Posts Tagged ‘twitter’
Twitter Tirades never end well
April 12th, 2013
It’s that time again when we look at the latest case study of someone that should know better using social networks to vent personal beliefs/opinions that reflect negatively on their employer.
No prizes for guessing what happens next.
This time, the brand in question is Microsoft, specifically Xbox, and a recent conversation in relation to the next Xbox, which will be released on May 21st, and its probable always-on feature.
For those that are familiar with always-on gaming, it has been far from a smooth path, and games fans are wary of related issues, especially in light of problems with titles such as SimCity and Diablo 3.
In this instance the conversation was U.S. –based where Internet connectivity varies depending on location, and some parents have also expressed worries that an always-on connection would break broadband caps without their knowledge.
The issue began when A creative director at Microsoft, Andrew Orth, appeared to confirm a rumour that the next Xbox will require an always-on internet connection. Orth has been working as a creative director at Microsoft Studios on a game, which is yet to be revealed, since February 2012 and he was involved in a sarcastic exchange about the benefits of being connected. This was seized on by games fans, which in-turn triggered an online debate.
The discussion, which can be seen below, took place between Orth and Manveer Heir, a senior game designer at BioWare. Orth and Manveer are apparently close friends who seem to have been making fun of each other, but sarcasm does not always translate well, especially when Orth commented “why on earth would I live there?” when asked about towns that do not have good levels of connectivity such as Janesville, WI and Blacksburg, VA.
After a week of controversy, Gameinformer reports that Adam Orth has now voluntarily resigned from the company, which had been forced to apologise for his comments and indiscreet references to the new Xbox project, as below:
“We apologise for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday,” said the company.
“This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer-centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.”
This may have been a case of a sarcastic conversation that went wrong, rather than an attack, but the outcome was the same; damage to the brand, resulting in the individual leaving the organisation.
The lesson is simple, Social networks are not private, and anything you write is accessible, so think before you tweet, and remember Twitter Tirades never work!
Read more at:
A deeper look at the demographics of Social Media Users
February 19th, 2013
The Pew research Center has recently releases its U.S.- focused social networking report
which highlighted some interesting trends on who’s using social media most and which social networks are most popular.
You can download the full report here:
In summary: “The Demographics of Social Media Users 2012” study found that the most frequent social media users are women aged 18 to 29. Women have been significantly more likely to use social networking sites than men since 2009. In December 2012, 71 percent of women were users of social networking sites, compared with 62 percent of men.
Overall, 67 percent use Facebook, and 16 percent use Twitter, which is especially appealing to adults in the 18 to 29-year-old category. Key demographics are charted in the images at the bottom of this post.
Pinterest has practically caught up with Twitter, with 15 percent of adult U.S. Internet users.
Pinterest, which launched in 2009, has experienced explosive growth. Women are five times more likely to use Pinterest (5 percent vs. 25 percent) and almost twice as likely to be white and college-educated.
13 percent of U.S. online adults say they use Instagram, 6 percent say they use Tumblr, and 20 percent of U.S. online adults say they use LinkedIn as of August 2012.
40 percent of mobile phone owners use a social networking site on their phone, and 28 percent do so on a typical day.
The report also looked at Creators and curators, defining them as follows:
As of August 2012:
• 46 percent of U.S. adult internet users post original photos or videos online that they themselves have created. We call them creators.
• 41 percent of U.S. adult internet users take photos or videos that they have found online and re-post them on sites designed for sharing images with many people. We call them curators.
Overall, 56 percent of internet users do at least one of the creating or curating activities studied and 32 percent of internet users do both creating and curating activities.
Interestingly, not using social media may be an elite thing. Those with a college degree are slightly less likely than those with some college education to use social networks (69 percent vs. 65 percent).
2012 a year in social network numbers
December 21st, 2012
As we quickly approach 2013, many people are in reflective mood as they look to round-off their year with a 2012 summary post.
I’m going to keep it simple and avoid the fluff by hitting you with some of the statistics that evidence the ever-widening reach of social networks.
