Based on preliminary results of a new ten year, longitudinal study of social media and social media users, (1,100,000+ online questionnaire responses , covering 73 fmcg categories and 1,500+ individual brands) a new research study conducted by professors in the Integrated Marketing Communication Department at Northwestern University’s Medill School, found that heavy users of social media (primarily Facebook) when asked for brand preferences in various product categories, showed higher levels of specific “No Brand Preference” as a brand category choice, than those who used less social media. Also, as social media usage increased (primarily Facebook) over time by respondents, there was a measurable decline in specific product brand preferences in a majority of the product brand categories covered in the study.
The study also found that only 11% of the respondents “regularly asked for or sought advice” from others, indicating that social media is used primarily for “social conversations” among users, not to provide product recommendations to others. At the other end of the spectrum, nearly 19% of social media users said they “never seek or give advice” about products or services through social media or other forms of word-of-mouth.
Findings from this study seem to confirm that social media usage is primarily for “social purposes” and the potential for marketers invading social media vehicles or encouraging social media users to become product advocates is not only limited, but, may actually be counterproductive in terms of building brand value and brand relationships.
In just over a week the ad has managed to capture two million views on YouTube. Apart from obvious brand promotion, Expedia says the motivation behind the ad was to support “an important story and didn’t want it lost, especially during the election season”. Nevertheless, a player in the success of the ad (alongside the coverage in news show and mainstream media in the US) has come in the form of social sharing service BuzzFeed, a site more commonly (nd originally) known for its cute kitten videos which has now become an important part of a trend to send videos into “viral” heaven.
Expedia confirms it used BuzzFeed as one of the outlets as part of the “minimal spend” (no figure actual disclosed) to help seed the campaign. Paid-for placement on social sharing sites such as BuzzFeed is becoming increasingly commonplace, it appears. And with ten million unique visitors a month to the site in August (says the WSJ), the trend looks like continuing.
So while advertising revenue may well fill the coffers of BuzzFeed, trying to push promotion campaigns into social networks may well – if the experience of Expedia is to go by – now become rather more structured than previous methods, such as asking media outlets to feature a “viral” video which has actually only launched that very day.
Google+, the search engine’s social layer, has become by far the brand’s most popular social media channel.
The best-performing posts on Travel Republic’s Google+ page have been visual ones, especially ones including images of unusual, beautiful, and unique hotels. Traffic to some hotels went up by as much as 633% following a Google+ post.
The most popular of its posts generated more than 8,000 clicks direct to the agency’s website. Some posts have garned more than 4,257 +1’s and hit the maximum comment limit.
In October 2012, a Travel Republic post on the Ubud Hanging Gardens in Bali received 3,231 +1’s and its link to TravelRepublic.com received 7,450 clicks. Similarly, a post about the Villa Seminyak Estate in Bali recorded 4,257 +1’s with the link from Google+ to the site, producing 4,224 clicks.
Another post on the picturesque Citta Del Mare Hotel Village won 3,994 +1’s and 1,404 shares, while sending over 8,000 clicks to the Travel Republic website.
Travel Republic lucked out, somewhat, in that it was promoted by Google to users of Google+, via What’s Hot, a Google+ feature to promote posts with a lot of interaction (a bit like trending topics on Twitter).
“These can appear in people’s news feed even if they don’t follow the brand, or if a user clicks on ‘Explore’ in Google+ it shows a selection of ‘hot and recommended’ posts,” explains Lynda Daboh, managing director at Wonder Communications, which handles PR for Travel Republic.
In its latest initiative, the company has started to get involved in Google+ “communities” as well.Its inaugural community is called ‘Beach Holidays’.
Travel Republic also installed the Google+ (like this! share this!) badge on its homepage. The badge displays the number of followers, and as the number of followers grew, it encouraged others to join its page. Adding a +1 button to email marketing was helpful, too, in speeding up the pace of follows.
Google+ enables users to upload high quality full sized photos, which Travel Republic found encourage more shares than photos on other social networks it has experimented with.
While some travel brands have written off Google+, Travel Republic joins others in the UK market, such as Kuoni, that have claimed tangible success with dedicated effort on the platform.
To bring this world to life, Google and UNIT9 — using various HTML5 techniques, including WebGL for the 3D effects, CSS3 transitions and GLSL shaders — accelerated 3D transforms, the Web Audio API for audio effect and the getUserMedia feature of WebRTC to power an in-browser photo booth that uses your computer’s camera and microphone. If you are interested in how exactly the developers created this experience, Google also published a technical case study that delves into the details of how they created the wind effect and grass, for example. As the UNIT9 developers note in this tutorial, “in WebGL / Javascript we don’t (yet) have the luxury to run a full-blown physics simulation. So in Oz we had to find a way to create the effect of wind, without actually simulating it.”
