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29 July 2012
28 July 2012
Programme - FB Marketing London
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Event Details:
18th July
9.00 am to 5.00pm
Programme - FB Marketing London
8:30 Arrival, Tea & Coffee
09.25 Welcome
Sam Michel, Chinwag & Luke Brynley-Jones, Our Social Times
09.30 Keynote – Facebook State of the Nation
Andy Pang, Facebook
09.50 Facebook Beyond the Hype
Tom Smith and Brett Petersen, GlobalWebIndex
10.10 A Marketers’ Eye View of Timeline & Pages
Kathryn Corrick, Digital Communications Consultant
10.25 Facebook Strategy: How Facebook Fits into a Social & Digital Marketing Strategy
Richard Ayers, Manchester City FC & British Film Institute
10.45 Discussion – Facebook Timeline and Marketing
Chair : Kathryn Corrick
Tom Smith (GlobalWebIndex), Richard Ayers, (Man. City FC & BFI), Vincent Sider (BBC Worldwide)
11:05 Break
11.25 EdgeRank: Optimising Position in the Facebook Newsfeed
Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility
11.45 Case Study: Yorkshire Tea’s Little Urn - From TV to Facebook
Dom Dwight, Yorkshire Tea
12.05 Facebook Advertising Uncovered: Ads, Attribution and ROI
Jeremy Waite, TBG Digital
12.25 Discussion: Are Likes Worth More Than Ads?
Chair : Adam Lewis (Immediate Future)
Jeremy Waite (TBG Digital), Dom Dwight (Yorkshire Tea), Emeric Ernoult (Agorapulse)
13.05 Lunch
13.55 The Science of Sharing
Niles Mork-Ulnes, Beyond Interactive
14.15 Case Study : Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
Sarah Lindley, Dairy Milk (Kraft Foods)
14.35 Timeline Meets TV : Engagement Through Live Broadcast & Interactive Video Russell Goldsmith, Markettiers4DC
14.55 Quickfire Agency Insight: How Kellogg’s, Dove & Xbox Build Community
Katie White (Isobar Social), Emma Gannon (Edelman), Maurice Wheeler (Doco London)
15.25 Discussion: How to Encourage Fan Loyalty & Advocacy?
Katie White (Isobar Social), Emma Gannon (Edelman), Maurice Wheeler (Doco London), Dominic Sparkes (Tempero)
15.50 Break
16.10 Guardian Reader: Lessons Learnt from Leveraging the Facebook Platform
Martin Belam, Emblem (formerly, Guardian)
16.35 Ringing the Tills: An Introduction to Fcommerce
Paul Marsden, Social Commerce Today
16.50 Heinz – A Case Study in F-Commerce
Tom Ollerton, We Are Social
17.10 Nokia and F-Commerce
Thomas Messett, Nokia
17:30 Close & Networking Drinks
Andy PangMeasurement Solutions Group Lead,
Andy heads up the Measurement Solutions Group at Facebook, which involves him in all aspects of monitoring, analytics and measurement, from product launches to branding and identity. He was previously a Senior Consultant at Metrixlab, the online research company and Marketing and Research Manager at Clear Channel in New York.
Vincent SiderVP Social Media,
BBC Worldwide
@vincentsider
A highly experienced social media professional, Vincent started his career as Head of Online at MCI WorldCom in France. After co-founding Mobilabs, a popular dating and social networking company in France, he joined BT in 2006 and headed up the social media and online gaming strategy for BT Wholesale.
Dom DwightConversation Manager,
Yorkshire Tea
@domdwight
Dom manages all social media conversations for Taylors brands (Yorkshire Tea and Taylors Coffee). He manages the production of branded content across social media and is developing it into major element of brand strategy. Previously Dom worked as communications editor for Bettys & Taylors.
Sarah LindleyBrand Executive,
Cadburys Dairy Milk (Kraft Foods)
Sarah has been at Kraft for 2 years marketing Cadburys Dairy Milk 'Singles' and driving digital marketing campaigns. Bringing new products to market from conception to market launch including digital strategy for each product. Previously Sarah managed a Ski School in the French Alps, developing their first digital and social media strategy.
Richard AyersHead of Digital,
Manchester City FC
@richardayers
Richard is focused on driving forward the club’s approach to media – by championing innovation, forming unique partnerships and delivering increased audience engagement and reach. For the last few years Richard has focused on a small portfolio of clients including the BFI, the Guardian, Kasabian and was Web Publishing Director for the regionals division of Trinity Mirror until joining Manchester City FC at the end of 2010.
Thomas MessettGlobal Editor in Chief, Social Media
Nokia
@tom_messett
Thomas is a digital native who has spent the last three years helping global brands explore the world of social media. Cutting his teeth in the social monitoring industry with Radian6, Thomas managed the integration of their platform into customer service, experience management, marketing and PR departments at major brands like Scottish Power, Centre Parks and Dyson.
Emeric ErnoultFounder,
Agorapulse
@eernoult
Emeric is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for Facebook marketing. He is the co-founder of AgoraPulse, a Facebook marketing platform based in Paris, France and has advised brands such as Microsoft, Playstation, Virgin Megastore or Disneyland Paris on their Facebook marketing initiatives.
Jeremy WaiteHead of Social Strategy,
@tbgdigital
Jeremy heads up social strategy at TBG Digital. TBG Digital is a Social Media specialist helping global brands to advertise and engage through Facebook and Twitter. The company’s team of experts has delivered more than 550 billion impressions and over 50 million social connections with a focus on ROI.
Adam LewisManaging Director,
Immediate Future
@adamlewis10
Adam Lewis is a highly experienced and award-wining digital consultant. Adam's expertise lies in digital communications and includes training and mentoring, creating measurement frameworks, building online communities and producing websites and digital content.
Kathryn CorrickDigital Communications Consultant
@kcorrick
A decade of digital media experience has seen Kathryn contribute to the likes of McCann Erickson, Digital Britain, New Statesman magazine and the Online News Association. As well as being an independent communications consultant Kathryn is Journalist in Residence at Kingston University, UK Chair for the Online News Association and a member of Women in Journalism. She is on the advisory board of London Social Media Week and World Book Night.
Russell GoldsmithDigital & Social Media Director,
markettiers4dc
@russgoldsmith
Russell has been involved in online marketing since 1995 when he joined software house Harlequin, setting up their e-commerce site. He is now the Digital & Social Media Director at markettiers4dc, the UKs leading Broadcast Communications agency with over 80 employees and five dedicated broadcast studios, with clients that include Kellogg's, Vodafone, Cisco, and McDonalds. His latest published work is a chapter on ‘The Future of Broadcast’ in the forthcoming book ‘Share This’ from The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, published by Wiley.
