Tag Archives: Facebook

When You’re Looking Like That

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October 21, 2011

 The internet and social media have allowed people to define the terms on which they interact with the media they consume. For example, The X Factor may be seeing a drop in viewer numbers but this doesn’t stop fans from tweeting about the contestants or the judges. The latest figures show that 59 per cent of 16-23 year olds use social networking sites to discuss their preferred television programmes with their online friends. What does this have to do with us? Well recently 52 per cent of people have admitted to shopping online whilst watching television. What’s Hot decided that it was about time we had a look at how consumers are interacting with TV and digital simultaneously.

 The act of watching television whilst using another screen, whether that be laptops, tablets or smartphones, is known in the industry as ‘dual-screening’. Dual-screening isn’t particularly new, but only an astonishingly small handful of companies have used it to their advantage. Of course it is by no means unusual to see a television programme ‘#hashtagging’ to encourage Twitter interaction from their followers. However very few have embraced dual-screening for its marketing potential, perhaps the logistics of co-ordinating marketing on two devices limiting what they feel they can do.

 One company to attempt to incorporate dual-screening is Honda. After its highly successful ‘Grrr’ campaign, Honda decided to create something that could interact with its television advertisement. Their creation was a mobile app which could be ‘swiped’ at the television whilst the advertisement was being played. The application would recognise the soundtrack and automatically download a character from the advertisement, with a total of six available. This encouraged the consumer to actually interact with the advert, anticipating the next time it will be screened in order to download their next character.

Dual-screening may not be such good news for the television industry. Even for the most tech-savvy user it is practically impossible to be concentrating on the television content whilst discussing it on social platforms. Furthermore if consumers choose to use their second screen to research the brand or programme, whilst having it on their television, they are automatically transferring their concentration into the hands of the digital world. The television advertisement will have little chance to influence the user after they turn their eyes to a search engine or social network.

We are yet to see the direction dual-screening will take in regards to advertising potential. What is certain is that advertisers can no longer take for granted the effectiveness of any single media type.

 Consumers are communicating their likes and dislikes over many different levels, and advertisers need to keep an eye on it.

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Live and Tell

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September 23, 2011

On Monday 19th September, Twitter was buzzing with updates from (appropriately enough) the Social Media Marketing conference in London.
Hosted by Our Social Times (@oursocialtimes), the day was filled with all manner of goodies: the latest social media case studies; examples of advertisers learning from when they got it wrong; interesting panel debates; a showcase of the latest monitoring and management tools; and John Morter explaining how he beat the Xfactor using social media to get Rage Against The Machine the coveted Christmas No.1 spot.
The day kicked off with a panel debate around the future of social networks: has Facebook reached its peak, should YouTube be considered as a social network, and is Google + worth using? Most people agreed that Facebook is still evolving and is keeping up with its users’ changing needs. With the recent introduction to “Friend lists” – allowing users to choose what content goes to what groups, and F-commerce taking a popular turn, it’s clear that Facebook is still at the heart of social. Google + seems to be excelling at video and perhaps we will see a linkup between Google + hangouts and YouTube in the near future.
Although we were promised details on Social ROI – the first question from any Marketing Director these days is something about ROI from social commerce – there seemed to be a lack of hard metrics. Apart from saying they were “good”, attendees were left without anything to take away, and it was made clear that there is still no magic formula for measuring ROI from social.
Online retailer Brand Alley was at least able to share its findings on working out the value of a fan, saying that an exclusive sale on their f-commerce (Facebook shop) site made them £10,000 revenue from a total fanbase (i.e., “Like”-ers) of 30,000. Exclusive items on Facebook shops perhaps may lead the way to getting users comfortable with f-commerce. This will only continue to grow.
It’s now said that 27% of all PPC activity is being directed to Facebook pages, so Social PPC and SEO have never been as important as they are now. Discussions here were around Marcus Taylor’s fascinating experiments to find out whether a Facebook Like and a Google +1 affect the Google ranking. In short, a Google +1 will directly affect the rank, whereas a Facebook like will only indirectly affect it through traffic. A nice little trick by Google giving its own social network the upper hand!
The day was really worthwhile, I could go on in much greater detail about each speaker and the debates around their topics but I’m limited by space on this blog! For more details and slides at the SMM conference click here , or contact digital@the7stars.co.uk

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Into the Groove

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September 23, 2011

Keen What’s Hot fans will remember our piece on Radioplayer from back in March. At the time, the player – a single online platform that could stream up to 160 different UK radio stations, both BBC and commercial – was predicted to be a game-changer in the radio industry. Six months later, it’s time for an update.

