A Look into Social Media Platforms: InsightMedia by Kalvin Coates

A look into Social Media Platforms: How to use for Advertising 1

Brought to you by InsightMedia

So what’s in this issue? Welcome from the Editors Section 1 Background of social media and research: So what is Social Media? Why we chose these forms of social media Secondary research into social media Primary Research Section 2 A Big look into the ‘Big Five’ A look into LinkedIn: History of LinkedIn So, what is LinkedIn? So, what does LinkedIn do? Advertising opportunities Effectiveness of Advertising Case Studies: Cathay Pacific case study (Good example) Example of bad case study A look into Twitter: History of Twitter So, what is Twitter? What does Twitter do for business? What advertising opportunities are there? Effectiveness of advertising on Twitter Case Studies: MTV case study (Good example) @HabbitUK case study (Bad example) A look into Google+: Background How exactly does Google+ work? What information does the site capture from the consumer? Advertising opportunity Advertising effectiveness

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A look into YouTube: YouTube’s History Advertising opportunity YouTube Effectiveness of advertising Case Studies: Old Spice case study (Good example) Cisco Systems case study (Bad example) A look into Facebook: Facebook’s History Facebook for business Advertising opportunities Costing and Insight Case Studies: PG Tips case study (good example) Walmart case study (Bad example) Section 3 (Conclusion) InsightMedia’s Verdict: Best practice for social media (with examples) Final thoughts on the key 5 social media players What are the forecasted budgets for social media marketing? Our thoughts on social media’s future Works Cited

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Welcome From the Editors...

Welcome to the difficult second edition of Insight Media. We hope you enjoyed our last issue on the Men’s Fashion Industry. Since our last issue we have had our Christmas Party and discussions on what to do next with Insight Media. So as a group we have decided to bring you.... Insight Media: Social Media, Money for old rope? This issue will bring you the latest research and examples on whether Social Media is a good and successful tool for digitally marketing businesses. As many CEOs and business owners are still not confident with the current Social Media Trend and how to put their business on there or what it can bring for their business. We aim to help them with this and present the potential advantageous opportunities of Social Media. We will look at the leading social mediums. So whether you are a student like ourselves or a business owner we hope this issue will help you make up your mind on whether Social Media Marketing is all as it is hyped up to be and if it can help your business. The Editors, Tyler, Mike, Brandon and Kalvin (design)

The Research Section: Within this section of this issue, I will be discussing “Why we chose Social Media” and also why we have chosen five specific forms of social media. The five forms of social media we have chosen to look into are:

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Facebook

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Twitter

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Google +

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YouTube

After that I will be then completing some primary research that will target all types of users to the specific types of social media. The research will look into how the users approach the social media and whether or not when left to their own devices if they first, notice any form of advertising or going onto any business pages and secondly whether they respond to any form of social media marketing.

So…what is Social Media?

Before we go any further we at Insight Media will tell you what we feel Social Media is within the context of this magazine. “In short, social media enables the swift and easy development, creation, dissemination and consumption of information and entertainment by both organizations and individuals”. (The social media management handbook) In English, Social Media is a place online where individuals and businesses have the opportunity to communicate together. Social Media allows the creation and discussion of user generated content. Social Media is also an online place where individuals can discuss brands and businesses both positively and negatively and within a click be seen by millions. Social Media has been categorised into the following sections: -‐ Blogs, individuals and also businesses can do these. -‐

Collaborative Projects – this is such content such as Wikipedia.

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Virtual Worlds – such as Second Life and Habbo Hotel

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Content Communities – these are forms such as YouTube and Lastfm

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Social Networking Sites – Such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

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Content Aggregators -‐ such as dig.

From the many forms of Social Media, Insight Media have chosen to look into depth into five forms of Social Media. These are social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and LinkedIn and then the Content Community site – YouTube. This graph shows that apart from the up and coming Google +, these forms of Social Media are the biggest at the moment.

Why we chose these forms of Social Media?

These five forms of Social Media are known as being some the biggest in the social media market. Twitter – it is estimated and on track that by March 2012 twitter will have 500 million followers. (mediabistro) Facebook – In 2010, it was estimated that Facebook had over 515 million users. LinkedIn – Again in 2010, it is estimated to have over 80 Million Users and is currently the best social media for Business to Business. Google + -‐ Is said to be the fasted growing social network site, with Facebook taking three years to reach 25 million users. It took Google plus one month to reach the same milestone. (Google Plus) YouTube – In 2010, it was said the 2 billion videos were uploaded every day and that every minute 24 hours of video content is uploaded. (Socialnomics)

I am now going to get my research brain on the go, and look a bit further into the world of social media. Within this section I am going to discuss further, how big really is Social Media? Well, latest facts and figures to help our argument on why we have chosen these five forms of social media. I will then go into the primary research and create a specific questionnaire, and get social media users to complete. After this I will then observe selected social media users while they are on their social media sites and see how they navigate around the site and importantly take notice of any advertisements that may appear.

Continued Secondary research into Social Media… So what do the experts want to learn about, on a survey that was answered by specific marketers, it was identified that the one form marketers wanted to learn more about was…Social Media. Also marketers seemed to want to know how digital marketing can be cross promotional. In a report from Mintel, looking into social network sites from 2001, the study found that Facebook is a dominant force in the social networking market, with a social design that puts members at the heart of the service. research showed that 73% of all Internet users have visited Facebook, making it have the top Mintel’s social network sites in terms of unique visitors and time spent on the site. spot for The graph below shows the total percentage of total unique visitors to select networking sites from home and work in UK, October 2008-‐March 2011. (Mintel) This graph shows clearly Facebook within strides ahead of the competition. the UK

Mintel also conducted some other interesting research and looked into how many social network profiles each user has. From this piece of research I will be able t o show how common it is to have more than one profile, personally I have two, being Facebook and Twitter and also a YouTube Account, so personally for me I feel it will be interesting, but to the marketers this can a lso b e i nteresting.