Kelvin NewmanStrategy Director,
SiteVisibility
@kelvinnewman
Kelvin is responsible for iTunes most popular Internet Marketing Podcast, downloaded by over a million people. On the show he’s collaborated with a number of the world’s most respected marketers including Seth Godin and Jakob Nielsen. Kelvin is a regular contributor to State of Search and Econsultancy. At SiteVisibility he works with clients such as Hotels.com, FindaProperty, Gala Bingo and uSwitch to deliver their marketing campaigns along with running the popular BrightonSEO conference.
Tom OllertonMarketing Director,
We Are Social
@mrtomollerton
Tom’s career in digital has taken him from mobile marketing through digital and finally found him in his natural home in Social Media. Tom is a strong digital all rounder and a respected regular on the conference speaking circuit.
Nils Mork-UlnesHead of Anallytics,
Beyond
@nilsmu
Nils is Head of Analytics at Beyond. He previously ran Next Fifteen’s research brand Context Analytics based in San Francisco, now part of Beyond. Nils has more than eighteen years of experience managing research and consulting projects globally for clients such as Cisco, Visa, Sony, and Microsoft. Areas of research specialization include: brand and corporate reputation management, social media marketing, and marketing optimization analysis.
Judith LewisHead of Search,
Beyond
@judithlewis
Judith Lewis is a specialist online marketer with skills in SEO, PPC, social media marketing as well as other digital marketing techniques. She was one of the judges for the inaugural UK Search Awards, is a founding everywoman Modern Muse and is the coordinator for London Girl Geek Dinners. Her clients include Google, Amadeus, & Mimecast.
Katie WhiteHead of Social,
Isobar Social
@ktmatey
Katie is currently the head of specialist social division, Isobar Social. Katie manages the social strategy and activation within Isobar across Europe for Chevrolet and Kellogg, and the UK for InBev, Absolut, Malibu, Adidas and Matalan. She is currently focused on evolving and expanding the group into a centre of excellence for social within Isobar and glue Isobar.
Tom SmithManaging Director,
Trendstream
@globalwebindex
Tom is Managing Director at Trendstream, he founded GlobalWebIndex a global survey that provides insights on web involvement, social media and content, clients include BBC, Pepsico, P&G, Dell and Ogilvy. Previously Tom was the Head of Consumer Futures at Universal McCann where he devised the world’s largest social media tracking study. it grew to cover 29 countries and 17,000 respondents. It created a huge online buzz, becoming the piece of seminal research on Social Media.
Brett PetersenDirector of Strategy Consulting,
GlobalWebIndex
@Brett_Gwi
Brett is currently responsible for leading all GWI research and insight generation, consulting with agencies and corporates to build comprehensive strategies for communications, product development, and business planning. Previously he worked as an analyst at e-Media Institute, a leader in European TV market analysis, and also worked as a macro-economic analyst at Euromonitor International.
Martin BelamPrincipal Consultant,
Emblem
@currybet
Martin has spent over a decade building successful digital products and user experiences across mobile and desktop for global brands like the Guardian, BBC, Sony and Vodafone. He helps run London IA, a network for designers, information architects and writers. Martin blogs about user experience, journalism and digital media at currybet.net and for the Guardian.
Sam MichelCEO,
Chinwag
@toodlepip
Sam founded Chinwag in 1996 for digital media and marketing professionals. He was one of the UK’s first full-time webmasters for Time Out magazine, Executive Producer of BAFTA-nominated movie website, Popcorn and has consulted on projects for clients including Microsoft, BBC and the Bank of England. He sits on the global board of Social Media Week and runs the London event. He’s a frequent speaker and writer on digital marketing and social media as well as mentoring at Seedcamp and running the Digital Mission series.
Luke Brynley-JonesCEO,
Our Social Times
@lbrynleyjones
Luke Brynley-Jones is one of the UK's most experienced social media consultants. In the past 12 years he has helped brands such as Blue Square, YMCA and Orange Business Services to develop effective social media strategies. He writes the popular social media blog, oursocialtimes.com and hosts social media conferences in the UK, US and Europe.
Study Defines New KPI Model for Facebook Ad Effectiveness
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/ 21 June 1227 July 2012
P&G's Digital Push Deepens Personal Touch for Olympics and Beyond
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1009220&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&R=1009220
Marc Pritchard
Global Marketing and Brand Building Officer
Procter & Gamble
As global CMO of Procter & Gamble, Marc Pritchard has overseen the “Thank You, Mom” campaign for the Olympics. Pritchard spoke with eMarketer’s Tobi Elkin about how P&G is translating the campaign across brands and countries, using digital to push the message far and wide.
eMarketer: P&G’s global “Thank you, Mom” Olympics campaign is a major tent-pole idea. How did the concept come into being?
Marc Pritchard: We briefed one of our agencies and they came back with this idea that wasn’t obvious at first glance because P&G brands like Pampers, Tide, Secret, Cover Girl and others don’t sponsor athletes. But all our brands have something to do with the Olympics because every Olympic athlete has a mom and P&G is in the business of helping moms. We have everyday products and brands that moms trust for their families. Our brands are there every day, whether it’s washing your hair, doing the laundry, brushing your teeth or wiping a countertop.
We thought, “Why don’t we just thank mom for whatever she does?” We loved the idea immediately. One of my tests is when I see great work and my spine tingles—and it was certainly tingling when I saw the idea.
[Editor’s Note: For more on the “Thank you, Mom” campaign, click here.]
The Olympics allows us to leverage the full breadth of P&G brands around the world. We have brands that span a person’s lifetime, from Pampers diapers to Fixodent dentures and everything in between. The Olympics was an opportunity to bring all of those brands together in one big idea that we can bring to consumers around the world.
We participated in the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 with 16 brands. The London Olympics is a bigger opportunity to unite more brands under the P&G umbrella. We’ll have 34 brands participating in the London Olympics, spanning across 150 athletes. The campaign will activate in 73 countries and be in more than 4 million stores around the world.
eMarketer: What are your goals for this massive effort?
Pritchard: The goals for the entire Olympics effort are to build the sales of our brands. We’ve gone on record saying that we want to try to achieve $500 million in extra sales from this campaign from April through August. Obviously, we want our brands to grow and we also want to connect with consumers on a much more one-to-one basis through social media and our online activities. We’re trying to create a whole new relationship with our consumers.
eMarketer: You’ve got an ambitious sales goal. How are you thinking about tying millions of impressions back to sales since that’s what really matters?
