The retweet is a popular feature of Twitter. Research shows that, as a result of combining live event marketing with social, 54% will post to Twitter, however, the creation of original content is far outweighted on Twitter, by the ease of sharing via retweets. 36% will share a tweet and 34% will share a link. So let’s put it into practice and find out how good your retweeting skills are!

From a UK survey of 1,000 individuals:

Reach of your experiences is increased to 74% by combining live events with social

When experiences and social are combined, 49% feel more positive about a brand

37% join brand social media pages  as a consequence of experiential marketing

54% will find out more about a product as a result of Live Brand Social

After a Live Brand Social event, 46% will visit the brand in-store

And after a live experience with social 38% will become regular customers

69% of consumers are using mobile devices to share Live Brand Social content

54% of people will recommend your brand to a friend because of a live experience with social

53% of consumers will make a purchase as a result of Live Brand Social

As a consequence of Live Brand Social, 28% will go on to purchase within a month

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

As our recent Social media and the law report showed, businesses are aware that social media can present a legal risk. Increasingly, the UK has seen developments in the law surrounding an employer’s ability to take action against employees for misuse of social media. A clear, comprehensive social media policy is still the best way to protect your business, and can provide valuable guidance as to how your employees can become advocates for your business in a constructive and beneficial way. As we have already shown in our previous blog there are many ways to create a comprehensive and positive policy for your business.

However, as the reasoning from Tribunals and the arguments from employees become more sophisticated just any old guidelines will not do. Here are three tips to ensure your social media policy stands up before a Tribunal:

1)      A clearly worded policy

A clear, well defined policy is essential if an employer wants to be able to rely upon it to discipline or dismiss an employee. In the case of Grant and Ross v Mitie Property Services UK Limited, two sisters were dismissed for excessive use of social media sites. However, the company’s IT policy permitted employees to access the internet ‘outside of core working hours’, which the Tribunal found unclear and therefore ruled that their dismissals were unfair.

2)      Training

An unused social media policy that sits in some long-forgotten cupboard is of little use. You should be able to prove that a social media policy has been communicated to staff. In the case of Crisp v Apple Retail (UK), Apple was able to fairly dismiss an employee for making several potentially damaging Facebook posts. Crucially for Apple, Crisp had been clearly trained when he started his employment on Apple’s social media policy. However, there are some quirks to social media that mean it is not enough to simply communicate the policy – further steps should be taken to fully protect your business.

3)      A proportionate response

If an employee’s actions have contravened your social media policy it may be necessary to act. However, the disciplinary action should be proportionate to the harm caused. Each case should be considered on a case by case basis – like many things in social media there is no one size fits all! With Taylor v Somerfield Supermarkets an employee was dismissed for bringing Somerfield into disrepute due to a video posted on YouTube showing two colleagues hitting each other with plastic bags in a storeroom. However, the tribunal held that the dismissal was unfair as the video only gained 8 hits – mainly from the result of the disciplinary panel viewing the video and therefore did not bring the store into disrepute. Your response should reflect the damage caused by the employee’s actions.

A social media document can’t just be a static document. With the speed that social media is moving it is important to keep it relevant and updated. Read more on who should be responsible for your social media policy and who should take responsibility, and own, your social media content. With social media litigation increasing, now is the time to get better informed!

Images courtesy of David Saunders, Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

After a number of high-profile hackings of some of its accounts, Twitter has launched a new strike in the war on hackers with a new weapon: two-stage authentication.

From the hacking of the Associated Press’ Twitter account, where a tweet was posted suggesting an attack on the White House, to the hackings of Burger King and Jeep in March, Twitter has seen the need to protect itself and offer an added layer of security for its 500 million plus userbase.

The new login verification, which is available now, means that Twitter users can now sign up to have a unique code sent to their phone by text message whenever they log in from a new computer. This means that any hacker who tries to steal your password has to infiltrate your phone as well, making it a lot harder to do.

The new authentication will only notify you when you login to Twitter on a new computer or device though, so it is not as though it will take twice as long to login every time you use your computer. For brands though, this is a welcome safeguard that can protect them from potential hacks, particularly when these instances can lead to a social media crisis and reputational ramifications.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

So when it comes to live experience what social networking sites have the closest affinity with real life social media? Are there platforms where we love to post form our mobile devices and do we prefer to share the live experience on specific sites only?

Mainstream platforms remain the favourite when it comes to live brand social sharing. Survey data revealed that 61% of consumers share content on Facebook, 25% on Twitter and 24% on YouTube. When it comes to devising material for your live experience it is important that you focus on content for these three social platforms in order to enjoy maximum return from your engagement with customers.

Although the research shows that visual content performs well with consumers, such as photos (51%) and videos (37%), comments remain the most popular. Facebook sees the most interaction so it is worth planning content that is easily shared. Still, that is not to suggest that user generated content will not do well. 68% will take the time to write a post or comment following a live experience, 60% will upload a photo and 30% will upload a video.