So sit back and spend a few minutes taking the numbers in while we rejoice in the fact that the world didn’t end today, at least not yet:
- 25 percent of users on Facebook don’t bother with any kind of privacy control. (source: AllTwitter)
- Monthly active Facebook users now total nearly 850 million. (source: Jeff Bullas)
- 488 million users regularly use Facebook mobile. (source: All Facebook)
- More than 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook in various ways. (source: Uberly)
- 77 percent of B2C companies and 43 percent of B2B companies acquired customers from Facebook. (source: Business2Community)
- 56 percent of customer tweets to companies are being ignored. (sources: AllTwitter)
- 32 percent of all Internet users are using Twitter. (source: Marketing Land)
- Twitter is projected to make a total of $540 million in advertising revenue by 2014. (source:Web Analytics World)
- In 2012, 1 million accounts are added to Twitter everyday. (source: Infographics Labs)
- 34 percent of marketers have generated leads using Twitter. (source: Digital Buzz Blog)
- Instagram was one of the largest acquisitions of a venture capital-backed consumer Web company since Zappos was bought by Amazon for $1.22B in 2009. (source: Factbrowser)
- According to Followgram’s research, 37 percent of Instagram users have never uploaded a single photo and only 5 percent of users have more than 50 pictures. (source: Siliconrepublic)
- It took just 10 months for Instagram to reach the milestone of 150m pictures uploaded. (source: Siliconrepublic)
- 80 percent of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have children. (source: Search Engine Journal)
- The average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. (source: Arik Hanson)
- The Google +1 button is used 5 billion times per day. (source: AllTwitter)
- Google+ pages appear in search results for 30 percent of brand term searches for brands with G+ pages, up from 5 percent in February 2012. (source: Bright Edge)
- 48 percent of fortune global 100 companies are now on Google+. (source: Burson-Marsteller)
- Google+ cost $585 million and took 500 employees to build. (source: Social Media Delivered)
- Google+ is expected to attract 400 million users by the end of 2012. (source: Remcolandia)
Source – Huffington Post
Notes from Social Media Marketing 2012 #SMM12
October 26th, 2012
Yesterday we attended Social Media Marketing 2012, which promised to take a more critical look at social media marketing by focusing on the realities, challenges and what we need to do better, not just the positive stories and back-slapping habits that have become the staple of social conferences.
I have summarised six of the presentations from the day’s discussion,but you can see the full programme here.
1. First up was Mat Morrison, head of social media, Starcom MediaVest Group, who told us: nearly Everything you thought you knew about Facebook is wrong.
Mat kicked off by making some very pertinent points about Facebook marketing, including: “It’s all about the newsfeed not the page.” And confirming that asking people to click the ‘button’ on the left or above, which is a common instruction when encouraging participation, is fine on the page, but doesn’t work in the newsfeed.
In other words, when you are talking to customers, don’t assume they are on your Facebook page, they are probably seeing it in their feeds.
He also reminded the crowd that Facebook apps can be difficult to use on mobile, and with such significant traffic coming mobile users, the potential wastage is significant. Therefore, always think
mobile.
When he asked if everyone knew what Edgerank is, only one soul was brave enough to say no, to which Mat nailed the explanation with: “Facebook Edgerank is a gnome that decides what stories you see.”
Mat proceeded to take us through a few examples of brand engagement with Cineworld and ASOS, who make mistakes early and fix fast, and are a great example of a consumer Facebook page. You can see these in his presentation (see title of his presentation in this post)
Mat asked us to remember:
1. A page isn’t a destination
2. It’s all about the newsfeed
3. A Page isn’t a community
4. Almost no one sees Fan posts
5. Think mobile first
2. We then moved onto our second presentation from Ruth Coates, marketing programme manager – Europe – Staples and Katy Howell, MD, Immediate Future, who gave us an insight into Social strategy in practise: How to meet the challenges of adopting a Social approach
Katy Howell made a good point in relation to strategy to kick-off, focused on where to start in social. She confirmed it’s not just about ‘listening’, it’s about understanding the organisational opportunity for social media.