This piece of research based on 2000 Internet users, I believe will be one that changes soon, with many users may having more than one social network site in the future. With 40% of users having just one social networking site with Facebook being the leading the site, this could be the one site many users just choose to have. Another interesting figure is the 20% that do not have a social network site, but this figure is believe to decrease with social network sites becoming more of everyday use on the web and becoming more intertwined with their everyday lives.

This n ext piece of secondary research also proves to be very interesting, especially for digital marketers, this piece of research looks at how receptive users are to adverts placed on social networking sites. With t wo out of three users showing that they rarely pay attention to adverts placed on the social networking sites. It also shows that the majority are starting to become worried about the privacy settings within social network sites, this could potentially in the future provides the decision for the user to de activate their accounts. 8

It is clear to see, that finding strong secondary research sources for Google Plus is limited, as the social network site is brand new to the public, finding information on the site has seen to be a struggle as there are no reliable sources for the secondary research, only opinions and blogs. The template behind Google plus is that it is full of services the user is use too and has already uses, but the difference with Google chrome is that apparently “they make them better”.

Another example of how a business has got YouTube right is the Charity Invisible Children. Since its upload a week ago it has got over 75 million views! Since its upload the charity has seen an increase in sales and the video has gone virally sparking it as a topic of conversation across the world, and bringing to light the issue they are trying to resolve. 9

YouTube is categorised differently to the social network sites already discusses. YouTube comes into the content community part of social media, where users upload videos for the rest of the world to see, and users can subscribe to other users to make sure they see all their video postings. YouTube as a form of social media has been able to take local people into worldwide superstars. An example in the music industry is Justin Bieber, who uploaded his videos on Facebook as a teenage boy and after millions of views is now a household name across the world.

From this to this...This clearly shows the power of social media and specifically YouTube, and if a brand or company can get this right, then it can create millions of views and opinions.

Getting the Users View... Now that the secondary research is complete for the social media sites, here at Insight Media are going to complete our very own primary research, so we can have our own opinion on things and gain more views on the ever-‐ g rowing s ocial m edia. Firstly we have conducted a questionnaire and have had it completed by 30 active users on social media forms, and then secondly we observed several users on their own accounts and tried to watch on how they use their social media sites, and if they follow or take notice of any advertisements.

Questionnaire

1) Out of these five forms of social media, how many of them are you a member of? (Please Circle) Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Google Plus YouTube 2) Which of these five forms of social media do you feel you spend the most time on? (Please Circle) Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Google Plus YouTube 3) Have you ever noticed any form of advertisements on any of these social media sites? (Please Circle) Yes No Cant Remember 4) If “Yes” what? ....................................................................................................................... 5) Do you follow any brands/ companies on any of these social media sites? Yes No 6) Are there any other forms of social media you feel you are an active member of?

Above is the questionnaire we asked the 30 active users on social media, below we will know show the results for the questionnaire. Q1) Out of these Five Forms of social media, how many are you a member of?

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google Plus YouTube

Q3) Have you ever noticed any form of advertisements on any of these social media sites?

Q2) Which of these five forms of social media so you feel you spend the most time on?

Q5) Do you follow any brands/ companies on any of these social media sites?

Results from the Questionnaire Above we have inserted the graphs and tables from the results of our first part of our primary research. We found out that from the 30 active social media users that; -‐ Facebook is the most popular tool with twitter in second. -‐ YouTube was discussed as being heavily used but some of the users went onto the site but weren’t actual members of YouTube, so therefore couldn’t answer that question. -‐ Facebook and YouTube were the two sites that the users felt they spent the most time on. -‐ All of the members on YouTube had noticed an advertisement while browsing on the site, the majority of Facebook users also noticed advertisements. -‐ 100% of Twitter members follow a brand or a company. -‐ LinkedIn seemed to be popular with the older aged users, with more specific uses of B2B. -‐ Google Plus, was very low and one user had already deactivated his account due to they felt Google Plus was not private enough, such as any photo he took on his phone it would automatically upload to Google Plus without his permission.

Observation Research

For this part of the research, we observed certain active members while they engaged onto their own social media accounts. The purpose of this research was too see if; -‐ They engage with any advertisements -‐

If they follow and engage with any brands or companies

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How they use their social media accounts.

From the observation research, Insight Media were able to see that: -‐ Users were actively engaging with business and brands on the Social Network and Twitter. Through our own research we were able to identify that users are more willing to go onto twitter and view their tweets. This could be as the user is seeking deals or new products to the brand.

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Users spent more time on Facebook, this could be due to users having personal content on sites such as Facebook, and this allowed the user to stay on the site more, then others such as twitter or LinkedIn.

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Users who were actively engaging with YouTube are very likely to skip and ad if possible so that they can view the content quicker then watching the ad.

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Companies are more likely to gain OTE with viewers if they upload a video rather then take media space as an advert on YouTube.

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The few users on Google Plus still found it confusing and spent a very low time on the site, as they had very limited friends in their circles there was very little to do on the site.

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LinkedIn was viewed some users as an another email usage to see if they had been contacted by other professionals and also an online CV, so some users just went onto the site to update their profile for views by other professionals.

From both primary and secondary research, Insight Media have been able to identify that Facebook is still the number 1 in the user’s eyes, with users spending most time on the site, and with the most views on the site. Even though it may be the number 1 advert on Facebook are still unlikely to be engaged by the user. Twitter is seen to be the best way to engage with the consumer, with the active users very likely to follow brands and companies, and from the observation research is likely to engage with their tweets. Google Plus has been shown to be the new kid on the block, and currently it may be seen as one too many sites for the users, with no real USP for the users, many active social media users have not made the change and created an account on Google Plus. LinkedIn is seen as the B2B for users and a way to professionally advertise them. Users seem to like LinkedIn but spend a small amount of time on the site. In terms for businesses LinkedIn may not be the place to advertise. Not everyone who visits YouTube is an actual member of the site. And businesses are more likely to engage with the users by uploading their own content rather then uploading an ad, which is likely to be skipped or ignored.

