Ford and General Motors Twitter showdown

The latest showdown on the Econsultancy website pits two behemoths of the motor industry against each other. The presence that Ford now has on Twitter and the gains in advocacy they have received, has been credited to Scott Monty, who joined Ford in 2008 as their head of social media. It seems even traditional companies can move with the times and harness social media.

General Motors have also embraced Twitter and have used the platform to make personal connections with their customers. GM even goes as far as to name the people within their company that tweet – a major move by a large brand. As the infographic shows Ford seem to have the upper hand at the moment with more mentions per tweet.

The big data flood

Making sense of the torrent of data that is now flowing into every corporation from their multitude of social media networks is proving to be a major headache. IBM– the keepers of big data – have created an infographic to not only highlight the issue, but also provide some much needed advice that corporations can use to tackle their own data mountains.

IBM Advises that big data can be better managed by audience, content, yield and channel optimisation.

Facebook ‘likes’ come to physical stores

It had to happen sooner or later: An enterprising store has made their social media leap from the digital realm into the physical high street. Brazilian fashion retailer C&A allows anyone to ‘like’ a fashion item on their Facebook store with the resulting tally of likes being shown on specially designed hangers for each item. Whether the fact that C&A’s Facebookfans have liked and item that then sees an increase in sales in their physical stores remains to be seen. Watch this space for future updates.

New report shows continuing divide between consumers and marketers

A new report from PulsePoint has looked closely at the perception that marketers have of consumers and also the continuing challenges faced by brand and the agencies that support them. One of the major findings of the report is that marketers are still treating each marketing channel – especially social – as separate entities, whereas more integration is needed to support customer that now move fluidly from channel-to-channel.

The report concludes that more integration and unification is needed if corporations are to truly embrace the multiple marketing channels and deliver coherent messages to their customers. As the report states:

“Consumers are moving freely and easily across channels and devices, engaging in real-time. And, as they do so, they have ever-rising expectations of relevant, unified, customized and rewarding digital experiences. Like any fluid state, consumers are flowing to those companies that “get it,” and leaving dry those unable to quickly and intelligently adapt. As such, consumers are collectively setting the mark and pace for all digital marketers, agencies and publishers.”

In Brief…

More sales are now driven by Pinterest than Facebook

According to the latest stats from Boticca – a jewellery retailer – after allowing their customers to pin images to their Pinterest profiles, the site has given the company 10% of its sales compared to just 7% coming from Facebook. There is also a major commercial aspect to this as Pinterest users spent $180 compared to $85 on Facebook. The company’s CEO stated: “On Pinterest users are in discovery mode, looking for the best, most interesting products and designs the web has to offer. On Facebook, people are primarily looking to socialise with friends and consume video and photo content.”

Google+ woos more brands for adoption and engagement

A new report from Simply Measured has shown that Google is actively courting some of the biggest brands in a bid to get them onto their social network. New brands on Google+ include Nike and Xerox that join iconic luxury brands such as Ferarri and Gucci. Google+ is still less than a year old, but brands are seeing the real commercial potential the social space could deliver in the future.

Click-throughs increase on Facebook

Marin Software has indicated that Facebook CTRs are up 50% in the last 12 months. In addition, cost-per-click also increased by 26% with CPC ads decreasing by a similar amount. Conversion rates always seem to be in dispute, but Marin’s stats also show that budgets for Facebook ads have jumped from 3% to 26% over the past year indicating that brands still feel this social network is still worth investing in.

Who are the top retailers on social media?

A new infographic from Campalyst shows that Victoria’s Secret is the top social media brand with over 18m followers on Facebook. Walmart is a close second with 15m. Looking at YouTube Nike had the most subscribers at 200,000. The graphic also reveals that the top 250 retailers on Facebook have an average fan base of around 1m

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.

If data is the “new oil”, as so many pundits claim, then social media is one of the oilfields. However, unlike real petroleum, there’s no international market in Facebook ‘Likes’ or Twitter Retweets: value is almost entirely determined by the objectives behind the social media programme, which are naturally business-specific.