Pritchard: We’ll measure them. We have return-on-investment measurements and have been using ROI measurements for almost a decade now. We can measure the effectiveness of digital media, and it’s actually one of the highest ROI activities right now because there is a much higher level of engagement. If you can target your communications more effectively and get people to engage, then it does generate a higher purchase intent. We’ve also worked with all of our retailers that have put up some magnificent displays and merchandising in stores around “Thank you, Mom.”
eMarketer: Can you offer an example of how your marketing and PR activities have changed as a result of digital marketing and media?
Pritchard: Tide’s news desk approach is an example of a brand being always on and assessing what’s happening in popular culture so it can make connections. For example, Tide sponsored the “Tide Ride” NASCAR vehicle. This year, there was an oil spill on a track and to remove the oil, they put Tide on it and cleaned it up. The Tide team immediately jumped on that, tweeted it and posted it on Facebook. We bought the rights for the visuals from the video, shot an ad and in 72 hours, it was up and we were talking about it. This was worth about $8 million in TV media and we spent maybe $100,000.
This enabled us to be part of popular culture on a real-time basis, and reinforce the superior benefit of our brands. The tagline was, “You keep coming up with tough stains and we keep coming up with ways to get them out.” That’s the kind of thing that the digital world allows you to do, and we’re seeing more and more of this daily activity as we launched the Olympics effort.
eMarketer: Can you tell me a bit about your budget and what percentage of your ad spending budget is paid digital media?
Pritchard: I can’t give you the exact amount, but I will tell you that more than a third of the impressions that we have are coming through digital—that’s both paid and earned. We’re really reluctant to provide anybody with any dollar figure because that would be proprietary information that our competitors would just love to have. But it’s definitely going up.
eMarketer: Would you say it represents a low double-digit increase year over year?
Pritchard: I don’t even think about it that way. I think about it more in terms of the percentage of time that people are engaging with digital. Moms will spend anywhere from 30% to 40% of their time engaging with digital content. That’s why the mobile piece is going to be even more important. It’s becoming an even bigger portion of how they’re getting information about brands.
A longer version of this interview is available to eMarketer Total Access clients only. If you’d like to learn more about becoming a Total Access client, click here.
Posted on 27 July 2012 in 1 Strategic planning 2.0 | Permalink
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26 July 2012
Building a commercial framework for social media engagement: a four step process
This week I overheard a major social media competitor tell a prospective client: "...well, you can't really measure social media commercially can you? It's like gravity, you know it's there even though you can't see it, so you just have to keep working on it, right?"
I hit the proverbial roof...
Firstly Einstein, (not his real name), you can most definitely measure gravity. And you can also measure the commercial value of social media too, if you engaged a brain cell or two.
Within the context of my obvious agitation with this and the sector in general, I wanted to share how we tackle this in the hope that, in some small way, we can start engaging in social media with a structure and level of respect that it deserves.
What follows therefore is a four step process to build a commercial model for social media engagement, part of a much broader internal framework, but I hope still useful to many of you.
1: Setting social media benchmarks
Consumers interact with brands and vice versa and social media is simply a subset of that process. These consumer interactions are those events where an action takes place between a brand and a consumer that includes anything from reading about you on a blog or a newspaper, to liking you on Facebook.
These interactions, millions of them for many of you, are taking place right now.
The first step in building a commercial framework to value these interactions is to understand what the generation of these interactions would cost your business if you wanted more of them.
More specifically, the objective is to identify what the cost to you would be right now, to generate one additional consumer Action, Conversation or Exposure (ACE):
- Action. The number of people making a material (usually monetary) commitment of some description to you (buying, signing up) as a result of your social media activities.
- Conversation. The number of people who are engaging in a conversation with your brand online, be it via a retweet, a blog comment, etc., across social media.
- Exposure. The number of people you are reaching through your social media campaigns.
To determine the acceptable incremental cost of each of the above you will need to first and foremost audit your marketing activities (including offline and online ideally) and divide your relevant and identifiable marketing costs by the number of actions, conversations, and exposures you are experiencing in your business in its entirety, to give you a Cost Per Action (CPA), Cost Per Conversation (CPCV), and Cost Per Exposure (CPE).
This determines what it currently costs your business to reach consumers, compel them to interact with you, and/or compel them to convert, regardless of the existence of social media as a channel.
Also, it’s important to note that Conversations and Actions are the result of Exposure to begin with so they need to be accounted for in ROI calculations as engagement resulting from exposure, therefore the exposure shouldn’t be double counted. (Illustrated below).
Secondly, you will also need to calculate the market-determined cost of an additional social media driven interaction (ACE).
You can source this insight from the social networks and platforms themselves. For example, consumer interactions over Twitter have a market value as determined by Twitter’s Promoted Tweet advertising programme.
Similarly you can buy ads on Facebook, of which a proportion will convert to likes, which you can test to determine the tradable, market value (CPA, CPCV, and CPE) for Facebook likes for you. This gives you the cost of driving social media interactions if you simply bought them and applied no real creative or innovative engagement value to fuel organic 'shareability'.
Thirdly, and if relevant, determine what your CPA, CPCV and CPE is for your current social media activities only (not including any other marketing activities). This gives you an understanding of how optimal your social media activities are right now against those other two benchmarks.
These three sets of information provide your overall consumer interaction cost, the social media market-value of such interactions, and your current social performance across ACE.
Your social media campaigns and activities need to deliver interactions at a lower cost than those other three benchmarks, or at least below the market value, to be deemed efficient and for you to be confident that a specific social media investment delivered a desirable return.
Note, however, that cost versus desired volume should be considered, i.e. often to get more of something you might be willing to pay more per unit. The ultimate objective of this step is to answer the question – “What would our social media campaign/activity/investment need to achieve for it to be deemed a commercial success for our business?”
You are creating a Commercial KPI Benchmark Table like this:
Table 1: Example Commercial KPI benchmark table for social media
| Commercial KPIs |
Social Media Market Value |
Current aggregate marketing Values |
Current social Media only values |
|
Cost per Action (CPA) |
£1 |
£2 |
£2 |
|
Cost per Conversation (CPCV) |
£0.10 |
£0.40 |
£0.10 |
|
Cost per Exposure (CPE) |
£0.02 |
£0.10 |
£0.12 |
This table should be updated on a regular basis and your social media activities measured against it. Step 2 explains how to conduct that measurement process.
