You may have seen the recent news about Facebook testing ‘Offers’ for Ecommerce sites. Brands will be able to push digital offers through the timeline to their communities and these will be redeemable for the first time on the retailer’s website at checkout.

At present this functionality is in test phase with a small number of Facebook’s closely affiliated brands (read brands that spend millions in advertising with them!) but if successful could be extended to encompass the same functionality that Bricks and Mortar offers provided 2 weeks ago. Facebook has a habit of testing functionality way in advance, and in December they were obvioulsy enthused by the results.

Why is this relevant? Well, brands can now monetise their existing Facebook community as long as they have a direct online retail element. It means that we have the opportunity to start pushing online redeemable vouchers to Facebook fans and test how engaged specific communities are and how open they are to sales opportunities. So, what’s the ROI of your Facebook communities? Quite a big deal, I’m sure you’ll agree.

There’s no time table for when Ecommerce Offers could become publicly available. When it does come into force, coupons will be free to run, but brands will pay Facebook to show their Offers to more people (just like FB ads). Do you think this finally offers brands the ability to monetise their Facebook communities?

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With the high profile acquisition of Instagram by Facebook for $1bn there is a lot of speculation about Facebook’s plans for the photo editing/sharing mobile app. CNET and the Guardian’s coverage of the takeover are the most comprehensive

CNET – Why Instagram just made the lives of Facebook’s IPO bankers a lot easier

Guardian – Facebook Instagram takeover

It also begs the question, how can brands utilise the service to drum up acquisition and engagement of fans. Currently the vast majority of the most popular Instagrammers are celebrities. There are a mere 7 brands in the top 100 most followed Instagram users and this goes someway to indicating Instagram’s main quandary, how do brands make the most out of Instagram?

1. instagram – 1,119,118
2. mtv – 444,581
3. starbucks – 415,555
4. burberry – 270,532
5. eonline -  263,544
6. victoriassecret – 230,527
7. billboard – 150,200

Current functionality presents more opportunities for consumer engagement than it does for acquisition.

Engagement

Competitions are an ideal way to emphasise the UGC element of Instagram. Brands can ask their communities to challenge themselves creatively, submit an image under a competition hashtag and then reward the best submissions.  There’s the potential to run competitions directly in Statigram, using tags to find the most stunning and creative shots.

Why not try using fan images for branded profiles, there are a number of apps out there that allow brands to aggregate Instagram images by topic, what better way to thank and recognise your fan community than by creating a mosaic of their content as your cover photo on Facebook or Twitter profile background? Instarium is a great way to see the potential of groups of Instagram images.

For fashion retailers the Instagram seems tailor made for showing off products in store in an appealing and simple way to core consumers. The Levis Brazil Instagram takes every opportunity to show off the latest styles…

E-commerce

Finally, should the branded imagery you create on Instagram prove popular enough, you might turn to Instacanvas to monetize that opportunity.  The e-commerce site turns your Instagram images into canvases that the public can buy. We all love a new revenue stream where appropriate.

Search and account management

Should you want to find particular images of your products or services that consumer may have Instagrammed you can’t go far wrong with Heroku.

Finally, what is the best way for brands to manage a large Instagram community and a multitude of images? One of the best Instagram desk platforms out there at the moment is Statigram.

Statigram (Photo credit: Felipe Vergara)

Even through this is a billion dollar company, it’s still very much in its infancy, after all it was only founded in 2010!  Facebook is bound to have big plans for it, especially around the integration of Instagram into the Facebook platform, as yet this is woefully under utilised.  Instagram itself isn’t making the most of integrating its functionality with that of Facebook – just take a look at its Facebook page. We’ll be sure to update you with the latest opportunities as they present themselves.

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We love this recent infographic from the guys Our Social Times. With more than 57% of consumers searching online to solve customer service issues, it’s an area that just can’t be ignored.

Consumers are increasingly turning to social to solve queries and resolve grievances

If you would like to find out more about the way social media is reshaping the relationship between customers and brands, then immediate future MD, Katy Howell, is speaking at The Social Customer 2012 conference in London tomorrow, 29 March 2012.

For further details and to find out how you can still claim immediate future’s exclusive 10% discount contact info@immediatefuture.co.uk.