This means an internal as well as external audit is important, looking at how the organisation uses and wants to work with social, and how social impacts many different elements.
She also suggested that an audit should look at 2-3 years of data, not just 2-3 months, which will not account for seasonal or event-based variations.
Ruth Coates from Staples identified the main internal challenges that she had experienced in relation to developing a social media strategy:
1 Change management & selling the concept
2. Business value: making social ROI-able, i.e. what does social mean to the organisation, not just metrics, but how does social impact organisational value?
3. Harnessing resource in a decentralised organisation, which was amplified by Staples’ huge challenges with multiple territories, multiple offices, multiple languages.
Katy then identified the four steps in establishing that there are enough conversations around the issues related to the brand to justify a social campaign:
1. Shouting out and asking questions – what are these conversations about? Are they just mentions or is there depth, are there questions? Understand this first, then roadmap.
2. Who is talking? Not just who has influence? But who are these people connected to, what are the communities?
3. Diving into the detail – how are they talking?
4. Social media is leaky – social now impacts what goes instore, online, direct mail, photos on Pinterest etc.
Katy summarised this by confirming that social media is data and spreadsheets, and that you need statistically-relevant samples, which confirm the tones of discussions, impressions and ideas, passion, points what are they saying, associations, what specifics are they looking for, behavioural trends.
You then need to create taxonomies to identify correlation and trends.
Strategy is a lot of heavy lifting on the data if you want to get to the goal of adding value to the business.
Once the strategy was ready to roll out, Staples then identified recommendations to move forward:
Firstly
1. Pilots to validate – Set timeframes, set outcomes, lower investment to see how it works.
2. Phase your approach – in this case a multi-year phased approach, looking at this over time to develop at the pace of your business so that it can integrate with business communications and existing focuses.
3. Tiered implementation – don’t force people to get involved. Pick out pockets where there is eagerness and resource, and demonstrate learnings to the wider business to enable overall internal sell in.
Internal structure
1. Structure the programme and measurement – set up forums to discuss social on a monthly basis internally with teams, best practises, ideas, development.
2. Intensive training framework – ongoing training across the business to continually move forward.
3. Set out the polices and escalation - from guidelines to appearance of profiles and how to react to crisis.
Learnings
- Cross functional groups – don’t miss out on ideas and opportunities for the business.
- Great communications – communicate the results of social and let people know how the social focuses are going.
- Ideas forum – cross-team and territories to develop ideas.
Since beginning the new social strategy in February 2012, Staples’ EU presence has grown by:
• 9 x FB profiles
• 5 x Twitter profiles
• 7 x G+ profiles
• 6 x YouTube channels
Staples closing comment: “It’s not about building 8 million fans, we would rather have 100,000 fans that deliver value”
3. The next session that I covered was on The Olympics: Big data meets Big event, presents Big challenges by Naomi Trickey, Sales Director for EMEA, Brandwatch
Naomi gave us an overview of data from recent events and news issues, e.g. U.S presidential election, superbowl, etc and confirmed that big data presents big challenges.
She also asked the question; What is Big Data? Suggesting size is not the only thing that matters, it’s also variety, volume and velocity.
She backed this up with a quote from Scott Thomson, head of research, Hypernaked: “Reality is easily accessible data, but you have to frame the right questions”
Naomi confirmed that Big = Relevant and data needs to be relevant. She also confirmed that greater social buzz does not result from a higher advertising spend, a recent example of which has been advertising around the Superbowl.
4. Jeremy Waite, Head of social strategy Adobe EMEA
What’s the Real Value of 1 million Fans?
Jeremy, who is always entertaining and informative in equal measure kicked off with a great quote on social media from Scott Stratten “Social media doesn’t fix anything. It just amplifies things. If your restaurant sucks, it just sucks harder in social media. IT doesn’t make your chicken fingers taste better or your beer taste bolder. social media is not a good place to go if you’re terrible at what you do.”
