WHAT is it that Apple, Rolex, Lego and Nescafe all have in common?
Instant recognition as a quality standard. Leaders in their field.
They’re all consumer superbrands beloved of devoted domestic advocates across the globe.
It isn’t like they advertise themselves as superbrands is it? They don’t fly into view wearing bright red trunks over their tights. So, how do we know?
What is the bottom-line hallmark of all so-called superbrands?
Earlier this week, Twitter aired its first ever series of TV ads to promote its service via an association with NASCAR. The ads drove traffic to a dedicated NASCAR branded Twitter page of aggregated tweets all using #NASCAR.
The move set tongues wagging as to whether Twitter was now beginning to roll-out brand pages in the same way that Facebook and Google+ has and whether or not Twitter was evolving further, its advertising and revenue streams. Whilst the tv ads weren’t a first for a social network (I’m sure everybody remembers the cuddly Google ads run earlier in 2012), it’s an interesting diversification and sophistication you might argue, of the way that social media platforms are vying for deeper penetration into our daily lives (and media channels).
It’s undoubtedly ironic that social platforms are now advertising their networks on conventional channels – perhaps doubly-so now that they are increasing the sophistication and social nature of some of their ads!
So, whilst the networks promote themselves “backwards”, they are also breaking new, albeit untested ground with new ad formats and methods of promoting content. Facebook especially, is looking at many ways to either improve “old” formats or introduce new, more financially rewarding ones.
So, after all the panic that ensued following the announcement of Edgerank last year, Facebook now conveniently allows you to basically buy the guaranteed visibility of your fans…for a fee! Very handy when you have a big campaign to launch or an important announcement. This will no doubt ending up as another bidding war on news stream space as more and more pages compete for the same eyeballs – so it will be interesting to see how this evolves.
Yes, it sounds as weird as you think, but this will really open up a massive privacy debate. As you may know, cookies on your machine allow Facebook to remember your likes and interactions IN Facebook – and present you with ads that are relevant to you. But, the new Facebook Exchange system will also include recommendations based on your EXTERNAL, non-Facebook browsing habits! Phorm anyone? Expect a massive problem around this one – especially in Europe!
Facebook is now also looking at playing with ad units from OUTSIDE Facebook that can be shared to your network. As you can see from the image on the left, the ad (shown on buzzfeed.com) can be shared to Facebook via the pop-up on the right.
The open graph which allows you to comment in a Facebook-style on an external website is certainly evolving. Quite why anyone would want to share an ad, or how you would reward the sharing of an ad is a mystery to me at the moment, but it is clearly moving ads way, way beyond what we consider them to be at the moment.
With Twitter’s promoted trends, tweets and accounts, social is seriously into advertising and getting smarter with it too, begging the question – is it easier and more effective to monetise and extend reach via ads from the very start (as Facebook has done) or add advertising “as you go” in a much more contextually-relevant way (as Twitter is doing).
But will mobile shake ALL of this up?
So, no sooner have we got used to timeline for pages coming in, then Facebook introduce some changes to Timeline…but some of these are pretty handy too!
One of the biggest challenges when managing a global Facebook Page is deciding how you are going to divide up content by region:
Most international pages opt for the one pager per language option – it’s easier for local marketing teams to post to. The problem with this is that often, smaller or less sophisticated pages in “far-flung” regions end up with off-brand content, small fan numbers and even lower engagement – in effect losing the closeness that the mother brand creates.
The latest changes will effectively make it much easier to bring currently regions and their content into the same page. Fan numbers will be shared between pages (i.e. all under the parent page) and admins and users simply need to click on the “swap region” button to see content specifically aimed at them in their mother tongue. You’ll also see PTAT scores per region, helping you to maintain local language engagement.
A cute (but important) touch too is that the Page will remember your regional preferences too – making life just that little bit easier.
If you’re using a social media management platform like Buddymedia or Syncapse, your admins are probably getting email notifications when you receive messages and notifications, but sometimes thats not enough. The arrival of the Page Manager app (itunes store link) means you get notifications to your mobile and can post or respond to comments directly through the app rather than having to login elsewhere in response to the email notification. You also get Insights too – which even looks pretty cool!
If you’re running a pretty sophisticated page management operation (as we like to think we do!) you’re already looking at Edgerank to understand how effective your content is. To help further, a new “% seen” stat will be introduced which basically tells you how many people (as a %) of your whole fan base saw this post. It’s slightly different to edegerank in that it simply counts VIEWS, but it’s helpful none the less.