Smartphones present an easy solution for sharing visual content but it is interesting to note that the personal touch is not lost online. Comments, in particular comments on a friend’s post, remain the favourite way to engage and interact.

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

There are so many statistics, which ones are relevant to me?

Firstly, take a step back and think about what you want your social media campaigns to achieve. Do you want to gain more brand awareness, drive more website traffic, or would you like it to provide better customer service? Whatever its role, pick out the statistics which help show if you have been successful or not in working towards your aim. For example, if you’re looking at driving web traffic, create trackable links (you could use bitly) and see how many people have clicked on them. You could also look at Google Analytics, to see how much traffic has come to your website from social media.

Should I be measuring ‘Likes’ and followers?

Although it is great to see your follower numbers increase, what does this figure really show? A common way to increase followers is to run a competition. Although you get a sudden increase in fans, you may find that not all of these people are interested in your company, but just want to win a prize. These followers may also not be your target market and so although many companies still measure their social media success against this figure, it shouldn’t be your key focus.

What are the key statistics that I should be monitoring?

This depends on what you want to achieve. However, a good area to measure success is on customer interactions, so see how engaged your communities are. This can be seen through how many customers add a comment to one of your posts, ‘like’ or favourite a post, retweet or share a post and click on your post links. On Facebook, you also have a figure which shows how many people are ‘talking about this’ which is a good engagement indicator.

Which social media analytics tools should I use?

There are a number of free and paid for tools available, each providing different statistics, however, to get you started, here are a few free tools to give you the basic data that you may need: Facebook  Insights, Twitter Counter, TweetStats, Pinpuff, Bitly, Klout.

Do you have any other tools that you have enjoyed using? Leave us a comment below to let us know your favourites!

Images courtesy of Facebook Insights

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

A well-conceived live brand social campaign can encourage great reviews and recommendations. Our research shows that, while 37% will join the brand’s social networking page or profile after a live experience, 54% will recommend the brand to a friend. As well as that, 33% will write a positive review based on their experience of live events with social.

Because review and comparison sites are so popular, not to mention easy to find in the search engines, it is not surprising that consumers will consult reviews from previous customers before making a purchase. So having impromptu, positive reviews and genuine recommendations from your target audience can add untold value to a brand.

Lending more weight to our research, the Harvard Business Review states that 76% of consumers cite word of mouth as their main influence when making purchase decisions compared to traditional advertising – and that word of mouth has been found to be 10 times more effective than TV or print.

53% of consumers become aware of a live experience from a friend’s social media activity and over half (53%) are motivated to share on social because they want to connect with friends online. To take it one step further, you can use this information to actively encourage social word of mouth.

Monitor the conversations around your experience. Look for the advocates and identify influencers and fans and then actively engage with your advocates directly, give them more reasons to talk about you and your products, and even invite them to your next live experience! By doing so you are creating and encouraging brand evangelists who will ultimately do your advertising for you by word of mouth.

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial 

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

1) Have a clear message

The unique aspect of Vine is the fact that you only have six seconds to make your point. Having a clear message and structure to your video is essential to making a good recording. For example Nintendo uses Vine as a teaser to preview future products to fans.

2) Tell a story

Even though you only have a short amount of time, it is possible to tell a story over Vine. For their Valentine’s day campaign Tropicana cleverly utilised Vine by showing a brief love story between oranges, finishing with a Happy Valentine’s Day message.

3) Be creative and entertaining

The whole point of Vine is to be as visual and creative as you possibly can within six seconds. Brands need to remember that if you want your Vine to have viral potential then it has to be unique and entertaining!

Look at these winning Vines from the #6SecFilms competition earlier this year for inspiration!

4) Engage Your Followers in Conversation

At its core Vine is a social media platform; this means brands should take the opportunity to get engagement from their audience. A great way to integrate Vine with social is to ask your audience a question via Twitter and then show them the answer through Vine.  For example, book retailer Simon & Schuster used Vine to engage with their fans by asking them what they were reading over the weekend.

5) Utilise the loop feature

Although this may not be a popular aspect of Vine the fact is that all videos automatically loop. The infinite loop forces you to be more creative with your video’s ending as you have to try to find a way of smoothly transitioning the ending and beginning of your video. Brands can utilise the loop feature if their brand name is mentioned in the video, garnering continued exposure.

Images courtesy of Vine

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In this fourth post we’ll find out how consumers are sharing live brand social content with each other. While 49% feel more positive about a brand as a result of live brand social, 37% will join the brand’s social networking page or profile after a live experience. This now gives you a chance to further engage with your customers.

With an increase in fans, followers and wider conversations about your company, how are audiences communicating in social? And how can you engage with them? 

