The Drum - Social (March 2013)

01 March 2013Modern Marketing

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THE DRUM 01.MARCH.13 www.thedrum.com Social 03

CONTENTS 04 Fully networked Major developments in the social space. 06 FT interview As the Financial Times celebrates 125 years, we ask how it remains relevent in these social times. 09 Facebook marketing The Drum takes a look at whether Facebook is still relevant as a marketing platform. 12 Vine What are the creative possibilities for advertisers on Twitter’s new video service? 14 The value of social Neil Major, strategy director, Yomego, explains the company’s research into social media ROI. 17 Q&A Industry experts offer their views on the big issues facing social media.

THE DRUM is published by Carnyx Group Limited. The publishers, authors and printers cannot accept liability for any errors or omissions. Any transparencies or artwork will be accepted at owner’s risk. All rights reserved. On no account may any part of this publication be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holder and publisher, application for which should be made to the publisher. TheSerif font is supplied by Monotype. © carnyx group limited 2013 iSSn 2046-0635

Brands and businesses have come a long way in their approach to social media marketing, recognising the importance of the channel’s ubiquity as it continues to grow alongside changing consumer behaviour. The influence of social media is set to continue, with the proliferation of mobile playing a key part in its growth; Nielsen’s Social Media Report 2012 found that 46 per cent of social media users surveyed stated they used their smartphone to access social media, up from 37 per cent in 2011. With 2013 predicted to be the year mobile overtakes desktop usage, mobile looks set to continue playing a vital role in the growth of social media.

This supplement highlights the key social media developments marketers should be aware of, including a round-up of news from the social networks and a look at how advertisers can utilise Twitter’s new video offering, Vine. We also explore examples of successful Facebook marketing campaigns, looking at key tips for marketers looking to improve campaign results via the platform.

Measuring social media’s return on investment is a key issue for marketers. This supplement’s thought piece by Yomego (page 14) explores the results of the company’s study into social media ROI measurement. The topic is explored further in The Drum’s Q&A with a cross-section of social media marketers (page 17), which also provides insight into other big questions facing the industry, including the role social media can play as a research tool for brands in gathering and dissecting vital data.

gOOD SOCial SkillSThe first of The Drum’s biannual social supplements, published in partnership with Yomego, highlights the value of social media as part of an online marketing strategy, outlining the key developments in the space.

www.thedrum.com 01.MARCH.13 THE DRUM04 Social

It’s been a big year so far for Twitter: not only has it launched Vine, but it has acquired social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs and been announced as the fastest growing social media network.

Research has found that 59 per cent of Twitter account holders are now active on a monthly basis, up from 50 per cent in the first half of 2012.

And according to specialist financial researchers Greencrest Capital, Twitter could be worth $11bn (£6.8m). The company also predicted Twitter could be preparing for public flotation in 2014. Some in the digital industry have suggested next year is too soon for an IPO, however.

Stewart Easterbrook, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, commented: “Twitter is interesting for advertisers because it can see people’s interests and who and what they follow. An IPO may be a way off though because there is more it can do to help advertisers interface with the platform and scale up their use of it which is currently a challenge.”

TwiTTER

The Drum rounds up developments with the social networks, looking at the impact they are likely to have on advertisers’ social strategies.

FULLY NETwORKED

J ust three months into the year, and so much has happened in the world of social media. Mass firings from HMV being announced via Twitter, brands creating instant ads to

promote their products during the Super Bowl blackout, and Google set to make YouTube into a TV channel, all show the growth of social networks.

Here, The Drum takes a look at what has been going on at the big four social networks, and what these developments mean for social media marketers. We also take a quick look at new network Nestivity, launching later this month, which is already creating buzz.

From Facebook’s announcement of the launch of Graph Search, to Twitter’s potential IPO in 2014, the sheer influence of social media means it’s clear advertisers need to be aware of the plethora of changes in the social media landscape.


It has been reported that Facebook will reveal a location-tracking app this month which will track the location of users, to help fi nd friends nearby.

The app aims to capitalise on the growth of social media usage on phones, and will run even when the programme or phone is not in use – which could help sell targeted ads based on a consumer’s daily habits.

Facebook has also announced the launch of its search engine, Graph Search. Currently in its early stages, Graph Search will allow the public to explore photos, reviews and profi les for things like nearby restaurants that friends have been to, or fi lms that others like.

Tina Judic, managing director, Found, commented: “The data that Facebook has on check-ins and ‘likes’ means that Graph Search becomes more powerful as a recommendation engine than Google+.”

FACEBOOK

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has conclusively confi rmed in his new book, The New Digital Age, that search rankings from Google+ are ranked higher than those from other social media networks.

The book, which is to be released in April by Schmidt and Google Ideas chief Jared Cohen, states: “Within search results, information tied to verifi ed online profi les will be ranked higher than content without such verifi cation, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verifi ed) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

Another quote reads: “Twitter can no more produce analysis than a monkey can type out a work of Shakespeare.”

