Micro blogs - Twitter, Social Media

Opinion Piece: Freedom comes with responsibility

Sharon Baker, Co-Founder at agency:2

The views expressed are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of agency:2.

I may be unpopular within social media circles but I’m going to say this… I think it’s wrong that people can tweet about a famous football player. I think it’s wrong that on my Facebook feed today I was told countless times who the footballer was who had taken out a super injunction to protect his name. I think by citing parliamentary privilege to overturn a law simply because 75,000 Twitter users had already done so, MP John Hemming has set a very dangerous precedent.

Why? Because I believe that we need a legal system in a democracy which holds people accountable and regulates online spaces. When we don’t have law the result is anarchy, injustices and people power that becomes lawless. There are plenty of examples in recent history which show what happens when people follow the masses without thinking of what they are doing. With Twitter based in California there is also the question of which law is being followed?

Whatever you think about the footballer’s actions in taking out the injunction and attempting to sue Twitter users (and I believe this was an (unpopular) mistake) the law is in place and needs to be respected. While I do think that social media users should embrace their right to talk about what they want I also believe that the users and the owners of these sites have to have some responsibility to society and must take this into account before they tweet or update their status. The fact that Jemima Khan and Gabby Logan were also, incorrectly, named just goes to prove this.

Using the Wikipedia model could be the way forward. Wikipedia allows a user to have access to incredibly important information. It’s free; it’s accurate and is hugely popular. Wikipedia works because individuals take it upon themselves to make sure that what is posted is factual and accurate. The Wikipedia foundation has been developed to ensure it’s self-regulated. This causes people to think before writing and allows moderation that everyone supports because they believe in the community and the dissemination of accurate information. Maybe this is a model that could be replicated around other social media networks?

Popular networks have a responsibility to their societies. As for the law on super injunctions I’ll leave this to the lawyers – who hopefully still have some say in our democratic society.

New media – Bre.ad

What is Bre.ad?

Bre.ad is a URL shortener which focuses on allowing people to share ‘slices’ from their life and ‘toasting’ it.

It shortens links, syncs to Twitter and Facebook, and provides click analytics data. Its unique selling point is that it helps users promote brands, interests and charities through a full-page interface. Bre.ad has reinvented the future of URL shortening by turning it into a promotional tool.

When you click on a Bre.ad link, you aren’t immediately taken to the webpage it directs to. Instead, you are taken to a web page created by the person who originally shortened the link.   These pages are called ‘toasts’ and can be used to promote anything from a brand message to a charity you support.  Bre.ad will pick one of their ‘toasts’ at random and display it for 5 seconds before showing the requested domain.

Who will use Bre.ad and why?

While Bre.ad isn’t public yet, Lady Gaga, The North Face® and a host of other brands already have ‘toast’ pages. Bre.ad even offers an Explore function that lets you see which brands, causes and profiles are the most popular.

However, the creators of Br.ead claim that the service is not about showing people adverts. Rather it is a highly personal service which adds to the overall user experience.  Each time you click on a Bre.ad link, you will be shown a personal recommendation from the Bre.ad link creator. The idea is that every ‘toast’ you see has been specifically selected – and has been chosen as it is relevant to the destination URL which you are being sent through to.

Bre.ad founder Alan Chan has stated that people have causes they want to promote, whether it’s their company or a charity they are passionate in supporting. The aim of Bre.ad, then, is that it is a simple and effective way for them to display this passion.

The Future

Bre.ad’s closed beta launches in the next few weeks and it will be interesting to see which brands attempt to leverage ‘toasts’ to push relevant brand messages. It is a great tool to allow people to share their favourite brands and causes and should prove to be a great way for brands and influencers to share something without disrupting the user experience. Indeed, Bre.ad would argue that they are adding to the user experience as ‘toasts’ will be based on the URL you are being directed through to.

Promotional tools like this one could prove to be the future of web advertising. At agency:2 we especially like the way the ‘toasts’ are presented as clear, attractive images and can certainly see the potential for brands to use Bre.ad to connect with their loyal fans.

The power of online word-of-mouth marketing

As social media specialists we understand the importance of online word of mouth marketing.