The Chrome experiment is fun to play with even without knowing all the technical details. If you want to delve a little bit deeper without having to touch the code, you can append ?debug=on to the site’s URL, wait for it to load and then press Ctrl-i to bring up a new menu that allows you to customize the experience a bit and leave the predetermined camera path to freely roam across the 3D world.
- 64% of those surveyed planned to increase social media spend in 2013.
- 41% of those surveyed had a dedicated social media budget.
- Funds are being shifted from both online and offline buckets to fund this increased spend.
- Metrics are still an issue: The majority of brand managers still name brand lift and sales generated as key metrics. Advertisers “would prefer to use the exact same metrics used in the offline medium, and additional metrics specific to the online medium,” pointing to the continued disconnect between offline/online ROI measurement.
- This disconnect is impacting the growth of paid advertising budgets, with a desire for cross-platform consistency, clear ROI benchmarks and connections between social media and brand lift/sales generated.
- Creativity seems to be lacking –> rather than experimenting on their end, many brand managers are looking to social media networks and media sellers to provide the necessary tools to measure return on spend.
Travel has seen some great social media successes over the past couple of years. But whether you were a Facebook pioneer or whether you just started to intensify your (business) engagement on Social Media platforms – you might have noticed a few things lately:
- It’s noisy & time consuming: Tons of information come in every minute and it’s getting harder and harder to handle.
- It’s boring: Honestly, how often do you see the same images of cats, the same links to videos or the same quotes?
- It’s challenging: Engaging people, in particular when it comes to business, has become really difficult.
The reasons for this development are diverse: relevance, originality, emotions, priorities, resources and time – to name but a few. When people ask me for ideas what to post on Facebook, I usually tell them the following:
“It’s not important what you post on Facebook. It’s more important what you do in the “real world” that inspires people so much that they want to post it on Facebook.”
This means that instead of thinking about what kind of information you can post on your Social Media channels, create stories by making a difference to peoples’ lives – every day. For instance, Hotels existed long before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was born. Movies, TV series, books (including the bible) feature life in hotels. And why? Because there is hardly any other place where so many different people come together and – yes – create stories!
The entire industry is based on giving people a feeling of welcome and home. Service is the magic word. Yet service has a different meaning today than it had when hotel chains were created. Today, service is about being treated like an individual – not according to standard. Knowing this, being social is easy.
The basics:
- Let your staff do things that make a difference to your guests.
- Do things that your guests have never seen or experienced before.
- Surprise them with little ideas they haven’t been surprised with elsewhere.
- Treat them as if they were the only guest in your hotel – or as if they were staying with you in your own place.
- Picture the guest journey – from the first encounter with your hotel (online, on the phone or in person) to unpacking the suitcase once back at home. What kind of personal touch can you add to each of these interactions?
- Try to arrange as many personal interactions with guests as possible and avoid machines or online orders etc. If this is too hard to do, at least make the interaction with machines or with your booking website as human as possible. You don’t have to go as far as Coca-Cola did with their fabulous “Skyfall” campaign. Yet try to do some magic by using well written instructions and images that make users smile or even laugh! Remember: be human!
- Think in visuals and create things that people can take a picture of and upload it to their social media profiles spontaneously: Funny signs, creative posters in the lift, breath-taking menus, jaw-dropping buffet items – you name it!
- Throw away those odd welcome cards and delete those boring welcome messages that appear on the TV screen. Only people who never stayed in a hotel before find them special. Instead, think about awow-way of welcoming a guest to his/her room. Some hints: sticky notes, lipstick, music, smell, posters, fish bowl, pillow treatment, bathroom amenities, poems, blackboards,…
- Let housekeeping leave a sign that the cleaners were actually human. Very simple things are: arranging the pyjamas in a surprising way, creating animals out of towels, lining up the shoes in a funny way, arrange the personal belongings of the guest nicely,…
The Oasis Beach Tower Hotel in Dubai got it right: Have a look at what their cleaning staff did on Valentine’s day! This is awesome, and the guest took the time to take a picture and to upload it on the hotel’s Facebook page. Priceless! - Guests who celebrate their birthday or wedding anniversary usually get flowers, Champaign or pralines (or nothing at all). Think about a morepersonal add-on present like handing over a card to the guest with the signatures of several employees or the reception team singing upon arrival. Researching guests’ preferences (behind their back of course) might help. Do it the way you would do it for your family and friends.
- Do a mini flash mob performance e.g. during breakfast, in a function room or in the lobby when many people are there: Some hints: live cooking, eggs, napkins, coffee foam, dancing, vacuum cleaner, announcements, music, … There’s no need to install cameras, people will take pictures and videos or at least will talk about it or come back just to see your chefs perform. The more natural the better, so don’t spend too much time on the choreography. Instead let your staff be creative.