GOOGLE+

Instagram underwent changes to its terms of service and privacy policy which were revealed at the end of last year, causing privacy concerns for users.

AppStats fi gures showed that daily users at 12 January sat at 7.81 million, a fi gure reduced by more than half from stats in December, before the announced. However, Instagram described these fi gures as ‘inaccurate’, and said that 40m pictures are uploaded a day. The site also said that it has 90 million monthly users

Founder Kevin Systrom insisted “Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world.”

INSTAGRAM

The social community platform built around Twitter was announced at the New Media Expo and Blog World Convention in Las Vegas in January this year, and is set to be launched at SXSW later this month.

Nestivity aims to ‘turn your Twitter following into a community’, and suggests it helps to keep users engaged with their audience.

Henry Min, chief product offi cer and founder of Nestivity, said: “We heard comments like ‘this would bring me back to Twitter’ and ‘Nestivity makes it so much easier for both the brand and the followers to actually converse’. This is exactly our goal. We are ecstatic by the response to our sneak preview.”

NESTIVITY


Is there a certain platform you prefer working on?Rebecca Heptinstall: Twitter is very much the Financial Times’s favoured social network in sheer community size (2.75m) and traffic to FT.com. That’s not to say that other social networks aren’t important, they certainly are – for example, we were the first newspaper to reach 1m followers on Google+ in July 2012. We’re also figuring out what platforms fit with the brand as and when they pop up – for us it’s less about being everywhere and more about being represented well in a few places.

Sarah Laitner: All the social networks we use have their own merits. Twitter is particularly important for allowing readers to connect with our journalists and to help our reporters follow their beats.

Which social media outlets does the Financial Times use to distribute images and information?SL We focus on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube. Does FT.com’s paywall make it harder to encourage click through? How do you counter this? RH: Our readers know better than anyone which content they wish to access. That is why registered/unpaid users can read any eight FT.com articles each month for free, completely of their choosing. In addition, our award-winning blogs (such as FT Alphaville and beyondbrics), FT.com videos, business education and FT Weekend content are open to all users and do not require a subscription.

We also offer daily ‘read for free’ articles on our social media channels. These articles are not placed behind any barrier whatsoever and are selected based on how popular we believe they will be among our social media followers.

The FT’s social media community remains extremely engaged and continues to grow: social media is growing faster than every other traffic source to FT.com, and the volume of visits to FT.com driven by social media is at the highest ever level.

Social media is almost the highest driver of new FT.com registered users.

Does the Financial Times have a set social media strategy and targets of how many articles to post a day on each platform? SL: We’ve got a really rich stream of content. We keep a close eye on the rhythm of the news day as we decide what to share, when and with whom.

We don’t have fixed targets on numbers of posts though. What are your goals for the platforms? Do you aim to get people talking, sharing, clicking through, or do you measure success another way? SL: We aim to interact with our readers as well as to build a relationship between them and the FT. We have a goal of bringing readers and journalists closer together because we can learn from our readers – they have a lot to offer.

We try to personalise their experience of ft.com as we share our stories and we take on board their responses, some of which we go on to feature on ft.com/in the newspaper. Our readers ask lots of questions of us and they expect their views to be read and taken seriously. RH: Our strategy involves three activities: cultivating community, providing them with a brand experience via our branded pages, RSS feeds and marketing messages and moving the individuals within the communities to deeper relationships with the FT, and where appropriate encouraging those communities to pay for subscriptions once they have registered with the FT.

We use Twitter to seek readers’ views and experiences, for example when Blackberry’s service went down, and ask for readers’ input, such as asking for questions for the tech column on the FT’s management pages.

The FT uses Facebook to engage our followers, asking them for their views on a range of stories, and to solicit user generated content.

Do you think the Financial Times will use tools such as Vine in the future? SL: Vine is exciting. We’re always experimenting with new tools; the test is what works for our audience.

Striking the right balance on social media channels can be difficult enough, but what if your brand is behind a pay wall?

The Drum chats to the Financial Times’s social media manager Rebecca Heptinstall and communities editor Sarah Laitner about why the brand is still with the times as it celebrates its 125th year.

LIVING IN SOCIAL TIMES


Rebecca Heptinstall, social media manager,

The Financial Times Rebecca Heptinstall joined the FT in February 2012 from gyro, where she held the position of community manager.

Heptinstall works across the commercial and brand led aspects of the FT’s social media strategy; including the analysis of campaigns, presenting results and making recommendations, and the moderation of user generated content where appropriate. One of the main aims of her role is to grow, manage and engage audiences across the multiple platforms.

Using 140 characters, Heptinstall describes her position as ‘digital comms-er protecting the FT’s online reputation. Often seen acting over enthusiastically about new things for us to play with.’

