Tag Archives: social media

05.27.17
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The Week’s Digital Highlights – 27 May

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Everything was put in perspective this week with the bombing in Manchester, and there was also one in Jakarta. The senseless loss of innocent lives will scare families, friends and communities for a lifetime.

There were 2 things from the digital world that stood out for me this week. The first being trolls who circulated fake images of people missing from the Manchester bombing and that 43 children were been held at a Holiday Inn. I can’t understand what possesses people to do these wicked acts of cruelty. While social media gives users an opportunity to voice their opinions and have positive conversations, it’s also used by some to spread negativity and pain, I suppose that’s a reflection of our society.

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The other thing to standout this week was the publishing of Facebook’s content moderation guidelines. The Guardian got their hands on 100 internal documents detailing how Facebook moderates content from child abuse to revenge porn, suicide and terrorist related content.

Looking at the documents, it does raise eyebrows on how things are moderated, and the time moderators have to review things (10 seconds to make a decision). With 2 billion users, the amount of content Facebook has to oversee is insane, so it’s not surprising some things slip through the cracks.

Facebook claims not to be a publisher just a conduit platform for users to share content. It would be a minefield if Facebook had to manage all the content from all the different languages and interpret local government laws.

Facebook plays a tightrope of protecting freedom of speech while protecting the innocent and vulnerable, particularly children. Facebook’s global policy management boss, Monika Bickert, says that Facebook is committed to providing a safe environment and encourages users to report inappropriate content. It will be interesting to see if any of the moderation guidelines or processes are change based on the publishing of the leaked documents.

 

05.22.16
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What I’ve learned in 3 months using Snapchat

Back in February I wrote an article about Snapchat, I had been using it for 3 weeks and was pretty excited by the platform. The excitement surrounding Snapchat reminded me of the buzz Twitter was getting 8 years ago when I was living in New York. Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr were all getting started and Twitter was winning the battle. We all know what happened in the following years.

Three months later I’m still using Snapchat, and are excited by the new advertising features which really opens up the platform to advertisers.
A quick recap, Snapchat is a mobile App that allows images and videos to be sent. The messages last between 3 and 10 seconds, and then it disappears. Points are earned for every message sent and received, and there are trophies for rewards. To enhance snaps, you can add funny filters and text to images and videos. These filters are one of the reasons why the platform is so addictive. I got hooked using the filters and was actively sharing photos and videos with my wife’s friends, who in turn shared content with their friends. Before long the whole group was using it.
Snapchat figures are impressive for a platform that has been going for about 4 years. Snapchat has 200+ million users, 100 million are active daily users with Australia having 2 million active users. More than 60% of US 13 to 34 year olds Smartphone owners are Snapchatters. Users spend on average 30 minutes a day on it. Snapchat is dominating video with 10 billion videos watched daily. To put it in perspective, Facebook has the same number of video views, but are 10x times larger!
Why do people love the platform? Snapchat is giving users a platform to creatively express themselves to the world. We can share content (our own) with friends, celebrities and people located anywhere in the world (very similar to how Twitter was used to connect with people from anywhere, Facebook was more of a closed environment). And we control the frequency of interaction. Snapchat is the perfect platform to be continually sharing Snaps from our busy lives. The Snaps are a reflection of how we are feeling in the moment.
Interesting to note, all content on Snapchat is viewed vertically, which means it gets maximum eyeball attention on mobile. Studies have found that mobile users were not turning their phones when viewing content, resulting in landscape content been underutilised. This could be one of the reasons why Facebook has recently launched Canvas ads, to take advantage of the full vertical space.
So how do the brands get involved in the platform? Like with everything, there’s the organic way and the paid option. The organic way is to create stories on a brand’s profile. This does not mean replicating Facebook and Instagram content calendars onto Snapchat. The content should be quite separate and unique. Snapchat content is a lot rawer and does not require the same high creative production. However, it still requires some planning otherwise a brand’s profile will be full of random images and videos. The brands doing it well are telling a story, checkout NitroCircus for inspiration. But building an active community is quite labour intensive due to the content disappearing after 24 hours, so you have to be continually creating new stories.
Snapchat’s paid options allow brands to get involved without having to invest as much manpower, but there are still considerable costs to advertise on the platform. In Australia we’ve had limited access to advertising options, but this has changed recently.
One of the first paid options introduced by Snapchat was the ‘Discovery’ brand channel, which is a place where brands can publish curated content. This option has been only open to a small number of brands with very deep pockets (in the US prices started from $750k per day, apparently it’s now around $50k).  In Australia some brands using Discovery channels have included Fox Sports, News.com.au, BuzzFeed and MTV.
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Another option for brands to participate in is the ‘Live Story’ section, which occupies prime realestate just below the Discovery section. It’s a combination of user generated, branded and Snapchat curated content from live events from around the world, it’s a bit like a modern day documentary. A lot of the content is from behind the scenes at fashion shows, music and film awards and sport (the NBA finals has been featured a lot).
To get a sense of how big Snapchat is, America’s ABC recently broadcasted the American Music Awards, it got 3 million TV viewers aged 13-34, while a Snapchat Live Story about the event drew 11.5 million. Advertisers will be climbing over themselves to be featured next year.
Snapchat also features Live Stories from cities around the world, yesterday Reykjavik was featured. Not sure if there’s an option for cities to nominate themselves. Snapchat’s team based in LA and NYC sift through thousands of Snaps to curate the content and mix in their own content (with people on the ground at events), and add in ads (brand stories). To create ‘brand stories’, prices start from a very reasonable $20 for every 1,000 views. Yesterday I saw a 5 second Hungry Jacks ad video.
Quickly becoming a popular option for brands to participate on Snapchat is sponsored ‘on demand’ Geo-filters. Users can add branded graphics to selfie photos and videos based on Geo-locations. We’ve had community driven filters in Australia (e.g. Melbourne) but recently we got access to ‘on demand’ filters. McDonalds was one of the first to use the filter on a national scale. Recently in the office we created a filter for an event, we geo-fenced it to our building for about an hour, and it costed about $5USD (very reasonable). Thoughts of hijacking events spring to mind, so it will be interesting to see how Snapchat manages this going forward.
The last 3 months have certainly been fun using and discovering more about Snapchat. If you want to learn more, I’ll be co-running a Snapchat workshop this Thursday afternoon. We’ll be Facebook Live streaming the workshop, so like our Facebook page to watch it. www.facebook.com/onlinecircle
02.29.16
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Watch out – Gen Xers are on Snapchat