2: Measuring against your benchmarks
Measuring your social media activities against our 3 KPIs (CPA, CPCV, and CPE) is quite straight-forward. Exposure and conversations taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and similar networks can be monitored and measured with a number of tools and platforms currently available. Sales derived from that exposure and those conversations are very easy to determine too, assuming that you:
- Utilise intelligent website tagging processes to identify referrals from social media networks, websites and platforms against a specific source site/network/platform and a specific, identifiable campaign.
- Utilise decent analytics to track the above, whilst also placing the aforementioned consumer interaction in an attribution model where it can make an undisputed claim for credit.
Note that not all social activities however should be measured against all of ACE’s measures equally and some only against one of two of the three KPIs.
For example, if you are looking to raise awareness of something, without a desire or concern for sales, then you could measure the investment required for that awareness campaign by focusing entirely on the Conversation and Exposure parts of ACE, with perhaps even a greater focus on one of these than the others.
Given that Conversations (e.g. replies, retweets, comments) give you an indication of the quality of the Exposure secured (number of people reached in pure volume), you would ideally want to see a good relationship between the two, and different types of campaign can also be measured against each other that way.
Furthermore, a key metric is where Conversations and Action numbers overlap (see below), as this identifies the proportion of your Exposure that can be identified as ‘fans’, i.e. those that are buying and also conversing with you or about your brand (assuming positive sentiment of course!).
3: Plan for outcomes
With these three KPIs as a foundation you can then plan your social media activities against your desired outcomes. For instance, do you want to use social media to drive sales (Action), or to let people know that you have a new product (Exposure), or, perhaps, to raise the sentiment of your consumer base against your brand (Conversation).
For most companies they’d like their social media outcomes to be a combination of these three, but with each at a different magnitude based on the business and social objectives they are working towards.
With this in mind you can add a Social Media Planning Matrix to our Benchmark Table, to include the following:
Maximum incremental target values
The maximum amount of investment you are willing to make to secure one more addition to your A, C and/or E. For example, perhaps you’d like to secure some brand exposure for a maximum of 0.01p each, or sales at £0.50 each.
Again, you’d initially set this at lower than your benchmark numbers and calibrate it over time as you receive more performance data from your social media campaigns.
Volume desired
The amount of interactions you’re aiming for. As we’re talking about social media and not paid advertising this has to be an approximation, with the first few campaigns you run being an estimation at best. Over time however, this will become far easier and far more accurate.
There are methods also of reducing the risk this variable represents to your cost outlay. For instance, Greenlight operates a pay for performance social media service whereby campaign costs are incurred by us and the client only pays pro-rata (the maximum target value) for each additional interaction delivered.
Maximum budget
This takes your maximum target value and your desired volume values and, simply, multiplies them together to provide an indication of what would represent a reasonable monetary investment against the objectives set.
This is important as social media isn’t free – you will incur costs with whatever you do, with rich assets (video, games, etc.) having significant costs attached, as well as offline-online campaigns (flash mobs and the like), so budgeting is absolutely necessary.
Maximum timeframe
This is the timeframe you are willing to measure the campaign against. Time to see the desired return must reflect the time you are willing to wait for ROI, not the true ROI of the social media campaign.
This is important as some social assets continue to bring in value against our KPIs for a very long time, years in some cases. A good example is how YouTube videos can often continue to attract incremental views many years after they are initially published.
Our Benchmark Table from step one then becomes a more complete media planning matrix:
Table 2: Media Planning Matrix for Social Media
|
BENCHMARK |
CAMPAIGN X - PLAN |
||||||
|
KPI |
Social Media Market Value |
Current aggregate marketing Values |
Current social media only values |
Maximum incremental target values |
Volume desired |
Max budget |
Max timeframe |
|
Cost per Action (CPA) |
£1 |
£2 |
£2 |
£0.50 |
2500 |
£1,250 |
3 months |
|
Cost per Conversation (CPCV) |
£0.10 |
£0.40 |
£0.10 |
£0.10 |
5000 |
£500 |
3 months |
|
Cost per Exposure (CPE) |
£0.02 |
£0.10 |
£0.12 |
£0.01 |
150000 |
£1,500 |
3 months |
If you’re running multiple campaigns you can simply add more columns replicating the Campaign X – Plan columns above. With this, social media becomes a series of activities with objectives and a mechanism to measure those from a commercial perspective, and plan them accordingly.
4: Maximise your shareability
A campaign or activity must engage people and compel them to share what they are seeing or experiencing. This is what separates the expense of buying the interactions from the efficiency of earning them and your ability to maximise your social media ROI, and deliver against a commercial social media plan, relies on maximising that ‘shareability’.
Social media ‘shareability’ is not an exact science by any stretch, but there are a number of activities that can be undertaken to maximise your chances of achieving your maximum levels of ‘shareability’, and allow you to forecast effectively. These are:
Understand your target market
You must understand your target market to communicate with them – what they like, who they like, how they speak, what concerns them, what they are doing this time of the year, etc. You need to build a profile of your user to market successfully to them, and that is no different in social media.
More specifically, you need to conduct an in-depth audit to answer the following questions:
- Who is your online customer?
- What are people saying about you and your competitors online?
- What are people saying about the brands you sell (if you do), or the partners you work with?
- Who is influential in your space? Which blogs/bloggers, journalists/publications?
Learn quickly
Your first few campaigns will help you understand what broad ACE levels you can achieve and how, at which point all future plans will be far more accurate. Running smaller campaigns first to get an idea of your ACE capability before running broader and more ambitious (read, more expensive) campaigns and activities is always sensible too.
Harness your existing reach
You can add confidence to your Exposure assumptions and therefore some of the Conversation and Action estimates by using your existing consumer reach to guarantee at least some initial traction for your activities.
For example, if your launch of a social media campaign includes the promotion of it to an existing captive audience that you have earned, be it people that have ‘liked’ you on Facebook, Twitter followers, recipients of your email newsletters or offline catalogues and brochures, then you are practically guaranteed a minimum level of engagement, which would be determined very quickly and easily.
Conclusion
The above framework focuses on the contents of a Commercial Audit for the efficient and effective planning and management of your social media. It is one of only three bodies of work you require to confidently take control of your social media destiny.
The second, part of which is summarised as a point in step four, is an Online Brand Communications Audit, which ensures you know your consumer and who influences them, and the competitive environment you operate within. Without this you won’t understand how best to sculpt your activities to meet those commercial goals.
The third, and last document, is your Social Media Strategy, which is the intelligent distillation of the first two documents into a plan of action for the year. Without these three documents you are operating blindly, ignoring the information and insights around you to forge ahead of your competitors.
Taking this approach also opens up the opportunity to utilise innovative different execution and supplier models. Armed with the above, you can can drive considerable value, and importantly, can plan it, measure it and justify it.
