We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #38
News
News
Sina Weibo to launch ‘Promoted Tweets’
Weibo has confirmed its next monetization step towards launching ads just like Twitter’s sponsored tweets. The new social ads are called ‘Weibo Tui Guang’ which when translated means ‘Weibo Promoted Ads’. These posts will take the top of a user’s Weibo stream. Whether or not these ads can be targeted to certain provinces in China depending on the brands needs or to users of a particular gender are unclear. The promoted ads service is still in beta mode with brands like BMW taking to using it. Sina has clearly been making efforts to offset its large running costs with the earlier launch of its premium paid services, a social gaming platform and now promoted ads.
Nike Hong Kong’s first Facebook social loyalty program
Targeting the 15 to 25 year olds, Nike Hong Kong has launched its first Facebook social loyalty program as part of their Make It Count campaign. To earn points and rewards, participants have to complete a number of ‘missions’ such as sporting activities like running, skateboarding or outdoor activities like walking a pet, attending a Latin dance class. Fans would have to share their activity as a status update or a photo upload on Facebook with the hashtag #makeitcount to accumulate points which can be redeemed as rewards for Nike products or joining their sporting event. For example, 7,000 points will allow fans to redeem a gym sack while 20,000 points will allow them to attend Nike Women’s Marathon. A brilliant way to tap on the organic nature of Facebook functions like status updates and photo sharing. Nike Hong Kong is looking to extend this idea to Weibo and Instagram in the coming weeks.
Baidu confirms its Tieba Vietnam launch
We have been speculating for a month now on Baidu introducing a second product in Vietnam. It is now confirmed that the Chinese web firm is launching a social forum service, a Baidu Tieba version in Vietnam. The service is called ‘Tra Da Quan’ which translates to ‘Coffee shop’ and is said to have launched last Monday. Baidu is not only growing its presence in Southeast Asia but also runs a Q&A service in the Middle East and is reportedly gearing up towards Latin America.
Nike finds its feet
Nike debuted a new Facebook app called ‘Nike Shoe Boxxxx’ in English and Japanese this week, which enables users to collect, trade and purchase classic Nike trainers as well as offering the stories behind the shoes.
Foursquare gets local and business-savvy
Is an author coming to your bookstore for a reading? Have a new dish that you’d like to test out on your biggest fans? Foursquare has just launched local updates so that businesses can use the platform to send updates to people that have liked their venue in the app or who check in often.
Study from Facebook shows ASOS’ success with Ads and Friends of Fans
What makes this clothing brand stick more in its fans’ minds? The third ‘Power of Like’ paper released by ComScore and Facebook reveals that Facebook Ads gave ASOS a 130% increase in purchases on the website, even across consumers who had the same affinity toward the brand. Other juicy details in the paper include how much more likely a brand’s Facebook fans are to visit the brand’s website and how persuasive Facebook Ads are to Friends of Fans.
The value of a Facebook fan
If the ASOS study above revealed that a brand’s Facebook fans have higher value, just how much is that value? Here at We Are Social we tried to answer that question, along with TNS, as Bulmers wanted to understand the value of investing in social. We calculated that each Bulmers Facebook fan was worth £3.82 more per week, or £198.64 per year, than the average cider drinker. Cheers to that.
Auto-publishing blog posts garners more exposure
New research from HubSpot says that companies that automatically publish their blog posts to social media sites get 50% more hits than companies that don’t. And what’s more, scheduling blog posts for the ideal times when fans are checking their social media feeds got three times more clicks. Let me guess, you found this blog post by reading Twitter at work just after you arrived?
Facebook adds more third-party app actions within Facebook
You just saw a friend’s Foursquare check-in at an amazing restaurant posted to Facebook and want to save that location for later. Now you don’t even have to leave the Facebook app to add the location to your Foursquare to-do list. Facebook has included a handy button at the bottom of the post, very catchily called an ‘action link’. Click it and voila, it’s added and you’re still in the mobile app. These action links have so far been seen for Foursquare and Spotify and have lots of viral potential for other brands.
Less than 10 percent of Facebook’s traffic comes from outside the site
Facebook is a very interconnected site without much traffic coming from beyond Facebook’s walls, according to research from PageLever. From March 2011 to February 2012, just 7.5% of traffic to Facebook pages came from external sources.
