The Branded3 Social Media Team has been put in place to help amplify and support SEO campaigns, and to drive the award-winning agency forwards into an ever more social marketing future.

In creating the Social Team, Branded3 CEO Vin Chinnaraja recognised the growing need amongst existing and prospective clients for creative campaigns that engage customers with brands and get people all over the web talking about companies, products, news stories and events.

Vin said: “Branded3 has created some fantastic social media campaigns in recent years, but we felt that now was the ideal moment to allow our creative thinkers, writers and marketers to focus on this fast-growing area and really push things to the next level.

“Social media is fast becoming just as important to our clients as effective search engine optimisation campaigns and first class web design. We are fortunate to have a wealth of social media marketing experience and knowledge amongst our staff, so creating the new Social Media Team was relatively a natural progression.”

The new team will work in conjunction with Branded3’s SEO specialists, helping to create the wide-reaching buzz, online PR coverage and the social link building that is so important to digital marketing campaigns in 2012.

Branded3 has won awards for outstanding work in the field of social media in the last two years. In November 2011, the online petition application Twitition won the Grand Prix prize at the DADI Awards. Twitition delivered further silverware when Branded3 won the silver award for Best Development of Own Social Media at the Digital Impact Awards.

In Autumn 2011, Branded3 helped Interflora to harness the power of Facebook by sourcing an engaged audience for a page dedicated to discussion about grandparents.

The campaign gave Branded3 an ideal opportunity to flex its viral muscles, and within one month the number of Facebook ‘Likes’ on the page had increased by more than 300 per cent.

The design and development team at Branded3 is ideally placed to support the new social media department through the creation of eye-catching graphics and bespoke applications for popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The Social Media Team, which features some of Branded3’s talented content writers, journalists, and PR specialists, will hope to build on the agency’s social media successes over the course of 2012.

Our very own Design, Development and Social Media teams built the Facebook app to coincide with the most romantic day of the year, giving visitors the chance to find out whether 2012 will be the most romantic year of their lives.

As a Facebook user, you need only ‘Like’ the page to get the cogs and springs of the ‘Love Machine’ working.

A series of lifestyle and personality-based questions about your potential husband, wife or civil partner for life will generate a percentage to reveal how likely you are to hear a heart-warming ‘yes’.

The Interflora app is based on data collected from a nationwide survey of more than 3,000 participants. Each person was asked for basic information on their hobbies, lifestyle and living arrangements and, of course, how they think they would respond to a proposal this year.

The Love Machine takes the information that each individual participant enters about their loved one and compares it to the survey data to generate the possibility of receiving their partner’s hand in marriage.

Interflora has been harnessing the power of social media with Branded3 for some time now and has seen a significant boost to its following and overall presence as a result.

Even before development began, the survey itself revealed some interesting stats about the besotted couples of Britain. Women, it seems, are 12% more likely to accept a proposal than men in the first 12 months of a relationship and the chances that they would say yes at any point beyond that stand at 70%. Men, on the other hand, at 63%, are either less enthusiastic about the whole idea of getting married or slightly coyer about admitting that they want to get married.

Thousands of the band’s fans have flooded to Twitition in a desperate bid to get the boys to their chosen US city for a special one-off show during their upcoming American tour.

A staggering 80,000 fans of the teen band have been using our award-winning application to nominate which American city they’d like to see One Direction stage a special event.

Six Twitition’s were created by @Bring1DToUS, the campaign set up by Sony Music Entertainment to drum up support for the five-piece band in America during their first ever US tour.

Whilst the campaign continues, the Twitition competition has now ended with Dallas coming out on top. The challenge to get One Direction to this city received over 29,000 Twitition signatures – a new record for our popular site!

We’re delighted that Twitition has been chosen as one of the platforms of such a huge worldwide campaign, and the results reflect the social media impact the fun site can have in just a few days.

If you’ve got a cause you’d like to promote across Twitter, head on over to Twitition now to create a petition in just a few clicks, and make something happen.

B3Labs launch

With the addition of a talented content team, we launched our company blog in April this year. Intended for expert thought and innovative ideas, we named the blog B3Labs. With a team as skilled as this, we needed a platform to not only showcase our expertise and innovation, but to interact and contribute to the digital industry.

Just a few months after launching, B3Labs had already been nominated for a SomeComm award and a prestigious Social Buzz award. We’re looking to increase the number of expert articles we publish in 2012, across all aspects of design, development and SEO.