Social media expert Cara Pring thinks it’s dangerous to put a purely monetary value on social media communities: “Each company has a differing strategy for getting likes and interacting with their communities, so value will be different for each brand.”

She goes on to emphasise that it is important to look first at the objectives of social media marketing: “For example, a brand might want to make sales through Facebook offers, recover customers and generate leads through Twitter, and provide better customer service/experience overall. What you can do is put some performance indicators on these objectives, based on past activity and projections/budget spend, and work out a value from there.”

That’s not to say it’s impossible to monetize social media. Eventbrite, the event ticketing company, tracks social media activity and has been able to put a value on different social ‘shares’. So, for example, for its recently established UK business, a Facebook ‘Like’ generates an average additional £2.25 in gross ticket sales; a Tweet is worth an additional £1.80; and a LinkedIn share delivers an average £1.24 in additional sales.

Tamara Mendelsohn, Eventbrite’s Vice President of Marketing, was quoted on the Econsultancy website as saying that initially the company optimised its site with Google in mind, but changed its entire approach when it realised how events are suited to the word-of-mouth marketing enabled by Facebook: “Social lets you reach a much more targeted group of people, so without knowing it at the start we stumbled across a business that could really use social media to grow.”

Numbers game

So is it just a question of dividing ticket sales by the number of shares, Tweets and likes? Absolutely not: Eventbrite takes a very scientific approach to working out these values, as Tamara Mendelsohn explained: “We use a custom suite of social analytics tools that we have developed entirely in-house. Our reporting lets us track and analyze not only which sharing options our users leverage, but where on our site each share action takes place. These tools also tie back into our conversion funnels, so we are able to attribute ticket purchases to the specific social distribution channel that drove them. So, for example, we can compare not just the value created by a Facebook ‘Like’ vs. a Tweet, but also the performance of shares initiated before or after a purchase.”

Clearly for a business like Eventbrite, which generates most of its revenue through online sales, this deep analysis is vitally important to maximising the benefits of social marketing. But what about businesses that don’t sell off the page, as it were?

The fashion retailer Burberry invests 60% of its marketing budget on social media, and Facebook was central to the launch of its Body fragrance in 2011. According to L2, the digital thinktank, Burberry shows that intelligent investment in digital translates into shareholder value, and has the brand at the top of its digital fashion index.

Like value

A couple of years ago, social media consultancy Syncapse studied 20 different brands and suggested that: “the average annualized value of an individual fan is $136.38”. The value was based on the different spending patterns of fans and non-fans among the respondents: this indicated that on average “Facebook fans [spent] $71.84 per year more than respondents who were not fans.” However, the same research emphasised that “The fan base of a brand is unique and comprised different levels of influencers and customers. The average fan value is $136.38, but it can swing to $270.77 in the best case or go down to $0 in the worst.”

Of course value is more than just money, and the Syncapse research also emphasised the importance of brand loyalty, with companies using social media to foster and develop relationships with customers. The benefits were vividly demonstrated in the research, showing that Facebook fans are more likely to continue using a brand than are non-fans: for sports brand Adidas, 42.5% of fans said they would continue to use the product, compared with non-fans.

The point seems obvious: fans that deliberately engage with a brand are likely to be more loyal than non-fans. But that doesn’t mean they will necessarily stay loyal: successful brands are those that, like Eventbrite, Burberry, Adidas and so on, continue to interact with fans and build on the loyalty and engagement.

A further benefit – which is almost immeasurable – is the fan as brand advocate. Facebook fans are typically active social media users, and can provide a conduit to their own networks of friends. Encouraging fans to share content and information about a brand is a sure way to build further loyalty and increase the customer base.

She goes on to emphasise that whereas some performance measures can have a direct dollar value – sales from a Facebook promotion, for example – others do not, although they are still vitally important in measuring the value of social media marketing.

The growing sophistication of relevant analytics helps in measuring the effectiveness of social media. Some businesses – such as Eventbrite – will use custom tools; others can rely on an increasing array of products being offered by online specialists. Either way, prospecting for the “new oil” is becoming more scientific by the day.

