Social Media Savvy

Social Media Logos Offline Make No Sense Without a CTA!

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:04:00 +0000

A few days ago I was on the bus, sitting by the window, contemplating about the fact that I kept seeing Facebook, Twitter and Youtube logos in every other store window.
Then I thought to myself, isn´t it by now OBVIOUS that every store is on Facebook? Then why post the sign in the window? More importantly, why post a sign without any call to action?

Why would I surf over to your Bershka or Mango page, unless I have any incentive to do so? Are you really that cool and impressive making it worth the effort?

I´m tired of brands who expect people to be searching for them on Facebook because to follow them should be the dream of every persons life.
I'd rather say it's annoying these days to follow brands considering the massive amount of spam that I receive. I un-follow more brands than ever now days. In fact, it reminds me a little bit about 10 years ago when I started opting out on email lists. Now, the few email lists that I'm on, they are carefully sorted into lists and some of them go straight to Spam.

I read a kick ass article yesterday that I encourage all of you to read: Can you name 3 reasons I should give rip about your facebook business page

Can you? Because to me it seems the vast majority of Facebook pages don't give me any specific reason that makes it imperative to follow their updates.

I can find the new Mango collection on their website, I get the fashion news in my Google reader, I got a discount coupon from the newspaper last week...

The same thing goes for the TV ads, big street posters or any type of ad that is not on the web.
Keep in mind it's not a small but rather a HUGE step for me to go from that store, home, keeping in mind the ad, turning on my computer, and searching for your brand on Facebook.
You need to give me a tease to do that.
It's completely different in my opinion, the fact of whether or not to place a Like button or a Twitter symbol on your website, in your newsletter or in your email signature. That's a no-brainer because it's such a small and simple step to the user. It's ONE CLICK versus me sitting on that bus and actively entering a browser typing in your brand name, probably finding 10 pages with your name on it and entering into the right one. Makes me tired just thinking about it...

I'm not going to be all negative here and would like to mention the great surprise that I found at the exit of sports store Decathlon:

This QR code leads me directly to their Facebook page, doesn't really give me anything exclusive, but I do give them credit for at least jumping into the water, doing SOMETHING out of the ordinary plain thumbs-up sign at the exit.

Like Pam is telling us in her article, marketers should take a look at how their social media presence really ads something to it´s potential fans day-to-day life's.

This may seem easy at first but it's really not. Especially in today's integrated marketing campaigns where everything is everywhere.
I encourage you to try to get 3 answers on Pam's list.

Can You Afford To Screw Up?

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Returning to the subject I spoke about in my last blog post, we are all customers at some point.
As marketers, the key to finding out what works, is often to take off the "marketer hat" for a while.

Can somebody tell me what's up with this "NON PHOTO LAW" that business owners keep imposing upon me?

I remember passing by DESIGUAL at Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona a few months and seing this really nice hoody that I immedeately knew would be perfect for a friend of mine.
So I picked up my iPhone, took a couple of pictures and before I had the time to even open up a new email to send it over to my friend, a man came up to me waving in front of me like a maniac. "No Photo No Photo!" To me that is like saying "No Business No Business" What are you, a non-profit organisation? You don't want me to recommend your hoody to my friend so he can stop by at your store after work to spend HIS money on YOUR product? Ok fine, I'll head over to ZARA instead.

Further more, what is there exactly to lose here, do you honestly think I'm going to sew up a similar sweater myself or sell the picture or...what?

Where I work there is really only one option to eat, Pans & Company. A rip-off of Subway I guess, but worse.
Today I bought a sandwich there and noticed they had introduced a new menue. Figured I'd take a picture and send to my colleague to tell her to come down and join me. Again, I barely had time to snap the photo before an angry lady popped up saying again "No Photo No Photo".
What did I do? I used the same photo to send to my friend, telling him "Gross, don't ever come to Pans&Company, food sucks and the service stinks".

When are businesses going to USE us to promote them instead of thinking they have any type of power trying to control what we the customers are doing.
You don't have ANY control anymore. What are you going to do with this blog post? What are you going to do with the hashtag #pans&companysucks? What are you going to do with my PICTURE? (I'm sure as hell gonna pin it!)
What are you going to do with an angry customer?

You have so much to win, and so much to lose. Heard of pinterest and instagram? Are you simply not interested in getting tons of traffic to your website or to reach new custumers through the most cheap marketing in the world = Word Of Mouth?

Focus on positive stuff instead of entering into a game that you simply can not win.

Pinterest Lets Me Dream

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:06:00 +0000

The articles about Pinterest and its success don't seem to ever slow down. Scanning through the daily summary from Mashable, 4 out of 20 articles mention Pinterest.

I always try to analyze from a personal user point of view, what it is that makes me sign up for a new network, click on an offer from a brand through Facebook, retweet a tweet or pin a picture.

Marketers too often think as...MARKETERS and I'd prefer to see myself as something in between the business and the public. A bridge, a communication channel, a facilitator.

I love Pinterest and I use it to express myself. I love sharing, I love the fact that Instagram makes me feel like a semi-professional photographer if only just for a minute. I love to have an audience on Twitter that find my information useful.
I'm certanly not the first one to say it, but what Pinterest makes me feel, is a sense of dreaming. On my Nature board I collect places, corners of the world where I would like to go, places that I want to remember, small moments outside in the nature that makes me feel close to nature, close to life.

Pinterest is not for every brand. But if you do have nice images, nice content that can inspire people, then do consider this network for your business.

I stumbled upon an interesting chart on Techchrunch this morning that I found interesting (now wearing the "Marketer hat").

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/pinterest-now-generates-more-referral-traffic-than-twitter-study/

Really rude people - They DO exist!

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:08:00 +0000

Today I'm making an exception on my Social Media topic blog. When I originally created this blog, it was supposed to be a place not only for social media topics but also a place for reflextions on cultural differences and experiences here in Barcelona. Today I go back to that topic, just one post.

