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Monday 29 April 2013

Facebook Studio Announces Creative Campaign Award Winners


Facebook Awards

Facebook Studio has announced the winners of its 2013 creative campaign awards, with two agencies, Draftfcb and 360i, taking away the coveted Blue award for their work on Oreo’s Daily Twist campaign. Campaigns for Nike, AT&T and Newcastle Brown Ale were also among the winners.

To celebrate the cookie’s 100th birthday, Oreo ran the Oreo Daily Twist campaign. Every day for 100 days, Oreo posted a different sharable image on Facebook. Each image put an Oreo-themed twist on whatever significant occasion was being celebrated that day. For example, on August 3rd last year, an Oreo cookie with tyre tracks through its red-tinted cream was posted to celebrate the successful landing of the Mars Rover.

The campaign, which relied mostly on fan interaction to increase Oreo’s popularity, proved to be a great success. During the 100 day campaign, Oreo gained around 1 million new Facebook fans. The campaign itself caused a 195% increase in Facebook interactions, with 1.3 million shares, likes and comments registered. Each of the posts was shared approximately 1,472 times.

The other campaigns either earned a Gold, a Silver or a Bronze award. The campaigns that won a Gold award were A Little Village goes Global, Dallas on TNT, Mayhem 2012, Nike Academy and AT&T’s You’ve Got a Case. To see all the winners, go to the Facebook Studio.

What do you think of this year’s Facebook Studio winners?

Friday 26 April 2013

How To Make The Most Of Your Business’ YouTube Channel


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YouTube is by far the most popular video sharing site online. 72 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute, there are more than 1 billion unique visitors to the site every month and they watch over 4 billion hours of content in that time. These astronomical engagement and audience figures make YouTube a must-use social media site for companies who want to promote themselves using visual media.

So, how do you make the most of your business’ YouTube channel? It is imperative, of course, that you get the videos right, but the rest of your channel needs to be maintained as well: before the videos, you need to create the right channel to represent your business; after the videos, you need to promote them online and monitor the success of your content. Here are a few hints and tips on how to make the most of your channel.

1. Before the Videos

If you are making videos for YouTube, you need the right equipment. Do you have a camera and editing software? Do you have sound recording equipment and employees who know how to handle it? Of course, depending on the quality of the videos you intend to create, you could always use a mobile phone with a good quality camera, a much cheaper and easier option.

So, you have the equipment, now you can start creating your channel. If your company is a large, umbrella corporation, you could have a number of different channels for different brands. For most companies, however, its advisable to just have one channel: think of it as a brand page, which everyone will associate with your company.

Name your channel after your brand, if you can, or as close to your brand name as possible. Use industry keywords in your about section and upload an interesting and original background. Make sure the theme of your channel connects with your business. Manage your tabs. Have your subscribe button and logo prominently placed, with subscriber and view counters in the corner. Don’t forget to put links to all your other websites and social media profiles at the top of the page.

Do you already have an archive of company videos from events or old advertisements? Don’t dump it all on your YouTube channel, select the videos that are relevant and interesting and post them in intervals.

2. The Videos

There are dozens of kinds of video that you can post on YouTube to promote your brand and increase engagement with the public online. Here are a few quick ideas: presentations of products, interviews with staff and experts, a tour of the office, a video explaining your product, a customer testimonial. Another good idea is livestreaming your events on YouTube, advertising them beforehand to ensure a large audience.
Title and tag your videos with relevant keywords. YouTube is a Google affiliate, so videos posted to the site appear high in relevant searches. YouTube itself has the second largest search engine on the web, after Google, so you need to ensure that you optimize your video descriptions with keywords so that they appear high in searches. Tags are especially important to get right, as they affect what videos get displayed in the “relevant videos” section.

YouTube videos can be as long as you want now, but it’s still best to edit your videos down – people have a short attention span on YouTube. Of course, if your video needs to be long, don’t worry: people will watch it if the content and is interesting enough to them.

YouTube allows you to choose between one of three screenshots from the video as the screenshot shown before it plays. choose wisely: the screenshot will effect how much engagement your videos get. Categorise your videos into specific playlists to make it easier for subscribers and visitors to navigate around the page.

3. Engagement

Do you want to allow comments on your videos? I’d advise against it: the majority of people who comment on YouTube are trolling. Of course, you can delete comments at any time, but there may be too many comments to manage.

Get people to engage by asking them to subscribe to your channel. Use annotations to promote engagement with your videos. For example, ask people to click on an annotation to view the product page of a product that appears in an advert you post on YouTube. make sure that your like, share and subscribe buttons are always prominently placed.

Embed your videos on your other social media sites and on your website. Create an introductory video talking about your company and embed it on the front page of your website, or create product videos and post them on your sales pages.

Use Google Analytics to measure the engagement of your videos. See what videos prove the most popular and with who, then optimise your channel and your videos to get the most interaction you can.

How do you make the most of your YouTube page?

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Facebook Updates Mobile Business Pages

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Facebook has redesigned its business pages for mobile devices, putting more focus on information that might be handy to users on the move, such as reviews, a map, and share, like and call buttons, at the expense of content posted on the page by administrators.

According to the announcement article on the Facebook Studio news page, the company has redesigned the page layout because over half of the millions of people accessing business pages every day are doing so via a mobile device: it makes sense, then, that those accessing pages on their phones and tablets are going to be provided with a “layout tailored to the way people look for information on their mobile devices.”

