the work is very much manual. That said since
using our Twitter account to strike up relevant conversations our
little (or not so little these days) team at H2O has driven a large
amount of business using this free tool for B2B in the
past couple of months.
I should paraphrase this by saying that these results from Digg are
skewed anyway as the algorithm seems only to be based on the keywords
in the users profile – but hey ho you can’t have everything. I am
still sure that major news channels and publishers knock the spots off
of Tweeters – but still it’s interesting to see who the top 15
Tweetfluencers (with the word Dubai in their profile) are , let me put
you out of your misery. It was going to be 20 but I just got
sidetracked by everyones blogs so now its just a lazy 15…..Press Read More
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Social Communities for the Events & Meetings Industry |
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Events require a community of customers, industry professionals and delegates for them to work well and make money. A profitable event should provide multiple opportunities for vendors and sponsors to showcase their brand whilst networking around a relevant industry forum and of course be very busy with networking and sales opportunities, a social community platform operates under the same principals.
The social community platforms supporting the events sector are no different and the same industry standards and practices can be applied to them to ensure that they make money and provide a healthy return, as well of course supporting off line event revenue.
Consider your Social community platform as a direct extension of your offline event business, it builds your event brand equity whilst at the same time providing an online “venue” for your delegates to network, communicate and discuss information prior to meeting up in person. As such your social community should be considered as an extension of your event brand that provides an integrated media and promotion platform between the online and offline worlds.
As part of an integrated media platform the supply chain benefits are clear, by providing online presence with your offline events offerings you can position your events with a clear differentiator to your competitors, you can also use both offline and online presence to negotiate a better rate fo  r your events or online platform sponsorship and participation. Of course with delegates networking and discussing topics under your event brand your event is continually active which also serves to promote your offline event in much the same way as a corporate website with a large volume of traffic.
Events communities are best suited to niche sectors of industry where specific features and functions are industry specific and cannot be replicated by the features available in existing platforms. Of course if the elements of your event can not be replaced by Linked in normally because your event:
1) Appeals to an industry niche sector
2) Provides niche networking and business opportunities
3) Provides content relevant to your niche industry sector, vendor stands, speakers etc.
Consider your social media platform in the same way that you consider your event; if you follow the same rules for your event and apply them to your social community platform you will be able to monetize your community easily and build a further equity platform for your business.
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Social Media HR Policies |
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 Protecting Your Company & Employees – Legal Considerations for Social Media in the Workplace.
Again a request from customers relating to exactly what the potential
risks are relating to staff and their use of social media platforms
online. This is an incredibly tricky blog post, simply because there
are very few case studies to use to formulate a well thought out post,
and because laws differ from region to region. Certainly if you
haven’t done so already and you are responsible for Human Resources,
Corporate Communications or even the running of a company you should be
drafting up policy documentation relating to how your employees use
social media platforms within and outside the workplace. So what are
the risks? There are lots of risk points for any corporation or person
but here are a few that I can jump on right away and suggest at least
an interim solution in terms of policy.
You’re Employees – Speaking on behalf of your brand
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Google Side Wiki - PR Advice |
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Google Side Wiki – What Brand Managers & PR Companies should be aware of
I have been requested to pull together a quick overview on the new
Google Side Wiki functionality by a number of our PR partners this week
as it is obviously of serious importance to most brands.
This is in effect "a game changer" for brands and communications
professionals, so important in fact that if you are working within the
corporate communications, PR or brand management sectors you should
really read and then re-read this post. So firstly let’s structure
this blog post so it makes sense. As a techie i understand my blogposts leave a lot to be desired.
• Understanding Google
• What is Google Wiki in a nutshell?
• What is the impact to communications professionals?
• What are the best practices to reduce your risks and protect your brand?
• Legal Implications
• Our two cents
Understanding Google.
 Google of course needs no introduction, especially on a blog like this
one. In terms of Google Wiki what you need to understand is that
Google is a noted supporter of network neutrality – no big deal, H2O is
also a supporter of Network Neutrality but of course we don’t own the
worlds search market, these guys do.
"Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in
control of what content they view and what applications they use on the
Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality
principle since its earliest days... Fundamentally, net neutrality is
about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers
should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate
against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies
are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can
say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power
to control activity online”
That’s interesting stuff; the key take home is that Google believe that
the internet should be a democratic platform, from a brand perspective
that means that Google fundamentally believe that if people want to
comment on your brand then they should be free to do so.
