FreshNetworks Blog

Four the last six months, and particularly since the real push on Foursquare at SXSW in March this year, we have seen a real increase in both people using and people innovating with Foursquare. At FreshNetworks we have been using the location-based social media tool with some of our clients – most notably the CatchAChoo London-wide treasure hunt for Jimmy Choo (which ended yesterday with the Jimmy Choo trainer being caught by @tjsaul at l’Atelier de Joël Robuchon). But in addition to how brands can use location-based tools there is also a lot of innovation in how the data being gathered by tools such as Foursquare can be used. Social media tools gather a lot of data that is valuable to businesses and can be used to provide a service back to users.

One service that shows how Foursquare data can be used, and also raises again the privacy issues all users of such services should recognise, is Assisted Serendipity.

The tool is simple. It uses data from Foursquare – how many users have checked in to a particular location, and the gender of each user – to tell you when any location your interested in has a high ratio of males or females that you might be interested in meeting. Or as they put it:

[Assisted Serendipity] notifies you a soon as the male/female ratio turns in your favor at your favorite local hangouts. Using Foursquare’s check-in data, we monitor the venues you are interested in, and notify you as soon as the ratio “tips”. Meet new people through the power of location-based social networking.

So the  basic message is that you can use Foursquare people to find people you might want to meet and to identify the locations where the balance ‘is in your favour’. An interesting concept and an innovative use of social media data to help with offline dating (of a fashion). Of course the use of this tool depends wholly on increasing the volume of people who are checking into a location on Foursquare. Thinking of a busy bar on a Saturday night, unless a high proportion of those people are using Foursquare and have checked in it is unlikely that any assessment of the “male/female ratio” in that bar is going to be useful and help you make the decisions that the tool sets out to help with. But with more people using Foursquare its utility can only increase.

Perhaps more interesting are the lessons we can learn from Assisted Serendipity:

1. For brands – social media is a great engagement tool, but it is also a great data-collection tool. You shouldn’t underestimate what we can learn from what people tell us and how we behave, but also how we can use this data to provide a real service back to them. Foursquare allows people to check-in to locations and find places near them. But we can use the data they provide in a number of ways.
2. For users – we should all be aware of what data we are revealing when we use social media. The tools that are being developed are great and can add real value to some experiences. But they are not for everybody and not everybody wants to share information about their lives in these ways.

I for one am looking forward to watching if and how Assisted Serendipity grows and potentially our first Foursquare wedding. I don’t think we should be rushing out to buy hats just yet, though.

Many community manager positions advertised online ask for someone to help supervise and develop a newly launched community. In my opinion this is far too late to look at employing a community manager. They should be involved from an early point in the development cycle, ideally when plans for the community are still being developed.

There are a number of reasons why ensuring the online community manager is onboard from this early planning phase:

1. They can get to know the platform the community is built on
   Knowing your platform, how to add and update content, how to moderate, how to make changes to user profiles is core to the community management job.
2. They can be involved in the user testing
   If your community manager finds something awkward or confusing you can be certain your community members are also likely to.
3. They can prepare engaging content
   Having time to prepare content for your community, be it forum topics, a list of future polls or a schedule of blogs will aid the smooth running of the community in the first few weeks.
4. They can be involved in seeding the community
   Being there to seed the community with content and invite those all important first few members in allows a community manager to identify trends and get an instant feel of how the community is likely to develop.
5. They can develop internal relationships
   Often under-rated, having the time to develop relationships with other employees who may provide content, or be able to help with questions that arise about your brand or services, provides long term benefits to the community.
6. They will have time to develop a library of external resources
   Sourcing resources such as external blogs and relevant news articles allows you to quickly update the community and provide a talking point for community members.

When that “go live” date passes and you offer your community out to the world, having a community manager who has been given a chance to familiarise themselves with the environment and build internal relationships before the traffic arrives will only help with the long term success of the community.

It sometimes feels as though parts of the financial services industry are in the grip of a social media frenzy, with a keen anxiety to “do something”. We’ve written before about why tactics such as “We want a Facebook page” are not a social media strategy and will not, in themselves produce long-term engagement and benefits for the brand. Sometimes Facebook as a presence is right for your brand and what you are trying to achieve, but there are some great examples of financial services organisations being more creative in their use of social media.

One such example comes from the US and is AXA’s My Retirement Shop. Rather than just trying to engage customers in their brand or products they are offering a real service. They are meeting their own business objectives, engaging a defined audience and also providing them with a service and an enhanced brand experience over and above their existing transactional relationship. It is one of many ways that financial services firms can make themselves relevant and also engaging. For many consumers insurance is not an engaging topic, but by adding this additional service to them it can become so.

We see many examples like this, particularly coming out of financial services firms in the US and increasing adoption of them in the UK and Europe. Brands moving from just using social media to engage customers in the brand, to providing a real service and value to them. Of course for many brands, a combination of both as part of a coherent and ongoing social media strategy would be the best option.

Developing these solutions comes best from a thorough review of why a financial services organisation is using social media in the first place. At FreshNetworks we work with clients, though our social media workshops, to identify the overall business aims that social media can help with and the best audiences for the business to target. Then we figure out what will bind the audience as a community and hence encourage them to participate.

