There are different disciplines of social media. Broadly they can be broken down into - Listening, Talking, Supporting and  Innovating. I think all organizations can (and should) do the  listening piece,  if for nothing else than as a planning tool for future activity or simply seeing what is being said about them, their competitors and their industry –basic research.

However, maybe the time actually isn’t right for your organization to start ENGAGING. The social media echo chamber is noisy at the moment and some companies have done their brand more harm than good by getting into it when they shouldn’t have. So, even though it may seem that every man and his dog is now ‘doing’ social media, if any of the following sound familiar then maybe your business isn’t quite ready to jump on the engagement bandwagon.

1. You don’t have the resources

Plain and simple, if you don’t have the money, the time or the man power to dedicate to social communications then you won’t be able to execute it properly. In spite of what you may have heard, social media isn’t free. It takes the same level of resource as any other marketing or communications initiative and so you need to find budget from other areas of the business that maybe aren’t performing, you need to include social in staff’s job role’s or hire the skills you need and you need to put in the ‘hard yards’ in terms of time. There are real, financial benefits from implementing social programs into your organization, but it won’t happen by magic and doing anything ‘half arsed’ is going to fail in the long run.

2. Your customers aren’t using social media

I know its hard to imagine that anyone in the known World isn’t on social media but, while the numbers seem impressive, the fact is not everyone is! You need to do the research before any program to determine if your customers are using social technologies and if so, which ones. You can throw up a Facebook fan page, create a Twitter account, jump on Foursquare and upload videos to your YouTube channel until the cows come home, but if your customers aren’t there then it’s a waste of time. Fish where the fish are, otherwise you are just creating noise.

3. You have no idea why you are doing it!

As with any marketing and communications program, you need a clear strategy and execution plan. Going through the planning stage will help determine whether social is going to be effective for your business, will make sure your business objectives are aligned with the activity and help determine what measurement metrics need to be applied. If you luck out and manage to create a thriving, engaged community by simply creating an account and ‘joining the conversation’ (I am hating that phrase a lot as well!) then …High 5, but you are in the minority! Some sports brands, celebs, fashion labels etc might, might be able to pull it off but I would advise spending the time doing the planning.

4. Your staff aren’t trained how to use social communications

Unless you are planning on outsourcing all the engagement (which I highly advise against and could actually be another point all of its own) then your staff are going to be on the front line, talking with your current and future customers…so they better be ready! There are countless social media shockers to draw upon where the underlying reason for the ‘fail’ is lack of training and understanding of how to use the technology or the rules of engagement in a given community. You wouldn’t let an untrained intern lead your marketing programs, so don’t let them do so with social. There is a world of difference between using Facebook, LinkedIn or a blog for personal use and running a successful social program for a business.

5. You’re not seeing this as a long term initiative

If you are from a marketing or advertising background, then you will be comfortable with campaigns. Campaigns are planned, executed, measured and then they end. Social is a continuum. It’s an ongoing process of interaction with your customers (or at least it should be). If you manage to create a community around your brand, product or industry then you need to keep fuelling it to get to the real gold nuggets of business intelligence and advocacy, the last thing you want to do is lose contact with the people who can help sustain and innovate your business with you.

What have I missed? What other reasons are there for a business to not start engaging with their customers through social media? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

This is a Guest Post by Chris Hughes. Chris is Head of PR and Communications at Sine Qua Non and has extensive experience in the motorsport arena. You can follow him on Twitter @chrishughespr .

There is an increasingly common misconception about ‘social media’. It is a phenomenon that is still rather loosely interpreted and with sufficient uncertainty surrounding its true meaning to warrant the need by some firms to segregate it into a separate box within its annual marketing and PR plans.

This has led to an influx in recent years of specialist digital PR firms, experts and social media strategists, all of whom are – quite legitimately – finding new business with brands or companies who are not truly au fait with all that social media entails. But sometimes even the most expert of experts cannot fully capitalise on the various social media opportunities that arise hour by hour, day by day.