Sarah Laitner, communities editor, The Financial Times

Sarah Laitner has held the position of communities editor since November 2011, having held the role of blogs editor at the newspaper from April 2009, and working as a reporter in the FT’s Brussels office for several years prior.

Laitner is the first person to hold the role of communities editor at the FT, where she oversees the social media journalism and engagement with readers.

Using 140 characters, she describes her role as: ‘I run the FT’s social media journalism, build communities around our content and work on ways to talk/listen to our readers across the world.’

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With so many new digital platforms available to marketers, is Facebook still important? The Drum’s Ishbel Macleod looks

at recent brand campaigns on Facebook and talks to the network itself about marketing on the platform.

On THE facE Of THE MaTTER

I t was recently revealed in a survey by US-based Pew Research Centre that two thirds of Facebook users have taken a break from the social networking site, with these breaks normally lasting for several weeks at a time.

And long gone are the days when social media simply consisted of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, with brands now making use of Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Google+ and a whole host of other platforms in order to create different messages and competitions.

Kathy Dykeman, EMEA measurement solutions group lead at Facebook, argues however that the network is still important for brands. She tells The Drum: “Facebook marketing is about leveraging reach – helping brands to reach the right audience with the right message at scale. Once brands can pinpoint the audience they want to target we see great results.”

Dykeman cites a cross-media campaign by Nestlé Maggi in Germany as an example. The combination of distribution via three mediums – Facebook Page posts, print ads and TV ads – resulted in a significant sales uplift for the brand.

“In short,” explains Dykeman, “Facebook increases the impact of other mediums – those that saw both the Facebook and TV ad were impacted 54 per cent more than the sum of individual impacts of either medium. For us, it’s all about showing brands that if synergy can be created across various media platforms, they will see results.”

Monopoly recently showed that Facebook could still be useful for brands by running a campaign giving its Facebook fans the chance to choose which game token should be scrapped, and what should it should be replaced with. The competition saw fans in over 120 countries vote, with the iron being replaced by the cat.

Eric Nyman, global brand leader for Hasbro Gaming, says: “The impetus for the worldwide vote came from chatter on Facebook, where Monopoly has more than 10 million fans.

“We’re constantly interacting with these fans and there is often chat about favourite tokens and indeed new token suggestions, so when we decided to replace a token in the classic Monopoly game, we thought we’d put it to the vote and get fans to decide.

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“We’ve had a phenomenal amount of fun with the “Save Your Token” campaign on Facebook, grown our fan base and created really engaging content for both new and existing fans to enjoy.”

Kit Kat meanwhile has re-launched its Choose A Chunky Champion campaign, with fans voting to save their favourite of four newly unveiled chocolate bars.

“The use of characters who the public can get behind, the limited voting period, and the fact that only one will survive, help make this campaign engaging and successful through the line,” a spokesperson for the brand said.

Facebook maintains that marketing campaigns should not be measured on click-throughs alone, and has suggested that reach, resonance, reaction and consumer action must all be taken into account in order to measure if a campaign is successful.

Dykeman insists: “What’s key is a combination of organic reach, paid reach and viral reach which will result in the delivery of compelling content to the right people.”

However, Andy Roberts, group programme director at KISS, suggests that Facebook is losing some of its edge as a marketing tool for brands: “You can’t ignore its size and what it has achieved, but dare I say Facebook is old news .Yes, it’s part of the marketing mix of tools we use within KISS to talk to the audience and it formed the basis of our ‘Hear it, See it, Share it’ strategy, but I would say that its role is less as time moves on.”

Those brands which remain on Facebook are making sure that they perform the best for their fans, with research from Socialbakers finding that brands are responding faster than ever to comments made on the platform: down from an average of 20.9 hours in Q2 of 2012 to 13.7 hours in Q4 2012.

The alcohol vertical ranked last for response rate in the industry report, responding to only 29.7 per cent of comments; compared to the airline industry which responded in 74.1 per cent of cases. The research also found that 55 per cent of fan questions were answered on brands’ Facebook pages in Q4, compared to 30 per cent in Q2.

Alex Packham, social media manager at NOW TV, suggests that there are two key schools of thought when it comes to Facebook marketing: “For big brands there are currently two approaches towards Facebook marketing; it’s either your main social channel, or your ‘tick along’ channel. Facebook’s strategy towards businesses currently means social marketers have to either dedicate significant level of spend to maximising activity, or rely on the (minimal) organic results that can be achieved without spend. Anything in the middle of this is a wasted opportunity as Facebook’s advertising system and Edgerank algorithm sway so strongly to paid amplification, anything in the middle will be drowned out by the heavy investors.

“That said, Graph Search is the first welcome addition to its product portfolio for consumers and businesses alike for a while – Google search will remain the primary discovery tool for products and services, but consumers will look to ‘sense check’ their results against recommendation’s by friends based on their social data, which could be found using Graph Search, and that becomes a very powerful opportunity for businesses indeed.”

