Is your site there?
I was lucky enough to attend the Social media “party” hosted by the Internet Advertising Bureau. The organisers used the analogy that social media campaigns are like planning and attending a party. Where the analogy falls down a tad is for continued social media interaction.
The speakers all took a part of the party process, – planning the party (planning your Social media), getting the cool kids to attend (blogger engagement), knowing it was a good party (monitoring), how to avoid the hangover (key things to put in place for continued success).
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Party planning principles: the importance of setting objectives and cracking the social media brief. A Sony Twilight Football case study
Katy Howell, Managing Director, Immediate Future and Ruth Speakerman, Head of Consumer PR, Sony Europe
It was interesting to hear from a global brand such as Sony, they have many different regions in which they work in and the challenges of doing so and in different cultures must have made the planning even more important. Their campaign was to sell a camera – using the idea of “chasing twilight” – they had 7 football matches taking place in 7 countries inviting photo enthusiasts, football fans and any Sony fans to take part and chase the “twilight” as the sun goes down.
The key points from their talk:
- Integration of all activity EARLY. From marketing to PR to creative.
- Don’t rush in. Listen and use what you hear to mould campaigns
- Use your SEO agency to target keywords and link to your SM sites. Do this EARLY.
- Long run up to campaign. The Sony campaign ran for 18 months even though the camera only launched during 2 weeks.
- Measure EARLY. Start to measure what is working and where from, if you are getting a lot of links from a site, give them more content and optimise your campaign to show that. Give exclusive insight to those who are linking well.
- Plan EARLY to get the “cool kids” (bloggers) on board, they need ego massaging, make sure you get them on board. Give them insight and exclusive content – you will reap the rewards later.
Three areas of social
- Onsite social – on the Sony website
- Branded social – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr
- Relationship social – bloggers
They used product and campaign branded social pages as well as established Sony Europe/Asia branded pages.
Give PR’s and bloggers content and things to talk about to make sure the campaign buzz keeps going. Sony had the chase the twilight photo challenge, the football matches and the camera. They teased content managers/bloggers with more content throughout the campaign.
Three take aways:
- Plan for flexibility – especially with bloggers & new media. Optimise
- Establish advocates
- Measure and plan EARLY
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Promoting your party
Mel Carson, Microsoft Advertising Community Manager & Kate Box, Head of Social Media UK, Microsoft Advertising
Up now was the very amiable Mel Carson (@MelCarson) talking about the windows 7 launch.
The key to social media success (may not have been his words) is to make sure that your content is: “Easily discoverable and sharable”. Making this as easy as possible without unnecessary hurdles makes a campaign more successful.
Word of mouth – do you have a shop? Get people who are meeting people on a regular basis to push your online content/campaign. At the till, as they leave or when they walk in, suggest they check out this new campaign or product.
Get bloggers talking EARLY. Give them insight and exclusive content, make sure that your business culture can deal with that. The long term benefits, especially with key influencers are huge. Not to mentions SEO benefits of getting bloggers talking early on a subject, you want to get the front page of Google, the top 5 searches.
Measure EARLY. Also measure mentions and engagements on other people’s sites and blogs…sometimes people go to the wrong address when going to a party…(the party analogy continues).
Windows 7 was a 16 month campaign for 2 weeks launch. The buzz started a year before launch, giving bloggers and social media sites content and ideas to talk about. Using user generated feedback for campaigns.
Inviting the cool kids: getting the right people to talk about your brand in the right way
Chair: James Whatley, Director of Engagement, 1000heads
Panelists: Mr Holy Moly, Ewan MacLeod editor of Mobile Industry Review and Rowena Fan, beauty blogger and creator of Cosmetics Candy
This was a panel of “experts” from the blogging world, although the Holy Moly guy was not to my taste it was of interest to hear bloggers (and their egos) talk about engagement. The panel was facilitated by the excellent @WhatleyDude of 1000Heads.
Key points:
- Build trust with the blogger
- Take time to engage, form a relationship.
- Build a connection – tailor asks and exclusives
- Remember that most bloggers will have a day job, this means thinking about when to contact them, how to contact them and to consider time for meet ups.
- In terms of video – chop up clips and give each blogger an exclusive part – much better than everyone having the same clip.
- Bloggers (Mr Holy Moly) hates embargos, and will break them. Consider the character and your embargos.
- Social media news releases – make sure everything is in the email. Attachments aren’t good; the big bloggers won’t read attachment. Embed video, and the release into the email.
- The bloggers seemed happy to be approached via social media – but not to check if they “have received the email”.
- Bloggers like to be able to talk to the person who will give them direct answers – not passed the same content.
