Social Media

Have you missed out on the latest updates from the world of social media, mobile or pay-per-click advertising from the Easter period? You’re in luck – we’ve kept our ears to the ground for you!

Social Media News

Facebook Update Cover Image Guidelines

When Facebook launched their new “timeline” for brand pages (back in March 2012) there were some fairly strict rules accompanying the cover photo function. Users were forbidden from including the following:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40 percent off,” or, “Download it on socialmusic.com.”
• Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your page’s “about” section.
• References to Facebook features or actions, such as like or share, or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
• Calls to action, such as “get it now” or “tell your friends.”

Advertisers hoping to get the most out of their cover photo space will be pleased to hear that Facebook have recently relaxed their cover photo guidelines considerably, replacing the previous bullet points with the following rules:

Cover photos can't be deceptive, misleading, infringe on anyone else's copyright or be in violation of the Pages Terms. You may not encourage people to upload your cover photo to their personal timelines.

Cover photos must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not include images with more than 20% text.

The less stringent guidelines mean that we are now free to add our URL, special offers and other information to our page’s cover photos - just as long as the text doesn’t take up more than 20% of the image.

Google+ Make Improvements

Google+ recently announced some profile page improvements, supposedly in line with the feedback they have received from users. Profile pages now offer:

• A tab for the user’s local reviews
• More intuitive ways to edit your “about me” information
• Very, very big cover photos!

YouTube Reach 1 Billion Users per Month

On March 21^st YouTube released the news that it attracts 1 billion unique users every month – that’s nearly one out of every two people on the internet. YouTube thank “Generation C” for their growth, a term they have used to describe the young adult demographic that use their smartphones as a “complementary activity to their lives” - while they commute to work or school, wait for a friend or sit through television adverts. They also have Psy to thank – the man whose popular Gangnam Style video is the most viewed on YouTube.

Mobile News

Facebook Launch Android App

Facebook have just launched “Home”, a brand new mobile app that will allow Android users to transform their smartphone’s lock screen into a version of their Facebook news feed. In Mark Zuckerberg’s words, "You're going to be able to turn your Android phone into a great social device. Our phones today are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around." Home will be available on Google Play from April 14^th. The HTC First, a new Android phone coming “pre-loaded" and “optimised” with Facebook Home, will be released on the same day.

Yahoo Buy Summly for $30 Billion

Yahoo have acquired Summly, a company founded 17 year old Nick D’Aloisio, for $30 million last month. Summly is an iPhone app that aggregates and formats articles from various new publishers into a summarised version of the content. The app as it stands now will cease operation, and the technology powering it will “come to life” through Yahoo’s mobile products soon.

Pay-Per-Click News

Google Disapprove Phone Numbers in Ad Text

Starting from this month, AdWords ads with phone numbers in text will be disapproved. Advertisers who want to display a number in their ad will be required to use AdWords’ call extensions - a feature that allows advertisers to include a phone number in desktop ads and a “click to call” button in their mobile ads.

Did you know that you can send a video over "Vine" or make a call from "Line"? If that sounds like gibberish, enjoy this week's blog post for a round-up of the latest news from the word of social media.

Twitter Launch Video Sharing App Vine

Currently only available on iOS (i.e. Apple’s iPhone and iPad) Twitter’s new social video app, Vine, lets users share short, 6-second videos with their followers. The clips can contain as many scenes as users desire, just as long as they fit in the 6 second time allowance. Much like popular photo sharing app Instagram, Vine’s lack of desktop presence means that it relies entirely on the popularity of the smartphone to attract registrations.

Users have expressed some annoyance with the standalone app, largely due to the fact that - sometimes very noisy - videos autoplay by default. Interestingly in light of the rivalry between social media giants Twitter and Facebook, Vine initially offered users a way to find friends via their Facebook account; Facebook quickly put a stop to the function by preventing Vine from accessing friend lists.

Facebook Graph Search Revealed

Facebook's search function hasn't exactly been lauded in past - many users note how difficult it is to find friends and pages on the popular social network. This is - possibly - all set to change with the site's introduction of Facebook Graph Search.

Presumably to the relief of Google, the Facebook Graph will be focused on more “social” searches (i.e. “what bands do my friends like?”) rather than more general web searches. For businesses looking to attract more customers via Facebook, Graph Search validates our efforts to attract "likes" to our pages, with a higher number of likes likely to increase the page's prevalence in the Graph Search results.

Free Calls through Facebook

Facebook recently added a new feature that allows free phone calls for US iPhone owners. Using the Facebook Messenger app, users will be able to make free calls to their friends as long as they have a WiFi or data connection to the internet. The calls can only be made if both parties have the Messenger app installed on their phone. Facebook is expecting to roll out the new function to additional countries and operating systems in the future. With Facebook striving to increase advertising revenue, it will be interesting to see whether we’ll eventually be required to sit through an advert before we can connect to our friends.

MSN Messenger Set to Close

As a number of messenger apps open their doors, MSN Messenger (previously known as Live Messenger) has announced that it will shut down on March 15^th. Following this date, users attempting to log in will be prompted to download and install Skype on their computer.

Line Messaging App Attracts 100 Million Users

Social chat app Line, available on iOS and Android devices, now boasts more than 100 million users worldwide - that’s a lot of users for an app that most people in the U.K. haven’t heard of! Used by roughly 1/3 of mobile users in Japan, the popular smartphone app can be used to make free phone calls and texting.

A competitor to messaging app WhatsApp as well as Facebook's Messenger service, January has seen social mobile users becoming spoiled for choice with alternatives to the traditional text message and phone call.

Whilst you may now be fed up of your marketing team or agency telling you the importance of good social media, you should consider giving Pinterest a go. Here are some great examples of Pinner’s and Pinterest boards we enjoy the most - and more importantly, why:

Hard Graft

Hard Graft is a boutique fashion brand selling bags and style products for the tech savvy man. They make really good use of their Pinterest boards. Firstly they have a board with all their products on that links back to the individual product pages on their website, whist this sounds like a basic thing to do many retail companies just don’t do it! You wouldn't believe the number of time we see a company link their products on Pinterest just link back to their home page.

Remember: Link your products back to their product page.

Airbnb

Airbnb rent holiday accommodation; they connect people who have accommodations to rent with people looking for holiday accommodation.

They organise their boards by locations and cites as well as themes such as “trees and ZZZs”, “Life’s a beach” which creates an interesting visual way to browser their properties.

Their product is pretty much perfect for Pinterest. Pinterest consist of cute animals, weddings, craft and a lot of people day dreaming about nice places they want to go on holiday to; the cuter or cooler the place the better, the more likely it is to get repined, tree houses are perfect.

 
Whist you may not have an audience who wants to go on holiday right there and then, you have one that may repin you and remember you later on when they do want to escape to somewhere different. As well as pinning beautiful pictures of their property, they often pin restaurants, bars and tourist attractions further encouraging their potential customer that they do want to go on holiday.

Remember: Use themed boards to convince potential customers to buy in the future

IKEA

Pinterest is perfect for IKEA, Pinterest is an online scrapbook or mood board, which is ideal for when people want to collect decoration or design ideas.

Mashable

Mashable is an internet news blog, focusing on tech news, unlike all the previous examples it does not have anything to sell, however its Pinterest board is still fun and worth a browse. Whilst they have no products to show off, they do have lots of articles they can pin to, which they do successfully because they nearly always have a good picture. While this has value in itself, Mashable pins gadgets from other websites, curating pins and products of others offers their audience a little extra which is sometimes not available on their website. Creating this differentiation between website and Pinterest allows Mashable gives pinners a good reason for people to follow their Pinterest, which in turn lead them to the Mashable website.

Remember: There's no problem with pinning someone else's product, especially if works for your audience.

Old marketing theory claims that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep one. Taking this on board, you should aim to go the extra mile with your after sales service and marketing. Social media is becoming an increasingly popular channel for retaining customers and this post covers five simple ways social media can be used to help keep customers returning.

1. Treat your social media pages as another customer support channel - When your customers have a problem or a question, make it easier for them to get in touch by incorporating your customer support channel into your Facebook, Twitter or Google+ pages. Doing this will also give you the opportunity to respond to disgruntled customers before they take their negative comments onto review sites and forums where they become harder to monitor and manage. First Choice have a “here to help” app on their Facebook page which leads to an enquiry form in Facebook where people can ask the customer services team a question. The enquiry form is signed by ‘Hollie’, which adds a personal touch.

