It is clear that Facebook has made significant changes to the platform over the last few years to create a marketable product that can be sold to businesses interested in communicating to Facebook’s 800 million members. From the very beginning, Facebook has been built on the concept of sharing; if users did not share photos, comments and content with their friends then Facebook as a platform would fail. It is, after all, sharing that leads to dwell time, and dwell time is advertising gold dust. Over half of Facebook’s 800 million users spend anywhere between 30 minutes and 4 hours a day on the site, and this time is spent interacting with the userface. With annual revenue of $1.6 billion in the first half of this year, up $800 million from the previous year, it is clear that Facebook has much to gain from users’ sharing.

It is no great surprise then that Facebook has evolved the platform in favour of improving advertising click-through rates. On Monday, Facebook began posting ads to the ticker, the real-time rolling tally of your Friends’ Facebook activity. Facebook has dubbed them “sponsored stories,” but they are essentially posts that an advertiser has paid to have displayed. While these stories are paid content, they’ll appear as the activity of your Friends or as Pages people have ‘Liked’. TechCrunch noted that Sponsored Stories are particularly attractive to advertisers because they have a 46 percent greater click-through rate than typical ads, which means they could provide these companies with more revenue. So, what of the user experience? Zuckerberg has come under fire for compromising users’ privacy in favour of commercial gain:

“I want to reaffirm the commitment I made when I first launched Facebook. We will serve you as best we can and work every day to provide you with the best tools for you to share with each other and the world. We will continue to improve the service, build new ways for you to share and offer new ways to protect you and your information better than any other company in the world.”

So, are consumers likely to turn off in droves as Facebook becomes more and more accessible to brands? Well whilst Zuckerberg’s view, that introducing brands to Facebook creates a more realistic ‘real-world’ experience, is a little self-serving, it is certainly true that we’re more accustomed to advertising than ever. Advertising is part of the world that we live in, even if it is not a part of our world; we are no more likely to log off Facebook than to turn off our televisions. There is a school of thought that argues that the way we use Facebook is intrinsically personal, quite different from the way we consume other media, and therefore any branded presence is invasive and unwelcome. Given the impulsive and whimsical manner in which we use Facebook, this seems a little severe; users are quite happy to while away the minutes on Farmville, so why shouldn’t much-loved brands offer up equally engaging content?

Last night’s documentary could encourage consumers to think twice before engaging with brands on Facebook, it might even make users question their privacy settings, but as social media marketers our challenge remains the same. Engaging consumers on Facebook requires a strong idea, something creative and engaging that will encourage users to trade their ‘Likes’ for a piece of the pie. So to echo Maitlis’ summary, ask not what Facebook can do for your brand, but what you can offer your customers.

Lindsey Reaney
Account Manager, Golley Engage

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

There is no question that the functionality of the platform has been well considered.  Google+ offers a much more professional interface, and applications have been designed to aid businesses.  This is a major advantage of Google being late to market when compared with platforms such as MySpace or Facebook. The result is that your page looks a lot more ‘grown-up’ and the user experience less cluttered. A number of big brands including Volkswagen, Motorola and Android have joined Google+ and clearly made an impression. VW USA has over 800 followers so far, and Google+ itself has over 7,500 followers; and it’s easy to see why.  The clean interface allows users to hero images, video and brand updates.

Here are our five favourite features of the site:

1. Professional – The clean and simple user interface looks and feels powerful and professional, which makes it an attractive environment in which to promote your business, and is something which Facebook will struggle to compete with.
2. Integrated – The option to ‘+’ all sorts of things across the web, and the ever-present Google+ notification bar makes the whole thing feel like a very inclusive system. The real win though is that when you search + in front of a brand or product their Google+ page will automatically be the top search result, making SEO for SMEs a walk in the park.
3. Inclusive – ‘Huddles’ is Google’s answer to messenger. It allows users of its Android app (as well as a forthcoming iOS version) to chat and share media with their Circles, whilst on the move. This offers a targeted option for making announcements or issuing discount codes/coupons.
4. Functional – ‘Hangouts’ provide an opportunity to video chat with up to ten people at a time.  They appear in news streams giving friends/acquaintances the option to join or leave at any time, allowing face-to-face chat and YouTube video sharing. A simple video presentation is a very real possibility with this feature, and two-way dialogue is made quite simple.
5. Available – As part of the Google suite, it will be difficult for businesses to restrict access to Google+ in the same manner that Facebook and Twitter use is limited in many offices.

