How do you measure social media app traffic?
There is now more activity in the “internet of apps” than on the “traditional” web. Most of this is invisible to marketers. Isn’t it about time we rethought how we measure digital activity?
Australian Election 2010 – social media match fitness
The 2010 Australian Election is going to be an interesting one for social media analysis, because for the first time we will see to be able to see whether social sentiment is going to have an impact on how people vote. I started looking at this on Friday 16 July, the day before the election was called, and left Alterian SM2 monitoring tool looking at the same keywords over the weekend which included the day of the election announcement.
This analysis is from 1 to 18 July and includes mainstream media as well as strictly “social” media channels. Twitter has by far the largest volume of mentions for both parties.
Mobile phones are changing the way we use social media
This infographic confirms what we already know: global access to social sites and networks via mobile phones is growing at a rate even higher than the uptake of smart phones . My favourite statistics from this:
* People who use Facebook on their phones are twice as active than non-mobile users.
* Growth in mobile access to Facebook grew by 112% year on year whereas Twitter access via mobile grew 347%
5 social media trends to watch
photo credit: cycle60 There are some social and digital trends which seem to hit like an avalanche, and others that build quietly and don’t go away. I wanted to share this list, as a bit of a combination of both types, originally written for The Communications Council of Australia. You can substitute “social” with “digital” because there’s [...]
Australians increasing social media use is led by Facebook
Nielsen reports today via Nielsen’s 2010 Social Media Report, that there are now 9 million Australians interacting on regularly on social networking sites with Facebook dominating – more than 83% of social networkers naming Facebook as their main social networking platform, up from 72% in 2008 and 34% in 2007.
Overall, Facebook is Australia’s most popular social network with 75% of online Australians having ever visited, and via time spent per month (more than 8 hours per month which is seven and a half more hours than its closest rival site YouTube)
HabitatUK return to Twitter
It was in June that HabitatUK learnt the power of social media when they jumped on Twitter and used trending topic hashtags (the most tasteless was the Iran Election) to push signups to their marketing database and furniture discounts . As the blogger who broke the news, and then watched it break all records on Social Media Today, I am very relieved to see them back on Twitter. The case has been used as a benchmark of the cynical use of hashtag spam, been written up on countless posts, news stories and talked about on Twitter. Even though HabitatUK apologised through me via another blog post, and then promptly blamed their intern as the cause of the hashtag spam, they didn’t respond back on Twitter. Until now.
Qantas Travel Insider on building a social community
At the Social Media Club Sydney June event panel discussion Do you need an agency to run effective social media campaigns? Karla Courtney – Online Editor Qantas Travel Insider, and @qftravelinsider – represented the client perspective. Karla works client-side and has built a community around the @qftravelinsider Twitter account by engaging in conversations around travel. Watch the video excerpt from the evening.
How not to use Twitter: HabitatUK as a case study
Habitat is a trendy furniture store, set up by Terence Conran in the 1970s, for those who’ve never been to the UK its like a slightly more upmarket version of Ikea. @HabitatUK turned up on Twitter a couple of days ago, and decided to use trending topic #hashtags at the start of their tweets to get noticed. They used ones that had absolutely nothing to do with furniture, decorating, or shopping, but obviously the top hashtags for Thursday evening AEST such as #iPhone #mms #Apple and even Australia’s Masterchef contestant who got voted off #Poh. I found these on Twitter Search:
8 reasons to use Twitter in promotions
When I was doing my 10 Twitter Strategies for Australian Brands post, I found a cracker of brand and promotion campaign on Twitter called iSpyLevis. The premise is very simple: the person running the Twitter account goes out to an inner city location every day, posting pictures of where they are. When a Twitter follower recognises her/him, they get free jeans. About 8 pairs of jeans are given away every day, in different styles, men’s and women’s. I notice that its been building followers steadily, and now the Sydney tweeters are noticing and interacting
10 Twitter strategies for Australian brands
With all the mentions of Twitter in mainstream media, one could be turned off by the hype but Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks in Australia. Twitter is also very adaptable to long term strategies in social media marketing and there are some brands that use it well, and others who are virtually invisible.
I’ve identified 10 Twitter strategies now being used by Australian brands. I’ve divided them up arbitrarily into “Talking” and “Listening” and low interaction (one way) and higher engagement (two way interaction) and plotted some of the types (and the examples) in a matrix diagram.
Social Media Club Sydney plays nice
Authenticity and Transparency in Social Media Part 1 from SocialMediaClub Sydney on Vimeo.
We got over the hurdle of the initial Social Media Club Sydney inaugural event with a packed house of people who came to see Adam Ferrier talk about the Naked Communications Witchery Man “Girl in the Jacket” campaign and Leslie Nassar talk about his alter ego, the fake Stephen Conroy.
