Liane Dietrich, managing director of LinkShare, the affiliate network which conducted the research, said:

“Less than 10 per cent of our respondents are interacting with adverts across social networking sites…Online users are information shoppers – they are looking for buyer reviews – so adverts need relay more information to cater for this need”.

This serves as a good reminder to all that at its heart the internet is a service led business. The most successful sites are those that are consistently providing useful information to their customers.

This obviously is easier said than done and even Google can sometimes get it wrong. Recently I’ve been exploring their Ad-sense channel via YouTube and came across this particularly illuminating comment.

“Hey Google instead of these ads for your Google products how about you give instruction instead. That’s what people search YouTube for, not to see an ad”.

Wouldn’t it be great if more people actually searched for ads. Perhaps a good lesson for us all, remember advertising needs to be useful!

In response to declining footfall and sales BestBuy have adopted a interesting Twitter strategy to take their in-store expertise online. Quoted In a recent Bloomberg article, BestBuy CMO Brian Judge said,

“The old paradigm is you open your doors and hope someone comes in. In the new world, you can go out and find people that are talking about technology and what they’re interested in buying, and be generous with your knowledge”

The BestBuy answer to this problem is Twelpforce. So far 500 in store employees have signed up to participate in a scheme that asks employees to scan twitter for potential customers seeking information about technology products in their downtime.

Its clear that this is a learning process for BestBuy, If you have a look at John Bernier’s twitter feed (the BB Marketing Manager behind Twelpforce) you start to get an understanding as to just how seriously they are taking this project.

To my mind they have a clear challenge and that is making sure that Twelpforce remains a service to help consumers solve their problems and not simply a channel to promote their best offers. It is really encouraging though to see traditional retailers using social media platforms as tools to promote their existing strengths. I can’t imagine it will be long before we see similar ideas on this side of the pond.

For better or worse, I’m what you’d call a belts-n-braces reviewer. When it comes to testing stuff, my policy is fairly easy – act like a punter. It’s easy for a journalist to get excited about the latest tech when it’s couriered over and they get to play with it for a month, and get paid for the privilege. That way also leads apathy, as you end up only wanting to review the latest and greatest, which in truth is only a small part of reviewing with an audience in mind. Most people only turn to reviews when they are actively in a buying mode and then it’s all about the experience and not the hype.

Experience and expertise aren’t about getting excited at the drop of a tech spec (or a carefully crafted press release), it’s about understanding the market you’re writing for and getting that across in as entertaining but informative a manner as possible. If that just so happens to be with a good measure of SEO and social media tools on top, then all the better.

These are the things that have been going round my head of late, as we’re gearing up for a changes around Republic Towers. Electricpig is in a period of change, but I’ll leave that for James Holland to discuss at a later date. My news, as you may have guessed, involves mobile computing, reviews and a large dollop of common sense buying advice. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you more news about what this entails but for now, it’s enough to know that it’s all going to be in the safest of hands!

My answer never seems complete, perhaps because I always feel like the question should be what does Twitter do for me? Why should I use it? In a reply to James’ story on changes to the Twitter service, @Liz explains just why Twitter is so important too her.

‘it’s that I want to see everything that @BarackObama tweets, no matter who it’s addressed to. I can already do that on the web interface by looking at their profile page but by choosing all @replies, it meant that they came directly to me in my Tweetstream. Now, I have to go out and search for them’.

At Republic we encourage our clients to think about social media as a set of tools. For the end user they can be tools that enable greater understanding and communication with the world around them. Once you know why you want to explore social media platforms, services like Tweetdeck and Newsmap can help you to organize the information you receive into manageable chunks.

We believe that harnessing social media tools in tandem with an clear and concise editorial strategy, forms an instant and accessible way for brands to hold direct a dialogue with their customers.

So what does Twitter do for me? I’m a bit of a world news addict. I started using Twitter’s real time search function around the time of the Mumbai tragedy. I found it a fascinating and easy way to discover real time local opinion and reaction to global events. In a small way this service delivered something that before was hard to access though mainstream media.

Too often we see the word “content” bandied around describing some sort of commodity that can be picked up, duplicated and sold on at will. Us editorial types like to think of what we produce as considered, carefully crafted editorial (described by the dictionary on my Mac as “relating to the commissioning or preparing of material for publication”).

And it’s that last bit that matters. “content marketing” is a term used chiefly by those across the pond and increasingly by those working in the public relations industry. In fact, in his eyecube blog, Rick Liebling talks about content marketing in the context of Public Relations, and what it means to PR agencies. The sentiment of what he’s saying makes much sense. Consider his “five reasons for doing it”

1. Content marketing is constant
So often traditional PR relies on a “big launch” then it fades away. Strategic content marketing is ongoing, with a focus on keeping the consumers engaged beyond ‘opening weekend’ or the ‘Big Game.’

2. Content marketing is authentic
Content marketing isn’t about synergistically leveraging the best-in-class this, or the enterprise-wide, value-added that. It’s about providing consumers with information they want to share and engage with.

3. Content marketing is through-the-line
Audio, video, text, images – all of it can be repurposed to extend the life of the content across multiple platforms.  People don’t find news anymore, news finds them. The brands that break through are the ones that strategically leverage content by serving it up to consumers where, when and how they want it.

4. Content marketing is self-propogating
A traditional PR program involves hiring a celebrity spokesperson, setting up interviews and then recording audience figures. Content marketing involves repackaging the interviews, hosting them yourself across multiple platforms, but also encouraging others to host and publish additional content based on the original.  When your content generates related, original, organic content you win.