Why I Share Your Content

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:33:00 +0000

A big part of the job of any community manager or social media manager is to aggregate other people's content.
Even if you're fortunate enough to have access to inhouse original content nobody really wants to listen to someone that's only talking about themselves so whatever brand you are, you should be looking for external content to some extent.
Too often I am surprised about the small mistakes that blog owners make and that inevitably makes me pass on their posts.

I program tweets and my social media tool allows me to quickly program tweets from my Google Reader. The tool makes a copy and paste of the Tweet text and shortens the link. Now, if your posts title is written in CAPITAL LETTERS THAT MEANS MY TWEET WILL BE CREATED LIKEWISE. I don't know about you but I don't like to scream at my followers. So I pass on all your blogposts just because of this simple mistake. Sure, I can (and often do) change the tweet text, but come on, every time?!
Secondly, the images. I was just about to post a great blog post to tens of thousands of Facebook fans, but the 10 predetermined pictures that Facebook gave me (and that utimately you have picked to feature on your blog) are all just selfpromotional pictures with zero relevance to the actual blog post.
Pass.

These are simple details that can make you gain thousands of visitors to your blog, new fans, followers and subscribers.
Take the time to make it right.

Opened Or Closed Facebook Wall

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0000

Social media should be opened, honest, a fluent conversation, lots of interaction, high engagement rates and transparency...right?
Well from the eyes of a Facerbook page administrator it's not always as easy as it seems.

I've been a fan of opened walls for a long time. I think it's nice to see when a brand invites people to post, not only comment on what the brand dictates should be on the wall.
I also assumed that the engagement rates of the brands with the opened walls would be much higher than the brands with closed walls...Until I did a bit of research.

I researched 30 brands and wrote down the Number of fans, the number of People Talking About the brand, calculated the Engagement rate and made a note on each brand whether their Facebook page wall is opened or closed to the public. I then highlighted the brands with an engagement rate higher than 10% in green.
Out of the 30 brands I researched the one with the highest engagement rate is Toyota. Second up is McDonalds and Third place goes to Nestle. All of them have their walls opened to the public.

However, what might come as a surprise is the low engagement rate on brands with opened walls such as Oreo and Skittles. And the relatively high rate of brands with closed walls, such as Nike, Adidas, Gucci, Luis Vuitton and Playstation.
Also note that two brands from the same industry, Playstation and Xbox have almost the same engagement rate even though one lets it's users post and the other doesn't.

Obviously there are more factors to take in consideration to extract some conclusion for this.
What content strategy is in place? Does the brand respond to people? How often do they post?

At the end of the day there are various things to take in consideration when deciding on the wall settings.

If you're a brand with millions of fans it's likely a hot space for spammers, advertisers and freeriders who all want to be in the spotlight if only just for a moment.
Does your brand have the resources to monitor the wall constantly and take actions when unwanted material is posted? If so, it could push up the engagement rate a bit to have your wall opened.
If you don't have those resources and you still choose to keep your wall opened, you MAY end up with something that looks more like a scribble wall instead of a professional Fan page.

The Source - Great Content

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:02:00 +0000

I read somewhere that we process more than 90% of our information through our eyes.
I also read that the most succesful piece of content on Facebook for brands are pictures.
I also know, from personal experience that about 70% of what I share online with my friends are pictures, the remaining would be videos.

Now I'm going to ask you a question, think about the content you see from the brands you follow on Facebook, what type of content do you actually care about?

I read somewhere that all people want from brands online are discounts but I don't buy that. Just think about it, I would say close to 80% of the brands I follow are based in America and they almost always have some type of location restriction on their contests and sweepstakes. That puts me on the "not qualified" list immedeately. So why do I keep following them? For great content of course.

Great content is unique.
Great content has a "wow"-effect.
Great content adds a smile to my face.
Great content makes me want to share.
Great content inspires me.

You want more fans, more followers, more channel views and subscribers on Youtube? Produce great content and the rest will come.

Look at companies that produce great content and you will see the number of fans resonates pretty accurately.

This also brings me to Pinterest which I love - For the great content I find there. For the visual experience, for the low maintenance.
For the focus on great content instead of the real-time urgency you have on Twitter.

------------------------

Related posts:
Why I Love StumbleUpon
3 Social Media Tools I Use daily

How Much HD Do I Need?

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:31:00 +0000

Yesterday while strolling around the streets of Barcelona, I stopped by one of those stores selling TVs, stereo equipment and cameras to check out the GoPro cameras.
Lately I've been watching too many crazy extreme sports videos, that in addition to starting the bike season with a couple of great excursions made me think I really should have one of those cameras that goes on top of your helmet.

Turns out the "new" version has not arrived yet to this store but either way I figure I'll investigate a bit about the differences of the "old" version (by old I mean like 6 months since it was released, no joke these guys put out new products faster than I change my socks).

The girl who helps me tells me that the new version shoots in HD. I'm confused, "Doesn't the old version also handle HD?" I ask thinking that if what I have seen the last months from GoPro is NOT HD then what the heck was it!?
"Yes it is, but this new one is even more HD". Yes, these are her exact words.
I'm even more confused. More HD? How much HD do I need? I'm fine with normal HD. I'm not going to show off my biking in a movie theatre any time soon.
"Oh, and it records in one stream instead of several smaller streams" the girl continues. I'm officially 100% off the track now.
I leave the store more confused than ever, wondering how many HD levels there are.
My conclusion is, if I don't know what the difference is in between HD and "more HD" and what it means to film in one stream then I probably don't need the new version.

I leave you this Sunday evening with a great video. As you can see, GoPro has a nice presence :-)
Happy Monday folks!

Experience Freedom from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

8 Keys For A Successful Social Media Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:22:00 +0000

People talk a lot about social media strategy these days.
It's not enough anymore to just have a community manager answering posts, uploading photos and tweeting. We need a plan, we need stability, we need a roadmap of where we want to end up.

