The Chameleon Net blog

Enhancing Student Experience via Twitter

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:27:42 GMT

In the city of San Francisco, "citizens can send direct messages 24 hours a day to the sf311 Twitter account to report standard non-emergency city-related sightings (like pot holes), request street cleanings, and any other service already supported by the phone or website." This was reported by the Mashable article San Francisco First City to Instate City-Wide 311 Twitter Program.

It goes on to say: "Of course the real beauty of enabling 311 support through Twitter is that residents can now have the convenience of sending in their requests on their terms, include photos, relevant links, and do so while on the go."

If a whole city can offer this service to enhance the experience for citizens, what are the possibilities for enhancing the student experience on a university campus?

Potential notifications include:

lifts not working
computer room out of operation
security gates rusty and need oiling
high-demand library books not available
paths and rooms requiring cleaning
lecturers inaccessible
issues regarding transport into university - e.g. extending what University of Bath did on Twitter when the snow in Feb 2009 had a big impact on transport in Bath.

Could you think of other non-emergency issues that students could report? Add your thoughts in the comments below.

Using notifications received from students and academic staff, the university's student relations and administration teams could raise the issue with the relevant parties to get it resolved, and report back to the person who sent through the notification. Where appropriate, messages could be tweeted and blog posts published to inform many more people about developments.

A service like this set up at the university could have a major impact, not only on how it serves current students and academic staff, but also on prospective students who take the university's online reputation into account when considering their university choices.

Afterall, the lines between student relations and public relations is blurring, and a disgruntled student being transformed into a content or happy student has a direct impact on way the institution is perceived on the web and therefore on student intake.

The Chameleon Net strategy-oriented technology trends seminar covers some of the latest mobile and web technologies including geo-tagging & geo-location. Other topics covered include augmented reality, social software, content moderation, web analytics & conversion.

Our Online Technology Update seminar is taking place on Thursday 18th June in London and you can read more about it and register at www.chameleonnet.co.uk/seminar

Scribd - friend or foe to publishers?

danm@chameleonnet.com (Dan Martin) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:30:42 GMT

I have been reading with interest the online discussion over Scribd.com

If you're unfamiliar with it... in their words 'Scribd began with a simple observation – that there's a writer in all of us. Today, Scribd is the place where you publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents.' Surely a laudable, innocuous-sounding concept?

The answer is less than straightforward. In effect what Scribd is providing is a mechanism for users to upload and tag content for others to consume and download. It's firmly aimed, supposedly, at self-publishers or content-owners.

Of course, unauthorised copyrighted content is cropping up all over the place on Scribd. So as you might imagine it's attracting a lot of interest in the publishing sector. Two of the latest pieces are Alison Flood's appraisal on thebookseller.com last week and this article in the Guardian.

For me the real issue surrounding Scribd is the user's responsibility for their own actions, and it's as old as the web. For year's there has been an issue with people posting stuff that they either don't have the rights to legally, or they shouldn't in someone else's opinion.

Scribd make it clear the resonsibilty is in the hands of users when it comes to posting content. See their general terms. It has also said publicly that it does not police the site - it expects the community to do that itself - but will remove content on request.

Which means that so long as they are seen to be acting on information provided to them by those who have an issue with certain content in a reasonable timeframe, then they are acting within their stated remit. And it's true that most reports I have seen online suggest their staff are friendly and react quickly.

But the problem lies in the passive nature of this moderation. It wrestles the onus onto content owners, who no doubt have better things to do, to check to see if their content has been illegally posted. And of course users can always put the content back up again! OK, there are automatic checks, but users are canny and have plenty of tricks to get around those, if they are that way inclined.

Such automatic checking, without active moderation, is only as good as the technology it uses, which is always flawed by its nature.

In many ways it is similar to implementing a automatic system to vet out unacceptable words, such as swearing or racist terms, but not imposing any checks on the context or purpose of all the acceptable words, and so can miss things like harrassment or bullying, or even simple stuff like deliberate mispellings to 'get around the bots'.