There are, however, some serious questions about levels of engagement on Google+ site. Despite attracting over 25 million users to the platform, traffic appears to have dropped off.  The Mail on Sunday reported a 60% decline in traffic to the site in October. The real test of Google’s social network is what people do after they join. Traffic-analysis firms have consistently reported Google+’s traffic to be declining from its early peak, and sharing amongst users is certainly not making headlines when compared to the 60 million status updates on Facebook every day.

So, with user engagement significantly lower than on Facebook, and many consumers signed up but not active, is it worth building a presence on a network that users seem a little non-plussed about? Well yes, actually.

It’s still early days for the search engine and leading industry authorities remain confident that consumer adoption will pick up. Yet more importantly still, if nothing else, the cross-platform integration offered by the whole Google package ensures that at the very least Google+ is a really effective SEO solution, particularly for SMEs.

Lindsey Reaney
Account Manager, Golley Engage

There is no question that today’s consumer is better informed than ever before; with information readily available to us at the touch of a button, we are becoming savvier consumers. TripAdvisor has recognised that more and more customers are seeking impartial recommendations, and online review sites are readily becoming the answer to our burgeoning appetite for ‘real’ reviews written by ‘real’ people. Offering complete anonymity to its users, TripAdvisor allows ordinary people to post reviews without asking for any supporting evidence, elevating the user to the position of a traditional travel expert. It is precisely this anonymity, seen as a key benefit of the service, which is leading others to criticise the site. Our very nature determines that we are more likely to post a review when we are dissatisfied, and therefore sites like TripAdvisor are actually negatively weighted against the companies featured. A Netflights.com spokesman said: “We’ve seen the influence of online reviews grow sharply in recent years and there’s no question our customers see them as a valuable tool in the decision making process”.

Collate positive feedback

Incentivise consumers to review your products and services, and ensure these reviews are placed on your website or blog. Customers are naturally more inclined to post about a negative experience, so give them a reason to say something nice. Perhaps offer a ‘recommend a friend’ discount for uploading a positive experience to the site.

You can’t stop people writing bad reviews, but you can make sure that negative reviews are outweighed by customers sharing positive experiences.

Control your search engine results

A typical search engine results page lists about 10 results, and these should be managed regularly to ensure the best results are featured most prominently.

To improve your brand’s position, push links to sites and reviews that show your brand in a positive light.

Ensure you are doing everything within your power to fully optimise your website too, make sure your code is properly formatted, and make sure your content is keyword-rich.

Deal with customer complaints offline

It is important that brands track, and respond to negative comments online. The best way to track down online complaints is use social media monitoring software to track what is being said about your company. Forewarned is, after all, forearmed

With social media, directly addressing the complaining customer will help other users of the platform to see that you are concerned about customer experience, but moving the conversation offline in most cases is the best course of action.

Perspective is important

Be sure not to overreact to comments about your brand that you perceive as negative. Remember consumers do not have the same insight into your brand as your internal team, and it is important not to appear defensive in responding to flippant remarks. Instead use customer feedback to inform future communications.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

A threat to your brand reputation online can quickly get out hand, and it’s important to act quickly to manage the problem.

Whether you use an agency or an in-house team, you must ensure that the right skills set are on hand to manage the problem. Proactively managing your reputation will pay dividends, particularly through search, where any negative results will cost you dearly. Google is the first stop for consumers 9 times out of 10, and making sure your brand is reflected kindly through search will safeguard your brand in the long-term.

[1] http://www.travolution.co.uk/articles/2011/11/04/5163/travel-review-sites-overwhelmingly-trusted-survey-finds.html

Lindsey Reaney
Account Manager, Golley Engage

Facebook serves up a ready-made, highly engaged audience on a plate – one that is willing to interact with a brand and tell their friends about it too – so it’s hardly surprising that brands want to tap into this potentially huge supply of customers.

Giving Facebook users immediate access to the final product, in the place they spend 16% of their online time, should make the buying experience convenient, tempting and most importantly, exploit the fact that users are likely to make an impulse purchase – the obvious advantage of setting up shop within Facebook. But is it that easy? Or does reminding users of the commercial message put them off completely?

ASOS, the online fashion retailer, is just one example of a brand that is successfully using f-commerce to bring in extra revenue through its fully transactional Facebook store. But is f-commerce right for every brand? And do consumers want to buy through social media?

In our opinion, whilst it’s a very good idea for some brands, it’s definitely not right for all. If a brand doesn’t sit comfortably on Facebook, it shouldn’t be trying to sell goods through it either. As an online retailer, ASOS works on Facebook. Users are likely to want to boast to friends that they have purchased from ASOS, and it feels like a natural step to combine the online shopping experience with the social experience.