Radioplayer celebrated its six month anniversary last week by announcing that it had received 6.7m unique users to its site during the month of August. Going from strength to strength, the platform now streams 282 stations – a 75% increase on March – live on the site. All BBC national and local stations are available, as well as commercial radio stations, and new stations are still enlisting. A lot of the growth has come from the addition of independent, community and student stations, expanding both the choice and diversity of the offering. Radioplayer is starting to live up to its slogan, ‘UK radio in one place’.

Research over the last few months has provided an insight into exactly who makes up those 6.7m users. Data indicates that Radioplayer is a companion during the working day. Listenership peaks at 9am, drops off at around 5pm and peaks again during the weekday evening when Joe Bloggs gets in from a hard day’s work. There are noticeable troughs of listenership at weekends and bank holidays.

A keen and significant development made recently at Radioplayer HQ was the development of a Facebook app, launched in August. It allows listeners to share what they’re listening to and chat about the content. It is the part of a broader plan to add online listening to other platforms, including mobiles and web-connected TVs. The end goal is to have multiple convenient access points for the listener. Elsewhere, Facebook has just hosted its F8 Developers’ Conference this week, with a special session entitled ‘The Future of Digital Music’. It announced plans to partner with Spotify, Rhapsody, Vevo and Rdio, which will effectively turn profile pages into personal media hubs. How exactly this will pan out remains to be seen.

All good stuff, but what’s next? Radioplayer’s success looks set to go global with inquiries from abroad from broadcasters looking to replicate its success in their own domestic markets. Future plans also include the addition of podcasts to the platform, enriching the end user experience.

So what does the future hold for radio in the UK? In the last RAJAR audit figures released in August, there was a period-on-period increase in total UK radio listening, with 91.7% of the population tuning in. Clearly, this is a medium that isn’t falling on deaf ears, and won’t any time soon.

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HEARTBREAK HOTEL

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August 19, 2011

 

Being a traditional media owner is a tough game. Anyone who doubts this should take a look at the latest financial results from Trinity Mirror, owner of Mirror Group Newspapers and over 150 local newspaper titles including Birmingham Mail and Manchester Evening News.

A 65% drop in pre-tax profits for the first half of 2011, whatever the reason, is a disastrous result and has impacted heavily on the company’s value. Trinity’s market capitalisation is now lower than the value for which it sold the Racing Post in October 2007.

There is no doubt the recent closure of the News of the World gave Trinity’s national Sunday titles (Sunday Mirror and People) a welcome boost. But here at What’s Hot we still think this will only have a modest long term impact as the Sunday market adjusts to the new environment. In fact, early indications already suggest the boost to circulation following the closure of the NOTW (and the accompanying marketing support to the Mirror titles) is beginning to wane.

Trinity Mirror is in a difficult place. There seems no end in sight to the increase in the price of core commodities needed for printing (paper and newsprint) or the big declines in circulation and advertising.

Sadly its plans to move into the digital space are still not fully formed and don’t really give any indication of how Trinity intend to turn things around. The Mirror’s flagship site is not yet fully functional – Google stats suggests unique visitors are at best flat year-on-year. And while the Mirror Football and 3AM websites are good examples of what an old fashioned content provider can do when it puts its mind to it; these sites are relative minnows and cannot ever hope to make up for the losses at the main titles. And that’s before we even factor in the impact of the social media phenomenon created by Facebook and Twitter.

Trinity’s problems have been a long time in the making; its traditional readership base has been declining for many years and it’s hardly new news that local newspapers have been hit hard by a move towards digital classifieds. At the moment we can’t see any way back for Trinity. Another round of cost cutting might keep investors happy but it’s definitely not the answer to a secure long-term future.

The shame of it is that the troubles at Trinity are not unique. Trinity just happens to be the only public company which publishes its financial performance.

It’s going to take a significant re-engineering of Trinity’s business model and some ‘seat of the pants’ investment in new products if the company is to survive this latest and probably greatest of challenges.

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DEVIL IN DISGUISE

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August 19, 2011

Facebook and Google have pushed a huge growth in their advertising options. Both offer behaviourally-targeted options to engage with customers – but how can you compare the two? What’s Hot takes a look at the pros and cons of running campaigns with these two behemoths of the web.

Targeting – Google obviously has a more established advertising model than Facebook, having built its entire business around the development of the ‘pay per click’ approach. Google Display Network operates around a robust pricing model that moves with demand, seasonality etc, but not with the wild, often unexplained swings that Facebook’s CPCs do.

