Posts tagged social media
When too much is way too much – BP’s Twitter assault
Jul 15th
I must admit, it’s been a while since I logged on to Twitter. The ‘people’ I’ve chosen to follow tweet way too much boring stuff – they tweet anything and everything they’ve posted online! This however, means I’ve missed BP’s incredible claw back from disaster…and it seems the disaster has indeed continued.
When BP’s deep sea oil rig Horizon blew it guts from its bowls in February last year, it spelt month of misery for the British oil giant – namely misery in dealing with a PR crisis.
Weeks went by and it eventually took to its Twitter and Facebook pages to offer somewhat of an explanation disguised as updates.
It coped a lot of criticism for its slowness in doing so. But now, it seems it can’t get enough of the social media medium. And it’s to the point where it is blatantly covering up the disaster with PR fluff.
A tweet today reads: “Photographer & proud #Gulf Coast resident Steve Jones captures the spectacular beauty of Gulf Shores, AL: http://pub.vitrue.com/FPH”
Putting a few photos online of a good day at the beach won’t make people forget.
Other tweets boast about the company investing $500M to address climate change and record numbers of sea turtle nests.
None of which fit in with the BP brand in the real world.
In the digital world, BP is going through a bit of an identity crisis it seems. The company is coming across as a big green hug too soon after it was a big black killing machine.
BP still has a way to go to build trust in the offline world. And in the online world, it needs to stop suffocating people before they completely switch off.
$500M is a great step toward climate change, but if BP really cared about the environment, they wouldn’t have to tweet about it. Its PR activity has unfortunately come across as a cover up for something.
What social media can learn from the Dutch
Apr 27th
The Dutch social networking market continues to grow strongly as sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin extend their respective footprints in the market – but the global players are still battling for number one.
Having over 600 million active users across the globe won’t sway Dutch loyalty in the digital space it seems.
According to comScore, the social networking market in the Netherlands is really quite unique and full of interesting storylines…
Mike Read, senior vice president and managing director of comScore Europe, said, “It is one of the few markets remaining where a local social networking player (Hyves) continues to lead over Facebook.”
Although, that lead is becoming increasingly tenuous. Another interesting facet to the Dutch market is that the Netherlands has the highest internet penetration worldwide for two of the other key global social networking sites, Twitter and Linkedin.
“The Netherlands is in many ways a nexus of global social networking behaviour,” said Read.
But despite the overall maturity of the internet market in the Netherlands, the social networking category continues to advance, growing 18% to 11.5 million visitors in March 2011 (representing 96% of the online population).
Hyves continues to hold the top position among social networking sites in the market with more than 7.6 million visitors in March, but Facebook is quickly gaining ground, surging 76% in the past year to nearly 6.6 million visitors.
Twitter.com and Linkedin.com rank third and fourth, respectively, with more than 3 million visitors and each growing approximately 70% in the past year.
Lastly, more than one in four Dutch internet users visits social media sites during the course of the month. While the top ten countries in Linkedin penetration are either English-speaking or in Western Europe, the top countries for Twitter touch virtually every corner of the globe.
Brands not using social media to its full potential
Oct 28th
Despite its vast potential, many companies have yet to capitalise on social media’s ability to not only listen to customers, but analyse conversations and turn the information into bottom-line benefit, according to new research.
A survey of 2100 companies, sponsored by business analytics leader SAS, reveals that many organisations cling to old paradigms, using social media for one-way flow of marketing messages, instead of capitalising on the opportunity to monitor, analyse, and participate in millions of conversations among consumers.
Three quarters (75%) of companies surveyed did not know where their most valuable customers were talking about them and 31% do not measure effectiveness of social media.
Furthermore, only 23% use social media analytic tools while a mere 7% are integrating social media into marketing activities.
Overall, companies continue to search for ways to gauge and demonstrate social media’s contribution to the bottom line.
Using, but not exploiting
More than half the companies that responded are using social media. But only one quarter know where their most valuable customers are “talking” about them. Even fewer are applying social media analytic tools. Almost none have attempted customer sentiment analysis. Just 7 percent are trying to integrate social media into overall marketing strategy, such as campaign management, retail analytics, CRM and business intelligence.
Tom Davenport, a leading author and analytics, said: “Companies are missing the chance to effectively market products and manage their reputations.
“They don’t know who’s talking about their brands, products or services, let alone the positive and negative sentiments. They can’t judge the influence of someone praising or criticising them, nor can they test brand messages, videos, etc. In short, they’re missing marketing opportunities.”
Perception vs. proof among users
Many organisations seem more focused on “making noise” than understanding and participating in ongoing conversations about them. Half the companies using social media see increasing awareness of the organisation and its products and services as the major benefit. Yet only a quarter thinks it’s working – a perception possibly constrained by the low use of analytic tools.