He also gave us an excellent example of useful content in the form of the recent 007 Skyfall ticket give away video by Coke Zero.
Jeremy suggested that Coke understand it’s all about content and achieved 4 million views in 4 days, probably with a hefty seeding budget.
Jeremy then moved onto the focus of his presentation, which was ROI, quoting both:
Forrester “90% of content marketers only track engagement metrics”
and
Michael Lebowitz, CEO of Skittles’ ad agency “Anyone who says they can track Facebook activity to sales is in a bubble and living on a spaceship.”
To make his point about the mismatch between traditional ROI and social metrics.
Traditionally the metrics that marketers have used to put a value on a relationship, (that don’t work):
- Fans, followers, subscribers
- Impressions and reach
- Change in sentiment
- Click through rates
- Share of voice
- Engagement
- Dwell time
Jeremy also used a trailer for the movie Money ball to illustrate the importance of ROI.
In brief, Moneyball is a film about the Oakland Athletics’ baseball team that followed a revolutionary way of buying a winning baseball team, with a tight budget, based on player analytics and a supporting algorythm
Jeremy confirmed this is basically a film about ROI
“This is getting everything down to one number. Using stats the way we read them, we will find value in things that nobody else can do.”
He made the point that we can compete in social with those on bigger budgets.
So what is ROI? Jeremy confirmed ROI in social media is the same as ROI in any other area of business.
“How much do I spend, how much do I make, what’s the difference?”
Jeremy confirmed we shouldn’t confuse social media measurement with ROI, the two are separate.
He recommended Olivier Blanchard‘s book: Social media ROI and ran us through an example of ROI on an Angry birds campaign.
5. Michael Litman, senior social strategist, AnalogFolk gave a great presentation on
Pinterest, what is it and why should you care?
He offered some great statistics, including 51% of interbrand top 100 have presence on it and Pinterest is growing, while Twitter, and other network growth is slowing.
He also highlighted that the usage of Pinterest differs from the UK to U.S, e.g
- U.S 83% female
- UK 56% male
- UK interest sectors – Venture capital, PR, content management
- U.S sectors – retail, creative
- 30% of UK users in the highest income bracket vs 5% in US
- Age group of users is mostly 25-44
- Pinterest first social network to reach 10m unique users
- Pinterest is in fact a power channel to build a strong social brand.
- Pinterest is taking traffic away from ‘traditional’ engines and delivering to retailers
6. Squeezing the social SEO value out of your social media campaign
Kelvin Newman, Strategy Director, SiteVisibility
You can see Kelvin’s full presentation here
In summary:
Google is trying to do something that we can all do instinctively – i.e. identify that this website is better than that website.
Google believes the way it is going to improve its algorithm is to understand the social web.
This is the future of what Kelvin referred to as off-site SEO, focusing on three key areas of Author rank, links and social shares.
He believes that G+ is essentially a tool to answer these focuses as it helps Google to find your content quicker and gave us a number of practical implementation points to make the most of Google+, which you can see on the presentation and include:
- Use chrome plugin – Bit.ly/do share to schedule updates
- Add Google+ sharing buttons to your website
- Use opengraph protocol
- Use Rel author mark up
Overall he suggested we Ignore the haters, because although Google+ isn’t as popular as other networks, it is hugely relevant to your Google ranking and that is essential.
He believes Google+ is here to stay, will only become more important and is having a bigger influence than most of us realise.
Kelvin also believes that search marketers make good marketers because people that understand search, understand people, which makes them great marketers.
Social Media marketing 2012 was a great success, and everyone that we spoke to thought it had delivered on the objective of taking a harder look at social, so congratulations to the Our Social Times team.
The power of a Tweet helps J.C. Penney shares jump 10%
July 27th, 2012
We often talk about the power of social media and how reach is ever expanding, but stories like this one are a beautiful and simple example of this in action.