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The new UK Twitter brand pages have finally hit our shores for those companies that can afford it.

Let’s put this out there, brands on Twitter still don’t have the flexibility the Facebook API allows. Twitter will keep a tight rein on what users can and can’t do and maintains a standard look and feel for the site. So what do the new pages allow brands to do?

Space for a branded banner below company profiles;

Area for a permanent tweet containing rich media or a promotion;

…and that’s it.

Twitter says that, brand pages now round off its offering for business. But, then Twitter would say that wouldn’t it?

WHAT YOU GET (according to the Twitter ad blog)

• Own it

Your enhanced profile page is completely public, entirely yours to brand, and accessible to every viewer. In addition, no other companies’ advertisements will appear on your enhanced profile page.

• Deliver results

Drive traffic around your latest ad campaign, product launch, breaking news, or other timely content by using your enhanced profile page to focus followers and non-followers alike on the Tweets that are the most important to you right now.

• Connect the dots

Want to integrate Twitter into other media? Now you can use your @handle to guide users to a richer brand experience on your profile page.

WHAT WE SAY

I’m being facetious, because you also get £25k of media spend with Twitter. Now, promoted tweets don’t have exhaustive proof of ROI, and while EA appear pleased with the results of their recent trial the wider jury’s still out on their effectiveness. Personally, I feel that promoted tweets and the brand page should be taken as a cost whole, branded pages might justify the financial outlay for an ad product that is yet to prove itself to marketeers and advertisers.

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Creating a branded Facebook page can be daunting for any business; doing so without a robust moderation policy in place can be disastrous.

A branded Facebook page can be an open-invitation for foul-mouthed detractors to fill the page with expletives and abuse.

Perhaps less obvious are the implications of a well-meaning, but misguided employee jumping in and publicly defending the company against said detractor. Or worse, a recently redundant employee joining in and publicly attacking the company out of frustration.

Before creating a branded presence on Facebook, it is therefore important to consider the Three R’s – Resourcing, Redundancies and Restrictions.

Resourcing

Consider who will moderate the page and the hours the moderator(s) will be active for. Weekdays and work hours moderation is commonplace, but clearly state this on the page. For larger branded community pages, automated moderation packages, such as Crisp Certified, can be purchased, to automatically remove negative or abusive posts; while software such as the Digital Recognition Moderation Engine (DRME) can be used to moderate user generated images and video.

Do ensure all employees, from the boardroom to the shop floor, have been fully briefed on the page and its rules of engagement; a solid social media policy will provide employees with the confidence to know when and how to respond to customers as well as outlining the necessity for employees to transparently state their relationship with a brand when engaging online.

Redundancies

During sensitive times, such as mass redundancies, a branded Facebook page – or indeed the social web in general – can present itself as the perfect place to vent feelings of injustice. Employ a monitoring system, such as Radian 6 or Sysomos, to proactively search for any online conversations surrounding this. Ensure an escalation process is in place should the online conversation spread and fully brief the page moderator to watch for potential negativity on the page. Page guidelines should state that profanity and abuse can be removed and blocked, to enable the moderator to quickly deal with abusive or aggressive Wall posts and comments.

Restrictions

Consider sensitivities surrounding data protection. While automated moderation services can be employed to block specific words and profanities, moderation becomes more difficult when it isn’t a specific word that needs to be blocked, but a reference to something or someone. Ensure the page guidelines clearly state what can and cannot be referenced on the page, this ensures the moderator can remove or block users who ignore these guidelines. The General Medical Council is a good example of an organisation finding a balance between protecting data and driving discussion.

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In the words of the Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Chernov:

“Without content, social media is a sports car with an empty gas tank”.

No one knows that better than an online community manager. But what that community manager also knows is that accelerating your social media activity straight to sixth gear is risky. Without proper road safety, you might say, that sports car could find itself on a collision course with a ditch.

Continuing our series on online communities, we’ve pulled together our ‘top four road safety tips’ for smooth and secure community management.

1) Stop, look and listen

As Brian Solis said earlier this year, the days of a lone community manager watching out for a few keywords to react to are over. The overwhelming amplification of online conversations has made it impossible for larger and certainly global brands to expect one person in front of a screen to be able to keep track of the potentially thousands of brand mentions taking place on any given day. Today’s community manager needs to listen out for conversations as much as they need to interact with them. Thankfully there are multi-purpose tools that make this more manageable, for example, Lithium combines social media monitoring with a CRM networking solution; while Radian6 offers social media monitoring as well as an engagement console.

