Category: Social Media

- by Rachel Adams

Reblog: Social media measurement: Is Google Analytics getting it wrong?

This is a comment in response to a blog: Social media measurement: Is Google Analytics getting it wrong?

Is social ‘value’ being overlooked?

In our experience this can be for two reasons: firstly, there may still be limited understanding of the extent and value of a brand’s social channels (it’s amazing how many social media accounts a brand has, if you have the right tool to assess this); secondly, companies may not be effectively using social data to make strategic social media decisions and organisations can feel overwhelmed by social media listening data without the right help to effectively cut through the information.

Therefore perhaps we should not look at clicks in isolation but blend them with a wider view of social media analytics such as growth and engagements to ascertain and benchmark ROI.

 

 

- by Chris Sykes

2013 a year for social detoxing?

If you’re reading this, Happy New Year to you. We hope 2013 will bring you good health, happiness and prosperity.

Most of us returning to work will admit to the traditional clichéd festive excesses – too much food, too much drink and too much time spent with certain irritating family members. How many of us though will admit to binging on social media this Christmas? Did you lock your smart phone away in a drawer or were you Tweeting and posting under the Christmas dinner table and throughout the Queen’s speech?

Social is becoming a bit of an obsession (for some it’s verging on an addiction) and if we are not careful, our on-going consumption of real-time content will inhibit and affect our lucidity and the way we process information. Like the old sayings go; ‘anything in moderation’ and ‘quality over quantity’.

As marketers we need to be aware that we don’t lose the true art of conversation and one-to-one communication. Nor do we want to risk social content overdose. Thanks to our smart phones and the telcos this will be increasingly difficult but new innovations such as content filters and blockers will come to market this year that will enable recipients to better control the content they see and consume. So delivering too much could see your real-time stream switched off.

Use social wisely but don’t ruin the opportunity it presents by overindulging or force-feeding your audience.

- by Chris Sykes

The office party, the company smart phone, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. A cocktail for fun or disaster?

The office Christmas party is an annual highlight for any company with a reasonable headcount. More usually means merrier and messier. We’ve all I’m sure, got hilarious and mouth-dropping tales to tell from parties gone by. Office parties, particularly those that don’t involve spouses and partners, produce a plethora of memorable incidents and moments, usually at somebody’s expense. And in my experience, no one is immune from embarrassment whether self-inflicted or not.

The best parties are the liveliest, where hair is let down, inhibitions are lost and the dance floor is crowded. In these scenarios, many make mischief, a few will over indulge and one or two may undergo a remarkable change in personality turning them into love machines, hell bent on pulling whoever they can. Then there are the ‘pick a fighters’, the chest pokers and the cry-babies. There will undoubtedly be some pukers and if you’re really ‘lucky’, the pass-outers.

Needless to say, you have the potential to capture some post-worthy content on your smart phone – The quiet guy who works in the IT department swinging his trousers ‘round his head to a 80s classic on the dance floor, the girl with the boob job in accounts flashing her augmented reality, or the classic pass out ‘n’ puke shot – another ruined Karen Millen dress.

Now I know I may be generalising and exaggerating but even the most innocuous event uploaded to Facebook or Twitter could land someone in a bit of bother. Many law firms’ Christmas message to business owners warn of the perils of partying with your smart phone.

Here’s one such statement verbatim – “Party-goers with company smart phones should be extra careful this Christmas season – using the phone to Facebook pictures could breach their employment contract. Posts to social networks via company smartphones can contravene the terms of job contracts and could lead, in extreme cases, to people being fired.”

Ooer! They continue:

“Sharing confidential company information knowingly or inadvertently could also kick-start disciplinary proceedings for the employee, potentially leading to dismissal depending on the gravity of any repercussions. While useful as an incentive, BYOD (bring your own device) and CYOD (choose your own device) schemes have blurred the lines between people’s professional and personal lives further and this has increased the risks for employers.”

We`ve been warned!

- by Chris Sykes

Blog off!

Blogging has been around since the nineties; lauded as a vehicle for online self-expression.

