We Are Social's Monday Mashup #120

Mashup
lauren.wellicome

How much are a brand’s Facebook fans engaging with its page?
As social marketers try to find the magic key to unlock fan engagement, the highly respected Admap has released a new study that points out that most of them aren’t doing a great job. In any given week, on average less than 0.5% of Facebook fans engage with a brand they are fans of. The category that the brand page sits within, makes some difference, with automotive the most engaged category with 0.98% engagement:

Which goes to show how much difference an agency such as ourselves can make, for example, by helping Jaguar to achieve more than 12x the automotive average and with PG Tips more than 33x the average for beverages/soft drinks.

Social signals are now most important search ranking factors
In news that will turn the SEO industry upside down (and most likely divert search budgets to social), a new study from Searchmetrics has revealed that Facebook is king for brands that want to boost their Google rankings. Shares and Likes on Facebook dominate the list of factors that affect search rankings, with Twitter also having a big impact:

Perhaps not surprisingly, Google+ actually scored the highest correlation with search rankings, but the study’s author said the network “does not currently have enough users for us to be totally confident about this finding”.

B2C and U.S.-based companies most likely to track and follow up on social
B2B companies and companies outside the United States are falling behind on social media monitoring. Satmatrix surveyed 1,000 global B2B and B2C brands and found that they monitor social networks to varying degrees, with a frightening 28% of all companies surveyed not monitoring or tracking mentions of their brand online at all.

Twitter bots boost follower counts
As many as 46% of Twitter followers of major brands could be bots, a professor of communications has warned. However, with a small sample size of 10,000 followers for each of the 39 brands tested and an algorithm instead of a person determining who’s a bot, these findings are bound to be a bit exaggerated.

Facebook launches App Center
Facebook has taken its first big step into creating an app ecosystem for desktop and mobile, with the launch of its App Center. Looking for a new game or want to see what apps your friends are using? The App Center gives personal recommendations and shows you what your friends are doing when they aren’t updating their statuses.

Twitter adds photos, hashtags, usernames and more to its Facebook app
Every day, Twitter users send out 400 million tweets, mostly on mobile. That’s only set to increase (and it has, even over last month, when 340 million tweets were sent daily) partially through increased integration with Facebook. Because of an update from Twitter, thumbnails and links to hashtags and Twitter handles now appear when Twitter accounts post automatically to Facebook using their app:

A Twitter spokesman said:

We have fixed many issues with the Twitter for Facebook integration, including the ability to post to Facebook Pages, and added some new features. The updated Twitter for Facebook integration now includes additional rich media experiences related to the first photo, URL, @mention or #hashtag in the cross-posted Tweet.

Twitter launches its first TV ad
Twitter is sending the message that it’s all grown up after buying its first TV ad during Sunday’s Nascar coverage in the US. The ad promotes its new (commercial) partnership with Nascar.

#allnew4sq grows out of its ‘check-in app’ shell
Foursquare’s redesign has morphed it into a full-fledged recommendations app that should have the likes of Yelp and Urbanspoon shaking in their boots. Version 5 isn’t just an update to the mobile app, but also an overhaul of Foursquare’s website, which now mirrors the mobile experience. It also adds a news feed of sorts, detailing your friends’ checkins, photos and tips. Although founder Dennis Crowley admits that the latest version takes the spotlight away from the check-in, it’s heavy on the recommendations, and the amount of data that the app collects could allow Foursquare to predict “what’s going to be going on in downtown Manhattan two hours from now”.

Maroon 5 promotes its new single through Foursquare
The band is giving away free downloads of its new single ‘Payphone’ when fans check in on Foursquare to, you guessed it, a payphone. And although we wouldn’t have any trouble finding one of those delightfully iconic red boxes here in London, this sweepstakes is only available across the pond in seven major U.S. cities.

adidas creates football Tumblr for UEFA Euro 2012
We Are Social’s client adidas have just launched a football Tumblr that will only help stoke the excitement for Euro 2012. Drawing content from both established names in football and up-and-coming sports writers, the Tumblr will be the place for football GIFs, cinemagraphs and a look at the games from an insider’s perspective.

Will Facebook dominate the so-called ‘Social Media Games’?
With 46 days until the Olympics, sponsors have been pushing their Games campaigns, with the focus heavily directed at Facebook content. Cadbury lands at the forefront of this effort, sending fans who’ve bought a chocolate bar with a promo code to its Facebook page to enter and instantly win. CommsCorner highlights 10 innovative (and a few less so) campaigns.

Elle UK want to spur magazine sales through social
The magazine’s biggest push yet into social media has brought back some rewarding numbers. After teasing fans with exclusive behind-the-scenes content of a semi-naked David Beckham, Elle posted big increases in page and video views with fans finding the content via Facebook and Twitter. The publishing industry has been slow in places when it comes to fully adopting social, but Elle’s momentum shows what is possible.

Burberry tweets a personal thanks to its 1 million followers
Using the promoted hashtag #thanksamillion, Burberry is sending out a simple but lovely personal animated thank you to its followers, though with a distinctly less personal tweet.

Next reminisces about 30 years of fashion through Facebook and Spotify
To celebrate its 30-year anniversary, high-street retailer Next has dug through its closet of history and created an interactive timeline featuring a series of shareable images that sum up fashion moments, each accompanied by a Spotify playlist.

Costa Coffee says hello to Twitter after four years of silence
Despite posting content on Facebook and Tumblr, Costa has neglected Twitter since October 2008 when it posted, “We’ve finally arrived on Twitter!”. Well, maybe now it actually has, with its second tweet in four years saying “It’s been a long time between tweets…but we’re back!”. Costa promises more content coming soon, and it will be intriguing to see whether it can take on Starbucks in social.