Simon Daglish vice president of Fox Interactive Media was interviewed by , senior PR and marketing manager at the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) about how to engage with your audience within social media and the importance of keeping them captivated. Simon was asked questions such as; whether it is better to engage the user instead of chasing the last click, do clients still require proof to use social media? and should measurement be bespoke per campaign? He also gave some useful advice for managing friends and fans in social networks.
Watch the below video to see the full interview…
By , Sales Group Head, .
There through choice? Yes. Loyal? Yes. ENGAGED? YES. Social Media users are arguably the most lent forward of all those online, real people logging into their own space online, adding that extra level of potential Engagement for brands, not achievable through other platforms. So, advertisers are embracing this and spending huge amounts of Sponsorship/Engagement budget in Social Media, right? Not really.
Social Media is to online, what Cinema is to broadcast, it is the part of the online mix that can really help drive consideration, awareness, propensity etc with a captivated audience, all very valuable measures, some of which seem to have been forgotten in this age of clicks and acquisitions.
I am not saying that online can’t do a fantastic direct response job, we all know it can, this too is an area that needs a marketers attention. But now is the time to undo some of that damage you may have done to your brand equity by placing a standard banner within a social network, and then only measuring success by click through rates. There is a whole depth to its effect that is often ignored.
Vodafone, Unilever, COI, are a few of the brands that understand Social Media is ‘not just for Christmas’ and increasingly brands are getting the idea that these are not impression farms but communities brimful of real people, I am loving the Marmite’ election’ campaign that has just been announced. Real people need to be entertained, enticed, emotionally stimulated, all the things we would expect when paying for a ticket to the Cinema, or for a gig by one of your favourite artists, and like voting for the Tories, Lib Dems or Labour, deciding whether you ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ is a decision not to be taken lightly.
by Harriet Clarke, communications executive, IAB
Tony Effik
is chief strategy officer at Publics Modem, and became chair of the social media council in November 2009 taking over from Lloyd Salmon, founder of Outside Line. I interviewed Tony to find out his future plans for the council, his feelings on its biggest achievements and his thoughts on the social media industry at the moment.
Why do you think the social media council is so important for the industry?
The social media industry can be a bit like Wild West terrain at times, with new comers occasionally entering into the industry under false pretence of a world full of ‘gold and riches’. Because of this misunderstood perception of the industry it can sometimes attract the wrong type of person. I think it is important for the SMC to work towards demystifying the discipline and achieving transparency, making it easier for new starters. I think this is crucial to maintain growth within the business.
What are your major aims and achievements for the next 12 months?
I am now a quarter of the way through my time as chair and in the first 3 months we have built a solid working structure for the council through establishing clear working groups and appointing ambassadors to manage these groups. Alongside this, we have also completed research into social media budgets which gives us a clearer understanding of where things need to go next and what needs to be done to achieve this. We have also finalised the framework of the practitioner course, a 2 hour session every 5 months aimed at new comers to nurture new talent.
Where would you like to see the council in the next 6-9 months?
Ideally it would be great if in the next 6-9 months the council could substantially aid transparency within the industry. It would be good if the knowledge and the brain power we have amongst us could get shared throughout the business, so more cross industry collaborations could occur. It would also be great to release a standard model that had been created by the SMC.
Why do you feel there was a need to create ambassadors for separate topics?
Social Media is so big, there is no way one person can be an expert at everything. Each individual council member has specialist skills in separate social media areas, and therefore I thought it would be best to unleash this expertise, it is also a good way of giving other members of the council recognition for the investment they make in the council.
How do you plan to further publicise the SMC within the industry?
We need to get the ambassadors out there. Talking, commenting, presenting, writing, and being interviewed. We need to do this in media that moves us out of our comfort zone. That means concentrating on building relationships with a wider range of media, and maintaining current relationships.
What is the council’s biggest achievement so far?
I think it would have to be the release of our recent research study which was conducted by research agency Opinion Matters. It showed the need for clarification over the role of social media and where it should fit within general business models, in order to make the most of the discipline. This research received a substantial amount of coverage within a lot of the major trade titles and online news sites, and was of real use to social media practitioners across the country. We hope to do this every year, and use it as a barometer of social media progress in the UK.
How do you feel the council can help the social media industry grow even further?