Practitioner Interview

Read our exclusive interview with Vanessa Hope Schneider, Senior Public Relations Manager, Eventbrite about how social media has become an integral component of Eventbrite’s success.

Social media has had an enormous impact on some of the most fundamental assumptions of business practice. The relationship between a business and their consumers has changed completely – and irrevocably.

The great levelling of the playing field that social media has engendered has led to plenty of corporate opportunity – initially around digital marketing – but also very real risks.

The New York Corporate Social Media Summit is a third time event devoted to investigating these risks and opportunities, and social business more broadly. It’s a conference designed exclusively for a corporate audience and brings together leading experts from within business to discuss challenges, opportunities, and best practice.

As business social media’s impact has grown, so has the Summit – to the extent that it is now the leading event in this space. This year, corporate vice-presidents from companies like American Express, Diageo, Citi, McDonald’s and Gap will share their experiences and insights on social media marketing and more generally, business social media, with an audience hundreds strong.

Some of the key issues to be discussed include reputation preservation and crisis communications, integrating social into core marketing, embedding social media across your organisation, internal governance models, measuring the impact of social engagement and core social media marketing best practice.

Nick Johnson, founder of Useful Social Media, who are organising the event, says

“This is a fantastically interesting – and challenging – time for businesses. Social has changed business in many ways – and those who are prepared stand to benefit from the many opportunities that corporate social media offers them. This conference is designed to help corporate digital marketing, communications, strategy and social media executives to learn from the leaders – those who have real experience of managing – and leveraging – this changing business environment.”

For more information on the Summit: www.usefulsocialmedia.com/newyork  

Contact
Harry Rollason
harry.rollason@usefulsocialmedia.com
0044 20 7375 7527

Hope everyone is well?

Plenty of activity across the social web this week…

How brands are using Facebook

Facebook recently rolled out its new Timeline layout and also now have a number of features aimed at brand advertising. A number of stakeholders have already been busy testing the new products such as Reach Generator, Offers, Logged Out ads and Premium that attempts to more closely match display ads with the content that individual Facebook users are loading onto their pages.

Already some leading brands have put out ads including Procter & Gamble with their Tide brand that linked to Nascar. The company stated that the campaign gave a 62% boost in engagement. Subway also used Premium and Logged Out ads to promote its spokesman Blake Griffin. The company experienced a ten-fold increase in traffic during the week-long campaign.

And Unilever used the Reach Generator to promote its Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to connect potential customers with their ads that would not normally be seen by them. Brands can usually expect an announcement to be seen by around 16% of their fans. With Reach Generator, Unilever had a 98% connection rate over the 28-days the campaign was running.

Less than half of all marketers have integrated social into their branding

A new report from Forrester Research has indicated that just 48% of CMOs and marketing VPs have fully integrated social into their marketing strategies. The surprising statistics illustrate that corporations still have some way to go when it comes to understanding and utilising social media. However, 92% of respondents did state that social media had ‘fundamentally changed how consumers engage with brands.’

What’s more when asked if their company had a roadmap for social media, the response was that corporations appreciate the importance these networks now have for businesses, but they are still unsure about how to capitalise on them. The reports author Tracy Stokes stated that brands are “stepping back to see how the jigsaw fits into their marketing plan.”

In Brief…

Airline Twitter showdown

In their latest showdown the Econsultancy has pitted Virgin America against United with some stark contrasts in how the two companies are using Twitter to engage with their customers. Virgin clearly wins with far more followers especially by region. United may have many more mentions across the social media network, but the vast majority of these are unfortunately negative comments made by passengers.

How to deliver world-beating customer service

Yet another infographic that all corporations should pay close attention to shows the influence that good and bad shopping experiences can have. Developed by Monetate, the infographic shows that over three quarters (78%) of consumers would buy from a retailer they had a positive experience with, with nearly 90% having the opposite reaction.