Facebook have introduced this alongside an interesting stat that on average, just 16% of fans see content that pages post. They estimate that with the Promoted Posts mechanism (where you will soon be able to pay to guarantee your posts are seen) visibility rates are up to 75%. Seems like a good time to say how poor “normal” unpaid for content performs.
So, whilst this may be on its way, don’t lose sight of what your edgerank scores are telling you. We may be in for a good wait yet for Promoted Posts.
When Timeline for Profiles first came out, a cool tool was also launched which made a movie out of your timeline actiivities and major timeline events. This will also soon be out for Pages too. I’d expect this to be a largely one-off activity for a lot of Pages (similar to the creation of Milestones) but still a handy creative tool!
[INNOVATION] Pint glass QR code only visible when glass is full of Guinness unveiled
Just a very smart idea. Not sure how practical it would be long-term. “Oi did you spill my pint”…
[SOCIAL MEDIA] BBC News – Barcelona uses new media to sell its brand to fans
Good look at how Barcelona is kind of reversing the sales funnel. They know fans LOVE the brand, they just need to channel that in to sales. Most brands need to find the fans and convince them to love them!
Fantastic stunt where Fiat race ahead of the Google Streetview car to park a new Fiat 500 outside the VW headquarters as it drives past
Social media is creating a huge headache for customer service teams. How do businesses need to prepare their customer service people for this incredibly fast-moving space?
[NEWS, FUTURE] Head of Time Warner Cable Is Unfamiliar With Apple’s AirPlay
Airplay is the ability to stream content from your iphone or ipad (and Mac) to your TV. The Head of Time Warner’s cable division hadn’t heard of it. Oops.
[FACEBOOK, INFOGRAPHIC] If Facebook Ran Newsfeed Ads – AllFacebook
So, if Facebook rolled out in-stream advertising (which allows you to pay to have your status update guaranteed to be in your friends’ news stream), they’d make about $3.5bn more per year!
[HOW TO, FACEBOOK] how to obtain a Facebook Page RSS with the new Timeline? – Stack Overflow
Bit geeky this, but when Facebook stopped allowing you to subscribe to a Page’s update via RSS feed, it made it much harder to track what was happening on your page if you weren’t watching it in real-time. This bit of geekyness resolves all that!
[FACEBOOK] GM to Stop Advertising on Facebook
So, as the world prepared for the $100bn IPO of Facebook, all fuelled by advertising, GM makes a statement that they have pulled all their FB ads. Mistake? Do they know something the rest fo the world doesn’t?!
So today is the day that timeline for Pages becomes permanent and social media management platform provider, Wildfire, have released some very interesting research about how timeline has impacted the launch partner’s pages as well as a large number of other diverse pages. We’ve spent a bit of time distilling the main points down here for you to give you a taster as to how pages have been affected by the changes.
The pages were assessed BEFORE timeline was adopted on the 29th Feb and a month after. Engagement comparisons were then made between the two periods. It’s worth bearing in mind that the real acid test will be a month from today – once all pages have had the chance to adopt and adapt to timeline.
In all but the top volume pages, engagement figures have had a marked increase, whilst 10m+ pages have seen a general decline in all engagement areas.
The BIG takeaway: Pure fan volume should no longer be your primary focus when evaluating Facebook’s effectiveness.
The data analysed 4,800 posts over the month from which we can draw the following conclusions:
Pre-timeline
Post-timeline
At this early stage, there is a mixed message. This table compares pre-timeline posts and compares them to the subsequent featured and pinned posts.
It’s pretty clear that whilst featured (full width) posts have little impact on likes and comments, they are significantly the most shared type of format.
Photos as pinned posts are achieving significant value across likes and shares types – but use them wisely. In many cases at the moment, pinned posts are replacing the like gate to point people to apps so don’t be alarmed if they generate fewer comments than the average.
The BIG takeaway: Use featured video posts to generate the most engagement across the board. At this stage, full-width, quality video is a honey trap for fans – but choose your content wisely. Photos appear to have the most significant impact as pinned posts. Consider how you might use this pinning to feature fans or new products, and even replace status updates with a photo to maximize engagement and shares.
The full Wildfire research is below:
How Timeline is starting to impacting engagement for brands
My latest piece for Marketing Profs’ Daily Fix went up this week and I wanted to share it here because it raises some really interesting questions about why and how we should consider using Facebook, especially this week, when both Google and Adobe announced innovative new ways to track the role that social media interactions play onconverting.