A Big look into the Big five After conducting research it seemed only fair to look deeply into the five main social platforms. This is to give businesses deep insight into how to use social platforms to their full potential with examples of how its gone good, as well as how it’s gone bad. We hope that after reading this section you can walk away with knowledge on how to write your own effective campaign.

So, what’s in this section? In this section we will look into: • What each platform is • What it does as a social platform • Advertising opportunities within each platform • How advertisements might be analysed • Case studies both good and bad showing how businesses have used of the platform • Finally, conclusion and Insight Media’s verdict We will firstly look into LinkedIn, followed by Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Twitter. 14

A Look into LinkedIn…

So, what is LinkedIn? Linked in is the largest professional site focussing on careers and networking. LinkedIn started out in the living room of the cofounder Reid Hoffman in the fall of 2002. The five original founders were Reid Hoffman, Alien Blue, Jean-‐Luc Valliant, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke. The founders invited 300 of their friends to join the service. th The site went live 5 May 2003. Within the first month they had 4,500+ members, by the end of 2003 they had 81, 000+ members, 1 year later with nearly 1,000,000 members. As of February 9th 2012 LinkedIn has approximately 150+ million users. (LinkedIn, 2012)

(LinkedIn, 2012) 16

So, what does it do? • LinkedIn is a way to get the most out of your professional network. • LinkedIn helps you to reconnect, find past and present colleges and classmates quickly. “LinkedIn makes staying in touch simple.” • LinkedIn helps you to ‘Power your career,’ helping you to discover inside connections when you are l ooking for a new job or business opportunity. • LinkedIn is also a great resource to gain answers. Your network is full of industry experts willing to give advice. If you have a question, then just ask. (LinkedIn, 2012)

Did You Know?

(LinkedIn, 2012) Advertising Opportunities LinkedIn o ffers a range of opportunities for advertisers. Each option has its own benefits, as well as this LinkedIn o ffers methods to analyse and track your advertising progress. Here are the options available:

Company Pages

Status Updates Company This feature allows engagement directly with your followers and potential customers. Allows the possibility of influencing customer perceptions and their buying habits by messaging followers across LinkedIn a s well as the Internet. allows businesses to have engagement with followers and potential customers. Regular This feature updates such as, company news, product promotion, videos and industry articles can be shared followers can in turn amplify this message by sharing, liking and commenting, (Potential of message (LinkedIn, 2012) going viral)

(LinkedIn, 2012) This image shows how your status will look within your page; it appears at the top of your page so it will be the first thing people see when they land on your page. 18

Overview Tab Introduce your company to professionals Members stay updated on your company news, see connections employed by your company, and get a quick summary of your key company statistics. Connect directly with your followers With company status updates, you can drive earned media by sending messages to your followers that will spread virally through their network update streams.(LinkedIn, 2012) (LinkedIn, 2012) As you can see this tab lets you view clearly, your followers, people you should connect with as well as the s tatus your business has. Products and Service Tab This feature allows you to change the Products and services Tab to display content of your choice, can be personalized to your target audience’s interests. You can define up to 30 different landing pages f or each different segment you are targeting – this means your Finance professionals will not see the same content as marketing industry professionals. 19

Build a showcase of recommendations This tab also allows you to feature the products & services you offer, whilst obtaining recommendations from your best customers. What this means to you as a company is that when a customer recommends your product or service, their endorsement is then added to your page, this then spreads virally throughout their network. (LinkedIn, 2012) (LinkedIn, 2012) As you can see from the image your product is shown, with recommendation from one of your followers on the right hand side. Groups Groups are a way for like-‐minded people to get together and engage in conversations and debates, as well as c ollaborate, share, connect around a professional passion, and interest or goal. With custom groups, you have exclusive access to a group for delivering custom media. Raise and position yourself as a thought leader by delivering rich content, including video, awareness embers with questions, and integrating a blog, Twitter or RSS feed.(LinkedIn, 2012) polling m

Groups Continued…

This image shows how HP/Intel used Custom Groups on LinkedIn: 2012) (LinkedIn, Enhanced groups For advertisers there is the opportunity for enhanced groups, this gives you access to raise awareness by having exclusive access to an ad placement within a group.(LinkedIn, 2012) (LinkedIn, 2012) This is how your advert would look if you used Enhanced Groups. As you can see you can make a bigger impact by having simultaneous ads running together. 21

Social Ads company ads allow you to highlight your company page followers to acquire new Follow Enabling these customers to engage with your ‘Company Status Updates.’ This is much like followers. any ‘Follow me” you will see for Twitter and Facebook.(LinkedIn, 2012)

(LinkedIn, 2012) Recommendation Ads allow you to harness the endorsements you have gained and create brand advocates by showcasing this. In turn this will inspire additional recommendations. valuable

(LinkedIn, 2012) 22

Join Group ads are a great way to entice new people to join a group; showcasing important relevant discussions within a group does this.

(LinkedIn, 2012) Display Ads All of the display ad features can be targeted directly to your target audience; this ensures you are not wasting money on people who you do not want to see your advert. The following are the display ad features LinkedIn offer: different Standard Ad Unit and Text Linked i n offers a Standard Ad Unit and Text space where IAB compliant ads and text displays can me placed within LinkedIn’s unlettered environment. This is essentially much like any normal ad space you can get on a website.

