For whatever reason, I was thinking the other day how it could be cool for weddings to have a Twitter “backchannel” in place of the disposable camera trend that was once big.
Apparently this was so not an original idea as the wedding I attended last Saturday did just that...promoting it with a sign in the lobby of the reception hall.
While there wasn’t a huge amount of posts using the hashtag (it wasn’t exactly the Tweeting kind of crowd), I loved seeing the use of social media at what is inherently a very social event.
Next up? Twitter wedding vows – In Turkey, it really happened.
This week Buddy Media released its report on Strategies for Effective Tweeting in a format similar to the Facebook report they published last year. The chart on page 9 of the report speaks volumes in how Twitter and Facebook are different.
Twitter’s “busy hours” wherein engagement rates are highest tends to be the exact opposite of Facebook’s. While there’s clearly no one-size fits all strategy for social media, what this helps to continue to reveal is the need for brands to understand how their consumers’ behaviors differ across the platforms on which they’re engaging – and then adapt and optimize their content posting strategies based on that.
I originally posted this on Hill Holliday's Blog.
Facebook recently started rolling out the “admin roles” for Facebook Pages – enabling varying levels of admin access based on the needs of individuals. Gone is the binary “all access” or “no access” permissions.
One of the new admin roles (chart from Facebook Help Center) is “Insights Analyst” which gives individuals granted this permission access to the respective page(s)’ insights dashboards – but they do not have access to post content.
This is big news for agencies whose clients perform community management functions but give strategic social media & content consulting. We need the data but neither need nor want full access – and this reduces the risk for any mishaps.
Also in this announcement, Facebook will be enabling the ability to schedule posts – something that Facebook Page owners have been longing for.
This was originally posted on Hill Holliday's blog.
Groupon has 38 million subscribers and in just the last 80 days, LivingSocial more than doubled its user base to 23 million. With daily deal sites expected to reach $1.73 billion in revenue next year, we thought we’d share the results of our recent (non-scientific) poll.
Just like our social gaming poll results, word-of-mouth (WOM) plays a huge part in driving up membership. And incentives (a.k.a. “game mechanics”) for sharing deals which is core to LivingSocial’s business model adds to WOM spread.
Mobile vs. Email
91% of our poll respondents get their deals from email vs. 18% from a mobile app. With the expansion of LivingSocial Instant Deals and pending launch of Groupon NOW, we expect this number to change over time as more and more people take advantage of the serendipitous nature of merging LBS with instant deals.
The Holy Grail Up-sell & Repeat Visits
Outside of the social sharing that happens (which is extremely important), deal purchases from existing loyal customers is (or should be) less value to a business doing the deal. The ultimate goal is to reach prospects to consider, try, and keep coming back to your business. The group buying model shows promise:
So not only does the deal help get people in store, while they’re there, they tend to spend more money which helps make up for the short-term margin loss from doing the deal and, most importantly, it fosters repeat visits (hopefully from NEW customers).
And the most popular deal type? Restaurants.
Do your own experiences with group buying sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, and BuyWithMe align to these results? Leave a comment.
This was originally posted on Hill Holliday's blog.
One of the best parts of Twitter’s monetization strategy (as I previously blogged about) is that it is creating paid media opportunities that leverage the Twitter platform more natively versus interruptive advertising.
And now that “promoted trends” has been available to marketers for some time, there are a few things that brands should be mindful of while considering their paid Twitter strategy. To illustrate, I’m using last week’s #ChipotleGold promoted trend.
1. Unwelcomed “Guests”
Spammers and porn stars are becoming more and more tech-savvy. At the time that I clicked on the #ChipotleGold promoted trend, 3 of the top 4 results were porn/spam/hashtag “hijackers”. Accept that this is going to happen (for now).
2. Lower Than Expected Tweets
There are many variables that need to align for a hashtag to take-off (probably as many as a video to go “viral.”). For the 24 hour period that the #ChipotleGold trend ran there were a little over 4000 tweets using the hashtag. That might be a good number for Chipotle as number of tweets alone should not be the measure of success. Instead how many people engaged with their contest because they discovered it directly or indirectly via Twitter should hold a higher KPI weight.
3. Negative Sentiment
Whenever you start or join a conversation and there will be naysayers. And depending on your brand and how you’re engaging in social media you might draw a high percent of negative sentiment. Be prepared for this by having a risk-response/mitigation plan before your trend launches.
By now it’s become cliché to say “listen first” when talking about a social media strategy. But there’s a reason why it is a best practice. When planning for your promoted trend:
Twitter’s Promoted Trends can be a very powerful marketing activation tactic especially when marketers think through the right strategy for their brand, specifically, in using them.
A moment during SXSW’s “TV + New Media” panel suddenly brought me back to the early-to-mid 90s – at UNH during Student Senate & SAFC meetings (photo above). It was our culture to pass dozens of notes back-and-forth during meetings, in effect, creating an informal meeting within a meeting. A sampling of some of the notes I saved over the years (below) show most being sarcastic and fraught with “insider humor.”
Fast forward back to March 14th 2011 at 11am. Dule Hill was a part of the panel and had, recently, joined Twitter. His playful “backchannel” banter with panel attendees using the #psych hashtag quickly became the most entertaining part of the discussion. At one point, Dule challenged the crowd to yell "me" if they were following him on Twitter causing a momentary pause in the main event as one of the other panelists said, “clearing there’s an inside joke going on!”
The Twitter backchannel is today’s version of meeting note passing. It has all of the same characteristics with one big exception: It’s completely public.
While notes during Student Senate meetings were addressed to one or more individuals as they were passed down the rows and aisles of our meeting room, the backchannel gives everyone access (for those who choose to join in) to the “meeting within a meeting.” And in creating his own "second screen experience" that's exactly what Dule Hill did for all of us in the room and following along on Twitter.
Since the premiere of The Social Network, there’s been a lot more interest in Facebook’s founders and the website’s origins. As someone who went to see the movie immediately on October 1st and then again 9 days later (and is craving to see it a 3rd time), I get the intrigue. For me (and I suspect many others), the movie powerfully fuels the entrepreneurial drive – much like I felt when I was in my twenties and first read, clipped, and kept in my wallet an article from Mecklermedia's now defunct Web Week titled “The 20 Something CEO.”
This “intrigue” that the film evokes is causing both the production and curation of related, yet non-fictional, content. Bloomberg recently did an interesting documentary-style piece on Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook. This is soon to be followed by an in-depth special program with Lester Holt on CNBC this coming January featuring brand new interviews with many of the people fictionalized in the movie.
And just yesterday, All Facebook curated a number of existing online-videos of the Facebook founders which prompted me to check out and compare their search patterns on Google. Since search is one pretty solid indicator of interest over time, the chart below clearly shows how search queries for each of the “characters” featured in the movie increased since the movie’s October 1st premiere.
What’s also interesting is the fact that spikes in searches have occurred every Sunday since The Social Network premiered (presumably because most people are seeing the movie on the weekend and feel the need, post-movie, to look up the founders and investigate what really happened). Note: The large spike for Mark Zuckerberg on September 23rd (before the Movie premiered) was most likely due to his philanthropic appearance on Oprah.
It’s also interesting that the relative comparison in volume of searches tends to match the amount of movie airtime each person got. Chris Hughes who I didn’t include on the chart was barely featured/mentioned in the movie and was more-or-less flat-lined in comparative searches. Ironically, he was a pretty big part of the founding of Facebook and has gone on to do some very noteworthy things.
In the end, there's no doubt that mass media drives search behavior.