Of course I'm not in a position to comment on the quality or otherwise of Scribd's auto-checking of copyrighted works. But it's clear to see where the gap lies, no matter how good their systems. I've seen plenty of content posted that looks copyrighted to me, big titles by well known authors, and I'd suspect that some of that content was not posted with the right authority. Have a browse and see for yourselves.

So what's the solution? Stop file sharing sites? Well that's just never going to happen. For every Scribd there are dozens of 'underground' sites, torrent networks, etc. Give up content rights altogether? No publisher will, or should, ever do that - it's their product.

Where the real solution lies IMO is in understanding users and then providing a compelling proposition to the market. Sites like Scribd thrive not just because people want stuff for free, but also because there's a genuine demand for the content itself.

People are willing to pay for products if they value the content and feel the price is acceptable. Ask yourself, is the hardback jacket price a suitable price point for a new e-book?

They are even more willing to pay if they get something they couldn't get elsewhere, like goodies or extras. Just think how much money is spent every year on repackaged DVD box sets with the latest special features, director commentaries, and cool new boxes.

'Honesty box' experiements, like with Radiohead's last album launch, have also proved people understand the value of the artist and their need to make money from their works too.

If publishers can get their digital content strategy right, then legit sites like Scribd, file sharing networks and so on, will keep on going but pose only a minor threat to the markets publishers need to survive.

And in some cases, free content on those sites can even stimulate demand for the genuine article, reaching audiences that may never have paid in the first instance, but whose appetites have been whetted by a freebie.

Digitise or Die (or “Much Ado About Digital”)

jeremyd@chameleonnet.com (Jeremy Davis) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:12:00 GMT

In my ongoing mission to become the David Dimbleby of the Web Industry (and beyond?) I recently spent an afternoon chairing a “Question Time” style event for movers and shakers in the UK publishing industry: “Digitise or Die” was the inaugural annual event run by The Bookseller, the leading trade publication for the book industry, with the sole intention of focusing on the issues facing the book business in the digital age. And issues there are.

Pretty much ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, the only way you and I could get our hands on a book would be if a Publisher printed it (the only way to create multiple copies on anything like a large scale) and a bookseller sold it to us. Simple. Oh yes, and of course and author needs to write it.

So, publishers find authors, groom them, coach them and generally hone their talent so as to (hopefully) create not only a great piece of writing but also a rampant commercial success. Of course the publishers would have to kiss a few frogs but hey, sometimes when you get your prince he turns out to be a darned good catch (JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Dan Brown anyone?)

So, that model’s clear: Publisher finds the creative talent, publishes the work, markets it, sells it to retailers and then you and I buy it. Hang on a minute…that sounds familiar…creative talent…publisher…seller…consumer…Ah yes I’ve got it! It’s the music business!

And that is essentially the problem facing the book business – how to not do what the music business did. In the digital age the roles are unclear: anyone can be an author (just add talent), publish a book, mass produce it, reach an audience (if it’s any good) and distribute it worldwide, absolutely free.

Perhaps books are just content, and the web is very good at distributing that for free. So who’s going to pay for it? Yes, the book business is probably going through its biggest change in over 500 years, when Gutenburg, quill in hand, said to himself “there MUST be an easier way of doing this!”. Anyway, back to my Dimbleby impersonation....

With research done and cue cards in hand, off I went. There were several speakers in the morning and then my session was in the afternoon. Tension was in the air…what does the future hold? speakers included Jason Hanley from Google (who are digitising content at a rate of knots) and he aptly demonstrated the speed at which the internet, in only 15 years, has been able to reach an audience of 1.5billion – way faster than the decades it took TV or radio to reach anything like those numbers. Yes, the internet is REALLY good at delivering content.

All in all the event was developing a fairly dramatic atmosphere and like any drama there had to be a bad guy. And there was. Enter, stage left, Andrew Keen, self proclaimed “Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley” and both irreverently funny and deadly serious all at the same time. And his message? That book publishing is finished as a business, either for the publishers or the authors. Content has gone digital and digital content (as the music business is finding out to its cost) is largely free on the web.