Tesco even have an entire Twitter page dedicated to customer care.

2. Show your personality - One of the biggest bonuses of using social media for your brand is the ability to show off your personality and connect with your customers on a personal level. Social media pages don’t need to be serious; they are about having some fun with your customers. The Fanta Facebook page features lots of silly posts like hiccup cures, games and cartoon pictures.

3. Post special offers - Give your customers a reason to keep returning by promoting special offers on your social media pages. Pizza Hut’s Twitter page is full of special deals for followers to take advantage of.

4. Regularly posting sharable content - Keeping your social media pages regularly updated will help to keep your brand at the forefront of your fans’ and followers’ minds. As well as posting regularly, make sure you are posting things you know your fans’ and followers’ will like and more importantly engage with. Galaxy chocolate clearly know their Facebook fans as they regularly post pictures of chocolate and cakes which always get lots of likes, shares and comments.

5. Get your customers involved - Reward your loyal fans and followers by giving them the opportunity to get involved with your brand and the development of new products. Giving customers this responsibility and involvement will make them feel valued and improve their connection with your brand. Cadbury recently launched a competition on their Google+ page asking people to design a new chocolate bar.

Oreo's "birthday of the day" Facebook feature is also a great way to involve customers and increase loyalty. It also adds a personal touch to their Facebook social media strategy.

We hope you find these social media tips useful. If you need some help with your social media pages then please get in touch!

Social media inspiration can come from unexpected sources; even classic movie quotations can be applied to our attempts to succeed at social media. Here's three pieces of wisdom from some unlikely characters, alongside some real-world demonstrations of how the philosophies have been utilised on Facebook.

1. "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse." - Don Vito Corleone, The Godfather

Don Vito Corleone, had he not been the cutthroat head of a powerful New York Mafia family, might have made a savvy social media aficionado. Promoting offers on your social media channels can be an effective way to get existing and potential customers to like and interact with your page.

Facebook recently rolled out a dedicated “Offers” platform, allowing businesses with more than 400 likes to advertise deals to their fans. Customers can claim the offer on Facebook before using the voucher to redeem discounts online or in-store. Making use of the Offers feature does come at a cost; the amount you pay depends on the number of people you want to reach, but the minimum spend is $5.

If you don’t want to stump up for fancy offer promotions, there are other ways to advertise your deals on Facebook. Pizza Hut, for example, has generated a dedicated offers tabthat houses a number of tempting deals. You could also take the more traditional approach of posting your current deals as status updates.

2. "Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter."- John Nash, A Beautiful Mind

If your social media pages aren’t offering original content (i.e. something that users can’t find on your website or elsewhere) then there is less incentive for people to get involved with your page. Find ways to distinguish the content you generate on Facebook from the rest of your online media.

Kit Kat used their Facebook page to run a fun “Choose a Chunky Champion” promotion. Kit Kat fans were able to vote for their favourite bar via a special tab on the Kit Kat Facebook page – this acted as a great incentive to like the page, as well as actually going out to buy the products.

Ford Mustang's Facebook page gives Mustang enthusiasts the opportunity to design and colour their dream Mustang before testing it on a virtual circuit. In a really cool twist, Mustang built one fan's design for real and suprised him at his home. While the majority of Mustang’s Facebook fans won’t be using this tool for practical purposes, the fun nature of the game will build a positive familiarity with the Ford brand in the eyes of its users.

3. “Sure, they're cute now, but in a second they're gonna get mean, and they're gonna get ugly somehow, and there's gonna be a million more of them.” – Galaxy Quest

Sometimes logic can apply to both the offspring of flesh eating alien overlords and the viral comments that can infiltrate the Facebook page’s of big brands. In some rare instances, seemingly harmless Facebook comments have snowballed into viral phenomenons.

ODEON Cinemas learned this the hard way. After a disappointing trip to his local ODEON, Matt Pledger posted this comment to the chain’s Facebook page.  Matt does seem fairly disgruntled in his post, but you might assume that his rant would be relatively innocuous amongst the rest of the page’s comments. Unfortunately for ODEON, Matt’s complaint proved popular with lots of lots of other Facebook users and the number of “likes” on his post (currently just under 300,000) turned it into somewhat of a viral hit.

