Vc 2 Oct09

2 October 2009

How Communications is embracing cultural and consumer shifts

We aim to communicate the purpose of the OU; and through our practice shape, influence and manage the OU’s reputation and identity.

This story is about•Understanding the audience•Being active in their spaces (informal and formal).•With activities that support our mission, and our communities.•Measuring the effect.•In order to change future direction.•Based on a deep understanding of our purpose, and our product range.

• This story is going to set a proposition.• And then illustrate it by practice.• In 2010 we may talk about stakeholder

influence and sentiment mining.• That is, who is talking about us, and

what are they saying?

(and in this we go from our traditional media, and channels, but more explicitly the new opportunities afforded by online)

The proposition

“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

“RIGHT NOW, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They are defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook.”Groundswell

What it means to our customers

“(More) people <like me>”

“I can talk to them when, where and how I want.”

“I don’t need to listen to your corporate voice, I have a million other people who’ve <lived you> to tell me the real deal.”

“The crowd will average it out for me.”

“Then I’ll decide.”

Web 2.0 changes the relationship

Web 2.0 and content created by the community extends the boundaries of <our> world.

Yahoo!Answers complements <our> FAQs.

Links in del.icio.us, digg and other sites add reputation points.

YouTube, Facebook and SecondLife extend the campus.

User-generated content adds authority to ‘official messages’ and channels.

We (used to) seek rationality in linear models

But the customer journey is complex

Why it matters

It’s a conversation

• The conversation is not – organised, controlled, always on message

• The conversation is– open, vibrant, compelling and full of insight...

... if we choose to join

Nature of social media

Joining the conversation

1.Map/understand our networks– Who and where are our major stakeholders?

2.Listen to our networks– What are they talking about?

Finding the people and conversations that matter

Stakeholder Influencer Analysis

Topic: Distance LearningScope: UKDates: Dec 08 – Jan 09

Evaluating Influencers

• Top influencers– most authoritative (“influence”)– most linked in the context (“popularity”)– most central to the network (“betweenness”)

• Connectors– is most significant in linking to the most

authoritative stakeholders (“hubness”)

Topic Trends

Sentiment

Answers

Our sentiment

Our sentiment

Our sentiment

Huge spike in forum discussions in the week after A level results, most on The Student Room forums peaked on 29th with 208 mentions in this site alone (sentiment 3.1).  Most of the discussions are around studying.

Sentiment/mentions tracking vs 4 agreed competitors, note whilst we have significantly less mentions in terms of volume, our sentiment score is in general much better.

Measurement

Stats and conversion rates

Stats and conversion rates

Visit/Visitor Trends Conversion Trends

Visualising our extended network

Measuring the zeitgest

Measuring the zeitgest

Our practice

Platform

How it all fits together

Platform

Platform (www.open.ac.uk/platform) launched in December 2008 to represent the OU community online, offering the same intellectual and social opportunities that are part of life in a traditional campus: the chance to be part of a lively, engaged and accessible university community, opportunities for peer support, access to topical content, and added value through services, benefits, competitions and offers.

Platform ; where we are now

Platform ; where we are now

Platform ; where we are now

Platform; where we are now• Platform has 32,200 registered users; has had c.155,000 unique

visitors. Average visit duration is 15 mins and 30 seconds. Average visit length in pages = 12.16

• The percentage of visitors with OUCU (i.e. staff or students) varies widely from month to month. Highest percentage of people with OUCU happened in the third week of site being live (83.6% in mid-late December 2008), and the lowest was late August 2009 (30.6%). May be people who have studied in the past and are keeping the relationship going.

• Outside of direct traffic, search engines, and other OU sites, 4 of the top 7 referring sites are social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr) in that order.

• Traffic is driven to the site by non-traditional OU terms. Most popular include 'get fit quick', 'essay writing tips', 'VAT decrease', 'Martin Bean', 'saving Britain’s past'.

Platform; how we got hereFour main drivers

• Business transformation and cost saving; from a student based newspaper (Sesame) to an online social media space with a prime objective to save print and post cost (c £200k), and transform staff roles in Communications

• Embracing Web 2.0, sense of community; power of the crowd (comment, rate, tag, embed, share); encourage uptake of social media online tools in a social, informal setting which would support our learning and teaching strategy eg collaboration.

• Platform as a destination website explicitly designed to work with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook – cross media, sharing of content – more importantly meeting users in their own environments – also increasingly useful for media exposure.

• A vehicle for the adoption of Drupal - ground breaking use of Drupal (in the OU); now integrating with ECM – best of both worlds; corporate EDRM and flexible and vibrant WCM framework.

“PLATFORM is awesome”

“This seems the perfect time to say how the OU gave me a life back after a serious crash involving spinal and brain injuries. I could not have gotten this far without them. The OU has been extremely supportive and I will be forever grateful. The Open University is a first class educational institution and this is why I am so passionate about having these options available for others.”

Other examples

David Cameron visit

Flickr

Twitter

Twitter

Facebook

• 18,253 fans, making us one of the most popular UK universities.

• Two OU Facebook applications: Course Profiles and My OU Story. Course Profiles is the most popular application with 6,421 users. 6 weeks after launch it was being used by 90% of OU students on Facebook.

YouTube

• 1,677,258 video views

• 113,615 channel views

• 633 videos uploaded

• 2,608 subscribers

In September, there were

• 124 videos uploaded

• 90,147 video views

• 56,307 unique users

• 77.86% of views were outside of the UK

Microsite; Darwin ‘devolve me’

Numbers, but value?

Our visual identity

An emerging story

Brand elements to support an international strategy

Way ahead

Way ahead

•Make the KPIs real – put into strategic management eg Multi-platform/Andrew Law

•E-Advocacy Toolkit eg campaign for HE funding

•Servicing communities eg Alumni, Donations/giving etc

•Develop ‘rich toolkits’ eg disaster page, experts guide 2.0, asset bank etc

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