In Formula 1 circles, there has been a notable increase in the use of Twitter as a communications platform this year, which has been a huge step forward in bringing Formula 1 fans closer to the action on track and behind the scenes. This revolution has been sparked by the need for journalists to satiate the immense hunger of the F1 fanbase who are always after the next morsel by laying claim to the next big story or the most insightful backstage feature.

It has also been helped in no small part by the openness of the new teams and their drivers who have embraced social media unreservedly. While the new teams have adopted social media as their communications tool of choice, it is unlikely that they have a specific strategy on how it should or should not be used. And that is no bad thing. In my own experience of social media, the moment you start to stifle it is the moment you start to go wrong. With anything as open and engaging as, say, Twitter, there comes an unwritten invitation for the public to criticise, to deride and to attack the brand, but in equal measure there is the opportunity to praise, commend and – most importantly – recommend.  Ah, yes, the power of an endorsement.

An excellent example of an organic social media success story in recent weeks was with the tongue-in-cheek GrandPrixDiary.com and German race driver Timo Glock. Below is a brief background to the story and how Glock’s team Virgin Racing used an out-of-the-blue social media opportunity to bolster its own reputation online. GrandPrixDiary looks at the world of F1 from a very sarcastic viewpoint. Its founder has made no qualms about the site’s sincerity, but instead offers a light-hearted and comical look at Formula 1.

When Virgin Racing driver Timo Glock started to use Twitter, there was an overwhelming culinary feel to his content. From a quick coffee to lunch in the motorhome to dinner in a restaurant, Timo would always tweet a photo. GrandPrixDiary pounced on the subject and quickly developed a column called Ready, Steady, Glock! (for those not familiar with the TV show Ready, Steady, Cook! its premise was to challenge chefs to cook a meal from an unknown bag of ingredients in under 20 minutes).

The column reproduced Timo’s Twitter images and presented them as if from his own German recipe book. Cue meals such as ‘Pizza mit der ham und mushrooms und olives’ to ‘Double chocolate cake mit Ice Cream’. After the Turkish GP, GrandPrixDiary challenged Timo (via Twitter) to participate in F1’s first ever online cookery show, Ready Steady Glock, offering Twitter followers the chance to submit recipes for Timo and his girlfriend Isabella to cook during the weekend.

Succumbing to a barrage of online pressure, Timo agreed. In fact from here on in, it was Timo’s own enthusiasm for the challenge that really propelled it forwards. The winning recipe was selected and announced on Twitter through the @grandprixdiary page, as well as through @realtimoglock, with suitable fanfare, and thus the shopping trip was set.

The winning entry, submitted by Kathryn Bird, was Marinated Chicken with Virgin Olive Oil followed by Timo’s Truffle Chocolate Puddings. Timo promised to tweet photos of the shopping trip as well as images from the cooking challenge itself, which he duly did. Credit also to @VirginRacing who recognised the growing stature of this online competition and agreed to supply a prize to the competition winner. The team has agreed to cook the winning recipe in its hospitality area for team members and guests at the weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

As Rob Sinfield of GrandPrixDiary.com explains: “Ready, Steady, Glock! would not have happened were it not for a combination of Virgin’s laid back style and Timo Glock’s now obvious sense of humour. We never set out to be cruel but we do like to prick the precious F1 bubble. So, referring to Glock as ‘the 5th best German in F1′ and then writing the cookery column in an ‘Allo ‘Allo style could have easily offended him but once he got into the idea it was he that drove it. The photo diary of the day is hilarious, he even decorated the fridge.

Once Virgin saw the fans response they too embraced it. The feedback I have had about Glock has been immense; he has scored a hit here. Now he has turned the tables, organising his own competition via Facebook where I have to cook a meal of HIS choosing with the winning recipe provider getting the cap he wears at the Canadian Grand Prix. A whole lot of fun has been had by all.

F1 must encourage this sort of participation with its fan base.” The outcome has been a hit for all concerned: – The GrandPrixDiary site has a heightened profile with endorsement from Timo Glock and Virgin Racing – Timo Glock has engaged directly with a website who were portraying him in a comical light and turned potentially negative comments into a massive positive – Virgin Racing has used an impromptu social media competition between one of its drivers and a Formula 1 fanbase to derive positives for its team – Formula 1 fans have been able to gain a closer connection to both team and driver via a social media portal and to have a bit of a laugh along the way.

