Clues from #smwf 2010 and Socrates to a winning digital strategy !

Clearly, everyone has a different approach to strategy when it comes to digital and they’re more or less innovative. I like simple.

Here are the main six points I gathered one must fully comprehend and take into account when building a strategy.
Because yes — again: as reported in my earlier post about Top 5 trending and hot topics at #smwf 2010 , there is no point in launching into a social media / digital campaign if you have no strategy. So… aside from those recommendations mentioned in the Top 5 trending and hot topics post, here are the #smwf gems for digital strategy:

To kick this off, I particularly like this quote from Muhammad Karim, Mars’ Senior Brand Manager: “If you have a crap idea, Social Media is NOT going to help you”. You are forewarned.

- Set a goal vs “launch a campaign”. Before anything else, have a goal or set one, as the copycat “me too” effect just won’t get you anywhere – NO NO

- Take it seriously and allocate proper resources, both in terms of staff and budget, to grow the community and your capacity to interact effectively. You have to start listening before starting to talk with your people and engaging them: it IS a full-time job.
Just yesterday, I was talking a Public Affairs-Digital honcho (somewhere) at Fleishman-Hillard and he told me that for the moment, his colleagues were taking on the social media interaction as “an extension of their full-time jobs”. Well, if you intend to make a great digital impact, please help them help you. You can outsource a lot of that to dedicated professionals — I’m one with full bilingual capacity but there’s a few of us out there, just ask !

- Because of the reasons mentioned above, involve your top management, those you have inking power. Make sure they understand what is social media and more precisely what you do with social media so as to unlock proper budgets and resources — invest.

- Boost and regulate internal participation, get your co-workers, and why not, hierarchy, to fully participate.
Once you’ve educated (sorry, I just can’t stand the word “evangelize”) them, ensure that internal guidelines are always up to date and clear – because you can’t constantly control everyone. And “Control is so 20th century” said Paul Charles, COO of Lewis PR.

- Ask (yourself) the right questions when building your strategy:
. specifically “who” vs “how many” as regards building a community
. set measurable indicators for your success: when will you be happy and consider that your strategy has achieved success ?

- Last but not least: Talk to vs talk at – nothing new there but always worth emphasizing

Take it from Trevor Johnson, the head of strategy and planning (EMEA) at Facebook:
. Make it simple
. Keep it simple
. Don’t think in campaigns or silos but develop a conversational calendar
. Think differently – let go of what you think you know.

“All I know is that I know nothing” — Socrates said. If you can think that way, you’re way ahead of the game… so just let go.
Now you know why I picked this title !

Do you have tips you’d like to share too ? Post them here !

Think you’re ready ? I suggest you read this first to be sure to be sure… Top 10 reasons why your company is NOT ready for social media

Top 5 trending and hot topics at #smwf 2010

Content at the Social Media World Forum (#smwf) 2010 was mostly articulated around strategy applied to various objectives and environments (government, politics, PR, crisis communication, etc). From this stem my three trending topics.
A few nuggets however also made their way to the surface: those are “hot topics”.

Three trending topics:
- Strategy: what it is, how to draw one, what to look for when devising one, asking the right questions.
A tip from Muhammad Karim, Senior Brand Manager for Mars: DON’T launch into or try anything if you don’t have a strategy. Sounds obvious but apparently it’s not unusual that people launch into “campaigns” without having built a clear roadmap.

- Metrics: surprise, surprise — NOT (…) ! Measuring your impact. Keywords: ROI, results, brand. Luckily we were spared the awful “conversion rate”, which, apparently took front stage at SXSW (South By South West, held in Austin, Texas).
I noticed a certain schizophrenia on the part of the speakers who kept on oscillating between “how many” and “who” — quantitative vs qualitative.
Within the metrics issue lays the question of the measuring tools. The question was debated on and off-stage: free applications vs professional apps.
—> here’s another tip from Muhammad Karim : the difference is that you gain time on the long term with professional apps

- Facebook came up in 95% of conversations, on and off stage. Big buzz. There were also dedicated Facebook 101 workshops, called “Facebook Developers Garage” (Why garage, by the way ? Can someone tell me ? ). But where was LinkedIn ? The biggest buzz deficit I noticed was there. Although they had sent top representatives, it was hardly mentioned in official talks or lobby chats. On the other hand, the Viadeo representatives were very much there and very actively networking.

Two hot topics:
- Geotagging is the next big thing. It has great revenue-generating potential through its cross use on multiple platforms. Geotagging enables 1) to provide the user with information regarding services existing in his/her direct, immediate environment at any given time and 2) to provide tailor-made offers and suggestions to users locally as well as worldwide.
—> guess what ? Facebook is ready to launch its app. Get ready ! Yes, this raises the issue of privacy, indeed. But it’s another debate altogether.

- Virtual gaming: it is a growth market, with the U.S. representing a mere 1/5th of the size of the Chinese market. Currently, Asia is the sector leader. [thank you, Nichola Stott for the figures as I hadn't attended that session].
For Muhammad Karim, the Social Gaming Market will be the biggest gaming market in the world in five years.
And according to Trevor Johnson, Facebook’s Head of Strategy and Planning, EMEA, virtual branded gifts are really big, especially with the virtual economy being valued at 10 billion usd in 2010.

There’s a controversy that makes me smile and I want to share it with you to wrap this up: it’s about Zynga’s Farmville game on Facebook.

Facebook's Trevor Johnson talks about Zynga's Farmville at the Social Media World Forum 2010

About 1% of the world population plays Farmville. Trevor Johnson said that even real-life farmers enjoy playing it. Yes, it’s truly addictive, and I have no shame to testify myself, after having declined offers to play for a year, I’m now hooked. So the debate is a matter of “addictive” vs “I’m worried for the human race”.

