Digital Chameleon Blog

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Fri, 09 Sep 2011 05:40:00 GMT

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Facebook videoconferencing

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:48:00 GMT

While all the buzz is around Google+ right now, Facebook aren’t resting on their laurels either. About the same time Google+ was rolled out, Facebook announced it had teamed up with Skype to offer videoconferencing. Users can now use their webcams to use Skype to talk to friends and family. While not as big an evolution in their product as Google’s, Facebook has still just given 600 million users the ability to use Facebook as a real-time personal communication platform. Here’s the news from the official Facebook blog.

What does all this mean for your marketing? It means there’s a whole raft of reasons for your customers and prospects to spend even more of their time in social media. As this chart from Pew shows, social media is, with the exception of LinkedIn, a very female-oriented part of the internet. What’s your plan to reach them there? Digital Chameleon is currently developing a new online learning suite focused just on learning how to use social media effectively in your marketing. Stay tuned for details

Upping the ante in the social media wars

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:48:00 GMT

Within the last few weeks, two major players in the social media world have offered significant updates in their current offerings. Google’s Google+ project and Facebook’s new videoconferencing capabilities both have implications for marketers. Let’s take a look at each and see why.

Google+

Google has been trying, unsuccessfully, for some time to tackle social media. Google Wave never got off the drawing board and when Google Buzz launched in early 2010, it was plagued by data privacy issues and quickly faded. This time it looks like Google has finally got it right with Google+. Here are some key elements of the new social media network:

Circles- Google+ provides you with a dashboard for organising your own social media networks. It is a simple drag and drop operation that allows you to build as many different social media circles as you like (for example, a work-related circle, a family-related circle, a political circle and so on)—all from on central point.

Sparks- Google+ publishes streamed content you can respond to, with whatever sparks your interest.

Hang-outs- Google+ gives users video conferencing capability, integrated right in to the social network.

Huddle- This is an instant messengering option that provides Twitter-like functionality.

Google+ supports their own Android platform and presumably will support other platforms too.

So what are the implications for marketers? First the demographics which were initially overwhelming male, is quickly shifting, with 1/3^rd of users now women. Even though Google+ is still in beta, it already has about 10 million users. Google can easily push search engine users and the almost 200 million Gmail account holders towards Google+. In other words, we’re potentially the biggest thing to hit social since Facebook! Here’s a link to the developer’s blog for more on Google+.

First looks at Google+

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:52:00 GMT

Google+ is a new social network launched to grab market share from Facebook - by invitation only. See the invitation workaround PH Creative did.

Google+ looks a lot like Facebook (with a little Twitter thrown in? Friends and Followers?) but watch the demo for some new functionality that makes this Google social network look more elegant than its competitor, and in fact more elegant than what we'd expect from Google. It actually looks more like something from Apple than Google in the demo. I like the look of "Circles," which lets you categorize friends into groups with a beautiful drag and drop.

Have a look at Google+ stats (Mark Zuckerberg has more followers than anyone else as of today).

Apparently Ford has put the first brand page up on the site.

So far, Google+ seems to have taken off in a big way (unlike Google Buzz launched early last year) so watch this space.

Best practice Facebook pages for Beauty brands

Mon, 23 May 2011 07:06:00 GMT

Facebook supports a multitude of tools and apps, but if it all sounds too hard and time consuming, there are experts who can help you devise your Facebook content strategy and make implementation of apps easy. Loopster Media operates in Australia and provides marketers with tools and services to help them achieve their goals on Facebook without having to spend time and money building custom apps.

Many beauty brands have built a Facebook presence using these content management tools. For example, Dove ‘s Facebook Page allows users to select their country and language. Dove makes use of multiple tabs for Skincare, Deodorant, Hair, Men, etc. Included within these product tabs are options for people to submit questions, sign up for newsletters, take quizzes, answer polls, take part in discussions (there were 71 discussion topics when I last checked), and to share “where you find real beauty in your life.” Dove has over 1 million Facebook fans and this Page is a great example of a brand giving users the tools to interact and become part of the community.