 

Today blogging is a major publishing platform that comes in many forms – social, video, micro etc. Having recently come across some interesting stats on the state and scale of blogging in 2012, I’m compelled to question its future role and effectiveness. So to some of the stats: WordPress and Blogger account for approximately 78% of all blog posts. Apparently, there are 500,000 new posts a day on WordPress alone! It’s also estimated that there are 31 million bloggers in the US – sounds a lot but statistically, that’s less than 10% of the US population.  66% of all blogs are in English, so where does that sit with the global population? And finally on the stats front, 65% of businesses admit to the fact that they haven’t posted a blog in the past year. Outside of the most popular and established bloggers and the most popular sites like NBC, Techcrunch and Mashable – how big is your audience really? I can hazard a guess that it takes me more time to think about and write a blog than the total amount of time it’s read. Is this a realistic synopsis for the majority? I can also bear witness to many happy industry bloggers (self-appointed experts) who are relentless in their posting but rarely receive a comment – take the hint! Personally, I get much more feedback from a Linkedin status update but please don’t let Linkedin descend into a blogging platform, which it pretty much is. So next time you think about posting a blog think about reach. If you scaled Ben Nevis, stood proud on the summit and preached to the world you might find a bigger audience?

- by Chris Sykes

Oh two!

O2’s recent network problems naturally infuriated phonaholics who were left in a blind panic and desperate state of perceived isolation when the network went down and up and down. It was obvious the drama and sequence of events would be played out across Twitter. O2 subscribers vented their Roth and frustrations; many breaching the grounds of common decency
Why is it deemed such behaviour is acceptable on a public platform? Such rants in the middle of the street could see the perpetrator charged with a public order offence. If I sent such content via my work email, I’d be fired – but hey, that’s the nature of the beast I guess.

‘Human’ twitter

Anyway, for this post that’s neither here nor there. What I have observed over the past 24 hours is O2’s measured and ‘human’ Twitter response to such abuse. This has created other streams deflecting attention away from the original subject. This shows an organisation that is in touch with its social-self and one that is reasonably well-equipped to deal with a reputation crisis over social-media. If we compare O2’s response to Blackberry RiM’s after it suffered a similar fate, it shows O2 is leaps ahead. It also helps to get the message across to large organisations that they need to invest in proper resources, training and procedures to deal quickly and adequately in such scenarios. Despite the still many news-worthy corporate social-media faux pas, there’s still a sense of denial from many executive management teams that they need to get serious about social-media. If you upset your customers they are going to tell you and tell you in the most public of forums.

As disruptive as a network outage is for people and businesses that genuinely rely on their phones, here’s a small nod of respect to the O2 social comms team, who have dealt with adversity in quite a good way.

- by Josie Rogers

What are the top five organisational concerns with social media? How can you deal with them?

When talking about social media with clients, there are a number of questions that commonly come up. Many stem from the challenges of adjusting to using social media as a new way of reaching customers and advocates. I have highlighted the five key concerns we get asked and how we help alleviate them.

The five most common concerns organisations have about using social media are:

1. Brand damage
2. Compliance issues
3. Lack of expertise
4. Difficulty in measuring ROI
5. Resource constraints

Brand damage

No one wants to be the next #McDstories gone sour or be the next brand caught deleting negative comments. On a less viral level, no one wants customer-retention issues stemming from slow responses from those in charge of running the social profiles.

One way of avoiding brand damage is to educate your staff through professional social-media workshops and clear social-media guidelines. This should help avoid situations that leave the profiles open to brand damage; it will also open doors to would-be brand advocates among your staff, who can represent the company, the brand and the products and services via their own social profiles.

Compliance issues

Have you ever seen a brand with myriad social-media accounts that all seem to do the same thing? How do you control the setup of new and random profiles? By putting policies and processes in place, there’ll be a clear process for account setup, which will avoid the proliferation of new accounts that serve no purpose or duplicate effort.

Develop clear and concise social-media policies, and ensure that employees contributing to social media have read and understood those policies. They should provide guidance on setting up and running accounts, and engaging with stakeholders.

Policies are great, but how can you ensure that they result in socially-savvy employees representing the brand in a productive way? Training, of course! Face-to-face or online-based training sessions give practical guidance on social-media activities, and on combining activities to engage an audience and generate leads. You can find out more about the benefits of training in one of our earlier blog post: Is training the answer to the social dilemma?

Lack of expertise

Are you planning to start social-media initiatives? How do you plan to integrate all of your planned social-media activities to ensure you’re driving value for the brand? Do you know what to do in order to achieve your goals?

When choosing to partner with an agency or consultancy, it is important to look for a proven track record of tangible success in social media – campaigns that deliver value and ROI. At Volume, we work alongside brands and provide expertise (from a number of social-media tactics to a fully integrated strategy supported by best-of-breed social tools) to ensure that our clients get the best return from their social media activities.

