Blog post written by Anders Mikkelsen, Analyst at Mindjumpers

As brands invest increasing budgets on social media and Facebook in particular, the demand for a solid correlation between overall business goals and a Facebook strategy with KPIs corresponding to business goals increases as well.

In this blog post I will share some practical thoughts from the skilled brand strategist Oliver Blanchard on how to align higher business objectives with social media goals and relevant KPIs. I will then show two examples of how brands and NGOs can use Blanchard’s thoughts and framework to structure their Facebook setup.

How to choose your brands Facebook KPIs – A practical approach
Oliver Blanchard’s book Social Media ROI from 2011 is one of the best contributions to the social media field yet seen. In this book, Blanchard shows how to align your brands’ overall business goals with your social media goals. He suggests that brands should always begin their social media performance by asking themselves what their overall business objectives are, and what their business targets are in numbers. Then he suggests that brands should dig deeper and decide their strategy and tactic on social media with a focus on these business goals. Finally, they need to measure if their tactics are successful by using some efficient and relevant KPIs. Sounds difficult? Not really… Below I’ve shown Blanchard´s framework in a simple up-to-down table to sum it up:

Yada yada yada – just show me how it’s done instead of theorising
Fair enough, I will do so by using two Danish cases that I am very familiar with. The first one is a middle sized music venue and the other one is a small sized NGO:

Example 1 – A medium sized music venue in Denmark

Example 2 – A small sized Danish NGO

As demonstrated with these tables, there should be a logical correlation between objectives, targets, strategy, tactic and KPIs. If not, then you and your brand have some considerations and restructuring to do.

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Every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Yes, that sounds like quite a lot – and it is! To put it into perspective, we have produced more than 90% of all online data that exists in the world today within these past two years. Combined, this online data equals Big Data. Being exceeding interested in the talk of Big Data, I’ve recently been inspired by the research and development of Big Data related software and applications. Especially the articles of Jeremiah Owyang and Raj De Datta.

BDAs – what exactly is it again?
The massive amounts of data make the value of good social media management and engagement even greater – and easier to sustain. Parts of Big Data are produced via Big Data Applications (BDA) such as LinkedIn or Facebook. Applications that produce detailed user data to the rapidly expanding masses of online data.

Breaking down BDAs’ structure to us, Raj De Datta’s article explains: “Every user that joins LinkedIn adds a signal to the LinkedIn BDA stack, enabling the recruiter to harness all their millions of profiles, not just their individual silos. As a result, smaller, specialized recruiters are competing with the biggest executive search agencies with comparable reach.”

The point of Big Data and thereby BDAs is neither marketing nor PR. The point is that understanding how to interact with Big Data can transform how we live, how we interact – and how we do business. Insights and analyses we are gradually exploring at Mindjumpers. From a business perspective, it all comes down to business intelligence: if we can manage to filter and funnel this data somehow, we can start mining on the data and realise details about our business as well as our fans or followers that we never would have expected or realised otherwise. In addition, if we can manage the BDA’s data, we can essentially analyse how our followers’ friends and connections engage with us.

Social Performance Software: helping us to retrieve business intelligence
Enter Social Performance Software. Needless to say, the Big Data hype has also caught the attention of software developers around the world, and a new species of social media tool software is emerging: Social Performance Software (SPS).

The aim of this new breed of software is to, as Jeremiha Owyan puts it: “analyze the conversations of your followers, then suggest which content and media to publish, then determine when to publish, on which channel, and to whom. As a result, content will reach the intended audiences and result in higher resonation, or higher call to action rates.”

So, SPS enables us to perform data mining in the relevant BDA data. On top of that, the SPS will analyse when, where and to whom we should engage to strengthen our brand.

I have introduced the white paper on Actionable Social Analytics by Awareness before, but I would like to show a relevant illustration to underline the purpose of SPS in handling Big Data from BDAs:

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We’ve all experienced at some point how frustrating and confusing the ever changing policies and terms of the mother of social networks, Facebook, can be. This week, they’ve launched a new site that tries to help all of their users navigate in the jungle that is Facebook’s terms and policies.

According to Facebook, their new information hub will contain “Everything you need to know, all in one place”.  We’ve had a quick look at the hub and it seems to be doing what it promises. Especially if you are a private user.