While there are mixed views on Facebook marketing, it does seem like the platform is staying strong, and those who continue to use it aim to continue to push boundaries and communicate with their followers.

“Facebook marketing is about leveraging reach – helping brands to reach the right audience with the right message at scale. Once brands can pinpoint the audience they want to target we see great results.” Kathy Dykeman, Facebook

Kathy Dykeman provides her top five tips for Facebook marketing

Get the messaGinG riGht

As with all channels, make sure the messaging of your Facebook activity is well integrated into your broader campaign objectives. To create this synergy, make sure that TV and Facebook campaigns complement each other, it seems obvious but creative executions across all your channels should reinforce each other.

think beyond fans

It’s vital not to forget about your target audience. It’s important to maximise reach among your target audience to increase purchases.

think in terms of cross-media

If used right, Facebook is the most cost-effective way to reach the right audience.

Use facebook alonGside tV and

yoUr other channels Facebook reinforces TV activity brilliantly. Nutella, for example, used Facebook alongside a TV campaign, finding that 3.8 million people saw the campaign on Facebook, but had not seen it on TV.

think aboUt mobile reach

One of our Preferred Marketing Developers, Nanigans, found that Page Post Ads on mobile generated a 1.9x higher click-through rate than those on desktop, which serves to reinforce the importance of building mobile into all campaigns.

top 5 facebook marketing tips

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So far, the launch of Twitter’s six second video product Vine has received a mixed welcome. The platform takes the short-and-sweet aspect of Twitter, and turns it into a video format, allowing the public

to use both motion and sound.The platform, described as ‘a new mobile service

that lets you create and share beautiful, short looping videos’, has faced criticism as some users have taken advantage of the simple format to upload short porn films. Now rated 17+ and with certain search terms censored, Vine is being used more and more for the reason it was created: to create short, quirky video.

In its first weekend, over 110,000 clips were uploaded; a number that is steadily growing. Brands are quickly understanding how to use the platform as well, with website Brands on Vine having already been set up to showcase what is being done.

Michael Litman, creator of Brands on Vine and senior social strategist at AnalogFolk, discussed the opportunities for the platform:

“The six second video format allows greater opportunity to creatively tell a brand narrative. However, the immediacy and personal nature of the channel suggests it will be used less for ads and more to capture and lifestream what a brand is doing or thinking right now, rather like the most successful brands using Instagram. Vine was the platform of choice for capturing short segments on the catwalk at New York Fashion Week, for example.”

He suggests that those brands surging ahead with their use of Vine include General Electric, Cadburys, MTV Style, Manchester City FC, GAP and Schuh. The diversity of these brands suggests that any brand can create a six second video.

The Drum asked three agencies – Jam, Rubber Republic and Weapon7 – to create their own Vine ads, shed light on the creative process and demonstrate Vine’s capacity as an advertising platform going forward.

What does Twitter’s six second video service Vine offer brands? Can such a short format be effective as an advertising platform?

The Drum speaks to agencies to find out.

HEaRD iT THRoUgH THE gREaT VinE?


Jason Cascarina, creative director at Weapon7, describes the ad: “It struck us that the seemingly prescriptive time length is actually ideal for dramatising anything that can occur over six seconds.

“According to the World Health Organisation, approximately one person dies every six seconds due to tobacco.

“From there, it was a simple matter of literally revealing this fact, by having a cigarette burn down to uncover the type. You could add further messaging for an anti-smoking campaign in the accompanying caption.

“We grabbed an iPhone and shot a shaky test version outside the office. Away from the building. And didn’t inhale.”

Weapon7 executive creative director Jeremy Garner added: “Watching Vinepeek it struck us that we are witnessing six seconds of life from around the world. The concepts went from the epic to the mundane. The sublime to the ridiculous.”

http://bit.ly/W1j5mw

Weapon7 uses the six second format to create a punchy anti-smoking ad...

Jam’s Ian Gambier said: “If fingers were the size of men and women, they’d probably start blowing each other up eventually! So we decided to make a stop-motion story of a bazooka wielding finger getting his revenge. Vine has made it super easy to make these kind of stories and share them with the world.”

Creative director Wayne Deakin added: “Like Instagram back in 2010, Vine has become the overnight must-have for agencies and brands. It has received a sudden, energetic burst of genuine buzz across the web. Brands can now benefit from bite-sized video content that is short enough to grab your audience’s attention and deliver simple messages as part of a wider campaign.

“Content and context is key with Vine and understanding if you’ve audience is even willing to watch regardless of it being only six second in duration. Remember I can still press the close button in under a second. The benefits are there for brands to take use of. But be careful where you aim it and what you put out doesn’t blow up in your face.”

http://bit.ly/XmiuXx

Jam’s short for Vine likens the video sharing platform to a loaded gun...

Rubber Republic’s Tiffany Maddox took a simplistic approach to creating her video.

“I channeled my inner magpie and gathered anything that caught my eye within reaching distance.

