A company that invests in building the right content on its Facebook Page is more likely to increase Fans and achieve a lift in customer engagement, but it is important that this serves a communications objective.

1. Make specific targets

Whilst most brands are looking to grow the fan base on their Page, that in itself should not be your objective. Companies should look to deliver a key message or to promote a video or campaign through a particular tab; and by doing so will successfully secure fans along the way. By integrating YouTube or your website into a tab, you can seek to improve your customer’s familiarity with your product range or organisation; helping you to deliver against traditional business objectives.

2. Have a clear tab strategy

By implementing a clear strategy around tabs, companies can create a simple consumer journey for its customers. Companies should look to inform and entertain customers, and to separate out these paths. Take advantage of events tabs to publicise calendar hooks, and ensure info tabs are up-to-date.

Tabs should complement one another, it should be clear to a user where the information they are seeking is housed and campaign tabs should not be abandoned or left unpopulated.

If you are looking to hold a dialogue with your customers, do not over complicate things; instead, focus on keeping the wall engaging and fresh.

3. Incentivise

Whilst valuable content and a thriving community are important to the survival of any business in a social environment, it is still important to consider the consumer journey and to offer an incentive to drive consumers to the page from an external source. The more signposts you put in place, and the more you reward customers for engaging with your business through the platform, the more your community will grow.

4. Attract, reward, share

Once you’ve determined your strategy, it’s time to build great content. The best tabs are the ones that encourage repeat use and expose customers to a specific product or service. Try to consider how your customer uses the platform, and the sort of information they might choose to share; according to a recent report for instance, video will soon account for 90% of all online traffic [2].

5. Audience

The most important factor in any social media programme is the audience. Identifying your target consumer and building content that they can enjoy is imperative to the success for the page. Remember, you are talking directly to your consumer, not through the media or a third party, so make it count. Above all, make it relevant.

[1] http://clearslide.com/view/mail?iID=V8YFCRBY2JCCKGKSFMAK
[2] http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/video-soon-to-be-90-of-online-traffic-0117979

Lindsey Reaney
Account Manager, Golley Engage

Brands go social

We predict that 2012 will be the year that brands go truly social. Whether as a result of the desire to turn negative comment into positive word-of-mouth recommendation, or as recent campaign activity proves the difference social can make to the bottom line, brands will embrace marketing’s newest discipline.

Brands will learn to listen, and to respond to consumers via the channel chosen by the consumer. The rules of engagement are changing, and brands are beginning to take up arms. To move from one-off campaigns to always-on conversations, real structural and cultural change is required. The pay-off is considerable – brands are being given the opportunity to open up dialogue with consumers, to co-create and to deliver exactly what their customers want. The question is will they listen?

Effective data

Qualitative data, taken from social media monitoring tools and from the expertise of those managing brand communities, will begin to drive business decisions. A bold claim, but nonetheless, next year brands will be forced to stand up and take notice of how social media can shape their sales cycle. From ‘crowd-sourcing’ product development through to helping to predict sharp sales peaks, social media can offer conversational data indicating popular models, colours or celebrity associations that could change the way customers interact with your brand or products.

Social intelligence and insight will start to be baked into all marketing activity at the very centre of owned and earned media strategy. It will become apparent to clients that often the agencies or individuals managing digital channels are best placed to create the content that those communities want.

Mobile

Over half of UK consumers now own a smartphone device, and they are using mobile everywhere. M-commerce has become big bucks, as savvy shoppers are using their phones to research products or services, check the status of an order, locate a nearby store or look up additional information whilst out and about. This presents a huge opportunity for brands to communicate with consumers whilst they’re out-and-about, and to remove potential barriers to purchase. M-commerce should aim to capitalise on existing opportunities to further engage the customer and should, above all else, place the consumer at the centre; next year is not just the year of m-commerce, it is the year of cross platform, integrated, consumer-lead marketing.

Sharing

Pictures, media, status updates are all things that we are familiar with ‘sharing’ across social media platforms. The media industry was one of the first to cotton on to this trend, adding sharing options to news articles, which in turn led to more hits and better visibility in search engine results. But what comes next? In 2012 we’ll be sharing the dress we just bought, holiday we just booked or offering SMEs personal recommendations across our social networks. Sharing has become a social norm, and we can’t get enough of it.

TV fights back

Appointment to view TV took a bit of a hit in 2011, as networks struggled to convince viewers to watch television through their televisions, and not through catch-up services online. In 2012 the TV will fight back. Don’t be surprised to see TV and internet converge, and changes to the way we consume our favourite programmes.