Competwition re-launch

With some big brand sponsors and a great new look and feel, we re-launched our internally built Twitter-based application – Competwition – in the summer. Allowing companies and brands to gain Twitter followers through prize draws, Competwition is the perfect tool for extending brand reach. With almost 20,000 followers, we see 2012 being a big year for this innovative application.

Yorkshire Three Peaks

Thirteen brave members of our team exchanged their laptops and notebooks for walking boots and rucksacks this summer when they took part in the gruelling Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge. Spanning 26 miles and encompassing the three highest peaks in the county, our team raised £2,000 for charity, and are looking forward to getting involved in many more fundraising activities next year.

Our Head of Design brands Leeds Digital Festival

We might describe ourselves as experts a lot, but we truly believe we have the best digital talent around. As such, it came as no surprise to us when our skilled Head of Design, Andrew Machin, created the winning design for Leeds Digital Festival 2011.

Talented designers from all over the region were invited to take part, but it was Andrew’s ambitious yet innovative design idea which ensured he and his team were voted winners.

Twitition reached one million followers

Beginning the year with 400,000 followers, we’re ending it with over 1.2 million followers. Hitting the one million mark in August, Twitition is now in the top 500 most popular Twitter accounts in the world, sitting above names such as Miley Cyrus and Cheryl Cole. Not bad for a fun experiment eh?

DADI Grand Prix award

Attending the DADI Awards in November, we were excited to have even been shortlisted for three prestigious awards. After scooping the top prize for two of our nominations, we were ecstatic to receive the Grand Prix award for our innovative work on Twitition – our internal application.

This was certainly a highlight for the whole team, and to gain recognition like this on such a high level was an honour.

We win eight awards

2011 has certainly been the year of awards for Branded3, and our team have dug out their best frocks and smartest suits no less than six times this year to attend the most prestigious of award ceremonies.

Take a look at where our nominations have taken us this year:

• The SomeComms Awards in Manchester
• The Digital Impact Awards in London
• The Search Awards at the Emirates Stadium in London
• The DADI Awards in Leeds
• The Digitally Leeds Awards in Leeds
• The Social Buzz Awards at Wembley Stadium in London

Shortlisted for a staggering 21 awards, we’re ending the year on a high after winning eight of them.

Team expansion

Branded3 began the year with 15 employees based in Leeds, we now have over 30. The rapid expansion of the team has been incredible, and is a direct reflection of the amount of client wins and our standing in the industry.

2011 has been fantastic for Branded3, and we’re ending the year as a 33-strong expert team; ready to produce even more award-winning work next year and raise our profile in the digital sector.

More than anything, the highlight of this year for all of us has been working within such a great team of people – so a big thank you to everyone at Branded3 for working so hard and making the agency the success it is today.

Merry Christmas from Branded3!

We couldn’t end the year without saying Merry Christmas to everyone we’ve worked with this year, so here’s a little Christmas message from us, to you…

For Twitter users out there; you’ll have no doubt seen one of Wednesday’s trending hashtags – #byebyemovember. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a typo of November, no no, far from it.

Movember is a campaign, which originates from Australia to help raise awareness (and the odd bit of dosh) for men’s health. Run for the entire 30 days of November, volunteers or ‘Mo Bros’ as they’re affectionately known, craft and shape in their best soup strainer, handle bars or caterpillars for the duration.

So without further ado let’s review our very own Tom Selleck look a likes as we reveal the Branded3  employees who have for the last 30 days at least appeared that little more attractive, follically challenged or just plain ridiculous!

Joe Griffiths

Take a bow, son! Ned Flanders you ain’t got nothing on Joe.

Matthew Jackson

An above par golfers goatee….

Julian Kay

A fine contribution. Never mind the Mo, hows he doing that with his hair in the group pic?

Mike Jeffs

A possessed tache!

Ben Jones

The team captain on our official page, bless him for his efforts, it’ll be gone once the wind changes!

Mike Auty

Hmm…the hat takes the attention away from the furry lip.

Max Shearer

The designer mo.

Thanks to all those who took part, those who donated via our official Movember page, and also the other team members who made cash donations in the office. We managed to raise a total of £195. There is a special shout out reserved for our ‘Mo Sistas’ who have mocked us all incessantly to keep our morale high…hmmm.

If you’d like to find out more about how Branded3 interact with social trends and campaigns then please get in touch via our contact page.