Stila’s Page is a good example of using a splash page to make it clear to users what you want them to do (“Like Us”!) in no uncertain terms – with the payoff being that you’ll have access to exclusive offers each week.

Covergirl includes free products giveaways, exclusive videos, badges, polls and quizzes for those who join “My Covergirl” on Facebook.

Avon asks people to “Like” them on Facebook in order to watch a video. They also include functionality for finding or becoming an Avon rep including videos, a Twitter feed, and a photo gallery.

It all starts with what your business is trying to accomplish via social media. Have a look at what others in your category are doing, but don’t lose sight of the fact that you need to build in tools and functionality that drive the specific actions that are important to your brand and its goals.

Building your business with Facebook pages

Mon, 23 May 2011 07:00:00 GMT

With a user base of over 600 million, 10 million of whom are Australians, Facebook is definitely mainstream and is becoming harder for marketers to ignore.

You may have a Facebook Profile for your personal life; Facebook Pages are for brands and businesses. In April, Facebook Studio published a guide outlining the best tools and principles for marketers to build a presence and run campaigns on Facebook, called, “Building Your Business with Facebook Pages.” I’m not saying that you can build a Facebook Page and then tick the box that you’ve got social media covered. Your social strategy should include more than Facebook, and your Facebook strategy should include more than simply putting up a page. You’ll need to continually manage your presence and give people reasons for “Liking” your brand, interacting, sharing, and coming back for more.

Facebook’s guide will give you some tips on what that entails. It outlines the three core phases of a marketing program on Facebook: Build, Engage, Amplify. Build is the first step, including Facebook Pages and apps enabling you to reach an audience on Facebook; as well as social plugins allowing you to extend connections and conversations to your website.

Engage is about using the touchpoints established in the Build phase to engage and grow your audience – for example, publishing relevant content on a regular basis, and engaging in conversations with your fans.

Amplify is about extending your reach through social networks via both earned (via the news feed), and paid (via Facebook ads) audiences.

The Guide covers best practice in terms of tailoring campaigns to your specific business objectives such as innovation and product development, generating awareness, increasing sales, loyalty/relationship building, word of mouth, feedback, generating awareness, etc. There are examples of where these strategies have worked using specific tools and applications.

Social media brings Barbie and Ken together again!

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 04:13:00 GMT

Did you know that Barbie and Ken are back together? Why should you care? Because in the last year Mattel has created a cheeky, engaging, viral and successful social media campaign that other marketers can learn from. Barbie is back, and she’s social media fabulous!

I grew up with Barbie… and Ken, Midge, and Skipper and all the clothes and accessories I could get my hands on. I had the Barbie beach house, as well as the cool convertible they tooled around Malibu in. This campaign has given Barbie and Ken a supercharged overhaul and made them cool and relevant once again. Through social media, Mattel has breathed new life into their classic characters by giving them a voice and letting their fans interact with them. It’s a brilliant, cheeky, and engaging campaign.

In July 2010 Barbie started a Twitter account, got onto Foursquare, and started posting videos on YouTube. That was all in order to promote the new Video Girl – a Barbie with a video camera embedded in her, so you can record videos with Barbie and post them on YouTube. She started a scavenger hunt on Foursquare, and tweeted clues to her followers.

In February 2011, Mattel created on their biggest social media campaign to date – Reunite Barbie & Ken. Such a reunion would generate loads of buzz, and the volume could be turned up high via social media. Barbie had continued tweeting and checking in since July, and now Ken had Twitter and Foursquare accounts and both were on Facebook. Cheeky videos were posted on YouTube, and they easily went viral.

The campaign engaged the user by asking them to vote on whether or not Barbie should take Ken back. Fans, followers, and “likes” got a say in what happened between the famous pair. You know how the story ends - Barbie did decide to get back together with her old beau (thanks to her fans), and Mattel has extended the campaign by providing more ways users can be involved in the love affair. People can have a look at some of the things Ken did to win back his love, they can download music, and they can take part in the “Genuine Ken” contest to find the “perfect” man.