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Akanksha Goel - Social Media Interview Dubai |
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Akanksha is a marketing maverick, start-up junkie and a social media
enthusiast. Before moving to Dubai, she served as Editor-in-Chief of STUFF
Magazine
Singapore, a leading consumer technology publication. Akanksha
frequently speaks
about social media and marketing in Dubai this interview was with IQPC
discussing Social Media Marketing in the Middle East. Akanksha is
currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer for the
Sherazade group, which represents OneEmpower’s Loyalty Marketing Solutions in
the Middle East, Africa and India. Sherazade also provides Training and Consulting
for the Financial services industry.
They are currently setting up an Academy to train and certify retail bankers in
the region.
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Social Media Marketing Podcast - Social Media Marketing Podcast
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Social Media Marketing in the Middle East |
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Marketing professionals and media companies that want to get to grips with how Social Media can be used in your marketing campaigns in the Middle East will not want to miss the Social Media Marketing Forum in Dubai. There seems to have been a high demand for case studies during the Social Media Forum which for the first event of its kind specifically for Social Media was attended by over 200 people with standing room only for the latecomers. There are a number of corporate companies speaking at the Social Media Marketing Event that will be sharing their experience, as such I think the event is probably going to be invaluable to marketing and communications professionals looking to use social media tools and develop best practices. You can check the full information on the website socialmediamarketingme.com . The event is on the 7-8th of December. More details>
During the main conference on 7-8 December 2009 attendees can learn from presentations and case studies from senior local and international speakers, as well as interactive discussions on crucial issues.
Key topics to be discussed include; overcoming social media marketing challenges in the Middle East, leveraging social media to drive traffic to your site, understanding available tools and technologies and managing online communities.
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Social Media Best Practices - Free Download |
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With pretty much everyone you know belonging to one social network or another it’s quite clear to see that businesses have an excellent opportunity to connect with and talk to prospective customers, existing customers and other stakeholders using social media platforms to build advocacy and brand awareness within their market.
There are a number of pointers that any budding social media marketer should be aware of before embarking on the journey ahead. One of the problems with social media is that it is incredibly unforgiving of mistakes and business faux pas that you’re marketing team may make.
To help you navigate these new mass media platforms we have pulled together this quick overview of the main social media platforms that we suggest our clients use. The paper serves as a quick overview of each platform and allows you to benefit from our experience in implementing social media campaigns for corporate enterprises. We have also sourced and consolidated information from the many contributors to numerous blogs, white papers and journals that are available on this subject.
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GITEX-Show-2009 |
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This looks really cool - I have just lifted the content from Dubai Lime but I am down to GITEX 2009 for a peak preview at the Panasonic stand to see the words First Full HD 3D Plasma Theater
From the Panasonic Gitex Site "To see it is to believe it! You can see the product at the GITEX stand simply visit www.panasonic-gitex.com
or follow the updates on You Tube Twitter or Facebook.
Seeing really is believing, he high-resolution 3D previously
experienced only at amusement parks and movie theaters is soon to be an
in-home reality, with a direct-view plasma display.
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Social Media for Coaching |
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Social media has become the current buzz phrase of the information age.
But what is it and how does it work? And how can it help you grow your
business?
Social media is user-generated content created online using various new
technologies which allow people to produce, share and read information.
Individuals are now publishers as well as readers thus changing the
information and communication paradigm.
Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, podcasts, twitter, Wikis and YouTube are
now a particularly popular way of communicating for some demographics.
One of the benefits of such technologies is that it allows individuals
to potentially communicate and interact simultaneously with a myriad of
people worldwide; at low costs and with increased efficiency. For
businesses, this can be considered a revolution into an untapped
business market.
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Social Media – Dealing with Negative Feedback |
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 I am asked this a lot during our presentations in Dubai and elsewhere – "How do we deal with negative feedback online – What if we get negative feedback on our blog? What do we do if people talk bad about our company online"
The answer is wake up and smell the coffee – if people are talking about you negatively online then you can be as sure as hell that its happening offline to. So take the opportunity, welcome the world of dealing with negative and bad feedback about your company. Follow these simple rules and you will be good to go
Welcome It
Firstly the fact that someone cares enough to tell you that your event, company, products, staff or anything else is terrible is someone that cares. Thank them for their feedback, if you don’t they will think you simply don’t care about them – that’s not good.
Avoid Emotional Knee Jerk Reactions
Of course, it can be hard to train ourselves not to immediately attack or defend against negative feedback but the reality is that a Knee Jerk reaction of attack will show your true colors, it will show you to be an emotional non listening aggressor – this isn’t where you want to be.
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TED Dubai - TED X |
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 TED-X Dubai
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx, basically it’s a localized TED with business leaders, forward thinkers and good speakers invited to present themselves on TED-X Dubai. There seem to be a lot of people in Dubai that think that this is going to put them on Ted.com – it isn’t, but it is a great local forum for sharing of your information and new and exciting ideas.
