We Are Social: Tuesday Tune-Up #12

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We Are Social Tuesday Tune-Up #12

Welcome to Movember, folks! Also know round these parts as ‘Tom Selleck appreciation month’.

To ease you into your month we’ve gathered the biggest stories from the social web for you to digest in one-easy-to-swallow blog post.

Here are the Top 10 stories in social media this week;

1. Facebook and Twitter users spamming friends in exchange for cash

In what amounts to a hijacking of brand advocacy, Socialloot are offering marketing dollars to users who sign up and post about brands to their communities.

The site has over a million users in Australia across Facebook and Twitter, with 500 Australian brands – including Reader’s Digest, Perfume Connection, Starshots and Bevilles Jeweller – offering users cash in exchange for links.

With the company set to go Global next year, it’s worth keeping an eye on. If your friends start trying to sell you random products, it’ll likely be the end of social networking as we know it.

Also, you should totally buy a Slusho.

2. Marketers use fan numbers to measure social media success

newly-released survey suggests that although marketers realise fan numbers aren’t the be-all and end-all, they do end up relying on them for measuring success. 60% still used fan numbers as a primary measure of gauging success.

The folly of this is clear: just accruing fans is not enough; it’s what you do with them which is important.

 

 

3. Vitrue research into Facebook fans
Vitrue have produced a really useful bit of research outlining how the demographics of Facebook overall are markedly different from the sub-group who like Pages, who tend to be younger and predominantly women.

In the case of consumer packaged goods Pages, the fans skew even more female but are slightly older.

4. How the F8 changes are affecting Facebook Pages
Analysis from PageLever suggests that the recent Facebook changes have made more fans see Page updates, but those fans are seeing fewer updates:

Facebook’s changes, announced at its F8 Developers Conference last month, appear to have boosted brands’ visibility among more of their fans but decreased the frequency with which a brand’s fans see its messages, according to a study of more than 300 brand pages. In what should be considered good news, the new layout has substantially increased fan interactions with brands.

EdgeRank Checker have produced other research, highlighting how engagement is generally up massively, with comments up 14% and likes up 16%, although impressions are down 22%.

In addition, engagement has dropped on smaller Facebook Pages, meaning that although this is good news for big brands, it’s bad news for local restaurants:

5. Google+ launches more updates in bid to improve UI
Google+ rolled out three new features last week, in a bid to increase the amount of time people spend on the site:

1) They’ve launched a what’s hot on Google + feature, to highlight – how did you guess?! – what’s hot on Google+:

2) There’s also now Google+ Ripples, which allows you how to track how popular posts are shared, and who the big conversation drivers and contributors are:

3) Finally and most interestingly, they’ve launched Google+ Creative Kit which allows users to edit their photos with some cool effects:

With Google+ now also available with Google Apps, one can hardly accuse Google of giving up on Google+ just yet.

6. BBC moves to human-edited Twitter feeds
The BBC has announced that its four core Twitter feeds will now be curated by real people. Nieman Journalism Lab has an interesting post about the effect human curation can have.

7. Airlines outed for bad customer service in social
There was bad news for two airlines this week: first, American Airlines was declared the least popular airline in social media, with only 12% positive sentiment.

Then, Qantas managed to fully step up to the fail-plate with some unbelievably wooden customer service via social media.

All of this left them flying towards the top of the trending topics, before the fuel of negative sentiment overpowered the account, leading them to truly crash and burn. It’s plain simple: it’s just not good enough to wing it.

8. adidas Originals Womens’ Look Book Instagram Contest
adidas recently launched an interesting city vs city Instagram challenge to encourage fans to capture their Originals styles.

Fans then upload photos of their outfits and their friends’ and tag them with #adidasoriginals and a geo-tag of their city and vote for their favourite look.

9. Chapstick’s social media suicide
We Are Social Tuesday Tune-Up Chapstick Fail

real #epicfail for Chapstick: first they posted an image of a woman with her backside in the air looking for her chapstick behind the sofa.

This photo received a spiral of negative comments which were subsequently deleted. More comments were posted, more comments were deleted, still with no word of apology.

Finally Chapstick issued an apology containing the words “we’re committed to listening…” but we’re not sure that message will stick, chaps.

10. Mexican football team replaces players’ names with Twitter handles
In a nifty move, Mexican football team Jaguares di Chiapas put their players’ Twitter handles on the back of their shirts instead of their names.

They also advertised their sponsor’s Twitter account, rather than the sponsor itself. Tweet idea!

The Week According To The Internet: