User-Input als Real-Estate von Medienhäusern!

Okay, der Fairness halber will ich in diesem Beitrag mit allzu harscher Kritik vorsichtig sein, da ich mich selbst seit gut und gerne vier Jahren mit dem so genannten Bürgerjournalismus, Social Media und den (Online-)Strategien von Printmedien auseinandersetze.
Dennoch sei folgender Hinweis gestattet – und er gibt glaube ich den Eindruck im Publikum wieder: Die Moderatorenposition der Diskussion „Der Bürger als Journalist: Geliebt oder geduldet?“ war nicht gerade ideal besetzt, aufgrund nicht weit genug reichender Themenkenntnis. Da waren doch ein paar sehr krude Behauptungen und Fragen dabei, die es unter anderem erschwerten, dass man bei der Debatte zum Thema tatsächlich mal weiterzukommen, als bei den ungezählten Diskussionen zur gleichen Thematik aus den vergangenen Jahren.
Glücklicherweise haben die beiden eigentlichen Protagonisten auf dem Panel, Katharina Borchert, Online-Chefin von DerWesten, dem Onlineportal der WAZ, und Jochen Wegner, Chefredakteur von Focus-Online weitestgehend dagegen halten können und von ihren aktuellen Erfahrungen in ihren jeweiligen Online-Communities berichtet. Deutlich wurde dabei, wie wichtig das Community-Management an beiden Standorten im täglichen redaktionellen Flow inzwischen ist, Man ist im Dialog mit der Zielgruppe – und das quasi in Realtime!
Sowohl Borchert als auch Wegner gaben sich begeistert von ihrer Community, wenngleich sie nicht leugnen, dass es auch die notorischen Dauernörgler und Trolls gibt sowie weitere Umstellungen in den redaktionallen Abläufen (Online First, Newsdesk etc.), die die Macher der Onlineangebote herausfordern. Für Jochen Wegner gehört der Input von Seiten der User inzwischen zum Real-Estate eines modernen journalistischen Internetangebots. Katharina Borchert kann das nur bestätigen. Ihre Erwartungen ob, wie und in welchem Umfang die Leser von DerWesten sich aktiv auf der Website einbringen wurden übertroffen.
In die Begeisterung mischt sich aber auch immer wieder Minifrust, eben weil bei bestimmten Themen die Diskussionen aus dem Ruder laufen. Dennoch: Zuhören was die User sagen, ernst nehmen was die Community bewegt, Moderator und Streitschlichter sein, all das gehört inzwischen zu den Aufgaben der Communitymanager in den Verlagen und das nicht 9 to 5, sondern 24/7, in realtime.
Was das für die Zukunft der Ausbildung bedeutet, wurde im Panel leider nicht behandelt, aber eines ist klar: Es geht nicht darum den „Amateur“, den User, den Leser zum „(Bürger)Journalisten“ zu „erziehen“, sondern zusammen mit den neuen Medienprosumern zu lernen, wie man gemeinsam die Zukunft der Webangebote von Medienhäusern gestaltet.

Real-Time: What’s in it for Brands? – Nils Andres

Wow! That was a quickfire presentation and a stage performance very well done by Nils Andres, founder of the Brand Science Institute (Germany).
He gave the audience some very interessting insights into the ongoing research of his institute and the (possible) future trends of brand marketing and CRM on microblogging and social broadcasting services (e.g. Twitter and JustinTV).
To give you the gist, here is what Nils had to say about what’s in for brands in the realtime market:
Possibilities:

  1. Brands can create a live online personality!
  2. Brands can re-invent their traditional customer support!
  3. Brands can generate extra sales!
  4. Low! danger of para-social group behaviour!
  5. Brands can reach especially women via microblogging and especially the young via Social Broadcasting! (based on their research)

So basically this means to give your brand a „talking face“ costumers can identify with and talk to. Hard enough, if you don’t want to show them „avatar-like TV-ad models!“ Extra sales??? Yeah, bring ‚em on! How to do that is the holy grail of course. But Nils has shared some ideas… so read on!
Challenges:

  1. Overcoming the state of being afraid of the unknown! Yes, realtime means leaving behind fallback options. Go engange the costumer, talk to them and help them out. They’ll be happy to love your little brand even more if you reply on Twitter or give them some gold nuggets via Social Boradcasting.
  2. Realtime is associated with Porn! Yeah, that’s still true somehow but it will change! Brands can change that and users of realtime services are already changing it.
  3. Realtime what? Not my Job!!! So who’s job is it?: Nils made it pretty clear that companies still have difficulties to assign the „realtime“ job to the right department. Is it PR? Is it Research? Is it Marketing? Is it Advertising?

His answer to this last challenge seemed to be kind of mixed. And he is probably right since it heaviliy depends on your brand and your company’s culture whom you would best assign the really nasty realtime job to. But don’t panic, you’ll make the right decission if follow Nils‘ „water proof“ tipps (wink!).
Here we go:
What does all that mean for Brands? What should you do?

