One For All? How Best To Tackle Different Social Media Platforms


With the upsurge in productivity tools such as Hootsuite and Seesmic we can now update multiple Social Media accounts in one fell swoop. Write a sentence with a link and use it for your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles. Technology allows us to do this, but does this means we have to?

There are various reasons to never ever produce the same copy for all your social media platforms. One can argue that even strategy may need a different take and angle. Balancing consistency for a memorable message with an understanding of the different audiences is key. Dan Zarrella, consistently studying the most shareable and retweetable content has come up with great data on the right content for our social media. According to him,

Facebook audience (audience as every individual using Facebook at that very moment in time) is looking forward to light content, videos, funny stuff, or anecdotes and interesting facts more related to pub talks than essays. All the techy stuff that gets RT and shared on Twitter doesn’t actually have a big uptake on Facebook, where it is rather ignored.

Twitter is very different. Its audience is information hungry, early adopters, smart individuals that can face complicated information on the spot (or save for later with Delicious or Instapaper). On Twitter, software, apps, gadgets and ebooks work better than videos and images.

As a general rule, never produce copy and push it to all of the platforms. Instead, spend a while looking at the conversations of your target audience in every scenario to give you some insight into the right content. Then, try your hand out with some tweets, posts or status udpates and analyse the content that gets liked and shared the most and produce more of it. Discard the other. Doing otherwise just won’t work and is a ticket to quitting. In addition, never trust those who tell you to “forget strategy and participate in the conversation”. That is just an insane cliché for all those who don’t understand Social Media. Never drop the brief.

Soon you will realise how your Twitter activity and your Facebook marketing part ways to talk to different people, at different times of the day and about different angles of your product or service.

About The Author

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library as a Social Media Analyst, helping brands and agencies identify key influencers online and devising best outreach strategies. With a background in traditional marcoms, Xavier has also completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London and carries out social media and online marketing consultancy work as a freelancer.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre


Social Media Tips and Tricks, Xavi Izaguirre


How Local Businesses Can Use Social Media For Growth


According to the 2010 Business Monitor United States report, only 1% of small businesses see social media as a factor in business growth. No matter how many case studies we find, let’s not forget that there are zillions of local businesses that remain dormant before the immense opportunities that social media brings.

The problem could be to do with having overwhelming doubts on where to start from. So, I just wanted to put together a few tools that could help your local business. Please note: the article will focus only on physical local business.

Monitoring and Reacting

Even before you “gain a Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare presence” or run a blog, local companies need to monitor existing conversation. This doesn’t need to be specifically about them, but could also exist about the competitor’s offer or the product itself. So if we happen to be “The Breakfast Club“, we should monitor for “The Breakfast Club” but also on keywords like “breakfast”, or “brunch”, locations such as “Hoxton”, “Shoreditch” or “Soho” and competitors such as “Fox and Anchor” or “Canteen”. Being comprehensive in our search is key and all platforms should be included. While Google can help users search within different platforms (blogs, forums, etc) as well as the whole web, some specific search engines can provide a lot of value.

• Searchtastic, a great Twitter search tool that allows users to find specific keywords and extract the information to an Excel file. Once there, specific tweets may be selected and replied to
• Hootsuite, a fully fledged Twitter client which has a monitoring feature, enabling “search columns” on keywords or hashtags that users can easily set up. This way we have a more casual but frequent way to respond to customer’s and prospective customer’s feedback or to butt into general chat ( if relevant )
• Boardtracker is a forum search engine, scouring discussion boards and forums for keywords
• Google Alerts is a very simple application that feeds your email every time someone mentions the keywords selected
• For a more holistic approach we may very well try Social Mention, where the keywords are scoured throughout all the social platforms and we even get values on sentiment and popularity that can be compared in different instalments or before/after campaigns

Marketing

If using the above search tools doesn’t bring a lot of actionable results, don’t worry. Awareness would then be our first social marketing objective and the search would not have been in vain.

When it comes to Marketing for local business there are a few obvious tools.

Foursquare and LBS. Foursquare in the UK has not taken off as much as it was supposed to but the whole category of LBS is close to hitting the mainstream. We have discussed Foursquare here.

The concept of LBS is simple. People go places and want to share their locations with their friends in case they want to pop along. By chatting with friends I have also discovered that LBS serves as an aide memoire to users. In both cases, footfall will be increased if we know how to leverage LBS. There is also the possibility of offering the person who checks in the most on Foursquare something special (a guest list) or something not so special and yet effective (a free drink).

