Caliber France
Happy Birthday, Twitter!
March 21, 2012
Yes it’s Larry the Bird’s birthday today (shame on you for forgetting). On this day six years ago, Jack Dorsey, co-found of Twitter, tweeted the now famous phrase ‘just setting up my twttr’ – the original codename for the social networking site back in those days. What followed next was a worldwide success with over 500 million users all embracing the 140 character social network. Fast forward to 2012, and now you can’t go anywhere without hearing the word ‘trending’ or seeing ‘hashtags’ plastered all over newspapers, magazines or your television screens. It’s safe to say, Twitter is a part of all our lives (whether you like it or not).
In celebration of the micro-blogging six candles, here are five key facts.
- Alexa ranks Twitter as the 9th most popular website worldwide with over 5 and a half million sites linking to it
- The musical superstar known as Lady Gaga is the most popular person on Twitter with over 21 million followers
- Twitter is valued at around $8.4 billion dollars and recently received a $300 million investment from the Saudi Prince listed as the 26th richest person in the world
- Super Bowl XLVI set the record for the most tweets received during a sporting event, with an overage of 10,000 tweets sent per second during the final minutes of the match between New York Giants and the New England Patriots
- Charlie Sheen holds the record for the fastest time taken to reach 1 million followers at approximately 25 hours and 17 minutes in March 2011
So there you have it; some facts and figures that define Twitter.
Happy birthday Larry. Try not to eat too much cake. We’ll see you this time next year!
New Facebook Page Timeline: What’s Really New?
March 2, 2012
Stop the press! Facebook has finally announced the launch date of the hotly debated Timeline for Facebook Pages. On March 30th, Timeline will roll out to all Facebook Pages, whether you like it or not. Much like with Profiles, Pages will now benefit from large cover images (ideal for Branding) enhanced picture and video content and key milestone moments – the date your company was formed, the date you landed your first big client and so on. While some fear the worst, others are welcoming the change as step in the right direction for better engagement between companies and fans.
Here’s the video that Facebook recently launched:
So what’s new?
With the Timeline only a month away and counting, here’s a quick look at what you can expect from the new Facebook Pages:
- Custom default landing pages will now be a thing of the past, with only fan gating left. Furthermore tabs are now 810px wide. However, Facebook might change its mind and offer an option for companies to setup a welcome tab again – who knows.
- ‘Likes’, photos and apps will operate at the top of the page under the cover image. Brands will be now allowed a maximum of 12 apps with the ability to rearrange them in order of importance.
- Brands will be able to favourite posts by ‘pinning’ them at the top of the page. This feature will enable Brands to display important content without their fans having to scroll down their Timeline.
- A brand-new administrator panel will be launched for all Pages. Brands will now be able to monitor their activity and insights, respond to wall posts and assign different permissions for each page admin.
- Brand will be able to replay to fans privately and directly with page messages. Message notifications will appear in the admin panel.
- Page names will no longer be permanent. Brands will now be able to request a change or alter their Page names.
While the majority of changes will be a breath of fresh air, the Page Timelines will also bring a wave of restrictions and rules. Below are some of the most important:
- Cover images will not be allowed to include price, purchase or contact information such as ’40 off’, ‘download on our website’ or web addresses, email etc, ‘like or share’ references or any call to actions such as ‘tells your friends’.
- With the removal of landing pages, each Business Page will effectively look and feel the same – landing pages offered a way for Brands to stand out from the crow and be unique, but unfortunately, that is all gone now (well, until some creative company releases a new app to inject originality into the Timeline).
- Likewise, without landing pages, key performance indicators such as likes and email signups may initially decline; creating a problem for Marketers and page admins as they wait for fans and the general public to acclimatise to the new Page Timeline.
Conclusion
With introducing Timeline across the board, Facebook has gone about remodelling its look and feel in an attempt to stem the tide of rival social networks and remain the undisputed king of the social jungle. In addition, by preventing brands from using call to actions in their cover images, Facebook has shrewdly increased the value of their Sponsored Stories and Advertisements, as Brands will now have to pay Mark Zuckerberg and co if they intend to continue advertising on the site.
Although there are noticeable negatives, namely the elimination of landing pages, Timeline for Pages will ultimately create an overall rise in engagement and fan interaction (fans will now be advised to send in their enquiries and queries via private message), as well as, an eruption of unique cover images and content once Brands, particularly small to medium sized one, get accustom to the re-design.
Wait for our next post about Facebook changes and how marketers can smoothly adapt to it.
Now tell us, what you really think about this new chapter for business on Facebook?
Build Communities Not Campaigns – Hosted by Comufy Social On Media Week London 2012
February 17, 2012
This week, social media came into the spotlight with a series of events throughout London and major cities around the world. It has been a week of highlighting the impact, improvement and importance of social media within business and the emerging markets. During the course of the last seven days, there have been several engaging and diverse events ranging from workshops to in-depth seminars and presentations; all with the aim of providing a platform for social media professionals (and enthusiasts) to discuss ideas, share success stories and of course network.