Difficulty in measuring ROI

How do you actually measure return on investment. What do you count as a success?

Start by setting measureable objectives you are looking to achieve. For example:

  • Site traffic generation
  • Interactions and engagement
  • Re-syndicated content
  • Event registrations and attendance
  • Leads

It is possible to use social media mapping tools such as SociView™ to understand your social media real estate, assess and rate your social instances to see how well they are performing. Each topic area is given a score based on the following:

1. Visibility
2. Influence
3. Relevance
4. Activity

Armed with this information, you can see how well your accounts comply with set score levels, and from there, ensure that accounts continue to perform well in a valued-added way.

Resource constraints

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has searched a brand’s social-media pages, groups and feeds eager to find specific information, only to discover that the last updates were a few months ago.

All too often, accounts are set up by keen but busy people – a few months on, the realisation hits that the resource needed to maintain the profiles negatively impacts their day job and primary objectives. Or people move on leaving accounts dormant.

We help minimise the time and resource needed to manage clients’ social media real estates by using a managed service. We monitor mapped social-media presence through SociView and ensure that all accounts comply with predefined target scores. Alternatively, we offer a range of social media support services to help  build and manage social media presence to ensure that clients gain maximum value from social media activities.

Do you face any other challenges when dealing with social media? How do you deal with them?

If you are interested in finding out more about our social-media services or SociView, get in touch: info@volume.co.uk

- by Rachel Adams

Demystifying Facebook Advertising

Facebook has 845 million active monthly users and 2.7 billion daily likes and comments. Facebook is completely unprecedented, and let’s face it, a marketer’s dream. This you probably already know, but despite the capabilities and power of Facebook – people still seem to focus on Fan Pages and neglect the incredible power of Facebook advertising.

If you aren’t familiar with Facebook advertising already – now’s the time to get on board. Mobile advertising is coming as early as March 2012, and with 50% of Facebook users accessing the site with a mobile phone, it’s already being estimated Facebook is going to make a staggering $1.2 billion in just 12 months through mobile advertising alone.

So if Facebook provides brand pages that are free, why bother with paid for advertising? Well, Facebook advertising doesn’t stand alone and should be just one element of an integrated campaign. It supports the classic Facebook brand page and shouldn’t be considered a substitute.

What can be achieved with Facebook advertising?

When creating a Facebook advert there are two options – drive traffic to a Facebook page or an external touch point. When using Facebook advertising it is about 40% cheaper drive traffic to a Facebook page than an external website and so absolutely the route I’d recommend. If people are taken out of Facebook the bounce rate is likely to be higher.

Now here’s the key – most people use Facebook advertising as a way to get more fans/likes. This is where the problem lies. It should be used to achieve a business objective so the ROI is apparent. For example – we used it to drive downloads of our mobile application Bleat and our clients are using it to generate leads.

How Facebook advertising works

There are a few options when creating an advert:

Sponsored story:
when a user likes a page or post, it creates an advert using that person’s name, the action and the Facebook page then shows it to all their friends. The theory being that users are more likely to take action if there’s familiarity. This only works well if a page or post already has quite a large number of likes.

Source - facebook.com

Drive traffic to a Facebook page:
the title of an advert will automatically be the name of a page. You can either:

  • Promote a page: type in whatever text you like to support the advert, and pick an image if you don’t want to use your page’s profile picture.
  • Promote a post: if you have a particularly engaging wall post then this could be for you.

Drive traffic externally:choose a picture, headline and body copy.

Picking a target audience is where Facebook is brilliant. You can pick specific age, gender, country, city, marital status, workplace, education and most importantly – their likes and interests. You can even target specific fans of other Facebook pages.

Once that’s done a bit like Google Adwords you select your budget (daily or lifetime) and then pay for either clicks or impressions. Always go with clicks – this way you’re guaranteed results. It will automatically suggest a maximum bid (for the advert to appear in place of other ads) based on your target audience e.g. 66p per click, but often you’ll pay less than the max bid. A big factor in price difference is the target country, the UK and US are generally pretty expensive as you can see from this list from Social Bakers of the average cost per click by country.

Does it work?

Yes – if you do the legwork. If you just drive people to a Facebook wall, you’re not going to get a lot of likes. The user will be confused. You need to set the user’s expectations in the journey they’re about to take. Firstly give the user a reason to click on your advert in the copy and take them to a customised Facebook landing page. It should be related to the advert and shows something the user is expecting to see, but make sure it’s engaging.

