Oxford
University is using podcasts to help market itself to potential
students and also share ‘lectures’ across
a range of departments and subjects
The Ecological Society
of America is producing three types of podcasts -
In the latest edition of “Field Talk” the ESA talks to Dr. Rory Wilson, professor
of aquatic biology at Swansea University about why some birds have opted out of flying.
He talks about his paper published in the November issue of Ecological Monographs
which…’examines the Galápagos cormorant, an aquatic bird that hunts seafloor prey
off the coasts of the islands where it makes its home. Wilson and his colleagues
find that the peculiar conditions on and around the islands has led to the loss of
flight in these cormorants, a trade-off that gives these birds better diving ability.’
(Source: ESA web site)
The NHS is the UK’s biggest employer. The South Central Region which stretches
from Milton Keynes and Banbury in the north to the Isle of White in the south has
almost 90,000 staff and a budget of over £5 billion. That is a lot of staff to
communicate with.
The ‘customer’ base is over 4 million. How did they serve their customers in 2007?
From the 24 NHS trust organisations in the region they provided the following
customer services:
The NHS is changing. Organisationally and culturally. They are becoming more open.
Engaging in dialogue with their ‘customers’ - patients. But change takes time. In
the case of the NHS communicating with patients and prospective patients as well
as almost 90,000 employees working 365/24 hours takes time and effort and so they
have to use every communication tool available.
Tonight the Focus team are again video recording a ‘town hall’ style debate on a proposed
change to health policy. Gone are the days when a decision was was made by unknown
people and the public were simply told after the event if at all. The public
debate has pro-change and anti-change supporters on the same panel and the publics
response and feedback will be taken into account. NHS staff who could not attend personally
as welll as members of the public will be able to watch the video recording of the
event. Whilst not streamed live it will be online within a day or two so maximising
the outreach communication programmes.
Like many of you outside of the USA you have probably never heard of this product
but it could become a Harvard Business Case study in the near future and not because
the brand is owned by J&J.
It is a story of an marketing campaign running for a while before getting picked
up negatively online and then within a short time (48 hours or so) having suffered
a ‘firestorm’ of negativity being pulled by the brands owners. For an excellent summary
of the situation see AdAge
Digitals coverage. For a UK PR professionals perspective see Neville
Hobson’s blog post. Also check out the AP
newswire summary of the situation.
As an ex-Corporate Communications Director for a Fortune 500 global corporation I
can only shudder at how I think we could have coped in a similar situation. In my
days (10 years ago - I know - a lifetime in digital terms!) we would have had
time - maybe weeks - to react. That would have been enough time to make a careful
decision, get our resources lined up and our story straight and have cleared it with
internal and external legal experts and have the accountants look at the financial
implications. That is a lot of ’stakeholders’. The bigger the company the larger
the group to be communicated with.
Leaving aside specific issues on what happened and why in this case what it shows
is that when it comes to online reputation the old ‘guidebook’ has to rewritten. Where
I would have had days to get a response ready a few years ago there is maybe now only
hours. This means some form of pre-prepared response or ‘fast track’ process needs
to be in place. It also means companies (and their PR and marketing advisors) have
to be using tools like Radian6 to
be constantly monitoring online communities, Forums and blogs to see if unexpected
or negative comments are developing and analyse why. This may just be enough time
to react as long as long as the preparation and planning has been done before.
Full marks to Motrin for being so fast as they have pulled the advert and apologised…
on their company web site.
The Maritime
and Coastguard Agency is one of our podcasting and web video clients.
Over the last couple of months we have produced a number of programmes for them.
We did a quick lifejacket education programme on a DVD for use at the Southampton
Boat Show in September. We then created an online podcast version of it so they could
use that for further outreach communication. We then edited a BBC programme
to create a short education film on the work of the MCA in the Dover Straits
(policing the shipping lanes) and on practicing rescue missions in the Scottish Highlands.
We have also just produced part 1 of a 2 part programme on the MCA’s work on
monitoring and inspecting dangerous goods entering Dover.
One of the challenges anyone faces in trying to engage with networked communities
is finding what exists, who the participants are and who is the most influential people?
Tools and techniques that can help in that task are most welcome. We recently interviewed Matthew
Brazil, CEO and
Founder of 6Consulting,
a London based agency specialising in Social Media Monitoring and an authorised sales
agent for Radian6 in the UK.
Radian6 has
been gaining a reputation in North America and now the UK as one of those ‘must consider’
companies when it comes to tools to measure and track social media networks and their
participants.
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Nice to hear that a UK company wins a global award. Step forward Wiggly
Wigglers and their MD - Heather Gorringe.
Dell awarded
Wiggly Wigglers their Global Dell Small Business Excellence Award. The reason Wiggly
Wigglers won….in Dell’s own words….