Over two thirds (69%) of survey participants use mobile devices to share content from live experiences. Smartphones and tablets make it very easy for users to share content on social platforms.

Brands can of course be more active on social by suggesting ready-made tweets or hashtags for participants to share, while any photo opportunities are very effective. But smart companies will go one step further and consider how experiential events can be designed for mobile and social sharing:

• Resize your content: create hassle free content with eye-catching features that encourage consumers to take and share photos at your live experiences

• Invite friends: 61% like to post or share on social media if it includes friends. Make sure that there are opportunities or attractions worth sharing at your event

• Short and sweet: by writing brand messages and calls to action that are to the point consumers can share your words easily. Aim to be within Twitter’s 140 characters

Inspiring and motivating social sharing is not just about the device used to connect. Nor is it just about the format, be it photo, video or plain copy. It is much more about the behaviours of your audience. The research shows that only 23% of consumers claimed they wanted to be the first to tell friends. So bragging rights really don’t seem to matter that much. What matters is that the experience and social content around it is unusual (71%), entertaining (69%) and relevant (65%).

Download the full report and share your thoughts on live brand social with us bit.ly/LiveBrandSocial #LiveBrandSocial 

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

So what does it show? In Google’s own words:

Before making an online purchase decision, a customer may engage with your brand through many different media channels over several days. This tool helps you explore and understand the customer journey to improve your marketing programs.

The tool distinguishes between assisted and last interactions, showing which channels contributed towards the sale at the beginning of the customer journey, and which concluded the sale. Its impressive sample size (358.9m conversions across 35.9k profiles) ensures that the findings are highly reliable. The data is sorted by location and industry, highlighting the importance of local context in which the marketing activity takes place, as well as the peculiarities of various industries.

To see the significance of the tool, let’s compare the customer journey in the health sector in two different countries – Brazil and the US respectively:

The difference is considerable. In Brazil, healthcare customers tend to start their journey to purchase via display advertisements, they continue their journey via e-mail and only then are they exposed to social channels. In contrast, the customer journey in the US starts with social media.

Implications of attribution modelling on marketing strategy

The significance of Google’s research should not be underestimated. In particular, it greatly helps the following aspects of the marketing strategy:

1. Expectation management. Any online marketing attempts should be governed by realistic expectations. So far, however, it has been challenging to set the highly accurate KPIs in advance because there has been no clear data on the exact customer path to purchase. Backed by rigid sampling, attribution modelling revolutionises expectation management and thus enables more accurate planning.

2. Bespoke approach. Online marketing for a B2B financial services firm in Brazil will be radically different from the approach taken by a B2C retail company in France. Case studies of success may not necessarily be transferable across industries and countries. Each online marketing strategy should involve bespoke reasoning, based on the requirements and audience of the organisation in question.

3. The need to integrate. E-mail, PPC, social media and SEO efforts can no longer be treated as separate, independent entities. What matters most, is not the channel but the efficiency of integrating and optimising all these channels into one, overall customer path to purchase.  

Further steps

Despite the significance of this tool, there is still some room for improvement:

• Industry-specificity. It would be great to drill down the industry list even further. Would the Edu/Gov sector include the charitable organisations? Is it entirely accurate to generalise Finance as one industry?
• Platform-specificity. Social media is more than just one channel. It comprises a highly diverse selection of individual platforms that differ significantly in terms of audience demographics and significance in the customer journey. It would be great to see how Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other social channels differ amongst themselves.

You can find the tool here. Let us know how valuable you find the data?

Images courtesy of Google

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It is one of the big players in the world of social media, with over 300 million active users and a place at the social media top table. Not content with being the world’s second largest social network and being used by 25 per cent of the global Internet population, Google+ is aiming for the next level.

This week at the I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that they are adding 41 new features to Google+; including a new look to the stream and profile pages, hashtags, trending topics, photo enhancement and greater integration with Hangouts.

Taking full advantage of the fact that visual content is key for brands on social media, Google has redesigned the news feed, giving it a bit of a spruce up in a style reminiscent of Pinterest and Facebook’s new design. When it comes to photos, the new features include Auto Enhance, which will improve your photo by tweaking the brightness, contrast and colour for maximum effect. Combine this with the new Auto Awesome feature, which allows users to merge photos together to create the perfect image.

This integration of editing features on Google+ could lead to an increase in the number of brands embracing the platform. Instead of just focusing on the search benefits of the platform, these new changes and a more user-friendly feel could work wonders.

Other new arrivals include the “What’s Hot” section, covering the trending hashtags to get involved with and supplying you with relevant communities to join. Hangouts also get an upgrade, as they will now be integrated with Google Chat to allow users to IM and video chat with their connections from the newsfeed.

This fresh redesign and the range of new features bodes well for Google+, as they borrow the best parts from other networks and bring it to their platform. So what do you think of the new Google+?

Image courtesy of Flickr

Bookmark It

Hide Sites