Social Media Agency London Manchester UK

This Week in Social

Liam — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:33:41 +0000

Twitter testing auto-translate

As more Twitter users flock to the site worldwide, it’s only natural that the social network roll out an option that allows you to read tweets beyond your native language. Twitter is experimenting with a new feature that automatically translates tweets into various languages with the help of Bing Translator. A Twitter spokesperson said that it started to roll out the feature to a handful of users last week to help members better connect and interact with others, regardless of language.

Websites can now block people Pinning items

Pinterest may be an Internet hit — especially with U.S. women and Facebook CEOs but not all companies want to ride the pinboard wave of referral traffic. Now Pinterest has released code for companies that want to block the pinning of content from their sites to personal pin boards. Companies can copy and paste this code into their websites, prompting a message with each pin attempt that states: “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

Man City Player to host post match interviews on Social Media

Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany is to take part in what the club is describing as the Premier League’s first post-match interview to take place on Twitter and Facebook. After the final whistle of City’s clash with Blackburn this Saturday, the skipper will face the media as usual. But this time it will be fans posing the questions. The club’s supporters are being offered the chance to grill the Belgian international by tweeting their questions to @vincentkompany and using the hashtag #askvincent.

Eurostar to include social media updates on new ‘live’ adverts

Eurostar is to include comments and pictures from Facebook and Twitter in its new ‘real-time’ outdoor advertising campaign launching this week. The Eurostar Live platform goes live across 363 digital screens in London and the South East on 23 February. These screens will feature ads for Eurostar’s service to Amsterdam via Brussels combined with as many as 4000 tweets and Facebook updates each day.

The train operator claims it is the first major brand to integrate real-time social media messages with large-scale advertising.

Continue reading this story here.

We are a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

Facebook’s New Premium Ads

Liam — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:54:59 +0000

With the imminent arrival of Facebook’s new Premium ads we thought we would give you an update on any other changes to the ad platform.

Feature Stories

Facebook is beginning to roll out advertisements into your news feed. If you like a page on Facebook, you may see their ads pop up in your general news feed. The ad will be marked as “featured.” Having ads in the news feed will likely increase engagement. You may see you reach and your “people talking about this” number rise.

90 character ads

Formerly 135 characters, Facebook ads will be cut down to 90 characters by the end of the month. This is great for Facebook since now they will be able to fit in more ads. This is challenging for marketers since now we will have to fit our copy into an even smaller space! Well Facebook, we are up for the challenge!

Mobile Ads

Once an ad-free zone, Facebook will not be implementing advertisements on the mobile app. Because of the small screen, it would be hard to feature ads off to the side so we will likely see mobile ads as “featured stories.” Mobile ads are rumored to launch as early as March.

Action (Open Graph) Ads

With the integration of so many apps (Spotify, Pinterest, Washington Post Reader, etc.) users can listen, pin, read, and more. All these gestures post right to your ticker and the potential for sponsored stories are endless. A band can have a sponsored story that says “listen” to this, and a publisher can encourage user to “read” a particular story. It is important to note that this is a limited test with a small number of marketers. Also, there is no timetable for when these Sponsored Stories might be available to the public.c

We are a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

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Social Media from the Frontline: Jen Rankine

mycleveragency — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:05:45 +0000

Welcome to the latest “Social Media from the Frontline”. This time, we hear from Jen who is a Social Media Co-ordinator at Schuh shoes. If you fancy getting involved in our next Frontline drop us a tweet @mycleveragency.

NAME: Jen Rankine
COMPANY: Schuh
ROLE: Social Media Co-ordinator
TWITTER HANDLE: @schuhshoes (@Censored_Pixel – personal)
FACEBOOK URL: http://www.facebook/com/schuhshoes

MY SELF

I started in Schuh as a fresh faced graduate a year and a half ago as a sales assistant. Without sounding majorly gushy, my plan was to get their head office and a year later my position was advertised. Since that glorious day, I can now be found in the marketing department working with the guys on new ways to grow our Facebook and Twitter communities, helping customers out with their queries, on the floor taking photos of new products or scribbling competition ideas down on Post-It notes.