Mainstream Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook will include geolocation ( the base of LBS ) soon (Twitter has done it in the US today and soon this will spread through geographically and across Twitter clients). This makes social media gain importance for the marketing of local business.

Schmaps. A nice way of putting your local business on the spot on Twitter is by providing a link built with Schmaps. Available in free or paid for versions ($250), you can build a clickable profile that takes Twitter click-throughs to a screen with pictures, maps, descriptions and RSVP, making it ideal for parties, events and local business. A powerful tool worth checking out.

Schmap

Schmaps

Yell – As technology leaves its footprint on how we promote our local business, traditional tools don’t remain untouched either. Yell now includes a video channel for businesses to showcase the interior of your shop. What a great way to stand out.

Qype – Qype is a social network for places. Places get talked about, discussed, buzzed or slagged off. There are big chances your place is on Qype, but are you harnessing that? Connect with enthusiasts that can’t get enough of your offerings or liaise with the deranged customers if there are any.

SEO

Local businesses have an SEO advantage and that is that they can get good SERP positions through Google Places, a free service from Google that allows you to register a business so a map springs up in search queries, raising awareness of your profile and location. A great return may be obtained from this tool that is totally hassle-free to set up

Conclusion

Think big, act small. (Ring a bell? It’s Seth Godin)

As a local business you need to think big. But whereas large organisations can’t always afford to talk to individuals, small companies should be engaging in conversations at all levels. Never be afraid either to build your profile through your persona and chat to customers and prospective customers as if you’re the local grocer. For here lies your unique selling point.

About The Author

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library as a Social Media Analyst, helping brands and agencies identify key influencers online and devising best outreach strategies. With a background in traditional marcoms, Xavier has also completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London and carries out social media and online marketing consultancy work as a freelancer.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre


Social Media Tips and Tricks, Xavi Izaguirre


Update: The Sun Drops World Cup Sweepstake After Blogger Complaints


As reported by The Guardian yesterday, The Sun have now dropped their World Cup Sweepstake after a multitude of complaints from the bloggers whose names they used without permission online, as covered by us yesterday.

This competition has really done The Sun few favours. A competition that stalled, a host of bad press and a bunch of hacked off bloggers. All of which could’ve been served with a simple bit of research.

About the Author

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett is a Social Media Analyst for Social Media Library, responsible for developing the content within Social Media Library. Paul lives in a world of blogs, blogs and more blogs, scouring the web and plucking out the juiciest information he finds. Previous to this, he worked as a Music Press Officer. He is also a freelance writer, an organiser of Scrabble Sunday and blogs about stuff that he does here.


Paul Barnett, Social Media News


Sun Scores Blogging Own Goal In World Cup Competition*


The Sun newspaper, since the events of 15th April 1989, has struggled to find favour with passionate fans of ‘the beautiful game’. Their recent World Cup sweepstake game provides us in social media with a perfect example of how not to foster relationships with the blogging community.

The sweepstake works by allying a UK football blog with a World Cup team, for example Who Ate All The Pies were drawn with Uruguay (don’t fancy their chances there too much!). Each blog was then sent a ‘supporters pack’ for them to promote the competition on their blog. The winning team/blog wins the, ahem, ‘lucky’ prize of interviewing the paper’s chief sports writer, Shaun Custis. As well as being ‘a bit of fun’, the competition exists to help promote The Sun’s World Cup Sweepstake app.

The Suns World Cup Sweepstake

The Sun's World Cup Sweepstake

Now, The Sun sent out emails to the blogs concerned informing them of the competition. What they weren’t banking on was being ignored or encountering outright opposition from the blogs to being involved. Or maybe they were. Because they went ahead and used the blogs anyway. Now the blogs have picked up on it and what they’ve got to say, unsurprisingly, isn’t all that complimentary.

Whilst not a PR campaign in the traditional sense, there are lessons to be learned from this blunder. The main one being DO YOUR RESEARCH. This can mean a number of things, but in this sense it means actually reading the blogs. If they’d spied an anti-Sun/tabloid sentiment (and, as mentioned before, this is often the case with those passionate football fans, of which football bloggers undoubtedly are), it would have been a good indication of whether to get in touch or not. And even if they hadn’t found this sentiment and still emailed the blogger, a lack of response usually tells its own story. And the story in this case the story is that the football blogging community are pretty upset that their names have been used without permission, leading to negative blog stories, outrage in some cases and, in most, an impassioned desire to spread the word of the ‘evils’ of The Sun further. Which, let’s face it, is bad PR.