We already love using Internet services like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and others to watch our favorite shows on demand, but with the rumoured launch of an Apple product designed specifically to meet this need, it looks like TV will be stepping it up a gear. In 2012, all of our media devices including our television sets, computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones could come together to offer us more social, sharable television experiences that far outweigh a cup of tea and tonight’s ‘Enders.

Lindsey Reaney
Account Manager, Golley Engage

A number of retailers have simply cut prices. Heavy discounts have already been introduced in the run up to Christmas in an attempt to lure customers in to make purchases. Last Saturday Oxford Street and Regent Street were both closed to vehicles, acting as a further incentive to attract consumers into some of the biggest chains’ flagship stores. Nevertheless, takings fell by 10% in comparison to the same Saturday of last year.[3]

It’s clear that retailers need to be more imaginative if they want to encourage paying customers in-store. One that’s clearly doing something right is John Lewis, which has managed to break its November sales records both online and in-store. In total, the company took £123.5m last week, a 2% rise on the previous record, achieved in the same week of last year, and up by 12.2% on the same week two years ago.[4] So what’s its secret?

The company doesn’t seem to be doing anything hugely differently to their past activity, or to other high street players. It has a ‘pick and collect’ initiative, pioneered by another high street stalwart, Argos. The retailer has also relentlessly marketed itself around the ‘never knowingly undersold’ mantra for its 85^th year; a week-long campaign earlier this month promised to price-match competitors, proclaiming: “If our competitors have a sale, we have a sale.” In addition to this they have produced yet another successful Christmas ad which has attracted widespread media attention, topping viral charts upon its release.

The brand’s consistent dedication towards making shopping easier and worthwhile for the consumer, combined with savvy business strategies, seem to be what is driving the company’s success. Its ‘pick and collect’ service has been extended to 100 areas without a John Lewis store, where products can be picked up from the local Waitrose instead. It also has a never-ending refunds policy whereby there is no time limit on returning unwanted items, which is surely a big attraction for Christmas shoppers buying gifts.

It’s clear that this is striking a chord with recession-fearing consumers that may have put larger scale purchases on ice, from summer holiday plans to kitchen upgrades. In this respect, the retailer offers a manageable luxury – a cost-effective antidote to all the doom and gloom. With John Lewis’s latest plan to open up four new stores next year and to further expand its in-store services, it may be in a position to capitalise on market trends in a way that no other high-street retailer has yet been able to manage.

Alicia Barham

Recent research predicts that 67 million e-reader devices will be sold in 2016, compared with 25 million this year.¹ Within these huge sales figures the Kindle dominates the market, but rival e-readers are still big business. Earlier this year W H Smith partnered with a Canadian firm to launch the Kobo and the Kobo Touch, whilst Barnes and Noble have their Nook range of e-readers and Apple is furiously trying to ensure the Kindle doesn’t push its iPad out of the market. Many daily newspapers have branched out to the e-reader world too, with the majority of the national papers now available to download on Kindle.

So is it true that e-readers spell the end for independent bookshops, and the humble paperback? Given that the best-seller ‘One Day’ has sold over one million copies in paper back in the UK alone, it seems that despite the ‘e-reader fever’, we’re still buying books in significant numbers. So what are the advantages of the good old fashioned book over the sleek e-reader? Here’s our list of the pros and cons of the Kindle as we see it:

Pros

1. All clear ahead: The electronic ink and screen used by Amazon definitely lives up to the marketing spiel, making the reading experience very similar to that of reading a printed page.
2. Reading on the go: The Kindle is light and small and fits easily into your bag, meaning weighty tomes no longer need to be left behind in the morning.
3. Books galore: There are thousands of books available at the push of a button in the Amazon store (which you can access on the Kindle) thus removing the need for long-winded transfers or synching is necessary. Typically e-books are cheaper than their printed counterparts too, and many of the Classics are available for free from the Amazon shop.
4. Long life: Some might say having a battery life on your reading material is a huge e-reader drawback, but the need to charge your Kindle is so irregular that it really isn’t an issue. Just don’t get caught short!

