FreshNetworks Blog

Social media marketing budgets are set to rise for 40% of firms across Europe in 2011 and budget for social media marketing is an issue for only 18% of brands. These findings come from Meltwater Group‘s Future of Content report, a survey of with marketing and social media decision makers from 450 brands across the world, including the US, UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Australia. The news is undoubtedly good news for social media agencies, but also reflects a growing maturity of how brands are viewing social media as part of their marketing and communications mix.

Of those interviewed, 40% said that their organisation fully embraced social media, and a much larger proportion (82%) reported that budget was not a constraint. Social media sits alongside more established tactics for those interviews – being the third most popular means of getting content out, after e-newsletters (the most popular) and printed magazines (the second most popular). But with 40% of firms reporting that their budgets will rise in 2011, social media marketing is a growing part of this mix and is challenging the more established media.

This pattern is one that we have seen in 2010 at FreshNetworks – clients moving from traditional print magazines to social media, especially in the B2B market. Engaging customers and stakeholders in social media has grown significantly over the last 4-5 years, and we are now witnessing it taking over traditional methods of communication as opposed to just complimenting and adding to them. Brands are starting to rethink their overall marketing and communications mix and are putting social media at the heart of it.

This study from Meltwater Group supports this trend and reinforces a trend we expect in 2011 for successful brands to dedicate a greater proportion of  their marketing spend to social media marketing. Reviewing existing campaigns and processes and working out how social media can add greater value than what they have already. We have moved beyond social media marketing being experimental and for individual projects alone, and into it being central to a brand’s marketing and communications mix. In 2011 we will see this become more pronounced, see more experimentation, and see more brands able to report, and prove, the value they are getting.

2011 will see social media marketing budgets rise, but it will also be the year when we should expect, even demand, to see more demonstrable value from this expenditure. But that’s the subject of another post in this informal series of predictions for 2011.

This post is part of an informal series: Social Media in 2011.

Vodafone homepage

Vodafone has been running a great campaign in the UK for Christmas called ‘The 12 Days of Smiles’ – 12 days of offers associated with the 12 days of Christmas. Last week (and over this weekend) they launched a social media element to this campaign on Twitter and on their website homepage.

The idea was simple:

• Tweet something that made you smile today
• Add the hadhtag #mademesmile
• All tweets with this hashtag would be streamed live on the Vodafone homepage

The outcome was a homepage over the weekend riddled with thoughts on how much tax Vodafone should be paying, and various other less-than-ideal things. You can see two such tweets in this screengrab from the Vodafone homepage.

That this happened is not a surprise. There are many cases of similar things happening – brand live streams tweets with a certain hashtag to their homepage, and hashtag gets taken over by people wanting to say other things about the brand (Skittles and the Conservative Party in the UK being relevant other examples). It is a surprise that Vodafone opted for this and reminds us all that when we are coming up with social media campaigns, we need to balance the creative idea with the business objectives and the business and brand risks.

Now, I don’t think that this is actually going to do a huge amount of damage to the brand, but it is a shame. A shame that they didn’t think about it thoroughly and use this valuable homepage real-estate in a better way. Also it suggests a lack of a clear strategy and consistently applied strategy of why they are using social media. A clear view of what benefits any campaign of tactic should bring to the brand. Only this helps you to evaluate creative ideas and make sure the things that we are doing make sense and add value to the business.

You can read more about this campaign here:

• Tax protest turns Vodafone’s smile upside down
• Vodafone’s hashtag hash

Here's looking at you. Image via shutterstock

Facebook have just launched a new redesign for profile pages. OK, they don’t really launch it until tomorrow, but you can get an early look by going to http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/ and clicking on the green button in the top right corner. User experience is important in social media and Facebook are clearly hoping that this fairly radical overhaul of the profile area will improve the experience the many millions of Facebook members have.