Internal/External

The most common type of social media engagement is the external one. Facebook fans, Twitter followers and Blog posts all in its honor, but to build a house you need a steady base to build on.
Investing in social media should be a long term project and internal support is imperative.
Make sure your company understands social media before diving into it. Further more, make sure you have a commitment from people to treat social media as a priority.

Resources

This point is very related to my first point.
While finding out what support you have in your company, don't forget to see what internal resources you have.
Do you have access to a programmer who can help you make changes to your company blog? Do you have a designer that can once in a while help you out with transforming a photo in Photoshop and make it 10 times more sharable? Do you have people working in customer service that can help out with your Twitter support? Is there any writer savvy team members who would love to contribute to the blog?
Make a list of what resources you have in-house to later see what you need to go and find elsewhere.

Goals and objectives

I may be repetitive but the goals are a fundamental part of your strategy.
Is Twitter really right for your company? Does it make more sense to be on Pinterest?
What are you trying to achieve? Brand awareness, increase sales, loyalty campaigns, cost savings the list can be as long as you decide it to be.
I have been at companies where the main goal was brand awareness. Then a great content strategy, continuous engagement and contests online were important parts.
I have also been at companies who's sole objective was to increase sales. Then exclusive social media offers, a steady blog post with various integrated sales pitches and actively reaching out to potential customers were all parts of our day to day actions.
Goals are also necessary to establish KPI's. How are you going to measure your efforts? What is social media success to your company?

Learn from others

Social media is not new any more. There are thousands of case studys out there, so take some time to check out your competitors, benchmark well and read, try, learn, adapt and try again.

Location

Is your company a local store, a national enterprise or does it have an international presence?
Do you have representatives in other countries?
Do you have CUSTOMERS all over the world?
How many "hubs" do you have (places to drive traffic to).
Sit down and consolidate the already existing material out there. Do you have several Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that need to be merged? What's going to be your communication language? Do you have access to local content that can support a local Facebook page?
It's important to understand that one model does not fit every company and think long and hard about what online presence you should have in different locations.
If you have a worldwide audience you may need to do some research on what the most popular networks and platforms are at your other locations. Although Facebook and Twitter are big platforms in most countries there are many niche communities in different countries that could be much better for your business.

Communications

The core of social media is communications. It's about a two-way communication with your customer, making that fan into a brand evangelist. But it all starts with a connection and some type of communication.
Social media can belong to your marketing department if you want but whether you want it or not, the communications department will (and should!) be involved. Now, when forming your social media strategy, make sure you find out how the flow of communication works in your company.
Social media should make communications easier, not harder. Yet many companies struggle with finding a smooth flow of communications in between departments. Social media is fast. If you take 1 hour longer to answer your customer than your competitor does, you may loose that customer. This means you can't go through 3 people to get an answer when a customer is calling. You need to have access to the express line to the responsible person who can help you get an answer.
Your responsible person should be a centric role in your company, not isolated into one department. He or she should have direct access to the heads of each department.

Relationships

Social media is also about creating relationships. Once you start working in a company with social media you should make a digital rollerdex and take note on important Twitter followers, interesting blogs and contact information. Fill up your excel sheet or google docs spread sheet as you go, file important tags so that you later can go and export a list of contacts from a certain segment when you need to get your brand new infographic, viral video project or press release out to the digital world.

Content strategy

If you are an IT company selling printers, maybe photos may not be the sexiest type of content. However, videos may be a perfect match considering the opportunity to make tutorials and create helful and meaningful content.
If you are a bakery making cupcakes, photos may be the ideal type of content and platforms such as Instagram may be great places to showcase your beautiful cupcakes, while LinkedIn may not fulfill that many objectives.
Think long about this point. Don't waste resources, time and money pushing out all types of content to all platforms just for the sake of it. Pinpoint where your customer is and what he/she appreciates. How can you help your customer? How can you entertain him? How can you impress her?

What made me buy the ticket?

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:22:00 +0000

Tuesday reflections.

I fell for it. Advertising!
I am a living proof it works. But it was Youtube that made me buy the ticket, or was it?

Walking on the street a week ago I was suddenly faced with a big display ad on the side walk and Denzel Washington's eyes were staring at me. "Safe House. Premiere this Friday".
I'm a big fan of Denzel, especially "Bad Denzel", Training day Denzel makes me wonder why I ever left Los Angeles.
Entering Youtube 3 hours later the trailer literally throws itself at me and I press the repeat button 16 times. I also share it to everyone I know, posting it to all my social channels, sharing my passion for Denzel and his work. I even liked and rated the movie at IMDB before I saw it (!)

I keep saying it was Youtube that made me buy that movie ticket but the fact remains that I saw it first through a poster on the street. Also I have to admit I had no idea about this movie before I saw the ad.
If I wouldn't have been such a great Denzel fan or if I wouldnt spend so much time on Youtube I may not have seen the trailer. Would I have bought the ticket?

Why I Love StumbleUpon

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:21:00 +0000

A part from the fact that StumbleUpon is by far hands down the number one most important source to find quality content online right now, it is a GREAT traffic referral tool.
In fact, it drives more traffic referrals than any other social media site.