5. Content marketing is cost-effective
You’ve already hired the spokesperson, created the event or filmed the commercial. Your sunk costs are just that, so for a relatively minimal investment, put some additional muscle behind the initiative and extend the length of the program indefinitely. Or, if you can’t afford the $600,000 broadcast commercial, put a fraction of that money towards initiating and supporting direct consumer interaction via Social Media platforms (that’s content too).

But it’s the content bit that bothers me a little. A cohesive content strategy needs to be editorially, not “content” driven so that consumers and readers will be engaged, no matter what is going on in the world, or with the brand. We hear much about viral content, particularly in the realms of social media. And, whilst very clever, it’s little more than advertising.

Think about it, what are the best ads you can remember from TV? They’re the same kind that if a link to one on YouTube popped into your inbox, you’d be inclined to pass it on. But those aren’t necessarily the ones that get the most hits. For that you can’t beat solid, exclusive, “stop press”, “we got it first” juicy editorial. Be it a news story, a first snap of a new product, or a video showing the bits the photos didn’t. And that’s just to grab people’s attention. Implementing a solid editorial strategy can bring brands and consumers closer together, be it through aggregating reviews, providing tutorials or just highlighting stuff those consumers will be interested in.

Much of what Rick says is spot on. Save for one bit. Content on it’s own won’t win the day. The editorial process that delivers that content will.

Sadly I didn’t get much further once I understood what the Blackwell Esspresso was. I am full of admiration for Blackwell as a brand, they are providing their customers with tangible, authentic reasons to re-engage with their products.

The concept of Print On Demand has been around for a while now. Its mainly been used for reproducing out of print books. Lonely planet started experimenting with this in 2008 and its a great idea. Here is why its worth it.

Posted, 17-Jul-2008 06:34, by kitamonster

“THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. This is such a great idea. I’ve taken trips before where I’ve had to tear up three different guidebooks and stuff the relavant pieces into my already over-stuffed backpack. This will save me space and money”

Lonely Planet get it. They are curating loyal customers who have become brand evangalists. The idea has gone full circle now for LP, you can now buy chapters at a time in PDF format ready to use on any digital device – Pick and Mix.

Here at Republic we believe that it isn’t enough to simply talk to your customers. You have to get out there and engage with your customers on a daily basis, on their terms, wherever and whenever that will be.

Oh and finally I think its the gadget freak inside me but I was just a tad dissapointed to find out that it didn’t actually make coffee…

Do a search on Google and you’ll end up with a load of stuff that’s unrelated to it. See, it’s a new term, or at least our definition is a new application of the term. FastCompany’s Karrie Sullivan did a post on her blog a couple of months ago, which sums up the process, but I thought it might be useful for me to define it here, too.

social media publishing, the Republic definition, combines traditional editorial principles with the latest social media tools to help brands create and engage with online communities.

For us, the foundation of any solid social media strategy requires a brand (be it one who isn’t traditionally a publisher, or like Electricpig.co.uk one that is) to have somewhere online where the conversation can begin, end or at least be hosted. This doesn’t mean brands suddenly get to own the conversation, but they can facilitate it.

We use our editorial expertise to create a destination for users (and fans of the brand) to congregate and find out what’s happening on a daily basis. At the centre of our editorial strategy sits daily updates, designed to reveal what’s new and interesting from inside the brand, and bring together what’s being said from outside the brand (on other blogs or websites). Combined, this forms a pretty compelling environment for users to come and interact with the brand.

That’s the publishing side. Getting readers to come and visit a site is challenging though, and sometimes you need to take the site to them. That’s where the social media side comes in. Solid tools such as email and RSS enable us to get content to where readers want it. Newer tools, such as Twitter, do a similar job and also provide a new and additional environment for the brand and users to interact. Video is best published (shared) on YouTube and frequently that’s also where we’ll congregate to comment on what’s being watched.

More active users of course will spend time coming to the site, typically through finding something on a search and most will actually stick around, whilst some will come back. Quite frequently.

All this adds up to enabling brands to create and engage online users, ultimately turning non-customers into customers and existing customers into enthusiasts and evangelists.

And it works, too. Not that we’re surprised, but traffic across our sites has increased by up to 300 per cent over the last three months compared with the previous quarters. Social Media Publishing isn’t a quick win, but instead is focussed on building long term value and genuine results.

Recently we’ve been trying to quantify what we do, in real terms so as to better demonstrate the return on investment for social media publishing. The results, have astounded even us. It typcially costs about £2 to get someone to visit a brand’s website through an ad campaign. That’s assuming that brand can buy advertising at £5 per thousand. With a fairly generous 2.5 people clicking through per thousand, the CPC is pretty high. Easy to explain then why more brands are putting emphasis on search, where CPC can be closer to the 20-50 pence mark. Each of these is designed to present something to a potential customer which they might deem appealing, get them to click through and then hopefully, get them to buy something.

The social media publishing model, by comparison can cost as little as 5-15 pence per visitor, per month, if measured on a CPC basis. The beauty of it being, the more people who visit, the cheaper it becomes. What’s more, these visitors don’t tend to drop by once and then move on. If they like what they see (generally they do) they’ll come back again. And again. Over time the site builds and audience (or a community) which then self perpetuates, building and growing as it goes.

We’ve had sites go from zero to 200k uniques users in six months. All the whilst, the equivalent cost on a CPC basis is dropping and the value delivered rapidly increasing. All in all, we think it’s cracking value. Seems our clients do too.