AN OVERVIEW OF A FEW SOCIAL MEDIA SERVICES

AN OVERVIEW OF A FEW SOCIAL MEDIA SERVICES

MARK 490

Week 2

Today’s class

Some tools for managing social media

Current

use

of social media tools

–

an overview

Twitter for business and organizational marketing

Pinterest

for business and organizational marketing

Facebook

for business and organizational marketing

Some tools for managing social media

Some free tools to help you manage social media

To manage your accounts

Tweetdeck

Hootsuite

Buffer

Storify

– collect and publish tweets to show a “story”

Klout

- “influence” scoring service

Tweepi

– helps you manage your followers

These are just a handful of software tools that you can use for free (several also have paid services too)

We will look at enterprise software for managing multiple accounts in a future class

Fun fact: among the 140 global corporations studied for the “

Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation

” report, they each have 

an average of 178 different social media accounts.

twitter

What makes twitter unique?

“Twitter stands in a class apart from other social media because of the open invitation it gives us to talk to the world at large. On Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram, you have only two options if you want to meet new fans and potential customers..First, someone might find you..and decide to follow you. Second, a customer might share a piece of your content and [someone] might be intrigued enough to follow you. Either way, you’re stuck outside until that person decides to let you in….Everyone else is off limits”Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary

Vaynerchuck

. Jab

, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social

World. Harper Business. 2013

Caveat…

Don’t abuse that open-ness and use twitter to do overt selling or self-promotion

Tell a story

Provide value in an authentic manner

Twitter Basics

Tweets and direct messages

Replies,

retweets

, modified tweets, and quoted tweets

Hashtags

Followers

Images, Video, Animated

GIFs

Lists

Twitter chats

Twitter Search

Your Profile

Twitter for Websites (extending reach)

Tweets – they happen in real-time

A tweet can be no more than 140 character.

A tweet can be addressed to someone (an @ mention) by including their @username

A tweet does not need to be addressed to anyone at all

A tweet can include a hyperlink (usually shortened so it uses up as few characters as possible)

Tweets are PUBLIC by default and practice. ANYONE can view all of your tweets by going to your profile or by using Search

Your FOLLOWERS can view all of your tweets in their TWITTER STREAM or TIMELINE

However - If

you start a tweet with @username it will be seen only by those users who follow both you and the person you are tweeting

to (unless someone looks directly at your tweets via your profile)

Starting a tweet with a ‘dot’ or a word means that it will be seen by everyone following you

Direct messages

DMs are private messages, viewable only by the sender and the receiver

Start a tweet with DM or D then the person’s @username

You can send DMs by default:

only

to users who follow you

you can receive direct messages from any user that you follow

BUT you can opt-in to allowing anyone to DM you

Be

careful about how CASL might apply

Replies, retweets, modified tweets, and quoted tweets

Replies go to the person who authored the tweet (and usually) anyone else who is mentioned in it

Replies are public just the same as any other tweets

Retweets

(RT) are just what they sound like! A repost of a tweet from someone you follow

Modified tweets (indicated by MT) are

retweets

that have been altered slightly to make them shorter

#Hashtags

Hashtags

are words that become hyperlinks if they begin with a #

They create a way for tweets to be followed and connected – via link, search, trends, lists etc

You can add an existing

hashtag

to a tweet to add to a conversation – your tweet will have a better chance of being seen that way

Or create your own #

nospaces

– short is best as they use up characters

What’s the challenge with this?

How

Hashtags

Work on Twitter,

Instagram

, Google Plus,

Pinterest

,

Facebook

,

Tumblr

, and

Flickr

Don’t overuse them (The Tonight Show

"#

Hashtag

" with Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake

)

Followers and Following

Follow relationships do not have to be reciprocal

When you follow an account, you will see the tweets from that account in your timeline

Twitter does not algorithmically manipulate your timeline

The list of accounts you are following is public and can be viewed via your profile

Yes, we are judging you….

If you find someone interesting, look at who they are following to find more (potentially) interesting accounts

Images, Video, Animated GIFs

In late 2013 Twitter introduced inline images from its own pic.twitter.com service and then video from Vine –

examples from Buffer

Tweets with images get more engagement

Instagram

photos and videos that are tweeted do NOT appear inline and need to be clicked to be opened

Animated GIFs introduced in June

2014

Periscope for live streaming introduced in March 2015

Lists

Lists are used to slice and dice your twitter stream to focus on what is most important to you

You can add twitter accounts to your lists even if you don’t follow them

The number of lists that your account has been added to is another good measure of success

Using Twitter Lists

Twitter chats

Really useful for increasing your exposure and building a professional network

Real-time discussion using a

hashtag

so you can follow the conversations

Very wide range of topics

Schedule of twitter chats

Twitter Search

The native Twitter search is rather cumbersome

Search by username, keyword,

hashtag

Advanced search

provides more options

When we look at

Hootsuite

we will take a more detailed look at the data that can be extracted into separate streams and how we might use it

Profile

Have one! Fill it out

For professional purposes you should have a photograph of yourself or at least a logo – your objective is to make connections

Profile should contain information about your interests and who you are

Should contain a link to another online presence of your choice

Think about how your profile looks on mobile and on the desktop

Extending the use of twitter – website integration

Twitter provides a variety of widgets Buttons for following an account, hashtag etcWidgets for embedding tweets on a web pageEmbedding a timelineTweet buttons on a pageCode for tweeting a text snippet – ClickToTweet tool generates the code. Some examples of how to use it

Twitter for Websites

Owned, earned, and paid media on Twitter

Owned – an organization’s own twitter account or accounts

Earned – follows,

retweets

,

favourites

, lists, mentions

Paid – Twitter for Business:

Advertising

Promoted accounts

Promoted tweets

Promoted trends

Questions to ask about your twitter content

Is it to the point?Is the hashtag unique and memorable?Is the image attached high quality?Does your voice sound authentic? Will it resonate with the twitter audience?