How can you combat this? It's difficult, but Domino’s have a good idea; in an attempt to prevent disgruntled customers from posting on their wall, they have implemented a clever “Customer Care” tab. Asking users to contact them through this private channel should reduce the number of complaints that are visible publically.

Viral posts on Facebook aren’t always negative. When Richard Neill humorously accused Bodyform of deliberately deceiving him, the post prompted over 100,000 likes:

In keeping with Richard’s jovial tone, Bodyform’s riposte was equally popular with social media users. To date it has amassed more than 3 million views on Facebook.

Hopefully you enjoyed this week’s blog post. If you didn’t, well, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn (just kidding – please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions!)

Whether your brand is on Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other social networks, there is always the potential for everything to go bloodcurdlingly badly. 

While this might be a fright for the brands involved, it can be a treat for the rest of us! Here are some of the worst and funniest social media nightmares:

1. Progressive

This is by far the worst example; Progressive's social media nightmare began with this blog post and thanks to Twitter a lot of people saw it. The blog post is by a man called Matt Fisher; when his sister (a Progressive policy holder) died in a car accident, Progressive refused to pay out $75,000 and instead provided legal help for her “killer”. 

Progressive failed to react to the tweets and Facebook comments, confirming their guilt in the mind of many tweeters. When they finally did react, they used one  template line (see image below). This is every marketing manager’s worst nightmare, but it shouldn’t have even got to this point!  In this day and age it does not take long for people to find out something bad about you, so you need to behave in a way that you want people to view you. Social media will not work for you, but instead against you, if you do not have good customer relations to back up your products.

2. Chick-fil-A

I am not sure if this was bad or good advertising, as it certainly got people to head to Chick-fil-A. This summer Chick-fil-A ended up in the middle of a row about gay marriage, and a lot of people felt the need to make their voices heard through the medium of Twitter and the hashtag #Chickfila and #Chickfilgay.

Chick-fil-A is an American fast food restaurant. Its president is a Christian and "came out" against gay marriage. In their attempt to avoid bad press they published this on Facebook:

"The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender. We will continue this tradition in the over 1,600 Restaurants run by independent Owner/Operators. Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.

Chick-fil-A is a family-owned and family-led company serving the communities in which it operates. From the day Truett Cathy started the company, he began applying biblically-based principles to managing his business. For example, we believe that closing on Sundays, operating debt-free and devoting a percentage of our profits back to our communities are what make us a stronger company and Chick-fil-A family.

Our mission is simple: to serve great food, provide genuine hospitality and have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."

Social media marketing is both a mystery and painfully obvious to most of us. On one hand if you've used Facebook and Twitter you know how easy it can be to feel engaged - especially when dealing with friends. On the other you probably haven't got a clue how to translate the experiences of using social networks as an end user to Using Social Networks As An Effective Marketer (TM).

We'd like to work through a few of the ways you can begin to map out your success with social media, including:

• Selecting the correct metrics
• Getting to know your audience (testing)
• Gaining a social presence or a community "culture"
• How to know if it is "working"

There are a few metrics to be used for measuring social engagement on Facebook:

• Virality
• "Reach" of individual posts
• Shares
• "Likes" on individual posts

Ideally of course, all these numbers would be as high as possible, so rather than thinking about which metric is "best" for you, you're really talking about which metric is best for you first. The others may ideally be considered second and third stage engagement measures.

For our Facebook page we considered the first metric of use to be the "reach" of individual posts. We considered what our main goal of the page was - and for us it was to expand membership and get more visitors to join the community. 

While shares might have been a better indicator of "spreading" a message, we'd never had one! Our logic followed that the best way to get to a point where "shares" could be a useful metric was to increase the number of people reached - after all, the more people we reach, the more likely someone willing to share will see the content.

We decided that the first job then was to improve our "reach". We looked back at our data to see the ways in which we were sharing the content. Nearly all were in the "link" format as we originally published from a feed to our Facebook page. Our reach hung around the 70 mark on all these "link" posts.

We found that there were a few posts with a higher reach, hanging around the 100 mark. On investigating these we found them to be the ones we'd entered into the Facebook page ourselves. A jump from a reach of 70 to 100 isn't to be sniffed at, so we looked at why these might be more popular.