This image represents what the advert would look like if you were to use this feature. (LinkedIn, 2012) 23

Homepage takeover

offer a package of ‘Homepage Takeover’ this is where you have a banner ad along with LinkedIn ad unit. This is seen as a high-‐impact roadblock. standard (LinkedIn, 2012) As you can see by using this feature you are able to have a ‘full frontal’ attack on a user as you dominate the whole page ensuring attention to your advert. Ads Content This feature allows you to incorporate different content into one single unit. Essentially you can have your ‘Company Status Updates’, Video content and more. (LinkedIn, 2012) As you can see this drives engagement as users must engage with the ad to change its feature. 24

Sponsorships Employee Profiles This feature allows you to build your brand through your employees you can deliver relevant messages to LinkedIn members any time they view a profile of one of your employees. (LinkedIn, 2012) (LinkedIn, 2012) As you can see from this picture, this content will be specific to your company and is a way to link you better to your employees and potentially more people. Answers (LinkedIn, 2012) This feature allows you to reach industry professionals during their critical decision making process, you provide insight into questions prompted by your ad. (LinkedIn, 2012) 25

The previous image shows how this question will look on the page, it will help users to engage with and build a trusting relationship. your brand Polls By using this feature you allow LinkedIn’s professional community to engage with your grand at the as collecting valuable insights. same time (LinkedIn, 2012) This is h ow the poll would look, it is simple and quick so will be able to get people who are even in a hurry. Events Reach those professionals who like to stay on the move and know what’s going on in their industry. (LinkedIn, 2012) This is a great way to get your event directly to the professionals you want, at the same time as saving m oney by using other advertising methods.

Applications This feature allows you to use application as a way to engage with users by building lasting relationships through a variety of apps as they help them be successful. (LinkedIn, 2012) As you c an see for those who are using the apps you will get directly to them. Partner Messages This feature allows you to communicate directly with members through targeted InMail messaging. This feature uses industry leading open rates, this on LinkedIn’s own messaging platform.

(LinkedIn, 2012) Partner massages allow for you to customize the look, including the use of co-‐branded landing pages, an ad unit as well as a call to action button, this all enhancing the effectiveness of the feature. 27

As you can see there are many options for advertisers to use LinkedIn as a means to get to their target audience, each feature having its own benefit. However, now you’ve chosen what method to use, what ways can you measure the effectiveness of the campaign you run? The following describes how to analyse your campaign:

Effectiveness of Advertising Insights

(LinkedIn, 2012) Analytics and Reporting This feature allows you to gain insight across all your activity on LinkedIn, including campaign audience a nd performance, Company Page visitors and followers, as well as groups and polls. (LinkedIn, 2012) 28

As you c an see this from the previous image data is clearly mapped out, with information as to where people a re from, how many from each place, how often they visited. This is valuable information. Research researches to provide unmatched insight from millions of global members, these LinkedIn conduct members are a udiences that are challenging to find elsewhere. (LinkedIn, 2012) As you can see this insight provided is clear and precise information that can be used to see how effective your c ampaign has been in the eyes of your target audience. Plugins (LinkedIn, 2012) LinkedIn offer plugins, which can be used on your own sites to enhance the awareness of your page or activity on L inkedIn. The sorts of plugins LinkedIn offer are: • Share buttons • Recommend Buttons 29

Share B utton

This feature gives members and easy way to share your web content on LinkedIn. This would meet to be monitored to ensure that it helps to promote the right message.

(LinkedIn, 2012) Recommend Button This feature allows customers on your site to recommend your products and services to LinkedIn’s professional audience.

(LinkedIn, 2012) This helps to give your products and services more credibility at the same time as raising awareness of your brand as well as products and services you offer. 30

Case Studies with examples Good Case Study

Leverage member profiles to reach business travellers to Asia Challenge • Increase brand awareness among target market segment – people who fly business class between U.S. and Asia Solution • Identify members who belong to LinkedIn groups related to business travel in Asia, such as Global Workers, China Networking Group, Hong Kong Connection • Target these members with Display Ads and Sponsored Polls (LinkedIn, 2012) 31

•

Establish Cathay Pacific Company Page on LinkedIn and use Status Updates and Recommendations to Build awareness and drive engagement (LinkedIn, 2012)

Why LinkedIn? • Uniquely precise targeting by industry, group, job title, company • Engage with time strapped business travellers in an environment where they’re already comfortable, engaged and spending time Results • Three Sponsored Polls generated a total of 1,324 responses from business travellers • Recommendation Ads generated 97 recommendations on company product page • LinkedIn Research Network provides on-‐going insights on ad effectiveness and provides useful data for future campaigns (LinkedIn, 2012)

Case Study adapted from: http://marketing.linkedin.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/LinkedIn_CathayPacificCase Study2012_0.pdf

Bad Case Study This section is not necessarily an example to bad use of LinkedIn, but rather how to ensure you use it to its full advantage for business. 1. Answers This section of LinkedIn offers participation and a chance to be seen as industry experts. People post questions, if you take a few minutes a day to answer some you could gain new customers and be s een as a company who knows their stuff. 2. Join groups and participate If you haven’t joined a group yet, this might mean you’re missing out on a few things. Joining relevant groups means you can post, share links (Such as own blog etc. in a non spamming fashion). Groups also help you to keep up to date with the latest industry news. Also groups are a great w ay to find peers to connect with. 3. Don’t connect LinkedIn to your Website It is not a good idea to leave your LinkedIn profile in the dark on your own site as the people visiting your site will most likely be the people who would follow you on LinkedIn. By adding a LinkedIn icon on your site it promotes awareness to your LinkedIn activity. 4. Ignore Connection invitations Once you use Answers and Groups, people will request to connect with you. This is not like Facebook in the sense that you need to know who you are allowing to follow you. LinkedIn sorts out how connections are made as in, previous employees, or through a group or institution. 5. Post Status Updates It might seem at first that it is too much to post updates on all social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, on LinkedIn you will have a more professional following so the people will want to see your updates, as it is relevant and insightful to them. (Urban, 2010) Case study adapted from: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7040/The-‐9-‐Worst-‐Ways-‐to-‐Use-‐ LinkedIn-‐for-‐Business.aspx