So it doesn’t always need a carefully honed social media strategy to enhance a brand’s reputation online. Sometimes, it just takes a sense of humour and a willingness to engage socially.

Each day, more and more sports teams, organizations and athletes are launching social media programs, joining social networks and starting to jump on the social media bandwagon. The reasons are obvious – Their fans have shifted their media habits towards social platforms over official websites and want greater interaction with their team. The social tools allow a greater level of interaction and richer user experience and there is measurable commercial value to be realized by being active.

However, just setting up a Facebook Fan Page or Twitter account without an understanding of the rules of social engagement can result in missed opportunities or worse, the alienation and general pissing off of the people you want to engage with. So with that in mind, here are five, broad, best practices to kick things off.

1. Don’t be scared!

The main barrier seems to be a fear that getting into social media will open up a wave of regular and uncalled for criticism by the fans. In the same way that the fans vent, with furious anger, each time the team loses down the pub, on the forums and phone ins, this will now happen tenfold on Facebook or Twitter. Truth is, it probably will…for a while! Your fans love your team, so when they lose they aren’t rational but most of them are doing it because they care, with all their body parts they care and this should be embraced. Sure, there are the ones who will be unnecessarily negative, but with the correct engagement plan, they can be minimised and your social channel can become a valuable area to engage. Alongside the abuse will be valid points on how to improve the service at the game, the outlets in the ground and the customer service.

A clever dude (Aristotle) once said – “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” If you aren’t involved in these conversations, it doesn’t mean they won’t be happening. You can’t control the community anymore but you can manage, learn and use the insights from it. Plus, it won’t all be negative!

2. Dedicate the resources.

Social isn’t as expensive as other media in terms of creation…but the cost is in the time your staff have to dedicate to do it properly. There really isn’t any hiding from this. You will get out what you put in and the more of your staff (and that includes the players) that you can get interacting with the customers in a way that is valuable to them…then the returns can be exponential. Hire a £20,000 per year intern and you will get what you pay for. In the same way that most of your staff have email and a telephone, social can become another communication tool for them to provide a better service to the fans.

3. Do your research

You know your customers (or you should do!) and what they want based on historical research. You need to do the same in social. This means spending time in the communities that already exist and listening to what works, what doesn’t, who’s influential, what media they like to consume. There is also software (free and paid) which can help with this and will give you a full picture of the type of tactics and the tools you need to be successful when you start to engage.

4. Integrate social with your other channels

Social isn’t a silver bullet. It needs to work in conjunction with your other media channels, online and offline. Your website is your official online home and will still be the place to convert sales and to make official statements but the conversations, UGC  and interaction will happen off site (for now). Make sure your social presences are designed properly, the content is engaging and integrates with the official site and that there are clear calls to action on your other marketing materials and programs.

5. View the engagement as your marketing and customer service

Your fans (or customers) are already active on the social web on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs or the multitude of forums and unofficial fan sites. By engaging with them on these platforms and your own official channels in the correct way, you can turbo charge your marketing, customer service and research programs. The fans are talking and exchanging opinions and ideas about your brand on a regular basis whether you are there or not. You can use these channels as a cost effective way to listen, learn and engage with them.

“Of all the amazing new technologies that are opening up possibilities to communicate and connect in the digital space, video is the one that holds the most promise” (Valeria Maltoni – Conversation Agent)

Human beings are visual creatures and the experiences we get from seeing someone or something is far deeper than reading text or hearing audio. The good news, is social media and the web in general is becoming more video friendly. It is easy to make videos, easy to upload them to sites with potentially millions of viewers and easy for those people to share them. With the search engines and advertisers now more interested in engagement levels and time and depth of a site visit, it is a bit of no brainer for media owners and brands to not harness this.

