ESSAYS
ANDREW ROBERTS, MANAGING PARTNER, GRAVITY THINKING
FACEBOOK
The social behemoth is now the go-to social channel for
every brand but careful consideration must be given to the channel and the consumer’s mindset there. According to Facebook the average user checks in 14 times a day with nearly half doing this either whilst shopping, at the gym, cooking or at the movies – even on the toilet, and only half of that time is spent browsing the news feed. With the rest of the time being divided
between Facebook messaging and posting updates, this means getting attention is key and content is central. Asda’s Head of Social Dominic
Burch’s talk at Social Media Week referenced this challenge directly when he admitted Asda “delete updates if they do not get 100 ‘Likes’ within one minute.” Their use of ‘thumbs up’, ‘true or false’, ‘pick A, B or C’, and ‘yes or no’ resonates with its audience as they post three times a day and get an average of 500 ‘Likes’ per post. The strategy is bold but it obviously works. Facebook posting depends on your
objective, whether that’s engagement, acquisition or reach. But broadly speaking light, shareable, highly visual content that connects to real-time events works best. Also, don’t forget the importance of consumers’ personal brand in social media. Promoting ‘brand. me’ has a powerful impact on what users share.
TWITTER
With a billion Tweets posted every fi ve days by more than
115 million active users, Twitter is a cultural phenomenon. But it can be hit and miss - for every funny or informative Tweet, there are 20 taking up time you’ll never get back and the ‘half life’ of a Tweet is between 18 minutes and three hours.
Retweets are the currency of Twitter;
observations on your journey to work or the weather are all very well, but Twitter
49 issue 20 january 2014
content should be useful, clever, funny and unpredictable. In short, it should add value and this should drive your strategy. For this reason we love @BetfairPoker.
From the refreshingly unexpected to the downright unintelligible, Betfair Poker blatantly avoids anything poker-related. What is central is a wonderful persona that reels in its target audience by offering them content they actually want to connect with. With nearly 30k followers, this is generating great word-of-mouth response.
YOUTUBE YouTube is fast becoming the most infl uential social
channel. Not only is it the second largest search engine but video is one of the most shareable types of content on social media. A study by Pixability showed that brands doing YouTube well “averaged over 10,000 per cent more Tweets and 5,000 per cent more Facebook activity” than those who weren’t. In comparison with Twitter, the long-tail applies, with a third of views coming 12 weeks after publishing. Most importantly, this is
not just a one way street. Passionate fans are interacting directly with brands: 92 per cent of Oreo’s views and 99 percent of Revlon’s views come from fan content. Red Bull are the kings of content and
YouTube is their kingdom. With nearly three million subscribers, they blow number two PlayStation (with two million) out of the sky. Red Bull Stratos activity alone drove average subscribers from 2,000 to 87,801 in a single day.
Their channel is a case study in the
power of visual branded content. Over 100 of their videos have at least a million views. The channel integrates seamlessly alongside a magazine, a record label and two fi lm studios. Cisco believes that video usage will outperform Twitter and Facebook by 2017. If Red Bull’s channel is anything to go by, we think it will be sooner.
PINTEREST This three-year-old is now an integral social media channel
CATCHY
with over 70 million users (two million from the UK). According to Shareaholic, Pinterest is now the second biggest referrer after Facebook. Like many youngsters it is also the most misunderstood with a huge untapped potential, not just in terms of brand awareness and equity- building but in its potential for ecommerce. Just as brands used to
HEADLINES AND CONSUMER INCENTIVES CAN ONLY TAKE YOU SO FAR”
view Facebook as a broadcast channel, so the same principle is being applied to Pinterest. It is not enough to create a few boards, upload some images and leave it, especially when you consider a study by Vision Critical highlighting the concept of ‘reverse showrooming’ where consumers use Pinterest to
browse and then visit the actual store to purchase.
SNAPCHAT Perhaps most famous for turning down a $3 billion offer
from Facebook, Snapchat is an increasingly popular app among millennials that lets users send photos and videos which disappear within 10 seconds. The valuation appears to be warranted as the company announced in September that its eight million
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