A look into Twitter…

History of Twitter

Twitter much like Facebook, comes with conspiracies as to who created it, the official story is that Twitter was created in March 2006 by a man called Jack Dorsey, with Twitter being then launched in the summer that same year. Since Twitter has launched much has changes from its 140 character limit to each 'Tweet' to the introduction of 'Brand" pages. (Twitter, 2012) On Wednesday Feb 24th 2012 at around 3 pm EST, micro blogging service Twitter was hoping to witness the arrival of its 500 millionth user. (Nortal, 2012)

So, what is Twitter? Well according to (Twitter, 2012) … “Twitter is an information network. Millions of people, organizations, and businesses use it to discover and share new information.

On Twitter, anyone can read, write and share messages of up to 140 characters. These messages, or Tweets, are public and available to anyone interested in them. Twitter users subscribe to your messages by following your account. Followers receive every one of your messages in their timeline, a feed of all the accounts they have subscribed to. When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, opt-‐in, and accessible anywhere, you have a powerful, real-‐time way of communicating.”(Twitter, 2012)

What does Twitter do for businesses?

As a business, you can use Twitter to quickly share information, gather market intelligence and insights, and build relationships with people who care about your company. Often, there is already a conversation about your business happening on Twitter.(Twitter, 2012)

What advertising opportunities are there? Promoted Tweets

Promoted tweets use a good segmenting tool, being able to target the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Promoted tweets can be targeted to two additional features, user timelines and to search results. Promoted Tweets in search: Using this feature you are able to target users as they are searching twitter for their interests. The promoted tweet will appear at the top of the search results. Promoted Tweets in Timelines: By using this feature the promoted tweet will be amplified to all followers, or like followers. The promoted tweet will appear towards or at the top of their page when logging in, or when the page is refreshed. Targeting followers means the campaign and brand reach will be extended, these users will be more receptive to your message. Geographic targeting: By using geographic targeting the message delivered can be more relevant as it is projected within the right region. This feature is only at country level/U.S. regional level. Promoted tweets are rated on a Cost-‐Per-‐Engagement (CPE) level, this meaning payment is made only when someone either; re-‐tweets, replies, clicks or favourites the promoted tweet. Impressions or re-‐tweets are free; these can extend the reach as well as the cost-‐efficiency of the campaign. Much like organic Tweets, to make a campaign effective, Tweets must be interesting and relevant. Tweets that engage with users appear far more frequently. (Twitter, 2012) Here is an example of a Promoted tweet:

(Twitter, 2012)

Promoted Accounts Promoted accounts are a good way to quickly increase follower base of ‘brand advocates’ or influencers of your brand. (Brand Advocate -‐ A customer who has favorable perceptions of a brand who will talk favorably about a brand to their acquaintances to help generate awareness of the brand or influence purchase intent. (Chaffey, 2007))

Promoted Trends Promoted trends drive conversation and interest around a subject (Brand/product) by capturing a user’s attention on Twitter. Everyday, every minute, every second, twitter hosts viral conversations. These conversations are the hottest topics at the time. These trends can be seen featured prominently next to a user’s timeline. Because of this placement Promoted Trends give immense exposure as well as it being perfectly placed to give a bump start to a conversation on Twitter and beyond. A successful Promoted Trend will give users something new and Interesting to share, participate in and discover.(Twitter, 2012)

Promoted Trends Continued… Being followed on twitter is a great indication of interest as they have actively shown they wish to hear from you. You Twitter followers are the prefect base to launch any campaign, whether it be a new product launch or enhance online presence; they will share and amplify any

message, helping it kick off. When on twitter, promoted accounts can be found when selecting ‘Who to Follow’ section. This is a section twitter has set up to connect like minded brands, people and interests. So if you use this method, Twitters generator will place the Promoted Account in relevant search results as to ensure maximum efficiency. (Twitter, 2012)

Enhanced Pages This is a brand new Feature. Using the enhanced profile page ensures an increase in engagement and drive to business goals. This feature enables you to visually brand your page, unlike all other pages. Also the content as well as how it is shown is up to you so you can create a page that will stand out and engage with users like no other. 39

Benefits: image on page, providing instant engagement, also if there is any Promoted tweets from the Header business it will feature towards the top to show the most relevant content from your brand. Any tweet with a link to a video will expand and play automatically, no other page does this. Tips: Provide exclusives, maybe exclusive content regarding a new product launch. Update regularly, change header image, promoted tweets to keep the page looking new and fresh. (Twitter, 2012)

Effectiveness of advertising on Twitter (Twitter, 2012)

After/during the running of any campaign it is important to evaluate and measure the effectiveness. Within Twitter itself there are stats given to you, on both paid and un-‐paid activity. Within Advertiser Analytics on Twitter, Promoted tweets, Trends, and accounts are all measured and analysed to show you the important information gathered. This information includes, Impressions, retweets, clicks, replied as well as followers (relative to promoted accounts), this all live as it happens. Also twitter offers insight into how a tweet performs, as in how far a reach it got, how many followers gain as a result and much more. As well as this Twitter let’s you gain insight into who your followers are, how you gained them, where they are and their engagement level. (Twitter, 2012)

(Twitter, 2012)

Optimising results Even if you just want a version of our logo to make your own link, or a Tweet button so visitors to your site can share content, we've got you covered. There are ways in which to enhance the reach of your twitter not on their website. You can incorporate a ‘Follow us on twitter’ button or a tweet button onto your own website or any other website. Twitter provides the necessary coding for you to do so. (Twitter, 2012)

