OK we know this is just some SEO basics, but given our recent social search report, we thought this was just great advice on to get you started…

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We like this visual representation of the size of the internet, wow is it big!

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When Santa Claus comes to town, the rules are simple. You watch out, you don’t cry and you don’t pout.

I put to you that in 2009 the social media marketeers ignored every single one of these rules, pedalling Christmas campaigns that involved risks, made people cry and yes, made them pout. For this reason, I propose last year’s social media marketeers did not want Santa Claus to come to town.

The offending articles

Item One

In 2009 Essex couple Jon and Tracy Morter diced with fire when they attempted to topple Simon Cowell’s UK Christmas Number One monopoly.

The couple used Twitter and Facebook to build a groundswell around shunning X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s single, The Climb, for Rage Against the Machine’s 1992 release, Killing in the Name.

The result? More than one million fans joined the Facebook page and Killing in the Name reached the top of the download chart just in time for Christmas.

Item Two

US blogger Jill Kocher wasn’t worried about bringing tears to ours eyes when she launched a campaign to bring SEO to the charities that needed it most.

Kocher, SEO Manager at Groupon by day and blogger for WebPieRat by night, found local-level charities had little knowledge of SEO and optimisation.

Following her findings, she set out on a mission to provide back links to charities in featured posts in the first instance, followed by arming them with the skills to embed optimised terms into their sites in time for Christmas 2010.

Item Three

Fashionista definitely wanted you to pout. Last year the augmented reality tool was developed for fashion retail sites to help shoppers virtually try on their Christmas party outfits and share the pictures with friends via Facebook.

I think the evidence is clear, social media marketeers do not want Santa Claus to come to town.

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Brands on Facebook are a lot like teenagers in high school; both crave popularity.

Conventional wisdom teaches us that to be popular you need to be seen fraternising with the cool kids.

Clueless (1995)

A recent study by The Daily Beast, however, reveals the quickest way to become popular on Facebook is to do the opposite.

The Daily Beast outlines a one-month experiment into Facebook’s news feed algorithm aimed at decoding why one member’s news is more prominent than another’s.

The experiment centres around a newly set-up page, which is befriended by a select group of people, monitoring to see how much the page features in their feeds.

The Daily Beast found the Facebook algorithm favoured established members over newcomers, with absolutely none of the page’s news appearing in feeds initially.

It was only when the friends began interacting – clicking on the page, browsing through pictures, leaving comments etc. that news started to appear in their feeds; page interaction and news feed visibility was directly correlated.

The Daily Beast also found that a status update carried a much greater chance of appearing in a news feed if it included a link to an external web page. 

Throughout the experiment the ‘popular’ friends never received any of the page’s news, which meant they never clicked-through, browsed pictures, left comments or clicked on links – all of the things that fuel the Facebook algorithm.

The takeout for brands on Facebook? Start small. Friends with low-level followings are the crucial first rung up the algorithm, only once a presence has been established does it make sense to go after Facebook popularity domination.

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As brands adopt and implement more social media marketing in house, so the demand for enhancing social skills and capabilities is growing.

But building social capabilities takes more than a one day training course.  Perfecting your social media skills means doing it. Social media is a vocational discipline – it is best learnt with action. Simply because social is, well, social. It is about people and the nuances in behaviours, conversations and etiquette that can only be picked up by living and breathing the communication.

A chat the other day with our insights analyst, Melissa, is a case in point. We were talking about unearthing conversation trends for a client.  “It’s about instinct”, she said. And went on to explain how she reads the chatter to get a ‘feel’ for the direction of conversations, as much as she analyses the data.

Adopting a social approach to communication requires ongoing immersion. It needs a proper internal programme of mentoring, support and leadership. It needs knowledge drivers and they fall into three core areas:

Social People are Mr (or Mrs) Motivators

It suffices to say that social media is all about people. And never more so than internally where you need champions to help make the change. In any organisation you need at least two types of motivators to ensure social media uptake. The  evangelist, or better still the change catalyst (thank you @andismit), that drives momentum and inspires change. And the leaders. The senior executives who want the business to change and are prepared to lead by example.

Process at the heart of social

The social media leader also plays a significant role in ensuring business and marketing processes are evolved to meet social communication. It is the  changes in practices that create the biggest differences. People want to learn how to do things better, and processes can facilitate and liberate exploration and innovation.

Social Media Enablers

Social media needs technology enablers. Even in its most basic form, companies wanting to develop social skills need to have monitoring tools. Whether they are paid or free, someone needs to choose and someone needs to understand how to maximise them. Then there is social CRM, workflow and productivity tools and simply new and emerging platforms.

We have been delivering social media training for a few years now on the certificate and diploma for the Institute of Direct Marketing; with the Chartered Institute of Marketing; and in our work with many brands. It is clear that those students that get support – so they can go and practice and play with social media – go on to execute successful social media initiatives.

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They may be slow adopters but the British Monarchy finally joined 500 million people across the world last week and signed up to Facebook. Instead of having a personal profile, the Royal Family set up a Facebook page for people to ‘like’ and keep abreast of official engagements.

However, with such a high profile public presence, they are bound to invite very public criticism and comments from adversaries. Already boasting more than 200,000 fans, the Royals’ comms team have been kept busy trying to moderate the comments.

The page has been set so fans are restricted from posting on the main wall but still have the ability to comment on updates and uploads. While this isn’t usually recommended for brands, this is a sensible decision by the Queen’s team as the wall would be bombarded with comments from people (and spammers!) if this was live which would distract from the updates that are being posted by the team.

Attention has been on the negative comments that have been posted that harp back to the same arguments and debates that surround the Royal Family. For example, Jason Higginbotham wrote: “Take all their possessions as they belong to the country, sell all their assets to help reduce the national debt. Abolish the monarchy and all its powers, real and ceremonial.” The Princess Diana vs. Duchess of Cornwall debate came up again when a photo album of the Duchess was posted. One fan said: “Let’s put pressure on the monarchy to create an album for Diana on this profile!!!” Another said: “why she has an album and Princess Diana doesn’t? Is there UNLIKE button (sic)?”As with all public profiles on Facebook, the British Monarchy has said it will remove any offensive comments.

So far, the Queen’s presence on Facebook is a good example of how manage a your brand on Facebook.

Keep a steely eye open as there’s bound to be another another Royal controversy in the next few months. Now the Queen is signed up to all major social networking sites, it’ll be interesting to see if these estates will be incorporated into crisis communication strategies and used by the Palace team as a way to connect directly with the public in these circumstances.

http://www.facebook.com/TheBritishMonarchy

Related articles

• Queen’s Facebook page becomes forum for monarchy debate (guardian.co.uk)
• The British Monarchy to join Facebook (cnn.com)
• The Queen’s Facebook page allows royal subjects to vent feelings (guardian.co.uk)

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You may have noticed that we’ve been had a very retail focused week here!  As a leading social media agency we’re particularly interested in how social is changing the way we shop.

Given this focus, here’s our pick of the top three retail stories this week:

Retailers set for £85.2bn Christmas windfall – covered on Retail Gazette publicising figures from Verdict Research.  No surprises here that the figures point out that online sales are expected to rise 17.6 per cent to £8.1 billion, and this represents the largest share of growth of any sector.  Maureen Hinton, lead retail analyst at Verdict, interestingly points out that “retailers such as @johnlewisretail, Marks & Spencer and Next, that provide a range of multichannel options for buying, delivery and exchange are the winners at Christmas, as well as specialists with unique ranges such as The White Company.”  Nice to know we’re along the right our social shopping explosion report!

Asos launches mobile site – opening up another route to purchase for the UK’s biggest online fashion retailer this site will work across BlackBerry, Symbian, Android and iPhone operating systems, offering the full range and features of the retailer’s transactional website, such as its ’save for later’ function.  A timely launch in the run up to Christmas.

Weekly Facebook fashion index: most popular retail brands of the moment – a list of the most popular retail brands on Facebook.  Victoria’s Secrets, Zara and H&M are top three.  We will be revealing more data regarding specific brands, from our research, so it will be interesting to compare and relate such an index to our findings.

