Tasha Harrison

More than any invention in the history of the world, it is the internet that has changed my life. Not just in the way that I work, communicate, gather information, shop and find my way around London, but in the way that I have been conditioned to think by the media.

The invention of the television marked the greatest change in the way that we receive information since the printing press. It changed our lifestyle, all sofas now pointed at a TV set and it dominated our entertainment. Most importantly, though, it changed the way we received news and information. It was fed to us during the news, which became 24 hour rolling news, so that we were always in contact with what was going on in the world. We were given advertising – told what to buy, where to buy it. And all of this was driven straight into our homes. The age of absorbing information was born. Imagine how many different ideas you would absorb during an evening of watching TV, almost effortlessly.

Then the internet came along and over the last ten years it has become completely integrated into our lives. I no longer watch broadcast television (except for football… obviously) but watch all programmes on demand via a PC linked up to a TV. This is also true of the news, I only watch news programmes I choose, including video clips from Al Jazeera, the BBC and others.

The main shift in the way the internet has changed my life is that it has changed my mentality towards how I receive media and information. I want to go and choose it. I don’t want to be told what to watch and when. I also have a lot more information at my disposal and it is easier for me to check what I’m told by news and advertising. Is product A really better than product B? Someone will have written a comparison online and my judgment is based on that . My trust in the original advert is undermined.

The internet has given me the freedom to choose what knowledge and ideas I have, it has eroded my trust of what traditional media like TV broadcast channels tell me. And it is this major shift in how we consume media that has made it so important for companies and organisations to increase their transparency and honesty. Finally the best product will hopefully win, rather than the one with the biggest advertising budget.

There is a huge misconception that you can make a fun video, post it on Youtube and it will be watched by millions of people, possibly even making it onto a ‘Best Youtube Videos Ever’ programme. Sadly, it is extremely difficult to create a video that actually goes viral. There are an estimated 24 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute, so it’s incredibly easy for your video to get lost.

Creating a Viral Campaign

However, it is still possible to create a viral campaign if you have a greater plan. Volkswagen have created a viral campaign called ‘The Fun Theory’. Run in Sweden, the campaign sought to prove that you can change people’s behaviour by making things fun. It then invited people to submit their own ideas as part of a competition. The competition took place at the end of last year, but today I stumbled across one of the videos on Youtube, using StumbleUpon (a social bookmarking site).

Below is the video I stumbled:

I came across the campaign by accident, which is the result of a viral campaign. This campaign was paid for by a large business. They put money into the videos, they built a site and, no doubt, spent a great deal of money on advertising. This gave the campaign the impetus to become viral, it was given a huge shove in the right direction.

It also doesn’t seek to explicitly sell cars, it appears to be done simply for the sake of doing something fun. It associates ‘fun’ with ‘Volkswagen’. This is a very effective brand building campaign!

When measuring the success of your Tweeting it is important not to simply count the number of followers you have. You need to think about how many potential people are within your network.

For example, let’s imagine you have 200 followers. 2 of those followers retweet your link to their 200 followers. Suddenly you have reached a potential 600 people.

1. Build a relationship with your customers

   If you walk into a shop and the shopkeeper sits you down, makes you a nice cup of tea and discusses exactly what product is best for you, you are more likely to return. By speaking with your fans and not just at them you can create the same warm fuzzy feeling.

2. Customer services

   There are instances where people may talk about your brand, make a complaint or be unable to sort out a problem through the normal channels. You can monitor social media sites and reply to these people. They may reveal problems you didn’t know where there.

3. Your fans can become your brand champions

   They share your content, they suggest your Facebook page to their friends, they promote your Twitter account through #followfriday. They do the hard work for you.

4. Show your brand’s personality

   What sort of person is your brand? What music do they listen to? What do they wear? This can all be communicated through talking and sharing stuff with your fans and followers.

5. Be consistent

   The way you speak to your fans across all your social media sites should be the same, your fans will expect you to act in a particular way.

6. Create guidelines for your staff

   If more than one person is writing your content, you need to make clear to them how they should conduct themselves and what they can and can’t talk about.

There’s big changes on Google today. The search engine is going to include results from sites such as Twitter and from blogs. This is important, because it means that the search results we receive will be up to date news, as it happens. The explosion of  Twitter, in particular, has been the main catalyst for this change. It gives people the ability to publish news as it is happening. It is important that Google reflects this new real-time news source (Rupert Murdoch should take notice).

The other big change is the increased personalisation of your search. Google records your web history and bases its search results on the sites that you visit. So if you regularly visit a particular news site, it will place that site higher up the search rankings if it is relevant to your search. This is a big game changer for SEO, since it favours more established sites. It also means that when you view your own site on Google you will generally see it ranking differently than most of your potential customers, meaning that you have no idea how well your site is actually ranking.

Most good SEOs will have seen this trend already and will have been aware that personalisation has been increasing over the last couple of years. It provides us with a new challenge and increases the need for different forms of online marketing, like social media and online PR. It also creates a problem for SEO companies who still guarantee positions on Google, as they will find it hard to prove.

From a users point of view I actually think these changes are rather limiting. Surely the point of search engines is that we can find something new. Before the days of social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, we relied on search engines to bring us new sites and information. Now we will increasingly receive the same sites, having to look further through the results to find something new.