Presuming my maths is pretty accurate, I’ve only been working officially in social media for 6 months but I’ve been here, there and everywhere for a good number of years. Remember Neopets? Yeah… well technically it all started there. I found myself managing ‘Guilds’ and to further add to the shame, I checked the other day to find I had celebrated my 10th anniversary on the site*. On a more mature level, I’ve been on pretty much every social network that’s been kicking around but now my feet are firmly grounded in Facebook and Twitter.

*FYI – I haven’t been on it in years.

MY LIKES

Best things in social media? No day is the same and you stumble upon some awesome characters who love your brand. Plus there are no set rules. I get to try out new ideas which previously couldn’t be done through traditional methods and see the results instantly. In other words, I enjoy a good chinwag and solving peoples conundrums.

There’s two brands who I love to see updates from. The first is Innocent Drinks. Who else could post a picture of a cat hugging a baby and get 1,520 likes, 210 comments and 692 shares? To put it simply – they are geniuses. My second is my local tex-mex restaurant, Illegal Jack’s. They respond to any question/query you might have and will engage in witty banter at the drop of a hat.

If I’m not nosing through other brands pages, I can be found on Imgur or Tumblr laughing at cats doing funny things.

MY DISLIKES

There’s not much I don’t like but one thing that does bug me is self proclaimed, know-it-all social media gurus. There is no such thing! We’re working in an environment which is constantly changing – it’s not possible to know everything.

The new Tweetdeck. Thankfully the new abomination didn’t replace my old version so I still have access to all the functions that I actually use. Yeah, thanks for that one Twitter!

Automated postings from Twitter to Facebook. I have no idea why I don’t like this but as far as I’m concerned Twitter is for your random updates/spam and Facebook should be for more in-depth postings. It’s also lazy. I’m also not much of a fan of GetGlue telling me what you’re watching, people re-tweeting who Follow Friday’d them and One Direction/Beiber fans taking over the Trending Topics.

Ok, so I lied when I said there’s not much I don’t like so whilst I’m at it, Facebook requests for Farmville!

MY TIPS

It’s a dramatic learning curve for all brands whether they’re new or old hands at social. When something new comes along, take the time to learn about it and figure out if it’s useful for your community. Not everything is and I’ve seen a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon of certain things that have no benefit to them whatsoever.

Get to know who your customers. They follow you for a reason so show/tell them what they want to see/hear! And whatever you do, don’t ignore them! This is a channel of communication and they are looking at you for the answers. Provide with them and you’ll have a happy community. Whilst I’m on this soap box, don’t hide anything negative. Every company makes mistakes and as long as they are dealt with in the best way possible, your customers will (hopefully) see that you are only human. I never trust a company that only ever has positive comments left, right and centre.

If you’re looking at Twitter, use listening tools. Even basic (and free!) ones such as Tweetdeck have a search option which show you what people are saying about your company. Complaints can often fester on Twitter but you can swoop in like the hero you are, solve their problem and turn their frowns upside down.

MY PREDICTIONS

I honestly have none. As I said earlier, it’s a constantly changing environment which can often be fickle. The only thing I’m sure about is the use of social plug ins. Expect to see them on a lot more websites in the very near future. Oh, and be cautious of Google+. Whilst they say they have 90 million users, how many of them do you think actually check their accounts. Here’s some homework – go ask your friends how often they log on and you’ll have your answer.

mycleveragency is a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

Is Facebook commerce dead??

Liam — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:22:14 +0000

JC Penney, Gamestop and GAP are among a group of companies who are shutting down their stores on Facebook, as they find that they’re not generating the revenue that justifies the investment in time and money. Gamestop opened their store on Facebook to generate sales among their 3.5 million ‘fans’ but is now shutting down, after just 6 months.

Given that very little sales were being processed through this channel, it would suggest this is the right business decision. Many commentators are also deeming F-commerce as a complete flop, due to the lack of sales and are claiming that Facebook “isn’t a place to sell”.

Sure, as consumers we are adapting to new ways of doing business online quickly, as we keep up with the change of pace in technologies that facilitate this, but shutting down a store on Facebook after six months seems a bit extreme. People seem to forget that Facebook is a very young company and that both brands and consumers are still figuring out the best way to make it work for them and what they are/aren’t comfortable doing on there.

