Fewer, Bigger, Better: Social Media Tips from American Express

We recently attended #SMWF - Social Media World Forum in London. Read key take-aways on current and emerging trends in digital and social media from world leading and innovative brands. Simon Veaney, American Express Director of Social Media Communications, presented recent social media wins and shared tips on how to achieve similar success.

The key message for publishing socially, was for fewer, bigger and better posts. That is:

• Fewer - don't publish too frequently,
• Bigger - only publish when you have something newsworthy or interesting to say, and
• Better - only publish high quality, engaging content.

One of the examples presented was the Shop Small movement, initiated by AMEX. In response to online flash sales, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday was held between the online sales days to celebrate local offline retailers. The campaign was shared by all participating small businesses through social media channels using the #SmallBiz hashtag, and local communities rallied behind them. This positive sentiment linked back to AMEX via two-way real-time social dialogues throughout Small Business Saturday.

Simon discussed the benefits of introducing ambassadors or guest bloggers to contribute content on behalf of your brand but emphasised that marketers must understand that this means letting go of editorial control. "You can’t mandate what they write and you need to give them the flexibility to let them write the story their own way," he said.

World-renowned fashion photographer Nick Knight agreed to act as ambassador for American Express by taking photos along his London commute to work. AMEX tweeted the images to a photo gallery in real-time along with the hashtag #MySecretCity. The American Express team monitored engagement and sponsored popular tweets. They also encouraged their social media audience share their own pictures with the same hashtag.

Along the Fewer, Bigger and Better theme, Simon highlighted the need to do less, get your message out to lots of people (this means put money behind your posts to boost them), and create great content, but cautioned, "people are very VERY happy to tell you when they don’t like your content. When you post and boost on social media, you’re paying money to enter people’s curated newsfeed, so you need to provide content that will be interesting and relevant to them."

Simon recommended marketers should “plan your spontaneous moment” on social media, asserting the need to make less, but high quality "snackable content." In the moment, real-time and relevant posts can usually be worked out before an event – pre-make quality content ready to post. He referenced the famous Oreo "you can always dunk in the dark" Superbowl tweet as a prime example of a quick-thinking spontaneous tweet that was incredibly successful, and he challenged marketers to think the same opportunistic way with their social media strategy. 

Simon also said that marketers must now accept that social posts need to be paid (boosted or sponsored) all the way – but don't think of them as paid ads – be more creative and provide compelling content. This was a recurring theme of the #SMWF conference - all digital marketers must allocate budget to boosting and sponsoring social posts or your audience, literally, won't get the message.

To see more information and discussion from the Social Media World Forum, check out #SMWF on twitter.

Blended Social Data for a Competitive Edge

We recently attended #SMWF - Social Media World Forum in London. Read key take-aways on current and emerging trends in digital and social media from world leading and innovative brands.

Will McInnes, CMO of Brandwatch, shared new trends in social data and a few examples of how his company has provided new insights by blending social data with data from other sources to provide a competitive edge.

He said that while social data is relatively new, it would become another standard source of information currency that will flow through every part and of the organisation.

According to Will, to achieve success in blending social data you need:
1. Great quality social data you can access and manipulate
2. Great quality and interesting data from other sources
3. An analyst or data science resource

An example of successfully blending data presented by Will was a popular ice-cream brand that had always run marketing campaigns around the assumption that ice-cream consumption was linked to sunshine and outdoor activities. “By blending social data, sales data and weather data, Brandwatch found that customers were talking about consuming ice-cream on social media when the weather was rainy and cold,” said Will. “People were cocooning and talking about snuggling up and comfort eating ice-cream on social media.” The client was able to leverage this insight in their new marketing campaign.

Proving ROI of events is always difficult, but Will argued that by blending offline registration data with social data before, at, and after an event, social posts can provide new evidence and insights as to what drives brand favourability. “This blending of offline attendance data with online social data can give companies an edge over competitors,” said Will.

Another Brandwatch client, a large retailer in the US, bought social data on the top 20 brands they stocked in store. They matched the names of people talking about any of those brands on social media against their own large email database. As a result they were able to send emails and present relevant online content to these people.

“Get away from just social data,” said Will. “It’s about fresh, timely, authentic and unprompted business opportunities. Social data can be strong it if is weaved in with other data sources. Learn quickly and experiment.”

While currently social data is mainly sourced through analysis of text, Will said that soon more insights will come through understanding the visual aspect of social footprints. “Currently most marketing is visual,” said Will. “We need to recognise photographic content without tags, comments or labels.”

With permission and appropriate guidelines Will said that wearable data will also provide an interesting future data source. “We are beginning to collect personal streams of information. The granularity of information available is incredible. Smart blending of social media with other data sources can give your company a competitive edge.”

Content Marketing – the Importance of Storytelling

Last week we attended #SMWF - Social Media World Forum in London. Read key take-aways on current and emerging trends in digital and social media from world leading and innovative brands.

A panel of experts discussed the importance of storytelling in content creation for social media channels.

CREATIVITY AND EMOTION
“A lot of content and storytelling success comes down to bravery and budget,” said Joe Edwards, Digital and Social Strategy Director at MOI (agency). “Studies have shown that creative marketing is twice as likely to generate social sharing.”