Facebook on the other hand uses profile information to target consumers with relevant ads. While Facebook is limited to its own (admittedly vast) network, it offers highly targeted display advertising opportunities, based on profile data and user habits. This way, it can serve messages that have ‘social currency’ among Facebook users. Google’s raft of social launches, most recently Google +, show it is desperate to move into this space.

Data – Facebook is also sticky – it wants people to hang around, rather than directing them elsewhere to other sites as Google does. Via its API Facebook Connect, it is taking Facebook outside of its network and collecting data from user habits on these sites to add into its rich database.

However, Google’s insights into our browsing habits add a unique degree of contextual relevance to any placements across its network.  Google is still learning and is making both search and display network results more relevant, with a truly semantic web as the end goal.

So which platform will have the edge in the future, or can they both happy co-exist?

Big egos – not to mention competition commissions – might prevent there ever being a Google/Facebook merger, but both will define the future web.  The next few years will see the two circling as they seek to compete with, or aggregate each other’s data. 

Each wants to dominate the web experience from first to last click, whether information gathering, paying a bill or claiming a geo-located deal in a restaurant. We’ve seen Google toying with real-time Twitter results in its results pages, and Facebook partnering with Bing to bring internal search capability to Facebook. 

The big play for both is clearly mobile/tablet. With new Geo-location services such as Foursquare, both companies reacted with products of their own. Google’s ambitions with Android, not to mention its recent acquisition of Motorola, shows its intentions, and this will no doubt have implications for advertisers.

In short, Google wants to become more social, Facebook more relevant as navigation. Let battle commence!

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The Masterplan

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July 25, 2011

Even if you haven’t received an invite yet, chances are you might have heard about Google’s latest (and perhaps final) attempt at social, Google+.

Orkut, Wave, Buzz…nope not the names of the Beckham’s next offspring, but the behemoth’s previous and spectacular failures in capturing the ‘social media’ glory that Facebook has basked in, but which continues to elude Google.

So Google+ is up and running and has already made significant headway among the intrigued, no doubt social media-driven set. Numbers suggest that 10m worldwide are now moving in new ‘circles’ – the shape reference here is to one of the lead functions in Google+ that allows you to cluster your friends into specific groups, or ‘circles’. You can then choose to notify any or all ‘circles’ with your status updates, photo uploads etc. Basically, Google + gives you the ability to ensure your mother doesn’t see the photo of your drunken misdemeanours meant only for friends.

Whether the new circles are vicious or virtuous ones remains to be seen, but this would certainly seem to be the last throw of the social dice for Google. They appear to have ditched the early Twitter love-in (with Twitter incidentally now in bed with Microsoft/Bing).

But with Facebook experiencing a certain amount of backlash and a definite levelling-out of new user growth (certainly in Europe), not to mention a wild increase in advertising costs, might Google gain some traction at last in the social space? Success in social integrated with its market-crushing dominance in search could spell even more impressive revenues going forward, particularly coupled with its success in mobile via Android.

Social media god Brian Solis used an interesting phrase, saying that Facebook and Google+ are attempting to become Social Operating Systems. So in the same way that we rely on Windows or Mac OS to organise our computing lives, Facebook and Google + want to do the same with our social lives. And of course, he’s spotted the way things are going. The cultivation of our social and interest graphs, the apps that further personalise the experience, and those that plug into other applications such as web sites, documents, collaboration tools etc, essentially do create a social OS.

In the long run, Solis believes that Facebook and Google will compete as a Social OS for all you do online (Google OS is already doing this in the cloud). Think about it. From grouping and coordinating work or activity streams, housing email, hosting phone or video chats to managing geo-location, Google and Facebook are already on a significant collision course.

One thing is for sure, social networks will always innovate. The question is: does Google really have social in its DNA? In the end we are the best judge of what works for us as users. Google+ certainly offers early advantages, but this is a long journey. Much of the success of any network will come from anticipating our future needs and developing ahead of the curve. It’s going to be an interesting race to watch.

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Reach Out

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June 22, 2011

Klout is the latest social media rating tool. It scores over 75 million people on their social reach using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn data to give you a rating from one to one hundred. Or one to Justin Bieber, as it currently stands.

It looks to be a popular metric, and has been mentioned in Forbes, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal and more. On Twitter, Klout’s influence score is based on users’ ability to drive action through tweets and retweets. On Facebook, it examines how conversations and content generate interest and engagement via likes, comments and more. For LinkedIn, Klout analyses who users are influencing, how they’re influencing them and how much influence they have. Klout places a heavy emphasis on quality not quantity – so collecting connections won’t necessarily increase a user’s score.

