Sunday, October 25, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Success on Facebook
We looked at eight major product categories to find the brands that gained the most traction on the site, comparing their Facebook pages to those of competitors to determine which were best and worst at taking full advantage of the platform.
Some big-name players -- Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Starbucks and Microsoft among them -- are performing especially well on the social-media site. Others, however, including Burger King, Walmart, Dell and Geico, might be missing some prime opportunities to interact with their current and potential customers.
Contents:
- Consumer Packaged Goods ... Retail
- Restaurant/Food ... Technology
- Apparel ... Insurance
- Automotive ... Airline
The granddaddy of Facebook brand pages wasn't even started by the soft drink giant. Two fans created the page in August 2008 and it went on to become the top product page on the site. Perhaps Coke learned its lesson from the Diet Coke-Mentos phenomenon, when it objected to the use of its product in a viral Web video hit. This time out, instead of playing the corporate heavy, Coke brought the two consumers to company headquarters and invited them to continue to run the page with backing from Coke.Stats: 3.7 million fans; regular promotions include one that solicits videos for a shot at appearing in a Coke commercial.
Missed Opportunity... Pepsi. The company makes a disappointing showing on Facebook, given that it's a digitally and socially savvy brand. The Refresh Everything page has 250,000 fans, a fraction of rival Coke's. The company mostly uses it as a channel for pumping out updates of marketing activities.
RETAIL: BEST BUY
At a tough time for electronics outlets -- witness the demise of Circuit City -- Best Buy is pushing the envelope with social shopping. Its Facebook page doesn't just tout products, it lets visitors browse from the site and get feedback on items from Facebook friends. It's also using the site to get general feedback from its customers, sometimes to a fault.A recent post asking users what they thought of the company offering a BestBuy.com in Spanish ignited a firestorm of hostile and offensive comments. The company acted quickly by taking the post down.
Stats: 842,000 fans; one of the richest retail pages on Facebook, featuring "shop and share" and "gift ideas" applications.
Missed Opportunity... Walmart. The retailer might be the biggest on the face of the Earth, but you wouldn't know it on Facebook. The company clearly has its work cut out for it in the give and take of social media, but hiding is a dubious strategy. Its page has less than 17,000 fans and no content.
The chain has flexed its brand muscles on Facebook, running several ad campaigns to plumb its fan base, even to the point of offering free ice cream this past summer. Some say luring fans in with freebies means fleeting success, but Starbucks' fan page is growing over 3 percent per week, according to AllFacebook, putting it on track to overtake Will Smith in popularity on the site.Stats: 4.5 million fans; ice cream and pastry giveaways clearly resonate with consumers; the company's social strategy was enough for Altimeter Group to rank it the No.1 most-connected brand.
Missed Opportunity... Burger King. Not many ad icons nowadays have the appeal of Burger King's mascot, but the brand is curiously absent from the social networking platform. That's too bad because it clearly has cachet among users as evidenced by the avalanche of responses to the short-lived "Whopper sacrifice" campaign last January.
TECHNOLOGY: MICROSOFT
Unlike its nettlesome rival Apple, which is so beloved it doesn't need a Facebook fan page, Microsoft typically has to go the extra distance. The company has a sophisticated Facebook strategy with fan pages for several different product lines. This helps build focused fan bases for Internet Explorer, Windows, Surface and its MVP Award Program of product evangelists. The approach lets the behemoth act smaller.Stats: Over 300,000 fans; used the Bing page to solicit feedback on features the new search engine needs.
Missed Opportunity... Dell. Despite a concerted effort at social media, Dell hasn't cracked the Facebook code. It has about 40,000 fans who get a regular stream of product releases. What's missing is the feedback loop Dell started with its Ideastorm site in 2007.
For a brand used to playing second fiddle to big-spending rival Nike, turnabout is fair play. Adidas Originals is a Facebook powerhouse thanks to its trove of quality content and event information. The brand has a "your area" tab that populates with localized content.Stats: 2.1 million fans; posts photos and videos; updates a few times per week.
Missed Opportunity... Nike. As the ultimate passion brand, Nike would figure to be quite popular on Facebook. And it has amassed 382,000 followers. But talk about anti-social. Nike hasn't updated the page since July. Just do it, Nike.
