Presentation from ”New metrics for new media”

Finally the presentation from the Web 2.0 expo session by Margaret Francis: New metrics for new media has been put out on Slideshare.

6 saker jag har lärt mig om Facebook

Ett av de stora ämnena på Web 2.0 expo i New York var såklart Facebook och hur Facebook dominerar webben och hur Facebook har blivit den viktigaste marknadsföringsplattformen och hur om man som företag inte har en Facebookstrategi så är man hopplöst efter och har noll koll. Ok, riktigt så uttryckte de sig inte men budskapet var ganska tydligt.

Facebook är stort, det går inte att komma ifrån. Cirka 550 miljoner människor har ett Facebookkonto.  42% av Sveriges befolkning har en FB-profil. Ungefär hälften av alla Facebookmedlemmar är dessutom inloggade åtminstone en gång om dagen.

För företag finns det många sätt att använda Facebook för branding, kundrelationer, försäljning, marknadsundersökningar och en massa andra tillämpningsområden. Grupper, sidor, applikationer och annonser på Facebook har blivit del av  kommunikations- och marknadsföringsmixen. Det är en naturlig utveckling med tanke på dominansen men det kan vara bra att ha koll på vissa saker:

6 saker jag har lärt mig om Facebook

1. Facebooksidor för företag är ett bra och gratis verktyg för att etablera en närvaro på Facebook och nå kunder och andra intressenter, men man får vara beredd på reglerna och förutsättningarna kan ändras när som helst.

2. Communitysidor är inte samma sak som företagssidor. Vem som helst kan skapa en communitysida om ett ämne, vilket också kan vara ett företag, en person eller en händelse. Handlar sidan om exempelvis ett företag så feedas det automatiskt in fakta från Wikipedia. Som företag kan man få kontroll över sin communitysida genom att kontakta Facebook, men det kan nog vara lite trixigt.

3. Trots alla Facebooksidor som har detta innehåll är det inte tillåtet att köra tävlingar eller utlottningar via Facebook (om man inte gör det som en köpt annons). Det företag som bryter mot reglerna kan kickas ut, precis som användare som bryter mot reglerna.

4. När man har över 10 000 fans på en sida får man mycket utförligare Facebook Insights statistik och kan exempelvis se siffror för varje enskilt inlägg.

5. Det går inte att ändra på namn på företagssidor eller på usernames (url:er) när man väl gjort ett val. Så det är viktigt att man är 100% säker på att man väljer det namn man vill ha.

6. Ju större annonsör desto bättre service. Det företag som är storkund till Facebook har större möjlighet att få hjälp och service när det gäller andra delar som de gratis Facebooksidorna, målgruppsundersökningar, hjälp med applikationer och assistans när man vill claima communitysidor eller usernames (url).

Presentation av Path Interactive om hur man skapar vinnande Facebook Fan Pages, från web 2.0 expo.

Who is looking after your ghost towns?

During a session with Digital Brand Expression on how to coordinate your company’s social media efforts one question was raised: Does you company manage ghost towns and why isn’t someone looking after them?

The session was about how to  get control of all the social media projects of a company and set common rules and guidelines for all departments and individuals. As more and more company’s become interested in social media there are sometimes a lot of uncoordinated projects going on, from employee groups on Facebook started by HR, blogs by the research and development department to customer service initiatives on Twitter. But the problem is that sometimes the different departments act without coordination which can cause brand confusion and incoherent messages.

Another problem is that when there is no central control, departments or individuals sometimes start social media channels which are later on abandoned when a specific marketing campaign ends or when the person responsible quits the company. The result is ghost towns, branded social media channels with no updated content, nobody answering and noone moderating comments. The thing is that these channels still show up in Google when searching for your company which doesn’t help your brand reputation.

There are many things to consider when formulating your social media strategy and having protocols and guidelines for how to avoid ghost towns is one important factor.

/Sara

New metrics for new media

One of the topics of the web 2.0 expo was naturally the question about social media metrics. What is the return on investment is what your senior executives want to know when you propose to start a branded Facebook page, or try to promote online video for recruiting or want to take the initiative to monitor and engage with your customers on Twitter.
Margaret Francis from Lithium points out to four main types of applied metrics when it comes to social media investments.