Mobile business pages for administrators, brands and individual locations have all been redesigned. Beneath the cover photo on the brand and store pages are interaction buttons: Like, Message and Share on brand business pages; Like, Check-In and Call on individual location pages. On the brand page there is a map and address information showing individual locations within the user’s area. Navigating through to one of these locations will display a page which also has a map and address information, but this time contains a star rating, as well as ‘like’ and ‘talking about’ figures.

The admin version of the business page gives administrators the option to either write a post or share a photo, with previously written posts and shared photos displayed in a scroll-down list beneath. Administrators cannot pin posts on mobile devices however, which could be a problem considering the fact that other mobile users won’t see posts unless they scroll down. If administrators really need a post to be seen, they’ll have to pin it on the page using a desktop device. Admins can switch between an admin and a public view at any time.

There are no longer specific video and event sections on the mobile app business pages, but a side-scrolling photos section remains. Administrators can still pin video and event posts using a desktop device, however.

The new layout definitely makes it easier for mobile users who are out and about to find stores and brands, contact them and interact with the page, but perhaps also makes post interaction less likely. It is unclear, however, how much post interaction occurred on mobile pages before. Posts will still appear on timelines, which is probably where most of the interaction with them occurs.

What do you think of the redesigned Facebook business pages for mobile?

Monday 22 April 2013

New Facebook Logo Made Official



Facebook-logo-comparison


You might not have noticed, but Facebook has rolled out a new main logo and refreshed the design of other icons for the first time in years.

Facebook's logo no longer includes the faint blue line at the bottom of its "F" icon. The letter is also pulled closer to the edge of the box.


Although this was first spotted on the information page for Facebook Home — the social network's new app launcher for Android — the new logo showed up in the company's newsroom webpage on Friday, according to web developer Tom Waddington for the site Cut Out + Keep.

The "F" logo hasn't been updated to all pages just yet, including the Brand Permissions page. However, it has been added as the picture to Facebook's Twitter account.

Other official pages have received logo refreshes in the past few weeks, from the security badge to the privacy icon. The redesigned logos feature Facebook's signature blue color as a background to create a more streamlined, uniformed look.
Facebook Icons
Facebook has not yet responded to a request for comment.

What do you think of the new logo and icons? Will you miss the light blue line?

Images courtesy of Facebook and Tom Waddington

Friday 19 April 2013

Twitter Launches Music App


Yesterday, Twitter announced the launch of a standalone music app called #music on the popular Stateside television show Good Morning America. The Twitter #music app is based on the music discovery service We Are Hunted, which the microblogging site acquired a few months ago. The app is currently available to desktop users in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, as well as on Apple devices in each country.

Twitter #music is not just a music playing app, it is really a music discovery app, using software from We Are Hunted and Twitter to find artists and songs which are popular, trending or might interest the user. To find the music, the app has to be synced up to a user’s Twitter account. To play the music, it has to be synced up to either a Rdio or a Spotify premium account. If a user doesn’t have access to Spotify or Rdio, then they can use #music to find and discover new music, playing previews of the songs that interest them using iTunes. Twitter does say in the announcement post on their blog that they intend “to explore and add other music service providers.”

There are five distinct tabs in the app: Popular, Emerging, Suggested, #NowPlaying and Me. Popular and Emerging use Twitter’s search algorithms to display songs which are trending on Twitter and “hidden talent” mentioned in tweets. Suggested goes one step further, displaying artists and songs that you might enjoy based on your activity on Twitter – who you follow, who the people you follow are following, etcetera. #NowPlaying finds songs and artists mentioned in tweets which also contain the #NowPlaying hashtag. Me just finds the artists you follow. There is also a comprehensive search tool at the top right, which separates results into artists and users.

The Popular and Emerging tabs are displayed as charts, with artists arrayed left to right – there are three artists to a row on an iPhone. Each artist is portrayed by their Twitter header image, with an opaque text box running across the bottom containing their Twitter handle and the name of their song. Hovering over the header image will replace the Twitter handle and song name with the name of the artist. A play icon and a follow button also appears, as well as an explicit warning for certain songs. Clicking on the image will play the song; clicking on the text box will open up the artist’s Twitter profile card. Playing the song will open a play box, with buttons allowing users to buy the track on iTunes or follow the artist on Twitter.

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Although the app is reliant on Spotify and Rdio to play music, it does provide something different to both services. Access to the vast amount of information on Twitter, as well as Twitter and We Are Hunted algorithms to sift through it, ensures that those looking to discover new music will get a lot out of the app. There is also an interesting social element to the music discovery app: users can use the #NowPlaying hashtag to share what they are listening to with others – yes, they could do this before, but now that the hashtag has its own tab on a sure-to-be-popular Twitter branded app, more people are likely to use it and be interested in what others are listening to. Spotify does have some social elements, the ability to sync up your account with Facebook and follow others’ playlists to name a couple, but with Twitter, not only can users crowdsource and discover the most popular songs of the moment, they can also follow the Twitter accounts of DJs and music journalists: respected critics within the music industry who will definitely use the app to champion emerging talent.

The app already has a large number of celebrity fans, whose positive tweets are sure to increase interest in the app, after all, most Tweeters use the social media site to get closer to their idols – at any one time, at least two of the top trends on Twitter are based around fandom. There is no doubt that Twitter #music will be extremely popular – Twitter has had recent success with its previous app Vine, which reached number one in the app charts last week – so it is only a matter of time before musicians, producers and labels start leveraging the service to their advantage. There have even been rumours that Twitter is negotiating with Viacom and NBCUniversal about the potential for advertising on the service, which is good news for marketers and advertisers.

Twitter say on their blog that the app will be released on Android and to all users worldwide soon.

What do you think of #music?    

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Making The Most Of 140 Characters

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In the world of Twitter, less is more. 140 characters is all you have to get your point across, so make sure that you use each character as well as you possibly can. Practice makes perfect, so don’t be too worried if you can’t quite get the hang of the 140 character limit to start off with: keep practicing and pretty soon every single one of your tweets will be concise, clear and characterful. Don’t rush, but don’t take too long: Twitter is all about the here and now, with tweets working best if they are relevant to what is happening in the real world and in the Twitter world at the time. If you are still having difficulty with Twitter limits, here are some tips and hints to help you perfect your within-140-character tweets:

1. Abbreviations and Editing Down:

There are numerous ways you can cut down tweets whilst still ensuring that they are easy to read and understand. Here are the most obvious ways you can edit tweets to fit the 140 character limit:


  1. Use contractions – ‘can’t’ instead of ‘cannot’ 
  2. Use abbreviations – ‘biz’ instead of ‘business’ 
  3. Use numbers instead of words – ‘2’ instead of ‘two’ 
  4. Use recognised acronyms – ‘TGIF’ instead of ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ 
  5. Use symbols instead of words – ‘+’ instead of ‘and’. There is an entire set of symbol shortcuts if you want, but they are not necessarily ideal for business related tweets. Find them here
  6. Exchange long words with shorter synonyms – ‘gr8’ (using numbers again to cut down characters) instead of ‘amazing’ 
  7. Drop vowells – ‘ballrm’ instead of ‘ballroom’, or even ‘bllrm’ 
  8. Only use punctuation if you need to. No periods at the end! 
  9. Make sure you haven’t double-spaced anywhere 
  10. Get rid of needless words like ‘that’ in front of nouns – ‘the ice cream I 8’ instead of ‘the ice cream that I ate’ 
  11. Drop personal pronouns at the start of tweets about you, and 
  12. Cut out superfluous adverbs and adjectives. So ‘ I met a really beautiful girl this morning’ becomes ‘met a real beauty this morning’. 
Often, the shorter and more concise your tweets are, the more impact they have. Tabloid newspapers have perfected the art of the snappy headline, getting a lot across with only a little. By using as small a number of words as possible, but still ensuring that your tweet gets the right message across, you will ensure that people will give up that little bit of extra time to read them.

2. Retweets, Multi-tweets and Mentions:


Again, there is a lot that can be edited out of retweets and mentions. Make sure that you only credit the first tweeter, don’t multi-retweet if people have been retweeting retweets.

You can often cut down retweets as well, following the rules above in the ‘Abbreviations and Editing Down’ section. As long as you credit the original source and get the right message across, you should be alright. That said, if you see something you might like to retweet, but think that you can say it better shorter, then write an original tweet. Retweets are great for connecting with other Twitter users, but if you don’t need to connect with them then just say it yourself.

Editing down retweets can give you more wiggle room to add your own thoughts and comments. Make sure that your comments are as short as they possibly can be. It’s also a good idea to leave room in your own tweets so that people retweeting have the room to add a little themselves. 140 characters is a limit, not a target, its actually better to aim for around 100 if you don’t need the extra characters.

If you really do need more than 140 characters, and a picture or vine won’t do the job just as well, find an appropriate point at which to break your tweet in two, then tweet them one after the other quickly. If you can, tweet the last part first, so that they appear correctly in the chronological feed.

3. Links, Shares and conversations:

Most sites contain widgets, allowing you to share their articles on various social media platforms. Often, the tweets these widgets produce can be cut down significantly. If you are posting a link yourself or, for that matter, posting a link using a share button, you can cut them down using URL shortening sites like bitly.

Think about exactly where in your tweet you want the link to appear, the three options being, rather obviously, the beginning, the middle and the end. There is some evidence suggesting that links in the middle of tweets are more likely to get clicked, but really the aesthetics of your tweets are up to you.

Just like when you’re retweeting, leave space to add your own comments and thoughts to tweets containing links. Twitter cards will show the start of articles and videos, so people can see your comments alongside what you’re tweeting a link to. Make sure you only put one link in a tweet, otherwise your audience won’t know what to click on. If you’re commenting on a link in a tweet, think about whether you want your comments before or after the link – what do you want people to see first?

Consider carefully what you are linking to as well. Don’t waste a tweet on something that isn’t very interesting, isn’t relevant to your business or isn’t similar to the things you normally tweet about. Surmise what the link is about in your tweet, but don’t waste characters repeating what people are going to read on the page you linked the tweet to anyway.

By commenting on a link, you can start conversations on Twitter, helping you to build relationships with potential connections and customers.