Case Study with examples

Good Example

MTV Incorporates Twitter into Video Music Awards and uses a Promoted Trend to amplify the conversation — gets over 10 million Tweets The Challenge MTV is known for involving each generation of viewers by bringing them programs that is inspired by a relevant to their lives. Most cable networks know its audience multi-‐tasks and consume content across many platforms. Its audience is also highly social and values interactivity: MTV's Twitter account has well over 2 million followers. MTV has pioneered the use of Twitter at the VMAs and in 2010, ratings soared as the network integrated social tactics more fully to drive engagement and buzz through Twitter. Leading up to the 2012 awards, MTV wanted to take its social TV approach one step further. The solution worked with Twitter's content and programming team to develop an interactive experience that MTV allowed viewers to engage with and actually influence the live broadcast. The cable network hosted a custom mobile and online "Twitter Tracker" site and used a Promoted Trend on Twitter with the hashtag #VMA to help amplify the conversation. #VMA was also shown on-‐air, on MTV.com and on the "Twitter Tracker" to maintain a consistent cadence and experience for the audience. Verizon partnered with MTV to sponsor the integration, which had three major components: (Twitter, 2012)

The Buzz Encouragement to ‘tweet’ about celebs, the more tweets the better rating and then shows on-‐air with pictures that grew or shrank depending on volume of tweets. The Paparazzi Use twitter to distribute real time pictures of celebs, encourage viewers to re-‐tweet pictures. The re-‐tweeted pictures were shown live on show. most The Hot Seat A new feature not used before, allowed viewers to click on a virtual representation of the seat layout at the awards. By clicking on a seat, viewers could see the live tweets from that celebrity. Also show live on show. As pictured bellow:

(Twitter, 2012)

The results 2012 VMCs saw its largest viewings to date, 12.4 million (9% increase on last year). MTV saw its mobile site views hitting 2.7 million on a single day (50% increase on previous year). This was due to its cross-‐platform strategy. Trendrr TV notes that of the millions of social mentions it captured for the event, only about 1% came from Facebook while 98% came from Twitter. MTV saw over 10 million VMA tweets. 43

(Twitter, 2012) MTVs promoted trend had a 16% engagement rating (27 times the average mentions on the MTV Twitter account), 3.37 million #VMA mentions, as well as helping to drive 128,000 people to follow MTV’s Twitter on the day of the event. "The combination of Twitter and television is powerful," says Thomas Fishman, Social Media Manager at MTV. Case study adapted from: https://business.twitter.com/en/optimize/case-‐studies/mtv/ 44

Bad Example @HabbitUK

is a trendy furniture store set up by Terence Conran in the 1970s. Habbit is known for being a Habbit more up market version of IKEA. In June 2009 Habbit made their first appearance on Twitter. To get noticed Habbit decided to use #hashtags at the start of every tweet. Habbit decided to use #hashtags that had no relation to furniture, retail or even shopping. Habbit used #hashtags which, were that top trending topics, such as #iPhone #mms #Apple and even Australia’s Masterchef contestant days #Poh. HabbitUK used a hashtag spam to get noticed. But to make things worse they carried on, using shows they know a lot of people watch such as #True Blood as well as an Iranian election. which

transparency and twitters immediacy enables spamming behavior to be quickly picked up. The Public community quickly picked up on @HabbitUKs spamming behavior, and made their twitter disappointments clear. The following are comments made to @HabbitUK regarding their behavior:

So, w hat did @HabbitUK do in response? They deleted all offending tweets, replaced them a couple hours later with generic sales/product orientated tweets with links to various web pages. Even though the tweets were deleted, there was enough time for the damage to the brand to be made. The response tweets and the re-‐tweets will live on long after. Case study adapted from: http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/103334 46

A Look into Google+

Key Information CEO: Larry Page Launch Date: June 28th 2011 Number of users: 62million (tracked as of December 2011)

As the new kid on the block, Google+ (Google Plus) has some heavy competition within the social media arena. So what exactly does it have to offer clients by way of advertising potential, and will it take off?

Background Google+ launched with an air of mystery about it. Initially the social networking site opened to only a selected audience via invitation. This in a practical sense was to essentially control the number of potential problems the site may cause for first time users, also to protect their servers from potentially crashing. Another product of launching this much-‐awaited answer to Facebook in such a secluded manner, was that of a media buzz. By keeping it invitation only, an air of exclusivity was created and thus people want to find out more about it. (Tony John, 2011) Today the site has been tracked to have at least 62 million users, with predictions that by the end of February 2012 there will be over 85 million users. (Paul Allen, 2012) In its opening month, Google+ passed the 25 million-‐user marks, something that took Facebook 3 years to achieve. (Oneindia, 2011)

How exactly does Google+ work? What does it do that others don’t? Why would you want to use Google+? This section of the article is focussed on addressing these areas. Essentially, Google+ is similar to all the other social network sites in the sense that its primary objective is to help users in staying connected with their friends and family. So what’s different? Well, Google+ has introduced a fresh new spin on staying connected by introducing three strong key features. These are named +Circle, +Hangout and +Sparks. +Circle allows the user to create their own private ‘circle’ in which they can share content and post to a limited number of selected individuals; content shared can only be seen by members of the circle. See Fig 1.