Completely contrary to our chap who believes social simply happens ‘to you’.
Andreas Pouros is COO at Greenlight and a guest blogger on Econsultancy. You can connect with him on Google+.
Visible measures Video Metrics. Unlike traditional Web pages, online videos travel from site-to-site and viewer-to-viewer, spreading and changing in unpredictable ways.
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Share of Choice™
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Video Engagement
Video Engagement is a measure of audience interaction with your video content, including rewinds, fast-forwards, abandonment, and more. By calculating the Engagement Score for each of your videos, you can quickly understand which videos your audience finds most compelling and which videos need to be improved. Read on to see how our Video Engagement Curve reveals additional key performance metrics like Initial Attention and Captivation.
25 July 2012
Parenting Dilemmas in the Age of Facial Recognition
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/parenting-dilemmas-in-the-age-of-facial-recognition/
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty ImagesFacebook has the largest photo bank of any company in the world.- Google+
- Share
A picture is worth a lot more than a thousand words in the era of facial recognition.
With so many of our daily movements recorded so easily and artfully, it is hard to know how to react anymore to pictures being taken — and what will be done with them. Social norms are yet to be written, and the issue is all the more pronounced when it comes to pictures of children.
What if a bemused stranger starts taking pictures of your child in a public place? What if a music school posts pictures of your child on its Web site? What do you say to birthday party pictures on other people’s Facebook pages?
I have a young child, and I thought of these things in light of two parallel developments around facial recognition.
Google announced last week a new tool to allow users to obscure faces in videos that are posted on YouTube. It patted itself on the back for being among the first Internet companies to offer a visual anonymity tool.
“Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world,” the company said in a blog post, “our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube.”
The same day, a Facebook representative appeared on Capitol Hill to answer legislators’ questions about its use of facial recognition technology. Some 300 million photos are uploaded every day on the social networking site, making Facebook the largest photo bank of any company in the world. Where faces are part of the photo, Facebook can identify the people by name and “tag” them. The only way to avoid being tagged is to tweak your settings to disable it. (In “Privacy Settings,” go to “Timeline and Tagging” and check the “No One” box in answer to the question “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?”)
Facebook’s logic of facial recognition by default seemed to infuriate Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, who sponsored the legislative hearing. His most pointed question to the Facebook representative, Rob Sherman, came at the end. Can you assure users that the facial data will not be sold to a third party in the future, Mr. Franken asked. Mr. Sherman answered that no one can say how Facebook would evolve in the future.
I found this to be a refreshingly candid response. We are at the mercy of private corporations to decide how much control we have over how our pictures are used. One day, a benevolent Silicon Valley firm waves a magic wand and grants us a way to blur our image online. What about the next day? Could the company change its mind? Could another company develop new ways to profit from our pictures – and not tell us? And how will Facebook and all those application developers connected to Facebook use its rich repository of “faceprints,” as some people have called them, in the coming years? No one knows.
Keep in mind that by downloading some applications on Facebook, you give the company access to all your pictures.
Legislators have dangled the threat of regulation. Facebook and Google have both stepped up lobbying in Washington. Facebook reported last week that it spent close to $1 million in the second quarter of 2012; Google spends considerably more.
Why does this matter? It matters because our faces can be more revealing today than at any time in the past. They can potentially connect our offline and online existences.
Facial recognition technology can be vital, for instance, in nabbing criminals. It can also be used to identify people at a Tea Party meeting or a protest in Tahrir Square or, with so many cameras in public places, compile a record of all those who pass in front of a certain mosque or synagogue.
Our faces are immutable, as Sarah Downey, a lawyer who works for Abine, a company that offers free and paid tools to guard online identity, points out. It is one thing, she said, to post photos online of your children for friends and family members to see. It is another when advancing technology allows that photo to be connected to all the other data that’s out there about your families, including potentially where you live. “Everything they are doing is inescapably documented,” Ms. Downey said.
Abine is not a disinterested party in this debate. Its tools include one known as “DeleteMe,” which promises to expunge your digital footprint from data broker Web sites.
Meanwhile, as we figure out what to do when others post pictures of us, one Oregon company this month figured out how to build a new imaging tool that can attach itself to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. With new technology, it announced in a news release, “we are now recognizing faces and reading license plates from stand-off ranges beyond audible detectability.” Drones, in other words, can be fitted with cameras that are good enough to recognize faces from so far away that we wouldn’t ever hear them whirring overhead.
Fact Check: Olympians Did Not Melt Grindr...But Grindr kind of wishes they did!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/fact-check-olympians-did-not-melt-grind
A delightful story has been making the rounds from England that man-finding app Grindr ground to a halt when Olympic competitors arrived in London. People UK breathlessly noted, "technicians believe the arrival of Olympic teams on Monday sparked a flood of new customers – and loss of the service in East London," and quoted an unnamed Londoner saying that "the Grindr system obviously couldn’t cope." It looked too good to be true, and, sadly, it was. A Grindr press person told us:
"While we'd love to believe that the best-built men in the world all dressed up in Lycra and congregating in one place can generate a huge increase in Grindr traffic, we can say with confidence that the arrival of the Olympic teams had little or no effect on our server. The truth is that there are many factors that cause a technological service disruption."
The spokesperson refused to elaborate on which factors actually did take Grindr down earlier this week, though. Hrm.
Grindr has become incredibly popular — boasting over four million users as of mid-June — and it wouldn't be the first social network to have problems scaling. Grindr is releasing a new app later this summer, with improved search and other features. For now, though, users can take comfort in the fact that service returned a few days ago. As CEO Joel Simkhai put it in a blog post, "I know it was frustrating. I was frustrated myself."
Responsive Design: What is it, and Why is it So Important?
The concept of Responsive Design is being kicked around pretty much everywhere lately, but it’s a lot more than just a buzzword; it’s quickly becoming as common as CSS for website design and development.
And this is no surprise: with more than 6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, and almost half of them now using smartphones, mobile has become the best way to reach out to more of your users. To keep a brand’s digital experience consistent while welcoming more visitors from all of these avenues, presents an overwhelming complexity of multiple sites, duplicate content and many other problems. Responsive Design helps clear that all up.
Before we get into the why of Responsive Design, it might help to nail down the what.
Responsive Design is the practice of creating adaptive designs that deliver content seamlessly, and in real time, to visitors based on CSS media queries that tell the site the dimensions of the device they’re using to access it. It helps your site maintain your message consistently on a tablet, e-book device, smartphone, laptop or desktop.