Another 30% look to increase traffic to their websites, but, only 29% report collecting and tracking customer reviews online. It is striking that more accountable benefits are far lower down the list.
While 23% agreed social media helped them monitor what was being said, few described measuring the frequency of discussion about the organisation as a current benefit. Only 18% could identify positive and negative comments.
The benefits loom large
Looking to the future, 36% of companies surveyed plan to conduct customer sentiment analysis in the next two to three years. Some 33% are planning social monitoring solutions, 27% want predictive analytics and 26% will measure the impact of online conversations. Many hope to integrate social media monitoring with other marketing solutions, to understand not just what is being said, but who is saying it and its impact.
In July 2010 Harvard Business Review Analytic Services surveyed 2100 Harvard Business Review magazine and e-newsletter subscribers via an online survey. In addition, 12 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with subscribers via phone. The full report, “More Than Talk: The Search for Impact and Analytics of Social Media Use” is available on the SAS website.
Email versus Social media. What’s more effective?
Oct 22nd
Three-quarters of web users say they are likely to share pieces of content with their friends and family, an activity brands are watching closely in their attempts to leverage the influence of brand advocates, according to eMarketer.
A new study from SocialTwist has revealed email was the most common channel used to share content via the company’s Tell-a-Friend widget, accounting for more than half of all referrals. Social networks made up fewer than a quarter of shares.
But shares on social networks had outsize importance in terms of clicks: 60% of clicks generated on shared items came from social networks, compared with just 31% from email.
One reason for the imbalance is the high clickthrough rates for shared content on social sites, says the researcher.
Links posted to Facebook via the Tell-a-Friend widget generated an average of 2.87 clicks each. Twitter shares did even better, with an average of 19.04 users clicking each referral link.
But email may be performing better than it seems at first glance.
Emails sent through the Tell-a-Friend widget include the full piece of content in the message, so users don’t need to click through to the original site to read the item that a friend thought was interesting enough to send. Facebook and Twitter users, by contrast, must click through to read more than a blurb.
For many sources of content, the clickthrough is key: When visitors click through to the originating site it opens up the possibility of ad revenues as well as the ability to build awareness and purchase intent while the user is on an owned-media property. But email recipients who read the content shared without clicking through will still get the benefit of an earned-media recommendation.
Brands should ensure that shareable content carries a message on its own that will remain effective when read through an email client, since such messages remain the primary sharing vehicle for consumers.
Earlier research similarly showed that email shares had a lower click rate than items sent through Twitter or Facebook, but email shares led to more engagement, including more pages viewed and, most important, more conversions.
Checking in? Think about it first
Sep 21st
Onlinefire’s Melanie Seasons questions our blatant disregard for own own privacy with the launch of Facebook Places in the UK.
I’m going to come right out and say it: I have always thought Foursquare as kind of creepy, and with the introduction of Facebook Places in the States recently, I’m a tad worried LBS (or, Location-based Shouting, as I’m going to start to call it) is going to get out of hand.
It’s not that I don’t care if you’re at Kew Gardens or Polpo or All Star Lanes, it’s just that I’m sure everyone in the world doesn’t have to be privy to that information as well. I consider myself to be trustworthy – others… I’m not so sure.
You may remember the Please Rob Me campaign started earlier this year by Netherlands-based creatives Frank Groeneveld, Barry Borsboom and Boy van Amstel. It brought to the attention the fact that if you are checking in and announcing publically all the places in the world you are, it leaves wide open, the one place you aren’t…home, which could potentially leave you vulnerable to burglaries. The campaign gained moderate success, but I think it didn’t touch enough on one point – even telling people where you are currently can be dangerous.
I would hope those with stalkers and evil exes wouldn’t use the location-based services, but you never know. If you’re posting your current whereabouts, is that not an invitation itself to be mugged?
While brands are using LBS to an advantage, I worry about consumers’ eagerness to share, and for what purpose? Someone tweeting that they’re working late from the Starbucks on Tottenham Court Road may get a free coffee every once in a while, but they could also be leaving themselves open to having their laptop, Blackberry and iPad pinched on the way out.
Or perhaps, I’m over reacting? What are your thoughts on ‘checking in’?
Metro’s social media strategy is going places with Foursquare
Sep 20th
Move over Facebook — Foursquare is the hottest social networking property on the market at the moment and Metro newspaper has wasted no time in getting down with those geo-location kids.
Metro has become the first UK newspaper to cover what is quickly becoming the most popular new network.
Metro’s support will allow users of Foursquare to be able to view restaurant and film reviews when they ‘check- in’ to relevant places.
Working with social media agency Diffusion, Metro’s expansion on to Foursquare is just one of a number of social media outlets the urban newspaper now has a presence, enabling it to communicate to its users and readers.
Along with Facebook pages for Metro.co.uk and its Fantasy football game, Metro also has a number of individual twitter feeds, including sport, showbiz, weird, entertainment and fantasy football.
It also runs a twitter feed for spoof anchormen Donnie Fox and Bill Craze from Metro.co.uk’s METime campaign that launched earlier this year and which encouraged users to ‘Grab some METime’ throughout their working day.
Jamie Walters, digital director, Metro said, “We are really excited to be the first UK newspaper to take advantage of this platform and I am sure users will find our reviews helpful when they are on the move and exploring the UK’s cities.”
Ivan Ristic, director of Diffusion added, “Metro’s readers, particularly those living in London, have become enthusiastic early adopters of Foursquare in the UK and they are crying out for tips they can trust. By creating a dedicated Metro layer on Foursquare we now have the ability to deliver targeted, timely and trusted editorial reviews to Metro readers and to create new opportunities for brands keen to work with an established media partner to deliver location based marketing.”
Don’t bug your social media customers – how to listen and respond directly
Sep 15th
Kristin Hersant, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, StrongMail, introduces the company’s new Social Direct tools and tells us why it’s all about respect for your customers.
Let’s face it, on the whole, people don’t like advertising. They try and avoid it at all costs. They change channels during commercials and use pop-up blockers in their web browsers. The reason ads on social networks such as Facebook aren’t living up to their potential is because people haven’t opted-in to receive those messages. They don’t want to see them.
Conversely, by approaching social media as an opt-in channel, you are respecting the individuals that you’re trying to target and are only communicating with those who are interested in hearing from you. This conforms to the spirit of social media and aligns with email marketing best practices.
As any email marketer will tell you, opt-in marketing is significantly more effective than blasting a mass message to a rented list of names that someone claims has similar interests to what you’re trying to market.
It is opt-in marketing that StrongMail is leveraging with our new Social Direct product. Introduced in beta in early 2010 and formally launched last month, Social Direct is a social media campaign solution that enables marketers to monitor, target, and measure their investment in social channels using proven principles from direct marketing.
Marketers can now use Social Direct to monitor all the social conversations that affect their brand and respond as they occur from within the campaign management tool. Those who engage with your social media promotions can be easily identified and distinguished from those who don’t, meaning future offerings can be precisely targeted to customers who opt in to receive correspondence from your brand.
Using StrongMail’s unique search and conversation technology, users can also create individual workspaces to take control of the broad stream of data and conversations regarding customers, products, competitors and projects. By leveraging threading within conversation columns, they can easily see the flow of engagement with consumers on the social web.
Automatically adding re-tweets and replies to a campaign also allows businesses to track the total impact of engagement within a conversation.
Using the social media campaign management tools in Social Direct, marketers can manage campaigns simultaneously via a collaborative platform that integrates multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Key features were designed to improve campaign workflow, including the ability to schedule messages and posts, organise profiles into groups, shorten and track URLs separately, and view a comprehensive calendar that drills down to summary metrics.
Social Direct addresses the lack of effective measurement tools in the social media marketing space by incorporating advanced reporting and analytics. Using real-time reporting, marketers can track all campaign activity and break it down into key performance metrics to help them identify trends, track conversions and conduct comparative analysis. Not only does this help streamline your own campaigns, it gives your customers the satisfaction of knowing they are being listened to, and only approached according to their own wishes.
This effort will be fuelled by personal referrals and genuine recommendations that ring true because the people recommending your product or service genuinely care about it. The future of social media marketing has more to learn from email than advertising.
Why over 50s are flocking to social sites
Sep 7th
Social media networks are increasingly appealing to older users, according to eMarketer.
A May 2010 survey from Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that internet usage among users aged 50 and over has almost doubled during the past year from 22% to 42%.
Almost half, 47%, of 50 to 64-year-old internet users and 26% of seniors aged 65 and over also indicate that they use social networking websites, compared to 13% and 25%, respectively, last year.
The Pew report explains that the lure of social media for older users can be attributed to the fact that social media websites provide an ideal way of reconnecting with others from the past.
Social media is also useful for parents and grandparents to learn about the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Furthermore, the report asserts that people with chronic diseases are more likely to reach people online, and older people are more likely to have a chronic disease.
Ironically, the surge in older users participating in social networks may be pushing younger users away.
eMarketer said, “Already hyper-vigilant about their privacy and what they share, young users may stop considering social networks cool when their parents join – let alone their grandparents.”
Which social site is the most powerful country in the world?
Sep 1st
With so many social networking sites springing up every month, its becoming increasingly hard to keep track of which ones really matter to marketers.
To ease the pain, Flowtown have released this social media infographic, that draws the worlds top social networks as country like shapes according to the size of their user base.
The map includes things like the land of defunct social networks, the stumbleupon sea and the triangle of YouTube viral videos.
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