As an online marketer we all know that a Facebook post or needless to say a Tweet has an extremely short life span. A tweet lives for a few minutes, Twitter is fast, and I keep repeating the phrase that my ex-boss once told me "Twitter should be what CNN uses in their tag line, Be The First To Know".
Facebook have their own lovely alogithm that is supported by several likes, your interaction history with each user, time of posting e.t.c. A Facebook post may live for a few hours.
But after 24 hours your post is far down on any users newsfeed.
On StumbleUpon it keeps travelling.
A page shared on StumbleUpon has after 400 hours just gained half of the engagement it will ever get. A Facebook post reaches that point after about 3 hours.
2,5 million webpages are added each month to StumbleUpon. I personally added 15 in the last hour. That's the effect SU has on you, it makes you stick around, it's sticky, it's good.
Check out the infographic for yourself and install the browser toolbar and start adding your favourite webpages and blog posts!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/blog/the-lifecycle-of-a-web-page-on-stumbleupon

How To Become Your Customers Friend

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:37:00 +0000

It has to make sense. We can't run around trying to track every single Key Performance Indicator that we can extract from Social Media, in a desperate attempt to justify it's use. It's already justified.
When social media blew up a couple of years ago, everyone thought it was free. Now I think it's safe to say that most executives have realized it's NOT free.
Qualified manpower, applications for your fan page, blog tools, prizes for contests and monitoring tools all ads up.

It's a swift of doing business. It shouldn't be treated as normal business, cus it's simply not.
In traditional business you pay 10 euros for marketing and plan on getting 20 back within a short period of time.
Social media is first of all a complete change of mentality that very few have yet understood. Almost a type of friendship. Like us, belong to us, follow us, check in with us...For what?
The easy way would say, for building a base of people to blast your marketing at.
The different way of doing business model would say - To create a bond. To be human. To get into their lives and have them let you be a part of theirs.

When we make friends we are humble. We listen to our friends, we don't yell. We invite them for a coffee, and in return they invite us back next time. If they treat us well we invite them for dinner at our house and when they need our help, we are by their side.
Friendship is not about exploiting eachother, trying to get the best and most out of the other person.
And friendship IS a win-win deal at the end.
This is what you want to ashieve as a brand doing business in a new and innovative way. You want to get invited to your customers home (their Facebook wall or Twitter feed), you want them to have your back and be loyal when a competitor offers them a better price. You want them to genuinely like you. Not change you for the first best option.
How do you do that? Be genuin, be nice, don't rush for the sale, be human, always over perform and happily surprise your customer, apologize if you mess up...

A KPI should be Online Reputation Management. How are people talking about us online?
A KPI should be engagement metrics, how are people sharing our content online?
A KPI should be referal traffic to your hub (website)
A KPI should be returning customers.

The sales come later, and maybe they´re not even direct sales. People are 71% more likely to purchase based on social media referrals. Maybe a person checks you out on twitter and 3 days later makes a sale because they had you in the back of your head, they were familiare with you already.

So do you engagement, be a brand evangelist, create a champion persona of your brand online, and the rest will come...

Brand may not be social - But the customer is

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:25:00 +0000

"This is what social media is about!" I announced while stepping out of Mezzo Di Pasta exatcly 27 minutes ago. I haven´t even eaten there, ever.

Me and my boyfriend were on our way home after having had a great Friday dinner out in the best sushi restaurant in Barcelona, and almost at home we figured we should check out the new opened restaurant just 20 meters from our door. A fast food type of Mc Donalds place, but Italian.... Sounded interesting.
We stepped in and it was empty, bad sign.
My dad always used to tell me "Always check for the packed places". An empty place means nobody likes the place.. OR maybe people haven't discovered it yet? After all, this place was new, they just opened a few weeks ago.
To make a short story short, we walked up to the counter and explained that we were neighbors and just wanted to see what this place was all about.
A guy in this 20s behind the counter started sharing his passion for the brand and it was completely contagious.
We now know about all of the the company´s history and origin, menus, the combinations, the special deals, the fresh pasta and it´s ingredients and the cookies that seem extremely unique and tasty.
At the end the guy said: "You wanna have a taste just to know what we have here, for free?"
I was totally full after a huge dinner so I simply couldn't. But I walked out of there thinking, this guy is good, this guy is gonna make me come back for a take-away-coffee each morning from now on. This guy is going to make me write a blog post and THIS is what new business is about.
It´s not about Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. It's about treating your customers in a human and friendly way and having THAT behavior go viral.
Some companies may not even use social media, but the point is: Their customers are.

My Favourite Social Media Management Tool

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:23:00 +0000

This is the post I would have loved to read a few months ago. If you're looking for social media listening and monitoring tools, this post is my christmas gift to you :-)

When I started my current job I did a major reserach of social media monitoring tools.
I'm a big fan of aggregating content and having it on one place and being able to handle various accounts from the same base camp.
However it quickly turned into a nightmare trying out tools and discovering that my dads words "There is nothing called cheap" were true.
You get what you pay for, as always.

In my opinion there are 3 levels of these tools, and nothing in between, except for ONE; Sprout Social

These levels are: Free tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Rowfeeder e.t.c. The free
tools have one advantage, they're free. But just as I hesitate picking the cheapest tomatoes in the super market, I seriously doubt low prices. "Something's gotta be bad".

Free tools don't give you the amount of content availible online and they usually dont filter the relevant stuff.
They don't offer reporting, the ability to export data and create nice graphs that will make your boss think he understands social media.

In the middle level you find tools that have a price tag of in between 100-200 eur. These are usually tools that try to offer the same as the highlevel tools (600-1000 eur/month) but again, there is no cheap, something's gotta go.
I used PeopleBrowser for a while. Started out well and I liked it, until they raised the price tag from 70 eur to 400(!)

In my opinion what puts me off with many tools is the complexity and the technical failures that keep happening. They're often not stabil enough, you need to reload the page, sign in and out 10 times for them to get your data well. The interface is usually complex because they try to fit in as much as possible to show they offer an advanced tool with many of the same features as the Radian 6 or Meltwater Buzz tools.

To me it's about sophistication and simplicity.
Rather a few great things than many OK things.

So what does Sprout Social offer me that was different?

First of all there integration of Google Reader inside the tool. Can I just say one thing: Brilliant!
Gone are the days of copy paste links, importing them into hootsuite and then programming them into Tweets.
Above each news piece there is an "Expand" and "Share" button. Click share and program that tweet instantaneously.

