By adaptive - April 11th, 2012

Hi all, Hope everyone is well? Plenty of activity across the social web this week… Nissan uses Bollywood for new campaign [N]issan have used the power of social networking via their Faceb...

Hi all,

Hope everyone is well?

Plenty of activity across the social web this week…

Nissan uses Bollywood for new campaign

Nissan India Facebook PageNissan have used the power of social networking via their Facebook page to create a unique ad campaign. More than 2,300 fans entered a competition that Nissan India ran and selected 20 winners to act alongside Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor. The audition process alone gave Nissan over 500,000 Likes on Facebook to become the number one car brand in India.

The campaign run by AKQA illustrates how corporates can lever the power of social media and engage with their audience. Nissan’s social marketing team was only established in January with this major campaign being their first to use social marketing.

David Parkinson, General Manager of social and digital communications EMEA for Nissan GM told the econsultancy: “We already have traditional above-the-line ads but we knew we wanted to have a social push to try something new. Initially we looked at using Orkut but we found that its user base is dwindling and Facebook has replaced it as the number one social network. Now we have got them, what do we do with them? We are looking at how we can continue the success and continue to use our current brand ambassadors. We may run a sequel to campaign using the same format.”

What is Facebook worth to your company?

Eventbrite Facebook PageIt’s a question that CFO’s have been struggling with since the inception of social networking: What is social networking worth to my company? One business though, thinks it knows what Facebook is worth to them.

 

Eventbrite the ticketing company has been tracking its Facebook activity has stated that when someone shares one of their UK events on Facebook this is worth an additional £2.25 to the company. Tweets are worth £1.80 with a share on LinkedIn bringing in £1.24 in additional ticket sales.

For corporations looking to generate reliable ROI stats, the information from Eventbrite is a revelation to say the least. VP of marketing Tamara Mendelsohn commented to the eConsultancy: “Events are social occasions, it’s no fun when you go alone. Events also say something about who we are, so people like to share them.”

In the UK alone the company has £7.5m in ticket sales for over 25,000 events since its launch, and have become one of the first companies to aggressively track and quantify the value of their social media activity.

Facebook Timeline is positively affecting brands

Facebook Engagement Adobe Digital Advertising StudyThe latest Q1 2012 Global Advertising report from Adobe states that: “Facebook post engagement increased 176% year on year—Engagement in the brands’ Facebook posts have increased dramatically since the beginning of this year. This may be due to the new platform changes Facebook has made in the last two quarters. The most significant lifts were seen immediately after the release of Facebook Timeline for brands.”

In addition the report also indicated that brands are on course to double their fan bases over the next 14 months. It would seem that brands now have a clear roadmap for their development using Facebook.

Groupon IPO masks shaky future

No one can deny that Groupon’s IPO was one of the most spectacular of recent times. Investors looking for the next social darling heaped cash onto the company, but are the cracks already beginning to show?

The company’s stock price has already fallen by 17% with fears that the business model that Groupon is based upon isn’t sustainable. And with a recent accounting blunder, which will see net income fall by $22m after a ‘adjustment’, the stability of the company is also being called into question.

Rocky Agrawal an analyst guest posting on the Venture Beat blog said: “At its core, Groupon’s U.S. business is a receivables factoring business, as I wrote last year. They give loans to small businesses at a very steep rate (the price of the discount plus Groupon’s commission).

“They get the money to fund these loans from credit card companies such as Chase Paymentech. Groupon is essentially a sub-prime lender that does zero risk assessment. And as word continues to spread about what a terrible deal running a Groupon is for many categories of businesses, the ones that will choose to run Groupons are the ones that are the most desperate. For U.S. based businesses, the only time I can definitely recommend running a Groupon is if it is otherwise going to go out of business.”

Overall the refund rates that Groupon has had to defend of late may be the company’s Achilles heel. At the moment Groupon is popular as social media continues its meteoric rise. However, if consumers begin to devalue the discounts it can obtain from Groupon, the company could be in serious trouble.

In Brief…

Most socially active CIO’s

A new infographic that Forbes columnist Mark Fidelman has developed gives a score to the top CIOs that are currently the most active across the social networking space. According to Fidelman, Oliver Bussmann, CIO at SAP is the most active, closely followed by Benjamin Fried at Google and Abraham Galan at Pemex.

New dashboard from Infochimps announced

Corporations have masses of data to analyse. Dashpot for the Infochimps Platform, an easy-to-use analytics and operations dashboard that provides customers with a powerful suite of tools for business metrics and data visualization, cluster management and system monitoring.

“We built Dashpot to dramatically increase the usability and management of the Infochimps Platform and help our customers see their data as it streams in. When users decorate their data with other sources, they can produce completely new insights that can fuel a new level of critical decision making,” said Joe Kelly, co-founder and CEO.

Why did Facebook paid $1bn for Instagram?

The headline that Facebook had splashed out the purchase of a company that had yet to make any money raised several industry eyebrows, but a new infographic from Infographiclabs gives an insight into the thinking behind the acquisition. Clearly the social community are snap happy when it comes to posting their photos. This trend looks like it has a huge upward trajectory that fits beautifully with Facebook’s core values where sharing is central to all they do. Perhaps a $1bn isn’t too much to pay after all.

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.
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Featuring 47 pages of stats, facts, and analysis, it's an essential read for all corporate social media practitioners.

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