Two theories:

1. We're curating: the content in these cases and consciously picking items we knew our members would like. Naturally, these would gather a further reach as the post aligns better with their interests.
2. Links get ignored: Links on Facebook may be a bit of a blind-spot for some. Often Facebook users don't want to be taken away from the site, and as such, they may be ignoring links out of habit. If users do not click "link" posts all that often it may be that, in turn, they don't get shown links all that often. There may be a built-in bias against links from brand pages.

This led us to believe that we would improve our "reach" by adding stories as text posts. So we did.

The improvement was drastic. Our average "reach" for a test post (which still contained a link - just not as a "link" post) increased to 100 on the day of posting, increasing to around 120-130 the day afterwards.

Victory, right?

Here's an example of users engaging on a picture posted on the page timeline:

Look! A share! This post has "reach" of 212 users and a handful of comments.

From this experience we learnt that:

• The less someone has to engage, the more likely they will
• They really like cats
• Pictures work!

A large number of businesses are now using social media to engage with customers and prospects on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. 

However, there are still many brands that have yet to adopt social media strategies. If your business hasn’t yet started using social media then perhaps it should. After all, social media is simply the online version of the oldest form of marketing – word of mouth. If you need more compelling reasons to get into social media then read on:

1) Huge user base - The social media statistics speak for themselves - 62% of adults worldwide are now using social media and according to comScore, one in every five minutes spent on the Internet worldwide is spent on social networking sites.  Therefore, the potential to reach existing customers and prospects is high.

2) To get customer feedback – ‘Like’, ‘comment’, ‘+1’ and ‘re-tweets’ are just some of the features on social networking sites which will quickly show you how popular your products and offers are. Social media also helps you monitor and control conversations about your business or brand and highlight your loyal customers and advocates.

3) To increase brand awareness – Social media is great for sharing, which makes it a valuable tool to increase brand awareness. On Facebook, friends of fans can see what they have ‘liked’, ‘commented’ on or ‘shared’ and Twitter followers can read what has been tweeted and ‘re-tweet’ it, whilst Google+ is driven by ‘shares’ and ‘+1’s. All of these will help expose your brand to new audiences.

4) Competitors use it – If your competitors are engaging with their customers through social media then you should be too, before they start engaging with your customers as well. Competitor social media pages can be useful to see which types of posts work well and which don’t, but it is important to differentiate your social media strategy. This will give your fans and followers something different and may also help you increase your following further.

5) Protect your brand name – Anyone can set up pages on social media sites using your brand name so it’s important to secure your brand before someone else does. The last thing you want is someone with negative intentions acting as the public face of your brand.

6) To show a personal side of your business – Social media is an excellent way to get your employees more involved with your customers by communicating on a personal level – helping them get to know the customers better. A good example of a company who interact with their customers through social media is Cadbury, who make chocolate versions of their top followers’ profile pictures on their Google+ page.

7) Educate your customers – Add value to your brand and educate your customers by adding historic milestones to Facebook Brand Timelines. Ford has added historic company information to their Facebook Timeline which dates back as far as 1903!

8) SEO benefits – The more people who are talking about your brand and sharing links to your website, the more this will help SEO efforts and improve your organic ranking.  Having an online marketing strategy across multiple channels, such as SEO, PPC and social media, can produce results that are greater than the sum of the individual parts.

9) To increase sales and leads – Social media can be a great platform to promote new products and special offers. Competitions and special discounts are also a good way to entice people to subscribe to newsletters and promotional material.

10) Increase customer lifetime value – Posting regular, interesting and relevant content on your social media pages is an effective way to subliminally stay at the front of your customers’ minds. This could increase brand loyalty and lifetime value to your business.

11) It’s free – Apart from the cost in man hours to manage your social media presence, your business will only start incurring costs on social networking sites if you choose to advertise with paid ads, but having a presence on social networking sites with ‘pages’ alone is absolutely free!

If you need a hand with your company’s social media then feel free to get in touch to discuss how we can help!                     

When it comes to online marketing there’s a lot to think about! Do you want more visitors arriving at your site, do you want more “free” traffic, are you struggling to manage the negative reviews your brand receives online, are people just not buying from your website?

Don’t despair, no matter what your needs are, there is an online marketing solution for you. Take a look at the table below to see what will best meet your goals:

Here at SilverDisc we’re experts in online marketing and we offer all of the above services, give us a call if you could do with some sound advice!