Social Buzz Award Interview - Scott Douglas, Holyrood PR

A I started a personal blog Black and White and Read all Over in 2007 – and was hooked.

Q Who does it well - either as an individual or company?

A Far too many to name check. This might be a shameless plug, but the team at Holyrood Partnership are active, adept and engaged across multiple channels every day, which pleases me.

Q Is it for every business?

A Probably not – though off the top of my head I find it extremely difficult to think of a business that couldn’t extract some benefit from some aspect of social media.

Many businesses blunder in and expect instant results, easy wins and no cost. Er, no.

Care, thought, research and measurement are required. Any business prepared to invest the time, resources and evaluation in a strategy with clear goals should find the right level within a year.

Q Is there a lot of snake oil about over social media?

A Here’s the thing: we created a world where everybody could suddenly publish globally and real time – anything from what they ate for lunch to a book-length manifesto claiming the Holocaust never happened.

Now that ‘everyone is a publisher’, the flip side is that lots of people suddenly see themselves as journalists, chroniclers, story tellers – or communications consultants.

Who am I to say they are wrong? This is, after all, the democratisation of media.

I just hope that we never have to navigate a world where brain surgery, aviation electronics or essential public utilities are similarly ‘democratised’.

Q There’s an old argument that PR/marketing/advertising should own social media - should any of them?

A Despite the fact it’s only three letters ‘own’ is an awfully big concept. For my part, I’d be happy if PR could ‘take the lead on’ or ‘be heavily involved and invested in’ social media.

Q Why is there such a fear over traditional ROI? Surely it’s the best metric to be using?

A We should never lose sight of how return on investment is calculated: gain (or saving) from investment minus cost of investment, divided by the cost of investment.

People are scared of it because the process of trying to evaluate the gain (or saving) from the investment when you are talking about reputation, image, mind share, positive sentiment etc is – and always has been – torturously difficult.

But yes, it is the best metric to use.

Q What are your favourite social media sites?

A I love podcasts and in four years or more, I haven’t missed an episode of the podcast For Immediate Release with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Another must-listen for me is Marketing Over Coffee. Both are available on iTunes.

Q In your eyes, what’s the biggest barrier to adoption of social media? And how would you tell people/firms to overcome this?

A I decided a while back there is no value for me in trying to convince doubters.

It is far more rewarding to work with people who accept change is part of life, particularly in communications and technology. Generally they understand that to move forward carefully and productively means delivering value or benefit of some sort to an audience, as a means to earning trust and value back.

Q If you had to choose one platform - for you personally - what would it be and why?

A In reality, where time is always against me, it’s Twitter. In an ideal world, where time was no object, it would be YouTube.

Q What’s the can’t live without App on your Smartphone (and what make is the phone)?

A Hootsuite on an iPhone.

Q What’s the must-have Apps on your tablet (and, again, what make is it)?

A For my iPad – Pulse News, FeeddlerPro, TV Guide, BBC iPlayer, 4oD Catch Up and Hootsuite.

Q What motivates you when you’re down/seeking creativity - what’s the one thing that gets the brain going when you have to dig deep?

A Unplugging and reading a good book (can I say ‘unplugging’ even though I do that reading on a Kindle?).

Q Given that the way most social media institutions - Facebook, Google, Twitter - are making their money is through the most traditional of ways - advertising - is this a failure of thinking? Surely if social media is such a paradigm shift, we wouldn’t be relying on advertising just like we have done since 1955?

A If you want to go old school, then how about this: people should pay for the content they consume.

Thought not.

Q Should the phrase “social media” be abolished as there is so much to it - it can be linkbuilding, community engagement, community building, sales, SEO, blogging, gathering and seeding visual information - should we be at a stage now where people get to specify what part of this their talents lie in?

A It’ll happen naturally anyway. Just don’t hold any hope that when the nomenclature changes, that it will actually improve.

Q Companies seem to be concentrating their efforts on Facebook - is this a dangerous move?

A Concentrating on Facebook is fine, as long as it is working. Though I believe focusing solely on Facebook and putting all the eggs in Mr Zuckerberg’s basket is most definitely a recipe for disaster.

Q A huge element of social media seems to be based around customer satisfaction but should companies - and customers - accept that you won’t always get it your own way?

A Those businesses that strive to give their customers the best possible experience and ensure satisfaction will hopefully always thrive. But yes, we have to accept that even the very best don’t get it right all the time.

Q Where do you see social media being in five years time?

A Mobile. And maybe in flying cars.

Q For those thinking of getting into social media, any tips or pointers?

A Turn on, tune in, gimme a shout.