Cons

1. No sharing: One of the best things about reading can be recommending a book to someone else and passing on your copy. With the Kindle this isn’t a possibility.
2. Too risky to read: Whilst a huge benefit of the Kindle is its portability, this is often outweighed by the worry of losing such a high value item. If you’re catching the bus to the pub for the evening, you might think twice about putting your Kindle in your bag.
3. Losing the plot: Sometimes following the story relies heavily on a great deal of flicking back and forth to timelines and family trees at the front of the book. Amazon has thoughtfully given the Kindle a bookmark feature, but it can be a bit fiddly, and it’s certainly not as easy as turning a page.
4. Bragging rights removed: The Kindle could mean the death of the trophy book cabinet. We all know someone who displays their high-brow reads for all their guests to see and admire!

The president of the Association of American Publishers, Tom Allen commented earlier this year that consumers “have made e-books permanent additions to their lifestyle while maintaining interest in print format books.” And we would agree – there are undeniably a huge number of advantages to owning an e-reader, but there’s certainly a place for both in our lives.

So will you be buying your loved ones an e-reader this Christmas? Go on. They come highly recommended.

[1] http://www.businessweek.com/technology/five-reasons-ereader-sales-will-nearly-triple-by-2016-11152011.html

Phillippa Holmes
Junior Account Executive, Golley Engage

Having launched in New York in September 2011 (with a UK release expected early 2012), the Kindle Fire is likely to be the latest must-have on Americans’ wish lists this Christmas. This is largely due to its cost of $199 compared to the most basic version of the iPad 2’s recently slashed price of $458. Amazon’s lower price reflects the fact the Kindle Fire has a smaller screen than that of the iPad (7inches compared to 9.7inches) and is Wi-Fi only (so no 3G). Lack of integrated camera also means you can’t make video calls, and it features a stripped-back version of Google’s open-source mobile operating system, Android.

Considering the Kindle Fire as a potential iPad-defeater on specs alone, it doesn’t have what it takes. But the reality of the situation is that Amazon isn’t exactly going for Apple’s consumer base… yet. Instead it’s targeting those who are reluctant to spend out vast sums for a tablet computer. This may be because they aren’t keen on the Apple brand, or that they simply don’t value the benefits of touch screen computing as highly as its price. The Kindle Fire is also likely to capture those consumers who were already tempted to buy Amazon’s popular range of e-readers. With a low price the device is very much in the “impulse buy” category, which is likely to encourage hesitant consumers to go ahead and experiment.

In many respects Amazon is doing Apple a favour. The company’s move is likely to result in a growth in the overall tablet computer category. Potentially enlightening consumers to the value of using computers this way, it will create a better target market for Apple in the long term. However, this is early days for Amazon and it’s likely that the company will release an upgraded alternative within the next 12-16 months. It is anticipated that the next incarnation of Kindle Fire will be 3G-enabled – allowing consumers to download Amazon’s vast catalogue of books, music and movies on the move – and in the process go one step further in competing against the iPad.

Research has shown that mobile commerce looks set to grow by 55%[3] over the next five years. Traditional e-commerce relies heavily on consumers having time on their hands to browse and an affinity to a particular website or brand, m-commerce is proving much more impulsive. If consumers see products they like for a reasonable price, they buy – there and then. In short mobile offers a great opportunity to connect with consumers on-the-go.

Source: Forrester Research

Just under half of the UK population now owns a smartphone, and Google’s mobile operating system Android is powering half – followed by RIM’s BlackBerry models with 22.5% and Apple’s iPhone at 18.5%. These smartphones are GPS enabled and offer brands the unique opportunity to connect to consumers through location-based targeting. By focusing your advertising spend within a small geographical area, targeting a specific audience profile, you can communicate with consumers in an extremely cost-effective manner.

Consumers are increasingly becoming reliant on their mobile devices, 90% of consumers in the UK have their mobile phone to hand while they are watching TV,[4] and a recent report by the Science Museum placed the mobile phone in tenth place on the list of things UK consumers could not live without – polling higher than central heating or painkillers. Whilst this confirms the mobile offers an incredible opportunity to reach huge audiences, brands need to exercise caution when engaging with consumers through their mobile devices. Consumers are much more likely to find commercial messages intrusive, and once they are turned off they are unlikely to switch back on.

