By Nick Johnson - March 21st, 2012
[H]i everyone, And welcome to this week's roundup of the biggest stories from around the (corporate) social web! This week, we cover Domino's new 'social pizza' campaign, the discovery of social...
Hi everyone,
And welcome to this week's roundup of the biggest stories from around the (corporate) social web! This week, we cover Domino's new 'social pizza' campaign, the discovery of social ROI (sort of), brand engagement failures on Facebook, and brand engagement opportunities on Facebook.
Read on!
Domino's launch a new pizza flavour - social
Domino's in Australia yesterday launched their new Facebook campaign, which allows thewir fans to create a crowdsourced, 'social pizza', which will eventually feature on their main menu.
With shades of the Mountain Dew 'Dewmocracy' campaign from a couple of years ago, this is the latest example of a brand tapping into the power of social media for market research and product development.
With the 'Social Pizza' app, fans can vote on their favourite pizza components (crust, sause, etc) on a daily basis. After seven days, a (hopefully palatable) pizza will be created. The fan that picks the Pizza's name wins $1k, too.
While the pizza itself may leave a little to be desired, the campaign certainly makes sense - allowing a popular brand to both further engage their audience, bring in new members of their community, and learning some useful information about current followers. It's also very closely aligned to the brand's broader marketing message - that eating pizza is a social activity.
Find out more about this initiative here.
Facebook brand page owners not engaging: Vast majority post less than 5 times a month
According to research from Facebook optimisation site Reccomend.ly, Facebook brand page owners are falling victim to a common afflication. Ignoring their community. Too many brands set up social presences on various networks and then let them either gather dust, or use them as a glorified RSS reader.
The new research, based on a sample of 1.7m Facebook sites, suggests that 91% of companies leave their Facebook page 'unattended', while 94% of local businesses don't actually participate in the conversations happening on the page they own. The contribution these businesses do make tend to be standard text entries, rather than more engaging media or links.
For more on this, check out Simply Zesty's more in-depth analysis here.
Facebook brand engagement higher than Twitter
It turns out those brands failing to engage fans on Facebook are missing a bigger opportunity than previously thought - because the team at Socialbakers have just found that Facebook represents a better engagement opportunity than Twitter.
After looking at the ten 'biggest Facebook brands', they've determined that said brands have a far higher engagement rate on their Facebook page than with their Twitter account.
The big lesson that comes from the post is that brands need to set up tailored strategies for Facebook and Twitter. Too many companies (Coca Cola, Pringles) post the same things to each - which the SocialBakers team suggest is "not good for the brand". Facebook offers a richer form of engagement, and brands should leverage this opportunity by using richer media than 140 characters of text.
To read more - in a post featuring insight on Skittles, Oreo, Starbucks, Red Bull and more, head to the SocialBakers blog here.
Have Google just found the ROI of social media?
It appears Google has just made their first attempt to show the ROI of social media (unsurprising, considering this). Their popular Analytics software has just updated to allow website owners to track the activities of visitors from social networks. One can now see whether these visitors are more or less likely to 'convert' (by filling in a form, buying a product, etc) than others.
Not only that, but there's help for that tricky 'top of the funnel' problem too. Those people that visit your site via a social link, then leave, but convert later will also be tracked.
For more, check out the offical Google blog post here.
That's all for this week's (slightly reformatted) Wednesday Update. Normal service will be resumed next week when David Howell returns. Until then, please get in touch with any questions or comments here, or on our Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ pages.
Thanks
Nick and the Useful Social Media team