INSURANCE: AFLAC
For some brands, fan bases are best built around characters. That's been the case for Aflac, which has attracted fans for its trademark duck's quirky updates. The brand gets the character's voice right, mixing charity pleas with offbeat takes on news from the duck's perspective.The company, seeing how far it can go, has taken the duck to Twitter where he's attracted over 3,000 followers.
Stats: 161,000 fans; mixes updates with charity pitches and contests; posts daily.
Missed Opportunity... Geico gecko. If a duck can do it, a lizard can, too. Yet the Geico gecko has never found his footing on Facebook. The page has just 6,800 fans. The lizard's droll tone doesn't carry over to the site. Instead, his updates sound a lot like the voice of a PR pro.
The automaker has lately fared better across the board than its domestic peers. It's also beating its competitors in social media, including on Facebook. Ford Mustang has built up a loyal following, and Ford is an active updater on the company's official corporate page.Stats: Over 370,000 fans on the Ford, Mustang and Fusion pages; mix of product and event information with photos and videos.
Missed Opportunity... Toyota has nearly 50,000 fans, yet it hasn't updated its page since June.
AIRLINE: SOUTHWEST
It's hard to find anyone who's a fan of air travel nowadays -- but there are plenty of them on Southwest's Facebook page, which succeeds with a personal approach. Rather than craft a brand voice, for instance, Southwest introduces "hosts" Lindsey and Christi. Frequent polling keeps interaction high. Southwest has more Facebook cachet than hotter brands like JetBlue and Virgin America.Stats: 80,000 fans; high customer engagement thanks to fun promos.
Missed Opportunity... United Airlines. Not exactly a passion brand, United Airlines could stand to have something more than an empty page with 11,000 intrepid fans.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Color Scheme Designer
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Grid:::line by line
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A case in point is a brand experience where real and virtual worlds intersect, called The Grid. A mobile social network that allows users to chat with friends, locate them on a map and share media, The Grid is a first for the African continent. Part Facebook, part Flickr, and a dash of Twitter combined with a GPS-type navigation system, The Grid allows customers to share their lives in a mobile location-based matrix with all of their friends. The application is all about socializing on the go. If users want to have a cup of coffee with a friend, all they need do is log into The Grid to see which friends are nearby and tag the location of a nearby coffee shop. Then they send a coffee invitation with directions to tempt their mate to pop on over. If the coffee drinking duo wants more friends to join them, they can log in again and type up a blog, message or record a quick video and invite everyone who’s free and happens to be nearby. Because The Grid displays the user’s approximate position on a street map, everyone can easily see where friends are and what they are doing where. Users from any network can join in because the independent and network-neutral application was developed to showcase innovative new technologies to all South Africans. “There are several areas where users get significant value when interacting with The Grid,” says Vincent Maher, portfolio manager for social media at Vodacom. “The service enables low-cost and real-time conversations, as well as an opportunity to meet new people and interact with them via mobile phones. Then users can create the mobile equivalent of a blog by combining multimedia elements and maps to show where the content was created. The Grid is a highly social environment, and what we are seeing is that people love to share their experiences and contribute to creating a social map of their experiences across all walks of life in South Africa.” The Grid is offered as a free or value-added service to users, who only pay for the data usage from their mobile phone to access the service. “Right now people are using The Grid to meet and interact with friends and new people, and to share their experiences through photos and stories about the things they do in their day-to-day lives. The service is busy most of the day, but usage peaks in the evenings when people are home from work and relaxing,” Maher says. The winner of the New Telecommunications Service at the Comms MEA Awards—held to recognize outstanding performance in the Middle East and African telecommunications sector—The Grid’s branding plays a significant role in promoting the larger Vodacom brand as a technological mover and shaker. Not only does it underscore innovation as a key brand value, but it does so in a way that is completely experiential. What’s more, it is changing the way marketing is delivered by offering a new paradigm for brand messaging. “The Grid demonstrates how the physical and digital can be meshed to create a more compelling and relevant marketing message,” Maher says. “By tying location to the delivery of messages it means small businesses finally have a viable digital platform to advertise on, and this means that bigger brands can leverage multiple locations simultaneously to interact with their