 

Word of mouth communications has always been an extremely effective tool for spreading messages quickly and influencing purchase decisions. In the age of social media it has become even more powerful. Social media has opened up online word of mouth marketing, changing it from a one-to-one to a one-to-many form of communication.

By utilising influencer outreach programmes brands can now reach large but highly targeted audiences on social channels – and know that their messages are being communicated by respected brand ambassadors.

Maximising word of mouth – Brandvocacy, the brand ambassador network

Brandvocacy is our established brand ambassador network, optimising word of mouth communications through influencer outreach.

As social media becomes more and more prominent and consumers increasingly seek opinions from trusted peers and opinion formers the need to engage with these people within social spaces has grown. This is where Brandvocacy’s influencer outreach comes in.

We use our network of trusted and passionate brand ambassadors to communicate brand and product messages through social spaces to a receptive audience. By creating these virtual communities and segmenting them into niche tribes we ensure the greatest relevancy for the audience and for our clients’ brands.

Adherence to the ethical and legal principles of our industry is also key to the success of Brandvocacy. To us it’s imperative that all communications are open and transparent. This means each and every Brandvocacy campaign is always clearly shown as ‘sponsored’  branded posts. For example, all blog posts are marked as a ‘Sponsored Post’. This focus on ethics and transparency ensures that Brandvocacy benefits brands, influencers and the online community as a whole.

Social media has revolutionised online word of mouth marketing. People use social channels such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook everyday to make recommendations about brands – Brandvocacy ensures the client’s brand is front of mind with your audience.

Top 5 Tips for improving your Facebook EdgeRank

Ever wondered why your brand’s Facebook Page is not receiving as many Likes and comments as you hoped for? It could well be that many of your Fans have not even seen your post due to Facebook’s EdgeRank system. EdgeRank is Facebook’s unique algorithm which decides what posts appear in the ‘Top News’ stream, the default Page when you log on to Facebook.

Nobody outside Facebook completely understands the unique (and top secret) factors that enable a post to be positioned at the top of the ‘Top News’ results page.  It is, however, largely based on three main factors: affinity, weight and timing. When these factors are combined they have the ability to push content to the News Feed’s ‘Top News’ page.

EdgeRank, then, challenges brands to produce appealing and engaging content in order to ensure they are seen above other brands. Here are our Top 5 tips on how to optimise your content so that it will appear on the ‘Top News’ page:

1. Encourage audience engagement

EdgeRank is weighted so that activities that require higher levels of user engagement get a higher score than those that don’t. So, instead of just aiming for Likes, brands need to get people to comment on, and share, their content.

If brands want increased fan participation they need to provide something that people want to engage with. With social media you are fighting for people’s hard earned attention – brands must offer content that is worth their audience’s time.  As with all social media it is about having relevant conversations. You must ask questions and not just push out content and hope that people will respond. It has been proven that posts which include a clear and simple call to action achieve higher engagement levels.

So: make your posts fun, timely and engaging and ask your Fans to join in with you (for example, through asking for user generated content, product feedback or running competitions). You’ll be surprised how many will enthusiastically do so.

2. Personalise your brand on Facebook

It’s important to remember that, when it comes to EdgeRank, manual posts have more weight than posts automated through apps.  More than this, your Facebook Page needs to be human and personalised. You must develop a relationship with your audience: be ready to thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions with you.

Each social platform demands a bespoke tone of voice and content strategy – this is vital when it comes to engaging with your fans on Facebook. They can tell which posts are automated or those that have been written for Twitter (e.g. featuring hashtags) and which have been personalised – and for this reason auto posts do not produce as much engagement.

Efficiency and timesaving is important in the social sphere but when it leads to a decrease in engagement it simply isn’t worth it.  Show your fans you care enough to personalise each post and respond to their queries and opinions.

3. Stand out with rich media

With so many brands on Facebook it can be easy for your brand messages to get lost in a sea of content. Videos and photos are a way to ensure that your content stands out – plus, this type of rich media always performs well on Facebook. People love rich media content – videos and photos are much more immediate and, in many instances, more interesting than lengthy text updates which means people are more likely to engage with them. This engagement means that your posts will appear in the ‘Top News’ of your Fans’ News Feed.

