Listening and responding in social media is vital to protect sales
According to McKinsey, an unnamed telecoms brand found that negative online buzz hurt signups by 8%, effectively off-setting any gains from their entire TV spend. It underscores a really important point: it is quite literally pointless to put money into TV advertising if you are not also listening and responding to consumer queries and complaints on social channels.
Fan-created content vital for brands on Youtube
Research from Cisco has found that by 2017, online video will be even more popular than social networking. Although brands have learnt from this somewhat by ensuring their content is top-notch, they also need to learn to appreciate their super-fans on Youtube – because as much as 99% of video views featuring a brand can come from user-submitted content.
Facebook introduces hashtags
Facebook introduced Twitter-style hashtags last week which when clicked on create a lightbox which includes a call to action to use that hashtag and a selection of posts using it:
As Inside Facebook correctly highlights the problem with the hashtags is that most users have tight privacy on their posts, so the only people who will be able to see your hashtagged post are your friends, limiting the utility of this feature. Although AdAge suggests the move is intended by Facebook to help them compete with Twitter for real-time marketing spend, it’s hard to see them competing with Twitter as the prime social network for second-screen viewing.
Our effervescent Strategy Director, Jordan Stone, told Marketing:
Facebook would love to tap into the ‘real-time’ public conversation in the same way that Twitter does, but the challenge for Facebook is they have always been considered a private social network for people you actually know. This is in contrast to the very public nature of Twitter where you can more easily tap into the public consciousness through search and hashtags. Whether Facebook can credibly straddle the line between being a personal social network and a public platform is open for debate.
Twitter has successfully positioned itself as an important second screen platform, which makes it attractive for advertisers and agencies to integrate Twitter into campaign thinking, and therefore spending. Facebook may well be going after their ‘second screen’ dominance and the near ubiquity of using hashtags in advertising campaigns to drive conversations. Which is no doubt why they will allow advertisers to include hashtags in Facebook advertising as it’s rolled out.
Facebook to eliminate Sponsored Search results
As parts of its push to simplify its ad product range, Facebook is eliminating Sponsored Search results. According to Inside Facebook:
The reason why the sponsored results will be nixed is because the most common marketers for them were app and game developers, and Facebook feels that the mobile app install ads and page post link ads are more efficient ways to reach this goal.
Twitter opens up its analytics platform
Twitter has opened up its analytics platform, allowing casual users and brands an insight into the people that follow them, as well as the performance of their own tweets.
Myspace relaunches with $20 million ad campaign
Myspace has officially relaunched with a huge ad campaign, aimed less at re-recruiting former users and more as an attempt to re-position the site, aiming it at all creatives involved in the music industry. They’ve released a 90-second ad which they say represents what the new Myspace has to offer:
Google buys Waze for more than $1 billion
Google’s purchase of Waze for more than a billion dollars shows just how important maps and location data is to Google’s business model. Waze is a social map app with real-time traffic data provided by users, letting them flag bad road or weather conditions to other drivers. The acquisition of Waze is a sign that Google will be trying to make Google Maps even more social – with indicators that the next incarnation will include data from Google+ (such as restaurant recommendations) along your routes.
Google launches unified dashboard
In a move which will allow businesses and brands greater flexibility in managing their Google products, Google has launched a single dashboard that allows Google+ page owners to also manage their presence in Search, Maps and AdWords in one place.
For example, the new dashboard will allow businesses to update their info, including their website URLs, store hours and phone numbers, across Google Maps, Search and on Google+ right from the tools Overview tab.
Path to raise new funding at $1 billion valuation
Mobile-only social network Path is raising a new round of funding of between $75 and $100 million, valuing the company at over a billion dollars. It’s particularly impressive as their last round of funding in 2012 valued the company at around $250 million.
Twitter and Everyday Health join up to provide public health alerts
Twitter is partnering with health news publisher Everyday Health to deliver health alerts and potentially to sell ads. The publisher will be able to scour the 2 million health-related tweets in the US every day to see if anything is over-indexing in such a way as to suggest a potential outbreak. They say the HealthBeat program developed with Twitter could warn users to be vaccinated through Promoted Tweets and Trends. Although they’re yet to seek any advertisers, in time they will for broader health issues such as hayfever or flu.
Random House launches book recommendation app
Random House has launched BookScout, an app which recommends books to users based on the things they like and discuss on Facebook, as well as their Facebook friends’ interests.
Foursquare rolls out Samsung-sponsored visualisation of users’ check-ins
Foursquare has partnered with Samsung for The Foursquare Time Machine, a new feature that provides users with an animated infographic based on their check-in history. Although the campaign includes a play-pause button and specially-generated heat maps, the campaign is more interesting as an insight into Foursquare’s business model going forward: it has been criticised for a lack of revenue, but Samsung reportedly paid $1 million for this campaign.
Despicable Me 2 characters take over Mumsnet
In the first site takeover in Mumsnet’s history, minions from upcoming film Despicable Me 2 will take over Mumsnet for one week from next Monday, renaming the site Minionsnet to help promote its release. The campaign also includes advance screenings of the film for 400 Mumsnet users in Manchester and London, online competitions and on-site advertising.
Heinz Salad Cream launches new campaign with We Are Social
Heinz Salad Cream is looking to promote the product to a younger audience with a new £2m ‘Bring on the Zing’ campaign, including a Facebook challenge (created by We Are Social) challenging fans to add some Zing to sandwiches to try and become a Zing Master.
We’re also working with Heinz on personalisation campaigns for HP Sauce and Five Beanz.
Kiss Me First’s Facebook Connect campaign
Lottie Mognach’s first book launch is being supported by a Facebook Connect campaign. Which you might be impressed by if you’d never seen a Facebook Connect campaign before.
Clever campaign for Tourette’s awareness
The Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada has launched ‘Surrender Your Say’, where consumers have their Twitter account taken over for a day by their app, and the consumer cannot control what is tweeted. It’s a great illustration of what life with Tourette’s must be like.
The ultimate anti-social app
Foursquare prides itself on giving you the location data of your friends – so that in theory it’s easy to meet up. But developer Scott Garner has re-used this data in his app ‘Hell is Other People’, which utilises the most recent check-ins of your friends to work out a position where you’re most likely to avoid them entirely. Scott has created a nice video about his experience using his own app:
How EE ended up embarrassed on Twitter
EE were left red-faced after a consumer’s complaint about them not upholding their T+Cs – and not giving him the Glastonbury tickets he had rightfully won – went viral. After an enormous amount of negative publicity, including O2 offering the consumer entry to all their events for a year, EE eventually caved in and offered Terry his Glastonbury tickets.