Reuters has announced that shares of J.C. Penney jumped almost 10% briefly on Wednesday this week after Nina Garcia, Marie Claire magazine fashion editor and judge on television show “Project Runway” tweeted about the department store’s revamp mentioning chief executive Ron Johnson.
“I’m @jcpenney’s HQ. Thank you Ron Johson (sic) for the walk through of JCP’s prototype. Get ready to shop! Its (sic) going to be a game changer!”
J.C. Penney shares rose to as much as $23.09. The stock was up 4.9 percent at $22.02 later on Wednesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.
Although the link between the tweet and the rise in stock cannot be clearly made, TD Ameritrade chief derivatives strategist J.J. Kinahan immediately referenced the tweet when explaining the share spike, and there did not seem to be any other obvious contributing factors.
J.J. Kinaham said:“With that we saw the stock go sharply higher, along with increased buying in call options, a bullish play.”
Interestingly Reuters also mentioned that Garcia recently became J.C. Penney’s “Style Voice” and fashion collection curator, so it’s up for debate whether the tweet was entirely unlinked, but the point remains that an influential tweet seems to have had a huge impact on share price, and helps to prove the influencer status that Twitter can now claim.
Dom Dwight, Little Urn, human voice and Facebook Tea – Facebook Marketing 2012
July 18th, 2012
Dom Dwight, Yorkshire Tea
They started with blogging. They had loads of stories they wanted to tell, and it seemed a natural place to do it. Twitter they were using for listening mainly, and for reporting back what people were saying about the brand, which built more enthusiasm for social in the company.
And then they spotted an opportunity for linking it up with TV, when they realised so many people complained about bad tea when abroad. Especially in the US… They sent a tea van to the US, to support the UK’s people, and tracked the journey on Facebook.
What did they learn?
Video is tricky! They did 10 stories, but at two to three minutes long they were too long. The short clip of Little Urn struggling up the hill did 50 times better. They’re not likely to commission a video company to spend £10k on a video. They’ll do it with a flip cam.
Don’t force it. The competition for uploading photos and getting them liked wasn’t great, and there was a vote exchange syndicate at work at the time. And every time they mentioned the competition, a vocal minority complained about its existence. Make things that people want to share, don’t create a transitional mechanism.
Stay on their level. For all the carefully crafted messages in the world, sometimes a Saturday morning comment on the weather will get more engagement – or a comment about tea tasting better in your favourite mug.
The most you can do is influence and steer the conversation – you can’t control it. And they learnt to integrate events, social and PR. When a member of One Direction tweeted that they missed their Yorkshire Tea, they tracked them down, and served them tea… They got on the BBC and Channel 4 through serving tea at the Hockney exhibition.
They don’t draw a big line between Facebook and Twitter. They’re a bit more selective about what they put on Facebook – they try very hard to keep the tone of voice human.
Keep room for flexibility in all your planning. In Homeland someone mentioned that their favourite tea was Yorkshire Gold – lots of people thought it was product placement, and said as much on social media. They were able to join the conversation denying that. They struck up a relationship with Tim Burgess who used to be the frontman of The Charltans – and Dom ended up taking to him about Homeland and tea and Twitter. And the agreed to livetweet Homeland for Tim when he was away…
April 1′s treat was a t-shaped tea bag. Their tea experts sent a silly photo with fake moustaches, done for one of their number’s birthday, for him to share on the Facebook page. Co-creation, like mug designs, goes down well. Corgi has made a Little Little Urn van – which has been ridiculously popular. They advertise it by posting silly photos of it in strange places.
And did you know that tea can save a sheep’s life? Rhododendron leaves are poisonous to sheep, but two solid days of Yorkshire Tea was a great antidote for a lamb – and telling the story went down a treat on Facebook.
Richard Ayres on ManCity, the BFI and strategy – Facebook Marketing 2012
July 18th, 2012
Richard Ayres is an accidental agency – his work has grown until he has four or five people working with him. Here’s some of his work:
Manchester City
How does Manchester City expand into a global brand without just pumping itself out there? There are 3.5 bn football fans out there. There’s a truckload of people who love football – but where’s their affliction? In the UK people tend to support one team. Internationally, people are happy to support two or three.