Instead, m-commerce should aim to capitalise on existing opportunities to further engage the customer and should, above all else, place the consumer at the centre. Consumers are using mobile to seek out further information in store, so using existing technology such as QR codes and near field communication, retailers and major brands should look to solve consumer bug-bears. M-commerce offers retailers the opportunity to use advertising as a prompt to launch local store locators, or to fulfil an online order for a consumer who can’t find the right size in store. Savvy brands will be looking to do more than just advertise on handsets, they will instead need to target users with effective marketing campaigns whilst on the move. 2012 is not just the year of m-commerce, it is the year of cross platform, integrated, consumer-lead marketing.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/31/half-uk-population-owns-smartphone

Lindsey Reaney
Account Manager, Golley Engage

Martin Long, Group MD, PR

One of Twitter’s first customers for Promoted activity is Sky. Sky is using the full suite of Promoted Products to increase awareness as the popular teen TV sensation ‘Glee’ returns to our screens for a new series. The @gleeonsky account and #gleeonsky hashtag were being promoted, whilst several Promoted Tweets were run simultaneously with brand new clips from the series.

Promoted Tweets are not entirely new, Twitter started putting them into your timeline earlier this summer but you would only see a Promoted Tweet if you followed that brand already. As a follower you’d see those Tweets anyway, it just meant that brands could create ‘sticky’ tweets that would stay at the top of your timeline until you had read them. The key difference now is that everyone will start to see promoted tweets in their timeline, whether they access the platform through a mobile device, their PC or smartphone.

This is the first example of a viable marketing product from Twitter. For a long time the platform sat gathering new users, building its profile and being quoted in the media and yet offered no outlet for brands to harness the power of the network for promotional activity. The Promoted activity is Twitter’s first advertising model, and marks a move into territory that Facebook and Google have been exploiting for quite some time. The problem is that users have got used to Twitter without invasive advertising techniques and so the Social Media giant will have to tread carefully to avoid upsetting fans.

It seems the initial bout of advertising activity has done little to discourage people from using the platform. Twitter has posted some impressive engagement statistics earlier this month. Compared to the beginning of 2011, 110% more tweets are being sent every day now; the number of active users the service expects to add by the end of the year – that is, in the next four months – outranks the total number of users it added between 2006 and 2009.

So far, the companies Twitter has partnered with for the initial launch of its U.K. advertising platform include Eurostar, BT and Paramount. Brand or activity awareness is really the KPI to track with Promoted activity, which means that it is not right for every campaign, and Twitter will struggle to compete with the increased functionality of a platform such as Facebook or YouTube. It really remains to be seen whether Promoted activity will be successful, or whether the changes to Promoted Tweets will annoy users. One thing is for sure, it will be the first of many products that Twitter roll out to better serve its business objectives. They will learn from Promoted activity, and one or two brands will be cited as success stories for the platform, but the real crux of the issue is still the same – Brands have to produce interesting, engaging content on social media to EARN traffic. Paid-for activity can only achieve so much, and brands will face the same challenges with Twitter that they do with Facebook and YouTube. You have to post videos that people want to watch, and content that people want to share. Different platform, same challenge – and that is not about to change.

Lindsey Reaney
Social Media Consultant, Golley Engage

It remains to be seen as you could argue that they serve a niche market. Average UK TV viewers are currently more interested in catch up TV than streaming. The latest research from TGI, for example, shows that 30% of consumers have watched catch up TV in the last 6 months compared with the 12% who say they watch live television. At the same time, this demand for catch up is already catered for across a variety of mediums, built into the latest Freeview boxes, also accessible via consoles such as the Wii and paid-for services like Virgin Media.

However, this is not to say that we won’t have fully wired home entertainment hubs featuring one day in our living rooms. The latest high-end televisions from Samsung, for example, blend internet widgets seamlessly into their interface which – if linked to the likes of Apple’s App Store – could have real appeal. While the technology remains expensive, history has taught us prices of new gadgets go down very quickly. As a result, it remains unclear whether the likes of dedicated boxes such as Google TV have a long term future.

Claire Strong

At a rumoured £550 on pay-as-you-go and £35 a month on a mobile contract, the device certainly doesn’t come cheap. While it’s unlikely to put off hard-core gamers, the handset, dubbed the ‘PSP Phone’, is likely to struggle to attract casual gamers who prefer the simplicity of games such as solitaire and Angry Birds (not to mention the fact that they’re free to download). These have the advantage of being quick and easy to dip in and out of, especially on the commute to work.

One obvious way in which Sony could grow the appeal of a PSP Phone would be to drop the price. However, another strategy would be to use PSP games to drive greater awareness and loyalty to the Sony Ericsson brand. Perhaps offer ad-sponsored games for free, but only to owners of these specific handsets. An added advantage is that it would allow the brand to distinguish itself in a market that is increasingly saturated with competitively priced, well-designed, Android smartphones. Watch this space.

Jim Clark, Research & Insight Analyst