If you grew up with Barbie, Ken, Midge and the gang as I did, you can’t help but smile at the way these icons have remained relevant (OK, more than that – they’re positively COOL!) with a campaign that revolved around social media and building community.

But the campaign didn’t stop with social media – Mattel invested in billboards around the world. Posters at Times Square from Ken shouted, “Barbie, I want you back!” Not only did this reinforce the message, but those who weren’t aware of the online campaign were driven there through offline media.

Today Barbie has 1.9 million friends on Facebook, and over 44,000 follower on Twitter. For an overview of the campaign don’t miss the video on YouTube.

A new way to view your social media

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:22:00 GMT

One of the (free) iPad apps that I’m really enjoying is Flipboard. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a “social magazine.” If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, and have an iPad, proceed immediately to the app store and download Flipboard.

Once downloaded, you can enter your Facebook and/or Twitter details and those streams are turned into “magazines.” It takes the links from your feeds and puts them into a visually appealing and easy to read format that’s attractive and does look like a magazine. There’s no advertising on Flipboard which begs the question – what’s the business model?

I’m in the process of trying to figure out how to take the Flipboard version of my Digital Chameleon Facebook stream and distribute it as an enewsletter. I would think other marketers would want to do similar, as it makes a visually (not to mention information-rich) compelling product. Maybe a business model here?

Flipboard is less than a year old, and if you read the reviews from hardcore social media types you’ll see that it does have limitations, but I love the concept. It’s an engaging new way to look at our social media, expressly made for the iPad platform. It’s interesting to see the differences between the look and feel of my personal Facebook feed, versus the Digital Chameleon on Facebook, versus my Twitter feed . The content is “clickable,” and can be shared and commented on from the application. It surely makes Twitter easier to read and make sense of. Flipboard apparently senses “engaged” items with lots of comments or retweets, as well as photos, so that it filters out the “best” content and visuals.

Isn’t it funny how we always approach a new medium/platform with our “old platform” sensibilities? iPad is an exciting new device but I wonder how long it will take before content developed for the iPad will start to look less like a newspaper or magazine and more like something we can’t yet imagine.

Group buying sites harness the power of social commerce

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 03:35:00 GMT

US group buying site Groupon launched in Australia last week as Stardeals, entering a market already active in group buying with players such as Nine Entertainment Company’s Spreets and Cudo, owned by Yahoo!7. If you’re not sure how hot this segment of the online market is – Facebook and Google are expected to launch initiatives in this sector, as the margins are significantly higher than their current online advertising products. In fact, it was rumoured that Google attempted to buy Groupon back in December for several billion US dollars.

So how do group buying sites work? The sites ask retailers to offer steep discounts on items that would appeal to the local market. For example Stardeals currently offers deals in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane. The deals would include 50%-90% off spa visits, dinners, cruises, haircuts, etc. There’s generally one deal per day, and some sites wait until a certain number of people sign up for the deal before it becomes official, others make the deal available right away. The group buying site then takes 30%-50% of the revenue generated by the deal. It’s a sweet arrangement for the retailer who pays nothing upfront and enjoys new revenue via a new marketing channel that takes advantage of the power of online social networks and word-of-mouth.

Consumers can be notified of deals via email, Facebook or Twitter. Seven Media’s Spreets emails over 500,000 Australians each day. When someone buys a deal and suggests it to friends, they are rewarded with credits, and the cycle continues. Group buying sites use the power of the web to offer big discounts to volumes of people for things they actually want to buy.

People can also access these sites via iPhone apps. So instead of printing out a coupon which they take into the retailer, they sign in via their phone and show the coupon to the retailer.

How do the group buying sites reach critical mass members? Local players Spreets and Cudo can take advantage of their parent companies’ marketing power including print, TV and online properties. Search engines, word-of-mouth and social media contribute additional fuel.