“The first Vine didn’t look exactly as I wanted, and because there’s no edit feature, I had to scrap it and repeat the whole process three times. Once I’d got the hang of it though, it was easy enough.

“Vine has the potential to be a great little app, though what exactly that means for brands remains to be seen.

“It isn’t faultless and could do with a few tweaks. The share function is hit and miss, and if you’re slightly ham fisted it can take a few tries. Mostly though it’s very neat and well designed, the UI is simple but retains a good aesthetic and the vine community are finding ways to be creative. All it really needs is a few updates to iron out some of the more irritating kinks and it could well be a permanent fixture in our social toolbox.”

http://bit.ly/W7Hodd

Rubber Republic’s Vine video gives the mobile app the stamp of approval...


M arketing metrics have long been the source of lively debate, as the century-old quote from advertising pioneer John Wanamaker attests: “Half the

money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

The rise of the web has changed things to some extent and it is now possible to track the customer journey, from awareness to purchase, and directly attribute a cost per acquisition. This model starts with the assumption that purchase is the primary objective however – and that all visits follow a linear path.

Some longer-established marketing disciplines, such as TV, radio and PR, have models in place for dealing with this conundrum. Many would argue they’re flaky, but their shelf life has afforded them a degree of validity.

Social media is the latest pretender to pull up a chair at marketing’s top table. But up until now, the sector has been unable to combine behind a collective voice when it comes to ROI. It’s a tough brief, given its digital heritage: it must be measurable, scalable, observable (open), attributable, and, above all, relevant to the brand, whether you’re Marmite or Samsonite.

Last summer we kicked off a process to tackle this thorny problem, adopting a social approach and working with a variety of different stakeholders from across the industry to canvass opinion and share suggestions.

Clients, agencies, media buyers, industry commentators and academics have all been involved to date, and a simple and transparent framework is now within our grasp.

Starting point The question that crops up in every client meeting is, “Yes, but what will social media investment actually do for my brand? How much budget should I commit if there’s no tried-and-tested ROI model?”

The starting point of the model needed to encompass the cornerstones of all social media strategies: development of relevant content planning; identification and outreach to the most influential advocates; amplification of the reach and impact of the positive messages; and quantified value aligned with other existing ROI metrics. The Approach – The Three As 1. Analysis The starting point of any social campaign is always to see what people are saying. The web is essentially a huge unfocussed focus group, and tools such as Brandwatch, Radian6 and Sysomos can help provide some structure to the many voices and opinions that any brand will find exist out there about them.

This data is useful, but apply a level of insight and analysis and you can reveal:

Its nature: Where are people talking? What are the key topics? What is the sentiment?

Its depth: Are audiences truly engaged or mentioning you in passing? Is there a groundswell of loyal supporters willing to support / defend your brand? How can they be segmented and embraced to help drive third-party advocacy?

Its focus: Finally and allied to the above is the question of whether social commentaries are talking to you (direct) or about you (indirect). How and when should the brand invite itself into the conversation?

The analysis phase helps brands assess the relative value of each interaction. Marketers instinctively know an in-depth review of their product from an influential blogger on a popular platform is more valuable than a Facebook Like. But how much more valuable?

A weighting system will possibly need to be applied but we need to beware of metrics that apply an arbitrary sector-wide ‘multiplier’, like the (now widely discredited)

Measuring social media’s return on investment can be a tricky issue for brands. Here, Neil Major, strategy director at Yomego, provides insight into an effective framework for measuring the value of social media.

THE valUE of social

advertising value equivalent used in the past by the PR industry. Weightings will be applied on a client-by-client basis based on their individual business model. 2. Alignment No two businesses are the same but there are things they all have in common. To provide a framework for discussion, the working party has identified 11 common business drivers that regularly apply. Clients would simply pick those that apply to them. The 11 can be segmented into four categories:

Media value: These are the typical measures of many ad campaigns – awareness, reach and degree of engagement.

Sales value: The value of social mentions can directly be applied to sales conversion if, for instance, an e-commerce client knows its traffic conversion rate. We can apply a value based on traffic derived from social media sources, either directly or indirectly. This section can also deliver a value in terms of increased customer retention if year-on-year sales data is made available.

Growth value: Market share and share price can sometimes be the real determinants of marketing success, as assessed by board members. If attribution can be applied to social, a direct value can be applied in terms of the incremental value of the brand.

Cost saving: Effective adoption of social media can slash costs. Some brands have saved millions by facilitating peer-to-peer query resolution so this should be added into the pot.

Intelligent social CRM can enhance the single customer view and significantly boost response rates, reducing wastage. Social is made for crowdsourcing/R&D, so savings via co-creation and customer feedback need to be quantified and applied to the overall total.


3. Attribution So we have relevant data, and we know what we’re measuring against. The key to establishing successful measurement now lies in an open partnership between the agency and client.