The private users of Facebook is Facebook’s actual product and their needs and concerns have therefore been placed at centre stage of the hub: “Statements of Rights and Responsibilities”, Data Use Policy” and “Community Standards”.  These are the main categories of the site, putting the advertisers’ and companies’ main points of interest aside on the right hand side.

Show me the money - discretely and without offending our users

Though, not forgetting the advertisers, according to Mashable a Facebook spokesperson commented:

“This week, we began rolling out the Facebook Terms and Policies Hub, a central resource for all of our policies. Our hope is that this new resource will make our policies more transparent and accessible for the people who use Facebook by offering easy access to answers to specific policy questions ranging from platform to ads to content.”

So, trying to combine the needs of their users, who are paramount to the business, with the needs of the advertisers, who are bringing in the money, Facebook Terms and Policies is not only a helpful tool to navigate in their expanding policies. It is also quite a quaint picture of the user driven money-maker Facebook has evolved into becoming.

Have a look at the website: Facebook Terms and Policies

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By the end of February 2012, Facebook announced that they launched a new feature called Offers. Offers are basically coupons for people to redeem and the platform already began testing this feature last year.

Facebook has previously launched Deals, which is a check-in product in relation to Places. Offers are however not location-based, but focus solely on the relation that the customer has with a given business on Facebook. If you are managing a business page, Offers is a good way to combine online with offline activities and to directly engage customers in your products and services.

Offers are still running in beta and are only available to a limited number of business pages. But according to Facebook, they are soon planning to do a more broad roll-out.

How does it work?

As a Facebook Page admin, you are able to post an offer to your page free of charge. The users who have liked your page then see the offer in their news feed. Users can redeem the offer by clicking on it. They will then receive an email from Facebook with the details of the offer, which they then need to show to the staff in the store.

When a user has claimed an Offer, a story will be published in their friends’ news feed and possibly also on their timeline or as a sponsored story, depending on the user’s settings.

The offers therefore normally spread through the users’ news feed as they are being claimed. Now, there are still not that many offers floating around. But if a user is following many business pages, it could end up as an annoying feature. As a page owner, you should therefore think of how many offers you post. In stead of posting offers every other day,  you should rather spend some extra time on having an offer that performs well. Users cannot choose to hide offers as a feature, so if they get overwhelmed by the number of offers, they will much likely either unlike your page or choose to hide all of your updates.

Still, you will probably need some time to figure out what kind of offers that perform well for your business. According to Facebook, offers that give big discounts (more than 20%) are normally the ones that perform well. As well as offers that give away something for free.

If you wish to promote your offer beyond the news feed, you can choose to run an Ad or a Sponsored Story.

How to create an Offer

• Go to the your page and choose Offer in the update field of your timeline. Fill out the offer with an appealing headline. Direct language that describes the offer is normally more effective than using catchy phrases or slogans.

• Choose an expiration date for the offer. Normally people will need some time in order to discover the offer and claiming it before it gets effective.

• Upload a square photo. Photos of people using the product are usually more engaging.

• Add terms and conditions. Remember not to make them too advanced as this can sometimes make the offer less attractive.

•  Post the offer. To promote your offer, pin it to the top of your Timeline and share it. As with any other update, people can Like, Comment and Share it with friends.

• You also have the option to limit the number of people, who are able to redeem the offer.

• Finally, make sure staff is trained and informed of how to handle offers, when customers come in to redeem them.

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Last week, Facebook finally revealed their much hyped “life saving” feature: the organ donor status. This has sparked our interest towards other examples of how brands and charity organizations have managed to use social media as a platform to help social problems through user engagement.

Networking on social initiatives

Socialcitizens.org, part of The Case Foundation, is one of these initiatives that thrives to encourage those involved in social media (be it privately or professionally) to share problems and create solutions. Together. By motivating and inspiring the main users of social media, they match creativity with solutions and volunteers with companies. Basically; matching social problems with social media in order to build effective problem solving within a strong network of creative and social media superusers.