While group buying tends to focus on local retail and SME’s, with the focus on dining, leisure, health and beauty products and services, bigger brand marketers are starting to move into this sector. It’s a cost-effective way to get traffic in the door compared to other advertising channels. Locally, retailer Harvey Norman has reportedly trialed group buying for its security products. In the US, Amazon and Gap have tested group buying.

The popularity of group buying is tied directly to the growth of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. They simply couldn’t exist without them. Group-buying campaigns combine online and social elements, enabling brands and merchants to directly reach consumers, who in turn share product offers with their networks of friends through email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Engaging with Beauty Consumers Online

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 05:08:00 GMT

Here's my column that appeared on Beauty Directory in January

Along with the rapid increase in time spent online, there has also been a significant rise in the amount of time Australians are spending on social media sites. In fact, according to Nielsen, Australians spend more time each month on social sites than any other nationality! And it’s not only the quantity of time that’s important, but the level of influence that social media has on consumers’ purchasing decisions. “The Social Network” recently won four Golden Globe awards (including Best Picture – Drama), demonstrating that social networking has indeed become mainstream.

A Garner Group report (July 2010) found that a majority of American consumers rely on social networks to guide their purchase decisions. This is significant for the beauty industry as women are even more likely to spend their time using social media, and they refer to it when making decisions on products to buy. Many beauty brands have included digital in their marketing strategy by now, but most could still be doing more in terms of keeping up with consumers’ use of digital channels, especially in the social space.

Of those beauty brands who have established a presence online, they would have a website, include email marketing in CRM programs, perhaps offer ecommerce on their sites. Of those who have ventured into social media, they most likely have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, the logical first step for most companies. What’s the next phase of social marketing? It’s social engagement.

Posting on Facebook and Twitter are great, but tend to be one-way broadcasts, not unlike traditional media activities. Rather than simply counting number of posts or fans, marketers should be looking for ways to start a dialogue with, and among, current and potential customers.

Anitra Marsh, Global External Relations Manager at P&G gave an informative talk at the BlogWell conference in 2010 where she shared P&G’s approaches to social media. She shared that one of their focuses has been improving their listening and “choiceful engagement” with their community. They choose 4-5 topics on which they engage with consumers in order to retain focus. For example, they’ve appointed a “Beauty Maven” for Pantene, who manages their online community programs. They found that the kind of information that women want most about healthy hair is “tips & tricks.” So, the Pantene Beauty Maven got involved in conversations where she could add value in terms of providing participants with useful tips and tricks. Anitra cautioned that tone and authenticity are vital when a brand engages with consumers in these environments.

Anitra Marsh also said that P&G has evolved from a holistic communications model to an interdependent communications model. Where a holistic model involves re-hashing the same advertising message across all channels, with an interdependent model the message can change depending on the medium. They are finding that digital often drives the message (via consumer surveys/stats, consumer generated content, etc. via social channels) and that that content then migrates into traditional media.

Have a look at the video of Anitra Marsh’s ”Social Media for Beauty Brands” presentation for an interesting viewpoint from the largest beauty brand in the world.

How to be successful on Facebook

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 04:19:00 GMT

Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide, and shows no signs of slowing in terms of popularity among consumers, as well as marketers. But the issue for marketers is how to effectively use Facebook (and really any social site), and not make the mistake of using their own customers as guinea pigs in their quest for social media prominence. Altimeter Group conducted research this year leading to a report called “The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing.” The study included input from 34 vendors, agencies, and experts to determine how to successfully make use of Facebook as a marketer, and how to develop a roadmap for best practice. I highly recommend you download the report.

First, let’s look at how consumers are adopting Facebook – according to third party research referenced by Altimeter Group - 50% of active Facebook users log into the service every day, and connect to an average of 130 friends. Amazingly, the average internet user is spending more time on Facebook each day than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon – combined! Consumers increasingly trust their friends and family more than other information sources about products and services; and 60% of Facebook users are more likely to recommend a brand after becoming a Facebook fan. My caveat to all this is that Facebook may or may not be the leader in three years, but I think the concepts discussed in the Altimeter Group report are equally true for any social media marketing activity. The report suggests that, “As consumers make decisions directly with each other on Facebook, brands are left out of the mix.”