You hear online video and you think YouTube, and why not? There are over 400m people per month watching between 6-9 million channels! Impressive. Also, we have the social networks who have their own video upload platforms and streaming sites such as Ustream or JustinTV. A recent, and very interesting entrant is Vpype. I saw them in action at SMWF on Monday and think this has some real legs from a fan engagement perspective.

This is truly social video . Sure, you can watch a video on YouTube and comment on it or watch a live event or broadcast on Ustream (even with some nice social chat features running alongside) but the ability to run a live, unscripted, ‘meeting’ or ‘party’ with your friends or fans is a far more engaging and authentic proposition.

Features include:

-          Live chat alongside each video

-          Chat History and storage

-          Viral tools to promote broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter

Bring out the Celebrities

I think the real winners in this will be celebrities or brands who have a community of advocates such as bands, fashion designers and especially sports teams and athletes. The ability to provide an experience such as Vpype to fans, embedded into a platform where they are already investing a huge amount of their online time is one that they should be seriously looking at.

Too many media owners are still thinking they need to use this type of golden content as a way to drive traffic to their ‘official websites’ or require a two page registration form before you can access this good stuff. You don’t need to put your audience or fans in a headlock before giving them what they want! The tools are available to provide remarkable experiences outside of official sites and it will be interesting to see who starts putting some stakes in the ground and experimenting.

Would love to hear you thoughts…and Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Sports teams and athletes are at an enormous advantage to corporate or consumer brands. They have a huge amount of content, they have an exisiting, passionate offline community who want their rpoduct. On top of that, sports fans are one of the most brand loyal groups of people I can think of and sport itself is inherently social. It brings people together around the game itself, in bars and pubs, in people’s homes…and online can help augment the game experience by bringing the fans into the inner workings of the clubs on a daily basis.

A sports team’s product isn’t just the game each week that the fans will pay to come and watch and broadcasters will pay to distribute. Fans want interaction with the team and players and not through the traditional methods of the press and staged TV interviews. In the UK, Football is going through a rough time financially and we may see more clubs going the same way Portsmouth and Crystal Palace have recently -  into administration. I am not saying for a minute that a social media program will solve these structural problems, far from it, but it can keep the fans,  from feeling like the clubs don’t care about them and keep them coming through the turnstyles or buying their favourite players shirt – wanting to stay loyal, wanting to be brand advocates. Long term, that’s surely the game.

A team’s ‘customers’ want to be as close as they possibly can to the club and the players…this is in stark contrast to consumer brands. If you sell mobile phones, insurance or detergent, do your customers really want to be your friend? They will take any freebies or decent offers but its no small ask to keep them engaged on a regular basis and enjoying every bit of content, they just aren’t that interested. Not so in sport.

So, what can a club or team do to harness this opportunity?

Make sure you have a ‘fan engagement’ strategy – This is different to an online marketing and PR strategy. It needs to provide an experience the fans can’t get through traditional channels.

Have at least one community where conversations can take place – An interactive area of the clubs website,  An official Facebook fan page, a private social network. Be active and conversational here, don’t treat it as another PR vehicle.

Think what ‘exclusive’ content you can reward your fans or members with. There is boat loads of this! Exclusive footage from training, locker room interviews (within reason!), injury news from the physios, community projects….

Bring the fans into the fold. Consider empowering the fans, if you check your Facebook groups and forums I bet there are plenty of unofficial communities already thriving – harness that. Why not create Fan reporters, team tweeters, a fan zone that has some clout with the club. In Spain, Barcelona are ‘owned’ by the fans…other teams would do well to adopt a similar mindset.

Consider what Mobile can offer. Mobile is going to be big for entertainment – The devices are getting better and the teams already have a glut of content which can be distributed to people’s pockets. Think, what can we get to the fans via mobile? Arsenal and Chelsea both have iphone applications at around the £2.99 mark which is a good start. Sure they are the big fish, but the same will be true for clubs of all sizes, just on a different scale…the same principles apply.

Another key difference is that sports fans will pay for this type of content and level of interaction. Not huge amounts, as some fans will testify that it is expensive enough supporting their team but this is a question of value rather than pounds or dollars. Anything that provides a level of joy and touches the tribal part of our brains, a few quid here and there to make me feel it’s MY club is fine by me.

