The Social Practice

Archive for the ‘social media’ Category

SuggestMe Traveller’s Guide

New platform SuggestMe allows people to create their own shareable custom travellers guide by what’s popular on real-time social media. Most tourist guides based on customer reviews are quickly outdated as opinions and reputations are constantly changing. Suggestme keeps on top of these opinions by analysing information from millions of social media mentions to determine the best places to highlight at the moment customers are browsing the site. Visitors can also search venues based on keywords such as ‘live music’ to find places to suit their mood. It’s great to see the real-time feature, and seems a step in the right direction for the growing dependency of customer reviews.

Stop the Spoilers

Unveiled at the TVnext Hack event in Boston, and winning Best in Show is the Google Chrome extension that allows users to block tweets based on chosen keywords and time period. Twivo has been created by a 17-year-old who was tired of getting the plot to her favourite TV shows ruined before she got the chance to watch them. With the popularity of second screen TV growing, and more and more people watching TV on catch-up or from recording, this is certainly software that will attract an eager audience. No more Game of Thrones spoilers!

SeeItShopIt on Facebook

To launch their new swimwear range, Littlewoods have claimed themselves as the first retailer to monetise Facebook by using SeeItShopIt – a new e-commerce Facebook tool. Retailers can monetise through Facebook by showcasing collections of products within a single post, where users can browse through collections, share items and click directly through to purchase. Littlewoods plan to expand this throughout May and June. This functionality delivers an interactive shopping experience straight into the newsfeed, creating a seemless shopping experience exactly where their customers are.

A Facebook Toast

Budweiser in Brazil has launched The Buddy Cup – a new way for alcohol to grow your Facebook friends. By containing a chip integrated with the social network, people can become Facebook friends simply by clinking their glasses. Being used at events that are sponsored by Budweiser, the cups are designed to increase the interaction between Budweiser consumers. Not to mention the ‘never been done before’ novelty effect drawing in more fans and raising brand awareness.

Go Back and Retwact

After receiving 1,500 requests for it to be built, a software developer has built the web’s first Twitter correction service. Retract Retweet (Retwact) gives you the functionality to correct one of your last 5 tweets. You can either send out a retraction tweet, or a tweet via Retwacts own Twitter account to those who retweeted your original message – highlighting the correction. This is potentially a useful service – but a terrible name.

Photo Donation

Johnson & Johnson has utilized the influential campaign mechanic of donating to charity in return for interactions. Their “Donate a Photo” campaign lets users upload a photo to a curated list of good causes to which the brand donates $1. In 5 days, 5,000 photos have been uploaded, raising $5,000. Integrating with Twitter, and Facebook where 350 million photos are uploaded each day, this campaign taps into a popular daily activity. However, perhaps the ability to upload to Instagram with its 100 million users would have also been a smart move.

Tate Twitter Guide

The Tate Modern is bringing a gallery tour to Twitter in a modern guided exploration. They are giving a tweet and image based tour of its Roy Lichtenstein exhibit for art enthusiasts who aren’t able to make the gallery. A museum curator will be managing the Twitter feed for 30 minutes, followed by a Q&A segment. Perhaps taking inspiration from the fashion world tweeting live catwalks, the art world is catching up.

The Social Comedy Festival

TV channel Comedy Central are to hold a five day comedy festival almost entirely on Twitter. Comedians will be tweeting Vines and jokes along with the #ComedyFest hashtag, including a “Vine Dining” party of six-second videos. With more and more people splitting their attention between TV and online, it’s only fitting that Comedy Central should follow their audience and also seek a wider one. Performers and distributors have to go where their audience is, and in this case, that’s online.

The Great Cycle Trade-In

Evans, the bicycle retailer is using Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy for a rewarding social media campaign as part of their “Great Evans Cycle Trade-In”. The cyclist has hidden three gold bikes in three UK cities and is tweeting out clues to their location. Whoever finds one can then trade it in for a bike worth £1,000. This is a good example of an effective celebrity partnership, and will be sure to raise brand awareness for Evans.

