FreshNetworks Blog

Today I attended an event hosted by WOMMA UK which covered the ways that word of mouth is impacting search and looked at how search and social media are overlapping more and more.

Search and social are becoming increasingly intertwined, especially with the arrival of Google+, a clear indication of the search giant’s intention to further develop and improve the social nature of search results.

There are several important areas brands should consider when thinking about how word of mouth affects their performance on search engines. Here are three areas that brands should keep in mind when looking at their social and search strategies:

1. Word of mouth drives search traffic – be ready

• People that “hear” about your brand (online, face to face, or otherwise) will want to search for you, for convenience, for education and for learning about new opinions. This means you need to cater for all the various different ways people will search for your brand and cover all the possibilities that  misspellings or misperceptions may cause.
• “Reviews” is a very popular search term, so hosting these on your own site is a great way to generate authenticity and long-tail search terms.

2. Social and your online reputation

• Consider the implications for reputation management. Is “scam” a prominent result on the suggestions for your brand in Google? Nobody wants to see that, but instead of covering it up, ask yourself why this is such a dominant sentiment. Maybe there is a miscommunication and customers are not fully informed as to what your provide? Treat this as an opportunity to intercede and communicate.
• You can be proactive by using third party sites such as Yahoo! Answers, which generally ranks well and gives you a neutral platform to respond to negative sentiment.

3. Conversions and social media

• Retailers – price is no longer a USP. Your customers will be seeking deep content, such as user reviews and friend’s recommendations. It is important for users to trust your site, or they will go elsewhere to research and/or purchase.
• Remember that peoples’ decision making can be rational, but is predominantly emotional. Having social recommendations appear in search results and on page will appease the latter.

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?

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.

Image courtesy of X journals

Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as it appears that Facebook has rolled out its new auto facial recognition feature without giving users any notice.

So what happens with this new facial recognition technology?

Basically every time your friends upload images, Facebook will try to determine if any of the pictures look like you. And if they find what they believe to be a match, they may well urge one of your Facebook friends to tag it with your name.

So the tagging is still done by your friends and not by Facebook; the element that some deem to be creepy though is that Facebook is now actually pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you.

What’s more, Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags so it’s up to you as a user to untag yourself if you are tagged by a friend.  And that’s often after you’ve been tagged.

If the new facial recognition technology is something you’re uncomfortable with you “opt out” by disabling the  “Suggest photos of me to friends” option, which can be found by going to Facebook account’s privacy settings and then “Customize settings”.

So what do you think about Facebook’s facial recognition privacy settings? Creepy or clever? Or both?

So far in our social business blog series we’ve provided a definition of  social business and why it’s important in a commercial context.  We’ve also looked at existing examples of social business by looking at a few social business case studies, as well as providing some simple, practical advice on how to succeed at social business.

In this final post of our social business series, we’ll look at how you can get the ball rolling in your own organisation.

Social business, after all, is really a re-evaluation of how communication takes place within a company. The difficulty comes from the need for a new company culture, and that’s usually dependent on top-down movement from senior levels.

So while you might understand the importance of clearer communication and collaboration, how can you convince the key decision makers that it’s something they really should be thinking about too?

1. Find your champion

At a recent seminar I attended about social media use in FTSE 100 companies, Bian Salins, Head of Social Media Innovation for BT Customer Service, commented that a strong personality is an essential requirement for encouraging a company to adopt social media.

Basically, Bian was saying was that you need to have a champion, someone who will not back down, especially when facing senior stakeholders who are invested in or unwilling to change from legacy systems and procedures.

If you have to face middle management before reaching key stakeholders, finding someone in this level who is already aware of social media and it’s value can help improve your chances and can give you an ally.

2. Find your story

Obviously, enthusiasm and charm alone will not be sufficient for your champion – solid evidence of why social business adds value is a vital instrument.

To do this you may need to start small. If possible,  get a pilot scheme running (which is also a good opportunity to involve middle management and find your champion).

While the main challenge may be getting approval from senior executives, demonstrating the value and generating buzz from the bottom up can show that there is not only a need for social business, but a willing and prepared pool of evangelists who are ready to encourage adoption.

If you aren’t able to get your own process started, then case studies of strategic social media use from other businesses are another way to demonstrate success and reduce perceived risk. Of course, it never hurts to highlight how it has been beneficial to competitors,but having the first mover advantage is probably more beneficial.