By adaptive - June 27th, 2012
Hi all, Hope everyone is well? Our pick of this week's news includes... Nike Twitter campaign banned in the UK [T]he Advertising Standards Authority has made social media history by banning...
Hi all,
Hope everyone is well?
Our pick of this week's news includes...
Nike Twitter campaign banned in the UK
The Advertising Standards Authority has made social media history by banning a Twitter campaign from Nike that featured prominent footballers Jack Wilshere and Wayne Rooney. The tweets were taken down, as it was not made clear that they were in fact ads for Nike. The tweets were part of the brand’s wider ‘Make it Count’ campaign.
Wayne Rooney’s tweet said: “My resolution — to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion...#makeitcount gonike.me/makeitcount".
Rooney has over 4 million followers, with Nike stating that his association with the brand is well known, and the web address given was clearly branded Nike. The ASA commented: "We considered that the Nike reference was not prominent and could be missed. We considered there was nothing obvious in the tweets to indicate they were Nike marketing communications."
Branding: Choose your weapons
A new infographic from Pardot has made it clear that Google+ is not a Facebook clone. The new research clearly indicates that Facebook is still king when it comes to personal social networking, but it’s Google+ where businesses are thriving.
And if your corporation is in the tech sector, Google+ is the only place to be. The type of engagement your business is looking is important to clearly define. The results of that definition will guide your enterprise to the right social media platform. The infographic is also a great help when deciding where particular types of content would be best received by your business’ audience.
GM and Facebook friends again
After the much publicised withdrawal of ad support from Facebook, GM have been on the charm offensive to qualify their decision to abandon their $10m account with the social network. The news broke with a story in the Wall Street Journal, but quickly moved across the blogshere with many citing this move as yet another issue for Facebook that had a rough ride post its IPO.
However, speaking to Marketing Magazine, GM global chief marketing officer Joel Ewanick said that the reports were overblown and that their relationship with Facebook was “all good.” Whether the company will return to the levels of paid advertising has yet to be seen, but industry analysts point to the move as an example of how Facebook needs to rapidly commercialise its space to keep high profile brands spending their ad budgets with them and not on other sites.
Social ROI is not a myth
Brands struggling to make sense of the social environment will often point to a lack of return on their investment. However, some of the largest brands are clearly showing high levels of ROI with their exposure across the available social networks – just ask IBM and the TD Bank Group that embraced the social web to much commercial success.
Sandy Carter, vice president of social business sales at IBM says: “Realizing a meaningful ROI depends on how you deploy social.”
Commenting in a Forbes article, Carter shared six pieces of advice:
- Pilot your social business initiatives.
- Benchmark processes before you begin your pilot.
- Don’t skimp on training.
- Understand how new social processes impact your organization’s leadership models.
- Redefine your metrics to measure the soft and hard benefits; skip the traditional social marketing metrics as they don’t apply.
- Communicate, share, and evangelize the results and learnings.
The message is clear: Corporations that embrace social media and clearly understand how these spaces fit with their business can achieve high ROI, it’s just that the definition of ROI has to change. Good ROI can improved brand advocacy via customer satisfaction, or heightened brand awareness in the market place.
In Brief…
Enterprise social media is all about the customer
Writing in Forbes, Tom Kelly points out that enterprises must not just ‘do’ social media, but integrate it into their business: “Some companies are deploying enterprise social software simply because everyone else is. A variation: since the topic is so often in the news, executives feel pressure from their boards to prove that they have an “enterprise social strategy”. There is also pressure to adopt the software from employees, since it so closely resembles the programs they use during their free time.”
What is clear is a deeper understanding of what social media applications can do for companies is needed. Social networks must make your company more efficient and should be used to put your customer’s front and centre of everything your business does.
Kelly concludes: “When you deploy enterprise social technology, you create more connectivity in the workplace. And that is always for the better, because it makes even the biggest company small again. You make possible a happier employee base. That, in turn, creates a better product than a disengaged employee base ever could. That leads to better customer experiences, more customers and ever-growing shareholder value.”
Topshop and ASOS lead in social media marketing
The fashion retailers ASOS and Topshop have topped the charts in a new report from Stickyeyes. The report states: “The research shows that both brands are dominating an extraordinarily diverse set of players in the market due to a strong offline brand presence and diverse product portfolio as well as increased investment in e-commerce.”
New Facebook Ad management app from Payvment
The leading provider of F-commerce platforms has announced it will not only provide more functionality with its app, but analytics have had a major overhaul. Instead of rely solely on Facebook’s own social graph data, Payvment will now offer 165,000 merchant’s data and the interaction stats of over 40 million Payvment users to offer detailed analysis.
Until next time….
The Useful Social Media team.