The key to attribution isn’t to use an advertising equivalent value broadly applied across all campaigns but something specific to the particular circumstances we’ve scoped and campaigned within. To make this as accurate as possible, clients will need to provide access, for instance, to sales data, average customer values and ROI metrics from other disciplines. Of the four types of campaigns identified, market share or stock price are potentially harder to attribute but value can still be ascertained by using a subtractive model. That is to say when all other channel effects have been quantified, then the remaining should be attributed to social.

This model is not perfect. For instance, it still equates an advertising click (eg promoted tweet) alongside an editorial click (eg retweeting a friend). But every model needs a starting point and all respected, tried-and-tested metrics have been here before.

This framework needs to be interrogated and refined if social is to continue – and potentially increase – the level of support it deserves. In this article, we’ve scratched the surface. A more detailed discussion is available if you download the free Value of Social Advocacy white paper at Yomego.com.

But one thing is crystal clear. The Holy Grail of social media ROI will only be achieved via a concerted and collaborative effort.

Neil Major (@neilmajor) is strategy director at Yomego (@YomegoSocial)

Identifying key business objectives

£

Awareness Reach

Social Engagement Advocacy

Media Value

Website traffic and footfall Conversion

Incremental yoy sales

Enhanced CRM

Sales

Share price increase

Market share increase

Growth

Customer Service Research and development

Cost Reduction

Yomego has identified 11 common business drivers that can be applied to measuring the outcomes of social media campaigns. The 11 can be segmented into the following categories.

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The Drum catches up with a selection ofindustry experts to ask their views on some of the big issues affecting the social media

sector, such as video and data.

Q A&

What do you see as the ROI from social media?

Jim Dowling, managing partner, Cake There are plenty, but top of my list would be measurements that clearly link to

commercial gain. 15 per cent of all retail is now conducted online, and 50 per cent of online traffic is being driven by social media. As a result, it is quite easy for brands to track whether their efforts in social media are turning into business. The investment is an investment in content or conversation. The return is a sale, an existing customer spending more or a disgruntled customer retained.

Jim Coleman, managing partner, We Are SocialThe measurement of ROI itself is out of date. While it has classically been defined

as a financial measure, return is no longer always about the bottom line – brands are becoming less interested in tracing back social media to the actual sale itself. For social media, return could be a better understanding of your customer base and their sentiments towards your brand, a more engaged user base that fosters brand loyalty and the ability to use your social communities as a focus group to influence new product development.

Jonathan Palmer, head of social, Vizeum UK Social media allows us to change perception, gain awareness and create

an ongoing dialogue with our consumers in order to build brand preference and loyalty. It also allows us to gather, over time, a lot of valuable consumer insights, which can be used to help optimise our

future planning and ensure that we are giving our clients the best strategies going forward. More importantly, social plays a part in an overall comms strategy, and the ROI should be part of a greater holistic brief.

Martin Jordan, marketing director, Equator It has to be about awareness. Being active in social media takes a lot of

investment and your initial return is based on whether or not anyone is listening or even better, engaging. While said listener may not buy straight away, the trust/relationship that you can create via social media may contribute to them doing so at some point in the future. If you can ascertain what role social media plays in your purchasing funnel, you’ll be able to take that initial engagement and through time translate that into a financial ROI. What’s the biggest challenge for brands’ social media strategies in a multichannel environment?

Jan Rezeb, CEO, Socialbakers We saw 2012 as the year when companies set up presence and started to focus on two-way communication. We

believe that in 2013 the focus will be on measuring quality of relationships, competitive intelligence and the consistency of data. Perhaps the most important development will be measuring the velocity of positive and negative remarks. Brands are starting to move towards democratisation as they accept that public opinion matters and they are no longer in control of the majority of information released about their company.

Social is where

we see some of the most visible marketing mistakes. Brands should make sure all channels are considered and planned for right from the initial conception of the campaign.Jim Coleman, managing partner, we are social


Steve Richards, managing director, Yomego Segmenting the messaging while joining up the ROI. Messaging needs to be

optimised for different social platforms, let alone different marketing channels. The way you interact with customers on Twitter versus Pinterest won’t be the same – one size doesn’t fit all. Success will come back to the sort of best practice for one-to-one marketing that predates social media – it’s about having joined up systems and databases underpinning everything. Better targeting and a more sophisticated single customer view will help to minimise wastage in marketing budgets.

Neil Higton, senior account director, Essence Often the biggest challenge is making sure that a brand’s social media strategy

is not the last consideration in a multichannel marketing plan. In the past it has been quite common for brands to add social media as an ‘afterthought,’ which can be quite restrictive, especially when developing campaigns with specific social objectives and goals. Brands that have organisational structures that allow their departments to operate in silos can also enhance this problem, preventing a truly integrated approach.

Nigel Ferrier, executive chairman, Ferrier Pearce Creative Group The question of resource and the threat of missed opportunities if the message

becomes diluted across a number of different channels through the lack of resource is the biggest challenge that is faced across all industries using social media. What is the role of video content in social media marketing?