1. Brand perception

You have to look to the benefits your brand gets out of being present, promoted and active in social media. How has the perception of your brand changed? What kind of relationships have you grown in these arenas that will help you strengthen your brand?  How can you reduce the impacts of potential crisis by having a strong brand presence online.

2. Marketing efficiency metrics

Social Media is generally good for search engine optimization which means that you will reach a larger target group with your messages. Social media campaigns also have the viral effect of attracting followers, forwards, invites, shares and retweets.  

Another point is that you can use social media for surveys and testing, and thus reducing your research costs.

3. Revenue growth metrics

Social media does actually drive sales. All the relationships created in social media are potential leads: member registration, subsribers, downloaders, commenters, bookmarks and followers. See how you can convert all these to actual sales.

4. Support savings

In social media the customers will help each other. They will answer questions in forum, rate and review products and create content related to your brand. This can have a positive impact in reducing your support costs. If you engage with your customers online and also encourage them to help out each other, the pressure on your customer service support can diminish.

I am still waiting for this presentation to be put on Slideshare and I will link to it when I get it!

/Sara

Augmented reality

Attending this presentation yesterday was like getting a glimpse into the future. It is both an interesting and exciting future but also a little bit scary. The combination of smart phones, gps and social networks make for great possibilities on the one hand when it comes to targeted, location-based advertising and services. On the other hand it is getting closer and closer to the movie Minority Report, where your face will be scanned and information gathered about you in an instant. Or you can scan a house and see who is living in the house and what their status update is currently, which gives thiefs excellent opportunities (see slide 52).

I liked the presentation a lot, and I liked the fact that @lynneluvah saw on Twitter that I was attending and sent me the link to the presentation without me having to ask!

/Sara

The art and science of seductive interactions

The first workshop of the first day of web 2.0 expo captivated me initially by the title alone: ”The art and science of seductive interactions”. When reading about the workshop I was even more intrigued:

”As designers, we work hard to provide powerful features in our applications, but if users don’t take advantage, it’s all waste. We have to extend our designer’s toolkit, leveraging the latest thinking from behavioral economics, neuroscience, game mechanics, and rhetoric.”

Todays workshop did not dissapoint. It was a really good seminar and workshop where we were gathered into small groups with a clear agenda and task for the day. The core message of the workshop was to build and design websites that fulfills the visitors goals as well as the company’s business goals and to motivate user interaction by the use of psychological triggers like humour, feedback loops, curiosity, the need for self-expression and hunger for encouragement.

We were all given the task to for a specific problem try to figure out which psychological triggers to use in order to solve that problem / make a service more useful for the users.

The seminar gave me a lot of good ideas to bring home, especially when it comes to looking beyond usability and estetics when building a website and putting more focus on usefulness and increasing motivation. We put a lot of importance on usability and that it should be easy to navigate sites and click on the right things and have the possibility to interact, that we tend to forget to motivate the users to want to search, click and interact.

The workshop was held by Stephen Anderson from PoetPainter, a company which helps businesses to use psychology to design better experiences.

/Sara

Attending Web 2.0 Expo in New York 27-30 September

Web 2.0 Expo

A colleague of mine told me that going to Web 2.0 Expo in New York in 2007 really opened his eyes and changed his perception on digital communication, marketing and development.  Even if the name Web 2.0 feels a bit outdated I believe that the content of this year’s Expo will have the same impact on me. I hope to come back to Sweden with new ideas and inspirations and with new perspective on issues I battle with in my everyday work as a web consultant.

Cultural differences when it comes to startups

I recently read an article in British Wired magazine about how there is a great difference between USA and Europe,  both when it comes to the entrepreneurial drive among individuals but also in regards to the willingness by investors to take a chance on new ideas. In the writers opinion entrepreneurs in USA have it much easier, both culturally and financially to create a startup business based on their ideas.

An Expo centering on digital media and new technology will naturally include a few seminars on the topic of startups. Here are some I have found in the schedule and I hope to make it to at least a few of them:

• Getting Media Buzz for Your Product
• When and How to Pivot: A Practical, Real-world Example of Iterating to Success
• Reports of Media Death Vastly Exaggerated
• Local Technology, Global Startups
• Get Offline

Of course I will blog during the Web 2.0 Expo, both in Swedish and in English and if you want to get updates you can subscribe to the rss-feed of Integrerad Kommunikation and you can follow me on Twitter.

/Sara