A great example in Bridgeline Digital’s responsive experience came about in the opportunity to create multiple sites in iAPPS with this practice for a nationally known athletic club, from the ground up. Read on to get the whole story.
Responsive Design & iAPPS
In this case, the goal was more than just website redesign: it was an entirely new site that would be user-friendly as well as engaging for the quickly growing Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) demographic. After all, visitors were online, active and increasingly mobile. Initially, discussions involved developing multiple sites – one for laptop and desktop users, and more for mobile devices. In the midst of planning, the Bridgeline design team suggested looking into responsive design. With responsive, all of these goals could be met completely with a single site – and at significantly less cost than originally planned.
With the flexible capabilities of iAPPS, and with help from Bridgeline’s development and design teams, the project team was able to create a web experience that was flexible for all devices, remarkably engaging and – we would soon see – very effective.
How it works
Using media query functionality in CSS3 (a fancy way of saying that when a visitor enters a website the CSS asks which sort of device is accessing it, and actually measures its physical characteristics), a responsive site adjusts the amount, layout and size of content accordingly, to make it appealing and easily engaging on any of them.
In action on a desktop or laptop, maximize the browser window to see the design at full status. Dragging the bottom corner up to different sizes will cause the site change dynamically to fit different screen sizes. Responsive is so… well, responsive … that any responsive site will first open at the appropriate size, based on the device visitors are using to access it, or the size of their browser window.
Why Should You Care?
More than 44% of those almost 3 billion smartphone users we discussed earlier access the Internet from that phone, and that number is projected to increase by as much as 18 times before 2016. With numbers like these, responsive design stops being a cool new toy or the latest hip trend, and becomes a clear necessity. But there are a few more reasons to consider this new approach:
- It saves money. Setting up responsive design costs more money upfront, but a long term plan for mobile to build separate, device-specific sites will require more investment down the road (in labor, for one, as you’ll have to have a team of content editors posting to all sites, rather than just the one).
- It helps prevent duplicate content issues. Using a mobile and a desktop version of the same site presents multiple site issues, the most significant – and problematic – of which is duplicate content (psst… this is the one that gets your site penalized – heavily – in search engines!).
- Honest! It really saves you money. And it’s worth mentioning again. Two separate sites require two complete, separate content strategies (and not to mention the maintenance for each site). That’s a lot of extra planning, writing, strategy – phew!
- People are already landing on your site with all kinds of mobile devices. Pull some analytics and see how many mobile users have visited your site over the last six months, and then compare that number to last year. The increase you see is largely due to new, mobile device traffic. Expect that number to do nothing but grow.
Take those same numbers from the last six months and compare it to your overall traffic. The percentage of those that come from mobile is also going to increase significantly over the next 16 – 24 months. (Hint: Keep these numbers handy! Having them available is essential when trying to make a decision on making your site mobile-friendly, and convincing the C-suite for buy-in!) - You’ll make more money. Visitors are much more likely to stay on a site and complete a call to action if the site is easy to navigate. And navigation on the smaller, more specialized “third screens” that your visitors are taking on every day ultimately convert that visitor into a customer, or send them on to an easier to navigate alternative. A dynamic, easy and engaging experience is also likely to make them an advocate for your brand.
And, the final kicker that should get you and your C-suite really looking at responsive design: Google has recently announced that responsive design is their primary recommended configuration for smartphone-optimized websites, though the search giant doesn’t stop there. As it has with the recent Panda and Penguin updates, Google seems to be continuing to put emphasis on the user experience – and rewarding sites that follow suit. Google says that these updates affected between 3% and 12% of queries – which is a little more than just pocket change.
With iAPPS flexability and Bridgeline’s responsive design experience and SEO capabilities, getting your sites optimized for search engines – regardless of the user’s device – is getting easier. And now it’s getting much harder to keep putting of making the leap.
24 July 2012
How to Make Branded Content More Credible [Research]
Branded content. When done poorly in the movies and traditional media, it’s the source of ridicule. Think of obnoxious product placement, inspired Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Done really poorly, branded content can backfire. Look at how infomercials have become infamous for misleading people. Done well, branded content is at least not annoying, as in the tolerable 25 brand mentions in 21 Jump Street. (Wouldn’t 21 mentions be more clever? But I’m getting off track…)
That’s traditional media. Is digital doomed to the same fate? Will digital brands keep making mistakes like PepsiGate? Can digital branded content ever be taken seriously, even as seriously as journalism?
I’ve watched the interactive marketing and media industries debate this question for a while. The debate is interesting, but sooner or later we need answers. Wait, let me amend that. With 80 percent of American adults going online to find digital information, we need answers NOW. To get some, my firm conducted an in-depth study of digital content credibility. Note that our research didn’t focus on digital branded entertainment, which acts similarly to advertising.)
We found Americans are quite open to brands being credible sources of web content. For example, when we asked study participants to rank financial content sources in order of credibility, a company or brand ranked second, beating out big media and other source types.
That result astounds me when I think about the credibility challenges faced by the scandal-ridden financial industry. But, we found the same was true for the health and travel industries, too. Those three industries are so different from each other, it’s not a stretch to think this insight also applies to other industries.
What does this insight mean for you, as content marketers? Big opportunity. People want to hear from you. Americans are not opposed to brands being sources of content.
Well, that sounds easy enough, right? Here’s the rub. Our applied research finds content execution matters to digital credibility. A lot. While people are open to companies and brands as credible sources in theory, in practice people rated other sources of digital content as more credible. For example, when research participants rated different samples of finance content, they rated content from big media the highest in credibility.
This discrepancy means the problem with branded content credibility isn’t the concept. It’s the execution. Your challenge, then, is to improve the credibility of your branded content execution. Let’s look at three research-based ways to give your digital branded content more clout.
3. Be Easier to Recognize
We’ve known since 2002 that appearing credible is important. (For a refresher, take a look at this study sponsored by Consumer Reports.) But, my firm’s research finds digital credibility is about more than looks. It’s about identity.
Clearly identify yourself, always
Don’t assume everyone who comes across your content knows your brand is the source. In our research, if participants had any doubt about who or what the content source was, they rated the credibility of that content sample lower. And, among samples of content that our participants rated as “not credible,” uncertainty of the source’s identity was the number two reason why.
So, make your brand name, logo, and tagline obvious. Getting this basic right will take you far. But how do you make your brand’s identity unmistakable? Voice.
Develop a distinct voice
When so much content is text, you need a verbal identity as strong as your visual identity. Voice is your verbal identity. When your content sounds like your brand, even when visual cues are limited (think SMS, for example) people can recognize you faster. The foundation for voice is point of view. How does your brand see the world? What does your brand stand for?
