By adaptive - July 11th, 2012
Hi all, Hope everyone is well? Plenty of activity across the social web this week… Is the Facebook honeymoon over? [F]or many brand owners the move to the Facebook Timeline page layout ha...
Hi all,
Hope everyone is well?
Plenty of activity across the social web this week…
Is the Facebook honeymoon over?
For many brand owners the move to the Facebook Timeline page layout has offered a great opportunity to enhance their connectivity with brand advocates. However, research by PageLever seems to suggest that since the inception of the Timeline tab engagement has reduced by over 50%. The figure is based on 500 pages with at least 10,000 fans each.
Why the drop off? PageLever believe it is a combination of elements including the fact that brands can’t control the tab that fans land on, and the Timeline design makes tabs less visible. PageLever founder, Jeff Widman commented: “Without the option to set a custom tab as the default view, most users will never see a tab again. We’ve heard from several users they didn’t even realize tabs still existed with Timeline.”
Brand owners should continue to develop content for their tabs but clearly be aware of the issues with visibility. However, it has been pointed out that the ability of brands to pin content to the top of their pages can give their latest messages more than enough exposure. Perhaps the tab has had its day?
Dan the social face of Barclays
In an effort to humanise their approach to social media, Barclays attempted to introduce Dan a ficticious customer, but with spectacular bad timing and a completely misunderstood mood in the country.
Introducing Dan to the world on the same day that the news broke that Barclays was being fined several million pounds for wrong doing, and subsequently has become embroiled in the interest rate fixing scandal illustrates that brand owners must take intimate care of their marketing messages and how they are perceived. No wonder then, that Dan’s Facebook posts has been met with vitriol. Whether Dan survives remains to be seen.
Grandmothers in Renault latest campaign
Nostalgia has of course been used for years to market a wide range of goods. The latest campaign from the giant car manufacturer that ran in Holland sees a grandmother character asking for help looking for her keys. During the course of the campaign over 100,000 fans tagged the Facebook page where they thought her keys were located.
The campaign is sticky in that it drives (no pun intended) back to Renault’s Facebook page to see updates on the story. It seems that good old-fashioned storytelling is still a powerful marketing tool that social media can use with highly effective results.
GM back on Facebook?
The much-publicised withdrawal of their $10m ad campaigns from Facebook put GM in the spotlight last month. However, reports that GM are ‘reconsider their position’ may stem the tide of other high profile brands that may have been thinking of following the GM lead.
Even though the level of spending that GM pulled is quite small, the move was generally seen as a judgement on Facebook’s ad platform and its ability to deliver conversions, which two reports suggest could drop further below its current clickthrough rates of around 0.05%. Analyst believe that GM will move back to Facebook with limited campaigns, but will put their major ad spend into mobile over the coming months.
In Brief…
Brands score and ace at Wimbledon
As Wimbledon has just ended for another year, the brands that have become intimately associated with the tournament have been looking at how they have faired. The main winner was Evian that off the back of the viral video featuring Sharipova was able to gain most traffic across the social media space. Other brands including Slazenger, Ralf Lauren, Rolex and of course Robinsons also managed good levels of brand engagement during the two-week tournament.
The debate about how ROI can be calculated from the world’s most popular social networks rages on. A new infographic from InventHelp reveals a number of techniques that brands could use to generate their own ROI stats either independently or in association with Google Analytics.
A new report from Postnord has revealed that the Nordic e-commerce sector was worth €11bn in 2011, with the UK being the most popular destination for online shoppers from that region. Some 40% of Nordic shoppers buy from overseas sites, with speed of delivery being high on their list of favoured features available from the retailers they buy from. Mobile is also gaining traction with 5% of Nordic consumers using their smartphones to make purchases. The full report can be downloaded free from the Postnord website.
Until next time….
The Useful Social Media team.