The Ethical Issues of Social Media

In Daryl's guest lecture, we looked at the fall in traditional media such as newspapers, which actually links in with my work from Loyalty Marketing. Firms are now providing news online, and I read a statistic that stated 75% of the UK access news from online sources. Mintel boasts statistics that show the Guardian online, as of January 2009, have over 30 million different users per month, a 59.4% increase from March 08.


Daryl pressed home what I already knew, that Facebook is a very effective tool in driving sales of products, but could also be a platform for the development of ideas, largely via a crowdsourcing scheme. He mentioned that media is turning digital and I couldn't agree more, with 3G available on an ever increasing scale, it makes sense for national dailies to expand into the digital environment or fear getting left behind. Further highlighted was that, not only are traditional media "going online", but older people are also getting into social media and more technologically adept. Digital buzz blog's figures that prove this belief that older generations are increasingly becoming part of Social Media are shown in the figure below.

The best way for companies to learn how to utilise Social Media sites, seems to be to have a play around with them in an almost trial and error approach. One way that was attempted was Astroturfing, which could be used on social media to fake grassroots campaigns that create the impression that large numbers of people are demanding or opposing particular policies. (1. Monibot, 2011) Tobacco companies have a long history of creating these campaigns to fight attempts to regulate them, and the anonymity is an area that companies can utilise to create these campaigns, so regulation to ensure Astroturfing is not occurring, is required.


Companies need to listen to online forums and social media sites to become aware of areas that need addressing, engaging with the audience allows substantial feedback to be acquired. Transparency however, is key, being upfront and informing consumers of your intentions so the consumer knows who they are talking to and to what end.


The privacy of Social Media is constantly under scrutiny, as one of my previous blogs outlined. It is thought nowadays that a persons web shadow is becoming increasingly important, and this actually led to me changing my privacy settings to ensure only friends can see my Facebook profile. I did this because "Half of employers reject a potential worker after look at Facebook page" (2. The Telegraph, 2010). The question is though, is this ethical? 

A company such as Nike can use social media such as their Twitter and Facebook pages to communicate with their target markets, and utilise the availability of dataveillance. This is the "systematic monitoring of people's actions or communications through the application of information technology" (3. Clarke, 2003). This allows them to monitor what consumers are looking at, liking and becoming fans of, then this enables them to provide more relevant and specific marketing communications with potential customers. In my mind, as long as the interaction between the company and the consumer is not too intrusive, (constant messages getting in the way) I don't believe that it is unethical. 


With reference to employers, I put it to you, if you could find out more about a potential employee than the CV originally indicates , which supposedly puts them in as good a light as possible, why would you not? It is not unethical to utilise the avenues available unto you, and I have recently learnt that journalists are asked in interviews these days on their Social Media searching capabilities, so this is indeed a very real practice. I have used this quote before, but due to its relevance here specifically, i felt i should include this Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) quote “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." 


Social Media involves sharing information about oneself on the web which then is free for all to see, if consumers do not wish to have this information used by marketers, it is their prerogative to regulate their own behaviour. Brands need to protect users privacy within the regulations in which they operate, but beyond this i feel that ethically speaking, marketers aren't doing a whole lot wrong utilising these dataveillance methods. These marketing methods are going to become more and more the norm as traditional media fades, and the likes of TV adverts, thanks to availability of modes such as Sky Plus, become less effective. The key is to remain as unintrusive as possible, and these targeted ways of communicating will benefit marketers providing the do just that.


References:
1,  Moniton, G., 2011. The need to protect the internet from "astroturfing" grows ever more urgent. The Guardian. 23rd February. Available from:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing [Accessed on 24th March 2011]


2. The Telegraph, 2010. Half of employers "reject potential worker after look at Facebook page". The Telegraph. 11th January. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6968320/Half-of-employers-reject-potential-worker-after-look-at-Facebook-page.html [Accessed on: 25th March 2011]


3. Clarke, R., 2003. Dataveillance 15 years on. Available from: http://www.anu.edu.au/ people/Roger.Clarke/DV/DVNZ03.html [Accessed on: 25th March 2011]

The Public Sphere in Marketing

Before even attempting to put this concept into the field of marketing, i must first get my head around it's meaning. The public sphere, as far as I understand is where the discussion of public affairs takes place and is conducted by supposedly "elite people". The lecture outlined that the media acts as a public sphere for common society and the likes of Rupert Murdoch could, to a certain degree, control this sphere.