Facebook tests Sponsored Search Results
Will Facebook finally become a heavyweight in the search category? TechCrunch spotted sponsored search results on Facebook, which look identical to the normal results, save for a tiny “sponsored” at the bottom of the result, similar to Sponsored Stories. These ads don’t target keywords, but instead specific pages, places or apps. No word yet on whether this will roll out to all users.
Are Promoted Tweets or Sponsored Facebook Stories more effective?
A corrected study from TBG Digital says Promoted Tweets get 1-3% clickthrough rates on desktop and even higher than that on mobile, which beats Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, currently sitting at about 1%. The study originally compared Facebook’s ad suite to Twitter’s Promoted Accounts, which had much lower engagement scores because they didn’t appear directly in a user’s feed, but has since been updated to make a more apples-to-apples comparison with Promoted Tweets instead.
Twitter offers new geographically targeted Promoted Tweets
Here’s one that brands have been waiting a long time for: Promoted Tweets can now be shown just to followers in specific locations. This makes it even easier for brands to dole out content that’s relevant to a subset of their users without creating noise for the rest.
Nike to get real-time with promoted tweets
While the Team USA men’s basketball ‘dream-team’ is running up and down the court, Nike’s Jordan brand will be tweeting real-time comments through Promoted Tweetsduring all of the team’s matches. These Twitter ads will also contain pre-planned brand content and links. The brand hopes that by tapping into the real-time nature of Twitter, non-followers caught up in Olympic fever will retweet and share its promoted tweets, and the buzz around the Jordan brand’s #riseabove campaign will be amplified.
Twitter gets into Olympic training
Twitter has launched its Olympics hub in partnership with NBC Universal, marking a landmark moment that sees Twitter serve as an official narrator for a live event. Alongside this, it appears NBC will also provide on-air promotion and links to athlete interviews and video clips. This sounds like it will look similar to the NASCAR hashtag page that Twitter launched a few weeks ago. It would seem that Twitter is hoping that this trial will lead to wider adoption and maybe even woo potential investors with an eye towards a public offering.
British cynicism to be displayed on the London Eye?
British tweeters will be posting their sentiments on to the London Eye during the Olympics and Paralympics. The mood of the tweets will dictate what colour the London Eye displays each evening. Reports suggest that up to 60,000 daily tweets have been posted since the commencing of the Olympic torch relay, and this is predicted to increase to more than 100,000 every day of the Games. Fingers crossed we see a yellow wheel for the next two weeks!
The IOC gets social
The IOC and Foursquare are offering a new badge that gives users a chance to win tickets to the Olympics by following the Olympics page and checking in to the “to-be-announced off-site venues” around London. Wonder where this Olympics trail will lead tourists…
A Google experiment sends pages from search to Google+ without +1
Google has confirmed that it’s testing out a new share feature without Google+’s familiar +1. Instead, a share button appears, and when a user clicks it, a box to add a comment pops up. This has not rolled out for all users, but does it show an early demise of the +1 idea?
More Google+1s mean higher rank in search results
Much to the annoyance of those who aren’t Google+ fans, the search giant has thrown its weight into the social search arena and, perhaps unsurprisingly, having more +1s for a page is more likely to boost its rank in search results. Having 23 or more +1s for a URL puts you in the top 35% of search results, and 63 or more puts you in the top 20% of results. Compare that with Facebook ‘Likes’, and you need 35 Likes to be in the top 35% of results, but nearly 160 Likes to be in the top 20%.
ShareThis launch new social reader tool
ShareThis have announced a new tool for publishers that will allow them to turn their sites into social readers without having to build custom apps. This means sites without big budgets can use Facebook’s Open Graph features so their users share the stories they’re reading with their friends on Facebook, just by reading them.
BMW celebrates 10 million Likes with infographic generator
To celebrate 10 million Facebook likes, BMW have launched a new app infographic-creation app that revolves around users’ Facebook data. The data is then tied in with BMW products, such as telling you how many of your friends you could fit into a typical BMW 3 series. The campaign target appears to be about acquiring even more likes, and it uses an enticing ‘BMW experience’ prize as an aid. The competition is based on your “social score”, which can be increased by inviting in as many friends as you possibly can to ‘Like’ all sorts of different pages that BMW owns.
