MRMStrategy

Social media ROI: how you can demonstrate the value to your business

Michael Taggart — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:08:19 +0000

Michael Taggart, MRM’s head of social and digital, recently gave a talk to financial services businesses about how they could identify and report the return on investment (R.O.I.) of their social media programmes to their businesses.

Here are the slides. For a free consultation on this topic, please email Michael at michael.taggart@mrm-london.com or tweet him (@michael_taggart).

If you’d like to watch the film presentation in film, click here

Social media ROI (part 3/3)

Michael Taggart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:13:29 +0000

This is the third and final part of our series on social media return on investment (R.O.I.).

Click here for part one and here for part two.

Social media ROI (part 2/3)

Michael Taggart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:07:33 +0000

This is Part 2/3 of our series on social media R.O.I. (return on investment) by MRM’s head of digital and social, Michael Taggart.

Click here for part one and here for part three.

Social media ROI (part 1/3)

Michael Taggart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:58:19 +0000

How do you demonstrate the financial benefits of social media to your boss; the so-called return on investment?

MRM’s head of digital and social Michael Taggart gave a talk on how to identify the R.O.I of social media at the recent MRM Breakfast Briefing.

Below is the first of three parts.

Click here for part two and here for part three.

Chaos reigns at the cathedral

Michael Taggart — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:13:30 +0000

The #OccupyLSX protest camp at, erm, St Paul's Cathedral

By Michael Taggart, head of digital and social (here on Twitter)

With its polished website and ‘media centre’, Occupy London Stock Exchange had clearly hoped for a slick PR operation from the off.

Yet there was something farcical about the spectacle of dozens of nearly new tents crammed in front of St Paul’s Cathedral, that historic symbol of, well, nothing relevant to the demonstration.

It must have been obvious even to the foreign TV news audiences that #occupylsx refers to the London Stock Exchange. As a result, the images being beamed around the world scream out “we didn’t quite make it!”.

Then there are the reports of protesters wandering merrily in and out of the local Starbucks; hardly an obvious sponsor of the struggle against globalisation.

Little wonder that Twitter is alive with mischievous speculation about whether the “Tarquins and Cressidas” are against capitalism – “or is it whale hunting today?”.

But if the protesters’ manifesto lacks clarity, it looks like the Gettysburg Address in comparison to the position of their reluctant hosts.

The Dean of St Paul’s has come across as a suspicious father meeting his teenage daughter’s much older boyfriend for the first time; hoping to appear reasonable and relaxed while looking like he was praying for divine intervention.

This culminated in a bizarre, rambling statement on the cathedral’s website yesterday that read like a stream of consciousness and had bemused news editors arguing openly on Twitter about what it meant.

“Is it now time for the protest camp to leave?” the Dean mused, seemingly unsure. “The consequences of a decision to close St Paul’s cannot be taken lightly”.

Frankly, it’s all straight out of the Ratner’s PR Manual.

Michael Taggart is head of digital and social at MRM – follow him here on Twitter.

Why you should allow people to criticise you on your own blog

Michael Taggart — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:48:13 +0000

Negative comments on your blog can seem unwelcome

There comes a point soon after any organisation begins corporate blogging when they find themselves asking this difficult question:

“Should we publish that comment someone just left that criticises us?”

Happily, the decision should not be difficult – because the answer is always the same.

As long as the remarks are not beyond the pale (i.e. not sweary, untruthful, defamatory or unlawful in some other way), then – yes – you must publish them.

This should be a cold business decision and there are five key business reasons to allow the comment:

Traffic: Comments of any kind – negative or positive – encourage participation, sharing and referencing on social networks, which increases traffic to your site.
SEO: Every new comment is actually an update to your site, leading to more authority in the eyes of Google. Also, the more comments left by other bloggers, the more likely they will link to your blog from their own sites, meaning more inbound links, another thing Google likes.
Credibility: Allowing dissent from your own corporate view will convey an air of confidence in your arguments and belief in your brand. It will speak of an organisation that wants its beliefs tested until they are solid. It will lend an atmosphere of genuine debate to your site, hopefully making it a go-to resource for people with all sorts of different views.
Research/business intelligence: Through criticism, you get to understand what the key misconceptions about – and valid challenges to – your opinions are so you understand what you could be doing better or how you could be arguing your case more effectively. Don’t forget that for every negative view expressed on your site, there could be 10 or even 100 people who had the same issue without you even realising it. Your response to the seemingly unhelpful commenter could actually be a response to dozens of people who felt exactly the same but weren’t telling you.
Content strategy: The comments section, especially the comments that disagree with you, will help hone the content on the blog by informing ideas for future blog topics, videos and podcasts. They are also another good gauge of how well the content is being received and what sort of content is working best (beyond traffic figures).

What about you? Are there any other compelling reasons to publish criticism of your brand on your corporate blog? Or do you think there’s ever a time to refuse to publish a blog comment?

(pic: Angry by JelleS)

The unsociable FSA’s Dr Pepper moment

MRM Team — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:03:57 +0000

The Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) latest guidance (this link downloads a PDF of the guidance, by the way) on the application of social web tools by regulated businesses was issued a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, I was given the chance to offer my view as part of BrightTalk’s Thought Leadership Live programme.

In The unsociable FSA’s Dr Pepper moment webcast, I explain why I think the FSA’s stance is counter-inuitive to its statutory objectives and principles, why the application of social tools can increase confidence in the market and improve consumer protection, and suggest three principles by which regulated businesses might consider adopting in their approach to the use of social media.

Thought Leadership Live webcast: How to build a brand these days

MRM Team — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:56:33 +0000

I was really pleased to be invited to present my slide-deck called ‘How to build a brand these days’ as a live webcast yesterday as part of BrightTalk’s Thought Leadership Live programme.

The presentation – which is roughly half presentation and half question and answer session – lasted approximately 45 minutes and is now available to view on demand.

Unless you already have, you’ll need to register with Thought Leadership Live or BrightTalk to view the full presentation.

To view it, just click here.

Nestle, Facebook and why brand marketers need to wise up

MRM Team — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:36:51 +0000

Right now, Nestle’s brand reputation among Facebook users is at dire risk of self-imploding.

You can take a look at Nestle’s Facebook Page itself to see the tone of the exchanges, but Nestle’s stance illustrates an issue that brand marketers more generally need to understand: In an age of the social web, who on earth suggested that your brand was your brand anymore?

When AOL rebranded last year, Wolff Olins‘s work on the AOL logo was getting a no-nonsense pasting at the Guardian’s PDA Digital Content blog on the comments board beneath a post detailing designer reaction to the new look.

The mindset displayed then by most commentators on AOL’s logo is precisely the mindset that Nestle are displaying at its Facebook page.

So I waded in with my view. And it is my advice today to brand marketers who are under the illusion that they have any control over their brand or its identity any more. Here’s what I posted:

“If I understand AOL’s CEO correctly, this isn’t a brand visual identity that’s designed for the linear world of the mass media model that we’ve all grown up with, it’s designed to underline the provenance of content distributed by this brand in a messy, fragmented, user-centred world.

Very soon branded content will compete with branded content to build equity from consumer pass-alongs; we’ll no longer be operating in a polite brand sits alongside brand mass-media modelled world where adherence to visual identity guidelines is sacrosanct.

Wolff Olins clearly understand this. And they also understand that brand identity, particularly for digital businesses, is secondary to the creation of distinctive signature brand interaction design

This is where AOL appears to be focusing its attention – interaction and service – and, judging from the comments on this board, it seems they’re right to do so.

I think this piece of work has the potential to deliver a really adaptable hallmark brand. Its success will be determined by the quality of its application and in tandem with products and services that really work well for users. That is where its brand reputation will be built and not built on what it looks like.

The idea that brands – even today – have any control over their visual identity once it passes beyond the boundaries of their own business environment, is naive. So the loose association between the imagery and the text really works well to mitigate the risks of damage to the ‘Aol.’ brand name which, in reality, doesn’t even need a prescriptive typeface.

I think it has the potential to be a powerful adaptive brand but only if the ambition of the idea is matched by the ambition of Wolff Olins’s client.”

Wolff Olins’ approach resonates with my increasingly acute sense that – pretty much – everything we’ve understood about marketing communications’ conventions is now being rapidly and unceremoniously tipped on its head.

It’s what led me to create this presentation last week. And why we posted this at MRM’s website just about two weeks ago.

What’s motivating people like Tim Armstrong is behaviour elsewhere in his marketplace like this.

Our latest work: A cool way to show clients what Cofunds is and how it helps

MRM Team — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:26:05 +0000

Here’s some work that’s just been completed for Cofunds. It’s an animation that independent financial advisers (IFAs) and financial planners can share with clients to explain how its technology has transformed the way in which people can save for post-work life.

To bring the idea to life we worked collaboratively with design consultancy, Bond and Coyne, who took the narrative and translated it into this infomatic-style animation.

We hope you like it.