One of the events was Build Communities Not Campaigns hosted by Comufy. Organised in a lovely restaurant, in-between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus, Build Communities Not Campaigns was a panel event which included top professional speakers from leading PR and social media agencies. Taking centre stage was Ying Wong, Head of Digital at RLM Finsbury, Blaise Grim Viort, Head of Community & Social Media at EModeration, Neil Hallmark, Head of Digital at Kaizo and Rob Horsfield, Managing Partner at Brass Agency.
As the name suggests, the aim of the panel was to highlight the importance of brand communities over campaigns; how to build communities (with your brand advocates), and how to sustain engagement and interest within a community. In the hour long event, each speaker took turns to share their social media wisdom and answer questions from the event mediator, as well as the audience. Below are some of the key points from each professional:
Ying Wong
- Part of the preparation is focusing on knowing who the influential people are – make them feel special and they will be your advocates when negative comments are posted
- Seed content and get people talking to one another – talking to community members offline will get them talking more online
- Getting a select number of people who comment and engage within the community is just as important as a million people who ‘like’ a page and bounce off
- Facebook ‘Likes’ don’t always mean a lot
- ROI is not that simple when measuring sentiment – look at share price and how much positive/ negative coverage over a period of time
Blaise Grim Viort
- Focus on people’s sense of belonging and influence, as well as monitoring if their needs are being met. From a community perspective, engagement is essential, then you should look at engagement between members
- Keep things simple by asking communities for their feedback on products out now, not in the future
- Work with the 3 P’s – People talking about the brand – get a relationship going, make sure they are Passionate and then build a Process around them
- Make it clear to people that certain discussions will not be appropriate – alternatively, run a live social media crisis situation with fake social account, imagine a dispute and go through the steps of how to deal with the problem
- ROI depends on client objectives – is it to build and create engagement or is it to click through and buy
Neil Hallmark
- Communities are a group of people with shared influence (brand advocates) – the community will direct where the conversations go
- Within a community you can drive campaigns, but how can you start a community without a campaign
- Asked Unilever communities about the brands they love to give incentives e.g. designing packaging or giving a sneak peek of a new product – people love the fact that Unilever is listening to them
- Used Facebook for a Unilever campaign as this is where half the UK population is
- It’s all about content – what activities will you be doing with the community once you have them on board
Rob Horsfield
- Use campaigns to produce a readymade community – alternatively, use word of mouth (tell community members to ask their friends), mailing lists, customer database
- Set out expectations with terms and conditions to inform community members, however, communities do tend to police themselves – don’t underestimate the power communities have to sniff out a disgruntled comment
- It’s not always about creating communities – there are lots of forums that already exist – it’s about finding them, accessing them and extracting the information you’re looking for
- How do we keep members interested – respect, good content and cash incentives
- If communication members fall out, find new member to replace them – sometimes people who join communities aren’t advocates
Key findings
The main conclusion to take away from the event was that the needs of the community members must always be met. Whatever the community, its members should always be respected, listened to and thought of first when planning, implementing and analysing community and campaign strategies. The other major point was that engagement is must successful through great content. For community members to participate and spread a brand name, engaging content has to be seeded to get people responding and talking to one another. This can be achieved by offering good incentives for communication such as sneak peeks, designing upcoming product packaging and cash prices.
Is the #NewNewTwitter Redesign A Step Forward or Back?
December 23, 2011
In the past month or so there have been big changes in the social world in terms of website layouts and functionality. Several big fish including YouTube, StumbleUpon and Delicious have all revamped their designs. However, the site that is getting the most attention is Twitter – yes, we were kind of shocked too. The welcome changes come as Twitter tries to increase their usability and relevancy with the year coming to a close and the first quarter of 2012 set to commence.
On December 8th, the über popular microblogging site released their first redesign in a staggering five years with 21 global companies. Dubbed the ‘new new Twitter’, the changes were made with the intention of making the social platform more user friendly and a ‘compelling destination’ for brands – an attempt to try and tackle Facebook’s Pages. The changes brought in a new tabbed style layout where all the Twitter functions were spilt into separate island boxes to make everything easily accessible. (more…)
Facebook’s Timeline from A Business Perspective
December 21, 2011
In a few short weeks, something will happen and it will impact the lives of over 800 million people worldwide. The event in question will be the worldwide roll-out of Facebook’s new interactive Timeline. To the general public, Facebook Timeline will be a cool feature which will transport them through time, allowing them to see all their memorable events, status updates, uploaded/tagged photos and friend lists from when they first joined Facebook. Timeline will also provide a host of commercial benefits that will bring a smile to the faces of marketers and business folk everywhere. (more…)
How to Use StumbleUpon to Generate More Traffic
November 21, 2011
When it comes to Social Bookmarking sites, StumbleUpon is widely regarded as the one of the most influential. With over 11 million registered members, it has almost twice as many members as Digg and other major bookmarking sites. Nevertheless for such a modest membership, StumbleUpon manages to be a leading tool for driving traffic to your website, thumping the mighty juggernauts Twitter and Facebook. Below is an infographic that highlights the importance of StumbleUpon.
One of the reasons why StumbleUpon is a great traffic generator is because when a member likes or stumbles on a page, it is placed into the StumbleUpon line-up which allows other members to view the same page through their toolbar. The question is: how can you take advantage of this traffic friendly network? (more…)
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