customers in an interesting, innovative way. There are a lot of very interesting ways that brands can leverage The Grid to integrate digital and mobile campaigns with the physical world. The revenue model has been developed in such a way that deeper integration can be done to encourage users to go to specific places as part of a promotion. Another element of the model is the ability to deliver location-targeted advertising, which makes the content of the ads more relevant. At the heart of The Grid is the digital marketing “holy grail”—the viral effect. “Usage is driven partly by viral growth as users invite their friends to join and partly by innovative media integrations,” Maher says. The more friends users have on The Grid, the more they can get out of the service and the more they can do with it. “The stickiness is directly connected to how many friends a user has and the quality of conversations. The ability to meet new people without revealing your mobile number is also very appealing and, as users become more advanced, they start to use the features like the street maps and content uploads,” he says. To launch the new service, Vodacom commissioned the world’s first geo-tagged documentary for mobile phones, which centered on the issue of youth culture in South Africa’s biggest urban township, Soweto. Called Mobikasi (literally translated this meansmobile township), the mobile documentary utilizes The Grid’s location-based service capabilities to tag real-life physical locations and link them to relevant content in the movie. When users look at the film, they can explore Sowetan youth culture on their mobile phones from anywhere in South Africa through The Grid’s map interface, or by physically touring the famous township and watching documentary clips on their phones at the locations where they were shot. Mobikasi features people, music, fashion, social issues and places of interest and is unique in that it is not linear in nature. Rather, Mobikasi splits the content up into 25 one-minute inserts, and each is geo-tagged to the location where it was shot. This means that viewers can now explore Soweto’s vibrant youth culture by virtually “traveling” through a mobile street map of the township and stopping off at points of interest to enjoy the short video clips about each destination. The mobile documentary has proved so successful that a second season of Mobikasi is on its way and will take place in other townships around South Africa. In short, The Grid is a smart social networking solution with a branding strategy and message that targets a continent where mobile connections are more pervasive than television, the radio or the Internet. |
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Coca-Cola:::creating shorter links
Check out Coca-Cola's URL shortening service: http://cokeurl.com/
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Changing definition of friendship:::Social networks
One of the things that always fascinated me with virtual worlds and social networks was how many users regard their online contacts as 'friends' in every sense of the word...with the exception that they've often never actually met.
Family values return, thanks to the internet
Here’s a strange thing: everyone is increasingly desperate for attention and yet we spend more and more of our leisure time in rooms with other live humans in them, ignoring live humans and doing things alone online. The people we know – husbands, wives, siblings, children – sit on the sofa while we engage with the people we don’t on the internet.
We’re all desperate to interact, to have our voices heard, but we find the nameless masses make a better audience than our near and dear. Is this a terrible disaster? Is it yet another nail in the coffin of “traditional” family life?
Wanting to be heard is a newish phenomenon in itself: not so long ago the thing to do was quietly potter through life, head down, drawing not an iota of vulgar attention to oneself. Today it isn’t just children that crave attention – grown-ups have found a voracious appetite for it, too. Adults, already prone to feeling like so many teeny-weeny little ants, scuttling about unappreciated and unnoticed, are eager to have their ant-voices – or their great big lion-roar, for that matter – brought to as large an audience as possible.
Technology has obligingly come to the rescue: if you feel like saying something about this article and are reading it online (for free! Um. Yes. Anyway. Moving on), you can avail yourself of the comment space or the e-mail address below.
If you have thoughts that you’d like to share about anything at all – from politics to child-rearing via artichokes or shed-building – you can start a blog; it takes about four minutes to set one up. If you’d like new friends, you can join a social networking site; if you want a date, you can trawl the singles sites; if you want a recipe for strawberry jam, you can ask strangers in a foodie chatroom. If the stuff that you watch on television or hear on the radio or read in the paper triggers a chain of thought, you’re free to share it with the people who made it at the click of a mouse.
All of this attention-seeking (and I don’t mean that pejoratively) takes place while we are in the physical company of friends and family with whom we are apparently failing to interact at all.
A report released last week by Ofcom, the communications regulator, painted a fascinating picture of family life – or rather of family life at play. Whereas 60 years ago people might have gathered around the wireless after supper, and 20 years ago around the television, today they are more likely to be in the same room, possibly on the same sofa, doing completely separate things: one watching television and checking Facebook at the same time, one tweeting away, one downloading music onto their iPod, one updating their blog. The Communications Market Report shows how reliant Britons have become on the internet for entertainment, and the net, though it links you to millions of other people, is a physically solitary pursuit.
Ofcom’s report presents a picture of a country multitasking in the most frantic way: 36% of those questioned, for instance, said they were online at the same time as they watched television – and this is after a long day at work. Ofcom’s director of market research said: “What we find is that there has been a trend for people to converge on the living room, to watch the 37in high-definition television, but when they get there they start to do something else like surf the internet as well.” The report suggests that although television viewing is holding up – three hours and 45 minutes a day is the average – it is only holding up because people are doing other things online at the same time.
Previously, teenagers were alone in indulging in what MTV calls “connected cocooning”, where someone is at home but spending all their energy communicating with the outside world. However, the older generations are now catching up.
We all know that multitasking is exhausting and that it has its limits, so the question is: will this level of engagement fry what remains of our brains? Will people’s already lamentably short attention spans fizzle away to nothing?
I don’t think so. I spend countless evenings in the sitting room with my two older children: the television is on; I’m at my desktop computer; one of them might be checking Spotify on his laptop; the other gaming online, with strangers from Arkansas or Fife, with an earpiece and a microphone so he can chat to them. If anyone – usually much older – suggests this is odd, the middle son shrugs and says that the people he’s chatting to are as real as you or me or “friends” on Facebook. They are just not physically present.
It would be easier to scoff if we didn’t know of the amazing success – I don’t mean just in terms of numbers but in terms of helpfulness and support – of giant websites such as Mumsnet, where strangers, normal people, not weirdo nerd-heads, also form friendships that are entirely real, even though they happen through the medium of fibreoptic cables.
The thing is, there’s necessary multitasking, of the kind you do at work, but there’s now a new and different kind of multitasking that we do for pleasure. Checking Twitter updates while cooking, for instance, may sound demented to the uninitiated, but it isn’t wildly different from listening to Radio 4 – both consist of people telling you interesting stuff. Admittedly, some of us have Radio 4 on while we cook and text, and while the sauce reduces we might even text about Radio 4. I do realise how peculiar this sounds unless you do it too, but it’s hugely enjoyable.
As for family life: I’m in favour of anything that has everyone in one place. We may be differently occupied, but we’re hanging out together, each doing our own thing. Nobody would be throwing up their hands in horror if we were all reading our own books or staring into space having our own thoughts – so why be appalled by the idea that we might all be involved in our individual bits of internet?
To me, the picture painted by Ofcom is rather reminiscent of a gentler age, where one family member played patience while the other read and a third caught up on some sewing. I can’t see anything wrong with this: then, as now, being together in the same room is sometimes enough.
+ The TUC has proposed a motion, due to be debated at next month’s conference, arguing that high heels in the workplace are demeaning to women and contribute to long-term health injuries and as such should be replaced by “sensible shoes” with a 1in heel limit. Is there a more unattractive combination of words than “sensible” and “shoes”? The TUC, which is mostly made up of men, might as well call for a return to “sensible slacks” and “drip-dry blouses”.
Besides, I have recently discovered that it is entirely possible to injure yourself through the wearing of completely flat shoes, or indeed of wearing no shoes at all as often as possible. Not only do you get hobbit feet – well, hobbit-shaped, not hobbit-furred – but you also get weird aches and pains, which are basically your feet sobbing for Louboutins.
Also, it’s 2009. I think we can probably safely assume that if women felt “demeaned” by wearing high heels they wouldn’t buy, or wear, any. Instead, many go into paroxysms of ecstasy at the mere word.