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Picking the right venue – how do you decide the best social media property for your brand?
Ted Hunt, Digital & Emerging Media Manager,Innocent
On to the presentation from the digital manage from Innocent drinks – who was a fantastic presenter – he has a blog unfortunately I didn’t note down. If anyone knows it, let me know.
They have hit all the main social media sites; Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and have their own blog.
Their blog is their most visited area of the site, cultivating conversation and being a “window” into Innocent drinks. Give sneak peaks.
Innocent always start at the shallow end, slowly building up, wearing stuff in and making sure it works for them. Slow growth. The more they use a social media platform the better it gets.
Work down the pyramid…
Brand
You
Friends
Their friends
The friends of friends
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Being the Host or Hostess with the Mostest!
Deborah Womack, CRM Practice Leader LBi & Amy Cutbill, Communities and Social Media Manager, BT Tradespace
This presentation also had the best cakes ever (cakeballs.co.uk) – they discussed how BT tradespace (@BTTradespace) are using community to engage with those interested in web design etc.
The Community manager must be a “Social Butterfly” and take time, not talk about yourself all the time and set guidelines and house rules for those in the community.
The community manager must also be prepared to listen and not act. Be honest, and know that there is a limit to how happy and how far you can go.
BT Tradespace are very open and human, very different to the main BT sites. They speak like humans and show who they are, transparency is key to this. (check out their Twitter profile for more examples of their human touch.
Key points:
- Build advocates on the forum to self police
- Do things differently, talk about other things in the news. Do not always be on brand or product.
- Get the less engaged and shy involved by talking about things that are in the news or of interest outside of the main aims of the forum.
- Try to get people to come back with off topic and good solid information and content (RKnote – I coin the phrase “comebackability” in reference to this point.)
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Did everyone have a good time? – Introduction to the IAB Measurement Framework for Social Media
Richard Pentin, Group Planning & Intelligence Director, TMW
This was the big sell for a lot of people. Did it fall down? I am not sure, I am waiting to get the slides and framework from the iab to add more content.
The 3 key areas of measurement are:
- Intentions
- Awareness
- Benchmark
Intentions are broken down as, objectives, plans and how they fit into KPI’s. Basically, what we are doing.
Awareness is broken down into
- Awareness of the SM platform
- Appreciation/engagement of content and conversations on SM
- Actions – does it solicit a response? What response or does it influence behaviour?
- Advocacy – Does it create word of mouth promotion? Do people advocate our brand or cause?
Benchmarking
- Compare and contrast the metrics against other platforms, what platforms are working for you. Is Facebook pointless to your brand because they are all on LinkedIn?
- Compare similar objectives
- How does this compare to other marketing promotion?
- Historically how does this compare?
- Against competitors? How does this compare?
Define the KPI’s in the framework
3 Parameters
- The 4A’s
- Defined by the SM platform
- By Soft and hard financials.
Defining hard financials…
- Awareness – e.g. Cost per impression
- Appreciation – e.g. Cost per engagement
- Action – e.g. Cost per lead
- Advocacy – e.g. Cost per referral
I would like to go into further detail but I am waiting for the framework – hopefully this will add some interesting context. Personally I think it was an interesting view point but nothing new, we are working on a similar framework. What WOULD have been interesting is how to effectively measure these things, broken down via SM site. But perhaps that is asking too much.
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Using social media to prevent a hangover – tips in crisis management and how to stay ‘safe’ online
Amy Kean, Head of the IAB Social Media Council
This presentation was very well put together, with some nice touches and a good tone from @keano81
How to avoid the Social Media hangover
Need to consider the #FAIL culture that people and brands take when an SM campaign doesn’t work. As an industry we should come together and help and critique but be constructive…
Key points:
- Take responsibility for SM mistakes and move on. Hold your hands up.
- Monitor conversations across the web, everywhere you can. The good and the bad.
- Watch trends
- Balanced appreciation of feedback and sentiment – both positive and negative
- It sometimes isn’t useful to listen to all comments. People always be deviant…Edin Sutherland 1939 differential association paper
- As a brand think about how to respond, it will look far worse to have a page of “@X – sorry for this” than a succinct answer with a place on main site into more detail.
- Need a central place for when things go wrong – be that the blog or a site. Point people there.
- Empower a social media team. The best person to answer the question may not be in the marketing or communication team. Get a SM team with people around the organisation. Get buy in.
And so that was it, a great day with some really interesting points. I hope to have some of the slides from the day available as soon as I can.
Any thoughts, let me know!
I came across SoloCo during Social Media Week Scotland and was immediatlely intrigued.