Beach Meet was on the week before and there were waves of hostility directed at PR agencies (accused of hijacking Twitter) and Social Media Club Sydney (accused of random stuff) was at an all time high. So much so that Kelly Tall was prompted to name the Twitter/blogosphere sniping and bitchiness a “feral sandpit”
Leslie already had a cult Twitter following, so he was likely to be OK. Given that the Witchery Man launch had already copped it on from the social media set, as well as digital marketing/regular advertising commentary, we were all steeling ourselves for some serious stoushing.
We never expected what happened.
Jetstar’s 5 cent fail sale
Like all Jetstar members who’d opted in to their communications, I was sent 2 eDMs hyping up a sale which started at 10pm tonight. Here’s the web version of the eDM promising 5 c seats from Melbourne to Hobart and Brisbane to Newcastle and Gold Coast to Sydney.
So what was the catch? The only way you could book was clicking on the link from the eDM or the webpage version. And of course thousands of people were trying to book in the hour or so the offer was available. Of those thousands who tried to access the site, they were presented with a website fail screen, prompting very vocal negative responses on Twitter.
Is public the new private?
Is public the new private? What constitutes oversharing on the public channel of Twitter? So a lot of angst of private being the new public relates to the equation
* how famous/reputable you are
* relative to how private you want to keep your life
* relative to your awareness of who your talking to
* and what you are saying
* how public the channel is
Social Media Club Sydney and the Secret Handshake
There’s been some healthy debate around the “exclusivity” of the Sydney Social Media Club. And despite the title of the post, you won’t need a secret handshake to be let in. Mumbrella released the news this morning about the Social Media Club Sydney starting up, with the first event scheduled for April 27th featuring the figures at the centre of two famous social media incidents in 2009 – the (fake) Stephen Conroy a.k.a Leslie Nassar and Naked Communications Adam Ferrier.
What’s in a name? More on building brand you
What’s consistent about all these personal brand identities, is that that they have built an authentic brand without necessarily using their real faces or their real life names. That’s not to say they aren’t also known as their real life names, only that they have constructed a consistent and authentic online or brand persona that lives over and above their real life personality. Its the consistency in communication or voice as suggested by Seth is what makes the personal brand authentic.
PepsicoZeitgeist visualizes Twitter
I have a quiet obsession with visualizers, so I’m jumping on the SXSW bandwagon only because of this amazing Twitter mashup PepsicoZeitgeist. It combines mapping (swarm) showing where there are multiple tweeters in one spot, with the SXSW streams of tweets (stream), tracks hotspots, (party), and trending topics (popular). Pepsico are also putting out a [...]
Why it takes balls to Skittle
The Skittles social media mashup site works on so many levels. Firstly, it shows confidence in the strength of the Skittles brand. The social media strategy behind Skittles site shows confidence in being able to go with the conversation about the product. While I was on Twitter yesterday, the chatter around Skittles wasn’t necessarily positive, but it added to the general momentum of Skittles being talked about and staying in the top 2 or 3 trending topics on Twitter (a bonus really). Lesser brands would be feel buried in negative conversation.
Unscientific yet accurate Twitter user pie chart
Thanks to Brainz for this one, check out the other social network pie charts at Brainz post on social network user pie charts
Your brand is just not that into you
As advertising and marketing budgets are being slashed (don’t mention the “R word”), it’s probably worth looking at the way brands engage and relate to their customers. I’m inspired to put this into relationship terms after seeing the film, “He’s Just Not That Into You” (HJNTIY) . One of the male characters, Alex, is brutally frank in telling Gigi, how she is deluding herself on male romantic behaviour when a series of guys don’t call her or ask her out again – all when they say they are going to.
In much the same way Alex did, I am going to tell it like it is, with regards to the way brands (and the agencies acting on their behalf), toy with customers’ feelings, and keep them at arms length, or promise to contact without any actual delivery.
Here are my interpretations of the classic, dysfunctional customer relationships where customers are treated badly by brands:
Twitter as interactive backchat
Twitter since it’s launch 3 years ago has been a major part of SXSW, so much so that Pepsico spent some sponsorship dollars this year in creating an interactive visualizer of the various Twitter streams, following the parties just as much as the event itself.
Which brings me to the most pop cultural use of Twitter as interactive backchat. So You Think You Can Dance Australia has a bunch of amateur commentators (me included I’m afraid) who sit on Twitter every Sunday and Monday evening, tweeting on the minutae of costumes, music, hair, camerawork and oh yes, the dancing. Every week, the #sytycd hashtag becomes a trending topic, prompting Twitter users from opposite hemispheres (literal as well as metaphorical) to ask “what’s sytycd?”. Meanwhile the backchat goes on in an interactive (at least amongst the amateur commentators) stream.