It’s not necessarily all about Facebook. And it’s not necessarily all about engaging with your actual product or service. When you are using social media to engage customers make sure you focus on your business aims and target audience, and then be creative about the tactics you use.

At FreshNetworks, we aim to bring you the best posts in social media, online communities and customer engagement online. In case you missed them, find below our top five posts in April.

1. Social media monitoring review 2010: Test 1 results

The second post from our Social Media Monitoring – 2010 review serie. In it we give an insight into how we have set up the comaprison of the seven tools (which in itself proved rather a challenge) and the volume of online conversations that each social media monitoring tool was able to uncover. And even at this top level, it’s clear the tools are each doing something quite different…

2. Social Media Monitoring Tools – 2010 Review (intro)

Introducing the FreshNetworks social media monitoring review 2010, a series of detailed tests and analysis on seven of the leading social media monitoring tools – Alterian, Brandwatch, Biz360, Neilsen Buzzmetrics, Radian6, Scoutlabs and Sysomos. The purpose of the report is to provide an in-depth comparison of buzz tracking tools that accurately depicts their individual pros and cons.

We’ve put the tools to the test by tracking well-known international coffee company Starbucks. We compared over 19,000 online conversations, giving us some really unexpected results and highlighting some staggering differences in the way each tool performs.

3. The basics of social media monitoring

Social media tools make it possible for people to have conversations online. The uptake in conversations, comments and reviews has been explosive and the importance of these conversations is growing by the day. Among many other things, people are discussing brands, describing their purchase intentions and asking for assistance in making buying decisions or product support.

The opportunity for organisations is clear. They can now listen-in on the conversations of their customers, potential customers and other stakeholders in a way that was previously impossible. Through social media monitoring it is possible to gain insights from the conversations people are having online every day and to make improvements to products, customer service and marketing as a result. This post looks at some of the basics of social media monitoring.

4. Long-term success in social media is about more than tactics

There is a danger of building your social media strategy on tactics (“We need to use Twitter” or “We need to use Facebook”) rather than focusing on ongoing and sustainable engagement. Long-term success comes from a strategic (not tactical) approach to social media and from properly evaluating why you are using social media in the first place and how you will measure its success against overall business objectives as well as any individual campaign aims that you might be focused on at any given time.

This approach has a number of implications for what brands should be doing online and for the role of the social media agency and the brand itself. In this post, we looked at these, including current trends in the social media industry, how to develop a social media strategy and the role of the social media agency and of the brand in any engagement.

5. The Economist on Social Networking

At the end of January, the Economist published a special report on on social networking.Their special report on A World of Connections, provided an excellent overview of the current state of social media for those still trying to get to grips with it. You can download a free pdf of the report here. Or check out our summary of key highlights in this post.

Ever since sites like Kaboodle and Zebo spearheaded “social shopping” (a mix of e-commerce and traditional shopping where consumers shop in a social networking environment) consumers now have the ability to swap ideas, share product reviews and discuss latest fashion trends with like-minded people before, during and after their decision making and purchasing journey.

Social shopping has certainly helped to personalise the sometimes faceless online shopping experience.  And with 67% of shoppers spending more money online after recommendations from an online community of friends or like-minded people (according to Internet Retailer) a key element of social shopping seems to be the ability to recommend and share additional items that shoppers are likely to want to purchase.

A recent social shopping survey by e- tailer PowerReviews has also shown that a retailer’s own e-commerce sites play an important role in the purchasing process.  Survey respondents rated customer reviews as being the most persuasive factor in making a purchase and nearly half of all respondents said they would leave a retailer’s site if user-generated reviews were lacking.

Online shoe and clothing shop Zappos has certainly taken this knowledge to heart.  Largely known for their successful use of Twitter, thanks to the CEO lending his personality to the company brand, Zappos was also one of the early adopters of social shopping. Their site has a comprehensive ratings and reviews section to advise people on what products they might like based on their purchase selection, aiding the shopping process and helping with the conversion rate. They also have a “notify me of new styles” button, as well as plenty of  “favourite” ratings options so that customers can formulate a shopping list based on selections made by customers who have viewed the same or similar products.

More recently, apparel company Levi Strauss and Co has turned their hand to  social shopping . Their new Levi’s friends store uses the recently-launched  Facebook “like” plugin  to allow shoppers to see the number of Facebookers who ‘like’ an  item. It also allows the shopper to cast a vote about a product, encouraging joint participation in what was previously an individual shopping experience.

Social shopping can benefit retailers in several ways, especially if it is integrated with a wider online sales strategy.  With this in mind, we’re running a free breakfast seminar for retailers on how to use social shopping to increase online profits.

The event runs from 8.30am-10.30am on Wednesday 19th May and will include useful tips and advice on social shopping from the likes of  Geoff Quinn, CEO of TM Lewin, as well as real-life case studies from high-end brands like Jimmy Choo.

While the event is free to attend we ask that you register for the event below or call us on 0207 692 4376 to attend.

Please note: As places are limited the event is reserved for retailers only.

• Location: FreshNetworks, 229 High Holborn, WC1V 7DA,  London (map)
• Date and time: Wednesday 19th May 2010, 08:30-10:30