  • Find out (if you don’t already know) if you have a strong Brand Community out there! Nils made it pretty clear that you will need backup from a networked group of brand-enthusiasts that can join your conversations online and help you out when the critics and trolls show up. In short: Your online personality needs friends!.
  • Fish where the fish is! Pretty clear what that means, huh?
  • Be at the right place at the right time! To reach your audience via microblogging and social broadcasting (especially with the latter) you need to have the right timing. E.g. Be on Justin.Tv when there is action going on. Don’t be there when the user sleeps!
  • Cooperate with brand enthuaissats! See #1
  • Dont start something that is already popular Don’t re-invent the wheel! Don’t reinvent Twitter. But be a good driver and player in the field! That seemed to be the message here.
  • Don’t seperate your fans Check out Amazon’s activities on Twitter. They don’t have one single channel but like a zillion. Although for Amazon this might be a wise decision it might not be a good one for your brands‘ realtime Twitter channel. You don’t want your online personality become a screwed shizophrenic maniac.
  • Don’t copy or extend a concept or campaign – Compliment user experience
  • Rely on Specialists – Dump Ad-agencies This is really bad news from Nils to your ad-agency. But his point is convincing: They don’t get (yet) what’s going on on microblogging and social broadcasting services. So hire one of them web-culture specialists!

Bottom line: Realtime has to seemlessly fit in with your brand (culture)! If it doesn’t fit don’t do it. It will not be a mass market as Nils pointed out at the end. So: No jumping on hyped-trains but making smart decision to get the best out of it!

Geraldine Wilson on Yahoo!’s Mobile Strategy

Geraldine Wilson, Yahoo! Mobile Strategist kicked off the content stream of next08. Yahoo! believes that within the next 10 years more people will access the web via a mobile device than by desktop computers. And thats why Yahoo! puts quite some effort into developing mobile applications, is teaming up with other players in the field to offe advertisers a growing mobile audience. Wilson predicts the quite obvious (at least to Yahoo!) when she stated that mobile devices will be the most important advertising channel in the near future.
She argued that the obstacles of creating meaningful mobile user experiences are about to disappear as flatrate pricing allows users to afford the always-on state of using the Internet. To Yahoo! mobile devices are becoming the key means of reaching users in almost any aspects of their life. As connection speeds keep increasing and usable devices are thrown on the market (Think iPhone!) that make using the Internet on the go as easy as carrying a newspaper, the future of advertising lies in the mobile worlds: Anyplace, Anytime and Always-on. It is all about the „A’s“ – did I mention Advertisements?…
Yahoo!’s current and future mobile strategy follows 5 key principles:

  1. Reach: Building reach is key to Yahoo!s strategy and they are teaming up with partners because they believe that it is not going to be one single player who will rule the mobile market! I asked myself: What about Google?
  2. Targeting: Targeting individual users with costumized and individualized content and advertisement is pretty much a commonplace here.
  3. Formats: The standardization of ad-formats and the development of new formats is another area Yahoo! is working on. I asked myself how creative do you have to be to annoy users, and how creative do you have to be to really serve the user meaningful things? No real answer here!
  4. ROI Yahoo!’s research and marketing guys are constantly working on case studies to measure the success of the company’s effort on the mobile market which directly relates to the last key principle…
  5. Metrics: Advertisers want numbers! One number is 40%! According to Wilson 40% of the targeted audience for the new Renault Twingo responded to the campaign via mobile. But what does that mean? Is it hard facts ot just flipping around with numbers?

Bottom line: The future (of advertisement) is mobile! …at least according to Yahoo! What do you think? Where is the mobile Internet and mobile ad-selling within in next 10 years?

next08-Event-Blogger: Steffen Büffel

steffen_bueffel.jpgIch bin schon mittendrin! Session 1 mit Geraldine Wilson von Yahoo! bei der next08 spricht gerade über die Mobile-Startegie von Yahoo!. Gleich gibt es dazu auch ein Posting von mir. Vorab aber noch ein paar Worte von mir zur Vorstellung.
Name: Steffen Büffel, Selbstverständnis: Social Media Experte, Pro-Blogger, Medienwissenschaftler, Digital Immigrant etc. , Blogheimat(en): media-ocean, blogpiloten und hardbloggingscientist. Im Web unterwegs mit dem Nickname mediaocean. Tagline: Totally hooked to the digital lifestyle!
Englisch version:
next08 Event-Blogger Steffen Büffel, Social Media Expert, Freelancer, Pro-Blogger, Author, Journalist,…. in short: Hooked to the digital media worlds! You can find my home-base blog at http://www.media-ocean.de but I roam around the webosphere quite a bit. I go by the name mediaocean and most services – e.g. Twitter. Follow me @mediaocean! Lats but not least: I am the co-founder of the HardBloggingScientists!