New Revenue

I think clubs have genuine untapped revenue streams here, not only through online advertising, sponsorship and merchandise sales but in streaming and distributing their games and content to much, much bigger audience than they currently do through TV broadcasting contracts. For the clubs with international audiences (especially Asia and Africa who have a lot of growth in terms of intenet access ahead of them), if and when the devices and connectivity improve, they can have millions more people watch their games and additional content and pay micro payments for the privilege. We aren’t there yet but it is coming.

Youtube have begun streaming live sports events.  We have seen England football matches being streamed live, admittedly not very well yet but that is to do with the devices and the connectivity, Virgin are trailing 100mb broadband, Conservatives have said they will make high speed connectivity priority if they win the election this year, smart phone penetration is on the up…and that is just for the games, what about news, updates, promoting community and charity work?

Players

For the athletes and players there is also the opportunity to build a huge amount of brand equity. This can be used a positive platform for a media career, raise awareness for good causes they are involved with, create a more authentic and trusted voice for the individual than old school press releases. Some are doing it well, (more in the US but we are seeing signs of it this side of the pond). Chad Ochocinco has his OCNN channel, Shaq has been a Twitter exponent for a few years now. Having the players active on these channels does come with its own set of potential pitfalls, but ignoring the new communication channels and opportunities isn’t going to make them go away. The clubs, agents and athlete’s representatives need to find a balance where the players can be treated like adults and decide the type of relationship they want with their fans…they may need them after they retire!

Organisations, brands and sports clubs are all in the same boat with needing to be more trusted and that takes time and comes with authenticity and engagement. Its all people to people communications, after all!

Update: A good example of exactly what I was talking about is Manchester City. Read this excellent post by Ash Read covering similar lines of thought.

Friday has come around again (rather too quickly this week in our opinion) so below are some of the stories from around the blogosphere which caught our eye. We did six last week…so let’s stick with that for the moment!

Social Media’s True Impact on Haiti, China, and the World– Ben Parr at Mashable – The devastating earthquake in Haiti has continued to dominate mainstream and social media this week. In this post, Ben looks at the continuing role of social in fundraising and how the real time information streams have impacted recent world events.

Toward a Definition of Engagement – KD Paine – Engagement and the hunt for definitions and metrics is all the rage at the moment. Here, Katie offers a six-point scale of engagement from the unengaged (0) to the addicted (5) and then 35 different signs which can point to an engaged user. I like the notion of measuring passion, feelings and love of a product or brand as by digging deeper into comments and posts, we can start to glean real insights rather than merely an interaction. Some big thinking, as always.

The Real Cost of Social Media – Danny Brown – What? Social media isn’t free?! Who’d have thought! A good post shining a light on the fact that even in the planning stage, this stuff costs money. From man hours, to creative build to measurement, there are (quite significant) costs along the way. Danny puts forward some ‘worst case’ scenarios…so don’t freak out but its important to address an often overlooked topic.

World’s Most Valuable Soccer Team Doesn’t Get Social Media – Nick O’Neill at social times. One of my favourite stories this week…and not in a good way. Man Utd have announced that NONE of their stars maintain a social network profiles, so don’t bother looking for Wayne Rooney or Ryan Giggs on Twitter or Facebook. I think this is a huge own goal (sorry!) in terms of fan engagement. They are the biggest team in the world with fans on every continent crying out to be brought nearer to the club and the players. Yes there are pitfalls of letting players speak freely but surely, if managed correctly, the benefits can out-weigh them.

Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder – Josh Bernoff – Forrester Research introduced the Social Technographics ladder a couple of years ago, profiling the types of user behavior online from creators to inactives. They have added conversationalists to include those who tweet or update Facebook at least once a week…and there is a lot of them, 33%. A good update.

Wiring In Social Media Measurement – Amber Naslund – A nice post on how businesses need to start internally calibrating to be able to measure social media programs. Many companies don’t measure their current activities so finding the meaningful nuggets in social media is almost impossible. Some useful tips on how to start and set up measurement infrastructure.

Have a good weekend guys and girls!