2) Watch your speed

If a brand has lots to say and a stack of rich and shareable content, things couldn’t be better for the community manager. But it’s important to resist the urge to shout it all out at once. The content might be flooding in now, but there could well be a drought four months down the line. A clear content strategy and plan will enable the community manager to spread out that content, make it flow in a logical and structured fashion and ultimately make it last. Too many posts in one day can also be seen as ‘spammy’ – so we generally recommend 2-3 a day on Facebook and 4-6 on Twitter.

3) Don’t drive without insurance

In an ideal world your community will chat happily amongst themselves and drop some nice brand evangelism into every other sentence. In reality there will always be the odd trouble-maker, which is why you need to take out an insurance policy: engagement guidelines. By making them clearly visible on your owned social platforms, the community manager is within reason to warn users, remove their posts and if needs be, block them altogether. The Alzheimer’s Society, for example, has a neat Guidelines tab on its Facebook page explaining its rules of engagement, without sounding draconian.

4) Don’t drink and drive

It might sound obvious to say that community managers should always be sober on the job, but the role can require out-of-hours checks on evenings and weekends. Tweeting after one glass of wine might seem harmless enough, but embarrassing hiccups are oh so easy when Twitter platforms are involved. Platforms, such as Tweetdeck, are a great way for brands to keep track of multiple conversations, but when a combination of personal and branded accounts are streaming through a single platform, it’s simple for that manager to find themselves telling their friends about a 40% rise in market share, while their branded community gets informed how pissed they plan to get that evening.

Related articles

• What Exactly is an Online Community Manager? (thesmileystone.wordpress.com)

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Facebook pages give brands an opportunity to build close relationships with consumers; however, they also present new challenges for online community managers. Unlike forum based communities, brands have little real ownership over the platform:  posting is instant, 24 / 7, and pre-moderating is restricted. This means that the risks are higher – and it’s important to be prepared.

Here are our top 5 tips for managing and moderating an online community on Facebook.

1. Use the Facebook tools: You can’t pre-moderate all comments on Facebook; however, you can block profanities; remove posts and ban users or pages.  You can also set up a list of blacklisted keywords that keeps these comments hidden until you have reviewed them. Make sure that your profanity setting screens out any obscene posts; and, use social media monitoring to identify any sensitive terms that you might want to review before the post becomes public.

2. Publish a moderation policy: Having a clear moderation policy can reduce the need to remove posts and also provide a justification, should you need to delete any content. Here are some good examples that tell the community what is acceptable and what is not.

The next web ‘To our fans’

Diabetes UK ‘House Rules’

Topshop ‘Info’

Baileys ‘Terms and Conditions’

3. Know when to delete: Negativity is not always a bad thing and certainly not a reason to automatically censor content. People may post negative comments and it’s important to have a workflow in place to decide what will be deleted and whether an explanation will be provided.

When we’re managing Facebook communities, we delete posts that are offensive, irrelevant or spam. When we get very negative conversation that does not fall outside of the Terms and Conditions, we use other techniques such as asking for the community’s input or direct messaging.

Nestlé’s handling of the Greenpeace Kit Kat campaign and its deletion of Facebook posts demonstrates the risks of a heavy handled deletion policy, so make sure that your reaction is planned and thought through.

4. Know when to ban users: Users and pages can be banned from posting.  We’d only recommend banning users/pages who repeatedly break the Terms and Conditions of your Facebook page; and those considered scammers or spammers. It’s helpful to be aware of your online detractors – but don’t ban them until they have given you reason to do so.

5. Make sure your page is adequately resourced: Are your staff clear about the moderation policy?  Is there an escalation process for any potential risks? What happens out of hours? If you want your online community to succeed and any moderation to be effective, it needs to be properly resourced and you need to act quickly.

These tips have helped us to successfully manage Facebook communities for international brands, but what do you think? Are there any tips that you’d add into the mix?

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There is a real dearth of social media case studies when it comes to business to business. The scarcity is even more profound when you are looking for examples from UK companies. Yet, surveys tell us that almost half of UK companies are active in social media.