Key functionality: +Circles: Create private groups and share what you want with who you want. +Sparks: An application, which sources content based on your interests so there, is always something of interest to read and share. +Hangouts: The ability to instant message with friends’ +Hangout is an option, +Sparks is one of Google+’s which allows the user the more interesting options +Mobile: You can opportunity to chat via as this feature delivers to integrate Google+ with a voice or video, and has the user live up to date mobile device and utilise capability for multiple content from across the mobile functionality person conferencing. web, about topics or (camera, GPS) to See Fig 2. people the user is directly broaden the interested in. See Fig 3. opportunities of Google+. See overleaf for images of these features in operation. sense that there are greater personalisation options available to the These options set Google+ apart in the user, in a more user friendly way. Google+ has in it’s mind making social networking more like real life, i.e. you wouldn’t broadcast to everyone a private joke involving some of your closer friends, so you can simply select the people you want to share with, and share with them only. This is a useful option when thinking in terms of profession, what with a rise in employees, or potential employee’s social networks becoming more like an extension of their CVs, now you can quickly and effectively share what you like worry free that your boss might stumble upon something you might not want them to see! Integrating +Sparks into the equation is right on the pulse with the latest trends of RSS feeds and Micro-‐ blogging sites like Twitter, as it uses a similar and therefore recognisable interface. Simply enter your interests or allow Google+ to identify them through your search activity, and then on your homepage receive up to date 49 articles of relevance.

Here is the display format for +Circle, at the bottom of the page are the user’s created or suggested +Circles. Each of these has an edit feature to be renamed. To add people to the +Circle simply drag and drop each of the chosen contacts into the circle at the bottom. From there on in you can contact these selected people directly, and share exclusively with them only. To the left is the window that opens up when a +Hangout session is to be initiated. This is a pop up window, and so this program runs simultaneously alongside the main website page for Google+. This page or ‘mini-‐site’ can be fully personalised, including wallpaper, to based weather report, an location embedded YouTube player with full search functionality, a link to Gmail inbox and also CNN News account feed. A ll of these options can be altered or added based on interest. To invite a contact to chat, simply search through contacts via the left hand side option. Finally here is an example of +Sparks, essentially the main body of the site. This is where news or updates from friends, family, celebrities that have been chosen to follow, and also s tories relating to the users interests, are displayed. This information can be commented on and 50 shared.

What information does this site capture from the consumer? Can this be used for targeting? As w ith every social network site there are the standard sign up details Full Name User Name Password Birthdate Gender Location There are added details including Mobile number, this is primarily for password recovery. Opportunities for data usage follow typical conventions, e mail promotions, birthday reminders.

And here is the key disclaimer, should the user tick this box and thus agree to the statement, Google can use all this collected search data in order to target user specific advertisements to the user. Meaning as a place to advertise, there could be greater R OI as the adverts will be relevant specifically to each individual user, and thus more opportunity of a click through, leading potentially to a sale. 51

Google+ does have a USP though. Pictured to the left is a paragraph of text lifted directly from the sign up page. This highlights the power Google has that is to the benefit of advertisers. This text states that usage across all Google products (inclusive of YouTube) will be logged under your account and backed up as search history. This means that all your searches, i.e. interests, are stored by Google. With a search provider such as Google knowing what it is the user is interested in, this puts them in a valuable position.

Advertising opportunity. What space does Google+ have to offer? How can your company use Google+ advantageously? Let’s take a look at the site page by page. This is the screen displayed when logging into Google+. Unlike some other social networking pages, there is no external or internal content displayed on this page, it is simply a standard log in or sign up page. There is no opportunity to advertise currently on this page, quite possibly to retain Google+’s identity as a social network provider (would the site maintain credibility with a log in screen covered with adverts?) Having logged in, the user is taken to their homepage, where they can catch up with things their contacts have been sharing or doing. Highlighted is the only advert on the screen, and that is a user generated YouTube clip of a song from an artist’s up and coming new album. This is a plug from a celebrity to promote their album. It should be noted there are no conventional banner or display ads on this page. Here is the games page. Highlighted is a rolling slideshow, which displays the latest games to play on the site. This could be an approach companies might like to take, by developing content through a sponsored game, thus encouraging consumers to interact with the brand directly. Following suit with the rest of the site, the +Hangout area once more has no banner nor display ads, it is simply a ‘conventional ad’ free area. This doesn’t mean to say brands cannot utilise this tool to interact on a one to one basis with their consumer. Essentially anyone can be invited into a chat should you be following each other. Brands could use this to speak with their target audience directly. 52

The distinct lack of conventional banner/display ads may have you at a loss. But fear not. Google+ has a few tricks up its sleeve. Business Pages. Nothing new I hear you cry. No. Google+ has reengaged business pages via their pre existing Google technology, Google Analytics. Put it this way, each day there are 50million ‘likes’ on Facebook, yet only a minor fraction of these users actually actively engage with the business page. Google+ has seen this huge opportunity and put their skills to work. Google+ can offer businesses premium pages which include highly prised services including Google Analytics, which in turn presents the possibility of creating ads that are completely segmented based on the individual audience characteristics (i.e. gender, locations etc). (EranGefen, 2011)

In conjunction with their advance in business pages, as Google+ is naturally part of the a lmighty Google network, this in turn allows Google+ to take advantage of the already existing display ads within this large network. They have done so by introducing the “+1” icon, displayed on the opposite example at the base of the picture. This is essentially a ‘share’ button, but with a difference. When a user +1’s an ad like this, not only does it indicate that this sort of advertisement is of interest to them (therefore identifying the sorts of ads to be targeted toward them in the future), their user display picture then attaches to the ad, 53 meaning their contacts will see the ad with you as part of it. This has shown a positive impact on levels of click through rates. (Barry Schwartz, 2011)

Advertising Effectiveness. Is it worth investing your money into?

The tables below illustrate the brands currently operating using Google+, highlighting their current numbers of fans, and their overall fan growth over a 1-‐month period. The figures demonstrate the impressive pace Google+ has set in terms of its growth for Brand users.

How much is this going to cost? Well the rates Should your company use Adwords (which is for advertising on Google+ will be in excess of quite likely) then there is more good news. the rates for advertising on Google, this is Adwords will offer a namely because the

discount on ads will be long-‐term advertising on more targeted than before. Google+.