Following on from the final story, we also spotted some interesting research from DDB on www.adweek.com.  The most interesting points we took from this were:

• Over 90 per cent of Facebook users that have chosen to follow brands can be considered genuine advocates
• 92 per cent of this audience would either “certainly” or “probably” recommend companies and products they “like” on Facebook to their friends
• Fans want to feel more like a VIP who can access exclusive content and information about new products and special offers before the general public can
• 39 per cent of DDB’s interviewees said fan pages could be improved through supplying advance information and previews

Next week, we’ll be writing another post looking specifically at some of the sector findings of the research and providing some top tips on how to engage Twitter and Facebook followers.

In case you’re new to the immediate future blog, we released a major piece of research this week exploring the motivations and mindsets of consumers online (you can get a flavour for some of our findings in previous posts, Should we reward customers for social media recommendations and our introductory post, The Social Shopping Explosion).

You can download the report by visiting http://bit.ly/Social-Shopping

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The Explosion in Social Shopping

Developing brand loyalty and encouraging repeat sales is a challenge for online retailers, particularly in an increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace. With the ability to move between retailers at the click of a mouse and with a multitude of comparison sites for the savvy shopper, encouraging brand loyalty can feel like an uphill battle.

But social is providing a new route.

Reviews, recommendations and recognition

Our research, The Social Shopping Explosion, demonstrates that product reviews are on the up. 53% of respondents had reviewed a product or service in the past six month.

We also demonstrated that the review is rapidly catching up with both search and word of mouth in terms of influencing purchasing decision.

Consumers are increasingly writing reviews – and they are increasingly making purchases based on recommendations.

But it’s not quite clear where the retailers fit in.

The ethics of recognising customer recommendation

Recognising customer contribution is often approached with caution. There are whisperings of bribery or manipulation or undermining review authenticity. And as a social media agency, with our own reputation to manage, we tend towards caution.

However, only 3% of consumers would think negatively about a brand that recognised customer contribution.

53% would think more positively.

It’s a win-win situation. And the preferred form of recognition is not a discounted price.

The impact on brand perception if consumers are given incentives for recommendations

Recognising your customer with a bit of retail love

83% of survey respondents would like a combination of transactional and experiential recognitions; and there is a marked trend towards exclusive offers and developing a closer relationship with the brand. The preferred forms of recognition, including “exclusive insight about the retailer” and “the ability to interact and talk to real people at the company” demonstrate a growing appetite for brand advocacy; and present a compelling opportunity for e-retailers to extend their relationship with customers beyond the point of sale.

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Today we are launching our report on social shopping and its impact on consumer behaviour.

Online retail has traditionally been characterised by price-driven sales and purchase-driven consumers. The focus, for retailers, has been on engaging the latter and maximising the former.

And as a social media agency, we are seeing how social connections are changing this behaviour.

Social relationships on the web have transformed how shoppers are behaving online and dramatically changed the online customer journey. It’s an exciting time for retailers and The Social Shopping Explosion report highlights some of the new opportunities that social retail affords.

Research shows new social behavioural trends

With the rapid growth of social networks and the socialising of the internet, the question of where social media and e-commerce meet  – and how  –  is of huge relevance for retailers today. Particularly in the UK, where internet users continue to lead the way in purchasing online.

In August 2010, social media agency immediate future conducted an independent survey of 2,000 UK internet users to understand how consumers are behaving online.

The results are surprising; the implications for retailers, huge.

Changing the path to purchase

The social web has opened up the purchase cycle. It’s made it easier for consumers to talk online and easier for consumers to share opinions, information and advice. This means that purchase decisions are based on different criteria: the social shopper is increasingly buying on review, recommendation and the advice of other consumers.

Our research found that 46% of consumers are no longer searching purely on price.

This means that retailers can now engage with consumers before they’ve decided what they’re going to buy.