“Often as marketers what we do is quite rational,” said Joe. “Effective story-telling is really about embracing emotion. The great thing about a story is that we personify ourselves in those stories – we can’t help but put ourselves into those stories and that brings us closer to the brand.”

“There are emotional stories and there are rational stories,” said Kenoma Agbamu, Digital Marketing Manager of outdoor outfitter, The North Face. “There is an emotion behind the usage of the products that we have. So rather than say “That’s a jacket. It’s waterproof. You can use it when it rains,” we try to tell an emotional story.”

Former Head of Digital EMEA at The Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Company, Luisella Giani, explained their storytelling was not necessarily about the product – but related to the product. So they would focus on safety or travelling, and then explore the convergence between and offline – the experience of driving a certain type of car with a certain type of tyres. 

CONTENT SOURCES
“For us it’s easy to find content,” said Kenoma from The North Face. “A lot of people go hiking and take and share beautiful photos. We find people who like to explore. We have a large group of advocates – we follow their personal channels and use their content generation. And then we think about how we can integrate that into our business.”

Phebe Hunnicutt, Digital Director of ELLE UK said “We are story-tellers by trade but sometimes people within the organisation need to be reminded about collecting content all the time. Spontaneous opportunities like a celebrity dropping in at a fashion photoshoot – people need to remember to record and share this. It’s about educating people within the organisation."

“A lot of the time it’s not about finding the stories, it’s about recognising the stories, because the stories are there,” said Luisella from Goodyear. “People really need to understand how to recognise a story. For example, thinking about driving being a part of your daily life – to work or on holidays – in a way it is easy to make content but it needs to be recognised.” 

CONTENT STRATEGY
Kenoma explained that when developing The North Face content strategy they consider upcoming sponsorship and event opportunities, and identify key sources of content generation. The type and format of the content is decided after checking what is working, and what can be optimised. They also analyse which social channels customers are most likely to respond to that content, and choose platforms to push content.  

SOCIAL CHANNELS
Kenoma from The North Face highlighted the need for marketers to effectively engage with customers across different digital platforms. For example, the way that people watch a video on Facebook is completely different to viewing the same video on YouTube. A commuter might view a video on Facebook without audio – so the video should be able to work purely visually. Content needs to be customised for each platform. “Dig deep into the data and pay attention to how people are using different social media, as it changes really fast. Make sure that you’re constantly optimising. With new social channels, learn to fail fast. Take baby steps but try new platforms and technologies early to test whether they have potential for your business.”

"One of the biggest challenges is just staying up to date,” said Luisella from Goodyear. “Consumers change faster than companies do – like the adoption of Snapchat. If you have a brand ambassador on the new platform, leverage their influence.” 

ORGANIC Vs PAID
“It is important to consider budget from the start,” said Joe from MOI. “If you are planning on creating a great piece of video content, you need to consider how you will drive audience traffic so that they will see it. And then have a plan in place to monitor and optimise.”

A recurring theme at the Social Media World Forum was the need for paid investment in boosting social posts. A purely organic campaign is a thing of the past. Resources to support story-telling content in social media channels should form an essential part of every digital marketer's budget. 

To see more information and discussion from the Social Media World Forum, check out #SMWF on twitter.

Social Business Models - Fiat Case Study

Last week we attended #SMWF - Social Media World Forum in London. We'll be publishing key take-aways on current and emerging trends in digital and social media from leading global and innovative brands. The first is a discussion on social business models from Fiat Digital Marketing and CRM Manager, Pepe Moder.

We’ve all seen the LinkedIn jpg:
·       Uber, the largest taxi company does not own any car,
·       Facebook, the biggest media owner in the world does not produce content,
·       AirBnB, the biggest hospitality provider does not own any real estate,
·       Alibaba, the biggest retailer in the world does not have any inventory.

“All of these businesses are based on a social service platform model that motivates people to participate via social communities,” says Pepe Moder, Digital Marketing & CRM Director, FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. “They bring people together in a common environment and incentivise them to participate and build trust in the system to to improve the service. Industry without any physical assets – these platforms disrupt and change the rules of the industry and the business is completely reversed.”

Pepe discussed the rise and demise of the music industry with the introduction of iTunes and pondered its future, now that consumers are transitioning to subscription-based services such as Spotify. He challenged delegates to consider their own industry and the disruption it will endure over the next five years.

Pepe shared a new initiative from Fiat, in response to Uber and new ride-sharing platform, BlaBlaCar. Collaborating with Italian oil and gas giant ENI and national rail service, Trenitalia, Fiat begun a car subscription service, Enjoy. Fiat offers a fleet of 2,000 bright red Enjoy cars in various locations that can be driven by any of the 250,000 subscribers. In this new paradigm Fiat has become a service provider, rather than solely manufacturer. Pepe argued that all businesses should think about how they can change or diversify their offering to include a web-based social service model to give them a competitive advantage in their industry. “Start seriously investing in experimenting with startups, different business models and different approaches that are not part of the establishment,” he said.

“We build cars – that’s what we do,” said Pepe. “But we need to rethink our vision for our business in the long-term – it doesn’t mean than people won’t buy cars anymore, it means that some people will access cars via a service, perhaps a subscription service, and we need to become a global player in providing the ability to move people from point A to B."

To see more information and discussion from the Social Media World Forum, check out #SMWF on twitter. 

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