When an f-store doesn’t work though, is when it jars with the brand, its target market and the type of product on sale. The shopping experience through an f-store should offer users a unique experience that they can’t get from shopping in the traditional online store. For instance, Magners recently announced the opening of an f-store to sell a special edition cider. In short, a brand must be able to justify the benefit of an f-store.

F-commerce doesn’t begin and end with f-stores either. The umbrella term can also cover the multitude of ways companies are using the platform to drive sales in their existing sales outlets. ‘Deals on Facebook’, launched in April this year to rival the likes of Groupon and Living Social, offers consumers the chance to pay for deals inside Facebook, using PayPal or Facebook credits. Then there are Facebook ‘Check-in deals’ and Facebook ‘In-store retail’, both of which integrate the offline shopping experience with Facebook, to provide a social angle to bricks and mortar shopping as an added incentive to buy. These are certainly appropriate for a greater majority of companies, and though they’re not always used effectively by brands, certainly have huge potential to boost sales.

So with predictions that social commerce will top $30 billion globally by 2015 with Facebook-generated sales as one of the primary drivers, is it set to stay? Will it continue to increase its share of a business’ marketing mix? Hundreds of companies have bought into f-commerce, including such commercial giants as Coca Cola, Disney and GAP, and they’re using Facebook in a multitude of intelligent ways to entice users to spend*, so it would certainly seem so. Of course the whole ‘f-economy’ is reliant on Facebook, and the continued growth of its user numbers – a pretty safe bet – but most would agree that using the platform to convert a brand’s Facebook audience into a throng of customers is a watertight business decision. Companies have to tread carefully though and be wary of trampling over users’ social experience with their brand message. Users, and the way they want to use Facebook, must always be the starting point for any f-commerce idea.

*http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7540-101-f-commerce-examples

Phillippa Holmes
Junior Account Exec, Golley Engage

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

Last week Facebook made three key changes to the site functionality; it revamped Friend lists and introduced the news ticker and Subscribe button. These changes are designed to increase the dwell time spent on the page by creating more connections between you and your friends. For example, the news ticker is designed to allow you to track what your friends are commenting on right now, which encourages comment to become discussion. This really is just the beginning though, the landmark changes will come this Thursday when Facebook will overhaul user profiles with the Timeline feature, and launch a plethora of apps letting you listen to music, watch movies and monitor news through your profile. Facebook hopes users will create profiles that are a visual history of their lives, right through from birth.

The key changes to the service are listed below:

1. Timeline – This plots your Facebook updates, photos, apps and well, everything really, against the time and date, creating a stream of activity that is trackable. The idea is that users will be given a place to post more stuff about their past, such as baby pictures, creating a virtual scrapbook. Timeline is in beta now, and will be opt-in to start. In the long run, it will become the new default profile page.

2. Where previously you could only ‘like’ a comment or post, there will now be a whole host of verbs to choose from. You can tell your friends what you’re listening, watching or reading. Overshare? Maybe. Marketable? Definitely.

3. Changes to Facebook apps mean that branded apps will only have to ask at the point of authorization for permission to publish information through your profile. This is perhaps the most contentious of the new batch of changes.

4. Information that is deemed less important to you will be relegated to the news ticker, and you can control what will be filtered through into your newsfeed. Hopefully helping to make updates more relevant to you.

5. Thanks to an unprecedented number of partnerships, you will now be able to do so much more than just Facebook on Facebook. You can watch a show on Hulu, listen to a song on Spotify, or check out a story on Guardian news. The ticker will tell you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading too.

And what of the usual questions about privacy? Well, once again, Facebook stands accused of gathering and sharing more of your information than ever before. The latest accusations, from self-confessed hacker Nik Cubrilovic, have highlighted that Facebook can track your browser activity long after you leave the site. In fact, unless you delete all your Facebook cookies, they can pretty much follow your every move.
Facebook has hit back at critics claiming that any tracking they do is purely to improve user experience, and more notably, security. Facebook engineer Arturo Bejar said:

“We don’t use our cookies to track you on social plugins to target ads or sell your information to third parties. I’ve heard from so many that what we do is to share or sell your data, and that is just not true. We use your logged in cookies to personalize (show you what your friends liked), to help maintain and improve what we do, or for safety and protection.”

So all that said, where do users of the social network stand? Well users will be sharing more of their lives than ever before, and will be spending more time on the site as they view news sources, listen to music and watch films through Facebook. Brands will have more freedom to create content for the site, and Facebook is more receptive than ever to partnerships, but ultimately companies are still heavily restricted in the data that they can collect. Unless users give specific permission for brands to use data outside of the platform, the information stays on Facebook, to be added to the reams of information that the company already holds on each of their 800 million registered users. Brands are sacrificing the rights to this information, by requesting that consumers engage with them through the networking site and not through their websites.