Facebook’s Timeline has changed how people see each page

A new piece of research commissioned by Mashable and completed by EyeTrackShop makes for very interesting reading. The new report clearly shows that users of Facebook spent more time looking at the image on the Timeline than actual posts on a brand’s wall. The report’s authors state: “The new Facebook Timeline limits the effective branding space, and the top portion of the page must be effectively utilized.”

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.

KLM is the core of the KLM Group, which further includes the wholly-owned subsidiaries KLM Cityhopper, transavia.com and Martinair.

Catharine van Dijk is Manager Reputation and Content for Social Media at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Together with a social media team she aims to capture fans and win their loyalty. Since the introduction of Social Media within KLM in 2009 the amount of fans and followers has grown rapidly. The key to this success is to interact genuinely, having a real interest in the needs of fans and followers en solving problem adequately en swiftly, and, of course, running great social media campaigns. Social media make KLM’s reputation messages feasible for fans.

As a corporate user of social networks, how does your company value the networks it has a presence on?

KLM is mainly present on  Facebook and Twitter, where we engage with our followers with inspiring content, campaigns and where we offer 24/7 servicing in English, Dutch and Spanish. The social media platforms are valuable communication channels, which we treat as mature channels and are becoming more and more part of KLM’s communications strategy.

Are the social networks now offering corporations tangible commercial opportunities to sell their goods or services?

Some social networks might give the opportunity to do so. KLM refrains from hard selling via our central social media platform. We do try to integrate social tools into our existing ‘sales’ procedures (e.g. Meet & Seat).

What does KLM see as the key challenge across the social media environment with brand awareness and advocacy?

Around 2010 was the year of launching our social media efforts and experimenting. 2011 was the year of growing, learning and putting the structure in place. 2012 is the year of turning this growth and these learnings into business, knowing that exceeded expectations in the past are now the new standard and we aim to maintain our leading position in the social media landscape.

What was the strategy behind your KLM Surprise initiative, and how was social media a vital part of that campaign?

Schiphol as location for little acts of kindness for our passengers. Passenger uses KLM/#KLM/@KLM in tweet, and let us know that he or she is traveling with KLM. KLM finds out background info via profile of passenger, how we can surprise him (hobbies, interests) and where we can find him (gate number). KLM buys little present and surprises passenger. Little presents, nothing big, but very personal. Impact on passengers was huge. Lots of exposure and buzz.

How does KLM decide what it spends on which social media networks? Does KLM have a social media roadmap it is working to?

Yes, KLM has a roadmap for 2012, because social media will be one of the most important ways of interacting with our (potential) customers. Right now we are working on our channel strategy: which channels will be most important and where will we put in our energy.

Meet & Seat uses social networking to allow passengers to sit next to people with similar social profiles. Can you explain where this idea came from and how successful it has been?

The idea for Meet & Seat was born after a co-creation process. Social is top of mind within KLM and Meet & Seat is being integrated in KLM’s booking process as a first social tool. It fits into KLM’s promise of ‘an inspirational journey’ by traveling with KLM.

Numbers: Up till now you can meet & seat at 34 destinations from and to Amsterdam. And more than 700 passengers have shared their profile. We’ll keep on expanding. Lot of passengers like the idea, but it’s so new, it takes time to get used to the new idea.

What’s next for KLM in the social media space? Can you outline any new initiatives you are working on?

We are learning all the time and we intend to continue in 2012. Social media provide us with extra communication channels, integrated in our overall communication strategy.

In this slideshow taken from the Corporate Social Media Summit in New York in 2011, Chris Baccus takes us through how AT & T use data to drive a better social strategy. The presentation discusses:

• How to find the right balance: Identify and use the right metrics to match your organisation’s goals with your social media strategy
• How to translate innovation into revenue: Keep your focus on ROI, while promoting experimentation and innovation
• Turn data into decisions: How to use data to make solid and informed business decisions

To take a look, just connect with Facebook:

Linda discusses how Southwest Airlines use social media to enhance their brand, respond to crises and manage their reputation.

Linda was speaking to Nick Johnson, Founder of Useful Social Media, at the Reputation Preservation  and Crisis Communications Summit, which took place in New York in March 2012.

Download this short interview with Linda below: