Twitter has proved to have tailored an unbeatable formula which is original, evolving and, as it has proven recently, above the law. This recent hive of press has seen Twitter gain record numbers of sign-ups, from both individuals and businesses alike. But with new companies and businesses joining Twitter every day, how can you stand out from the crowd? Here is a look at a few brilliant campaigns of late…

Moonfruit

When Moonfruit turned 10 years old they gave away 10 MacBook Pros in return for a tweet including the hashtag #moonfruit. The hashtag reached the number one spot and remained there for three days. The campaign resulted in Moonfruit’s website experiencing 12 times its normal amount of traffic; they also claimed 2.5 per cent of all tweets during its peak, for only £9,000. Simple, easy and effective, this is a perfect example of how to use Twitter at its best.

The Feed from Orange

The Feed is not specifically a Twitter campaign, but it does integrate the service perfectly. Tagged as ‘adventures around the internet’, the campaign consists of a mass of games, competitions, quizzes and oddities, most of which have been launched via Twitter, some of which have then gone viral. Orange have committed themselves to launching a new ‘adventure’ every week, a massive undertaking but with anything from 12 to 1000 comments on each post, its definitely worth it.

Ben and Jerry’s Fair Tweets

As a company so focused on fair trade, Ben and Jerry’s had to come up with something original to promote World Fair Trade Day. The result was Ben and Jerry’s Fair Tweets, a platform that allowed users to input their tweet as normal then any unused characters are ‘donated’ to World Fair Trade Day. So far over 480,000 characters have been donated to the cause.

This post was inspired by a piece written by Tim Bradshaw (@tim) in the FT last week (Thursday March 31 2011) named ‘The fickle value of friendship’.

Tim’s article discussed the ever elusive value of a Facebook fan. Companies have been trying to assign a value to the Facebook fan for some time now, but why? Facebook is about the collective audience not the individual. You cannot apply the same value model to Facebook fans as you would to other channels like search (Google).

Facebook’s core value is the social graph (sets of friends connections). The platform was designed to bring people closer together and share their experiences. At its core are friends connections, to even think of breaking that down to the individual is the wrong approach. Companies should be looking at their fans as a whole. The collective audience is the real value and a brands inclusion in thier day to day lives can be more powerful in the long run than any search campaign.

Facebook is more than another marketing channel. You could almost look at a brands Facebook fan base as an extension of that brands voice, admittedly a little noisy, but truly transparent. Just give your fan base a nudge in the right direction and witness the power of the human voice. Take social media engagement away from the marketing department and hand it over to the customer and brand teams. Look at social media as a long term branding initiative rather than a sales driven campaign. Just like TV and print ads of the past, don’t aim to capture an immediate sale but focus on the long term loyalty and mindshare your brand can gain. Facebook is probably more in line with TV and print than you think, it is a past time, instead of spending hours watching TV, people are spending hours engaging with their wall.

Ankur Shah of Techlightenment makes a great point. “Companies that run search engine advertising in parallel with social media campaigns are more cost effective than social media on its own.” The integration of social into search results will be a relevant factor to this married success, but Facebook’s role as a brand communicator is absolute key.

As traditional (TV, print, etc) marketing budgets continue to be transferred online Facebook has a fantastic opportunity to become the TV of the future, not in terms of advertising spend but in terms of advertising reach. Half the UK population are active Facebook users, if you think about it you normally always digest offline entertainment in a social group, like a trip to the cinema. Online activities have for a long time been solitary experiences, Facebook has changed this. Facebook could become the platform for everything we do online because it has the social graph in its core.

Although Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a more transparent world seems like a long off digital dream, the same was thought when the duo behind Google set out to organise the world information in 1996. 2011 has seen Facebook reach over 500,000,000 active users, approximately 1 in 13 people across the globe and there is no sign of growth slowing down (Infographic: Global Facebook Usage 2011).

The Like Button

As well as simply recording the number of actual likes, the new analytics tool allow website owners to monitor the amount of traffic coming from Facebook in real time. This means they can now track how the placement of the like button affects user interaction immediately instead of having to wait a day as before.

The Comment Box

A few weeks ago, Facebook launched a new comments plug in, the new Insights provides information about various on-site and in-feed impressions. Some critics however have publicaly wondered what use this will be to marketers.

The Page

Facebook extended Popular Pages so it now shows the top 100 pages people are interacting with, whether that’s liking, sharing or commenting on. With real-time reports and additional granularity, Facebook can now offer marketers a more in-depth view of what makes a page popular.

The People

Insights can now supply demographic information about the people conversing with a site, allowing agencies to tailor content even more precisely. The data is recorded for those interacting with the site as opposed to those just visiting and, contrary to popular belief, the information stored does not violate the privacy of the user.

The Point

Facebook Insights was originally developed to follow those sites using social plug ins, but now those that aren’t using plug ins can see how their sites are being shared via status updates and wall links. Meaning everyone can see how their site is being shared via the social network.

Is your Facebook page up to date or could you do more? Why not email info@zeta.net or tweet @ZetaAgency and see how we can make your Facebook page perform better?

On Friday evening Facebook was first to announce its latest developer tweak via its blog which claimed that Facebook were now making users’s home address and mobile telephone number accessible to developers.

This has caused further outcry about the leading social network’s privacy breach issues.

Facebook users will only have their personal information  taken if they tick or accept the box to allow an app to access their data.  However the opportunity to ‘opt out’ is very easy to overlook as it appears alongside the normal application allow request as just an extra line of text saying it will also grant access to your contact information. Making us think that this simply is not enough protection for users!

There can be many attacks happening on a daily basis which can trick unknowing users into giving this information. Facebook is offering no protection against criminals and scammers from adopting and using the Facebook API to develop tools that capture user data for illegitimate means.

Currently anyone can write a Facebook application for any purpose, and unlike the iPhone app store by Apple, there is no protection against criminals or organised crime developing and releasing applications. It is a small step from one of the many recent survey scam applications to signing up mobile phones to premium rate services using information gained using this new system.

To make sure you don’t have your contact info stored follow these instructions.

• On the Facebook Home Page click onto your profile > edit profile
• You will see a menu selection on the left side > click the last tab ‘Contact information’
• Here we recommend that you remove your address, postcode and telephone numbers if you want to protect your privacy!

We know this is not the first revelation in Facebook privacy concerns. Sarah, our lead developer came across a useful blog by Tom Scott which exposed the privacy pitfalls in Facebook. Check it out.

I was brave enough to venture out on a Saturday night and go and see the eagerly awaited Facebook film ‘The Social Network’.  The reason for seeing it a little later was because I genuinely thought it would be rubbish, I only went to prove this theory to a friend who was singing the film’s praises.

So, settled amongst the hordes of children who had also chosen this particular Saturday night to see the film, I prepared for a nice two hour nap.  I would love to now use this opportunity to slate the film and give you something new and interesting to read, but I can’t.  I thought it was brilliant.

I know it must be boring to listen to yet another person wittering on about how good the film is but unfortunately it is true.  Directed by David Fincher, who was responsible for the impossibly cool Fight Club, and adapted by Aaron Sorkin from the book ‘The Accidental Billionaires’, the film secured itself a head start from the beginning.  Although the directing is top notch, it’s the script that makes the film the right side of acceptable.  Sorkin is responsible for the consistently brilliant ‘West Wing’ and was even asked by Steven Spielberg to polish the script for ‘Schindlers List’; supreme credentials indeed.

Sorkin took a subject that could easily be trivial and gave it an air of respectable coolness.  Having not read the book, I couldn’t say how true to life the events are, and knowing Hollywood I doubt events are word for word.  However, standing alone as a film it presses all the right buttons.

Sorkin and Fincher managed to avoid the common pitfalls of biographical tales, such as shoehorning every detail into an hour and a half.  The result is usually something that zips through, grating the same airtime to the interesting events as to the boring ones and never spending much time in any location.  Sorkin overcame this by basing the film in one place and stylishly using flashbacks to keep the plot chugging along.

All in all, the characters, the pace and the stroke-of-genius sub plots (one of the co-founders of Facebook has to deal with a jealous ex, the first of many worldwide ‘Why does your Facebook status say single?’ conversations …) get it right and have provided us all with one of the best films of the year.

Facebook Groups

So Facebook introduced a new “Groups” facility on 6th October.  What has been the response?  Very mixed.  Whilst some people love it, others hate it, which seems to be the typical “Marmite” response to Facebook and what it can offer.

Speaking for myself, I thought that the concept was a good one.  Having whinged about not being able to define different levels of “friends” ever since I first joined the social network, I thought it was going to resolve this issue.  My point of contention was that we all have different circles of friends in our lives, and we should be able to limit what we are posting to those with whom we wish to share it.  After all, your work colleagues may enjoy a witty comment with slightly dubious connotations, but you wouldn’t necessarily want your family members to know exactly what you’ve discussed in the office that day! Similarly, your close friends and family will enjoy seeing photos of your child’s latest homework efforts, but your boss will most likely find these sort of posts quite tiresome and hide your future offerings from view all together.  It has, of course, been possible to create “friend lists” for some time and use this as an extension of the privacy settings, but most users, in my experience, start with good intentions and then give up.

It was, therefore, with enthusiasm that I immediately set about creating my new groups.  I set up three and posted a comment on each to let the group members know that they were now part of a privileged community.  The initial feedback was, “What’s this?” or “Thank you, but how do I use it?” from those who bothered to respond.  But what disappointed me most was the fact that any group member can add any one of their friends to the group!  My group, no less!  How does that enable me to administer control of who sees what on my wall?  Surely only I should have control over who is invited into my little circle?  Curses!  And whilst any member has the ability to leave the group at their discretion, I have no power to remove any of them myself.  Well, it did seem like a good idea, but after an initial flurry of interest, the new facility slipped into dormancy, where it has remained for the past two weeks.  And the privacy problem, as far as I can tell, has still not been rectified.

“Forever on Facebook?  Then you’re a narcissist!”

There are, however, times when I must drag myself away from the computer and go about my daily chores at home.  It was on one such occasion that I stumbled across a newspaper article from September for which the headline was “Forever on Facebook?  Then you’re a narcissist!”  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1310230/Facebook-users-narcissistic-insecure-low-self-esteem.html

“What?!!” was my outraged and defiant reaction, and I continued using the newspaper to aptly assist in the clearing of my cat’s litter tray.  A suitable place for such nonsense was my judgement, except that I cannot deny that I am one of those people who logs onto Facebook at least once a day.  But sad as it may be, it is hardly a basis for being branded narcissistic, is it?  I like to see what my friends are up to, particularly those whom I don’t see from day to day.  And there’s nothing like a little humorous e-banter at the end of a long, tiring day.  But why does it make me a narcissist?  This in itself forced me to look inwards and question my psychological profile in greater depth.  Now that I was completely self-absorbed and paranoid about my state of mental health, I was relieved to learn that the survey was carried out in Canada, amongst a group of just 100 university students aged between 18 and 25.  It was found that those who visited their Facebook pages with greater frequency had more narcissistic character profiles than those who did not.  Facebook claims that of their currently active 500 million+ users, at least 150 million access their pages through mobile devices.  And it seems to be the nomadic proportion that is twice as active as those of us who sit down and log on using a big screen.

With more than 30 billion content items, such as web links, blog posts, news stories and personal pictorial updates, all buzzing around the ether like a swarm of flies, I sometimes wonder if the earth will one day no longer be visible from space and instead appear as a spinning mass of electro-magnetic signals and pulses rather like a rotting apple infested with maggots!

The survey carried out by Miss Mehdizadeh, of Canada’s York University, was therefore hardly conclusive; 100 students represent a mere 0.0002% of the active Facebook users.  What a relief!  I think that deems me exempt from any such psychological profiling, but it would be interesting to see if the same trend was true of a much more diverse group of users.

If it is, I’ll have to take a very long, hard look at myself – in the mirror!

This revelation is part of a wider group of findings from a new study named the Digital Life research project. The study explores people’s online activities and behaviour and claims to the largest of its kind. The global study was undertaken by popular custom research company TNS, who announced their findings on the10th October 2010.

Malaysia topped the list with users having an average of 233 digital friends across social networks, closely followed by the Brazilians, who have on average 231 friends on social networks.

I wonder if perhaps the reason that Japanese respondents have a less than average amount of social networking friends might be something to do with their culture?

The Japanese culture is based on personal relationships and thrives on face to face contact. So perhaps despite the digital revolution and technological advances, the Japanese still prefer to keep their friendship networks offline?

Another factor  is that  Japan has its own, very popular network which dominates the country called Mixi – so it could be that the study only accounted for users on the main stream global channels like Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace. However I contacted TNS Digital Life on Twitter to find out exactly what social networks were included in the study, and they informed me that the number of friends is the total sum of friends from all the networks they are on, regardless of platform – so that knocks that argument!

What else did the research show?