Man City was the first to launch its own YouTube channel – very powerful in reaching an international audience.
They have a Facebook page – very few initiatives have been paid. They’ve done an advent calendar, a fan cam, where people could tag themselves, a shirt competition, a timeline (of course) and other things
Each of their players is a celebrity with their own power. They do attract their own audiences – but they only come for things around their own favour player. For a long time they steered away from doing much with them. The players only social media briefing was from Schillings – the libel lawyers who told them what NOT to do. They’re now treating them as powerful sub-brands, and it’s working well for them.
They have an arabic language Facebook page, Twitter account and so on. You have to do the coverage as quickly as you do in English – not just translate the “main” coverage a few hours later. They have volunteers, including people blogging the matches.
BFI
The BFI’s name doesn’t reflect the sheer breadth of what it actually does now; it doesn’t just do British, it doesn’t just do film… The challenge is to reflect that breadth of activity in its online presence. It’s been doing beautiful stuff online, but in small numbers. It has an amazing archive in Berkhamstead of film, cameras, costumes, scripts, and other memorabilia. Imagine what you could do with this online! There are 800,000 titles in the archive – all with some supporting material.
Here follows a sneak preview of what they’re going to do:
- A timeline of people’s memories associated with films.
- A detailed database of film records, explored through a mind-map style interface
- A user generated ranked and rated list of the top 100 films. It’ll end up spitting out a Myers-Briggs-tyle profile of your film tastes.
- Twitter-derived “zeeboxy” pages about films with fan comments
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office strategy…
Don’t just do stuff on Facebook to drive people back to your site. Look at how the FCO works. Sometimes it just puts a bloke and a desk into a city. And sometimes it puts in a huge building, and organises cricket matches. That’s strategy.
Is your brand really engaging with humans on Twitter?
June 15th, 2012
A nice piece of relatively simple Twitter research was published last week from Milan’s IULM University. It shows that high levels of brands are talking to Twitter bots, and not customers, via brand Twitter profiles.
Professor of corporate communications and digital languages at IULM University, Marco Camisani Calzolari, found that in some cases nearly half a company’s Twitter followers were bots.
As you can see in the table above, @DellOutlet score highest for Twitter bots, or lowest for engagement, with 46% of its 1.5 million followers being identified as non-human users, with a further 13.2% unquantifiable.
EA, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Blackberry, Playstation, Samsung mobile and Starbucks also feature in the research, which focused on brand accounts with 10,000 followers or more.
Although some of the figures are particularly high, it did not come as a complete surprise that a large percentage of brand followers are bots. After all, the general obsession with follower numbers, rather than useful engagement, has long hindered any real measurement of a brand’s relevance on Twitter.
The ultimate result of this numbers approach is that there’s no need to actually listen or engage as long as you have many thousands of followers, which must mean you’re doing something right? Wrong!
The reality is that the vast majority of these brand profiles will be fully aware that they have bot followers, but are unlikely to cull these followers while numbers are still so important, which is both self-defeating in terms of customer engagement and irrelevant in terms of useful data collection and feedback.
Richard Binhammer, Dell’s Social Media Relations manager commented on the findings in MediaBistro:
“We don’t control who follows any of our Twitter accounts and we don’t artificially increase the number of followers. In fact, paying third parties to undertake such action is contrary to our policy. While there are some tools that claim to identify bots, they are not 100 percent accurate. The only action we could take is to ‘block’ a follower. We certainly would not want to risk ‘blocking’ a potential customer. Our focus is on relationships and engagements with customers.”
While I agree many tools do not pick up bots, some of those 46% must have been visible…just a little bit.
The final word goes to the author of the research, Professor Calzolari, who confirmed: “The research shows that the number of followers is no longer a valid indicator of the popularity of a Twitter user. Many of the companies included in the research have delegated their public relations activities on social networks to web agencies that in some cases have taken short cuts in order to demonstrate to companies, who are oblivious, that their activities have been successful by generating lots of new users.”