We have delved online and found a few good examples of businesses tapping into the social opportunity. We popped them into a presentation so we can share. We have left our B2B social media clients out of this slideshare for the moment, as we hope to publish more detailed reviews to share later this year.

From this small sample there is quite a diverse range of approaches. However, they all follow the same philosophy covered in our report on B2B social media – they place employees at the heart of the engagement.

What is clear is that B2B social benefits from a very focused and tailored approach. These activities are working because the ideas are unique to the specific audiences targeted. And they are all in context and relevant.

When it comes to platforms being used Twitter dominates, followed by Facebook.  Psion and RICS are spreading their wings and managing five social estates. Almost half of the companies have created communities, either on the social platforms or in their own bespoke site. The engagement levels are deeper. The response to comments and involvement in discussions is more intense than B2C.

Of the sites we found, only one – HP – clearly uses its profiles for customer service. The rest focus on brand building, customer relationship building, loyalty and lead generation.

We are keen to create and share a comprehensive portfolio of UK businesses implementing B2B social media, so if we have missed anyone please add to the comments with notes and a link and we will update the deck and publish it soon.

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There’s been a flurry of activity and attention around the rapidly growing question and answer site, Quora, and this week it hit the mainstream media.

For anyone who’s missed the news, here’s a brief introduction, and some of the opportunities and risks that we have identified:

What is it?

In their own words, “Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” It is a combination of conversation, information and question forum: think Yahoo answers meets Twitter, with a Wikipedia like information page at the end.

How does it work?

Quora users follow topics, people and questions. They are able to add answers and edit existing answers, as well as rate those that have been provided by others. Accuracy is ensured by the biography that is provided by the users and the expertise that they bring to the topic, as well as the self-regulating nature of the site: inaccurate information can be commented on or rated by other users.

What does it mean to brands?

Quora aims to create “question pages” which bring together all the most relevant information relating to a particular questions.  These pages will provide content about the brand, derived from answers given by the Quora community.

This provides a number of risks and opportunities for brands, including:

• Insight into questions/needs relating to the brand /product
• Opportunity to engage in conversations relating to the product
• Opportunity to identify brand advocates, experts and influencers.
• Community-generated content and conversation about product/brand

Initial research suggests that Google is pulling in information from Quora. This could impact brand’s position in search ratings, as well as sales deriving from recommendation or consumer opinion.

The popularity of Q and A forums on the internet suggests that Quora will be one to watch in 2011. Signing up is through Facebook or Twitter profiles, and we’d recommend that you have a look.

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By Kate Eglinton

Last summer whilst researching graduate positions in communications and public relations, I was drawn in by the social media buzz that has taken the PR industry by storm in recent years.  Social media seemed to be big business. With my curiosity piqued and a brand new Twitter profile, I decided to take the leap into online PR – and managed to secure myself an internship at immediate future, where I’ve been for the last few weeks.

3 key learnings from my stint at IF:

Social media is without a doubt, social.

Social media has widened our communication horizons by an immeasurable amount. It’s human nature to want to share and discuss with others and social media allows us do this – wherever, whenever, non-stop.  The popularity of social media platforms is evidence enough in itself – we love to communicate. With social media you can have fun, be inspired, get involved, learn… and all a super speedy rate. I think there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

It is also diverse.

Each social media platform serves a plethora of purposes and is used differently by different people. We must be careful not to lump all platforms into one social media box just because they come under the same label. I use Twitter to learn from tweeting PR and social media professionals and to keep-up-date with the latest news. Others use it for chitchat and staying in touch, which I save for Facebook. There are no rules of how to use social media – it’s entirely up to you! This diversity extends to brands and businesses…

A career in social media is equally diverse

Working in social media is surprisingly vibrant. From being at IF, I’ve learnt that social media still requires the creativity and communication prowess that traditional PR and marketing demands – with an element of geek which I love. It’s exciting to be involved in such a fast developing and ever-changing arena of business. And I don’t want to get left behind.

To round off…

I think social media’s brilliant. It’s a fabulous new way of communicating – but it’s also a big change which can scare some people. It took me a while to take the plunge and even now I’m a little nervous about tweeting. However, the social media sphere isn’t going to disappear and I believe there is something in it for everyone, whether brand or individual

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