So how do brands get in on the action? According to an eConsultancy study (referenced in Altimeter report), 70% of brands indicated they were planning to increase spending on social media in 2010. But the issue is that many brands are confused about how to approach social media strategy, and need a roadmap. The days of simply using a one-way website approach are over and marketers need to apply new strategies to social media, including Facebook.

Following their industry research, Altimeter Group saw some key issues continually coming up. From these, they developed a core list of 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing:

1) 1) Set community expectations

2) 2) Provide cohesive branding

3) 3) Be up to date

4) 4) Live authenticity

5)5) Participate in dialog

6) 6) Enable peer-to-peer interactions

7) 7) Foster advocacy

8) 8) Solicit a call to action

Facebook’s latest move is to make it easy for consumers to set Facebook as the default homepage on their browser. Have you noticed the bar at the top of your Facebook page with pictures of your friends, asking you to drag it to your “home” bar so you can see what’s happening with your friends every time you open your browser? This is a significant move because if Facebook can manage to convert even a fraction of their users, they will be giving Google and other homepage search engines a run for their money, not to mention significantly increasing Facebook’s page impressions and time spent on site. Imagine potentially hundreds of millions of people mining their social graph for information before (or instead of) going to a search engine?

Is it possible to measure social media influence?

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:35:00 GMT

Social media may be helping advertising shift away from its focus on measuring ROI solely via quantitative measures. If we’re only looking at clicks or “fans,” then we’re looking at social media through the same lense we use for measuring other (less measurable) forms of media. To this end, The Advertising Research Federation (ARF), along with the ANA and WOMMA in the U.S. are working to create social media measurement guidelines that would take more qualitative measures into account. One of the “fuzziest” social media metrics to measure has to be “influence.”

Razorfish has devised a Social Influence Marketing (SIM) score, looking at both on- and offline share of voice that a brand has, as well as sentiment or likeability of the brand to determine its SIM score. It’s a framework to measure brand health via what’s happening on the social web. According to Razorfish, the SIM score measures two critical attributes: total share of consumer conversations your brand has online; and the degree to which consumers like or dislike your brand when they talk to each other about you online (consumer sentiment). The first is a measure of reach, the second of likeability. The SIM score combines these two attributes to measure favourable impact of a brand.

You can download “Fluent – The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report,” and see more detail on the SIM score. They worked with TNS Cymfony and The Keller Fay Group to look at online conversation data from brands in four industries (Auto, Finance, Pharmaceuticals, Media), and compared online share of voice and sentiment numbers to each brand’s offline equivalents. Without going through the methodology details (which are included in the report), from this research they created a formula to derive SIM score: Net Sentiment for the Brand/Net Sentiment for the Industry, where Net Sentiment for the Brand (or Industry) equals (Positive + Neutral Conversations – Negative Conversations)/Total Conversions for the brand.

The findings for the Media industry are interesting – the titles/brands included in the study were Glamour, Elle, Essence, Cosmopolitan, and Harper’s Bazaar. The study shows that media brands are typically discussed in a positive light – perhaps because it tends to be the content within the titles that’s discussed, versus the media brands themselves. But there was a low number of conversations for each of the titles measured – from the report: “These low conversation numbers beg the question, why are they so low especially when they are so iconic and a large part of women’s lives?” These results point to an opportunity for these magazines to be more active in the social media space. If you’re a brand that’s relying heavily on magazine coverage and/or advertising, you also at least need to be involved with online publishers who are in the social media space, as well as start to think about your own social media activities, or you’re potentially missing a segment of your market.