Next thing I love is the Discovery tab. Here I set up my searches and can join conversations in the matter on a click, answer questions from people searching for my product or simply monitoring what people are saying.

The Report Tab is my Friday friend (Fridays I calculate the weekly KPI's). This is a great place to get a quick answer to the number of Mentions, Retweets and other valuable information. You pick the date range yourself and everything just WORKS and works WELL.

The MESSAGE tab has a neat feature under the Sent message sub tab which lets you see how many have clicked or engaged with your Tweets.

These are just a few things that make Sprout Social a great tool. Add to that a fantastic customer service center that helps you faster than you could ever expect.
I'm based in Spain and despite the time difference they always answer within a few minutes. I haven't even mentioned the iPhone app that works superb...

Price? For 2 "seats" (administrators) and the Delux plan we end up with a bill of around 80 usd/month. Well worth it!

Related posts:

Choosing a social media listening tool

3 tools I use daily

Flickr Or Instagram?

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:36:00 +0000

Those who know me may say I am anti-Flickr, and maybe I am.
I recognize Flickr as a specialized community for professional photographers and something for the "cool" people, the different "artsy" group who work at agencies and wear purple leggings and yellow glasses. (Joking...kind of)
But I don't see Flickr for us ordinary hobby photographers. I don't see it as the solution to set up a contest among main stream people. I am perfectly fine with Facebook and Instagram. Please add your comments below if you disagree and want to introduce me to the world of Flickr :-)

What Instagram was missing for a long time was the Android app. Flickr took an advantage of this fact and introduced the Flickr app for Android in the end of September 2011. A part from that it was clear that Flickr's owner Yahoo had a clear mobile strategy in mind. However, Yahoo is a big company, and big companys usually move slow. Istagram is smaller, more innovative and faster.

To me it's about the simplicity, the app, the interface and the hottness. Instagram comes out with new filters and features more often than I change my socks (almost).
Instagram is growing twice as fast as Flickr and claims to have more than 14 million users and a speed of 1,3 million photos uploaded per day. They launched in the end of 2010 and are already big in China too.
The app is availible in 10 languages. I like the tagging feature and there are various ways for brands to use Instagram.
According to Yahoo, Flickr advertising pitch page there are currently 51 million registered Flickr members. I'm registered but haven't used my account in a couple of YEARS so I take that number with a grain of salt. Keep in mind Flickr was launched in 2004, that's 50 million users in 8 years.
Instagram is growing with 2 million new users per month. Let's do the math: It will take Instagram less than 2 years to pass Flickr. (Based on Flickr neither gaining or loosing users).
I recommend you to read this great article from Social Fresh talking about Instagram as the largest mobile social network.

Here is a fun video that explains Instagram.

A Little Bit Of Customer Love...

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:41:00 +0000

...goes a long way.

We have a supermarket close to where we live. It's a Caprabo store in the middle of Barcelona and although they are not as big as the other stores they do have one really great thing - great people working there.

A few days ago I walked into the store with a friend and while walking in we were greeted by a friendly smile and a "Can I help you find something?"
Now, for you Americans, this is probably something very normal. I remember when living in Los Angeles I sometimes was thinking "Just leave me alone for once!"
In Europe though, or let me re-phrase that one - In Spain! You really don't bump into friendly workers in the grocery store. It's more likely you're going to have to beg someone to help you, or ask 10 people who all tell you to ask someone else. The fruit guy doesn't "know" where the milk is, he is just in charge of the fruit, duuh!

So anyway, this guy smiled at us and we were so shocked that we literally thought for a moment that maybe it was some type of practical joke going on. "Something is not right here" my friend said and had a troubled look on his face.

Yesterday we went back to the store and while signing the receipt the same guy smiled and asked us if he could help us with anything else and I suddenly couldn't stop myself: "You are such a nice person, do you know that?!" The guy smiled even more and told me some joke in catalan that I didn't really get but we all smiled and felt good inside.
And let me just admit one thing. When I walked into the store the first time it was only to check the price on something but because this guy was so friendly and spent several minutes trying to find what I was looking at, I simply couldn't walk out without buying something. So I bought a couple of small things (that I really didn't need) but this guy made me feel so welcomed and valuable that I wanted to return the feeling.

So here it is again, the people business, is highly profitable so let's try to adapt this mentality more!

The Social Media Department Of 2015

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:31:00 +0000

Social media KPI's, reach, channel views on YouTube, engagement metrics, unique visitors to blog, likes on content and brand mentions. A few years ago many of these expressions didn't even exist. Now they are hot subjects and important parts of a social media managers job.

But there is a big risk here that I want to pinpoint. A risk that I'm experiencing myself and that I see a lot of fellow community managers and social media team members facing and that is to get too caught up in these metrics.
We're still in a period of time where the social media departments often are not getting the right resources and right long term investment that's necessary for everyone to do their job well. The results can be creative people trying to do the creative work but faced with lots of other (important) tasks.
But should a blogger or a web designer do business analytics? Should a graphic designer do a P&L report? Should a customer service representative do Excel spread sheets about forecast projections?

My point is, that I think many social media departments are facing a difficult situation. Social media is a hot subject and most companies know they have to do something, and as much as possible, for as little resources as possible. Nothing new here.
The risk though, is that the creative blogger moves away from what he is good at, doing things that he is not good at, and the result is devastating. Less content in less quality and reporting eating up his time.
If the company is asking one person to do everything, the risk is that nothing will be done with excellence.

How do I see the optimal social media department of the future?
Let's imagine a medium size company, 100-200 employees.
Social Media usually falls under either marketing or communications but let's say the department head is the Social Media Director. Responsible for the team, reporting to the stake holders, calculating budget e.t.c.

1.) The community manager. Depending on the size of the company and how many languages need to be covered there could be the need for 1, 2 or 10 community managers.
The community manager is responsible for interacting with people, answering questions, searching for conversations and pitching the brand in the right way at the right time. Working closely with the customer service department. Maybe even having a second person in between, forwarding the complaints/issues/subjects that need to be adressed.
The community manager is sophisticated social media listening tools social media listening tools and reporting to the Social Media Director/Digital Director.

2.) The Social Media Manager being the strategist, doing strategical planning for the company's social media actions. Researching, planning and contracting the right tools, applications and services to execute the campaigns together with the community manager, being in charge of setting up contests and campaigns.
Also being a content strategist the social media manager should work closely with the bloggers of the company. The social media manager works closely with marketing, product and retail to integrate all campaigns in a timely manner.

3.) The Social media analyst, reporting to the stake holders about important metrics. Working closely with the agencies/services contracted to report on overall development. Working closely with the community manager and social media manager to optimize all channels for best business results. The social media analyst should also have access to listening tools but rather than being focused on Twitter or Facebook development, he/she should be looking at the website conversions and traffic.

4.) The blogger. This person could be external, or it could be a team of company bloggers.
5.) The SEO and link-expert. Working closely with the bloggers.
6.) The ad manager. Setting up Facebook ads, Promoted Tweets, working with SEM and Display marketing.
7.) The web programmer. Helping out with blog programming, being a consultant for services. Do we really need to hire an agency to develop this app or can we do it ourselves in-house?
8.) The online PR manager. Doing blog outreach. Having the online contacts, being the brand ambassador. Posting on other blogs, contacting influencers, setting up co-operation deals, finding the win/win situations.

Let's hope we're going in this direction so that everyone can focus on what they are good at, and therefor optimizing the time and results.

3 Social Media Tools I Use Daily

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:46:00 +0000

Be Awesome on Twitter is what Buffer promises us, and they do stick to their promise.

This brilliant app helps you together with the chrome plug-in to schedule great content in the moment you see it by a single click (ok, two clicks to be exact).

There are 3 price plans.
In the free plan you get to schedule up to 10 tweets.
I´m on the pro plan for $10/month which lets me buffer up to 50 tweets.
There is also a super version for 99/month which gives you unlimited buffering...
Why I like Buffer and what makes it special? I used to use Hootsuite but got tired of how time consuming it was copy/pasting the links into Hootsuite. This just let´s me schedule whatever great content I bump into.

Sprout Social
Great social media listening/management tool. Just started using it so I 'll write a more detailed post about it later on but it seems to give me exactly what I want - for the right prize. Approx 100€/month for
unlimited searches, several "seats" and a great scheduling message feature.

Stumble Upon
I use StumbleUpon to find great content. I find SO much great stuff that sometimes I stay up way to late stumbling and stumbling. I use the app on my iPad. The only thing I miss is the Bufferapp in the iPad!

The People Business - Highly Profitable

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 10:34:00 +0000

"Things change. People don´t"
"Companies don´t do business with other companies. People do business with people"
Two phrases that have stuck with me for years.

As human beings we have our personalities and our values. Those are difficult things to change.
Meanwhile we see the world as we know it, change around us every second. New apps, tools, ways of doing business pop up around us as we speak and we´ll pick them up, try them out, see what works...

Our basic values that most of us share, haven´t changed...and will not change. Things like wanting to be treated well, appreciating good customer service, wanting to be loved, smiling when somebody presents us a great deal.
But what have changed and even more - will KEEP ON changing is the environment, the place where we spend time, the places where we do business, the platforms we use, the approach we take.
Companies and businesses that don´t adapt these changes will lose, period. Companies that don´t understand the value of changing to meet the customers needs will go out of business.

As a customer I now have more choices where to spend my money than ever before. I can pick in between 100 types of cereals in the food market, 10 places to buy my cocktail dress, 20 different gyms to do my spinning lessons and hundreds of restaurants to have dinner on a Friday night.
Each of them can set up a Facebook page or a blog in a matter of minutes, but not each of them will show me that they care and that they are willing to step up for me as a customer. Far from all of them know how to change the way they do business to fit the customers needs.

It´s true that the customers are more in power than ever before, but we are still human beings with feelings and empathy. That said if a company surprises me and gives me something extra to do business with them I DO feel like I owe them a little bit of my time or money. It´s an opening to give me a first sweet taste of that the company is about, what´s their mentality, are they NICE PEOPLE?
Behind that desk is there a person doing her job just because of the monthly paycheck or is there harmony and love in this house?
That guy in the super market yesterday, who helped me find exactly what I was looking for, I simply COULD NOT walk out without buying something, even though my initial intention was to just have a look. He really wanted to help me find what I was looking for.

I got a free invitation to try out a new gym (DIR Tusets) the other day and not just that, the nice girl at the reception called me up and said I could come back and try it out for free again, anytime I wanted to!

On the other hand I bought a pair of 200 eur headphones (Beats By Dre) 2 weeks ago and signed a 3 year insurance with FNAC (where I bought the headphones).
A small accessory part that probably costs 5-10 eur (the ear hooks) broke in the moment of putting them on and neither the FNAC or the brand (MONSTER) offered any type of help. Makes it highly UNLIKELY I will recommend this brand or the store to anyone I know. Makes it LIKELY I will feel the need to spread the word to warn other customers by tweeting or posting on Facebook about it, remembering every time I pass the store "This place does not deserve my time or my money".

Think about the small cost for them to get my blessings and loyalty and the massive damage this treatment can cost them if they pass on me.
The gym will get my sweet words, a blog post and possibly a new customer.

The customers are in charge and we want basic things in a complex and technological environment.
The trick for businesses is to figure out that environment and combine it with the voice and atmosphere of people.

This is a mentality that businesses have to adapt.
It´s about the details, the small things, the points that make the business human. Because people do business with people.

5 Things To Remember When Setting Up A Video Contest

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:58:00 +0000

In my recent blog post How To Set Up A Video Contest I spoke about the back-office and set up of a video contest. Today I wanna give you some great advise for how to execute the contest. What to keep in mind and what I personally learned from own experience.

The Goal. Like with all social media campaigns you should first determine why you want to set up this contest.
Is it to get more subscribers on YouTube?
Is it to increase the channel views on your channel?
Is it to provide something great and fun for your audience?
Is it to impress share holders of the company?
Is it to make money?
Drive traffic to your website?
Whatever it is, write it down, speak openly about it and take notice on the status of the different channels BEFORE you launch the contest to be able to compare the results. How many fans do you have on Facebook, how many visitors to the blog and how many channel views and comments on Youtube for example.
Clear Instructions. Video may seem simple to you and me, but we are definitely not the average internet surfer. Provide clear instructions on HOW to participate. I'm not kidding you here. The last contest we set up we wrote down what formats we accepted and still the majority of the files uploaded were jpegs, docs, excels and power-points. Show HOW to participate with pictures. Make a dummy-guide.

People will likely imitate exactly what you have told them, so be creative in your examples and if you can - provide more than one example. Another point here ts to make it EASY for people to participate by not requiring any specific great quality. Let people film with their cell phones and you will make their life's much easier and you'll receive many more videos!
The Prize.Make it something good. If you can't afford it, then you're better of not launching a video contest. It will be more work than benefits because not a lot of people will enter the contest. An iPad, a laptop, a trip, a great gift-card for something online are some attractive prizes. If you can also provide something small for the first 100 participants that's a big plus. In our case we gave away 5eur gift-cards on Amazon to the first 100 people.
The Promotion.Make sure the whole company knows about the contest. Everyone should help promoting it, in their email signatures, to their friends, through their Twitter accounts. Post the contest on your Facebook page, your blog, website, Twitter account and keep posting somewhere on a daily basis.
The Legal Stuff.Make sure the company's lawyer takes a look at the legal notes and make sure you are covered for all types of incidents. Even if putting in there that you have the right to change the rules may sound ridiculous it can be helpful when you bump into something completely unexpected. However, this situation should be avoided and could obviously create a bunch of bad noise and upset people so it's just an emergency case option. Count on people getting upset about their video not having the same success as other participants videos. Make sure you are very clear that you won't accept any double voting, friend campaign-commenting to win and that you have the right to disqualify anyone breaking the rules.

Like a last point I would say, LEARN. Your first contest won't be perfect but take note about what you could have done better and keep it for the next time.

Have fun and Good Luck!

How To Set Up A Video Contest

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:01:00 +0000

We speak a lot about Facebook and Twitter contests and there is tons of information to find on the web about applications, rules and "how to's".
Video and photos are the most popular consumed medias, they reportedly gives you the best edgerank on Facebook and spark the best engagement according to both Facebook Insights and other analytic programs. Yet there is little information to find about HOW to set up a video contest.

I know 4 ways to set up a Youtube contest, maybe you know more ways, if so please comment on this post and share your experience!
First of all you can go through an application, such as Wildfireapp or Easypromos. It's pretty easy, not expensive but the downside is that if your goal is to increase the channel views on your Youtube channel, that's not going to happen with this option. An application let's the users leave their video url from the users channel. Also making it crucial for the participants to set up a youtube account if they don't already have one. Important is to make it easy to enter the contest and to not make it complicated or ask for too much.

Second option is to build a microsite or an interface for your website that lets people upload there videos. Great option but could be expensive I imagine.
Third option is to go through Youtube and pay thousands of euros (I read 5000 in youtube's help forum) for a custom made page that let's people leave upload there videos. Flashy, beautiful, easy and... EXPENSIVE.

But there is another option that we used recently that I really want to recommend.
Sharefile offers a service similar to an FTP server, a customized upload form and a back-office where you can see and download the videos and then manually upload them to your youtube channel. 50-60 eur/month depending on how many videos you expect to receive (how much space you need). Cheap and works great!

In my next post I will give some tips on the actual video contest.
Have a great weekend!

Fun tool for engaging posts!

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:43:00 +0000

I just saw this great post by KLM on Facebook. Guess the picture. So simple and 260 comments and 226 likes in 2 hours. Not bad.
Made me start to think about engaging posts and I found this great puzzle maker.
Give it a try!

provided by flash-gear.com

Priority: Awareness Metrics

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:06:00 +0000

How to measure the improvement of our Blog posts, Facebook posts and Tweets is a hot subject.
Many blogs write about Reach measurements, Awarness metrics and social media ROI is on everybody's mind. The number of options to measure social media seem to be more than the number of coffee combinations on Starbucks.

My personal opinion is that we complicate things too much in life and in business. The most simple things in life are usually the most genious and effective.

Here are 3 questions and 3 answers that can be applied to more or less any business.

1. Why are we going to be active in social media?

2. What platforms are appropriate for our business (Where are our custumers?)

3. What can we offer our audience through our social networks that we can't offer elsewhere?

How to measure our activities

Reach
Why measure reach? Well to be frankly honest this is the only number most executives ask for and you need to be able to tell how many people are in your brand community. But Reach has a minor value to real business. Reach on Twitter doesn't say much. Having 10.000 followers could mean 10 people saw your tweet and one retweeted you to his 10 followers where not a single one of them continued your tweets journey. But hey, this is a metric that we currently can't escape from so let's throw it in there.
Number of Likes on Facebook
Number of Followers on Twitter
Number of unique visitors on Blog

Awarness

Now we're talking reactions. Much more important in my point of view than Reach. This is where we see HOW people are reacting to our posts. Do they like us? Hate us? Want more/less? Can we help them?
Applause rate (read this post for some more details)

Number of comments per blog post
Number of retweets per tweet
Number of shares and likes per Facebook post
Number of +1s

Economic ValueEvery companys goal is different and here is where you need to set up goals in Google analytics.
What is a conversion for you and your business? Is it a sign-up form for newsletters? Is it a business transacion (that somebody actually buys something on your website) or is it lead generation (somebody requesting more info about your product?) Depending on your goals this can all be measured through GA.
Is your business offline? Do you sell chocolate bars in a store or cupcakes in an airport? Well then a suggestion would be to measure social-coupons. Make "only social-media offers" such as offering your customers a free coffe in exchange of a password only availible on Twitter. Count how many came in with the code and compare it with a day/week where you didn't have the campaign. This will definitily boost both Reach, Engagement and Economic Value.

That's it for today!
Cheers

New Facebook Insights

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:05:00 +0000

We Social Media Marketers are always looking for new, better and more efficient ways to measure our campaigns that we launch through platforms like Twitter, Youtube or Facebook to name a few.

Recently Facebook introduced a new version of Insights (Facebook’s own analytics package for fan pages). These are great news for us social marketers and just recently I attended a webinar hosted by Wildfireapp to get a better idea of what to expect from the new Insight.

The main goals with this update are to understand the performance of your page and learn what type of content really works.
The new dashboard is availible for all page admins, however if you’re more than one admin the one who accepted the first “test” may be the only one seing it. In my case I was the lucky one

In the graph to the right you can first see the“Total number of fans” which is nothing new. But right next to this you will likely smile. “Friends of fans” represents the potential reach of your fan page. It’s the number of fans of the page AND the friends of your fans. In our case we have a potential reach of more than 2 million people.

Obviously it’s going to be hard to reach all of them unless you know the perfect formula to end up in the news feed for each one of your fans AND create such compelling content that all of them decide to interact with your page.

We move further to the right and see “People Talking About This” and this is a true engagement metric. This gives you the number of people who have interacted with your page, liked, commented, shared, checked in e.t.c in the last 7 days.
Last we see “Weekly total reach” which means the number of unique people who have seen any content associated with the page in the last 7 days.

If we scroll down a bit we´ll come to my favourite part. Here is the place to really see what resonates with your audience. Does a post that ends with a question generate more engagement than a post with a statement? Does your audience prefer videos or pictures?

The first metric I have highlighted here is “Reach”. It’s the number of unique people who’ve seen the post. So even if we have 10.000 fans it doesn’t mean that all of them are going to see our posts.
Secondly is the one I would pick as my absolute personal favourite, “Engaged users”. It’s the number of unique people who’ve engaged (clicked) on your post.
At the end of the day, this is what we should try increase as much as possible.
The number of fans means nothing if they just ignore our posts!

“Virality” is also interesting. Here we see the number of unique people who’ve created a story about the post as a percentage of the number of unique people who’ve seen it. This is a great place to compare different posts.

Let’s craft better posts!

My opinion is that this should help marketers to know better what works and what doesn’t work with their fans. This will help us craft more relevant and engaging content that will spark more activity and at the end hopefully we will manage to turn that activity into real business.

The Essence Of Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (SocialSavvy) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:58:00 +0000

I was accused of not understanding the "essence" of social media the other day. Yepp that's right and I have never been so happy and proud of what should have been a negative comment in my life!
Why? Because it means I'm not the intern posting the flavor of the day cupcakes to a company blog anymore. I'm not anymore limited to explaining Social Media as something JUST intangible.
I'm also now capable of thinking in business, back-office and reality.

The person referred to me as thinking too much in business and not enough in the intangible form.

I don't know math really well, I kind of suck at Excel and I'm not a great swimmer. But I do understand social media.

What is social media really? The word implies it's something social and it's media, what's that really? Photos? Web? Music? "Media" could be a lot of stuff.

So here is my take on it and I'll round up with a conclusion of why I think social media can't just be flower power love and peace.

Social Media to me is a new (well not really anymore!) environment where the customer rules.
It's a new way of doing business in a BETTER way.
It makes companies improve, in everything from the way they treat their customers and the quality control of their products, to the experience offered to the customer and the way we let them consume our product (on their terms).
Social Media is boring made fun. It's bad made good.
Social Media is feelings and emotions.
Social media is responsibility and attention. Social media is technology but it's even more humanizing.

Now, bearing all of this in mind, social media is not free and it takes man-power to handle.
It takes qualified manpower and qualified manpower is not cheap.
I sometimes see these job offers of companies looking for a community manager and offering 20-30K/month and it's so obvious the company doesn't get it yet.
Qualified manpower take their job seriously and they know the company is investing and that usually means the company expects to see some type of return of investment...at least AT SOME POINT.
Social media is NOT just posting on Facebook and tweeting. A social media job implies making carefully thought-through strategies, having very clear goals and objectives and being able to report on those.

Crafting engaging blog posts about the best place to buy mozzarella cheese or why visit the Eiffel tower all in it's honor, but always with awareness of what this post, this campaign, this investment brings to the company.
YES if the goal is to create good-will, great positive sentiment and positioning the company as THE hub for information then let's focus on these things but keep in mind it may take a long time to see those monthly salaries, application costs, contest budgets make their way back into the company.

Here is the thing. The general budget for social media is still not huge. In fact it's pretty small.
And unless you're Starbucks with 40 people full time doing ONLY social media, the resources may not allow you to only bear in mind good-will.
Even more, the boss may ask you to report where those dollars for that Facebook contest or Blog design are entering back into the company. Sorry to break it to you, but the fact of the matter is that most of them won't understand your beautiful explanation of how amazing this is for the online climate and how the brand is being perceived in a positive way.

Folks, let's never turn social media into something that it's not. Let's never forget that the customer is and should be in the center. Let's understand it is an organic channel and should take time and effort to nurse, grow and expand.
But let's also be professional. Let's invest money in the right people to handle social media, then let's give them the right tools to create the greatest experiences for the customer, but then let's also make them accountable for their actions and ask for tangible results.

Do I or do I not understand Social Media?