With digital divides decreasing, and the potentially anonymous freedom of Facebook, Twitter and Blogs, spaces of discourse provide an arena for a more representative public sphere than the elitist form. The underlying theme I received from the lecture is that the ideas from online forums are judged more on merit than the standings of the speaker. People utilise online services such as rating eBay sellers or their recent stay in a Premier Inn to help those around them. Complaining about poor service (click the link to read a very comical one), is not done for the sheer fun of it, but because the facility is so easy to use and they are informing the general public of their experiences. This availability of course means that increasingly more attention to detail is needed to prevent customers starting a slippery slope of bad word-of-mouth but Coca Cola have handled this problem in the wrong way.


I listened to a very intriguing podcast from The Economist on how to counter act bad word-of-mouth,which is easy to announce on the global stage thanks to new media availability. Coca-Cola have a web page dedicated to address rumours about themselves and try to refute them. The economist, and more specifically Derek Rucker and David Dubois of the Kellogg School of Management, believe that by restarting the rumours coke are propagating them. Coke then, instead of trying to deny these rumours should counter by ensuring the positive steps they are taking, such as reducing carbon emissions, are circulating also. The anonymity of blogs and web 2.0 can be utilised by companies for self promotion, of course steering clear of Astroturfing.


It was also very interesting, yet perhaps not too unexpected, to learn in the lecture that the BNP had the largest forum during the last election, as it is an opportunity for people to express there racist and extreme views anonymously, or as i like to call it cowardly. 


Erickson and Lilleker (2010) believe that "the internet, and in particular the architecture of participation central to web 2.0 media technologies, has exacerbated the chaotic nature of the communication environment" (pp1). This led to them implementing a more diverse communications programme for Ed Balls in the last election that utilised new social media. This is a method that i suspect we will see increasing in the near future, companies utilising these sites for communication. I have already spoken in previous blogs about companies Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, but the ability to self promote via these sites can be utilised further. IBM have a blogging system, whereby their employees post their views on the companies in  blog form, which are easy for all to view. This not only promotes the flat hierarchical structure of IBM but gives them an opportunity to gain feedback from employees and questions from the public. 


These strategies I feel will be incorporated more and more by corporations to stay in touch with the public sphere, and perhaps exploit crowdsourcing for discussion and progression with product concepts.


References:
Erikson, K., Lilleker, D., 2010. Campaign Websites and Hypermedia Campaigning: Lessons from the Ed Balls Labour Leadership Campaign, Parliamentary Affairs.  Available from: https://sites.google.com/site/dlilleker/files/Campaignwebsitesandhypermediacampaigning.doc?attredirects=0&d=1 [Accessed on 24th March 2011]

Challenges of Promotions the Whole world can see

Promoting on the internet, why should Marketers do it?

Connected Kingdom provide statistics that show the internet has contributing more and more to the UK's GDP (7.2%/£100 billion in 2009), and 60 % of the internet economy is driven by consumption, which is becoming ever easier. They also suggest that by 2015, the internet will provide 10% of the UK's GDP. Along with this comes the growing knowledge that with technology increasing at an exponential rate, the internet will continue to be a significant part of consumers lives. 

There is a challenge here already for companies to think of, as The Guardian recently reported that the internet has run out of space, there are no new internet addresses available, as almost 4 billion have been used up since it's creation 40 years ago. This will lead to the implementation of new systems being installed in the next 12 to 18 months, which means a company looking to launch a website will have to be aware of the changing of Internet protocol versions (IP's) and ensure they are using the newest IPv6 type. Charles Arthur and Josh Halliday wrote "This could mean that in a year's time you may hear about a new site – yet when you type its address into a web browser or click a link to it on a web page, your computer simply won't connect to it because it will use an addressing system entirely different to the one used before."(2011).

The key for a company promoting on the internet is to establish trust with the consumer and to develop a good reputation. In this digitally communicative world, the speed of transactions is increasing and desire is easier to satisfy. Janice mentioned in our lecture that desire is cyclical, i.e. excitement leads to desire leads to excitement and so on and so forth. With the internet providing a platform for faster, easier consumption, this cyclical system is accelerated, so for an aspiring company, there is a need to offer diverse products that satisfy many different needs, not unlike that of Ebay, which provides a way to tangibalize desires.

