Drew B's take on tech PR

Radian6 bought by Salesforce.com. PR and CRM's collision accelerates

As a customer of Radian6, I just received an email bearing some fantastic news. Radian6 has just announced that it will be acquired by Salesforce.com.

These are my first thoughts on the news as it explodes through the twittersphere.

For full disclosure, I am a customer of Radian6 and a number of other media / web monitoring systems, and at 33 Digital we also build our own to do the things that Radian6 et al cannot. I also used to work for Salesforce.com (agency-side). So my views on this news are coloured by the above.

I think this news is marvellous and will tilt the social media landscape in a very interesting direction.

Why? Organisations of all shapes and sizes want to know what is being said about them. My background as a PR man led me to this place I'm in now where a lot of what my teams do is help our clients understand what's being said, how and when, how to talk in a way that engages and connects in tomorrow's environment and both the technicalities and the strategic thinking that is needed to do the right thing. PR was one of the first if not *the* first department to see the media environment change, to listen and to engage.

Now, social media is not just PR, as we all know. PR plays with CRM, sales and marketing, design and build, HR and everything else.

So Radian6 being part of a world-class megabrand in the CRM / sales and marketing space has turned up the speed setting on this evolution we're seeing. I'm excited to be here and part of it and can't wait to see how the market responds.

The future all star - systems thinkers and the pyramid team

Reading a post this week by Steve Rubel got me thinking about the future of the PR agency as I feel we're on the same wave length on this issue of skills and the future shape of comms and digital consultancy. His column in Ad Age titled 'Wanted: a few good generalists' talks about how senior advisory is of most value when the advisor has general experience across a range of comms disciplines. 

In my day-to-day work I've been feeling exactly like this. To advise on or to carry out work on a digital and social media project is increasingly now a technical or operational duty. There are easy bits to it (for some, for example, posting on to Twitter of Facebook is easy). There are technical bits to it (you could say design and build work in social networks is more technical). But then shaping how all digital and comms activity fits into the bigger picture of the business, this also requires a very broad range of experiences. Helping to decide where to commit efforts, channelling creativity, connecting the various comms disciplined which must be integrated and interlinked - this is what is crucial to today's campaigns. 

Steve rounds off his article with a call to action for more 'systems thinking' as opposed to guru behaviour. 

I see a more complex future for the corporate communications professional. At the top of a pyramid will be the systems thinker - the few good generalists, or the specialists in everything - who have a broad range of skills and experiences, and social and digital media will need to feature strongly in their skill set. Lower down the pyramid will be the operators - skilled managers with specialisms, all diverse in their roles and experiences. Then the foundations of the pyramid will be a large number of technical specialists. A good team will have a balance of skills and personnel from each level, and I think the all star team will have the perfect balance from top to bottom. 

 

My new test in social search: the #AskFoursquare experiment

As you will no doubt have seen, Foursquare took location based social networks to another level this week. 

First it announced a deal with American Express where you earn points on your Amex card for Foursquare check-ins. Then it announced a new function in Foursquare, called Explore. 

Explore is HUGE for social networking. This is social search in action. 

Instead of your social network being a stream of updates, Foursquare Explore turns your search for anything into a window into your friends' or local area's word of mouth buzz. 

For example, from my office, I open up Foursquare Explore, and it tells me the coffee shops, restaurants, shops and so on that have reviews, tips and specials based on my social graph. (It says that Brill is very close and that is does a mean flat white, and that Spinach and Agushi has amazing Ghanaian curry with hot sauce). 

So here's my experiment

I am going to test out social search in my pocket until I can break it. I am going to spend the next week only going to places I find in my social graph. And whenever I want to look for somewhere to go, I won't go to a search engine. I'll use Foursquare. 

I'll update this blog post with my experiences, starting this Friday. And follow me on Twitter where I will be tweeting with the hashtag #AskFoursquare.

Wish me luck. 

Footnote: 

I have done some experiments like this in the past: I spent a week using Twitter and Facebook instead of Google, a week letting Twitter make all my decisions, and a week Whitewalling. So at least I'm learning from my mistakes. 

Foursquare is about to go... Bananatown

A few weeks ago I was running a social media training day for a company and one of the delegates remarked that I hadn't mentioned Foursquare. It struck me that the once hot location-based social networking service was now neither new, nor mainstream. And as such it didn't fit into the training plan. 

This week I think all that is about to change. 

Foursquare is about to turn two years old, and judging by the murmurings from some of the staff over at Foursquare HQ, they are planning a big round of announcements starting later today. 

Only this weekend Foursquare announced that it had secured a new tie-up with American Express, allowing people checking-in on Foursquare to earn Amex points that can be redeemed in the real world (not just for the place you checked-in at, or for a digital badge or 'mayorship'). 

Earning rewards for online advocacy and custom isn't rocket-science, but services like Foursquare are making this a reality. There's no reason why Nectar points, Tesco cards, or other reward schemes should not be plugged into the social graph. And if location-based social networking continues to mature, I think that not too far into the future we will see checking-in being a more widely-accepted activity, and rewards a more widely-offered perk for doing so. 

Watch out tonight for news from Foursquare. As they would say: it will be Bananatown. (not sure why, but that's the word they like)