At the moment people don’t seem ready for F-commerce. There are trust and privacy issues that are preventing people breaking down the barrier to buying products through the social networking site. So at the moment I really think that Facebook won’t ever make it as an e-commerce platform, instead it will be an endorser, getting people to talk about and share rather than buy.

We are a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below.

This Week in Social

Liam — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:19:05 +0000

Facebook to launch verified accounts

Facebook will start offering some users the possibility to verify their accounts. The feature will start as invite-only, allowing public figures (in the beginning, only users with high subscriber counts will be invited) to change their account to a verified status. Once the account is verified, it will appear more frequently in the “people to subscribe to” list. Twitter launched verified accounts back in 2009, and Google+ launched a similar feature shortly after launch. However, unlike Twitter’s version of this feature, Facebook won’t display any sort of badge on verified accounts – a somewhat odd decision, since having a way to distinguish the real person from impostors is precisely why this feature is useful to most users. Instead, verified users will have the option to display a nickname (Facebook normally requires all users to use their real name) instead of a real name, or have their real name places in parentheses.

Facebook’s New Button

Facebook have slyly rolled out a new button on brand Pages….the “Add to Map” button. The option allows users the chance to create a post that will show up on their map as well as their Timeline. While users normally say there at a location when they’re actually there via mobile, this feature allows them to add in location retrospectively, allowing users to flesh out their Timeline.

Continue reading this story on our blog.

New Version of Twitter, for everyone

In December, Twitter launched the new version of Twitter. It’s been avaialbe for phones, via the mobile web, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, and they have been slowly rolling it out across Twitter.com. Now, this rollout has finished so everybody will see the new version.

If you’d like to know more about the changes to Twitter click here.

Twitter Launches it self-serve ad platform

Twitter is now accepting sign-ups from small businesses that want to participant in its self-serve ad program. The sign-up process is now live, just click here to sign up. In a promotion with American Express, Twitter offering a $100 credit for free advertising to the first 10,000 businesses that register — you just have to accept American Express cards, or be a cardholder yourself. Oh, and the sign-up process also requires you to follow American Express on Twitter.

Continue reading here.

We are a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

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Facebook’s New “Add to Map” Button

Liam — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:32:25 +0000

Facebook have slyly rolled out a new button on brand Pages….the “Add to Map” button.

The option allows users the chance to create a post that will show up on their map as well as their Timeline. While users normally say there at a location when they’re actually there via mobile, this feature allows them to add in location retrospectively, allowing users to flesh out their Timeline but more importantly, it gives businesses and brands another opportunity for people to check-in to their places, and gain further exposure.

See the following screenshots for a look at how “Add to Map” works.

A publisher window pops up that allows you to comment, tag your friends, date of the visit and choose who sees the post.

The post shows up on the map as alongside other locations.

If somebody tags you at place you will receive a notification that says ” Person X said they were with you at Place Y”

This is how it looks in other people’s News Feeds.

Could this be the beginning of Facebook’s rolling out Timeline for brand Pages? Possibly, because the way Facebook are attempting to make location a big part of their future, this seems to be a progressive state. On personal profiles, the more check-ins there are to a place or city the larger the circle becomes on a map. This would work extremely well for brands, especially those will multiple locations i.e. Starbucks. Of course, we still don’t know if Timeline will be rolled out to brands, or what it might look like, but this seems to be a step towards it. Roll on the 29th and the Facebook Marketers Council, to put us out of our misery!!

We are a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

Get Your Google +1 Button’s

Social Media from the Frontline: Sarah Drinkwater

mycleveragency — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:34:37 +0000

Welcome to the latest “Social Media from the Frontline”. This time, we hear from Sarah who is Community Manager at Google Places (London). If you fancy getting involved in our next Frontline drop us a tweet @mycleveragency.

NAME: Sarah Drinkwater

COMPANY: Google

ROLE: Community Manager for Google Places London

TWITTER HANDLE: @sarahdrinkwater/@googlelondon

Myself:

I’ve been at Google since November 2011, working across social media, editorial content and offline/online events and promotions to engage Google Places users and help them rate and review their favourite places in London. Before that, I ran Qype’s UK community team and worked as a community manager for Nokia and, before that, I was a journalist for everywhere from The Guardian to Glamour.