https://www.snapchat.com/add/jimmy-coleman

Username: Jimmy-Coleman

It’s been about 3 weeks since I’ve started playing around with Snapchat and there’s no going back!  Move over Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat is the new kid on the block.

As a Gen X-er, I was keen to understand what all the fuss was about with the platform that has captured the imagination of the Millennials. Also, how can brands use it as a marketing tool.

Snapchat is a mobile App that allows images and videos to be sent to users. The catch is the message last between 3 and 10 seconds, and then it disappears. For every message sent and received, you receive points, and there are trophies for rewards.

To enhance snaps (videos and images) a bunch of very funny filters and emojis can be added. These filters are one of the reasons why the platform is so addictive. Updated daily, they encourage users to keep checking back.

The platform is all about capturing and sharing moments.  Why send a plain text message when you can communicate via an image or video (a picture is worth a thousand words). While we all use Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and SMS for instant communication, Snapchat has turbocharged this form of communication by adding a game element to it.  It’s all about sending creative Snapchat messages, very similar to memes. Snapchat also gives an insight into a user’s daily life, as videos and images can be uploaded to a profile in the form of a story, which lasts up to 24 hours. Uploads are stitched together to make a story.

While it’s been a great tool for having fun with friends and spying on celebs, but how can brands play in the space?  From my research, it’s only recently that Snapchat has opened up the platform to advertisers. There looks to be 3 ways brands can get involved. The first is the discovery section where publishers / brands can upload highlights from the day in the form of videos, images and GIFs. The next is sponsoring a filter; Samsung recently used a filter in Melbourne. The third way is creating stories on a brand’s profile, the organic way.

From a reporting perspective, things are pretty limited. You can understand how many views and screenshots content has been received, but there’s no way to benchmark performance with other brands.

It’s very early days for me with Snapchat, but early indicators show it’s a fun platform to use. I’m looking forward to exploring it more from a business perspective. Don’t forget to follow me!   

10.30.14
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What’s the Point of Social Customer Care?

It’s been a busy couple of months since my last blog post! I’ve moved house, done a mini renovation, work got crazy, had an engagement party and the soccer season started!

I also had some interesting social media interactions with some leading Australian companies that left me questioning the point of using social media for customer service.

Social Customer Care has been a popular catch phrase used by marketers recently. In theory it should help resolve customer queries via social media in a timely manner.

However there is a gap between traditional customer service and the dynamic nature of social media. Traditionally customer queries were dealt with behind the scenes, but now they’re visible for all to see. Giving a standard politician response (dodging answering the question) to a customer query on social media is not going to cut it anymore. Users want answers!