As a popular author himself he should know – most of his money, he says, comes from live appearances (c.f. Madonna, Rolling Stones?), not book sales. Although a word of qualification here: as far as I know Andrew has one popular book to his name and that’s hardly a career. Most creative artists would expect to have to produce a substantial body of popular work before they can think about retiring…but I digress. And so to the afternoon session....

In front of an audience of book industry bods I chair an interesting discussion that ranges from the role of the author to the role of the high street bookseller. My fellow panellists included Andrew Keen, Kieron Smith (MD of BookRabbit.com) and Yang May Ooi, who introduced interesting ideas about how the nature of storytelling has changed with the digital age – maybe the book is a format from another time.

Our session was then followed by an excellent presentation by our very own Drew Davies who gave the audience a whistlestop tour of effective SEO techniques.

One thing was very plain throughout the day: Change is afoot. There is fear. There is excitement, anxiety, confusion and (as in all times of change) opportunity. My sense is that there will indeed be winners and losers in the publishing sector over the next few years and the landscape may look very different.

When the dust settles we will see who grasped the opportunities for delivering high quality digital products in a way that consumers want. Content is here to stay and if it’s good enough I think people will pay for it too. The challenge that faces the book business (and the music business) I think is how to position itself so that it adds value, not just the mechanism for distributing content. Value is always attractive....

Next question…ah yes…the man at the back with the yellow tie…yes you, sir!

How To Manage Your Online Reputation

surajs@chameleonnet.co.uk (Suraj Shah) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:29:44 GMT

When you offer a service or sell a product, either people are talking about you, or no-one is. If they’re talking about your brand, it may be positive or it may be negative. If no-one’s talking about you, perhaps they should be.

There are many examples where a brand’s reputation has been massively damaged, simply because a negative mention of a brand snowballed and was not spotted in time.

One such example is when a blogger from America bought a computer from the large computer manufacturer Dell in 2005 and paid for a four year home service support plan. Soon after, when the machine needed seeing to, Dell told him to return the computer, which left him without the machine for 10 days. When he wrote a short blog post about the poor service, it generated over 200 comments within a few days. This then resulted in 10 follow up posts and over 2500 comments that sparked so much opinion that it led to the phrase “Dell Hell” becoming a household term. Imagine is this post had been spotted in time – perhaps the massive damage that the brand received could have been limited.

Following an internal training session on Brand Identity Tracking run by our Head of Online Marketing, Drew Davies, I thought I’d write and share a few notes about how to discover what people are saying about a particular brand, how that can be tracked over time, and how the information can be used to improve brand identity.

Why Do Companies Choose To Track Their Brands?

Companies generally want their brand tracked for predominantly one of four reasons:

New product / service: The company is launching a new product in the marketplace and wants to see the attention the brand will be getting online over time.
Bad reviews: A brand has been getting bad reviews on the web, and the company would like to see the extent of that damage done to the brand.
Good reviews: The brand is already receiving positive reviews on the web, and the company would like to see what is being said and use it to create more products and engage with the happy consumers.
No reviews: The brand has been around for a while, but the company feels that nobody’s talking about it, and so that company wants to see where their competitors are being talked about and work out how to enter those forums.

How To Benchmark Your Online Reputation

We use a three step process here at Chameleon Net to benchmark the online reputation of our clients’ brands:

Step #1: GATHER – scouting the web for mentions of specific keywords relating to the brand in question, and recording how positive or negative the conversations are about the brand. Keywords here would include variations of the brand name, categories, and competitor brand names where appropriate.

Step #2: ANALYSE – working out what the comments mean according to pre-defined metrics, and benchmarking this information over time and against competitors.

Step #3: ENGAGE – making amends where there are grievances about the brand, and reinforcing positive comments about the brand on behalf of the client.

Tracking Your Online Brand Identity – For Free!