Steer the Audi Story

Audi USA has partnered with Marvel Entertainment LLC for its latest campaign. The car company is using Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to create a crowd-sourced digital Iron Man graphic novel. It allows fans to submit sketches for the final panel of the comic book, determining how the story ends, with the winning entry being published. In the book, the superhero undertakes his adventures in an Audi R8,  an example of a powerful partnership. This is a great chance for Audi to provide consumers and fans with the chance to showcase their creativity and designs, not only of Iron Man, but their vision of the latest Audi innovations.

Name for a Beer

Belgian beer brand Maes wanted to drive new custom organically through Facebook. They produced a campaign that rewarded people with beer when they liked the page and had the same name as them (Maes is one of the most common surnames in Belgium). To not elimate everyone else, they also gave people the opportunity to change their surname on Facebook to enter. In one day, Maes’s fans had tripled in size and made it into Facebook’s top 6% most active pages worldwide. This is a successful campaign that took an inexpensive approach to raising brand awareness, and we feel it was a cheeky tip of the hat to the legendary Whopper Sacrifice.

Twitter Wants You

In light of today’s ‘Twitter for Brands’ event, Twitter has announced a step forward for Promoted Tweets. Usually following the interest graph, Promoted Tweets targeted individual users on their following, but now it will target keywords in timelines. This enables advertisers to reach users based on recent tweets as well as tweets they’ve engaged with. This new feature enables you to reach users who are already talking about you. The question is, how will reducing reach but hitting a highly targeted audience affect Twitter KPIs for brands?

Girls Can, Can you?

Plan Finland, use “social peer pressure” to gain donations to help improve the lives of girls in developing countries. A website and app, allows virtual cans to be created and passed between Facebook friends. The process is trackable with the site showing a timeline of the contributions and a map of where each can has travelled. It’s just launched but has already raised €29,977 and adds a social angle to the standard “Donate Now” message. It’s Facebook tie-in encourages a younger audience to help the cause, knowing that it’s easier to ignore fundraisers on the street, rather than your friends.

Are you Social Media Self Aware?

If not, you should be. Recently we’ve seen two high profile cases of people parting ways with their company due to inappropriate tweets. Plonking ‘opinions are my own’ in your profile and expressing yourself freely to the world is no longer acceptable. The public launch of Paris Brown as Youth Crime Commissioner matched her equally public demise after inappropriate tweets. Soon after, showing how even the high and mighty can fall, Microsoft’s Creative Director Adam Orth suffered the consequences when he tweeted his thoughts on “always on” gaming – a very sensitive subject within the gaming community. So how have you prepared for the social media magnifying glass?

Google+: The New TV?

New UK programme, The Fox Problem, is streamed through Google+ Hangouts rather than TV and encourages deep social interaction. The show’s social footprint also includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr, and the audience is encouraged to use these platforms to influence the script. For example, each week viewers can tweet to save their favourite presenter from completing a humiliating dare. Overall the show seems more about raising the profile of Google+. Having promoted the show on their own Google+ account it seems evident that some form of Google production is in play, and may be their way to endorse the Hangouts feature.

Facebook rolled out threaded commenting across all brand and subscription pages last week, and this is a working guide to best practices for both brands and agencies that manage Facebook pages. Rather than a Fan replying in a single list under a post, they can now also reply directly to another readers comment. We’ve summarised the change, the effect on pages and outlined some simple action points to help co-ordinate a successful approach.

Why and what:
Historically, the commenting functionality, particularly on popular brand pages, didn’t work well from a community perspective. It was confusing, hard to follow and resulted in “fly by night” fan postings, rather than genuine conversations. Facebook has tested threaded commenting since 2012, and it’s now available on all brand and subscriber pages. But before we lose you to go check your pages or chase up your social media agency for an update – this change is currently optional and you can still turn Replies on and off in your Permissions settings (phew!).