Klout’s eventual aim is to be the stock measure of online influence and it’s making good progress. It combines the major social platforms and, perhaps more importantly, champions integration of its tool into other reporting systems. For example, Postling has partnered with Klout to allow business owners to get alerts when they have influential new followers. ReviewPro, a social media management provider for the hotel sector has integrated Klout scores into its product to help hoteliers interact with their guests. Social dashboards Hootsuite and Xobni are also on board.

Clearly there is a saturation of data on social media networks. Klout’s advantage to businesses is in its ability to quickly identify who is behind comments, assess the level of user influence and determine the most appropriate response. Prior to Klout the only way of measuring social influence was through friends, followers and fans. Nothing actually measured how social a person or brand really was and how well they were engaging with their audience or leading on various topics.

Experimental brands and businesses are testing out programs that provide special perks to social network users with high Klout scores. Brands like Disney, Audi, Hewlett Packard, and Universal Pictures have already been involved. Klout Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of a users Klout. Perks allow brands to connect with influencers in their area of expertise. For example, Audi invited top design, technology and luxury influencers to test drive their new 2011 Audi A8 at exclusive events.

Klout’s latest addition, ‘+K’, allows those in a users’ social networks to effect their score on a specific topic of influence. The +K system puts a +K button next to all users’ topics and clicks tell the system that the user has recently influenced the clicker in this topic.

Klout does have its detractors. You don’t have to look far to find people slamming ‘another’ social media influence metric. For individuals that are getting good information from their networks, generating interesting content, having good discussions with people, making new connections and can find who they need to find and can be found, a score doesn’t really matter. But for brands who need to quickly and efficiently find influential users Klout looks to be a fantastic tool.
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Mamma Mayor

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May 16, 2011

Are check-ins dead?

The case for:

According to a survey from youth agency Dubit, 48% of teens have not heard of Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR. Some 58% of those who did know what they were still did not use them because they ‘did not see the point’.

According to compete.com, Foursquare’s web traffic has declined by 50% over five consecutive months. Check-ins per day have dropped from 0.5 per person to 0.4, despite boasting a user increase from 2m to 5m, suggesting millions of inactive members. And with a much bigger user base, Facebook Places check-ins are five times lower than that of Foursquare.

Echoing the sentiments of Dubit’s teens, the check in is dead because it has no point. Checking-in within a densely populated city like London may reveal long-lost friends around the corner, which is great. But in more sprawling destinations it doesn’t work.

The ‘Mayor’ game may be fun but, as with even the best games, the novelty lasts no more than two weeks. Or until you realise that you can check into the trendy café over the road without leaving your office. And that being Mayor doesn’t result in free coffee after all.

The Facebook Places product offers even less: no points or badges to win, no tips – just a flat statement telling people where you are. Outside a niche set of people who want the personal branding (or ego boost) of the check-in, most people not only don’t want to check-in, but don’t know why they should.
 

The case against:

Location based check-in services are far from dead; in fact they are in their infancy. It has been predicted that location-based companies will generate $24 billion worldwide (according to ABI research 2010) by 2013, so clearly we have a lot more to come in the space.

The idea of checking into places through your mobile is still new a concept to most people. Concerns around security and privacy have been raised and the notorious argument for check-in fatigue is well known. The main question is “why bother?” or “what’s in it for me?”. Essentially, the reason for users to check-in is that it gives users the opportunity for companies to reward their custom/loyalty and spread the word. Even if companies themselves are only just starting to realise this.

We are on the cusp of Facebook deals being rolled out fully in the UK. This means that when users check-in to places they will be offered a deal, say a free coffee at Starbucks. This will be posted on their profile for all their friends to see. Facebook is the location-based service with the biggest attraction, with UK Facebook numbers now reaching 30 million. With even a small percentage of these using Facebook Places, we’re looking at a big number. However, because Facebook Places was rolled out without the Deals function, it’s easy to see why some think checking in is pointless. Until Facebook Deals starts to promote its check in for deals function, we will see slow growth.

Foursquare has always incentivised check-ins to earn badges, alert users to special offers in their area and promote ‘Mayorships’. ‘Mayorships’ recognize and reward the individual who is most loyal to an outlet. The latest addition is ‘Specials’ which is very similar to Facebook deals and gives local offers to anyone that checks in. The likes of Gowalla only offer badges at this stage – so in order to generate sign ups they really need to up their game

In reference to check-ins with the teen market – I’m sure if Justin Bieber or lady Gaga asked them to check-in to their O2 gig, more of them would know about check-ins!
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