The trick here is also to include a ‘like gate’. Tell the user to like the page to access the page/content/something special. This way you guarantee yourself a social opt-in. What’s behind the like gate should be related to your objectives – so if you’re generating leads maybe have an embedded form which they fill in to receive an incentive.

The Results

Without going into too much detail we’re currently running a client campaign. They’ve gained well over 3,000 likes at an average cost of 16p. A good percentage of those likes have converted into leads, and the average number of interactions per fan hasn’t dropped either. In a separate campaign we received 13% more likes than clicks – this means 100% of people who clicked actually liked the page and people who saw the advert but didn’t click went and found the Facebook page within 24 hours.

And now mobile advertising is coming. Customisable Facebook landing pages don’t work on a mobile phone so best practice will differ, but first get on board and start using it and you’ll no doubt reap the benefits.

If you have any queries about social and integrated campaigns, contact us: info@volume.co.uk

- by Rachel Adams

Is training the answer to the social dilemma?

This week Volume’s Key Accounts Team has been busy running a series of social media workshops! Our social media ‘bibles’ are hot off the printing press, having hosted our latest workshop just yesterday with more planned for the future.

So why are we telling you this? Most of us now accept that social media is rapidly changing the way we interact and communicate. Many of us want our businesses to be ‘social’ just like our personal lives. However, there’s still a gap between what businesses know about social media, what they want from it – and the practicalities of implementing it as a tangible and credible part of the marketing mix.

So what are the options to fill that gap? You can hire a specialist social agency to develop your social media strategy and implement it but in reality, precious budget isn’t that readily available for something still deemed intangible. This is where the social media workshop comes in.

Empowering employees

Empower employees to act as the voice of the organisation? By this we’re not suggesting you offer everyone in your company the login to your Twitter account and ‘let loose’. Instead, utilising effective training enables employees to understand the social process and how they can take part.

We suggest training your workforce to be ‘social’ – and it doesn’t just involve ‘how to tweet’. Social is something to be implemented internally and externally. Internally involves opening up the channels of communication between teams and departments amongst other things. Once a business is social, internally, it makes it easier to be social towards customers, partners and other external stakeholders. You just need to select your key people to spread the social philosophy.

So how should you go about planning your social strategy?

1. Bring in the right expertise. Trust in the right social business consultant to understand your business and advise on internal social processes.

2. Pick key stakeholders who will represent your business internally and on external social profiles, then offer them the training they need to get going.

3. Using insights and lessons learned from the training, start working out the best way for your business to communicate socially.

4. Integration. Ensure the social elements of your business integrate into other areas, whether that’s integration with the marketing mix or integration into current company processes.

All of these stages require a starting point in training and expertise. This initial outlay will save you money over time through potential mistakes and ineffective processes. The only thing worse than no social profiles at all, are ones which are badly managed – this can end up being more detrimental to your brand.

We run a range of bespoke training courses to help you get going – either in the comfort of your office or in our own digital theatre. If you want more information please contact suki.johal@volume.co.uk

- by Daryl Swinden

Social insight: understanding and adapting to your audience

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts exploring Social Business.

  • Hands up who has bought a house without getting a survey first?
  • OK, who has bought a washing machine without checking the specification?
  • Finally, who has made a sales call without knowing anything about the prospect?

My point here is that you need information and understanding before you can make an informed decision about the direction of something. The more you know, the better prepared you can be.

The same applies to marketing.

The “Spray & Pray” approach no longer works. Today, it’s all about relevance. We’ve seen this with direct mail, e-mail marketing and telemarketing. Each of these channels originally started as a percentage game: hit as many people as you can in the hope of getting a small number of responses. Over the years, however, this approach exhausted the audience, and now successful campaigns within these channels are those that are targeted and relevant.

Social media is no different: yes, it’s new, exciting and largely untapped; and yes, 46% of people access their social network every day; but in reality it’s a just different channel – the customers are the same.

So the same logic applies.

So what can you learn from social-data insight? Well, you’d be surprised.

To help explain this, I should first give a Reader’s Digest version of the history of database marketing.

First generation:

Once upon a time, customer databases were insular, collecting information that was either part of the transaction process or in response to a request, e.g. What is your date of birth? They allowed marketers to understand the customers’ relationship with their products and engage with them accordingly.