You can download the full report here.
The results were developed by awarding points for behaviour associated typically with humans, and points for behaviour typically associated with bots. These numbers were then crunched in an algorithm. Human behaviour included a profile containing a name, an image and a physical address, while bot behaviour included users only using APIs to tweet.
The report also states that “the algorithm allowing “human” and “bot” points to be assigned was defined with very conservative parameters.“
Case study: Lead generating B2B Content Community – My Meeting Professional
March 14th, 2012
B2B Social Media Campaign
A lead-generating social media and content based programme aimed at business decision makers and influencers delivers leads in excess of £500,000 in first six months. Core community website supported with LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook activity.
My Meeting Professional (MMP)
Overview: The My Meeting Professional customer community was developed by Liberate Media to deliver customer leads for iBAHN (EMEA), focused on its Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS) division. This was achieved by developing a non-iBAHN branded resource of content focused on the events sector to answer key technology/connectivity challenges that face event organisers. This allowed the campaign to engage with the target audience on a deeper level by educating rather than selling, and enabled iBAHN EMEA to developed relationships that had previously been unachievable.
Results: First six months
• Six leads secured during first six months, providing business opportunities in excess of £500,000
• Established My Meeting Professional as a useful content hub and learning tool for the meetings sector
• Social campaign positioned MMP with meeting/conference influencers and corporate customers
• Offered hard evidence of the strength of a social approach for iBAHN
Client Quote: Carolyn Sait, PR Director, iBAHN EMEA: “The success of the My Meeting Professional campaign (MMP) is evidenced by the excellent leads and income delivered to the business, but also by the case study it provides on how a social approach delivers real benefits to the business as a whole.
“Building relevant content and encouraging useful conversations via MMP has opened opportunities and allowed iBAHN to explore a more direct style of customer engagement.”
Objectives
• Develop My Meeting Professional into a useful content community for the events sector.
• Build awareness and understanding of MMP to open opportunities that are not available to the iBAHN brand alone.
• Generate leads for iBAHN’s Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS) division.
• Improve iBAHN’s network in the events sector by closer working with new partners and organisations.
• Share iBAHN content with influencers and the market as a whole.
Delivery
• Developed campaign and refine with client – build site and populate with content.
• Managed ongoing website development from launch onwards.
• Identified, negotiate and secure content partners for MMP.
• Developed MMP social campaigns via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
• Engaged with key industry blogger and influencers to drive engagement.
• Updated content on a daily basis via main website and social channels.
• Developed video content to promote My Meeting Professional.
• Measurement and analytics reporting delivered to refine campaign.
The campaign
My Meeting Professional is the content portal for event and meetings planners, sharing the latest views and news in the events, conferences and meetings sector but most importantly, MMP enables professionals in these areas to learn, share and develop their skills.
The campaign was developed by Liberate Media on behalf of iBAHN, a global broadband technologies provider for the hospitality industry.
Originally developed as a project linked to iBAHN’s EMEA communications campaign, MMP’s primary role was to raise awareness of and deliver leads for iBAHN specialist events division, iBAHN Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS).
iBAHN ECS provides a fully managed network, as well as hardware and connectivity to facilitate every type of meeting for large corporate clients, including conferences, launches, training, etc.
Launched in mid-2011, The My Meetings Professional community had surpassed all expectations in its first six months by bringing the iBAHN brand closer to the events sector. MMP has also developed business opportunities that continue to deliver and a resource to help the community understand and build knowledge of the growth of hybrid events.
Issues covered on MMP have included the technical complexities of events set-up and management, the technology expertise demanded in planning and producing events, network and internet connectivity needs and the effect of mobile networked devices at events, among many other themes.
Content partners
The content offered via the community was developed by Liberate Media on behalf of iBAHN and has been supplemented by content partners who were invited to take part, including Big Hospitality, Velvet Chainsaw, Symon Dacon, Ready2Spark, Planet Planit and Inspired Live Experience. Each of these content partners provides expert knowledge to build the conversation via MMP and grow audience interest.