… So what’s *your* take on it ?

Bloggers’ de-light: top misses at the Social Media World Forum

This year’s was the second edition of the event, the Social Media World Forum, aka #smwf. SixDegrees, who organizes it, did a good job of buzzing it through the roof. They proudly – and rightly so – reported a record 4000+ participants, more than doubling the first edition’s attendance.

H O W E V E R …

With success comes challenge and with commitment should come delivery. There were a few misses there, and especially regarding bloggers. The light went out on some of us… de-light.

A really friendly crew from PicturePerfectTV came to interview me on the morning of the first day and all I did was rant about the lack of organization and the bloggers’ plight. The short reel was released today, no wonder they cut me out of it !
The journalist seemed to be genuinely sorry for us (hello Andrew Psarianos!) but a ranting French person was not exactly the sexiest ad SixDegs could have dreamt of.

Therefore, I’ve decided to give this a positive and dynamic spin by listing suggestions for improvement instead of just ranting…

- When recording over 4000 pre-registrations, make sure to devote the right staff and enough staff to the actual registration on the opening day.
Because making people line up for over 30 minutes for registration on the Monday AM is NOT a good first impression.
Failing to provide proper guidance as to the line bloggers should stand in (general or media? Some of us went one way and the others went the other way) can be interpreted as a lack of interest. Just like when you build a community, if you fail to respond in an appropriate and timely manner, the people/users leave your group.

- When offering specific, differentiated participants categories, it’s always better to stick to those and deliver on the promises made to the various demographics
Because not delivering on official commitment to provide bloggers with red/white bracelet that would give “comfort” privileges (as in food and refreshments or ability to participate to the evening shindig party) is yet AGAIN a good cause for discontent.
Bloggers are business-minded people, you know. Just do NOT propose and commit to something that you cannot deliver on, it’s really bad for your reputation.

- When bloggers are promised a “bloggers’ lounge”, they sure expect more than a tiny space with a dozen bean bags, 3 tables (4 bags per table) and afew plugs. This doesn’t really go down well, especially when we all know that the number of bloggers will easily surpass that 12 big cushions lot.

- The quality of the speakers line up was uneven and the general feeling was that of disappointment: very little new content and quite a lot of pure theory that can easily be found in books (see Petra Semantia’s post).

Basically, what I’m saying is that there is a reason why you invite bloggers to attend your event. But for the partnership to be mutually beneficial, you need to cut through the noise to have bloggers hear your voice as they’re already snowed under by brands and companies willing to have good press. You have to be different and stick out.
But first and foremost, all you really need to do is show you care… The basics are the same as those of Social Media: talk to us vs talk at us.
To read more on this topic, see also Josh Chandler’s post.

Wait, it’s not all negative ! Read on …

Social Media World Forum kicks off ! What to look out for…

 Social Media World Forum kicks off in London in a few hours from now.

So, yes, I’m in London, staying with my friend Laura D. (thanks a lot for letting me crash !), ready for what promises to be a big day, regardless of the quality of the forum — which is what a lot of attendees are waiting to see: real added value or just a fluke ?
And aside from that first question, the program is indeed so vast that the ambition to just check every single thing is either an insane illusion or utter madness.

On my part, I’ve decided to focus on the Social Media section, including a) the exhibition to check for the latest developments just entering or about to hit the market; b) the conferences, c) the workshops where I’m hoping to learn a thing or two as well… and d) the networking shindig tomorrow evening ! When I say Social Media, I mean specifically as related to public relations, marketing and advertising.

Within those topics, I’ll be looking at social media “good” from a business perspective as in how it can be integrated as part of an overall business strategy rather than remain a stand alone, for non-profit activity.

Just a quick example: look at Mozilla. The latest version of its web browser is called “Namoroka” (pronounce “Namuruk”) after the name of a region in Madagascar (hence why I know how it should be pronounced: I’m partly from Madagascar and was actually born there. Yes, I do speak Malagasy). Mozilla actually supports the preservation of that area. But now, I’d like to know how this articulates itself into the bigger company picture and its business. So that’s one of the angles that I’m willing to explore.
How does it help the Namoroka national park to be associated in name to Mozilla ? What (and how) does Mozilla harness its web power to help that part of the world ?

Looking at design as integrated into Social Media will also be a focal point for me. I’m yet to define how I’d like to see that.

Anyway, here’s an update on the open list I launched on Twitter for those who are either just interested or coming to the Social Media World Forum today and tomorrow  here in London: I’m happy to count 98 people on the #smwf open list

To add yourself, simply follow the list at: http://ow.ly/1gOaz or http://twitter.com/merrybubbles/smwf. And please RT !

Again … if this post sounds cryptic to some of you, I strongly recommend you join Twitter altogether and start using it for pleasure, work, or information purposes. There’s a lot out there to benefit from, I promise.

See you later for the forum itself.

Social Media World Forum: join the open list on Twitter !

A note to those of you who are either just interested or are coming to the Social Media World Forum in London, March 15-16th.
I’ve created an open list on Twitter, just add yourself by following it at: http://ow.ly/1gOaz or http://twitter.com/merrybubbles/smwf

Join the crowd of like-minded Tweeps !

There’s a bunch of us so you should be pretty well covered in case you’re not coming. It looks like the hastag will be #smwf.

Please RT !

… and if this post sounds cryptic to some of you, I strongly recommend you join Twitter altogether and start using it for pleasure, work, or information purposes. There’s a lot out there to benefit from, I promise.