Second generation:

We then moved on; compiled data from multiple sources such as organisations, government bodies and so on. These can be used for demographic profiling to help you understand more about your customers and prospects through relationships elsewhere.

Typically, traditional demographics are based on location, on the assumption that you and your postcode neighbour are the same type of people.

Third generation:

We now have social networks. These weren’t initially designed to be a marketer’s friend, but due to the massive take-up around the globe (one in nine people alive are on a social network), they are proving to be a rich source of new information on customers and prospects.

The thing is, this information has been given, not requested.

Meaning that it has no particular bias.

The same can’t be said for the information gathered for those competitions that require you to answer questions with a view to winning a shiny new widget. Who is going to be honest and say the product is rubbish if they think it will mess up their chance of winning?

The trick now is to listen to what your customers aren’t telling you.

This data is new, powerful and constantly updating.

For example, want to know how far someone tends to travel to events?

What other interests do they have outside your relationship with them?

Which brands would be good affiliates?

Have they changed jobs, moved house?

Are they sport fanatics? Football? Which team?

Are they party animals?

The answers to the questions above aren’t the sort of things we would necessarily know. However, through the inherently dynamic style of social media, we have this information instantly. Social DNA can be derived, so to speak.

BUT (and it’s a big but) this data is not freely available. It needs to be earned. Through relevance and trust. The user must authorise the sharing of their social data with you.
So you need to consider why a user would authorise this. This is the marketing challenge, and to be blogged about at a later date. Once a strategy has been devised for the incentivisation, the use of Facebook’s Connect functionality (for example) opens up this new world of information.

Each one of the three generations of marketing data is useful in its own right, but blending them can prove extremely powerful, by making the unknowns known, and enhancing the marketer’s knowledge of the customers.

Now, hands up who wants to know more about their customers and their social DNA?

Contact me: daryl.swinden@volume.co.uk

So, now you have powerful insight on your customer, but what about understanding the brand connection? In next week’s blog, we’ll discuss the brand relationship.

- by Suki Johal

New year, new predictions, new hype… our advice: proceed with caution

Leading up to the New Year and the weeks following, you will have been inundated by experts providing their predictions for the year – an annual ritual usually followed by “told you so” at the end of the year.

In her Social Business predictions, Charlene Li of Altimeter Group explains her prediction pet peeve.

My pet peeve about the annual predictions ritual is that they lack context for action. It’s nice to know that tablets and big data are important — but what should you do about it?

I echo Li’s comment. Don’t get me wrong; I think it is important to provide analysis and foresight into future trends, but this needs to be coupled with insight and direction. Similarly, overambitious statements like, “2012 will be the year Social Business will revolutionise organisations” only risk relegating this business transition to mere hype.

Those of you who have been following our Volume blog will have noticed we are doing a fairly in-depth series on Social Business. We do not believe Social Business is hype, nor do we believe it will revolutionise organisations in 2012.

As individuals, we already understand the value of communicating across social channels. We are able to share pictures, videos and updates with friends and family around the world. Social-media channels make it easier for us to communicate effectively. 2012 will be the year that businesses also begin to really understand how the communicative properties of social media can be utilised to improve business performance. Businesses will begin to understand how a socially-connected ecosystem of employees, partners, distributors, influencers and consumers will improve engagement, collaboration, lead generation, customer retention and new sales. It will be the year that organisations seek out consultants to guide them through the implementation of Social Business processes and technology.

The direction I offer around this prediction is to proceed with caution. To effectively integrate Social Business technology, processes and people, understand your options and how they fit with your current environment and culture. Evaluate all the advice, including our blog series, and understand the tools on the market. There are currently several tools available to you, but you should define your need before looking at the solution. This is a simple but often overlooked task that often results in unused and redundant technology. With 2012 likely to be a challenging financial year for most businesses, throwing money at unused and expensive technology is not a luxury many can afford.

When looking for a Social Business consultant, make sure they can provide demonstrable experience and success. Social Business consultants should have experience working inside and outside an organisation, to effectively implement social technology and processes internally to improve social communication externally to customers. Furthermore, consultants should be able to show concrete results and success stories.

We currently provide Social Business consultation to businesses varying from Fortune 50 companies to small-to-medium-sized businesses. For more information on what we have done, please do get in touch: suki.johal@volume.co.uk or via twitter: @sukijohal.

In the forthcoming blogs, we will continue with our Social Business series. The next post will focus on stage two of our methodology: consumer insight and direction.