socialmedia

(Google +) = (- Interest)

April 23, 2012 By John Kimbell

My self-imposed break from Facebook and Twitter is over.

As part of a one man (not so social) experiment, for the last week I haven’t logged in to either social platform as I endeavoured to become a Google+ convert. To be honest, this little experiment was long overdue having ‘upgraded’ (current Google users don’t ‘join, but upgrade to G+) when it first launched, but never done anything with my ‘account’.

So, spurred on by reading about Google+ undergoing a revamp and boasting of its 170m users, I decided it was time to see what it was all about.

Whilst I understand (and Google later reiterated to me in person) that G+ isn’t supposed to be a like for like replacement for Facebook or Twitter, I felt the best way to truly appreciate what the platform could offer would be to give it my exclusive “social attention”.

I chose to treat using G+ as any other punter would (as opposed to scrutinising it as a Digital Planner might) and to be honest the first few days passed without incident – literally. Given that only a handful of my friends outside of work are on G+, my ‘stream’ remained unchanged. Ok, so Mashable and Richard Branson had plenty to say – but to be honest that isn’t what I want in my personal social space.

I asked people in my ‘circles’ if anyone else was using Google+ “No – I don’t get it” and “Yes, but only because you sent me a message” came 2 responses. I was starting to feel a little isolated and was wondering what has happening on Facebook.

As the experiment went into days 3 and 4, what did become apparent was how engrained the other social platforms had become into the social ecosystem. I felt like I was cheating on Google when I checked my LinkedIn account to be confronted with Twitter updates from my contacts and everywhere I went I was being asked to ‘share this on Facebook’, or ‘login in using Facebook’ – but I couldn’t.

By chance on the 5^th day of the experiment I was at an industry conference where a guy called Kerem Atasoy (+kerem atasoy) spoke about how Google+ can be used by retailers and to be honest he did very little to convince me that Google’s dabble in the social world is going to be the soaring a success. I collared Kerem at the end of the conference and outlined how I had been solely using Google+ for the past few days and asked if he could tell me how many other people in the UK only were using it – “Only Larry (The Lamb? Grayson?) knows that” was the response. (Out of interest Kerem himself has only posted on Google+ 3 times in the last 3 months).

My interest was waning and I found myself digesting more than my average amount of daily digital news as I found that this (outside of a handful of brand pages) was the only real content I could find of interest. Yes, a lot of big (and some smaller) brands (H&M, Burberry, Intel, Manchester United) have jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, have lots of people in their circles and appear to be making a fair fist of things – but it felt very much as if I was an outsider looking in, rather than it being the social/interactive platform I was hoping for.

Many of these brands have gone to great lengths to make some really attractive looking pages and update regularly, giving those people that are interested much to digest – but at the moment it just isn’t mainstream enough to be of interest to the mainstream – clearly seen by the lack of responses to most posts.

In summary, Google will be the first to admit they are behind the curve when it comes to social. Facebook and Twitter stole a march on them some time ago and they are now trying to play catch up.

Whilst Google+ has some nice features (Circles and Hangouts especially), I think they are going to struggle to compete with Facebook and become a social media tool that is used by the masses. The current awareness campaign they are running may help turn a few heads and increase uptake amongst a few (hundred?) thousand of the more curious and tech savvy amongst us but I’ll be surprised if it ever comes close to being as widely used as Facebook.

Admittedly for fans (and employees) of Google, G+ does help close the loop on their many product extensions but in my view it just feels a bit too complicated for the average online user – there is too much for people to get their heads around and I think this counts against it. If you look at how simple other social platforms are to set up, understand and use, it just feels that Google have overcooked it a bit.

For brands that have the know-how and budgets, it is bound offer rewards if it is managed properly – as no doubt Google+ brand pages will rank better in natural search and see other social platforms slide down into oblivion and it may well be this fact that many brands will consider when looking at their brand pages. But on the flipside, this is yet another social platform that requires upkeep and moderation – putting extra pressure on all but the most socially active and well-resourced brands.

I’d like to say that I will continue to use Google+, but until less of the digital pluralists and more of my friends and the brands I am interested in are signed up – I won’t be.

Feel free to see what I don’t get up to :- +john kimbell

Useful links :-

http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/

http://mashable.com/2012/02/09/hm-google-plus-brand-pages/

http://on.mash.to/xWVjIb

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/23/google_is_fiddling_with_the_google_plus_stats/

Filed Under: Display, Search Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: facebook, Google, socialmedia

Owen Hargreaves. Social media genius?

July 8, 2011 By Sharan Cheema

Fill in the blank – Owen Hargreaves is a ________ . If you asked 100 people to fill in the blank, I would estimate that around 90% would respond with ‘permanently crocked professional footballer’, 9% would respond with an unrepeatable explicative and 1% would say a social media genius – with that 1% being me. If I had been asked that question over a week ago, I would have probably responded with the former response, so what has changed in a week?

On June 30^th, Hargreaves joined Youtube & created his own channel . In just over a week he has uploaded 23 videos and his top 5 viewed videos have amassed a total of nearly 1m views to date. The only thing he is promoting is himself with the ultimate aim being to find a new club.

Hargreaves has suffered from a number of injuries over the past few seasons and achieved just a handful of appearances for Man Utd. This culminated in him being released by the club in May this year. When I saw his name trending on Twitter earlier this week, my instant thought was ‘what has he injured now?’. Having clicked on the topic I saw that he was the talk of Twitter having uploaded videos of himself to Youtube to demonstrate that he is fit and help end the perception that he is injury-prone. I have only watched a couple of the videos but the short videos go through a number of different drills to demonstrate that he is still able to stand the rigours of football.