Focusing on connecting friends on the actual retail sites rather than social media sites, Sociable Labs are showing brands how to correctly incorporate social media in order to ultimately enhance sales.

Currently, a brand’s involvement in social media seems slightly limited to gaining Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers, and so the idea to implement more directly at the point of sale may be a lucrative idea.

The vision is that customers will be able to connect with friends and family on retail sites, influencing their choices about purchasing a product or service.

So, for example, if a customer was on a hotel booking site, they’d be able to see which of their Facebook friends had booked a hotel before, and what they thought of it. The idea is that it’s much more helpful for customers to make decisions based on the opinions of friends and family.

At the moment, a Facebook friend could ‘like’ or ‘share’ a particular hotel which would then show up in your news feed, but it’ll only be there for a matter of hours, and will have disappeared months later when you’re looking to book a hotel.

The idea from Sociable Labs would mean that you could always see what’s been booked by your friends previously, and it’s all there in one place on the retail site.

Obviously there’ll be privacy issues around this cataloguing of consumer products, but with a recent $7million investment in the 25-strong team; it might not be long before this idea becomes a reality.

Whilst the social media services we offer have always been far from limited, we’ll be interested to see how this method pans out, and whether any of the big names in retail decide to give it a go.

We find that the brands who come to us often don’t know what social media could do for them, but they want a Facebook page or a Twitter account because it’s the ‘in thing’. We always start with a thorough consultation period to explore whether these platforms would actually be beneficial to the company, as it varies brand on brand.

Having created our very own innovative methods for brands to use social media effectively; such as Competwition, our fun prize draw application; we’re always exploring and experimenting with new ideas, and we reckon this one from Sociable Labs could not only transform the way brands use social media, but the kick-start the sluggish world of social commerce.

Branded3 were awarded top honours at the ceremony on Friday, despite some very worthy contenders for the prize. I think I speak for the whole team when I say we feel very humbled.

What was already a wonderful night at Saviles Hall in Leeds, soon turned into a great night for the team when we won the award for In-house Website or Campaign for our site Twitition. Better still, we won the next award we were nominated for – Use of Social Media.

The whole team were ecstatic that our internal site had won two fantastic awards, and we thought the night couldn’t get any better. But it soon did – when it was announced that Branded3 had won the most prestigious award of all, the Grand Prix Award for our work on Twitition.

Twitition was an idea that our Director of Search, Patrick Altoft, had come up with one Sunday morning in 2009. I can still remember popping into the office at 9.30 a.m. to catch up on some work that Sunday, and finding Patrick already working on a prototype.

Seeing its potential, the team developed this petitioning platform led by our Head of Digital, Steve Shaw; and within just a few weeks, Twitition had over 150,000 followers. The simple idea and usability of the application caught the imagination of users and the site started snowballing with more and more users creating and signing petitions.

Twitition’s have been re-tweeted by the likes of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, and the fun and popular site has even been mentioned a few times by the BBC. Twitition was also used as a platform to petition for the freeing of the controversial Chinese artist, Ai Wei Wei.

With the growth in its popularity, we invested further with a renewed design and usability early 2010 when we had about 500,000 followers. Since the re-design and updated features, the site rapidly grew to have the 1.1 million followers it currently has.

The site is testament to the adage that the execution of an idea is more important than the idea itself. We have achieved a multi award-winning application in Twitition because we have great ideas and an excellent, committed, and passionate team.

The success of Twitition not only lies with the talent of our team here, but our passion to make a difference in digital, and we’re thrilled that something so successful can be the result of something fun.

Vin Chinnaraja

We’ve had a great year for award nominations, and our award season kicked off on Wednesday with the second annual SomeComms Award ceremony. Taking place at the stylish Hilton hotel in Manchester; the SomeComms Awards celebrate the best in UK social media, and we took to our seats amongst the biggest and best media agencies in the country.

Nominated for three awards; we listened out for our name when the awards for Best Business Blog, Innovation, and Best Large Agency were being announced. Although we missed out on the top prize; the great food, cheesy silent disco and listening to Andy Crane compere (anyone remember Ed the Duck?) made the SomeComms a top night, and we were honoured to be nominated.

There was no time for sore heads on Thursday as members of our team had to make their way down to London to the magnificent Grange St Pauls Hotel for the Digital Impact Awards. Surrounded by talent from the BBC, PayPal, Centrica, and LBi; we were up against some stiff competition.

Treated to a wonderful three-course meal, great company, and commentary from Johnny Ball; our night was made even better when Branded3 won a silver award for Best Development of Own Social Media for our popular site Twitition.com.

Our second nomination of the night was for Best Intranet for our online international directory for Interflora. Pipped to the post by LBi and SmallWorlders; we were presented with the bronze award, making a wonderful end to the night.

Although we couldn’t be happier that we have two awards to add to our growing collection, we’re always just pleased to be nominated along with such well-established and well-known agencies and brands. You can take a look at all the winners of the SomeComms Awards here, and the Digital Impact Awards here.

With two more award ceremonies coming up in the next few weeks, keep checking the Branded3 news section for updates on how we’ve done. In the meantime, we’ll be polishing our new awards…

When these results for Matt Cutts’s and Rand Fishkin’s blog posts came up in a Google search, not only does it display their author names and images, but there is a link to their Google+ profiles as well as information on the number of Google+ circles they are included in.

Last year it was announced that Google was using social signals to help determine rankings. Then in March, Google tried to get one-up on Facebook with its +1 button. What does it mean now that Google are implementing this change? It certainly improves use experience, by allowing them to determine easily whether an author is well known, or reputable.

The link to Google+ is obviously in the favour of Google, whilst being useful to the user. For example, if you’ve read a good article and want to contact the author – but the article is a guest post with no link back to the author’s site or profile, finding contact details from this kind of search might not have been possible.

This shows the importance of developing a social media campaign not just for your business, but for the key people in your business. It is important to make these people aware of the effect social media has on business and to educate them as to how to do this. If you think your brand needs a social boost or if you think your boss needs to get on Google+ feel free to get in touch and we’ll see what we can do for you.

Now we have that out of the way, I’m going to teach you how to find the kill-stealers of your online campaign through the assisted conversions in the multi-channel functions section of Google Analytics.

A recent post on Blogstorm highlights that assisted conversions can drive 30% more revenue for some companies – so it’s important to know how to make the most of these conversions.

What is kill-stealing? In gaming, this is a phenomenon which occurs when Player 1 is working really hard to kill an enemy, and Player 2 comes in, strikes when the enemy is on death’s doorstep and claims the credit for the kill. A clever tactic on Player 2’s account, but highly annoying to player 1 who did most of the work.

How is this relevant to online marketing? Let me show you. It’s all down to assisted conversions. Time to open Google Analytics. You need to be in the new version, and in the Assisted Conversions Report.

Basically, an assisted conversion is one where the customer interacted with your site more than once before making a conversion. Branded3 are currently doing a lot of research into this new feature and discovering interesting new ways to do things all the time.

This page shows all sorts of data relating to assisted interactions. It shows how often a particular source appears in an assisted conversion, what the assisted conversion value is, and how often it appears as a last conversion and the value of that conversion.

There is also a nice ratio of Assisted : Last conversion. On a scale of 0-1, 0 represents closing all sales but not assisting in sales and 1 represents equal assisting and closing of sales. When this value is >1 it means the value assists sales more than closes. So, the closer a medium is to 0, the closer it is to being regarded as a conversion kill-stealer.

In this example, the 3 biggest kill-stealers are Non-Brand PPC, Direct traffic and Non-Google organic search. If you look below you will see the mediums that have the highest Assissted : Last ratio. One of them has a ratio greater than 1, so it assisted in more conversions than it closed.

However, in both examples, be aware that both the ‘top spots’ have a small amount of total conversions, so the data could be considered skewed. You can try this out with your own data by going to the assisted conversions page and sorting by the last column.

So, why does this matter? We use SEO research and analysis to determine what roles your conversion sources play in assisted conversions, you can determine how much focus could be put into each.

For example, if your product is something a customer purchases with a lot of thought behind it, you might want to focus on those mediums that have a higher assisted : last ratio. This is because the customer knows they want to purchase something, but would prefer to browse around and make comparisons between different sources before buying – so the medium for assisted conversions are important.

However, if your product is more of an impulse buy, you could choose to focus on a medium with a lower assisted : last ratio. This is because a customer sees something, and they want it then and there without much time to give it thought, so it is indeed that last interaction that is most vital to purchase.

So, in spite of the negative associations with Player 2’s kill-stealing in the gaming industry, Player 2 could actually be quite valuable to your campaign. Equally, the hard work done by Player 1 might be of more value to you. If you need help deciding which Player to control you can always get in touch with us to help improve your marketing strategy focus.