FreshNetworks Blog

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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

Social media monitoring tools identify influencers through a series of algorithms. Each tool uses different parameters and metrics to help identify influencers online.

The different tools look at influencer in different ways. Some can help you find an influential person or influential people; some help you find a site of influence.

Not dissimilar to Google, most of the tools don’t openly talk about the algorithms they use to calculate influence, but the majority  do take into a account a number of factors that aren’t just based around popularity.

Most of the tools we tested, including  Sysomos and  Alterian SM2, use metrics that are dictated by social media channel or platform  – eg, the tools use “number of views” to find YouTube influencers, or “number of followers” for Twitter. Rather interestingly, Attensity 360 uses information from another influence identifier,  Klout, to identify Twitter influencers.

Some tools, like Social Radar,  determine influence based on the number of posts about a topic and the number of backlinks (the number of incoming links for external sites that link to a web page or website).

Other tools, like Brandwatch, not only look at the number of inbound links but also take into account the age of the site, the PageRank and traffic to the site.

As well as using some of the more standard metrics seen throughout the tools, some of the tool providers have also developed their own terminology and measurements to help brands find influencers.

Scoutlabs use an algorithm to determine what they call “importance”. This includes their own editorial opinion about a comment or post, as well as its relevance to the topic that is being searched for.

Meanwhile, Attensity 360 uses “impact” to define influencers. Impact is a proprietary metric created by Attensity to provide “a more accurate estimate of the impact/influence of coverage related to a specific topic”. Attensity also offer users the chance to add “user defined metrics” to their search, allowing clients to customize metrics to the needs of their businesses.

It is this ability to sort and customize influencer data for individual business requirements that makes the tools valuable.  Synthesio, Radian6 and Sysomos are the most flexible when it comes to to drilling down into information about influence as users can sort and interact with the data using a variety of metrics.

As the tools all identify influencers and then segment data in different ways, it is important to carry out your own research into the tools before you use them. Research the tools before investing time and money in using them. Talk to the tool providers about your objectives so that you can really find the right fit for your brand and your social media strategy.

The final version of our social media influencers report 2010 will include detailed information about how each tool identifies influencers.

The report will be released online on 3rd December following on from the launch of the report at our breakfast seminar on 2nd December. You can sign up for the event by clicking on the button below:

You can register for the event by clicking on the button below:

Brands are learning and applying a more focused and disciplined approaches to their social assets, the November 2010 ComBlu report finds.

The “State of online branded communities” report evaluated 241 communities from 78 enterprise level companies in the US and shows that the percentage of brands exhibiting a ‘cohesive strategy’ increased from 20% to 33%.

Top scoring brands such as American Express, EA, Discovery Channel, HP, Sears, Verizon, Activision, Kimberly-Clark, AT&T and Sony delivered online communities with three primary purposes: Feedback, Advocacy and Support and were measured against their member engagement.

The report highlighted that the “design of community marketing programs must deliberately follow a best practices road map and generate business intelligence that provides a diagnostic for maximizing impact and return on investment (ROI)”.  Community Management was highlighted as core to this yet nearly half of the communities still have no active online community manager visible as the “face of the brand.

An Online Community Manager is key to stimulating and growing the community’s audience (as FreshNetworks have seen in the success of the RS Components DesignSpark community, and Jimmy Choo Facebook page). Community Managers also actively engage brand advocates, which the report highlights are being ignored, with only 20% of the scored communities have a visible advocate or expert group: a huge missed opportunity for their brands.”

That said, brands are doing a much better job delivering diverse experiences by providing members with multiple ways to participate. The report found that the use of aligned engagement tools nearly tripled, growing from 28% to 76% and activity levels in online communities are also significantly higher. This hub-and-spoke model of social media engagement is a something we feel strongly about – that people operate in different modes in different social spaces.

Brands that focus their communities on support tend to be among the highest scoring; these communities are the most mature and have evolved consistently over time. The lowest scoring communities provide no real path to engagement. They tend to allow some interaction with content, but provide few ways to connect with peers, build on the thoughts or ideas of others, or provide any feedback.

Best practice was defined as a clear Welcome message, Connection to offline engagement, Advocate programs, and Community managers. The five most improved brands—Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, JPMorgan Chase, American Express and Microsoft — have all adopted practices that allow for a customized experience, facilitate interaction with both the brand and community peers, and provide recognition for contributions and efforts.

One of the more relevant findings was that there is now a much greater integration between a brand’s sponsored community site and its other social assets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with 61% of brands offering content sharing functionality.

Some specific market highlights:

Banking and financial

JPMorgan Chase went from an unpopulated community with little to no member activity to very active (more than 2 million fans) by using a tight focus, such as using the community to determine where to “invest” its charitable donations. The communities that do well tend to focus on a very specific segment, such as small businesses or support CSR initiatives.

Retail

Activity levels dropped across the sector, with 78% of the communities exhibiting low engagement levels. The decrease in both content aggregation and content tagging along with low level of social bookmarking functionality was suggested as the reason for this – impeding the seamless social shopping experience.

One of the emerging best practices for this industry is the aggregation of product reviews, research info and peer-to-peer conversations at the point of sale to help customers make purchase decisions.

In the last year, almost 1 in every 4 UK holidaymakers used Tripadvisor to research their holiday before they booked. Given the plurality of information now out there – online and offline – for people to research and get advice on their travel choices, this number is very high. One in four UK consumers are using the same source to get information that influences what is usually a significant purchase. And this source is generated by other consumers, it is a classic online community.

The research, from WTM’s 2010 Industry Report, found that 36% of UK consumers used some kind of social media to research locations, hotels, airlines and other purchases or decisions before booking a holiday. Of these consumers two-thirds used Tripadvisor, by far the most popular source of information, reviews or advice. A much smaller proportion (34% of all those who used social media to do research) used Facebook and even smaller proportions used YouTube (231%) or Twitter (17%). That over a third of all consumers are going to social media before booking their holidays indicates its increasing importance as a resource that informs and influences consumer decisions. That two-thirds of all of these (so 24% of all consumers) are using Tripadvisor shows the importance of that channel.

Tripadvisor is a classic online community. Consumers read reviews and information from others. They connect with people based on content and a common need, question, interest or concern. For example people who are interested in hotels in Paris can connect through the reviews – some writing them and some reading them. This is not a space where people become friends, and in most cases people don’t care who has written the reviews, they just care about the content. This makes Tripadvisor very scalable and is the reason more and more users are turning to it for information. For every piece of information that is added, any users who are interested in that content could benefit.

And more than just using these sites as an information source, consumers are making real decisions on the basis of them. The same research found that when a users researched their holiday choices in social media, less than half then went on to book their original choices. 35% decided to change their choice of hotel, 15% changed their travel agent or tour operator, and 12% decided to visit a different country altogether.

Holidays are typically an expensive purchase and one consumers think about and research before booking. This study shows that an increasingly large number are turning to social media to help them with this research, and most of them are turning to one site – Tripadvisor. And those that do this research are likely to change their plans and original travel decisions.

Universal McCann have just published Wave5 of their Social Media Tracker. It provides a great snapshot of social media usage from around the world. The overall report is useful for brands and social media agencies alike and provides particular insight to people planning multi-national soial media strategies.

Among other things, they asked internet users if and why they join brand communities (see diagram below). And found that those who had joined brand communities were 71% were more likely to make a purchase as a result.

This backs up what we have found with clients in a range of industries and shows the power that online communities can bring to brands.

Why people join brand online communities (McCann)

The report is well worth a read and is Required Reading from FreshNetworks this week. You can find a full version to download here.