Depending upon the brand, sometimes text based status updates aren’t engaging enough to push your posts into the ‘Top News’ Feed. Videos and photos are more likely to grab people’s attention and they also seem to be a favoured by the News Feed algorithm, carrying a high weight score that will influence EdgeRank.

Use these videos to increase engagement. Don’t just push out this content, ask people what they think and contextualise it with a question. Getting people to comment will then add a highly weighted interaction score and build affinity with new users.

4. Timing is the key

Social media is all about timing, in all its senses. With the need for brands to publish content that naturally creates discussions and that people will have an opinion about, making it timely is crucial. The more time-relevant the post the more effective it will be in engaging people and drawing responses from them. This could be seen recently in the UK with so many brands citing the Royal Wedding in their posts.

Facebook is also a fantastic way to drive promotion of time-sensitive campaigns. If there is a deal being run or you want to count down to the close of a competition, Facebook is an ideal platform to successfully engage. As timing and relevancy is so central to the EdgeRank algorithm, posts that contain content relating to this kind of promotion will have greater success in appearing in the News Feed.

Timing in another way is also crucial. You need to understand the best times to post – analyse the responses on your Page and leverage these insights to post at the best possible time. Knowing the optimum frequency of these posts is also crucial. You don’t want to overwhelm your fans with too many posts.

5. Use the data

Brands need to take advantage of Facebook Insights in order to understand their audience and what content they are interested in. Facebook provides a range of data that will highlight what works and what doesn’t. Analyse the average number of comments and Likes for your posts and look out for trends. These insights can be used to construct a messaging plan that will maximise engagement.

It is important to keep a constant eye on what is happening and tweak messages to make sure all content is optimised.  Use the insights provided to make the most of the topics that consistently do well – and drop the ones that never perform. It sounds obvious but you’d be amazed by how many big brands push out the same content that gets little or no engagement.

Originally posted on Social Media Week’s blog.

New media: Storify

This week Storify became available to all. The site allows users to create their own story by dragging and dropping content found on social media channels including Tweets, audioboo recordings, photographs from Flickr and YouTube videos. This can then be embedded onto a news website or blog page.

It is essentially a publishing platform that has been built specifically for the social Web, allowing people to turn social media posts into compelling stories. Storify essentially lets anybody become a news curator.  It has been claimed by some that Storify sits somewhere between blogging and journalism and in this way could transform the way people put blog posts together or even how some online publications curate the news.

Who will use it and why?

Even in private beta, with an invitation required, the site became so popular that the brand name became used as a verb, with people asking someone to “Storify” an event or social media conversation. In the 8 months since its launch more than 5,000 sites, including The New York Times, the BBC and The Guardian have embedded Storify stories, and the stories have gained more than 13 million views, with March 2011 seeing 4.2 million views on its own.

It’s clear that this is a platform that has been enthusiastically taken on board by bloggers, PR professionals, journalists and major news organisations. It’s not hard to see why. This is because the tool is so much simpler and easy to use than traditional blogging platforms. By cutting and pasting social media content you can produce stunning rich media stories.

The future

With this initial success the big question remains: will it go mainstream? Now that Storify has gone public the site needs to decide exactly who their target market is. They have already stated that “This is still very much the beginning of our journey. Here at Storify, we have a lot more work ahead of us to realize our vision of a publishing platform built for the social Web.”

Events in the Middle East have shown how important social media can be with Twitter and Facebook at the heart of popular uprisings across the region. Al-Jazeera English has acknowledged this influence by launching The Stream. Storify is similar in its ideas to The Stream, which incorporates Twitter, Facebook and YouTube posts into its 30 minute show. The plan is to create a seamless presence between the web community and the programme.

It will be extremely interesting to see if Storify gets adopted by the mainstream in the same way. It needs to be recognised as the place to go when major events occur. Indeed, the single day with the most views came in March when the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan with more than half a million views of its articles. It’s clear that Storify must position themselves as the site to use when major events happen.