Paul Shephard, CEO, Coup Media Video as a content marketing mechanic will continue to increase in importance because it translates so perfectly to

mobile screens (better than say... an image, copy or infographic). But video will only work for you if it’s useful, funny, extraordinary or otherwise emotionally engaging. If you know your objectives, know your audience and deliver video content that resonates then video can be super effective especially as mobile screens become the normal way to consume content. If you can’t do that, video becomes a more time consuming and expensive way to fail.

Freddie Young, community director, 1000heads Countless studies tell us that, when it comes to consuming information online,

people prefer watching videos to reading text. For this reason alone, video can be a fantastic way for brands to communicate. As platforms like Vine, Cinemagram, Viddy, Socialcam and Keek make it quick and easy to create video, there is an obvious opportunity for brands to use this medium more – but if it’s not done with a strong strategy in place, it’s just more brand noise.

Jan Rezab, CEO, Socialbakers YouTube is the second biggest search engine on planet, and Facebook the biggest social media platform, so being shared on

these channels increases exposure hugely. Video can also be resource-effective in terms of solving a complex problem visually. It’s an opportunity to give customers answers in a concise constructive and graphic way, especially if you have a large amount of customer service queries all relating to the same problem.

How valuable is the data being discovered by social media to brands?

Dominic Sparkes, CEO and co-founder, Tempero Data is worth nothing without context and expert analysis. At Tempero we have seen

many organisations sign up to advanced monitoring and analysis tools only to lose interest when the results are inaccurate, confusing and irrelevant. To use data effectively, there needs to be a reason for collection, a plan for analysis and a willingness to action any actionable insight.

David Cushman, strategy partner, Social Partners Savvy marketeers are already turning to real-time data from open social media

to inform decisions about how, when and where to market, what content to create, for whom, in what format and to deliver where. It’s a powerful planning tool. But it’s also a powerful insight into customer need and should be used to inform decisions throughout the organisation, from new product development and R&D to customer service and PR. For many brands there is a direct sales play, too. Critically, social media data can help an organisation treat customers as partners in every decision it makes. Every boardroom should have access to the data.

Ben Hatton, managing director, Rippleffect Social media is a research tool. There is such a huge amount of data readily available and

every brand should be using social media research to its full potential. You can use social media for so many things that have direct impact on your business such as finding out what your fans think of your next poster, finding all the people on Twitter who mention your product or issue in their bio as well as tracking every conversation about your brand. Perhaps most importantly there is also an incredible amount of data freely available about your competitors – and if they are not finding value in it you certainly can!

Sam Waymont, social planning director, EssenceData is only valuable if you use it correctly. Every brand on Facebook has access to

informative data, such as age and location, as well as daily insights into what their consumers like and don’t like. It’s up to brands to use this knowledge to shape marketing and product strategies. Remember though, this is only a consumer sample that has connected with your brand via social media, while it’s both powerful and useful, in some cases it may not be representative.


Percentage of the UK population on Facebook

[Socialbakers]

FACT FILE

51.61%

52% of marketers have increased time dedicated to managing social media

[EML Wildfire, via Econsultancy, May 2012]

52%

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££££

Spend on social media banners in first half of 2012

[IAB expenditure report, October 2012]

£134.2m

www.thedrum.com 01.MARCH.13 THE DRUM20 Knowledge Bank

COUP MEDIAT - 0845 805 7345 E- [email protected]

W - www.coupmedia.com- @coupmedia_paul / @coupmedia

TWITTER’S API: A TASTE OF HONEY?T

hey say that a taste of honey is worse than none at all. Well some of the developers who built software using Facebook’s Ad

API might just be starting to agree...Why? Because as Facebook adds more

and more functionality to its own advertising platform, so it erodes many of the reasons we had to use third third party tools in the fi rst place.

The Facebook ecosystem of third party developers has become the social monolith’s number one R&D resource... and now they’re starting to reap the benefi ts by taking in house many of the better ideas developed outside of their Menlo Park HQ. Will Twitter do the same a few years down the line?

Rewind to 2009 when early access to Facebook’s Ad API was an incredibly valuable pass to be granted. Many of the companies who built the fi rst iterations of ad serving platforms (think Brighter Option, Ad Parlour, Vitrue et al) did very nicely from the wave of buy outs, mergers and acquisitions around that time as agencies and development houses came together.

But many others weren’t a part of that union and now they’re looking on helplessly as Facebook cherry picks the best parts of their products, and delivers that free of charge as improvements to their proprietary ad platform (instead of imposing the typical 5-10% charge of overall campaign spend levied by the 3rd party providers).

This isn’t an anti-Facebook rant; I love them from a personal and professional perspective, but I can imagine how it could feel like a callous blow to some businesses/development houses every time Facebook implements a ‘new’ piece of functionality to its initially rudimentary ad serving offering.