Social Media support
Twitter
The Twitter campaign was developed as a separate communications channel, updated daily with three main focuses:
1. Engage with the My Meeting Professional community daily to drive interest and conversation.
2. Allow any developments and announcements to be communicated immediately, including new content, announcements, and comment on industry issues.
3. Drive traffic to the main campaign website.
LinkedIn
The LinkedIn campaign was a crucial tool to drive the profile on the main MMP spokesperson and to provide the link between the content online and discussions with meetings professionals, using these three focuses:
1. Help MMP’s core spokesperson to engage in direct conversation with leads.
2. Develop relationships with key events influencers.
3. Engage with events discussion groups on LinkedIn to build the MMP debate.
Facebook
The Facebook campaign was developed primarily to share content from the MMP campaign and offer further insight into relevant events with these three focuses:
1. Act as a sign post to the main MMP website by sharing key posts.
2. Share updates and images from events attended.
3. Develop conversation with MMP fans and followers.
YouTube
The YouTube campaign was developed to act as a resource for relevant videos posted on the main MMP community website, with three main focuses:
1. Share original video animations developed for the main MMP community website.
2. Share videos from events that MMP and partners attended, or useful videos shared by the community.
3. Act as a signpost to direct traffic and interest to the main website.
Results
The headline result for the MMP campaign is the delivery of leads worth in excess of £500,000, which has been made possible by the engagement that has taken place offline and online, particularly via the various social media campaigns. By listening to MMP’s community and engaging directly, MMP has projected a knowledgeable persona and secured motivated advocates who have in-turn recommend the campaign and helped to build the success to date.
Further analytics available on request:
Visits: An average of 600-700 visits to the main campaign site per month.
Page views: An average of 1800 page views per month.
Time on site: 3.50 – 4.30 minutes per user.
Content: Over 300 blog posts were developed during the first six months of activity. Two animated videos were also developed for MMP.
Twitter account has over 700 followers and over 1000 tweets were posted with regular conversation and engagement on a daily basis.
LinkedIn account has over 2000 direct, sector-specific business connections, with a platform reach in excess of 3,500,000+LinkedIn members. MMP is a member of 25 event-focused groups on LinkedIn and posts regularly to these as relevant opportunities arise.
Client quotes
Mike Clanton, MMP team leader and EMEA manager iBAHN Enterprise Conference Solutions (ECS) says: “We saw the urgent need for an event sector hub that connected professionals and delivered accessible information at the right time.
“The technical requirement for event planners has grown rapidly over the past 18 months. They now need to understand a range of connectivity technologies and work with partners if they do not have that knowledge. To ensure maximum return on investment, event planners have to make network connectivity a central element of all meeting design.
“We’ll be helping to support this requirement, building partnerships that add more relevant and essential information to MMP in 2012, ensuring the community builds its knowledge and finds the best guidance.”
Graeme Powell, MD iBAHN EMEA, comments: “My Meeting Professional has certainly made its mark in 2011 and we are committed to developing it further this year, providing much needed technical and market sector advice for event and meetings professionals.”
Liberate Media contact
For further information, please contact:
Lloyd Gofton
Liberate Media
07919 353484
Lloyd@liberatemedia.com
@LiberateLloyd
The #tweetaconda needs feeding
March 7th, 2012
The tweetaconda is a Twitter campaign by Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The idea is simple, feed the tweetaconda and he grows. Hopefully creating the worlds longest snake, which currently measures in at more than 32.75 feet (based on a snake found in Celebes, Indonesia).
If you want to get involved, Tweet with the hashtag #tweetaconda or type in a message over at tweetaconda.com.
The goal of the site is to drive traffic to the exhibit and increase the Museum’s digital footprint by engaging its 25,000+social media followers. “We want the community to keep learning beyond the walls of the Museum,” said Amanda Bennett, director of marketing for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
