We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #40
As ever, the Mashup is here to to soothe you into the working week and massage away your gaps in social media knowledge.
Liking a brand not the same as liking its marketing
ExactTarget have published a report entitled “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” which found that Facebook users are more into showing off their brand choices to their friends on Facebook than those following brands on Twitter or subscribing to their emails. ‘To show support for the company to others’ was the second top reason for liking a page on 39%, beaten to first by ‘To receive discounts and promotions’ by a mere 1%.
Consumers who “like” a brand as a means to self-expression are according to eMarketers reading of the report “are by definition brand advocates, and the earned media potential for marketers among these enthusiasts is high”. Which leads us nicely on to…
I want to be ‘Liked’ by you
AdWeek published a story yesterday outlining some of the lengths brands are going to to get Facebook users to ‘Like’ their page. Since the switch from fan pages to ‘Likes’ in April of this year (only April!?! – feels like a lot longer than that) coupled with the ubiquitous presence of ‘Like’ buttons everywhere across the net (over 350,000 sites to be exact) there has been a massive gold rush to gain more fans. Borders, Mentos, Playboy and Lionsgate are some of the brands that have been pursuing pretty aggressive ‘Like’ campaigns to gain extra fans. However they point out (and we’d agree) that some of the recruitment strategies can end up backfiring due to the fan being less interested in the brand long-term as they are simply being attracted by content or offer they’d like to avail of in the short term.
Facebook ‘Like’ button news
Last Thursday Facebook launched a brand new way for apps and websites to use the Facebook ‘Like’ button, to summarize:
- You can now ‘Like’ specific pages or objects within an application; that last point is particularly important as it means you can now share specific in-app content rather than having to simply ‘Like’ the whole app itself
- Open graph enabled third party sites can now include a ‘Like’ button on their page that creates a connection with their Facebook page
- There’s a new, larger like button that allows you to see how often something has been ‘Liked’
Facebook adding ‘Social context’ metrics to it advertising analytics
Facebook also have recently updated their performance advertising analytics tool to now enable users to understand the influence of ‘social context’ on ad performance. ‘Social context’ is what they call that bit under their social ads that tells you what friends have already ‘Liked’ that ad, application, event or the fan page it’s advertising. It will be interesting to see how accurate Nielsen’s assertion is that adverts with ‘social context’ achieve significantly better results than standard banners.
Facebook Places update and Context Optional’s Facebook fan ranking app
We also have some updates on how Places is being integrated around the site. Check-ins are now being listed on the events home page, news feeds and Places pages, as well as in the right sidebar in a module called ‘Recent Checkins’ which shows you the name of the place that’s recently been checked into as well as the profile pic, name and the time stamp of the person doing the checking in. For those that have access to Places, if you go to your ‘Events’ home page you will see a ‘Happening now’ section that allows you to see the most recent check-ins with time stamps attached just in case you and your mates are in the same area at the same time.
In other news, Context Optional have just built a Facebook app that claims to be the first product that enables brands to recognise users who check into Places. Effectively making Places more like Foursquare in terms of functionality as it enables brands to reward top fans with promotions and special offers.
Things not so funny down on the Farm
SF Weekly has published a rather scathing piece on Zynga, the developer of Farmville (social game played on some social network I’ve never heard of) outlining it’s dodgy business practices of ripping off other developers content (this is not new news) as well as relaying quotes from former employees talking about how miserable it was to work there. One describing the MD Marcus Pincus’ business model as: “Steal somebody else’s game, throw millions of dollars at it, and then, if it doesn’t have it already, add virtual coins”. What makes this approach even more galling is Zynga’s trigger happy attitude towards suing competitors and former employees who may or may not have breached contracts or stolen IP. Still though, when they are rumoured to be making $500 million dollars a year you’ve got to think they are doing something right.
LinkedIn usage around the world
Comscore have just published a study about the countries with the highest penetration of visitors to LinkedIn. The Netherlands just edged out Ireland to first place. 5 of the top 6 countries are European.
Blogger outreach still pretty rubbish overall (except for ours)
Gary Andrews has written up the discussion from the recent London Bloggers Meetup – The PR Edition. It appears that when it comes to PRs pitching bloggers it’s a case of ‘plus ça change…’. There’s not enough research being put in up front to understand what the bloggers are interested in or whether or not they would be likely to write about the brands they are being pitched with. This is backed up by Darika Ahrens great set of blog posts on Blogger outreach, directly asking bloggers their thoughts on how they are currently being pitched to. Of course, this is a subject we helped write the book on, and don’t just take our word for it.
Nike continues to do cool stuff
Dan Calladine made us aware of a recent bit of activity from Nike in Portland, Oregon. Placing a Koi Fusion food truck near Portland university they Tweeted their followers to come along, check in using Facebook places and ask for the ‘Destroyer Burrito’. They received a rather large looking burrito wrapped in the usual tin foil within which they found a free Nike jacket. Tasty.
We get to work with lots of very cool stuff!
We are very proud to announce The Conran Shop as a client. We are in the very exciting position of being able to help the brand develop all aspects of their social media programme, from strategic advice through to blogger outreach. The news was covered in Marketing last week and we’re particularly grateful for Liam Butler’s, The Conran Shop’s global head of e-commerce and online marketing, comments:
There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the space at the moment, with everyone jumping on the social media bandwagon, but many ‘experts’ lack the understanding that We Are Social has proved time and again.
BBC experimenting with delivering user-generated news on Tube strike
The BBC’s progressive use of Twitter across its news channels and wider programming went one step further last week during the Tube strike by aggregating Tweets using the hashtag #tubestrike and plotting them on an interactive map.
Claire Wardle, one of the people behind this initiative, has written a detailed account of the project. It’s a really interesting insight into the sheer amount of work that was put into it and the learnings that came about as a result. We hope that more projects of this type get support from the BBC going forward.
Twitter good for understanding what people hate about commercial banks
Everyone hates banks. However a study of 5 months worth of Tweets about Australia’s top 4 shed light on how much, and it turns out it for a variety of reasons, however customer service came as the worse offender across the board. Christine Walker of Alliance Strategic Research who carried out the research said that that majority of tweets were negative and as such, it was beneficial for banks to be on Twitter in order to manage negative word of mouth about their brand. If there are any banks listening out there: here’s our details.
Twitter also good for getting money off Uniqlo
A rather clever piece of activity from Uniqlo who continue to do really good work in social media. The concept was pretty simple: upon entering the Uniqlo website, pick an item that you like, re-tweet it. The more you re-tweet it the cheaper it gets until it gots to the 9th of September dealine.
Tony Blair latest to feel ‘wrath’ of social media
A guy called Euan Booth has set-up a Facebook fan group titled ‘Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in book shops’ which gained over 1,000 members in a day last week. The Facebook group now currently stands at over 12,000 members, however I think he would probably have had more success if he replaced the word ‘Subversively’ with ‘Cheekily’. Or something.
Bloke behind @BPGlobalPR outed
Speaking of social media snowballs, it turns out we finally get to find out who was behind the outrageously successful BPGlobalPR Twitter account doing the rounds during the height of Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. Not surprisingly he is a comedy writer and drafted in a number of people to help him out with writing jokes for the account. Full interview on The Awl. Seems like a thoroughly nice fellow, very dapper too.
We need your help
A one final thing, this time a small request for your help – We Are Social are in the running for the “Most Admired PR Agency: The People’s Choice” ‘award’ and we need your votes in order not to lose to the evil Ketchum or the nice people at Cake. OK, so it’s not an award, just a poll on some bloke’s blog, and yes you’re right, we’re not a PR agency, but still, we want your vote!
See you next week.