Observations:
During the past week we’ve see Facebook fan behaviour change. Interaction between users is simpler and helps fans to engage with each other rather than just the brand. Where a passing comment previously would have been lost, now with support (engagement) from fellow Friends or Fans, it will appear directly under your original post, regardless of its time stamp – this is affected by both Likes and Comments. If you’re familiar with Reddit, you’ll understand the power this gives your fans and why it can’t be ignored.
Brands that rely on the platform for customer service are now able to easily respond to individual comments left on the wall post – it’s taking a while for users to get use to this and we’re currently seeing some fans engaging on threads rather than the main comment stream. However, customer service teams aren’t the only page admins enjoying the update, community managers who have been trying to engage their fans on a deeper level for years no longer have to deal with a vertical conversation. This is beautifully described by @poetagrafico over on Mashable “now it’s like a chain with links where the links are individual group discussions”.

Top Tips when making the change:

1. Get a budget for a moderation tool. The current Facebook notification process is a logistical nightmare. A tool should be able to solve this. As Emoderation’s Tia Fisher highlighted this week, the current Facebook API does not support this change so if you are using an existing tool, don’t turn on your replies yet. The changeover isn’t obligatory until July so you’ve got lots of time to start your research, trial a few tools and retrain your staff to use them.
2. Revisit your House Rules to include a guideline for behaviour towards other Facebook users on the page, as well as towards the brand. We’ve always taken the stand that your page is yours, so OWN IT! Don’t be afraid to ban or hide comments that break your rules. Your page’s fans are a representation of your brand, if someone visits your page and has a bad experience due to your badly behaved fans, that is a reflection of you. For example, last month Justin Bieber was held responsible for his fan’s manic and often aggressive behaviour on Twitter towards each other.  This instance further fuels the theory that the way your fans and consumers behave on a public platform has implications for your brand. Read this and deal with it.
3. Clearly define the purpose and Call To Action on every post. Of course everything you post has a clear Call To Action and purpose, but if you are calling for conversational engagement from your fans manage the direction. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, the most engaged post (and therefore prolific) isn’t always the most popular or intelligent (see pt. 4).
4. Be extra vigilant with your moderation and watch out for Trolls. Bringing the content that’s most engaging to people seems like a great idea until someone decides to post inflammatory or irrelevant messages for no other reason other than to provoke an emotional response from your fans. They may even abuse Facebook’s new ranking system to get their comments to appear most prolifically on the page by Liking and Commenting on their own comments.

In summary, get ready!
Have a clear timeline, of when you want all your documentation to be completed, as well as a date in mind for when you’ll have the resource and budget to manage the change over efficiently. Finally, look over your content strategy and double check that your direction is one step ahead of your fans.

A huge thank you to the fabulous #CMGR community over at e Mint for their comments and thoughts.

Written by Lizzie Gold, Senior Community Manager @ The Social Practice

Doritos #BOLDSTAGE

Doritos have brought to life the first fully interactive concert. The tweet powered stage is designed as a giant vending machine, and turns your tweets (with the #boldstage hashtag) into a real-time concert-control mechanism. Use your tweets to choose the playlist, control the special effects, send your photos to appear on the giant LED screen and pick the opening act. They will also stream the live show on Facebook and use the opportunity to showcase their new worldwide ad campaign “For the Bold”. Being the first of its kind, will concerts be the next Social Media dominated events?

Twitter for Music

Sources have claimed that Twitter is to release a new app focused on music, called “Twitter Music”. Soundcloud is set to provide the music streaming, whilst music recommendations will be tailored dependent on Twitter accounts. Moving into music is a strong step forward for Twitter, after launching their video-sharing app, Vine. Music discovery would be a nice fit since people are already tweeting about the music they like. Spinning out separate services that take advantage of users’ feeds and reach has strong potential.

For the Good of Pinning

Without a doubt – Pinterest is about everything we want and where brands can capitalize on our desires. So it is refreshing to see this helpin.it campaign that has used the platform to give to others instead. Each board is dedicated to a family that has suffered devastation through Hurricane Sandy. Pins on each board are of essential items that the family needs, from beds to shoes, all linking through to Amazon. With charities sometimes perceived as corrupt, this is a safe way to see where your donation goes, and it a good starting point for charities on Pinterest.