Facebook’s changes include increased sharing apps (Facebook teamed up with 60-plus partners to enable frictionless sharing of content to Facebook), Facebook premium ads that are entirely social in nature, and Timeline for Pages (the most recent change, which I was privileged to see before general release).
With close to 800 million users, Facebook draws people and friends by itself, which is significant. The recent announcements demonstrate a desire to also use applications and tools as major drivers in Facebook’s next period of growth.
In the 2006-2007 app rush, there was a flood of interest in Facebook because users and brands could do more in Facebook than ever. Fast-forward four years. We’re in the same boat—except this time, the apps integrated into Facebook are proven successful services, bringing millions of members with them.
These services relied on people wanting to spend time away from Facebook (for music, news, etc.) but the emerging trend (not just in apps, but new services, too) seems to be one of creating new experiences in Facebook.
At the moment, this really only applies to Spotify. And as an app, it is basic. Spotify Mobile updates seem erratic,
more about basic bug-fixing than new features. Its desktop app updates are even rarer. Spotify’s biggest advantage—creating playlists—is also its biggest downfall. Creating playlists is easy, but it’s nigh on impossible to organize them.
Sound familiar? This is exactly the problem that Google+ and Facebook are managing with friend lists. Apple has managed the problem with iPod, so what is Spotify’s solution? This issue of noise is only going to get worse as more and more friends experience musical serendipity.
Spotify and all entertainment services now need to consider themselves social platforms. Spotify is a social platform that plays music rather than just a music-playing one with sharing functionality, and this will require a fair amount of innovation based on what exists at the moment.
This is a significant change in mindset.
Spotify’s integration with Facebook is now so tight that new users have to have a Facebook account to make it work. Furthermore, anything and everything you play on Spotify, wherever it may be being played, is now being fed back into Facebook. While this admittedly causes concerns about sharing what you might secretly listen to, this integration is a brilliant way to find stuff that you didn’t know about or to discover what your friends are listening to.
As Brian Solis suggests, this change alone is forcing us to re-evaluate what we believe privacy is. We have all traditionally been free and easy with our information, but that’s because we have been in control of what is public, even if it is to a limited number of circles or friend lists. Now, everything has changed. Are we happy to have the people we consider friends alter their judgment of who we are due to our listening and reading habits?
Ask yourself this question: Has the benefit of finding new music or even favorites you’d forgotten been of more value to you than anything embarrassing your friends might have seen?
What this frictionless sharing introduces properly into our lives is genuine serendipity. For the last five years, services and algorithms have been trying to find ways to only show us the things that it thinks interest us.
This brings me onto the issue of influence. We are all influential about all sorts of different topics—yet we will happily accept advice from our closest friends about a topic, track, film, or pair of shoes. The same applies to music and news.
As apps and services wake up to the opportunities that tighter social integration brings, I expect the trust we have in our friends to introduce more experiences and products than we currently see. This brings one massive headache with it: How do we measure this influence?
In the span of two weeks, Facebook has introduced Friend Lists, Subscriptions, a mini-stream, new profiles and timeline, integration with Spotify, and news apps. But are everyday Facebook users (people who just use it to communicate with friends) capable of understanding the benefits of all this innovation?
Are we likely to see everyday Facebook users divide their friends into specific friend lists and subscribe to different bits of content from each list? I suggest not. Are they going to be massively concerned seeing the content they interact with now auto-posted to their Walls? Yes. Are they going to be massively concerned that sites they visit outside of Facebook are being fed back to Facebook? Yes.
Cookie issues aside (which Facebook is now addressing) and complex account management aside, “chain statuses” with scary stories of what can be seen on your Facebook Wall and what data Facebook can see are abundant. Everyday users are scared. However, all these changes are necessary to ensure that we have a way to manage what will become a deluge of information from streaming movies to music and news.
Noise management is perhaps the most crucial aspect underpinning all of these changes. Facebook is becoming our main window to the Web, but we need a proper way of managing this information.
You will now have to “think social” because Facebook is now forcing your hand. And by “thinking social”, I don’t mean broadcasting your messages through social channels, No longer can a strategy be based around the “if” of Facebook; it is now more of a “must.” And that is not just about Facebook Pages either. You must now consider how your brand can be social. And being social is not, as we all know, about simply using old message techniques on new platforms. It is about behaving differently and taking a fresh look at your product and service in entirely new ways.
However you look at it, the world has just changed. Massively.
(Photo courtesy of Bigstock: Happy Group of Finger Faces)