“Hipsterfying” a taboo

Movember is another great example of how to target people in order to engage actively through social media to help a social problem: prostate cancer. The campaign started in 2004 before social media had a firm grip on the majority of most countries’ population and the outcome was not really that impressive. Today, the campaign not only raises great awareness about men’s health and prostate cancer, in 2011 it also raised $120 millions for research in men’s health. All because of the power of social media and the right campaign audience targeting.

A jungle of good intentions

There are thousands of online services that connect causes with volunteers, creators, developers or donators. Some are free, some charge a small fee. Mutual to most services is the utilisation of user engagement and the great force of social networks: Getting a message out within seconds and creating involvement and results across timelines and continents. Facebook Causes from 2007 was part of the initial online social awareness evolution and many other services followed on apps and social media channels such as Twitter.

Combining branding and social awareness

The slide sharing service, SlideRocket, promotes their own brand by having a non-profit slide competition rewarding the slideshows with most unique visits and the best storyline with a donation of $5,000. Only requirement is that the presentation promotes a non-profit case – and that it is shared with as many people as possible. This creates both a great exposure of SlideRocket as a product as well as the good cause in question.

On a smaller scale of helping social problems, Mexican tele company Terra has placed a Poo WiFi constellation where dog owners (and the rest of the parks’ visitors) receive free WiFi for every poo-deposit as a part of Terra’s campaign for a new WiFi product. Though not providing shelter for the homeless or curing cancer, the campaign raises awareness to a daily nuisance to the park’s visitors. So, by understanding our need to be constantly online, they create active interaction.

Who are the game changers?

If launching a charity or a social problem initiative online as a part of your company’s CSR-strategy or simply in the campaign planning of a product launch, the generations of “digital natives” are the ones you need to watch and target. They are referred to as Millennials and have most likely never owned a VHS-player, composed a mixed tape to the cute girl next door or lived after the age of 10 without a Facebook profile. According to socialcitizin.org, they are already constituting the force behind the growing use of social media in the fight against social problems in our societies.

Not only replacing the old time consuming knocking on doors, the use of social media to decrease social problems offers both quick and world wide collaborative solutions as well as results.

Have your company ever considered launching a social initiative through social media?

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SEO has been an essential part of brands’ online marketing strategies in the race towards top rankings on Google search. However, a new research reveals that social media engagement connected to a website can leverage a sizable rise (or even fall) in Google rankings independently from any SEO initiatives.

About the research

Six websites were established. Each site focused on similar sized American cities and contained similar type of content and URL. During ten months the content of the websites was left alone while gradually integrating various social media channels to five of the sites – the 6^th website operated as a control test and was kept clear of social media channels throughout the entire test period.

Social media channels tested:

Google+

- Business page followers

- Google+1 votes to the site

Facebook

- Likes and Share

Twitter

- Followers

- Tweets and Retweets

The Results

The research not only aimed to reveal if any of the social media channels would influence the ranking on a Google search, but also if any of the channels ranked higher than others. The infographic says it all, really:  Google services unquestionably created the best ranking results in the test. Not really that big a surprise all things considered. However, the negative ranking result of gaining 1000 Twitter followers seems off considering the assumed added user relevance to the website.

Point being…

However, the most interesting finding in the test is neither the fact that Google services bring great ranking results nor that a certain amount of Twitter followers creates a fall in ranking. It is the fact that the control test-website with no added social media channels experienced a slight decrease in ranking. Point being that without adding any social media channels a site’s ranking is entirely dependent upon the SEO-efforts. To further elaborate, a successful SEO strategy should explore the opportunities hidden in the use of social media channels if wanting to secure a great Google ranking.

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Following post is written by Marianne Vågan, Local Community Manager from Norway and part of Mindjumpers Network. Mindjumpers Network is a global network of local country community managers enabling international companies to execute and maintain brand communities in a structured, quality assured and cost effective way across markets with the aim of creating effect and value.

Norway is one of the leading countries of social media usage. These statistics are both helpful and interesting if you plan to do any marketing activities or strategizing on a recruitment plan on the Norwegian market.