- Lasting gifts: Leave a little note, a flower or another little present in the returned laundry, in the pocket of a jacket for instance. You can as well put something in the spectacle case or in the toilet bag of a guest. Just make sure it is not too intimate and that it creates warm feelings – even or in particular if it’s only found weeks later.
- Make the check-out experience as special as possible. Instead of just asking which address needs to be on the invoice, write a little “thank you” or a “miss you already” on a sticky note and put it on the invoice. Or post an item to the bill like a mini-discount for being a lovely guest etc. You can also send postcards or e-mails to guests after they left and thank them for their stay. Even better: you send it before guests check out so that your mail awaits them at home saying “Welcome Home”.
Yet its post, which are often just attractive product images, gain thousands of ‘likes’ and hundreds of comments. For example, a picture of the original Starbucks coffee shop with the heading ‘Where it all started’, attracted more than 150,000 ‘likes’ and 2,100 comments.
Starbucks’ social team also doesn’t seem to respond to many of these comments, if at all. If anything Starbucks’ massive fan count and high engagement rate serves to underline the fact that there are few hard and fast rules when it comes to social media.
The other brands I’ve looked that have achieved success on Facebook, such as John Lewis and ASOS, flood their pages with numerous updates per day and do a decent job of responding to comments.
Starbucks does the exact opposite but outperforms both of these brands.
The coffee brand also has local pages for other global markets including the UK, which adopts a similar strategy towards the frequency of posts.
However the content is more varied, with videos, surveys and coupons in among the product images.
Starbucks UK is also the only brand I’ve seen so far that includes several user posts in its timeline. There are four posts from fans on February 8, two of which are ringing endorsements for the brand, while one of the others is a request for job advice from someone in Thailand.
I’m not sure why these posts are showing up on the Starbucks UK page, and really they make it look a bit untidy.
b) Twitter
Starbucks’ takes an equally relaxed attitude towards its main Twitter feed, tweeting fewer than 10 times a day on average.
Most of its posts are responses to @mentions, but it also tweets product images and links to its loyalty scheme every couple of days.
The content is generally uninspiring and often repurposed from Facebook, yet the feed has more than 3.5m followers.
While other brands give their social teams the freedom to engage in conversations with followers and inject some personality into their Twitter feeds, Starbucks’ content is really quite bland. Obviously this means it avoids getting caught up in anything controversial, but it also seems fairly unambitious.
The Starbucks UK feed is also relatively quiet compared to the likes of ASOS, tweeting no more than 10 times each day.
A decent proportion of the tweets are responses to customer service queries, but it appears that social is a low priority for the brand.
In fact the most notable thing about Starbucks’ Twitter feed is the momentous fail it suffered during a Christmas promotional campaign at the Natural History Museum.
The coffee brand displayed Twitter messages that used the hashtag #spreadthecheer on a big screen next to an ice rink at the museum, but forgot to actually monitor what was being posted.
Coming hot on the heels of the scandal over Starbucks’ UK taxes, the wall unsurprisingly became a prime target for angry taxpayers…
c) Pinterest
While its Facebook and Twitter pages are deeply uninspiring, Starbucks has one of the best Pinterest accountsI’ve seen so far.
It only has seven boards but they have more than 900 pins between them, and have attracted more than 76,000 followers. In comparison, Walmart has created 65 boards but has just 12,000 followers, while ASOS’s 13 boards have around 25,000.
The boards are full of fantastic images that are almost entirely sourced from third-party sites. I think this is an important part creating a successful Pinterest strategy, and is something that a number of brands don’t seem to grasp.
In September 2012 it offered followers the chance to win a Verismo System coffee machine if they created a board named ‘It’s possible’ then pinned six images to it, including one of the new machine. A quick Pinterest search for ‘It’s possible’ shows that it had hundreds, if not thousands of entries. Great success!
d) Google+
Normally when brands neglect their Google+ pages I say that it’s a symptom of the fact that nobody uses the network, but in this case it’s actually in keeping with Starbucks’ overall social strategy.
The coffee brand has more than a million followers and posts content every few days with nearly all of it taken from its Facebook page and Twitter feed, though there’s nothing drastically wrong with this tactic.
Each update attracts hundreds of +1s and up to 100 comments, which is actually a lot better than most of the other brands I’ve looked at.
Ikea, Tesco and Walmart haven’t really bothered to update their G+ pages at all, but ASOS and Red Bull post content frequently and as a result have 1.4m and 1.5m followers respectively.
e) Instagram
As I’ve already mentioned, Starbucks stretches every piece of content as far as it can by reusing it across all its social channels, and its Instagram feed is no different. It looks great and has more than a million followers, but all the content is remarkably familiar.
As with Red Bull, the idea is to promote the brand as part of a lifestyle choice and as something to be enjoyed with friends.
Starbucks also used Instagram to cross-promote a Google Hangout with Maroon 5, showing how the mobile app can be used as part of a multichannel marketing campaign.