Another challenge is the speed. Social media happens 24/7, and users expect answers instantaneously, which can be challenging to manage. As a result, businesses have had to extend their hours of operations.

Staying anonymous or hiding behind online personas makes it very hard for companies to know who they’re dealing with. This is a tough one, but no different to someone calling up a radio station with a secret agenda.

What got me frustrated recently was how 2 large companies (check my Twitter feed for the interactions) dealt with my social media queries. In both situations they couldn’t resolve my query and wanted me to call them. With the bank, I had already spent 20 minutes on hold and gave up. I asked them to call me! The same happened with my telco interaction, I had to either call or use the live chat, which we used the night before and got nowhere.

I understand there are privacy concerns, with companies calling, but if we’re sending private messages via Facebook or Twitter, how is that any different from sending an email with our phone number?!

Kudos to companies who respond quickly to customer queries on social media, acknowledging is the first step in addressing the problem. But if you can’t do anything, it leaves the customer frustrated and the issue is still not resolved.

To make Social Customer Care really work, a re-think of how businesses use it is required. Get it right, and companies can save money with customer service departments and ultimately the customer is happy!

 

06.23.14
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World Cup Facebook Stats update

SocceroosWow, what an awesome start to the World Cup! The Brazilian way of playing football must be rubbing off on teams as we’ve seen some high score lines.  I think we’ve already had more goals than the last World Cup. Australia’s Socceroos have performed gallantly and hopefully will finish off with a strong showing against Spain later tonight.

I’ve been curious to see what’s been happening off the pitch on Facebook. Looking at a bunch of countries Facebook pages I’ve done a quick breakdown.

Top Fan growth

Mexico’s Facebook page has had the biggest fan growth in the last 3 weeks adding 600,000 new fans, followed by Italy with 370,000, England with 350,000 and US 141,000 fans.  The Socceroos have added 42,000 new fans.
fan growth

fan growth chart

Engagement rate

All the action on Facebook has occurred in the last week. Mexico’s page from a pure numbers perspective is most active with 1.3 million people engaged (19.3%) on the account. Italy is a close second with 1.2 million (50.6% engagement) of its fans active on their page.

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In my next blog post I will analyse which Facebook posts have resonated most with fans.

Data provided by Social Pulse

 

 

02.11.14
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Sochi’s Winter Olympics – Is it Social?

Like many lovers of snow, I’ve been watching the winter Olympics with much enthusiasm. Coming from Australia we don’t get a lot of snow so maybe that’s where the fascination with snow comes from. Actually we’re currently in the middle of a summer heatwave so shots of snow-covered mountains are very soothing!

London was named the first Social Media games with 150 million tweets and 1 billion Facebook impressions. While the Winter Olympics are niche, I was curious to see how Sochi’s Winter Olympics compared.

Over the last 7 days the keyword Sochi has had 2,680,262 Social Media mentions followed by Olympics 909,311 and #sochi 497,603. Traffic peaked during the opening ceremony with 283,763 mentions.

US Olympic TeamAmerica is winning the Social Media gold media race. USA has produced 2 million Social Media mentions followed by Canada with 200,000 mentions. In Australia we’ve only had 27,000 mentions, which probably sums up in interest in the games here. Team USA’s Facebook page is the most active with 200,000 engaged users. Their opening ceremony post had 27,800 likes and 8,800 shares.

Granted the figures are not as impressive as London, but we’re only 4 days in and we still have the popular sports still to come, including Snowboard Half-pipe, Downhill Skiing, Ski Jumping and Ice-Hockey.

Go Aussie! Bring home a medal or two!

The above data only includes public Facebook posts.

06.30.13
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Facebook Performance Report June 2013

Facebook Performance reportIt’s been a big couple of weeks at work with the release of our latest Australian Facebook Performance Report – June. Produced quarterly, it’s become the benchmark report for Australian brands on Facebook. Using Social Pulse, data was analysed from 20 industries for the date range 13th May – 10th June. The report looks at fan growth, engagement rates and share of conversation. The learnings from the report can be applied to any brand worldwide.

Travel, TV shows, FMCG and fast food restaurants dominated the Top 30 largest Australian Facebook pages by fans numbers. The ‘Australia’ tourism page topped the list with 4 million fans followed by the television show Bananas in Pyjamas with 2 million fans. Snack foods brand Pringles Australia tops the FMCG list with 1.3 million fans and fast food restaurant Domino’s Pizza – Australia came in 7th place with 850,000 fans.

For the first time, the Facebook report includes a breakdown of the top performing posts (by likes, comments and shares) by industry.