Gary

Vaynerchuck

. Jab

, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social

World. Harper Business. 2013

Twitter successes and disasters

Oreo shows what it means to be responsive and seize the moment

SuperBowl

2013 power outage “You can still dunk in the dark”

tweet

Too many disasters to choose from…..for example

Chrysler’s famous critique of Detroit’s drivers

Twitter successes and disasters – your turn

Work in small groups

Do some research

Find one example of a fabulously successful use of twitter

Find one example of a terrible twitter #fail

Be ready to demonstrate your findings to the class

pinterest

What is distinctive about Pinterest?

VERY visual

Female demographic outnumbers male by a wide margin

Very fast growth rate since launch in 2010

Very effective for actually selling stuff…via direct click through to product

Some

worries about copyright issues

because of image placement on third-party website without permission

Think creativity…

“Unless you sell a product that no woman in a million years would want for herself or any person in her life – and that’s a pretty limited list of products – or your legal department is dragging its feet, you’re a dope if your brand is not on Pinterest”Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary

Vaynerchuck

. Jab

, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social

World. Harper Business. 2013

It’s all about understanding the psychology of the user

CreativeAspirationalSomewhat playfulA bit like an instant gratification magazineUsers 79% more likely to purchase something via Pinterest than via FacebookPinterest produces 4 times the revenue-per-click of Twitter

Gary

Vaynerchuck

. Jab

, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social

World. Harper Business. 2013

What is Pinterest?

Place to create online collections – primarily images and video

Pins are “visual bookmarks” that link back to the site they originated on – a

referral

for a brand

People add pins directly from websites or apps via a “Pin-It” button

Users create collections of “Pins” into “Boards”

Any pin can be “re-pinned”

Home feed – pins from people you follow appear there

Interaction and engagement

Likes

Follows

Re-Pins

Comments

Business accounts

Identify yourself as a business

Verification available (adds to consumer confidence)

Create a range of boards with different themes related to your business (people follow individual boards according to their interest)

Naming of boards is important (so they can be found via search). Keep the name length to 20 characters or fewer (so it doesn’t get cut off). Be clever and creative

“Secret” boards available – create a collection before you publish

Best practices

Don’t just pin your own products

Pin related products from others

Be creative – tell an inspiring story

Make sure your own product pins link back to somewhere useful (NOT just your home page)

Pinterest

for Business

(

pdf

)

Some examples of good use of Pinterest

Whole Foods Market

– food and aspirational kitchens

How realtors are using

Pinterest

NHL

– note use of

hashtags

What’s important

High quality content – especially photographs

Good

descriptions (used for search too)/

aspirational messaging

Encourage a sense of authentic community – not overbearing selling. Think long term

Make sure the link goes somewhere useful. Every photo should have a relevant hyperlink

facebook

Facebook

11 years old (founded in 2004 – became a public company in 2012)

At the end of Q4, 2014

1.39 billion active users (log in once a month or more)

890 million daily users (745 million of them on mobile)

Over 1 million advertisers

Revenues for the full year 2014 - $12.47 billion

Mostly from advertising

So, what is a marketer to do?

Marketers use

Facebook

for owned, earned, and paid media because….

“Familiarity breeds acceptance.”

Vaynerchuck

“Hard to dismiss a platform as skewing too young, or too experimental, or too trendy, when your niece, your brother, your seventy-two-year-old dad…are on it”

Vaynerchuck

Paradoxically, it is the size of the platform that causes the problem for marketers

With that massive amount of content streaming into a users Newsfeed, it is almost impossible to get and keep attention.

Marketers need to understand how

Facebook

manages the Newsfeed algorithm, called

Edgerank

Video from

Annalise

Kaylor

“

Mastering

Facebook

Edgerank

” (29 minutes)

The Edgerank algorithm tweaked to reduce organic reach

Analysis of more than 100 brand pages - organic reach was around 6 percent, a decline of 49 percent from October 2013

For large pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach hit 2 percent in February 2014“Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero. It’s only a matter of time.”Marketers being pushed to paid media

http://social.ogilvy.com/facebook-zero-considering-life-after-the-demise-of-organic-reach/

Other significant Edgerank changes aimed at reducing spam

Aimed

at reducing spam

“

Likebaiting

” – asking “News Feed readers to like, comment, or share the post in order to get additional distribution beyond what the post would normally receive” is now being targeted

Frequently circulated content (

ie

. Reposting of memes etc)

Spammy

links (deceptively phrased)

Facebook is encouraging authentic conversation and relationship building not begging or bribing fans

Aimed at balancing posts from friends and posts from Pages in newsfeed

Further reduction in organic reach for brands and other publishers

Facebook marketing products

Facebook for business

Build a

page

, not a personal account

Some best practices in maximizing referrals and driving activity on FB Pages

(from FB itself)

Facebook

advertising products

Sponsored stories

problem

Boosted posts

(also called Promoted Posts)

Facebook metrics

Earned media – engagement

metrics (we will look in a bit more detail at these later on)

Facebook

business products

for measuring success with Pages and their advertising products

Page Insights

Ads Manager

Conversion tracking