There are a number of modifications. And they go beyond basic design tweaks. Alongside a general move towards more imagery, key changes in the new facebook profile page include:

• A new introduction – Facebook have put photos of you front and centre
• Featured friends – make your most important relationships clear. This one could lead to fights (I seem to remember it being like that back in 2005)
• Experience sharing - this appears to be an effort to encourage people to share experiences and highlight the most important ones
• Improved browsing of your social graph - helping you navigate friends of friends and build more connections

You can read more at the Facebook Blog which covers the profile page update. Or watch this short video

image courtesy of shutterstock

Following on from the success of our social media monitoring tools review earlier this year, we’ve been testing  nine of the leading social media monitoring tools in order to assess how effective they are at identifying influencers.

We’ve tested Attensity 360, Brandwatch, Radian6, Alterian, Scoutlabs, Sysomos, Synthesio, PeerIndex and Social Radar using the subject  of  “organic baby food” as the test topic for our report.

We felt it would be interesting to see how well each of the tools could help identify influencers for this much-discussed topic. Will the tools pick out key “mummy bloggers” and frequently visited forum posts in parenting sites such as Mumsnet and BabyCentre?

Download our social media influencers report 2010 to find out

We’d like to thank all the tool providers for enabling us to carry out this report. We’d also like to  give a special mention the following people for their comments and opinions about influencers, which have been included in the report: Chris Brogan, Jay Baer, Murray Newlands, Louise Parker and Kelly Pennock.

Image courtesy of Jack Monson

With the launch of our social media influencers report this Friday 3rd December, we thought it would be useful to think more about how to engage with influencers online.

Our report road tests how well nine of the leading social media monitoring tools – Attensity 360, Brandwatch, Radian6, Alterian, Scoutlabs, Sysomos, Synthesio, PeerIndex and Social Radar – can identify  social media influencers. But once you have identified your influencers, how do you go about engaging them online?

Here a few things we feel that all brands and businesses should consider before engaging with their influencers:

1. Get to know your influencers

Before you jump in and start engaging with your influencers, be sure  listen to the conversation that is taking place on the blog, forum or social media platform where you are going to engage with them.

Read through previous discussion threads, conversations or any other relevant information you can find so that you can learn more about your influencer, what they are saying and how they are saying it.

Perhaps you could even segment by type of influencer, or the value they could potentially have for your brand (eg, spreading word-of-mouth about a product launch, reviewing your product or services etc).

This will help you use the appropriate tone and content for engaging with your influencer when the time is right.

2. Learn when to engage…and when not to

There’s no need to take part in all conversations with your influencers; sometimes the topic may be relevant, sometimes it might not. Sometimes it just won’t be appropriate for you to get involved with an influencer at all.

This will call for you to use your own judgement. Perhaps think about how much value you can add to a conversation or discussion. Or, assess how would you react in an offline scenario – would you join in the conversation or not?

Finally ask “what’s in it for me?”

If you can see no value in engaging with the influencer then don’t bother. Just because they’ve been identified as a potential influencer for your business doesn’t mean you have to engage with them.

3. Build an honest relationship with your influencers

As New Media Age commented in an article about engaging with “mummy bloggers“, it is important to be “authentic, accept criticism, not patronise and ask, not tell”. This is sound advice to anyone wishing to engage with influencers.

In order to build a successful relationship with your influencers you must think of all interaction as a way of building up a relationship. You should be looking at influencers as potential partners; as people who can champion your brand. Make them feel like an insider – they have a key position in your market place as they both speak to and represent your target audience, so treat them with the respect that they deserve.

Be mindful that influencers are giving you their time and expertise so make them feel valued and acknowledge their contributions.

4. Don’t go in with the hard sell

Yes, some influencers will be aware that you have a commercial interest in them.  And while some are commercially astute, there are always other who eschew all commercial influence.

Instead of pushing your own agenda, expand conversations beyond your specific products, brand or messages. Think about the wider topic at hand and then build up a relationship with them before discussing anything too commercial.

5. Be realistic about the results you will achieve

When  engaging with influencers it is important to understand the difference between affecting and controlling perceptions. While engaging influencers will go some way to affecting the perception of your brand and products, you cannot entirely control the outcome of your efforts.