4. Hashtags and Keywords:

Use keywords, trending hashtags and phrases in tweets that are relevant to your business. Optimise your tweets so that they appear higher in relevant searches. Hashtag words within your tweets that can be hashtagged. For example, if you are talking about social media in a tweet, use the hashtag ‘#socialmedia’, which is almost always trending.

Don’t overuse hashtags, however, as it can detract from what you are trying to say. At the very most use 3 hashtags, but this is in extreme circumstances: normally, It’s better to use 1 or 2 hashtags.

Look through the top trending hashtag lists for inspiration, but make sure that what you contribute to the conversation is relevant and interesting. Start your own hashtags if something interesting or momentous happens in the news. For example, if you run a travel agents and your area experiences the coldest day on record, invite Twitter users to use the hashtag #iwishiwashere in tweets about ideal holiday destinations, rewarding the best tweet with a free holiday.

5. Knowing Your Audience:

It is important to follow all the basic rules when tweeting, optimising your Twitter profile to get the most out of it for your business. Creating and maintaining the right personality in your tweets and knowing the audience you want to attract is vital to the success of your business on Twitter.

Space your tweets out so that you don’t clutter up your followers’ streams and make sure your tweets stay on topic, portraying your company in the best way possible way, while staying current and up-to-date. Don’t just tweet randomly, look for and enter conversations that are relevant to your industry.

A lot of websites will schedule the same tweet to be sent out a number of times each day, announcing updates or new articles. If you have thousands of followers worldwide this is a good idea, as not everyone will see the tweet if you post it just once. If you have the time, you could even tailor each repeated tweet to cater for the audience most likely to see it. However, most companies only tweet once, either as soon as possible to stay relevant, or scheduling to target the right audience.

Think about what you are tweeting, will it work best in Twitter? If you have the same people following you on Twitter and Facebook, then work out which site is best for the content you want to post. It isn’t necessarily a bad idea to post something across a number of platforms, but if you don’t need to then don’t. Infographics, for example, are best on Pinterest and maybe Facebook, but you can post links to them on Twitter.

How do you make the most of 140 characters?

Monday 15 April 2013

Just Who Uses Social Media? A Demographic Breakdown

Social-media-logos

You think you know social? How about who uses it? Well, you might not know it as well as you would have guessed.

A new study from the Pew Research Center and Docstoc shed some light on just who uses social and on what platforms. Some of the findings seem in line with what you would probably guess, but others were surprising.

If you think the smarter, more attractive sex is more socially prolific than us men, well ... you're right. Women use social media 9% more than men do. Despite having more distractions, people living in cities have the most social media activity, at 70% of the population. Perhaps it's the connectivity of large-city life.



In terms of racial and ethnic groups online, Hispanics lead the pack at 72% engagement, with African-Americans trailing at 68%, who are ahead of Caucasians at 65%. And in a strange twist, despite being somewhat economically disadvantaged, 72% of adults with annual household incomes below $30,000 use social networks, more than those with higher wages.

How about most popular social networks? That would be Facebook, with 67% of adults using the Zuckerberg-founded service. A distant second was LinkedIn with 20%, with Twitter coming in third at 16%, and Tumblr falling dead last at 6%.

Take a look at the details below:


Image via iStockphoto, hocus-focus

Friday 12 April 2013

Social Media Promotions Of The Week: 12/04/13

The sun finally came out in the United Kingdom this week, perfect timing for the two popular soft drink brands that released viral videos over the weekend. Two of the other social media promotions that stood out this week are also well-timed: the “Bubba’s Hover” video comes just before the Masters, while Nissan’s #Jukeride promotion with ex-F1 driver Johnny Herbert arrives two races into the current Formula 1 season. This week’s SMPW also features a first for the series, with one company, Nissan, having two promotions running in the same week.

1. Oakley – Bubba’s Hover




The Master’s teed off Yesterday, but, sadly, professional golfer Bubba Watson is yet to fly around the course in his custom-made hover-cart.

Bubba Watson teamed up with professional sports eyewear company Oakley to create an alternative to the old-fashioned golf cart.

The 60mph machine can float across water hazards and fairways alike, and can even be taken onto the green without damaging it.

“It takes you everywhere you want to go,” Watson says in the video. “Through sand traps, through water, short cuts into the woods and out of the woods. And my ball likes to go in and out of the woods.”
“The biggest advantage to the hovercraft is that it has a foot print pressure about 33 times less than the human foot,” Neoteric Hovercraft’s Chris Fitzgerald added. “So by hovering across a green you leave absolutely no trace.”

The video already has well over 10 million views on YouTube.

2. Nissan – #Jukeride


Nissan is asking its fans to contribute ideas for a new crowdsourced racing car on Twitter using the hashtag #Jukeride.

The car will have a roof-docking Skycam – a remote control helicopter which can monitor the car from above – and cutting-edge technology to analyse the driver’s performance.

Ex-F1 driver Johnny Herbert, who is the face of the campaign, has said, “This really will be a car like no other. It will have its own helicopter, equipped with cameras, that takes off from the roof to provide a unique perspective on Nismo drivers and give unparalleled insight into their performance. I’m really excited about being involved in this project and helping the Nissan team, along with the apprentices, to create and build something that is genuinely going to improve driving performance.”

3. Diet CokeMosaic


To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Diet Coke is inviting its Facebook fans to become part of the Diet Coke Mosaic – a mosaic of the fans’ pictures combining to create a larger image.

The three images that each face could contribute to are all from the Diet Coke ‘Gardener’ commercial: one is of the hunky Diet Coke gardener, model Andrew Cooper, wringing his shirt out after it gets soaked by the sweet soft drink, while another is of the can bouncing down the hill.

A photo booth will travel between 10 Tesco stores where fans can take photos of themselves. The results are posted on Facebook.
4. Irn Bru – Mum


Irn Bru rewarded their Facebook fans with a sneak peek at the brand’s latest advert in the “Get you Through” campaign.

The Scottish soft drink brand is renowned for its irreverent advertising, with the highlights being the take on Raymond Brigg’s “Snowman” and last year’s “Fanny” advert.

The video has since been uploaded to YouTube, gathering over 15,000 views.


5. NissanImpress With Sentra


Nissan’s second campaign in this week’s SMPW features ex-House M.D. star Omar Epps talking up Nissan Sentra’s fans to prospective friends, love interests and employers.

Omar offers to tell people that you are either an adrenaline junkie, a hopeless romantic or a business dynamo.

The campaign, which was created by TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, will advertise the 2013 Nissan Sentra.

Have you seen any clever promotional campaigns this week?       

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Facebook Introduces Emoticons To Status Updates



imageAfter the relative failure of status update prompts, Facebook has begun rolling out new options for users who want to tell their friends how they feel. The new feature could prove to be beneficial for Facebook marketers, as users can also update their status with activities.

Some users in the United States of America have been given the option to add emoticons to their status updates. There are a number of emotions to choose from, each illustrated by a round yellow face, similar to the ones used on Skype.

To choose an emoticon, users have to click on the smaller section separated from the main status update text box which asks “What are you doing?”. A drop-down box will appear, the first option of which is “feeling”, providing users with a number of different smiley face emoticon options.

Users don’t just have smiley faces to choose from, there are also a number of tiny pictures emblematic of different activities. For example, if a user selects “eating” from the drop-down box, they can choose to display an ice cream cone if they are eating ice cream, or a slice of pizza if they are snacking on a hot piece of quattro formaggi.


As well as the “feeling” and “eating” options, users can choose from “drinking”, “watching”, “reading” and “listening to”. Users can name the films, TV shows, books and artists they are enjoying, which could potentially provide Facebook marketers with extremely useful targeting data.

Chosen artists, films, TV shows and books will appear in the status update as a picture (if one is available), a description and a link to the corresponding Facebook page. Users who want to know more about a band that their friend is listening to can just click on the link in the status update.

Facebook is currently testing the new feature, so it is only available to a few users in the United States. Whether people will be more willing to share their feelings in image form is yet to be seen, but Facebook do intend to roll out the feature to the rest of the United States soon. There is no news concerning international users, so those of us living outside America will have to be without for the time being.

What do you think of the new emoticons?

Monday 8 April 2013

Vine Introduces Trending Hashtags


imageSix-second video sharing service Vine has improved its app’s Explore tab with a new trending hashtags section, making it easier to discover videos depicting popular subjects.

“Since launch, there have been a ton of awesome, creative posts that don’t always make it to the popular sections”, said Vine Co-founder and CTO Colin Kroll on the company’s blog. “In many cases, these posts include a hashtag that the community is using.”

The new trending hashtags section will help users to find creative videos posted by other users who they don’t necessarily follow. To keep the service as up-to-date as possible, the Trending section shows hashtags that have risen rapidly and recently in popularity, rather than those that are specifically the most popular.


The implementation of hashtags on Vine comes as no surprise considering the fact that the company is an affiliate of Twitter, the hashtag luminary. A number of other platforms have taken up the hashtag mantle, including Flickr and Path. Facebook, meanwhile, is reportedly going to introduce hashtags soon.

This is the second improvement Vine has made to its service in the last few weeks: late last month Vine was updated to allow users to post Vine videos on other websites. The service has seen continued growth since its Twitter acquisition in October last year: according to StartupStats, Vine has grown 1,300 per cent in the last month alone.

What do you think of Vine’s new Trending section?


Friday 5 April 2013

The Web Rallies for a Better World With Momentum1000 Campaign


United-nations-flag

In September 2000, leaders from around the world convened at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to adopt the Millennium Declaration, through which they committed their countries to a partnership in solving key global issues by the end of 2015. The leaders agreed on eight goals — known as the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) — that range from ending extreme poverty and hunger to reducing child mortality.

Friday marks 1,000 days until the target date for reaching these goals. As a result, the U.N., the U.N. Foundation and other international organizations have initiated Momentum1000, a global 1,000-minute "digital media rally" to raise awareness and galvanize people into action during the next two and a half years and beyond.


The campaign currently has more than 70 partners and hosts participating in online events and dialogues between 8:30 a.m. ET Friday and 1:30 a.m. ET Saturday. The schedule includesTwitter chats, Facebook Q&A sessions, live-streamed conversations and Google+ hangouts that can help guide public conversation and generate ideas for the post-2015 development agenda.

Many strides have been made surrounding the MDGs. Since 1990, extreme poverty around the world has been cut in half, enrollment in primary education in developing regions reached 90% in 2010 and maternal mortality rates have been reduced by 47% within the past 23 years.

However, 870 million people remain hungry, 61 million children are not in school and maternal mortality remains 15 times greater in developing regions than in the developed world. There's still plenty of work to be done.

You can participate in Momentum1000 by visiting the campaign's Facebook page, following the Twitter account @Momentum1000 and using the hashtag #MDGMomentum. Learn more about the rally at Momentum1000.org.
MDG Infographic, Momentum1000

Wednesday 3 April 2013

How To Get The Best Out Of Facebook For Your Business


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Setting up a Facebook page is quick and easy, especially considering how beneficial one can be to your business. However, to get the most out of Facebook, your business’ page, profile and presence on the social media site needs to be correctly managed and maintained. Here are five categories you should consider when managing and maintaining your business’ Facebook presence:

1. What to Post
The Basics:
Post pictures, videos, questions and facts related to your business, or that you think will engage your audience.

Post pictures and videos that excite and amuse or that your page’s viewers will find instantly recognisable. Why not post pictures celebrating special days like Valentine’s Day or Christmas, but with your company’s own special twist? For example, biscuit manufacturers Oreo sculpt pictures emblematic of certain holidays and anniversaries out of the cream in their cookies.
Photo: We heard the first thing the pilots asked for after touching down was Oreo cookies and Milk. http://oreo.ly/dailytwistIf your company is running a multimedia advertising campaign, post images and videos on Facebook to coincide with your billboard, magazine and television adverts.

Be an Industry Leader:
Ask your fans questions or post facts related to you and your company’s field of expertise. Post links to articles that you think your fans, followers and customers will find interesting, with pictures that will catch the attention of those who view your Facebook page – Facebook lets you post links and pictures at the same time. Cement your position as an expert in your field and your company’s position as an industry leader with the relevant and interesting information you post.

Ask your Fans:
Ask your fans for their input in certain company decisions, like what your mascot should be called, what new flavour of ice cream your frozen goods company should sell, or what your retail company’s new range of clothes should be called. Plush soft toy company Squishable gained over 700,000 likes on their Facebook page by asking their fans to vote for which creatures should be made into cuddly companions.

Promoted Posts:

Photo: Pudu or Kitsune? Two guesses as to which one is real, and which is mythological! Also, vote on the cutest one at Project Open Squish! http://www.squishable.com/c/voting_category/
Whatever you post will show up in your fans’ News Feeds – those who have liked your page – and the better the quality of posts, the more likely it is that people will like your page. Facebook users spend an average of 40% of their time scrolling through the News Feed, so having your posts appear there ensures that your fans will see them.

If your page has more than 400 likes, you can pay to promote your posts. Promoting posts moves them higher in the News Feed so that the people you shared it with are likely to see it. According to Facebook:

You can promote any post you share from your News Feed, profile or Page, including status updates, photos, videos, questions and offers. You can also promote and share posts from friends and people you follow.Any post you promote will be labelled “Sponsored by” and then your business’ name.
Celebrate Milestones:

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Milestones are special page posts that take up the entire width of the timeline rather than just one side of the timeline. Add them to your page to mark special dates in your company’s history, such as when the company was founded or when you moved to new offices.

You can post pictures alongside milestones to better illustrate their significance. When your company does something special, record it with a milestone on your Facebook page.

Conclusions:
According to Facebook’s business page, successful posts are:

Short: Posts between 100 and 250 characters get about 60% more likes, comments and shares

Visual: Photo albums, pictures and videos get 180%, 120%, and 100% more engagement respectively

Optimised: Page Insights help you learn things such as what times people engage most with your content so you can post during those hours.Post regularly, about once or twice a week, but make sure you don’t bombard your fans with information: if their News Feed is inundated with your posts they will get sick of hearing about your company and “unlike” your page.

Bear in mind that many of the users who have liked your page have done so because they are interested in the product or services you provide (unless they are friends, employees and colleagues, although they might like your company regardless) so make sure you provide enough information about your company on your page and in your posts.

2. Engaging with Fans and Followers
Responding to Comments:

You don’t need to respond to all the comments on your Facebook page, but answering questions and liking a few statements will make your fans feel like their opinions matter. If managed right, your page will act more like a forum for people to talk about your products and your posts amongst themselves.

Reward your favourite comments, not just by liking them, but by illustrating them and reposting them as a picture. This will further ingratiate your company to your fans and will help you highlight positive feedback about your company.

Unfortunately, there will be a few people who take advantage of the popularity of your page by posting back-linked comments. It is not worth the time or effort to constantly comb through comments to delete the few that are unrelated to your company, your fans are intelligent enough to work out which ones to avoid by themselves.

Promotions, Competitions and Contests:
Facebook has very strict guidelines for companies who want to run promotions on the site and, if you stray outside them, you run the risk of having your company’s Facebook page deleted.

Promotions, however, are one of the most successful ways to attract more fans onto your page. The problem is, you can’t use any of the features on your page to run the promotion.

All Facebook promotions need to be run through a third-party application, such as Google’s wildfire. You can’t use any of the features on your company’s page – the comments section, the photos, the events tab, the like button, etcetera – to run your Facebook promotions.

What you are allowed to do on your company’s Facebook page is advertise the promotion. However, make sure that at no point are you requiring users to “like” your page if they want to enter the contest or contacting winners and entrants on your page. It is advisable to include a disclaimer with any material related to promotions on your Facebook page, saying that in no way is Facebook itself involved.


Keeping Facebook’s stringent policies in mind, running a successful Facebook promotion is easy and often extremely beneficial: according to ExactTarget, 40% of Facebook users become fans to take advantage of promotions.

Here are a few ways to ensure your promotions success:

Make sure it’s free and easy to enter.
Offer prizes for the winners that are related to your company’s products or service.
Decide what sort of Facebook competition you want to run. There are four basic types: sweepstakes, essay, photo and video. The last three take a lot of time, but will potentially provide your page and followers with some quality content. Sweepstakes are an easier way to engage with fans and get their information.
Collect emails: one of the greatest benefits of running a promotion on Facebook is that you can collect all the names and email addresses of the entrants, making it a great way to reach more potential fans outside of the site.
Advertise the contest everywhere you can: your website, on Twitter, in a Facebook ad, for example.
Make sure the third-party app you use is flexible, competitively priced, has mobile capabilities and can be embedded on both Facebook and your website.Post on the Pages of Other Companies:
Businesses with smaller followings on Facebook can leverage the networks of businesses with more followers in order to increase their own fanbase.

Post on the pages of competitors and experts in your industry. Comment on their posts or the posts of their fans and followers with related information and links to your own Facebook page or website.

If you comment on the pages of other businesses, their followers who have commented in the same thread are instantly notified, drawing their attention to you.

Even if a follower hasn’t commented on a thread that you comment on, they may see it on the page. If they appreciate what you write, they may click the “like” button, which will show up in their activity for their friends to see, or they may even follow you.

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Offers:

If you are a page administrator, you can pay to run offers on your page, which will reach those who have liked your page and even their friends.

Offers will appear on your page and in your fans News Feed. When your fans claim the offer, it will show up in the News Feeds of their friends, who can claim the offer in turn.

Offer something that your fans will want, like a discount on a new product or a free trial. if more people claim the offer then more people will see it.

Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the greatest tools in a business’ arsenal: according to Facebook, businesses typically receive a 3x higher return on investment when fans refer friends.

Rewards:
You could also reward your fans exclusive benefits for liking your page.

Say you are a chocolatiers releasing new flavours of one of most popular snack bars: why not give your Facebook fans the chance to taste them first.

You shouldn’t only be trying to get new fans to like your page: you should be thanking those who have liked your page already. Customer retention is the basis of growth and rewarding your customers is one of the best ways to do this.

Conclusions:
Always stay active on Facebook: posting comments, replying to your fans, constantly networking and connecting.

Make sure that the quality of your response is high and that you post information relevant to the thread – don’t be mistaken for a spammer!

Give your fans something they want, so they will keep returning to your page and also refer their friends to your business.

3. Marketing and Advertising
Creating adverts:
Creating adverts on Facebook is perhaps the best way to get people to like your page and buy your products from Facebook: according to Facebook, people who like a company’s page will spend an average on 2 times more than someone unconnected.

Facebook gives businesses three options at the start, asking whether they want to:

Get More Page Likes: Reach people who aren’t connected to your Page yet. You’ll be asked to design your advert including headline, body text and image

Promote Page Posts: Promote a specific post; giving you increased reach and increasing your chance of placement in the News Feed

Advanced Options: See all creative and bidding options in one place. You can toggle your bidding options between CPM and CPC.Creating a good advert is like creating a good post: you need to ensure that the picture and the text is just right, catching the eye of the viewer and then telling them exactly what the advert is all about.

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Targeting:

Businesses are then given options on who they want to target with their adverts, with categories such as gender, age, interests, location, connections and marital status.

Make sure you target your adverts to the right audience. For example, if you are advertising a new people carrier, the ad should pop up on the pages of parents rather than the pages of single teens.

There is even an “advanced targeting” targeting option to narrow the boundaries even further.

Paying for and Scheduling Adverts:
After you’ve named your advert (make sure its something easy to remember in case you plan on making a few) you will be asked to set a budget for your advert.

You will never pay more than your budget, but you may pay less. What you’re paying for is impressions (clicks-per-minute), the more impressions, the more of your budget the advert will cost. However, impressions prove that people are seeing and clicking on your advert, increasing the chance of a sale.

You can adjust payment options, however, by clicking “advanced options” in the goals section.

Make sure you schedule your adverts for an appropriate length of time. Facebook allows businesses to schedule their adverts to start on a certain date and end on a certain date.

Schedule your adverts to be seen at the best possible time. For example, if you are advertising for the January sales, schedule your adverts to start after Christmas and end at the start of February.

Running Multiple Adverts:

If you are unsure of your best audience (and you have the money) you can run more than one advert targeted at different audiences to determine which audience is best.

If you are running more than one advert, Facebook will optimise your adverts automatically:

When multiple adverts are running in a campaign, we'll automatically allocate more of your daily budget to higher performing adverts so it's important to put your adverts in different campaigns when you're testing them.Change things subtly to fine tune your advert. Facebook make it easy with the “create a similar advert” option.