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Mattress Dominoes |
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Mattress Dominoes - World Record Attempt
A great example of Viral Video Marketing using Mattress Dominoes
Major props go to Bensons for Beds & their agency Wand for pulling off an amazing viral marketing campaign which for just a few thousand pounds (guestimate) must have delivered amazing results having been featured on BBC world wide and MBC and other major US networks.
It really is a fantastic example of how a good idea well executed with some seeding and links to some major news agency journalists can really deliver amazing value for money – with millions of views on You Tube and god knows how many on major news networks I would be very interested to understand exactly how Bensons for Beds benefited from the campaign – certainly the back of their truck door was very well placed explaining that they had the best prices in the UK. Without further ado here is the video!
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The Social Media Forum - Middle East |
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I am really looking forward to the social media forum this year, its going to be one of the first social media events to focus on Social Media and not “online” as a whole which is refreshing. The speaker role is also very impressive, as the market moves forward to embrace a lot more social media applications and with the market hotting up as a whole I think it is pretty much and essential agenda item for any head of marketing in the region?
Why – well Social Media is akin to a revolution in the media industry – Social Media will be the biggest change in the media industry since the invention of the printing press – Not my words – Rupert Murdoch came out with that nugget of information just a while ago. In terms of who is going and what’s on the agenda you can check the website here
Most importantly this is the first event I have seen where the event organiser has actually embraced the core concepts of social media by focusing on listing to the event attendees. The core element of this is that the social media advisory team taken from customers and industry experts will be involved in the creation of the event. The purpose of the Social Media Advisory Team is to provide independent wisdom and insight to ensure the forum addresses key topics relevant to the regional social media scene. If you want to be part of that team you can apply on the website.
Check out the speaker list – we will be chairing the event this year so we hope to meet you there !
Why Social Media Forum?
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Understand how to connect and engage with social networks
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Discover the full range of social media opportunities
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Practical guide to getting started with blogs, Twitter and communities
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Build a successful and integrated PR strategy using social media channels
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Manage a crisis online and protect your brand
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Facebook falls foul of Canadian privacy laws |
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Facebook potentially falls foul of Canadian privacy laws
Facebook has “serious privacy gaps” and must now change its data model to comply with Canadian laws, according to a report issued by the country’s privacy commissioner on Thursday of last week.
This kick in the teeth comes as the world’s largest social network reporting over 250m users, is opening up its applications structure to third parties with its facebook connect application.
Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart explained “Facebook has to be more transparent about telling people what they do with their personal information, how long they keep it, and who is able to use it,”
The Canadians have identified four privacy areas where Facebook needs to implement the changes, of course on the top of the list is the third party application integration issue. If you didn’t know it already Facebook retains your information even after you request to deactivate your account, invitations that you send out to your friends also potentially breach privacy laws in Canada by retaining the email addresses of users who decline the invite.
Facebook now has 30 days to respond and if the company fails to make the suggested changes, the privacy commission can ask to federal courts to enforce their recommendations which I guess could mean restriction of the service or heafty fines in Canada. I hate to say it but “I told you so” the amount of information held by social networks is only limited by a users activity and as such offers a potential data mine of user data without users expressly opting in for such services (Check the article on social media correlation).
The report was issued after the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic based at the University of Ottawa law school made a complaint on 12 subjects of which four of them were deemed valid. The net net – if you are running a social community you had better be 100% transparent and honest with your users regarding how their data will be used, and that it seems includes not opening up your database to third party applications like one big data mine.
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Social Media ROI (Return On Investment) Free Download |
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Social media measurement and ROI
calculation is a topic that I discuss with clients on a day to day basis with
the most common question being “How do we make money from social media”. The
answer of course is that you don’t.
Social Media applications are a technology facilitator for dialogue and
it’s the dialogue that makes or saves you money. This can be dialogue between you and
customers, between the members of your team or anyone else that you need to
talk to.
Uses for niche social
communities in effect, are limited only by the number of applications that can
be found for them. In the past few years, we as a company, have deployed niche
social community platforms for business groups, sporting clubs, research and
development groups, events companies, not for profit organizations and for internal employee communication as a
replacement for older intranet applications. With over 120 projects behind us
there seems no limit to the amount of new applications presented to us on a day
to day basis.
So niche social communities are
platforms for effective communication. As with most communications technologies
the return on investment revolves around productivity. Tangible benefits of
social media implementations can be defined by the cost and revenue
improvements that they can deliver to a business quickly and easily. 