Facebook dwell times will soar, helping to build convincing advertising models, and Facebook will be able to continue to track users’ activity and hold their information, making them more valuable to marketeers than ever before. So, what of the changes that Facebook has made this week? Well, they certainly benefit one party – Facebook.

Lindsey Reaney
Social Media Consultant, Golley Engage

With the recent acquisition of Zagat, an online restaurant reviews site, Google has taken its first step into acquiring businesses for their content and not their technology. So, is Google diversifying its portfolio by investing in the publishing industry, or does it intend to draw advertising revenue by optimising third-party sites such as Zagat thus guaranteeing reviews appear higher up in the search results listings. The latter route would prove a bold move – at present, a lot of Google’s usefulness is in its transparency. Consumers trust the search engine, and therefore value the brand, selecting it as their browser homepage and adopting the name into their vocabulary. If consumers no longer feel that the internet giant is impartial in pulling its content this could seriously affect the trust held by the end user.

That said, all in all there are only about 1 in 3** of us who understand how a search engine such as Google generates results. For instance, 24 percent believe that a website’s position in the listings cannot be influenced by the people running that website, whilst 22 percent believe it is entirely down to how much money has crossed hands. Over 19 percent have no idea where the data comes from and one in twenty believe results are generated at random. With much of Joe Public still in the dark as to how the technology works, Google could potentially pull off this contentious move without consumers becoming aware of the conflict of interest.

With other review sites such as Yelp and Open Table attracting more users than Zagat, it is difficult to see what Google stands to gain if its interest lies purely in accessing the publishing industry, though this is unlikely to make publishers feel any less uneasy about the move. More likely than not, Google, like most major consumer brands worldwide, has recognised the value in endorsement from third parties; PR is a vital component to maintaining brand health online, as it offers consumers a reason to believe. More and more consumers are consulting review sites before making purchasing decisions; IF Google does choose to walk this path, what it takes from the consumer in transparency, it gives back to brands through trusted, word-of-mouth recommendation.

*http://www.itpro.co.uk/635515/more-brits-browse-with-bing

**http://www.topclickmedia.co.uk/pay-per-click-advertising-blog/brits-don%E2%80%99t-understand-google

Lindsey Reaney

Social Media Consultant, Golley Engage

“Let me be clear – and I’m sorry if this wasn’t obvious – we are not currently supporting brands, organizations, and non-human entities in the Google+ field trial. Supporting these non-human entities is an obviously great feature – we have no allergy to it at all! It’s just not part of the system we are currently testing.”

Online speculation is rife about how Google’s functionality will enable brands to incorporate SEO and Google Analytics into their marketing mix. The platform is expected to offer all the same content streams as its rivals but will really come into its own when it comes to searchability and tracking.  In light of the statement issued by Google, asking brands to avoid setting up profiles until the feature is live, GolleyS has been exploring some of the rumours.

Search Engine Optimisation

Currently brands are struggling with the challenge of driving traffic to a Facebook page as Google search fails to rate Facebook amongst top results. Google offers second-to-none SEO, commanding 65% market share of all US based search. So one can only assume that a brand page sitting on Google+ will benefit from increased search support, offering a major pull to big brands. Many companies are investing huge budgets in creating content for Social Media, hiring agency support and bolstering the in-house team (see issue 3 of Engage). So providing reassurance that it will work with, and not against, your advertising spend is a real win.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is amazing. No, really, it’s brilliant. Anyone who has used it will tell you that the insights it offers into how consumers use search to explore your product is truly mindboggling. You can ascertain website dwell time, which content proved popular and where your website traffic is coming from.  Google+ will no doubt integrate the same detailed analytics into its branded page allowing companies to drill down into who their fans are. The only potential pitfall with this approach is that Google should look to err on the side of caution when sharing information about its users, so as not to undermine features like Circles which offer increased control over privacy.

Greater Compatibility with YouTube

YouTube content is one of the most widely shared content channels on Facebook – With more than 150 years of YouTube video having been shared by users of the social networking site. Offering brands the opportunity to see how many people are watching their video content through Google+ and increasing the ease of sharing between the two sites is a sure fire way for brands to track the content that fans really want to watch.

For now, we will watch this space with regards to what Google+ will offer brands once it launches the functionality later in the year. Google should, however, look to learn lessons from Facebook in terms of respecting user’s privacy, as this is the one very real barrier to dominating this space.

Lindsey Reaney
Social Media Consultant, Golley Engage

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