I’ll close with the words of Lynne d Johnson, SVP Social Media at the ARF, “Social media is becoming the space where we look closer at relationships and actions to determine behaviors. It's where influence is an outgrowth of the strength of relationships and connections. And while I strongly believe that numerical data can tell us the story of social media, it only tells us part of the story.”

Social Media success metrics

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:34:00 GMT

As with any campaign, the metrics that you choose to measure should align with your campaign objectives. Forrester suggests that marketers fail because they tend to focus on the metrics that are most easily available, as opposed to those that best correspond to their objectives.

So start with clear goals. As we covered in a previous column, be clear why you’re planning a social media program. Is it for customer service, marketing or PR, product support or development, sales, grassroots marketing? Market research? Will it help your SEO efforts by building inbound links? Once you decide on why you’re involved with social media you want to concentrate on the metrics that matter most. You don’t want to waste time looking at measurements that show how well your influencer program is going when what you wanted to do was improve customer service.

Some examples of metrics that tie back to the specific goals of a social media program include: engagement, traffic, viral analysis, influencer tracking, and sentiment. If you want to generate sales, you might be looking at driving engagement – getting people to spend time understanding your offering. In this case you’d want to track your conversion and not focus on things like number of links or retweets. Businesses where grass roots or word of mouth marketing are drivers should understand what is going viral for their brand and why.

Social media brings a couple of new metrics to online marketing – influence and sentiment. It’s crucial for marketers to know who their social media influencers are. This is a challenge for marketers since the opinions of a relatively unknown individual thought leader can be more powerful than a celebrity in terms of how their comments or actions affect a brand.

Sentiment brings with it even more nuance. We can now “listen in” on a vast number of conversations, and the numbers of conversations and people involved are only one aspect of it. In order to discern what people are really saying and thinking, we need to be able to understand the “tone” of the conversations.

Common social media metrics include number of comments and shares, along with the number of readers/followers/fans/likes, etc. These are the numbers that start to determine influence. But it’s not so simple. If one tweeter is only followed by a few people, but those followers retweet everything that tweeter says, and their tweets are then seen by thousands of other tweeters, then that aggregation of posts, comments, followers, and retweeters can help marketers determine who the influencers are.

You want to be able to track the impact of your social marketing efforts and refine your activities based on the social data. Social media measurement is vital for benchmarking and tracking your success over time. It helps you compare your activity with that of your competitors, analyse the vast numbers of tweets and blog posts and comments, start to understand what all that data means, and then turn your insights into actions.

What's web 2.0?

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:03:00 GMT

Let's take an example. When I went to school, we had to go to the library and take the encyclopaedia off the shelf to do our research. When the web came along, the encyclopaedia companies knew they needed to be "online," so they took their volumes of content, put it into html, and published it.

The problem was that it was one-dimensional and users couldn't do much with it except read it. Web 2.0 comes along and makes possible a quantum shift between the monologue of Web 1.0 and the idea that the web provides a network of connected intelligence that we can harness to create new things. So, in the Web 2.0 world, the encyclopaedia becomes a creation of all the contributors across the network - and becomes Wikipedia. A complete shift in thinking and possibilities made possible through technology.

Search works best as part of a marketing strategy

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:04:00 GMT

Marketing activities don’t happen in a vacuum. Search will always work hardest and best when it’s integrated into an overall marketing strategy.

Search give those people exposed to your ad messages (on and offline) a way to connect with your brand. Your search traffic will be affected by your offline media - launch a new model of a car on TV and it’s pretty well guaranteed that your search activity will spike that evening and into the next morning.

Your search activity plays a role in brand building - a user searching for plasma TV’s will expect to see certain manufacturers appear in search results. If your brand doesn’t, it could damage your credibility with that consumer, and it most certainly will keep you off that consumer’s short list.

Online display advertising efforts support your search activity. Studies have shown that when used together, search and online display can lift conversion rates. Users will tend to click on search results from brands they recognise, so while search may play a key role in your marketing strategy, you can’t run search to the exclusion of other important marketing and advertising activities.