Ryan MacMillan

In response to the demands of planning and evaluating social media campaigns we’ve developed a framework for managing this. KUDOS is an acronym that reminds us of what attributes a piece of social media activity should display if it is to be successful. It should be Knowledgeable, Useful, Desirable, Open and Sharable. And it needs to achieve this for both the audience and the brand. By using this framework a brand will be able to plan so that it deploys the right activity. It can check and balance the needs of both brand and audience. It can also establish what it is going to measure so that it can assess the success or otherwise of the activity.

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PR professionals are being bombarded daily with pitches for template social media release (SMR) services, often by the same companies - PR Newswire, Businesswire, et al - who distribute traditional press releases to the media. 

Perhaps as a result of this, we’re increasingly seeing social media releases used instead of traditional press releases.  This isn’t necessarily all to the good, and we thought it might therefore be helpful to look beyond some of the hype and offer a little guidance as to when, where and how these two very different communications tools should be used.

To some extent, our mantra of doing new things in a traditional way applies to the release of news into the social media space. To increase its popularity, a social media release should be concise, compelling, and composed with creativity and an eye for perfection before it’s furnished with social media tools.

Yet press releases and social media releases have different objectives and audiences, and therefore need to be approached in slightly different ways.

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Several recent posts on this blog have criticised the (lack of) social media creativity in UK politics. Many comparisons have been made between ours and the slick US online political campaigns. Turn now, if you will, to the liberal land of the Danes for how to really do it well.

Danish PM, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is, apparently, the European Champion of Facebook, whatever that means. He certainly has a few supporters on his Facebook Page - 14,330 as I type this post. He gets on Facebook, he engages in dialogue with his fans, in person; and they love him for it. So what does a modern politician do with that kind of support? Take a hundred of them out for a jog in public, of course.

That is PR platinum right there - spot on. And you know what, he probably even enjoyed it too.

Is it just me or is there a lot of talk these days about Quick Response codes? QR codes have been a huge success in Japan, not so elsewhere but that may be about to change. As handset technology improves we may see an increase in the use of inbuilt barcode scanners and their reappearance could be a boon for marketers looking for new ways to drive traffic to sites.

Google, stumbled first time around with the barcode scanning device CueCat which was given away with participating newspapers and magazines allowing readers to scan codes in the publications. Google have renewed their interest in the technology and are teaming up with the home shopping network QVC to take another crack at it.

QR code developers look to Japan for what’s possible, since almost every one of the 100 million mobile phone users have a handset with the technology built in. This means no need for any software downloads, or separate devices, as has been the case in other markets. Almost everyone knows what they are and how to use them especially the youth market meaning that the codes have become an integral part of ad campaigns.

One problem with the codes though is that they are fairly dull things to look at and advertisers haven’t made much of an effort to differentiate their codes from each other. Enter Carl van Wijk and the team at QR-It a small startup in Tokyo. Carl’s creative background was at odds with the bland black and white dots and so he decided to experiment with them. The results speak for themselves. Carl has cleverly blended the QR code with the ad, making it part of the story. One code made for an album release featured the hundreds of the band members heads instead of black and white dots. Another used basketballs to make up the code, while a series for a creative agency in Tokyo featured a menagerie of animals each with a code camouflaged on their body. This summer they will be working with companies to use codes at music festivals and outdoor settings using projections of codes onto buildings and a QR code that will be made up of people and shot from the roof of a nearby building.

I am not usually one for predictions but if I were, I’d say we are seeing the start of a QR revolution that will have a myriad of applications, particularly in the social mediascape. (and yes, the white heads in front of Darth Vader are stormtroopers!)

The internet was founded by geeks who wanted to share ideas and data with each other. Though nobody foresaw the size of the internet’s success, the conception of what is now the largest resource in history was an act of social behaviour. The internet was never branded, there was no business plan, and I don’t believe that such a mighty phenomenon would have evolved from any less selfless behaviour than it did. However, we’re not all computer scientists and many of us would not have had access to the web without the creation of easy-to-use tools such as browsers and search engines.

While packaged, usable technologies can open the door for the masses to engage with the internet, it is easy become ignorant of the greater possibilities presented by more customisable, fuzzier systems like open source developer platforms. Last week, Oxford and Harvard professor, Jonathan Zittrain was quoted in the BBC warning us to avoid this ignorance and fight to maintain what he calls generative technologies. Just at look at what Lego did when their Mindstorms product was hacked by techies and redeveloped to perform new, unplanned functions: Lego didn’t sue the hackers, they employed them.

I see this dichotomy as existing within social media activities too. We are great advocates of openness here, in fact it’s the “O” in our KUDOS acronym. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for slick, accessible tools, if they provide the time- and expertise-poor masses with new services. It all depends on who your audiences are and whether they are likely to adapt and collaborate on your tools or just want a quick fix.