The research claims to have covered nearly 90% of the world’s online population through 50,000 interviews with consumers in 46 countries; the study reveals major changes in the world’s online behaviour.
Here are some of the key findings:

• Globally, people who have on-line access have digital sources as their number one media channel. 61% of online users use the Internet daily against 54% for TV, 36% for Radio and 32% for Newspapers.
• Online consumers in rapid growth markets have overtaken mature markets in terms of engaging with digital activities. When looking at behaviour online, rapid growth markets such as Egypt (56%) and China (54%) have much higher levels of digital engagement than mature markets such as Japan (20%), Denmark (25%) or Finland (26%). This is despite mature markets usually having a more advanced Internet infrastructure.
• Activities such as blogging and social networking are gaining momentum at huge speed in rapid growth markets.
• Growth in social networking has been fuelled by the transition from PC to mobile. Mobile users spend on average 3.1 hours per week on social networking sites compared to just 2.2 hours on email. The drive to mobile has increased the need for instant gratification, with the multiple message formats available from social networks, including the instant message or update functions, consumers no longer have to wait. When looking at how the digital landscape will change in the future, research shows that consumers expect their use of social networking on mobiles to increase more than use through a PC.
• Goodbye email, hello social networking. One further finding showed that online consumers are, on average, spending more time on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn rather than on email, despite the former only becoming mainstream in many markets over the last few years. In rapid growth markets such as Latin America, the Middle East and China, the average time spent per week on social networking is 5.2 hours compared to only 4 hours on email. Does the demise of email open the door to more market share and improved capabilities on social networks? I wonder what the future will bring!

For more information on the study and the findings visit the website: www.discoverdigitallife.com

The latest ‘I like it’ status innuendo, which is supposedly an unofficial marketing tactic to increase Breast Cancer Awareness during its October campaign month, is really starting to irritate me. The status tactic is old news and disappointingly uncreative. Come on people, we can do better!

I logged onto my Facebook page today only to find half a dozen or so of my girlfriends detailing a little too much personal information!

My best friend, Lauren, likes it on her kitchen counter; my school friend, Lisa, likes it on floor; and my Auntie Jane likes it on the coffee table!!

What about me? Well, I like it on the back seat of my car while I’m driving! Calm down everyone – we are only talking about our handbags!

I must say I won’t be telling people where I like mine this week. This Facebook status stunt is a little outdated – by about 5 months actually. So I wonder why on earth it has resurfaced? Well simply put, it is another unofficial campaign aimed at raising breast cancer awareness. It was used a few months ago but did not get quite as large a response or coverage it expected. Being the up to the minute social media guru I am, this is when I actually participated in changing my status accordingly. This second tier Facebook social viral was a clever follow-on from the Facebook bra updates back in 2009 – read my post here: colourful-facebook-statuses

Well October is Breast Cancer Awareness month so that is why we are seeing the viral re-appear this week. It is really that great? I don’t think so.

A spokesman for Breast Cancer Care, which is not affiliated by the campaign, commented that, “While viral campaigns have great potential for increasing consciousness around many issues, we’d like to see this go further. We would encourage people to direct their Facebook friends towards helpful support and information to create better breast awareness … or reminding their friends to check their breasts regularly when they explain what the campaign is about.”

The issue here, and with many viral campaigns, is that whilst they may spread messages and increase awareness they often do not lead to any measurable action. Have any of my friends who have updated their statuses donated any money to a cancer research charity, or have they booked in for a free breast cancer scan? Chances are the answer is NO!

Why doesn’t some clever organisation out there try and capitalise on this? Thousands of women are updating their statuses in the name of breast cancer, why not invite them to a charity landing page or website? Here it could ask them to share their status in return for a chance to win a prize, whilst cleverly designing that page to entice donations using clever calls-to-actions?

What about a celebrity campaign to start the flow? Where does Katie Price, Kylie Minogue or Charlotte Church like it? These women have been touched by cancer and could help explode such a viral campaign.

We could inject more creativity, but my point here is that there are so many great viral campaigns happening online every day, yet organisations and brands are failing to grasp the opportunities they present quickly enough.

I am lucky enough to work with a great team here, we encourage each other to stay abreast of digital and social media developments and buzz, and where appropriate we try and maximise these for our clients and campaigns.

Come on people … think outside the bra!

Google recently announced that it has designs on Facebook’s social media crown by launching its own rival site.  In spite of rumours that it’s going to be called ‘Google Me’, we’re not sure how much of a chance it has.

Since February 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, Facebook’s early predecessor, few could have predicted the speed or the level of impact it would have on the online advertising community. With the imminent launch of ‘The Social Network’, it seems interest will continue to grow, but now, a mere 6 years since it has been available to the public, how do we feel about it?

It has given marketers all over the globe a new medium for communication based on the traditional aspects of word of mouth or referral marketing. It allows advertisers the ability to target an audience by the information they have provided about themselves – information varying from merely their age and gender to their likes, dislikes, favourite films, music and literature.