My likes:

Essentially, community managers are the middle man between the product or service and those who use it – it’s a brilliantly varied job. On any given day, I could be planning a fun event, chatting about bars on social media or interviewing site users for our blog. I love meeting and working with new people and, in terms of my particular job, I love supporting indie businesses, whether that’s working on an event so other Londoners can discover them, or just featuring them online.

My most inspiring sites and companies change all the time but, right now, I’m loving Pinterest – check out my friend Eamon’s boardofagencyrhymingslang – and my all-time favourite agency Poke, who I think produce brilliant creative work.

My dislikes:

I’m not mad on people who label themselves ‘gurus’, ‘early adopters’ or ‘ninjas’, but hopefully this is dying out as the industry matures.

My tips:

For wannabe community managers or social media managers: start a blog because that will help you learn how to write, edit and promote yourself, plus a little HTML goes a long way! I’d advise brands to be graceful; remember your next potential customer will see how you treat your current customers online. Respond to feedback whether it’s good or bad, and you won’t go far wrong.

My predictions:

Making predictions about the Next Big Thing ties in a bit too strongly with my ‘early adopter’ answer for my liking, so I guess I’ll just say this: in such a saturated social media landscape, I think we’re going to see more networks, or networks within sites, defined by interest in the future. Whether that’s around comic books or finding somewhere to go for craft beer, I don’t know…

mycleveragency is a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

This Week in Social

Liam — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:15:33 +0000

Facebook launches enhanced photo theatre

Facebook launched a new version of the pop-up window box users interact with when they click on a photo in the news feed. Facebook also calls this the “Photo Theatre”. The biggest change is that the photo info, admin, and comments section has moved from below the photo, to the right-hand side of the photo. The goal here is to increase engagement for photos by displaying comments above the fold.

You can now Tweet by Satellite

Twitter has announced a new partnership with major satellite providers to give their subscribers access to Twitter SMS, the original text-based Twitter service. According to a statement released Thursday, the company has partnered with Iridium and Thuraya, the world’s two largest satellite providers, to increase the number of people that can use Twitter SMS worldwide.

Continue reading on the twitter blog.

Facebook’s Open Graph Sponsored Stories

Starting this week, Facebook is allowing advertisers to pay for more exposure of listen, read, or watch stories that mention them by turning the stories into a new form of Sponsored Story ads. Open Graph action Sponsored Stories could further Facebook’s goal of turn all ads social, and boost revenue by filling the new inventory from Facebook now permitting Sponsored Stories ads in the news feed. Previously, advertisers could only turn actions taken by users on their own Pages, apps, and places into Sponsored Stories. This excluded plenty of advertisers whose content was being interacted with through apps owned by others.

If you’d like to read more, click here.

LinkedIn has 150 million users

LinkedIn on Thursday announced it has 150 million members in its network, a 20 million increase since November. The figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued Thursday announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. LinkedIn adds around 10 new members every 5 seconds, according to LinkedIn’s senior vice president of product Deep Nishar.

Social Media Wars: Attack of the Clones

Liam — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:40:06 +0000

Pinterest is now the big cool toy that everybody wants to use but how far are other websites willing to go to be like Pinterest? There are several copycats, the biggest being Pinspire, but others are jumping on the social cataloguing bandwagon. A brief list of some of these copycats (and their statements) are below:

Stylepin “Pinterest for style.”

Gentlemint – “Gentlemint is a mint of manly things.”

Thinng – “Create lists, add the Thinngs you love and post directly to Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter instantly.”

GetBega – “Remember everything you love.”

We’ve decide to focus on Pinspire as there is very little difference between itself and Pinterest. This obviously isn’t the first time a website has had a copycat and once again it comes from those clever Samwer brothers. The name may sound familiar to you and it should, they have been developing copycats of popular sites and selling them off since 1999, when they sold Alando to eBay for $50 million. More recently, they started and sold GroupOn clone CityDeal to GroupOn and Zynga clone Plinga to Zynga.