The empowered social shopper

The social shopper is empowered, vocal and increasingly collaborative. They are savvy, knowledgeable, demanding and the rules of engagement are different.

Broadcasting no longer works: brands and customers are talking; and, in the online space, it’s what other consumers say that really counts.

Our research found that 37% of respondents had reviewed or talked about a product online after purchase, fast catching up with those who had discussed it face to face (38.4%). Word of mouth is nothing new. What’s different is where it’s taking place.

Social spaces have created wider networks and, as such, have created a much bigger opportunity for retailers. Our research has found that consumers trust other consumers, even if they are people that they don’t know. This means that every consumer can now drive traffic and purchases via social.

The Social Shopping landscape is in growth

Recent reports from the IMRG/BPS Internet Access and Online Shopping in Britain report shows that online shopping continues to increase. It also finds that the number of internet users visiting social networking and blogging sites for the second quarter in 2010 has increased fourfold when compared to the same period in 2008.

Understanding this changing landscape is key to retailers; and understanding the social shopper is at the heart of their future success.

Exploring the types of shopping behaviour online and investigating how social touchpoints are affecting the customer journey, The Social Shopping Explosion provides up to the minute insights for brands operating in this new social marketplace.

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The extension of the ASA’s CAP code to cover digital marketing communications – both on brand’s own websites, but also through social media, has been driven by a need to close the gap related to companies’ claims online, in particular to regulate marketing to children.

There is no doubt that regulation is essential to protect the vulnerable. And to give brands clear guidance on accepted professional standards of communication. Everybody benefits.

At face value, the digital extension is clear: online communications that are generated or commissioned by a brand fall under the CAP code’s remit. All you need to do to ascertain liability is ‘follow the money.’

But is it really that clear cut?

Marketing communications falls under the Code; press releases on a company website are exempt. But ‘editorial’ and ‘marketing communications material’ can be difficult to distinguish. PR covers more than just press releases. Many different forms of content may be used to grab the attention of influencers.

And many different flavours of influencers may be engaged. If those influencers are professional journalists they are deemed capable of making up their own mind about PR material. What about bloggers? At which point do they move from interested member of the public who needs protecting by the Code, to media professional who can apply a different set of criteria to evaluating marketing material?

So what is marketing promotion?

Beyond online PR, the non-paid-for space online presents even more shades of grey. If a brand commissions user generated content (UGC) which is shared online, that communications piece falls under the CAP code digital remit. Unsolicited UGC is not covered. Promoting unsolicited UGC is covered. So what is considered a marketing promotion?

• Is a tweet highlighting UGC a brand admires to be considered under regulation?
• Is hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website, promotion?

There are many challenges here for social media marketing.

• Advertisers may have many different social media estates. These are not always managed at a senior level and engagement with those sites is not always defined. There is a potential that this extension will add to the fear of social media that already stops many companies from taking part.
• Those individuals already engaging in social media activities will need a level of communications expertise and an understanding of regulations that may be unfamiliar and outside of their experience.
• Hat tipping trends and influencer comment has become common amongst social savvy brands. This will now need some forethought to prevent false claims.

ASA will risk your brand reputation

Another concern is the risk to reputation represented by the planned ASA ‘outing’ of non compliant brands.

Even under the existing code, long after reparation is made, an adjudication can still show up high on a search engine results page. The new Code will bring a new ‘name and shame’ site into play. The impact of appearing on that site will affect business and increase punitive measure way beyond the fines.

The industry needs clarity

We have many questions that the Code as yet leaves unanswered:

• What is the difference between marketing communication and editorial on a website – and will the decision be made based on solely ASA assessment?
• Is an RSS or Twitter feed that pulls UGC onto a company website considered promotion and therefore covered by the code?
• When will the ‘name and shame’ site come into play? While the Code is still being defined advertisers could easily fall foul. If the point of contention is an ambiguous one, will there be negotiation room around the complaint or could a brand fall victim to a temporary ambiguity, while the judgement remains online for perpetuity?

Perhaps the biggest question that remains however, is this: given the ambiguity between editorial, PR and marketing, why was the CIPR not even consulted?

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