And while Facebook’s motto is ‘Move fast, Break Things’, I’m not sure that’s totally ringing true... they haven’t moved particularly fast here: Their fi rst clunky Bulk Ad Uploader

appeared a good number of years ago, and their latest refi nement to ad serving (conversion tracking) happened in January of this year.

But they are breaking things – mainly the business models of third party Facebook ad serving platforms. By including the new, prettier multi-pane graphical user interface, power editing tools, conversion tracking and deeper analytics to their ad serving platform, Facebook are stealing the thunder of many third party providers – and giving it to us for free. Who’s going to argue with that?

The people who built that functionality in the fi rst place, using Facebook’s Ad API, that’s who!

You could (and I would) argue that any business built on someone else’s API, and which doesn’t plan for ‘the hand that giveth’ taking away at some point is asking for trouble.

This is defi nitely something all developers

and software houses need to be aware of as Twitter moves to build its own ecosystem of developers and third party tools to do more than let you post to Twitter. That ecosystem will grow fast, just as Twitter CEO Dick Costolo hinted at back in 2011.

Twitter’s announcement that they are fi nally opening up an Ads API of their own is the fi rst really important development since 2007 when Facebook launched its application development platform.

It’s so important that it will make people sit up, listen and quickly want to fi gure out how to take advantage of it. The ones who get it right (and get it right early) will be wined and dined by any number of Social Media Sugar Daddies, but those who don’t get it (by ‘it’ I mean the product, the business model, the vision) right need to be aware of the social software wasteland that could be waiting for them as Twitter surveys their products, licks their lips, takes the best bits and leaves the rest.

I’m no programmer – I’m sure I’ve given that game away long before now, but I am involved in a number of products/companies that pull on APIs as their lifeblood. As such I (we) accept that we are beholden to the whims of the API provider – such is our lot in life.

But those businesses that provide APIs open up whole worlds of possibilities that would never be possible, and we all reap the benefi ts at some stage – whether as developers or consumers.

The fact is that those who develop and share their APIs deserve to get fi rst dibs on what’s built using that API. As long as everyone knows that – and plans for that eventuality there can be no nasty surprises. In short, there is an ‘i’ in API... and it’s a big one. Twitter know that, Facebook know that, and we should know that too.

Paul Shepherd, CEO, Coup Media

THE DRUM 01.MARCH.13 www.thedrum.com Knowledge Bank 21

THE WILD WIDE WEB

FERRIER PEARCE CREATIVE GROUPT - 01883 342682E- [email protected]

W - www.ferrierpearce.com- @ferrierpearce

Over a decade since the social media revolution and we are still seeing examples of some of the world’s biggest and best known

brands – pardon our French – cocking it up. You only have to look at the recent

Starbucks strategy to feed a live stream of #spreadthecheer in the Natural History Museum that was hijacked by tax protestors. This post-dates a whole host of ill advised social media dramas involving Skittles, Chrysler and even Ryanair to name but a few. Only #waitrosereasons managed to claw back some integrity for the brand.

The ‘shoot now and ask questions later’ approach that is adopted when it comes to social media is drawing to an end. The ease with which you can update, upload and respond means that it becomes very easy to lose sight of a strategy. Not only that but it is also very easy for mistakes to be made that will no longer go unnoticed. Rouge bandits can cause more damage with a single misguided tweet than the most scathing of press reviews. The web has gone wild and it’s time to bring back some order.

Within a year, internet use on mobile devices will overtake desktop access for the fi rst time, which is easy to believe when over 60% of all mobile phones worldwide are internet enabled smartphones. Consumers now have the attention span to that of a gnat, with a reduction over the last 25 years from 12 minutes to 5 seconds. Not only that but their ability to multitask has also gone through the roof, 86% of smartphone users will be online in conjunction with undertaking other

activities such as watching TV. Only recently it was reported that the general population checks their phone over 100 times a day.

Integrated marketing is not a term that is unfamiliar, so why is it so challenging to implement this across all online activity? Particularly when you know that your target audience is likely to have their fi ngers glued to their phones and watching your every move, making judgments and drawing conclusions based on how the brand is presented.

The social media obsession is drawing to an end to make way for a new and more advanced management protocol that is designed to ensure continuity across all digital outlets.

Consideration for the interaction between digital channels is now more important than ever. While a campaign can be run on a singular platform, thought must be put in to how this will translate should the

audience wish for it to be drawn out across the web as a whole. The length of a tweet, responsiveness of a website and compatibility of your links will all play a part in determining the fl op or fl ight of your online campaigns.

Digital media management has evolved as the integrated and strategic approach to the management of a digital footprint. There is no longer the option of independent online channels operating in isolation.

The sheriff is back in town...

To get your online engagement rounded up, and fi nd out more about digital media management email [email protected]

Nigel Ferrier, Executive Chairman, Ferrier Pearce Creative Group

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