CPC and CPM:
Cost-Per-Click and Cost-Per-Impression are used to monitor Facebook advertising’s ROI. Here are the figures for the average CPC (also sometimes called PPC) and CPM (also sometimes called CPI) in the twelve most expensive countries, as measured by socialbakers.com:

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As you can see, the price of Facebook advertising in the UK is relatively cheap CPC-wise, compared to Australia and the United States, but is equal to the latter for CPM. Canada and Germany are cheaper still: Canada’s CPC is $0.41 and there CPM is $0.09, while Germany’s CPC is $0.37 and ther CPM is $0.08.

Coordinate your Adverts with Third Parties:

You can coordinate with third party services to run adverts on Facebook based on traffic to your website or people who have bought your products online or in-store.

Target customers who may not have liked you on Facebook but have been in your store with offers and adverts for new products.

Sponsored Stories:
Sponsored stories are Facebook’s brilliant feature which highlights the comments of fans, allowing companies to pay for them to appear in the News Feeds of people who are friends with the commenter.

Sponsored stories are optimised to reach the highest number of people through word-of-mouth advertising, promoting businesses through the words of people that the viewer trusts.

Conclusions:
Make sure that what your advert is offering something that your targeted audience will see and will want. Drive traffic from adverts to the relevant websites. You could advertise an offer or a coupon to drive more traffic onto your main site.

P.F. Chang's
Chinese restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s ran a three-week Facebook ads campaign which offered coupons to reward their customers.

The restaurant chain also used sponsored stories, it’s Facebook page, its website and other social media sites to drive traffic into their restaurants'.

The campaign reached 9.1 million people and grew P.F. Chang’s Facebook fanbase by more then 100% to 420,000.

Facebook ads and sponsored stories are costly, but effective. If you have money to spend on advertising then Facebook is an economical outlet, allowing you to promote your business to a wide but targeted audience.

For more advice on running Facebook ads, click here.

4. Monitor and Analyse
Monitor you Page:
It’s simple really: keep an eye on your number of fans by counting how many likes you have. You can count how many of these likes are coming from your adverts and sponsored stories in the “actions” section of the Adverts Manager page.

Make sure you monitor the comments on your page, deleting anything that is inappropriate or too irrelevant. As I said before, you can delete all the spam and back-linked comments if you want, but checking through them is not very time-effective.

Adverts Manager:
From the Adverts Manager page, you can view various statistics and analytics to do with your adverts. Here is Facebook’s list:

Actions: The number of Page likes, app installs, and event joins that come from your adverts.
Reports: In-depth performance and demographic information to understand how your campaigns are doing over time. Run News Feed reports to optimise adverts being shown in News Feed.
Inline Reporting: Your bid and price for each advert or sponsored story, advert previews and a summary of your targeting and performance.
Key metrics: Info on the size and engagement of your audience to help you monitor the success of your campaigns.
Audience graph: How much of your target audience your campaign is reaching compared to how much it could reach. If you find you’re not reaching enough of your target audience, try raising your bid or budget.
Response graph: Track the performance of your campaign by clicks and actions over time.With all these analytics at your fingertips, you can optimise your adverts and your page to get the most out of Facebook.

Conclusions:
Always keep abreast of how your adverts and your page is doing. Adjust and optimize your adverts according to their success. Make the most of your budget. You can spend as much or as little as you want, its up to you to make it count.

5. Manage
Manage your Posts:
As well as monitoring the comments of your fans, you should monitor the success of your own posts on your business’ Facebook page.

If a post isn’t getting any likes or comments, delete it. Posts that don’t get you any interaction are just taking up space on your page.

Manage your IFrames:

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IFrames are the interactive images at the top of your page beneath the cover photo in which you can put links to your photos, old polls, apps, campaigns or even display how many likes your page has.

Your first two iframes should contain your photos and how many likes you have. The rest should be constantly updated to stay relevant to your company’s activity on Facebook at the time: what competitions you’re running, for example.

Stay Abreast of Facebook’s Updates:
Last year, Facebook introduced the new timeline view for pages, providing businesses with a new challenge and a new opportunity to make their pages original and interesting.

Since then, Facebook has already started testing a new page design, introducing it to New Zealand last month.

Facebook has also announced one of their most important features to date this year: Facebook Graph Search.

Facebook Graph Search has numerous applications that could help your business: Graph Search has a huge amount of quality data about Facebook users that could help businesses target new customers or find potential employees.

Facebook’s news feed is also getting a facelift. In the proposed redesign, more space will be taken up by a content and image-laden home page, with the stories, notications and advertising within the news feed taking prominence.

Facebook is updating its service frequently. Make sure you keep an eye on news blogs and websites like this one so you can take advantage of all the features Facebook develops.

Stay Mobile:
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Mobile is the future of social media marketing. It is, of course, not the only future, so don’t spend all your time streamlining your social media for mobile users.

It is a good idea, however, to make as many of your adverts and apps as you can mobile friendly. For example, if you own a clothes shop and you are advertising a sale, you want to be able to target customers who are already shopping near your store. Customers who are already shopping will be using their phones.

In November last year, Facebook Mobile hit 488 million monthly active users. Try to ensure that every single one can access you businesses Facebook apps.

Conclusions:
Keeping your business page up-to-date, not just the content you post but the posts you delete, is of vital importance.

Your fans won’t want to come to your page unless the content is changing frequently, giving them something interesting and new to look at and potentially share.

Stay current by utilising Facebook’s frequent updates to the advantage of your business, whether on desktop or mobile devices.

How do you get the best out of your business’ Facebook page?