Posts Tagged: Social Media Marketing

Social Media — No Comments
30
Sep 12

How The New Myspace is *Potentially* Getting Social Engagement Right

A brief preview of the newest iteration of Myspace went up up with a bit of fan fare this week but perhaps not a lot of sustained interest. The upcoming re-launch of the site was announced with a completely new interface and what seems to be a massive amount of music options. What I was sort of surprised about was how little people seemed to pay attention to the corporate social engagement portion of the site which is an aspect that this site could potentially have all other sites beaten in.

What am I talking about?

Displayed in a brief preview video were two aspects of what look to be actions from fan pages (in this case Justin Timberlake’s) that caused a few neurons to spark when I spotted them.

The first was a fan source map showing not only where fans were located but attributed a  fan joining your page  to another fan. This is huge in the sense that you can understand how your community forms and who are essentially the taste makers or ‘influencers’ in your community. By doing some digging you can understand how a fan is sending their friends your way and what makes them trustworthy in that others will follow his lead and join the page. In general by having this information you are understanding why people are joining your page and as a result can deliver better value to these fans.

What also caught my interest in this video was the option for the page owner to be able to reach out to “top fans’. Considering what was discussed earlier and using the idea of influencer marketing this could  allow organizations to better spread the word not only online but offline.

So for an example  say a new product is launching. With the option of contacting your ‘top fans’ you can share this information allowing them to spread the word  within their social spheres. Not only are you rewarding your top supporters by giving them exclusive information but you now have a trusted source who will be likely to pass on this information with others. You’re not spending thousands on an ad spend to get the word out, instead you have someone embedded within the community you want to target that will happily spread the word.

Are Facebook and Twitter Falling Behind?

Based off of this video my opinion is that Myspace has taken a direction that understands communications and social better than its competitors. What I mean in this is that Myspace has taken a direction that focuses on the actions of individual users and their contribution to building communities and spreading messages vs. Facebook/Twitter that have gotten too focused on pushing messaging out to as many eyeballs as possible.  On one side there is focus on who your messaging is getting out to and on the other a largely pay and spray approach is being taken.

Social Media — 2 Comments
20
Sep 10

Do you want Foursquare with that?

The most important concept in social media marketing that I’ve learned is that for efforts to be effective they should be connected to how the firm earns money. Having fans and creating engagements is great but when it’s not driving firm revenue in some way, shape or form it’s not useful.

That’s why when I read Mashable’s recent article about the McDonald’s head of Social Media Rick Wion celebrating a 33% increase in Foursquare check ins with a pilot program they ran I was disappointed that there wasn’t more to it. While the goal was apparently not to increase sales immediately this campaign could have been much cooler in seeing if McDonalds actions actually created an increase in sales( or not…).

How McDonalds could have measured the campaign (if they had wanted to):

McDonalds could have easily done one of two tests to see if this campaign was effective. First and probably most easy is that they could have just compared sales and check-in results from previous days for an extended time period to see if this 33% increase in check-ins actually led to an increase in money into stores. If revenue saw a significant jump when foursquare activity spiked (barring other variables) Mcdonalds would have at least some proof to try the campaign again.

The second test is running the campaign on a smaller scale comparing it between two similar markets. One would run the Foursquare campaign and the other would have no promotions. In the end, sales and check-in figures would be compared between the two. If the market with the Foursquare campaign saw an increase in check-ins along with revenues in comparison to the control market McDonald’s could further test this campaign and have it rolled out on a larger basis.

While I don’t know the full goal of the McDonalds Foursquare campaign I feel that despite the celebration within the Mashable article it’s still important to clarify that social media in business is not successful by engagements alone. If I would go on twitter or another network and tried giving away something for an audience action people would have jumped on it as well. In the end social media campaigns need to be attached to financial drivers because most companies can’t operate on foursquare check-ins alone. ;)

Do you have a question or comment ? Feel free to reach me at @kevrichard or kevin@kevrichard.com