*I would like to point out that this headline is an ironic take on tabloid headline writers who, when faced with anyone connected with football doing something wrong, continue to use the phrase “Scores Own Goal” unaware of their endless repetition and glaring lack of creativity.

About the Author

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett is a Social Media Analyst for Social Media Library, responsible for developing the content within Social Media Library. Paul lives in a world of blogs, blogs and more blogs, scouring the web and plucking out the juiciest information he finds. Previous to this, he worked as a Music Press Officer. He is also a freelance writer, an organiser of Scrabble Sunday and blogs about stuff that he does here.


Paul Barnett, Social Media News


PlayStation To The Power of BOOM™


This is Kevin Butler, VP of Sony’s PlayStation brand. He has received international acclaim as a brand spokesperson, has nearly 22,000 followers on his personal Twitter account, and his YouTube channel has received 67,000 views. His many roles within the company have included Director of Game Accuracy, Director of Rumor Confirmation, VP of Epic Footage and VP PS3 Softball team, and since joining Sony in 2009 Butler has presided over a massive increase in PlayStation sales.

Butler’s secret identity is Jerry Lambert, an actor with over 50 roles listed on IMDb and several commercials under his belt; Butler is the creation of Los Angeles based PR agency Deutsch, Inc. The campaign headlined by the character is set to last at least throughout 2010, a good move by Sony, whose brand has lacked a definitive mascot since its creation in 1994. Butler debuted in the run up to a massive rebranding of the PlayStation3; a price drop and new SKU was to place the brand in a prime position to grab the ‘casual’ consumer, with the new ad campaign being the proverbial cherry on top.

Gaming is a subject heavily featured in online discussion and huge forums and well frequented blogs on the subject are easy to stumble across in a browsing session; yet aside from developer forums, often centred on one game, the marketing of videogames often used social media simply as a mouthpiece to present press releases and trailers to the masses. The Butler campaign was the dawn of a new era in videogame marketing; a social era.

One of Butler’s earliest appearances, ‘Rumor Monger,’ saw the character directly engaging with, fittingly, an internet rumour monger over the subject of the long-rumoured price drop. Butler slyly avoided questions about the price drop (while surrounded by promotional materials confirming it) in a send-up of the way executives often dance around questions of rumours.

This style of commercial has become a staple of the campaign, with Butler acting as an agony uncle to consumers (with their PS3 conveniently running in shot) apparently teleconferencing with him while relentlessly (and humorously) pushing the attractive qualities of the product. This was Sony making fun of itself, but more importantly, this was Sony interacting with avatars of its target consumers.

Bear in mind however, that while these commercials feature hints of social media (how else does a VP of Topical Subjects end up in a debate about the digital recreation of a baseball player?), they are made primarily for US television audiences. Fortunately for Sony YouTube knows no borders; a fact hammered home when Butler advised a consumer that “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet. Otherwise, I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now.” The Nigerian Ministry of Information demanded “an unconditional apology from Sony Corporation for this deliberate negative campaign against the country’s image and reputation.” The Nigerian government had seen the clip, just one slice of an international audience that had viewed the widely disseminated video on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Butler had gone viral.

Even as the campaign had one foot firmly entrenched in social media, it is only since March 2010 that the character has been given his own Twitter and YouTube accounts. In true KB style, he came out of the gate running; the aforementioned 22,000 Twitter followers and counting and 67,000 YouTube views are impressive considering the time span, but it’s the KB hospitality that sets the social media campaign above any other effort in the gaming industry. Upon deciding to follow @TheKevinButler, I was greeted with this direct message:

The character’s humour, translated into a 140 character message and sent directly to the consumer. What better way to use social media to further a television ad campaign for an international product?

This campaign’s success is based purely on this concept; Kevin Butler is the approachable public avatar of a massive multinational conglomerate. He humanises the brand with self referential humour, readily mocks the competition and engages his audience. To paraphrase KB himself; well played Sony, well played.

About The Author

David Shawcross is an Intern for Social Media Library. He has a Degree in History and Politics from the University of Reading.


David Shawcross, Social Media News


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