FreshNetworks Blog

In a recent article titled “The people formerly known as the audience”, The Economist looked at how social media technologies have changed how we gather, filter and distribute news.

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, has termed this change “horizontal media”.

Thanks to the rise of social media, news is no longer gathered exclusively by reporters and turned into a story. Instead, it emerges from an ecosystem in which journalists, sources, readers and viewers exchange information.

Today it’s quick and easy for anyone to share links with large numbers of people via Facebook or Twitter and without the involvement of a traditional media organisation. In other words, people can collectively act as a broadcast network, sharing information in a horizontal way rather than top down from the traditional media organisation.

With this in mind it was interesting to see The Economist’s graphic about the traffic drivers to the main US news websites (see graphic above).

Typically around 20-30% of visitors to the websites of big news organisations still come from Google’s search engine or its news site, Google News. And while the proportion of visitors referred from Facebook is smaller, it’s growing quite quickly thanks to social sharing and the “Like” button becoming more commonplace and easier to use.

Josh Nieman of Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University believes that more and more news sites will see referrals from social networks exceed those from search engines:

“This year you’ll see more and more news sites where referrals from social networks exceed those from search engines…Facebook is beginning to join Google as one of the most influential players in driving news audiences.”

Some news sites already present visitors with a list of stories recommended by their friends because they realise an endorsement from ‘someone you know’ carries extra weight. And according to Liz Heron, social media editor at The New York Times, journalists are becoming more inclined to see blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media as a valuable adjunct to traditional media – an important shift in attitude and one that journalists will need to adopt if they want to keep at the forefront of new developments.

It’s also interesting to see that Twitter is notably absent from these statistics. According to The Economist, surveys in both the US and here in the UK show that only 7-9% of the population use Twitter, compared with almost 50% for Facebook. But Twitter users are the “influencers”, argues Nic Newman, a former media executive at the BBC and a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University. So the news itself is on Twitter even if the audience isn’t, given the reason why increasing numbers of journalists are cultivating both their profiles and followers on Twitter.

So while its not necessarily true that everyone is now a journalist, social media has created a culture of “horizontal media”, helping to ensure that more and more people are involved in creating and sharing news.

On 13th July Facebook will be launching new Pages and Places functionality to enhance the existing parent-child Page structure.

Facebook will be adding mass management features to help businesses, in particular global brands, establish a more localized presence on Facebook, making it easier to manage multiple locations in a more scalable way.

The new features will appear automatically in all existing parent-child set ups, and the admin functionality will be available via the Pages API.

The 5 new changes to Facebook Pages and Places are as follows:

1. Locations tab

A new Locations tab will appear on the main parent Page. The Locations tab will automatically load nearby locations for a user, and it allows someone to search for locations by zip or postcode. The tab can be moved up or down, or removed altogether.

2. Parent-child linking

Facebook will add a link below the name of each child Place Page that links back to the main parent Page. This will help tie together multiple store locations to a main brand Page.

3. Check-in aggregation

All check-ins from child Places will be included in a parent Page’s overall check-in number.

4. Mass Places management

All parent Page admins will automatically have admin access to their child Places. The parent Page will appear as an admin on every child Place and only the parent Page will be able to remove themselves as an admin from a child Place.

5. New Pages API features

You will be able to edit multiple Places at once using new features in the API, including ‘wall settings’ (you will be able to set a default landing tab, set up an open or closed wall, allow fans to post photos, etc.), ‘custom tabs’ (you will be able to add or remove these), and ‘Check-in Deals’ (you can create/edit Check-in Deals for individual locations). You will still be able to use the Page publishing feature in the API to localize your posts at scale.

It will be interesting to see if this influences how Global brands use Facebook moving forward. Is it better to have seperate pages for each location or just have one main page. What are your thoughts on this?

Online community moderation company Community 102 recently published an interesting infographic which looked at how different age groups interact online across the social web.

Key takeaways include:

• When it comes to age distribution across the social web, the most active age range is 35-44 year olds (25%) in comparison to just 9% of 18-24 year olds.
• The highest majority of Facebook users are aged between 18-25 (29%) while on Twitter the highest majority of users are 26-34 year olds  (30%).
• The average LinkedIn user is 44 years old.
• The average Twitter user is 39 years old.
• The average Facebook user is 38 years old.
• 26% of Millenials (people born between 1978 and 1994, so aged 16-32, and the first generation to be “raised” on the internet) access social networks at least once a day. Millenials also spend an average of 23 minutes online every day.

How different age groups interact across the social web

We’ve already talked about how Arla foods brand Lurpack is using social media to share good food and now it seems that another Arla brand, Cravendale, is using social media as a way of increasing brand awareness.

Cravendale, the UK’s number one branded fresh milk, will be giving away 200 bottles of milk every Friday from 1st July until October in what’s being termed “Free Milk Friday”.

Each week 100 Cravendale Facebook fans and 100 @Cravendale Twitter followers are in with a chance of winning a free one-litre carton of Cravendale milk.

To take part in Free Milk Friday Twitter followers need to wait for a competiton related tweet to be issued on a Friday morning and to then retweet it, with winners selected at random.

To enter on Facebook, Cravendale’s Facebook page will show a special ‘tab’ every Friday and the first 100 fans to click on it to be given a voucher for free milk.

The campaign seems to be about extending reach, as well as perhaps helping Cravendale brand managers hit their sample targets, and it will be interesting to see if  if Cravendale has thought about how they’re going to aqcuire new likes and retweets over time as the campaign is set to run for 3 months.

Even more interesting will be what, if anything, they do to retain the interest of any new fans and followers once the campaign is over.

What a busy quarter we’ve had here at FreshNetworks . As a proudly independent social media agency we’re pleased to say that we’re continuing to strengthen our client portfolio.

Some of the highlights from this quater include helping Telefónica Europe, otherwise known as O2 to its customers, develop a consistent strategy for using social media across multiple European markets.

Our consultancy team created a social media strategy to provide clear guidelines and policies for all Telefónica Europe businesses to operate within, while still allowing each individual market a degree of flexibility. This includes developing an analytical framework for measuring success from all social media activity across five major markets, and, as a result, we’re now Telefónica Europe’s retained social media agency for all Group-sponsored social media projects and programmes.

We also helped fashion retailer Topshop launch ‘Wish You Were At Topshop’ – a Summer holiday themed digital campaign at its London, New York, Dublin, Manchester and Liverpool stores.

Using  technology developed by our in-house tech team, we enabled shoppers to create their own digital ‘Wish You Were At Topshop’ postcard. As well as getting a printed copy of the postcard, customers could upload their perfected image straight onto Topshop’s gallery, as well as their own Facebook page, allowing them to share the photo with friends both on and offline. We’re proud to have helped Topshop become the first in the industry to work with Instagram.

Helping Hodder & Stoughton launch the latest James Bond adventure, Carte Blanche, written by Jeffery Deaver, was also a highlight for us. Using a mix of clues and questions in social media and in the real world Bond fans were challenged to to solve a series of cryptic clues for the chance of winning a chauffeur-driven ride in a new Bentley Continental GT  (the car driven by Bond in Carte Blanche) an overnight stay for 2 in the five star Lanesborough Hotel in London, an exclusive copy of Carte Blanche a day before the rest of the world and the chance to meet Carte Blanche author Jeffery Deaver to discuss, first-hand, the details of the book. Much to the delight of the male members of our team, they also got to meet beautiful bond girl Chesca Miles.

Aside from our client wins we’ve been out and about helping businesses understand that value of social media. Charlie, Matt, and Helen have spoken at no less than 14 different conferences and events this quarter, including the Financial Services Forum, the European Customer Experience World and Internet World, and we also ran our own Financial Services roundtable event for senior level decesion makers of some of the biggest financial services brands in the world.

Picking up yet another award for ‘best social media strategy’ at The Drum Marketing Awards helped to highlight how much we’re continuing to  grow and develop as a team. In fact,  we’re expanding and as a result we’re currently looking to hire a Group Account Director, an Account Director, Account Managers, Social Media Managers and a Social Media Executive. So if you fancy working for a busy, fast growing social media agency why not drop us a line.

So as we start on the first day of Q3 we look forward to working with some exciting new retail, FMCG and financial services clients, as well as continuing our relationship with existing ones.