There are already a number of free tools that companies can use to find out what people are saying about their brand online. Tools offered by Google include:

Google Search: visit http://www.google.co.uk, type in the name of the brand into the search box, and see a list of the websites that mention your brand.
Google Blog Search: visit http://blogsearch.google.com, type in the name of the brand in the search box, and see a list of the blogs that mention your brand, along with the date of when it was mentioned.
Google Alerts: visit http://www.google.com/alerts and sign up for alerts that will notify you by email about the latest web and news pages that mention your brand.

Limitations of using these free tools for tracking your online brand identity

If you have a good internal team who have plenty of time on their hands, information on conversations about the brand can be gathered fairly simply using the free tools listed above.

However, although the tools are good for finding the raw data, that’s where it stops. The next step is to analyse the gathered data with metrics to make sense of it, which requires a natural human touch.

Recently we tracked the brand identity of one of our clients in the not-for-profit sector who wanted to see how they are perceived online. We benchmarked our findings over time, and against similar charities in the sector.

Engaging: handling negative comments

So what happens if you discover negatives comments about your brand? What can you do to recover from an online reputation crisis?

The article at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/01/five-steps-for-recovering-from-an-online-reputation-crisis.html suggests the following steps:

Respond from the top
Admit your mistakes and apologise
Host the conversation
Seek resolution
Turn detractors into evangelists

To recover from even the severest of mistakes, base your crisis communication on sincerity, transparency, and consistency.

Engaging: encouraging more positive comments

Suppose you find positive mentions of your brand at the websites and blogs that you find, how do you leverage that?

Simply go to those websites and say “thank you” in the comments section. Then suggest other innovative ways that your product or service can be used.

Engaging: starting a conversation

Sometimes, you’ll look around the web and find that no-one’s talking about your brand. What can you do there to create positive exposure?

Well first highlight where you want to be mentioned, and then build an innovative ePR campaign to get more people talking about your brand.

Chameleon Net ran an ePR campaign to launch ‘The Survival Kit’ – a cookware kit developed in a collaboration between Jamie Oliver and Tefal. Get in touch with us to request our ePR case studies.

Is ‘Online Reputation Management’ ethical?

Some may refer to this process as controlling their message, while others may look upon it as ‘gaming the system’. What do you think? Is online reputation management ethical?

A media insight into Chameleon's online world

lucie@actualmarketing.co.uk (Lucie Bickerdike) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:01:32 GMT

Lucie is Chameleon Net’s PR account executive at marketing and PR consultancy the Actual group (www.actualgroup.co.uk)

When Chameleon Net asked me if I’d like a regular ‘blog spot’ on their site, I was chuffed but a little nervous. Surrounded by the creative and technical insight provided by the blindingly bright Chameleon Net team, how would my PR perspective of the company and their work fare?

But the fact is that Chameleon Net do some really exciting work that deserves to be shouted about. This month, .Net magazine was so impressed with Chameleon’s new Médécins Sans Frontières website (www.msf.org.uk) that they asked us to produce a tutorial that walks readers through the process of creating the dynamic homepage banner. The piece, written by Daryl and Louise (with co-ordination and proofreading efforts from myself!), has not yet been published but watch this space for the finished article!

Chameleon Net are also pleased to share the expertise used to create such innovative work. I had the pleasure of attending their latest seminar, titled ‘Quick Web Wins’, on 24th June. Offering ‘practical, tactical ways your organisation can harness the web for short-term results’, the seminar was a great way for non-technical folk (myself included!) to get a better grip on the latest web techniques – and, most importantly, how to translate this knowledge into visible results.

At the seminar Jeremy observed that, while the media continues along its doom-mongering ‘recession’ track, the online industry is thriving. Still effectively in its infancy, the industry is constantly innovating and creating new opportunities for companies to increase their revenue using online methods. It’s an exciting time for companies to explore the possibilities on offer.