A number of tweets have ridiculed him and there are already a number of spoofs but I applaud him. He has taken control and decided to communicate a message without relying on ‘traditional’ media. He could have chosen the route of doing an interview with Sky Sports and declared himself fit to play to gain publicity but that would have only got him limited exposure.

Creating his own channel has ensured that he is in control of the message he is sending out and has resulted in greater publicity, column inches and conversations about the player than I imagine he expected. No club will purely sign him on the basis of the videos but it does keep him front of mind in a market where there are already a number of out-of-contract players searching for new clubs. The latest rumour is that Sven-Goran Eriksson is said to be interested in signing him for Leicester City – that is what I would call a positive social media ROI.

Maybe the term ‘genius’ is a slight over-exaggeration but Hargreaves has succeeded in a channel where other brands have failed. Kieron Dyer must be looking on with interest…

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: socialmedia, youtube

The digital world in April

May 6, 2011 By Sharan Cheema

There are a number of daily digital developments and internally we always look to keep up to date with important and interesting stories within the digital and marketing space. We know that it isn’t always possible for everyone to keep a track of the key stories so every month we will compile what we feel are the top stories of the past month and post them on our blog to share in case anyone missed any notable developments. There are obviously hundreds and hundreds of stories but below is just a selection of key stories for the month of April.

Google launched their new +1 social search service as their major attempt to become more social. Here is a useful video explaining what it is and our thoughts on the development are here. Critically this will benefit consumers who search via their Google Accounts to ‘leave their seal of approval’ on relevant ads for their friends to see.

Facebook have turned their attention to marketers and developed Facebook Studio as a platform to showcase creativity. Here is our take on it and we are hopeful that it will lead to a greater pool of knowledge but it remains to be seen…

Behavioural targeting was once again thrust into the limelight as EU legislation is due to come into play later in May. To summarise, it essentially means that businesses who collect and store cookie data from visitors to their websites should gain consent for this moving forward – with the ultimate aim to protect consumers online. This is likely to have an impact on behavioural advertising moving forward and the Online Behavioural Advertising Framework has been launched as a self regulatory initiative. There are sure to be many developments over the coming weeks and here is our view on it.

The BBC have united with a number of commercial radio stations to launch an unified Radio Player that allows users to search by station, location, programme, presenter and interest on one site rather than having to go to each individual site to change the station. This will by no means be a challenge to offline radio but the ultimate aim is to make consumption of online radio easier. In terms of online advertising for the player, we still need to go to each sales house as there is no unified sales point as yet. The player is in its infancy but it will be interesting to monitor developments and listening figures over the first year to see how it evolves.

Online music service Spotify announced that users of its free service would be restricted to ten hours of listening a month with songs playable up to five times only free of charge. The move comes as they look to move people to their premium subscription account (in which there is access to exclusive tracks and also unlimited streaming) and as they also announced their plans to rival iTunes. The move coincided with this week’s nmain which research shows only 3% of people subscribe to music streaming services and shows the reluctance to pay for online content.

And finally, this last story isn’t a digital development but it is a campaign we came across and liked. Air France recently took to the streets of Manhattan with a free food gourmet truck which was promoted via their social media platforms and just demonstrated how brands can cross the bridge between online and offline ‘social’ campaigns

Filed Under: Display, Search Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: facebook, Google, OBA, Radio, socialmedia, Spotify

Becoming Social – Inside Out

April 6, 2011 By Sharan Cheema

Having been to a number of IAB workshops over recent months as well as the Social Media World Forum earlier this week, I’ve heard a lot of opinions and views about how brands need to ‘become social’.

We all know that social media is growing in importance with marketers and as a result there has been a rush of brands investing in social media campaigns. However, this at times has been done with brands not taking a step back and realising that in order to implement a truly strategic social media presence, they need to fully understand and embrace the medium – essentially becoming social themselves inside and out – before engaging with the outside world.

Why is this so important? Primarily brands need to ensure a consistent tone and message across all facets of the brand from the marketing department all the way through to those who are face to face with consumers on a daily basis. We talk a lot about consumers collaborating with one another and interacting with brands but what about how the brand interacts internally?

Last year we had an example where one of the Navigate team went to Domino’s to claim a free pizza which was promoted via foursquare. My colleague was initially denied his free pizza (despite showing the relevant offer to the Domino’s restaurant manager) however after protesting and several calls to the head office, the offer was verified and the free pizza was redeemed. This is just one example, but it amplifies the importance of sharing knowledge across all levels of a business – not just the marketing department. Only when this is achieved can a brand truly be seen as being authentic and true – not only externally, but internally too.

Essentially, ‘being social’ isn’t all about investing hundreds and thousands of pounds into social platforms.

We need to strive for a step change in how brands understand social media and steer towards internal collaboration from the top down. Without this, we face the situation where a brand is portraying one image via social media but when it comes to the product/service itself there is a huge disparity.

I understand that this is not as easy as it sounds especially for larger brands but in the long term an investment (not necessarily financial) is required – particularly where face to face interaction with the consumers is key.

I think we all know ‘doing’ social media isn’t something that should tag along at the end of a digital campaign but an ongoing internal social commitment is required in the long term. Social is still seen by many brands as ‘something we do’ rather than ‘something we are’ and we all have a responsibility to help this change.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: facebook, foursquare, socialmedia, twitter

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