The Norwegian social media and Internet users

In 2010, 92% of Norwegians had access to Internet. 78% of the internets users were online on a daily basis and 28% visited a social network daily. A report from 2010 says that the usage of social network in Norway is a tad higher than rest of Europe.
Following an international trend, the young Norwegians represent the majority of users and two out of tree Norwegians between 16-24 y/o visited a social network daily in 2009. The following graph shows the weekly activities on social networks in Norway compared to the European countries in general:

(%)

Facebook:
Today, 50% of the Norwegian population is on Facebook. The social network is the third largest media channel in Norway, only beaten by two TV-channels. With its small population of 5 million people Norway is #53 in the ranking of all Facebook statistics by country, according to Social Bakers.

The ratio of men and women on Facebook in Norway is 50/50. The dominating age group on Facebook is 25–34 with a total of 574,231 users, followed by the users in the age of 18–24.  The last six months, the number of Norwegians on Facebook has grown with 80,600 new users with the biggest growing age group being 45–54y/o.

Twitter:
There are about 252,202 Norwegian users of Twitter (January 2012). Since Twitter does not demand that you register a nationality it is difficult to find the exact number of Norwegian Twitter accounts. However, 6,000 new Twitter accounts are registered as Norwegian each month.

Recruiting through social media:
One third of the Norwegians are using social media in the hunt for their dream job and one in five have actually applied for a job through social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. 11,6% of the Norwegian population have a LinkedIn-profile, which equals 542,583 Norwegian user profiles. 62.49% are men and 37.54% are women. 59,947 of the Norwegian profiles were listed as leaders. In addition, there are 8,868 users in the marketing sector, 10,788 users in finance and 14,048 listed as students and in the educational sector.

Norwegian companies on social media
Norwegian companies have also taken part in the social networks. 50.4% of the 500 largest companies have activity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. As of 2012, 47.3% of these are present on Facebook (compared to only 25% in 2011) and 29.2% on Twitter. The two brands with most likes are the Norwegian clothing-brands One Piece and Moods of Norway with respectively 582,767 and 256,712 likes at present states. On 3rd and 4th place you see the airline companies Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Norwegian Airlines.

Other social networks:
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the three largest and most popular social networks in Norway. The Norwegians also have a growing interest in networks such as Pinterest – a social network that some Norwegian companies have already started to explore. SAS is one of these companies and have used Pinterest to spread the joy of journeys with pictures from different destinations, which users can share and repin. It seems that more and more Norwegian companies have discovered this branding opportunity and it will be interesting to see how visual engagement through networks as Pinterest will be used as a marketing tool in the near future.

Sources
http://medienorge.uib.no/files/nyhetsbrev/2010/Sosiale_Medier_2010-2.pdf
http://www.metronet.no/statistikk-for-facebook-aret-2011/#someno
http://www.jobbpunkt.no/portal/index.php/10-jobbpunkt/artikler/17-stadig-flere-soker-jobb-gjennom-sosiale-medier
http://www.fom.no/sider/tekst.asp?side=469#.T1-kQxTyAJA.facebook
http://www.mmyrstad.no/2012/01/50-av-norske-storbedrifter-er-na-aktive-i-sosiale-medier/
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-pages/brands/norway/
http://www.ssb.no/emner/10/03/ikthus/
http://pinterest.com/flysas/

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When the QR (Quick Response) codes first became available for smartphones, it seemed to be the new big thing so companies went along with the trend by incorporating the 2D codes into their marketing strategies. The black and white squares quickly became ubiquitous. However, today people don’t  seem to notice the codes anymore, and the QR interest and excitement seem to be fading away.

What happened to the QR code?

The reason to the rapidly decreasing user engagement is very likely connected to the fact that QR codes aren’t so ‘quick’ after all. Furthermore, the reward you get from scanning a QR code doesn’t measure up to the efforts of scanning the code or meet the expectations of where the code will take you. If going through the trouble of scanning a code merely leads you to a brand’s website, then there isn’t much in it for the user and the QR code doesn’t lead to any actual engagement.  In my opinion, this is the most important reason why QR-codes are now regarded tedious to most users.

However, we might haven’t seen the end of QR codes yet. Many companies have recently tried to find new ways of using the QR codes to engage with their users and to arouse their curiosity yet again. Here are two examples of how companies have managed to create actual interaction with their users and thus succeeded in adding more value to the brand through the use of the QR codes.