Drew’s talk on blogs and social networks was bang on trend. You can’t move in the new media press for articles on how social media can be exploited for by business. Bloggers have gained a name for themselves as pretty useful journalistic commentators on a broad range of subjects, and it is because of this that search engines tend to place blogs near the top of results. Many companies are now regularly contacting bloggers as part of their online PR activity and targeting users of networks as potential customers - but what we all really want to know is, as one member of the audience said, ‘how do you begin to measure ROI on this type of investment?’ It’s a sticking point faced by PR – and, to some extent, marketing – practitioners across the land, and there is no absolutely scientific answer. Perhaps the most successful companies are those willing to take a chance on new methods?

Speaking of hot topics in the new media press, Dan touched on one at the seminar that seems to have got them all a-froth: user-generated video content. According to .Net (177, July 08, p.15), Flickr users are none to happy about the possibility of video, or ‘long photos’, as well as photos being uploaded and shared on the site. Not everybody’s a fan of social networking sites, it seems, with one Flickr user commenting: ‘What will be the next step? Pokes? Third party applications that you have to invite 20 friends to use? Music playing on each member’s page to slow the site down even more?’ Ouch. I have to say I agree with the mag when it suggests that comparing the ability to upload simple video to an all-out MySpace style assault on users is taking it a bit far. It got me thinking, though: are social networking facilities actually a hindrance to users when they’re misappropriated? Perhaps this is an issue worth exploring for companies looking to monetise these sites – user experience is the all-important factor.

Last year, Chameleon’s ePR campaign for Tefal’s Jamie Oliver Survival Kit cookware sensitively navigated the rocky terrain of blogs and user videos, achieving high visibility for the product on dozens of UK blogs and a fantastic level of consumer participation on the mini site, which invited user video content. The success of the project showed that while these techniques are still in development, if you approach them with a real understanding of consumer requirements your brand will almost certainly be enhanced.

The Day I decided to make a film

jeremyd@chameleonnet.com (Jeremy Davis) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:34:18 GMT

In the autumn of 2004 I was sitting on a train with a friend of mine, Karen Jepp, and we were discussing climate change. We’d both been reading about it (Bill Bryson started the whole thing as I recall) and had both, unbeknownst to each other, been going through a whole range of emotions about the subject: interest, fascination, amazement, incredulity, anger, disgust and fear. We were both clear about one thing: it was not the latest fad, it was not hysteria. We (by which I mean ALL of us) were sleep walking into the biggest disaster the human race had ever faced – Climate Change.

You see even re-reading that sentence somewhere I cringe. Talk of disasters, sleep walking, even “the human race” somehow sounds over dramatic, an exaggeration. Yeah, yeah, another global threat, another disaster. It’ll be fine. It always has. Except this time it is highly likely that it just won’t be fine at all.

The basic problem is this: how we live is not sustainable. How we consume and discard in ever greater amounts has caused us to draw ever increasing amounts of energy out of the ground and convert in order to sustain our amazing growth (the human population has increased 6 fold in around 200 years). And doing that has put A LOT of so-called Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere very quickly. So it’s getting warmer. And that’s probably the least of our problems. You see, we (yes, that’s ALL of us again) are just not aware of the cumulative effect of our consumption.

And so there we are, Karen and I on a train on a lovely autumnal day (weather looks fine to me) we decide that we want to DO something. We have to help make people aware because then THEY might want to do something. Karen says “Let’s make a film.”

“Excellent idea”, say I. “Do you know how to do that?”
“No”, says she. “You?”
“Not a clue”.
“Right”.

At which point, we both realise that whilst we don’t know the first thing about making a film, we both knew someone who did: Lily Murray. An experienced documentary film maker who was nuts enough to say yes to helping us.

And 3 months later we had a film, SOS Climate Change. You can view it online at I’m so proud of it. We interviewed activists, campaigners, industry leaders, designers (Katherine Hamnett was a coup) and even got an actor from Home and Away to front it for us (thank you, Mick). We worked day and night (mostly editing – how hard is THAT!) and at times we gave nearly gave up. But it’s done.