From your brand viewpoint flows your brand voice. To bring it to life, don’t list a bunch of tired adjectives. Think about how that voice should make people feel and list examples. Should your brand make people feel wiser, like they’ve just hung out with their favorite mentor? Or cooler, like they just spent time with a hip friend who knows what’s in and what’s out? How would a favorite mentor or a hip friend talk? That’s your start on voice.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Voice sounds abstract, but the next way to give your branded content more clout is much more concrete.
2. Polish the Details, Then Polish Some More
If your content seems sloppy, customers will be slower to listen to you and to trust you. Get the details right.
Master that metadata
For part of our research, we observed people look for answers to questions about health, finance, and travel. I was astounded at how closely participants read metadata listed in search engine results. If that metadata was unintelligible or not clear, especially for an unfamiliar brand, participants would not click on the listing. Get your page titles and metadata descriptions in order.
Avoid typos, errors, and inconsistencies
Our research found that typos, factual errors, and inconsistencies will make people more likely to verify your content. That means people will consult other sources of content and won’t count on your content as the definitive word. And, that means people will be more likely to come across your competitors or, worse, give up altogether.
Reference other credible content sources
We asked participants to rank what helps them decide whether to trust content. They ranked references highly. If you’re a new brand, especially, references that your prospective customers already trust will go a long way toward building your clout.
Don’t have time or resources to polish content, you say? Take some of that budget you’re wasting on display advertising and put it toward better quality content.
1. Offer Content That Really Is Useful
In our research, we asked participants who rated content samples as credible to tell us why. The second most frequent reason? The content is useful.
Appearing useful isn’t enough
You can’t shortcut usefulness. Appearing to be easy to read with white space and bulleted lists or using a “3 ways to x” formula like the one I’m using here doesn’t guarantee usefulness. Usefulness is about whether your content truly means something to the people you’re trying to reach. Does your branded content really answer their questions or guide them through tough decisions? Does your branded content avoid rehashing the obvious and thoughtfully meet your customers’ needs? If yes, you’re well on your way to making content useful.
Be easy to recommend
When people find your content useful, they’ll be more likely to recommend it to others online and off. In our research, participants reported that recommendations both from experts and from people they know (friends, colleagues, etc.) help them decide whether to trust content. For a new brand, a recommendation will lead people to trust you faster, short cutting their normal approach to verifying what you say. Make sure your content connects well with social media so people can recommend your branded content online.
When you make your digital branded content easier to recognize, more polished, and more useful, your brand becomes a trusted advisor in the eyes of your customers. With so many companies not doing digital branded content — or doing it wrong — doing digital branded content right will distinguish you as an authority. You don’t buy authority, but rather you earn it with the right content approach. Your brand might not get name-dropped by Channing Tatum or Jonah Hill, but I predict you will get a jump on brand reach, reputation, and results. In the end, isn’t that what every marketer, content or not, wants?
Study—Everyone’s an Influencer: Quantifying Influence on Twitter
At the recent IPR Measurement Commission meeting Duncan Watts (see below) presented results of a study of influence among Twitter users by Jake Hofman, Winter Mason, Duncan Watts, and Eytan Bakshy called “Everyone’s an Influencer: Quantifying Influence on Twitter.” The study investigates 90 million posts by 1.6 million users. Download it here.
From the abstract:
In this paper we investigate the attributes and relative influence of 1.6M Twitter users by tracking 74 million diffusion events... Unsurprisingly, we find that the largest cascades tend to be generated by users who have been influential in the past and who have a large number of followers. We also find that... predictions of which particular user or URL will generate large cascades are relatively unreliable. We conclude, therefore, that word-of-mouth diffusion can only be harnessed reliably by targeting large numbers of potential influencers... Finally, we consider a family of hypothetical marketing strategies, defined by the relative cost of identifying versus compensating potential “influencers.” We find that although under some circumstances, the most influential users are also the most cost-effective, under a wide range of plausible assumptions the most cost-effective performance can be realized using “ordinary influencers”—individuals who exert average or even less-than-average influence.
Also, Duncan Watts has a new book on sale March 29, Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer. Here is what Alan Alda says about it: “You have to take notice when common sense, the bedrock thing we’ve always counted on, is challenged brilliantly. Especially when something better than common sense is suggested.”
--WTP
Altimeter Report: Paid + Owned + Earned = Converged Media
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2012/07/19/altimeter-report-paid-owned-earned-converged-media/
To join in an active discussion and presentation, co-author Rebecca Lieb and myself will be hosting a webinar convering the findings from the research, please register for the webinar on Converged Media. Altimeter directly interviewed 34 agencies, brands, technology vendors and industry experts to answer how media are changing. we found:
Summary: Converged Media a Reality –Significant Ecosystem Changes Ahead
Paid, owned, and earned is converging (like social ads) at a rapid pace, we found 11 criteria of success, a handful of case examples, yet companies are hampered internally and with fragmented agencies and technology to make this happen. Converged Media utilizes two or more channels of paid, earned, and owned media. It is characterized by a consistent storyline, look, and feel. We foresee that to achieve cross-channel integration in a consistent way there will be considerable changes inside of the marketing org chart, and a clear strategy on getting agencies to collaborate, and intensive system integration of vendors.
Open Research: Use, Share, and We’ll Create More
Altimeter practices Open Research, we provide our research to you, and encourage you to use with proper licensing as outlined by Creative Commons. Also, we believe in transparency in financial relationships of the companies which we covered in this report, and disclose our relationships if allowed. If you found this report useful, please actively share, which helps us to generate energy to create more.
Report Highlights
- Overview of needs, market definitions, overview of brands, agencies, and software providers.
- Three framework graphics ideal for powerpoint: Converged Media venn, use case workflow, criteria checklist.
- Checklist of 11 criteria required for converged media success.
- Four real world case studies bringing this concept to life from four leading brands.
- Pragmatic recommendations for marketing leaders for internal needs, agency strategy, and vendor deployment.
- Vendor showcase of ten technology providers who are seeking to solve this opportunity.
My focus over the past years have been owned corporate content (owned) and social (earned), however my viewpoint on the paid side has been limited. Thankfully, I was able to partner with Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb who hails from Manhattan and has a strong background in advertising, search, (paid) and corporate content (owned), together with researcher Jessica Groopman and editor Chris Silva, we sought out to answer these questions and bring multiple perspectives together.