Emart SunnySale Campaign

The Korean retail chain Emart launched a campaign to increase their sales during lunchtime between 12pm and 1pm, as their sales decreased drastically during this hour. Their solution to the problem was to build a sundial with the shape of a QR code. The code would only be readable during this exact hour, where the sun was in the right position for scanning the code. The event, called ‘SunnySale’, made it possible to create a unique shopping experience for the users, who also received special offers such as a $12 coupon to use on the company’s mobile webshop.

This resulted in a 25% increase in sales during the lunch hour, and the number of members increased by 58% in one month.

Spanish railway company offers download for their passengers

The Spanish railway company, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya, gives away the first chapter of 40 novels to their passengers in collaboration with the book publisher Random House. The downloads are offered through posters with QR codes for each book with the aim to encourage the passengers to read in the train and thus promote literacy.

So, as a brand you might want to give the QR codes another chance – but in order to generate actual value for your users, you need to create new interactional initiatives like these to give users better rewards and user experience than just opening your company’s website.

Do you have any best practice examples of companies using QR codes?

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During the past years, we have seen an increasing involvement of social media in sports – especially American sports with Super Bowl being the prime example. So much so, that the amount of tweets created during this year’s Giant’s-Patriots’ game reached an astounding 12,233 tweets per second (TPS) and 10,245 TPS during Madonna’s halftime show.

Real time interaction between fans and stars
The real time interaction between social media and sports is closely connected to the interaction between fans and sports stars. Fans want to connect and interact with the stars on the field – and vice versa. Looking at the infographic, the integration of social media and sports is not only in connections to the Super Bowl: 83% of American sports fans will check social media channels to gain sports insights while watching a game at home – 63% while being at a game.

How to handle social media –  or not?! 
This growing demand for stars to actively interact with their fans in a constant flow has brought new dilemmas as well as new marketing benefits into sports management. As a consequence, preparing for this summer’s UEFA EURO 2012, the management of the Danish national soccer team has taken intense social media precautions: they have banned all Danish players from interacting with friends and fans via social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook during the entire tournament. The decision has caused great debate, as the ban potentially harms the gained connection between the popular players and their fans. A connection that holds great marketing and promotional benefits for the entire national team.

Instead, sports management teams could benefit from outlining guidelines through a social media strategy, ensuring that the players don’t leak any game strategies or offend fans in drunken tweets or status updates, but that they actively interact with their fans in a positive tone to promote both the player and the team.

Tweeting for Success or Disaster
So, the  irrevocably live and viral aspect of real time conversations through social media channels can either be very successful when managed or close catastrophic when left unmonitored. Obviously, the last outcome being the overriding fear of the Danish soccer team! ”Fouls & Fumbles” in the infographic gives a few examples of just how catastrophic social media can be, if you don’t recognize and manage the virality and irrevocability of a status update or tweet. Worst case scenario when unmanaged: you get kicked off the team, fined and end your career. Best case scenario when managed: you rise to fame and your career takes off!

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Presently the third largest social network, Pinterest has become a channel that brands are eager to conquer. Earlier this year, we looked at how some brands successfully reach out to the Pinterest users through slim-to-none promotional content on brand pin boards. In contrast, the car manufacturer Honda has rolled out a straightforward promotional initiative on Pinterest this month.

Pintermission?
The campaign on Pinterest is part of the promotion of their new Honda CR-V. A campaign that overall promotes the car as a facilitator of enjoying life and the outdoors outside of your daily routines. To integrate the essence of Pinterest into the campaign, they have reversed the force of the social network by encouraging top pinners to take a break from their daily pinning activities. Instead of pinning life, top pinners are encouraged to go outside and actively embrace life for 24 hrs – and then pin about the things they have encountered outdoor. So, Honda encourages them to take a break from Pinterest – a “Pintermission” to be exact. With a Honda sponsored $500 bill in their back pocket to spent on some of the things they have already pinned, I might add.

Analogue Dialogue … Digitally!
The breaking of conventions on Pinterest’s brand interaction by directly encouraging pinners to physically leave the site, is supported by an almost analogue visual communication in their customised invitations to the selected top pinners:

Though moving away from the usual non-promotional brand use of Pinterest, somehow Honda still manages to play within the frames and conventions of Pinterest – or do they? As an active pinner, how do you perceive Honda’s take on brand communication on Pinterest?

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