There is of course a distinct
advantage that social community applications have over and above other
communications technologies: the ability to turn conversations into meaningful
and useful data. It is this data that
can be monetized through business use.
Monetization takes many forms, some of which we will define in this
document.
The aim of this document is to
provide a framework to justify a business case for a social media project. As
such it lays out the many benefits of owning and operating a social community plus
some of the more popular ways to monetize your social media applications
data. It is by no means an exhaustive
list but it should help any project team define the ROI and business benefits
that will be delivered by implementing a niche social community application.
Download the Full Social Media Return on Investment Document for FREE! Just click on the highlighted link.
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Promotions Marketing in the MIddle East |
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Middle East marketing executives may like to pay attention to some new research, which suggests that internet discount vouchers have significantly increased in popularity of late. 
Digital monitoring firm Hitwise has revealed that searches for internet vouchers among UK consumers increased by 143 per cent in December 2008, compared to a year previously.
In particular, sites such as HotUKDeals and My Voucher Codes have proved to be hit, said research director Robin Goad on the firm's blog.
He also highlights data that shows online retailers are receiving business from voucher advertisers, as one in every 140 visits to the average retail site came from a voucher site.
Mr Goad stated: "While entertainment and electronics retailers do best from discount vouchers, department stores and fashion retailers benefit most from the sales." Our new Promos product aims to take this a few steps further, you will see that the new Promos application will deliver discount vouchers to your mobile, to your email and even deliver vouchers to you when you are close to the outlet! Keep your eyes peeled from promos!
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Social Media – it’s the Dialogue stuff |
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It’s hard to keep up a blog when you are working what seems like 24x7 to rol  l out new products, but I do try to keep my hand in. It seems like the message in Dubai is getting through and people are starting to get this social media “Stuff” , although still confusing for the laymen like any other new technology development people are starting to understand the value of conversation and dialogue in their business, even here in the Middle East.
Later this year we will be implementing our USA and European offices, it’s going to be interesting to see just what Delta exists between those markets and the Middle Eastern market and if H2O has strong enough technology to enter into those markets, which I am quite sure we now do. There are still the day to day challenges of operational delivery and product development but right now I really think we have a solution and the return on investment case to may hay whilst the sun shines.
Today I was with a major hotel group and the marketing teams were very switched on when it came to Social Media which is great, when the customer understands that the whole process of social media it’s a dialogue and not having “Control” it really is encouraging. Its even more encouraging when you see a customer get really genuinely excited about what you are doing and what you can deliver to their business. Hurrahh !
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Intranet 2.0 - Middle East Intranet Software |
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Intranet Software with the power of a social community built in! 
For the past couple of days I have been using our CMS to build an intranet for us in house, quite an easy task I thought but nope – certainly not. However its completed now and H2O now has a full blown social community workspace in house that allows our sales teams, account teams and dev teams to create virtual groups, post shared information, document downloads, software version revisions – in fact pretty much everything, its pretty cool and will get better.
I just posted the following on our FAQ and forum page about how and what our intranet does:
This forum is related to the use of the H2O Cafe company intranet. Here you can ask any questions related to the use of the intranet. Here is some basic information on what you can do with the company intranet.
1) Create Groups - Working as a collective team on projects brings results, create account teams, project teams or dev teams instantly and publish them for other members to join. Share ideas and discussions within facebook like web groups.
2) Download Docs - Standard format company documents are now being uploaded - over the next week you should see most of the documents required to function in H2O are available for you on this intranet.
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Wallabies high on opium are making crop circles |
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Wallabies high on opium are making crop circles
Wallabies in Australia that have been chowing down on local opium poppy fields are getting "high as a kite"
and hopping around creating crop circles in Tasmania. I didnt know that Tasmania is the worlds largest producer of legally grown opium but apparently the wallabies are very aware of it.
Tasmania attorney-general Lara Giddings told reporters: "We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as
high as a kite and going around in circles.
"Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies
that are high."
Apparently a manager for one of two Tasmanian companies that make the legal opium said "wildlife and livestock - including deer and
sheep - that eat the poppies are known to "act weird". No shit! I wonder if ducks in Amsterdam are taking day trips to the British countryside?
Apparently all of the Wallabies are now in rehab, Tasmanian officials have recovered a large ammount of belts and spoons found in the crop circles.
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Is your workforce passionate, enthusiastic, committed and inspired? Is their morale and level of corporate citizenship high? Are really ‘present’ when at work? Employee engagement is one of the most important facets of any Human Resources Directors role today, however fewer than half of Gulf employees think their organization manages to attract the best talent or engage them to perform once they are inside the corporation and even fewer (just over one third of employees) think their companies are good at holding on to the best talent.
Steve Vaile's Blog