I think this can be achieved through creating a shared framework for the industry, promoting best practice and simplifying social media, making it easier to understand and less of a ‘scary’ prospect for those who are less experienced.
We need to create tools, and frameworks that become universal, and become standards. The more standards we create, and the more discipline we engender, the less of a Wild West frontier this all becomes. That will create growth.
, new business manager of skive was interviewed by the IAB’s senior PR and marketing manager about creativity within social media and all its touch points. He was asked various questions around this topic, his first being whether he thought social media was more platform or technology based, he addresses this question by mentioning the knowledge gaps within the industry, particularly agency side and that when you are immersed within the industry it is easy to overlook the fact that not everyone has the same level of knowledge about the subject area. He says that brands in general are doing the basics, the well publicised social media platforms such as twitter and facebook are the platforms that brands utilise the most as these are the ones they know most about even though they may not be the greatest channel to talk to their consumers.
Ollerton discusses the need to have a strong marketing strategy in place to make the best use of the social media platforms available in order to generate the best results for the brand. Amy also asks questions regarding social media budgets and whether or not a lack of money has constraints on the campaign, he squashes this comment and says that it is all down to the creativity and that the simplest cheapest ideas can be the most effective ones. Ollerton talks about which brand campaign he thinks is the most creative and how the use of crowd sourcing can sometimes be regarded as lazy marketing however when used well and for the correct brand it can have outstanding results and achieve brand objectives.
Watch the below video to see the full interview…
by , new business manager at Skive
When “social media”is mentioned by brands it all too often means “do we need a twitter/facebook page?” as if the answer lies in the platform. Those with any clout realise it’s about leveraging the platforms to achieve your goals as a brand. The exciting thing about social media sites is that they can be seen as blank pages for great creative ideas to run
free. Pumping out offers on twitter/facebook may be functional but it is a drop in the ocean of what can be done if only a little creativity is applied.
On the way in to work today I noticed that they’re opening up a Yo Sushi.
In contrast to their bland product they have made great use of the construction site by putting two social media calls to action on the boards outside the restaurant.
Yo! Sushi
We are invited to follow them on twitter and tweet “London” for a chance to win a meal for 4 on the opening night. Personally I’d rather pay to eat somewhere else, you call me a huge food snob but sushi is meant to be tasty as opposed to just cold – just a thought.
I’m a big fan of cross platform marketing and it doesn’t need to be complicated/expensive. This is a simple, cheap and possibly effective use of outdoor to drive engagement online. As good as this is I think it still misses a trick or two.
1. Yo Sushi ask us to tweet “London” – and that’s it. Who is going to want “London” in their feed except people who tweet random city names for the sheer hilarity of it? They should have said “tweet why you love Yo Sushi” or “tweet Yo Sushi rules for a chance to win!”
2. There’s a similar mechanic for Facebook which falls foul of the same problem.
3. It wouldn’t have cost them much to try out other channels such a flickr. They could have printed a cool image for people to interact with and have their photos taken next to and then got them to upload it to facebook/flickr etc.
Here’s an example of this being done really well by McDonalds:
I get the feeling that Yo Sushi are dipping their toes in the water here and don’t fully understand the integration of offline and social – but it’s a good start.
By Harriet Clarke, IAB
Mobile creativity has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 12 months. There are great examples of creativity in the mobile space, whether it’s been through apps or general mobile campaigns. At the IAB we’ve even decided to set up a Creative Showcase award dedicated to mobile (more on that in the next week or so, watch this space!). One of these reasons is because WE NEED MORE CASE STUDIES! We know social media on mobile is big, but there needs to be more proof… Read more…
The IAB’s social media and mobile councils have collaborated to produce a list of eleven things you need to know about mobile and social media.
1. Accelerating change. Whilst Gartner predicts that mobile will be the dominant form of web access worldwide by 2013, today, already, the combination of social and mobile is accelerating that trend, with nearly the same percentage of iPhone owners accessing Facebook through their mobile (71%) as through fixed line internet (77%).
(Ipsos, “The Future of Mobile” study, December 2009)
Steve Wing, Head of Mobile and Digital Attraction, Guardian
2. Social media and mobile are growing. It’s been predicted by eMarketer that mobile and social network users worldwide will grow more than fivefold between 2009 and 2014, rising from 141.4 million users in 2009 to 760.1 million in 2014.
Clark Turner, Editor, UTalk Marketing Read more…