One of the keys to the success of Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based incubator the brothers founded, has been identifying websites that have taken off in the U.S. but don’t yet have strong global followings. The brothers launched the clone as a beta in November, and if history is an indicator, will hold it just long enough to develop a loyal, overseas following. Already valued at more than $200 million, Pinterest remains in invite only mode, which is one of the ways Pinspire is trying to one-up its look-alike competition.

More Clones

Founded by the guy who created Twitpic, Heello doesn’t just look like Twitter. It works exactly the same, just renaming tweets as pings, retweets as echoes and followers as listeners.

Yammer is a networking tool for business. Rather than re-invent the wheel on group communication, Yammer chose to emulate Facebook‘s user interface and functionality. And when we say emulate we mean blatant copying.

Final Thought

The hardest thing to do is to come up with that unique/original idea that people haven’t tried before. So why should companies be happy about other people just coming along a ripping off their whole idea and just rebranding it?

Once you start looking, it’s not hard to find rip-offs. At best, they can be seen as homages but at worst, the are just stealing ideas. Still, there’s a difference between borrowing some core design ideas and wholesale imitating. In social media, where the essential premise of connecting and sharing with your friends provides a basic architecture, perhaps the line between the two is blurrier than in other fields. After all wasn’t Facebook called a MySpace clone?

What are your thoughts on these clone sites?

We’re a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .

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What are Google+ Hangouts?

Liam — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:50:23 +0000

With the increasing ‘popularity’ of Google+ Hangouts we thought we’d give you the chance to understand them a bit better and walk you through how to start a Hangout, how to invite people and the sharing capabilities of Hangouts.

We’ll start with the easy question, “What is a Google+ Hangout?”

Hangouts are the best way for you to say, “I’m online and want to hangout!” and they let you:

Use live video chat that puts you in the same room together!
Coordinate plans, whether it’s working on a project or meeting up for coffee.
Maybe you’re bored. Start a hangout, invite your circles, see who’s around!

No one owns a hangout. That means that anyone in the hangout can invite anyone else. So while your hangout could start with a group of people that you know, it could evolve into a completely different crowd.

“How do i start a Hangout?”

This part is really simple you can either go to plus.google.com/hangouts or simply click the Start a Hangout button on the side of your stream (like in the image below).

You’ll be taken to a “green room” where we’ll help you get your camera set up and choose additional circles or individuals to add. No one can see you while you’re in the green room. Once you click the Hang Out button your video feed will be broadcast.

Now to add some more people to your Hangout. Click Invite at the top of the hangout window, add the circles or people you want to share with, and click Invite.

Want to share a YouTube video with your hangout?

Everyone can watch YouTube videos together in a hangout. Just click the YouTube button. Then search for and select a video that you want to watch as a group. Anyone in the hangout can play, pause, or change a video.

To cut down on echos, everyone is muted by default while the YouTube player is open. You can click the Push to Talk button underneath the video to talk.

The volume control of the YouTube player is specific to each person. That means you can set what volumes you are comfortable with without affecting other people in the hangout.

If you mute the YouTube video, the Push to Talk button will disappear and your mic will be activated.

If you un-mute your mic, the YouTube video will be muted.

Screensharing? Easy!

Screen sharing lets you give other people the ability to see what’s on your computer screen. For example, if there’s a picture open on your computer screen, meeting participants can look at it without having to download anything.

To share:

Click ‘Screenshare’ at the top of your screen
In the window that pops up, choose your desktop or choose the window you want to present
Click ‘Share Selected Window’

You can stop sharing your screen at any time by clicking Screenshare again.

The jury is still out on Google+. There remains a general sense of worry that the Pages offering, though compelling in some respects, does not offer enough new value to truly compete with Facebook and Twitter, as a haven for corporate social media. With Hangouts though, Google are onto a winner. At this moment in time Facebook don’t look like they are able to compete with the Hangout, simply because it would require a total overhaul of Skype. Does Facebook have the power to do that? Probably not. So for the time being Google+ finally has something better than Facebook.

Are you a fan of Google+ Hangouts? Let us know your thoughts in the comments….

We’re a full service social media agency. Check us out on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. Please leave your comments below. . .