So, I hope you enjoy it. And I hope it makes you think. You see we didn’t make it for sentimental reasons. It’s not about saving the Whale or the Rhino or even the Rainforests, as beautiful as those things are. The truth is that Climate Change is not new to the Earth – it’s spent most of its 4 billion year history an awful lot hotter or an awful lot colder than it currently is. And species come and go – sometimes up to 95% get wiped out and the cycle starts again. What’s different this time is for the first time in the Earth’s history there is a species who can see it coming – and do something about it. And you never know, they might just save their own skins.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mUpVZwReoic

'New Web' seminar - three hot discussion points

danm@chameleonnet.com (Dan Martin) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:29:00 GMT

I thought it'd be worth outlining three particular areas discussed in conversations at breaks and during the Q&A slots at the end of each session at the recent seminar.

Attendees were asking:

1. Should we set up a corporate Facebook profile?

2. What are the pros and cons of implementing AdSense on our site?

3. How much of a risk is it to allow UGC on our site and deal with negative comments?

So here are some thoughts...

1. Facebook. Clearly this is one of the most popular online social spaces going at the moment, and naturally companies want to know if it's appropriate for them to get set up with a presence on Facebook.

The simple answer is to decide whether or not you have anything useful to contribute in the context of connecting individuals within your company with the other individuals using Facebook to communicate.

If the answer is a strong 'yes' then it may well be worth looking at what you might achieve and how.

If the answer is a 'maybe' or a 'no', then I'd question whether it is of value, because the risks of blundering in and making yourself unpopular, or of spending budget on something that delivers poor return, could rule it out as an avenue.

Even if you don't set up a Facebook profile, one thing is for sure though: your target audience is out there networking, so it is definitely worth considering which methods could work for you to communicate directly with them, something we are helping a number of clients work out.

If you haven't given much thought to whether it's appropriate or not, but are pressing on regardless, it probably won't end well!

2. AdSense. Monetising your website can be an attractive proposition, and Google's AdSense (the system whereby you can opt to display adverts through Google's AdWords programme on your website) is one of the main options.

Our experience is that AdSense is limited in how effective it can be to generate income, and that ensuring that appropriate ads appear on your site can require a significant management overhead.

Here are some specific criteria to help determine whether AdWords can be of benefit to you...

1. You run a site in an industry where people are used to seeing advertising (e.g. magazine style content). This will mean people find them less intrusive and that a portion of your visitors will have a propensity to convert.

2. You have enough traffic to make it financially viable. There's no sense in spending a lot of time and resource managing the ads if there is not enough revenue in it to make that profitable.

3. You are willing to accept that ultimately you do not have total control of some content that is displayed on your site.

4. You are also willing to accept that, despite the tweaks that can be made to the visual format of Google Ads, some visitors will find their experience devalued, given the presence of AdSense on many poor quality, cheap and 'spammy' sites, and possibly will think less of your brand.

The short answer is that there are a few situations where we would recommend AdSense is used, but they are exactly that - few.

However, if you want to look at the revenue streams through on-site advertising, a more worthwhile option could be either niche providers who specialise in syndicating certain types of advertising, or to set up your own ad management functionality and solicit ads yourself, and only select those you feel are a good match for your site's content. It may require a little extra effort and cost up front, but you get greater control, and of course you get to keep all the income too.

3. User Generated Content (UGC).

In our view, getting involved with user generated content is one of the great opportunities of doing business on the new web.

The reason for this is that it creates a dialogue between you and people you communicate with, and it shows to everyone you engage with that you are a transparent, customer-facing organisation that is happy to talk to people, confident about its product or service, and comfortable with dealing with all situations, both positive and negative.

OK, negative comments about your brand can be a bit scary, because if you allow people to post content on your site, they may well say what they think, so some companies are understandably nervous of this.

But the greatest risk is not participating.

People will make their thoughts known online whether you like it or not. They are probably talking about you right now. Do you know what they are saying? And if so, would it be appropriate to join in?

At least on your own site you know how people are feeling and what they are saying to each other. So why not be part of that conversation, and fix problems when they go wrong. If you do that, not only have you engineered a 'brand success' with an individual when you remedy an issue, but everyone involved in the dialogue can see it too.