Wiggly Wigglers, a rural England-based natural gardening company, was awarded
by Dell and its global partners for its innovation and leadership in social media.
Using tools like Facebook, podcasting and blogging, Wiggly Wigglers:
If you want to hear from Heather about her use of podcasting |
Want to know where your future customers will be and how to target them
most cost effectively? Check out this research by Nielsen
Online. (Source: e-marketer)
Without doubt over the next few years we will have new terms emerging talking about
‘loose and tight networks’ and ’spheres of influence’. What do I mean by that? Online
friendship is not as tight as ‘face-to-face’ friendship but on the other hand for
many things it is good enough. Some advice on a place to visit, a hotel to stay in
or a restuarant to eat in? Why not use your social network or special communities
of reviewers to give you objective (subjective?) data and feedback? For this
type of purchase decision the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ can be a good source of
data. Want to make a special purchase like a car or the choose a location for the
best holiday in the world and you many want ‘tight network’ or ‘face-to-face’ input.
Todays generation of teenagers are totally plugged into the multiple layers of social
networking. Just like when we went to school when there were groups of people who
interacted across multiple classes as well as sports and after school activities so
it is with online communities. The only difference is the scope and the use of technology
to keep in touch. I have lost touch with many people I went to school and college
with but todays youth will have contact books many levels deep as they can and do
keep in touch with people through their ever expanding network of contacts. Now what
will their sources of influence be?
For marketing and PR people it is important we understand just how these online networks
and communities are developing and the impact they will have on future purchasing
behaviour. The only way to really understand is to participate. Whenever I hear that
a company is banning the use of social networks or say they are a waste of time I
wonder just how well they understand the future consumer!
community marketing;Market research;Nielsen Online;social networking;Wisdom of the crowds
Its been a couple of weeks since my last post. Rather manic at the studio with projects
for the NHS, a local ambulance trust, the Fire Service College, the Health Protection
Agency and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. A mix of audio and video work.
So what has happened with the webinar that we did for EUFIC on
November 5th?
We had just over 300 people listening in live on the day but it is what has happened
since that is proved amazing. Since then the total number of listeners has reached
just a handful short of 6000! You can check it out here.
As you can imagine this has driven the cost per listener even lower that 70p. Taking
into account the cost of the second event (the earlier one was on 24th Septerber)
and that we did two webinars on 5th - one for the media and one for other people -
the cost per user is now below 60p.
To be honest what was achieved could not have been done in any other way for
anything close to the budget. Trying to mail out and get 6000 responses
would have meant a 120k mailer (using 5% response rates). Using a cost of £1 per mailer
the project cost would have been about £20 a response. A seminar programme would
have been logistically impossible as we have had visitors from over 30 countries
but assuming we could do a multi-country seminar programme of say 20 locations
with 300 people at each we would have been talking about £50 per person to cover room
hire, presentation equipment hire and refreshments etc. We would still have needed
to get all the speakers travelling and I would guess even now two weeks after the
event we would at best be only half way into the grand tour! (Having spent a while
on the road doing these sort of tours I know how hard they can be on the
people and that you need a break of a day between each event so a 20 location tour
would take about 1.5 months to complete - a massive investment of management time
and resource). For the EUFIC webinar we had the presenters in their office and
linked to the studio in Southampton so it was really easy to reach an audience globally
without the travel costs and time associated. Half a day of their time is all it took
not including preparation time.
What we have found that has been really interesting is the social networking done
by listeners. When one person attends a physical conference a few people back at the
office may get a debrief and to look at the delegate papers but the ‘pass-on’ effect
is usually low. What seems to be happening with the webinar is that those who listened
in have e-mailed workmates with the link and then told us that is what they
have done or asked us directly if it is OK to do so! (Err…yes!) Some of those that
missed the live session also mailed us asking for a link to the recording. Obviously
if it was a real seminar anyone who missed the date would have missed it completely.
Not so with a webinar. Months after the event it is still ‘live’ for each and
every new listener. Looking at some of our podcast and webvideeo for other clients
many are still going strong thanks to Word of Mouth/Mouse marketing months and in
some cases years after the event.
It is just over a week to go until the next EUFIC
webinar on their pan-European research project into consumer behaviour
and use of nutritional information on food labels.
So what has been the results so far? They have had almost 300 people register to listen
on the 5th November.
The results of the September webinar have
been amazing. As mentioned in an earlier post the ‘listen again’ using the recording
of the live event has been listened to over 2600 times in just over a month. Considering
we only had a specially invited audience of about 50 the post-broadcast version has
been taken up fast, far and wide.
We are hoping with more people registering an interest the numbers listening after
the event will be even higher.
Looking at budgets it means that cost per listener is now just over 70p. On some earlier
podcast the cost has fallen to under the cost of a second class postage stamp. A great
ROI.