Tourism tops the list for Facebook posts that generate the most Likes. A post by the Australia page generated 66,000 likes followed by Sydney Australia’s page which had 53,000 likes on one of its post. Both posts included images of iconic Australian landmarks and the post copy was 185 characters in length.

Fast food restaurant KFC with its Hot & Spicy post attracted the most comments with 10,600 followed by the Sydney radio station 2DayFM’s post which had 4,600 comments. KFC’s post asked fans which state was the biggest fan of its new product release.

The Australia page had the most shares with two of its posts, both showed cute images of a Wombat (11,600 shares) and Koala (8,300 shares). Outside the tourism industry, television show The Biggest Loser – Australia post had 6,700 shares for a video post. A popular post used by brands, ‘memes’ were also popular for shares with a meme posted by 2DayFM had 5,500 shares.

Click the link to view the Facebook Performance report. If you know of similar reports from America and Europe please post the links in the comments section, it would be interesting to compare the data.

 

05.26.13
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What’s in a name? Are you tempted by V Energy’s latest flavour?

V Not OrangeNew Zealand beverage company Frucor, manufacturer of V-Energy drinks has added a limited edition ‘V Not Orange’ flavour to its range. Just as consumer tastebuds started to move away from cold caffeinated drinks to hot beverages, V Energy needed a product to keep interest in their range during the cooler autumn and winter months.

Limited edition product releases are intended to create awareness and boost sales during quiet periods. The marketing guys at V Energy have come up with some great campaigns over the years, but had their latest campaign achieved their objective?

The smarts behind this product release is in its name, ‘V Not Orange’. Having not tried the new flavour I was curious to find out what people online were saying about the taste. Blogger Chris Jager, a self-confessed lover of V Energy drinks taste tested the product on the blog, Lifehacker. He scored the product 8 out of 10. The flavour of the drink was a combination of eating handful of jellybeans with a slight orange after taste, Jager commented.

A post on V Energy’s Facebook page on the 8th April asked fans what they thought of the new flavour generated 955 comments and over 7,000 likes. While the new flavour generated a mixed response, what was more interesting was the discussion around the name of the new product; it was a real conversation starter which most likely extended offline. To promote the new flavour V Energy is running a competition on its Facebook page, fans can win a trip to LA and weekly product prizes. Entrants must upload an image of fans photo bombing shots with the new flavour. Due to the design of the App it is hard to gauge how many people have entered the competition.

Working at an online marketing agency it’s not unusual to see developers sipping on energy drinks, however I hadn’t seen anyone try the new V Energy flavour. While waiting for our food at the pub on Friday the conversation turned to if anyone had tried the new V Not Orange drink and the merits of the marketing campaign behind it (I decided to write this article based on that discussion).

No one had tried it, but the very fact that everyone was talking about it was evidence that the marketing guys at V had achieved their goal of achieving awareness. Will this translate into trialling the product is yet to been seen, but I would say 35% of V drinkers that know about the product would most likely trial the new flavour out of pure curiosity. And that would be enough to keep sales going until the appetite for cold drinks returns in spring.

05.19.13
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What’s the difference between marketing strategies and tactics?

ImageMany newbies and experienced marketers confuse strategies for tactics. This is quite common in the digital industry, especially social media, which is full of savvy social media users, but most times they don’t see the big picture and deal with just the tactical execution.

Strategies are a subset of your business goals. Tactics are the actions taken to achieve the goals. Everything starts with the business goals, for example grow sales by 20% this financial year. These are the high level targets for the business. Strategies explain how you will achieve the goals.

Like most organisations, soft drink/ soda manufacturers would look to grow sales, but in a saturated market they would look at other food lines/ categories to achieve their goals. The ice-cream category is often used by soft drink manufacturers to broaden their sales. Ribena, a popular blackcurrant drink has released an ice-block product.

Ribena would have done their market research and understood their target market likes to keep cool in summer and ice-blocks fit that need. Research probably also told them that consumers for years had been creating their own version of Ribena ice-blocks by freezing the juice at home. In addition the ice-cream confectionary market has been growing steadily as a result of hotter and more prolonged summers.

When it came to tactics, Ribena would have most likely used a combination of television and print advertisements and social media to promote the new product. Social media is used a lot these days to launch a product, for example a simple 25 words or less competition is good way to generate interest in a new product. Once brands have built-up a good following on social media they can leverage this for product launches.

Now I’m not sure of the success of Ribena’s ice-block product, but if you want a better example check-out the blog ‘Brand Insight Blog’, John Ferguson references the famous ‘Arm & Hammer baking soda’ example.