There is, and probably always will be, a debate surrounding the degree of privacy that is lost due to the advancement of the internet. An aspiring company would need to be aware of the various laws that are in place to ensure that a certain amount of privacy is sustained.

It is assumed that companies will keep individuals information private, but the data protection act, as Connor pointed out in our lecture, is not necessarily geared towards absolute privacy with ambiguous terms such as adequate, necessary and not excessive. This provides a certain degree of leeway for a company, and Alex Krotoski believes that privacy rights are effectively lost by utilising the free services of the internet. The information a consumer gives is a virtual currency and how they "pay" for the services they are using. 

Customer data is pivotal for a marketing strategy to be effective and the information that consumers gives allow the promotional objectives of companies to be accomplished. I have spoken before on the way in which companies utilise personal data on Facebook to provide relevant adverts on one's profile page. This has changed in recent years as Facebook has grown and the ability to utilize personal data increases, as the two charts below indicate.

The blue area shows the level of personal data that is available for Facebook (provided by Matt Mckeon.com, and subsequently enables the personalized advertising techniques they implement.

To conclude, a company looking to promote a product on the internet will face challenges, as previously explained, but the rewards to be gained largely exceed the costs. Furthermore, whilst privacy is an issue that needs to be looked at, the plethora of information consumers provide, enables marketers to target consumers specifically with products the consumer may actually want, as opposed to random, generalized promoting. In my eyes, there will always be ways for companies to find information out about a consumer once it is on the world wide web, if there is information that a consumer does not want to be known, then they should not be putting it on the internet. I agree with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and leave you with a quote from him, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place".

References:

Arthur, C., Halliday, J., 2011. Internet almost out of space with allocation of last addresses. The Guardian. 1st February. Available from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/01/internet-last-addresses-ipv4-ipv6 [Accessed on: 11th February 2011]

Adding words and Analysing, Google's way forward

I have decided to try and apply Google Adwords and Analytics to a local sports store to where I live, called Sports locker, who I feel could really benefit from search engine optimization (SEO)


Google Adwords is Google's main advertising product and source of revenue, which conor's lecture showed an overall revenue of $29.3 billion, 97% of which ($28.2 billion) came courtesy of advertising revenues. This works by a company creating ads and choosing keywords, which are words or phrases related to their business. When searches on Google are made using one of the aforementioned keywords, the ad can appear next to the search results. This ensures advertising is made toward an audience already interested in the companies products.


Sports Locker, is not a phrase that will frequently be put into a search engine, so to utilise the Adwords capabilities, I would recommend a phrase match keyword option with "sports surrey" as the Phrase match word. This way the ads should show in searches such as "sports in surrey", "Sports store surrey" and "Surrey sports shop".


Due to the specificity of this search term, the ad will appear in more relevant searches and provide more significant return on investment, as the graph below demonstrates, it is more long tailed phrases which generate more specific responses.

Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. With this information, you can improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web.  


Sports Locker can benefit from utilising Google Analytics as it allows them to track which pages are generating the most traffic and which adverts are performing the best. The reports available from Google Analytics provide information that will enable Sports Locker to enhance consumers online experiences and find areas that need to be improved.


On another note, Google has recently changed its search algorithm, because people have created web pages to match search terms (Google Adwords) when you go to them, and when they are selected they are just full of ads irrelevant rubbish, it is in effect web spam.


There are content farms on th internet who produce lots of content then sell advertising against it. An example would be Demand Media, who look at what people search for on Google and Twitter and what terms are trending etc. Following this, they write articles that satisfy these searches, Demand Media actually employ 5/6000 journalists that write the specific content and key words for them to attract the web searches, and then sell ads again when the consumer is on their page.


Google are trying to get rid of these content farms by changing their algorithms and trying to ensure that the search engine is still run in a fair way, whereby the top sites are there on a popularity basis as they have the most hits. (The Economist, 2011)


References: 
Babbage, A 3D sensation. The Economist. 2011, Podcast, iTunes. 2011 March 02