Adverts on Facebook can be relatively cheap and available to the majority of businesses, allowing nearly everyone who wants it to have the opportunity to advertise themselves online. It begs the question; ‘If everyone can do it, does it lose its effect? Does it become spam and easily ignored by users?’

Facebook was said to have generated between $700 million and $800 million in advertising revenue in 2009, a figure higher than was expected. With Facebook’s 500 million users browsing the site’s pages, it seems the chance to reach that large a number is attractive to advertisers, regardless how many click on their ads.

With its users spending 700 billion minutes a month on the site, such a concentrated amount of people actively swapping information about themselves online has never existed before. But it is the information swapping that made Facebook both brilliant and controversial.

In its short lifetime Facebook has been no stranger to controversy, attracting a number of lawsuits and a wealth of criticism over those who use the site and how they use it. With ever growing reports that Facebook has been used by adults to groom children, schools reporting accounts of cyber- bullying and with tribute pages being set up for people such as Raoul Moat, it could make you begin to doubt Facebook’s future.

Over the past year Facebook announced regular changes regarding its privacy policy, one of which was that it planned to share information with a third party. It’s constantly changing privacy settings have left some users feeling exposed. With Facebook allowing people to display as much or as little personal information as they choose, with as many different people as they choose, the controversy seems unfair. If you don’t want someone to know your phone number, don’t put it on the internet, right? But should the default settings on Facebook be that everything is shared and to hide information so it is only shared with your ‘friends’ and you have to manually change it? This may have been acceptable when Facebook’s members were confined to one campus, but now its users are spreading across nearly the entire globe, is it not time for Facebook to reflect that?

It seems comparing Facebook to Twitter, LinkedIn or foursquare is a little pointless as none have reached the same level of popularity or even offer the same service. Although each are information- sharing social sites, they don’t offer the level of depth Facebook can. Although, as reported recently in The Guardian (23^rd July 2010) it is possible to follow and make contact with a stranger (as one journalist proved) just via their tweets and foursquare updates. So they are still viable for the level of criticism usually reserved for Facebook, if not the success it seems. Even with on-going privacy squabbles, it seems advertising on Facebook shows no signs of waning, and especially as socialmediatoday.com (2010) has predicted a 39% increase in advertising spend on the site this year.

So with nearly a billion in advertising revenue, 500 million users, an MD that goes to meetings in his PJ’s and its own Hollywood film, it seems we may still be a while off asking people we just met in the pub to ‘Google me!’.

The worst earthquake to hit the Caribbean in 200 years struck Haiti on Tuesday 12th January 2010. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near the Haitian Capital of Port-au-Prince, where it devastated the tiny nation, causing an unknown number of deaths and widespread destruction.

Social Media was the first to tell the story

Despite being the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti’s Internet connected devices were key implements in telling the rest of the globe about the emerging crisis.

Twitter

Twitter was a key tool for distributing images and information from Haiti — just as it has been in a number of other crises across the globe. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that images sent via Twitpic and other Twitter-based photo services were hitting the Internet long before news agencies produced anything similar. And as Haitian officials were giving their reports on what happened, eyewitness accounts from Haitians in messages of 140 characters or less were already widespread. People were given further insight when the Los Angeles Times published a list of Twitter users believed to be tweeting from Haiti.

Wordpress

A Wordpress-powered blog called Haitifeed is also delivering a steady stream of first-hand accounts as well as mainstream media reports from across the globe.

Facebook

On Facebook, a group called Earthquake Haiti now has over 230,000 members. The group is largely being used for people to show support and trade news reports; however, there are some users who seem to be posting critical information including pleas for help to injured Haitians.
Skype

With telephone service toppled due to the earthquake, those on the ground turned to Skype to speak with the media, aid organisations, or to communicate with loved ones overseas. A Connecticut-based missionary organization that works in Haiti used Skype to communicate with their people there to get a sense of the devastation. Pedre also used Skype to give CBS News and many other media organizations a first-hand report about Haiti’s crisis.

Social media tools are emerging as a new type of news media, especially during times of crisis communications, were such channels are being used to primarily disseminate information about the happenings to the rest of the world as and when it is happening. Even US Rappers such as Busta Rhymes, P Diddy, Kanye West  use their fame via social media platforms to urge donations and spread the word to fans and followers alike http://hhboard.ihiphop.com/hip-hop-news/456798-diddy-kanye-west-tony-yayo-more-plead-haiti-earthquake-relief.html

To read the full version of this article visit Aimee’s Blog: http://easywriting.co.uk/2010/01/18/haiti/