Swinging from the Vine

Since their launch, Vine has been labelled as the “the next big thing” after Facebook acquiring Instagram. Some of the early adopters have used the video-making tool to showcase their range of products in various ways. This includes ideas for content marketing – like ASOS asking consumers to share their relevant ‘vines’, building hype around new products – such as Schuh giving users a sneak peek before product launch, and releasing ‘behind the scenes’ content – implemented by Topshop at London Fashion Week. It will be great to see how the tool is integrated into future brand campaigns.

Social Fashion

Fashion Weeks all over the world have seen the relationship between social and fashion grow even stronger. A study during New York Fashion Week found that more people are using social media for wardrobe advice, inspiration and latest trends, whilst top fashion accounts live tweet from shows and preview their collections exclusively on Pinterest. Fashion-related tweets doubled from last year’s events and professional photographers made good use of Instagram. This was predicted as the next big thing, and the current volume of activity is proving this prediction right.

The Music Blog

Micro-blogging site Tumblr has launched an official music channel, positioning itself as a top music destination. This will see 20 bloggers curate content sourced from the community, highlighting the top music news and biggest tracks being shared on the platform. Tumblr’s goal is to be the editorial voice and online go-to place for music, whilst services like Spotify and Songdrop provide users with online streaming. With little additional effort, Tumblr has produced something that gives them an edge and a niche – and could potentially improve their advertising prospects.

Tweet For A Table

This Valentine’s Day, Heineken launched a Twitter campaign that saw them present themselves as a generous brand. Appealing to last-minute Valentines across the US, they encouraged people to use the #TweetForATable hashtag to request a last minute dinner reservation. A simple but effective campaign – that ultimately would be low cost, if they used their clout as a supplier to its potential. It received a strong response, and fuelled much more general conversation across Twitter.

The Vine Movie Trailer

After launching in January, Vine has seen all sorts of brands use its services, from product launches to in-house comic strips. Most recently, movie distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories has released several 6 second teaser movie trailers of the 2013 new film “It’s A Disaster”. It’s too early for results, but it is definitely an innovative experiment, and is a solid vote of confidence for Vine.

Fiesta Social Remix

Three years since the original Fiesta Movement – Ford are launching the “Social Remix” – a 100% crowd-sourced campaign. They are seeking 100 social influencers (agents) to use the Fiesta and produce content that conveys the unique ‘personality’ of the car, and themselves. The content produced will fuel social channels and be the assets for the whole campaign – a first for the auto industry. The message to be conveyed is about the real-life lifestyle, rather than stereotypical components of the car. It’ll be interesting to see how Ford reignites the Fiesta Movement for a new generation.

The Social Practice acquires ISM Search & Social

We have big news! We’ve acquired specialist content marketing agency ISM Search & Social.  This move will strengthen our capabilities in content marketing, community management and search engine optimisation. Our new team brings with them expertise in managing online communities and creating improved user journeys for brands using its proprietary audience mapping, content planning tools and social search expertise and is already fully integrated in to our service offering. We look forward to our future projects now that we’re bigger and, ultimately, better.

#AmexTweetToBuy

American Express is expanding its Sync program with Twitter, which rolled out last March to now let cardholders buy stuff using specific hashtags. Items available to purchase are being rolled out includes Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Xbox Controller. This is a clear win-win for Amex, the move not only highlights forward-thinking e-commerce but also, with each hashtag, users are endorsing the concept, and in turn the AmEx brand.

Topshop’s Google Fashion Week

Google has joined forces with Topshop to offer up a comprehensive London Fashion Week experience. The project will use Google’s+ to give people different ways of interacting with aspects of the show, including hangouts with the design team, streaming live cameras and access to makeup tutorials. We think this is a great example of how brands can make the most out of Google+ and it’s features and it will offer Topshop the chance to collect valuable data, which will tell them exactly what their audience likes and wants.