At the bottom of this post, I’ll cross-link to all thoughtful conversations, extending the conversation, below the report is embedded directly below:
Above: Today, advertising, corporate content, and social content is often separated, but tomorrow, we expect these circles to converge and overlap, with little or no separation. Hence the term “Converged Media”. We deliberated at great length on how these items would be properly fit into this framework, and
Above: Although we expect many workflows to emerge, this pattern became evident within interviews. In particular, we frequently heard that analysis of social content was often a precursor to content creation by the brand. Furthermore, very few technology providers will be able to solve this entire use case, and brands and agency partners will be relegated to system integration and methods to coalesce.
Above: 11 Success Criteria to Make Converged Media a Reality: We found through interviews a set of patterns from respondents on what will make this a reality and organized the criteria into four distinct categories: Strategy, Organization, Production, Analysis. While this process is likely followed in any individual point channel, now, it must be an integrated approach
Related Discussions
- There’s a churning discussion on Twitter using tag #POEMedia
Twitter as media: Its ambitions grow with NBC Olympic deal
Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how Twitter was dipping its toes into the media business by hiring editors and producers to curate content, followed by the launch of a NASCAR media hub that made it obvious where the company’s intentions lay. Now it is about to jump into the global media game with both feet: as reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by us, Twitter will launch a landmark partnership with NBC Universalfor the Olympic Games later this week that will see a team of curators or editors producing a Twitter-based news hub — turning the service into what the Journal describes as “the official narrator” of the Games. The deal marks another step on Twitter’s path towards a media-based future, one in which it tries to navigate the grey zone between being a partner for media companies and being a competitor.
The Journal story describes what sounds like a fairly traditional editorial operation: a team of Twitter staff will be based in an office in Boulder, Colorado and will spend their days filtering through a never-ending stream of reports about the Olympics, picking out the interesting or newsworthy ones from participants, onlookers, officials and others. The only thing different in this case is that all of those editing and curating functions will be directed at the stream of tweets coming through Twitter — and the people doing it will be employed by Twitter, in concert with staff from the NBC Olympic team. Says the WSJ report:
“Twitter’s Olympics hub… is one of the first times Twitter will serve as an official narrator for a live event. NBC will tout the website with on-air promotions and links to athlete interviews or video clips.”
Twitter’s role as a media entity is increasing
This kind of operation, which Twitter confirmed it is launching later this week, seems like an obvious extension of the moves the company has been making recently to expand its media relationships — and in the process become more of a media entity in its own right. The tip-toeing started with the acquisition of Summify and the launch of a curated email for users based on Summify’s recommendation algorithms, and then progressed further with the hiring of a “sports producer” for the NASCAR partnership that Twitter ran in June. Along the way, Twitter has also announced new features such as expanded tweets that highlight content from media partners (while keeping that content contained within Twitter’s apps and website).
Much like the description of the Olympic offering provided by the Journal, the NASCAR arrangement involved a news hub for the event featuring curated and filtered content from a host of different Twitter streams, including those from drivers, official team accounts, fans and others. Although Twitter has downplayed the work involved in doing this — describing the producer’s function as simply reading the stream and “pinning” noteworthy tweets to the top of the NASCAR hub — it’s pretty clearly an editorial function, very similar to what news entities like NBC and the Journal do (or could do) with similar events.
For NBC, partnering with Twitter probably makes sense: the network and its staff understand the dynamics of the Twitter stream and can make sense of things more easily, and having real-time tweets appear on a branded news hub and on television during the Games probably still seems like a cool and geeky addition to the broadcaster’s coverage — in the same way that newscasters now seem to see reading celebrities’ tweets on the air as a necessary part of almost every news event.
What happens when Twitter no longer needs NBC?
The deal clearly makes sense for Twitter too, since it gets a big marketing boost from being associated with the Games, and that will likely translate into a bunch of advertising revenue. And there is probably also some Facebook-related jockeying going on as well: the giant social network has its own deal with NBC for the Olympics, in which the two have agreed to provide content to each other (no money is changing hands in either the Facebookor the Twitter partnership), so that NBC can show viewers what is being talked about on Facebook and the social network gets access to NBC videos and other material.
As I’ve tried to point out before, these kinds of deals are a natural extension of Twitter’s decision to become a media entity powered by advertising — something that has been the subject of much debate recently, and has led at least one entrepreneur to try and launch his own user-supported alternative to Twitter. But they are also a double-edged sword for traditional media companies: they get the benefit of access to curated streams of content, but they are also providing more fuel for Twitter’s own ambitions in the media department, as critics such as blogging pioneer Dave Winer have noted a number of times.
In a sense, Twitter doesn’t really need to partner with NBC to provide this kind of curated news content. It could hire staff and filter public tweets and create a news hub without the broadcaster’s help, just as it could with any other news event. For now, partnering with media outlets makes sense for the company, especially for a tightly controlled one-off event like the Olympics — but that might not always be the case. And Twitter’s ambitions are clearly growing.
Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Umberto Salvagnin
Sarah Lindley drives Dairy Milk engagement with a giant, chocolate thumb - Facebook Marketing 2012
Sarah Lindley, Dairy Milk (Kraft Foods)
We’re a big brand and we put a lot of money into TV. It’s my challenge to get more money into digital. Digital should be in line with our brand behaviour. Their brand platform is Joyville - they’re trying to get people to associate chocolate with happiness.
Their campaign is run by a community manager, who combines everyday conversation with creative. They get more reposnse from bespoke creativity than from duping adverts into their community. They have 1.2m fans, but most of them are not seeing what they’re doing. They’re not longer interested in fans - they have to drive engagement. So, they build a giant Facebook Like thumb, built over two days on a live stream on Facebook.
They teased the campaign with images and photos of a conveyer belt and great boxes of chocolate. That led into the livestream. They had a popup that encouraged people to share with the people that they interact with most.
Yes, it’s gimmicky. It’s a big chocolate thumb. But it’s interesting content. They encourage Likes by promising to give the workers tea for 100 Likes… They got them involved in deciding what to put on a reward cake, and if they should smash the dumb. Some people left the livestream on for hours.
What else do they do? Share artwork from fans on their Wall - and then messaged them about it to encourage sharing. They got people to send in their own photos of their thumbs. They set up a community noticeboard in the studio to show them - and they got more photos than they could handle.
To top it off, they offered fans the opportunity to be the person who, well, topped off the cake. They wanted to create genuine interactions, person to person.
Results? They got 40,000 new fans - their fastest growth ever. But even better, they got 350,000 fans actively involved, and it drove their highest engagement levels ever. The story spread beyond their Facebook page to both traditional print media, and various blogs and tech media.
If you do something like this - support it with media and see how far you can push it. Give people a very big reward for a very small effort, and you’ll reap the benefits.
23 July 2012
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