Bless the TUC, but really. What next? Perhaps a motion proposing that chocolate is bad for your teeth and causes unsightly stains when melty and should therefore be banned from all tea breaks
Monday, August 10, 2009
How to Use Facebook for Professional Networking
How do you use Facebook? Is it to connect with long forgotten friends or share fun tidbits of your personal life with extended family? If that’s you, well… you are not alone. A great majority of Facebook users maintain Facebook profiles exclusively for personal networking and do not feel Facebook is appropriate for professional networking. I disagree with this approach. Facebook social networking experience should be what you want to make of it and more and more professionals turn to Facebook to maintain professional and/or business presence in addition to a personal one.
What’s wrong with using LinkedIn for my professional networking?
Nothing really. LinkedIn is definitely the channel of choice for professional networking. However, Facebook continues to grow and mature making its security and sharing options more and more robust. All this to ensure that you have choices and your social networking experience is precisely what YOU want to make of it. While you won’t post pictures of your family vacation on LinkedIn, a balanced mix of professional information along with a limited and tasteful glimpse into your personal life could prove to make Facebook the new LinkedIn for those who what to use Facebook for both.
Charlene Kingston in her blog post advocates keeping two separate profiles on Facebook: your personal profile for friends and family and your professional one by creating a “fan page.” This works great for small businesses where the owner of the business has the authority to set up and control the fan page. What if you work in a big company and do not have that luxury? You can still use your Facebook profile as a professional networking tool as long as your follow some basic rules.
Polish your Facebook profile for professional networking
Let’s start with some basics which includes using your real and full name in your profile. This is not only important to ensure that you are easily found on Facebook and on Google when your profile is indexed but also to keep the profile professional. Don’t use nicknames, fictional names or maiden names unless that’s the name you are using in your professional life. Remember to secure your facebook vanity domain name to make it easy to direct others to your Facebook profile with a clean and easy to type in URL.
Also, don’t forget to include your photo in your profile. No avatars, no images of kids or wedding photos please. A simple, tasteful head shot of you will do the trick.
Include detailed information about your area of expertise, your company where you work including website and any other social media channels where corporate presence is maintained. Your contact information and all of your social media channels you maintain presence on should also be listed.
Adjust your security settings
What might be appropriate to share with your family and close friends might not be appropriate to display or share with your colleagues or professional contacts. Don’t just assume the default security settings will keep you out of trouble. Take the time to go through each link in the Privacy area and make adjustments. Nick O’Neal has a great blog posts that will guide you to choose wisely when adjusting your privacy settings.
Consider setting up friends’ groups to control what information is viewable by whom. The groups are also IMPORTANT because according to Facebook you soon will have precise control of what gets shared with whom on the level of individual wall post. You will be able to direct your weekend planning posts to just your family or friends and send posts about the latest whitepaper you’ve read to just your colleagues and professional contacts. Having your friends divided into logical groups will make appropriate sharing a snap. Here is more info. about Facebook’s new privacy settingsincluding the timeline for rolling this enhancement out (courtesy of the Marketing Pilgrim blog).
Add apps selectively
There are tons of applications available for download, but it does not mean that you should go for quantity rather than quality. Yes, you can send virtual gifts to people, play games or display love quotes, but aside from being great time wasters these types of activities will greatly diminish the quality of your profile. Opt for socializing with others through conversations, asking and answering questions, sharing resources and advice rather than playing games.
Join groups related to your business interests
Similarly to LinkedIn, finding and joining quality Facebook groups opens up great opportunities to network with professionals who are interested in what you are interested in and who will pay attention if you display your subject matter expertise there.
Not sure how to find groups? Search for them and see what groups your colleagues have joined. If you find that there is no group that matches your expertise create one, but before you do that please think about your own commitment to maintaining the group. There are a lot of dead groups on Facebook. Don’t let yours be one of them.
Interact with your Facebook friends and group members
There is nothing more powerful than personal interaction. Facebook excels at it and gives you lots of opportunities to engage. Remember though to separate your personal posts from your professional content.
For your professional network interactions consider the following activities
- Asking/answering questions or starting a new discussion thread
- Sharing a resource on your group’s wall particularly articles you have written or articles that quote you
- Commenting on a status message of your colleague
- Sharing a list of your favorite industry books or online resources
- Inviting others or accepting invitation to professional networking events
But don’t attempt to send bulk commercial or self-serving messages to all your friends. Maintaining a professional presence is about finding and developing relationships and not spamming people.