In terms of ROI, Google+ is generating $28 per (JP Morgan). Putting this into user some perspective, Facebook generates merely $4 user. per 54

Rates will be based upon the number of likes of a page or individual’s profile.

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The min

A Look into YouTube…

‘s History

YouTube Inc. was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in February 2005 in San Bruno, California. They all met while working at PayPal, Chen and Karim as engineers and designer Chad. According to Hurley and Chen, the idea of YouTube came at the difficulties experienced in trying to share videos taken during a party San Francisco. This story has been considered a very simplified version, and Chen has recognized that this idea can be promoted by the need to present a simple story to the market. Karim said that the party never happened, and that the idea of sharing Internet video was his. His colleagues have stated that the party did happen, and Karim's original idea was to create a dating site where people could be classified based on their videos. Karim acknowledges having been influenced by a dating site called HotorNot.com ('"Hot or Not'), where users could upload pictures of themselves, which were then rated by other users. (Article Alley, 2010)

Google bought YouTube for $ 1650 million dollars in stock. At the time of purchase 100 million videos on YouTube were displayed and 65 thousand new videos were added daily. In addition, some 72 million people visiting per month. Hurley and Chen held their positions, like the 67 employees at that time worked in the company. In the days before, YouTube has signed two agreements with Universal Music Group and CBS, and Google had signed agreements with Sony BMG and Warner Music to distribute music videos. (Article Alley, 2010)

Homepage Masthead Unit This space is situated on the homepage of YouTube and is the most visible ad placement on offer, which means the chances of a higher click through rate, should be more prominent. However, even though this ad resides on the homepage if a user leaves their account options as ‘keep me signed in’ the audience do not get a chance to even see the ad which would mean wasted opportunity and capital.

Homepage Expandable Masthead Unit The expandable masthead will as it states ‘expand’ when the user has clicked the ad or any other hyperlink included in the coding. This tool is nearly the same as its counterpart, bar one additional feature, the issues are the same still present as if the user decides to leave their account ‘signed in’ this space become redundant when it comes to reaching its audience

Homepage Tandem Masthead Unit (cross-‐Talk) Homepage tandem masthead unit is very similar to its masthead relations due to the fact that the page it appears the location and functionality are the same apart from the fact that more space is available for the user to add more content and they have a choice on what layout best suits the purpose. The benefit of the tandem unit is that if the content being made for a standard unit looks too compact this unit frees up space and allows for other multimedia to be placed in the lower rectangle such as another video clip an image or perhaps a hyperlink to the owned media of the creator. Due to the extra space for content available in this masthead, an increase in capturing the attention of the audience is increased in comparison to other masthead units. Although on the other hand the point, which has been continually stressed throughout in relation to masthead units, is that if the user decides to leave their account signed in when visiting the site, on their next visit they will not be redirected to the YouTube homepage but to their subscription list.

Animated Flash Overlay Ad This type of advert is fairly basic as no animation or audio is allowed to be present in the advert, which YouTube have governed. A great feature of this advert is that they appear on the actually video itself, so the audience’s line of sight more than likely will see the advert increasing the chances of a higher click through rate.

Standard Banner Ad (Large Rectangle) The large rectangle banner ad can be seen across every page YouTube has to offer apart from the homepage. This banner ad can contain flash based images and can be enabled to be click through the advantages of selecting this ad is that it is directly next to the video player so it would reside in the sight line of the audience. On further investigation into how the audience use YouTube we found that not all people view the video in this way some watch it in full screen or in a larger player, which moves the position of the banner ad or completely obscures it from vision.

Mobile Banner Ad The mobile banner ad is fairly new in terms of YouTube advertising; the same physics apply in relation to banner ads to what content you can include. The advantages fir this type of ad space is that new opportunities have been created to target audiences on the move, which will hopefully increase the chance of capturing the attention of the viewer. However this ad space does suffer from impracticality, for example this banner ad is only visible on the YouTube’s mobile website homepage. The flaw of outlined there is that it all depends on the frequency someone will visit that page, perhaps the amount of times will be lessened due to the fact that they are using a smaller device and only want to watch videos and that is all which would make the homepage less active. 59

Expandable YouTube Video Ad (YVA) The expandable YVA allows for a higher resolution video advert due to the increase in space when expanded. The high-‐resolution advert is a great tool to use for demonstrating detailed products or more commonly movie trailers. Despite the expandable YVA’s stature being a selling point, this quality can be turned into its weaknesses. Because it can be enabled to auto play when the audience hovers over the ad with their mouse this will break the unwritten rules of internet etiquette, for example if a user accidentally hovers over the ad whilst watching a video then all of a sudden an interference pops up mostly filling the space then as a consumer they may feel angered buy this thus a negative relationship with the product has been created by a simple error on their part. So perhaps the click to lay method would be the best choice when choosing this ad space.

Standard YouTube Video Ad (YVA) The standard YVA consists of a small length video appearing in the wings of the YouTube pages. Standard YVA’s can be chosen to be an auto play or click to play video ad. The advantages of choosing the auto play method is that the audience are more likely to see or hear the ad as they only need to hover the mouse over it for a split second in order for it to activate. A major flaw of this method is that if the audio becomes distorted by external forces such as music playing from the audiences personal computer or the audio from a current YouTube video they are currently watching is being interfered with, they may become annoyed with the ad and decide to mute it or close it possibly resulting in the user developing a bad outlook of the company or product. The click to play functionality will not have a higher interaction rate but it the users that did decide to click the ad have shown some interest in the product and therefore greater chance of creating brand loyalty or future sales. The click to play method also displays Internet etiquette, which would aid in developing the audience’s outlook of the product into a more positive one. 60

After/Pre Roll Advertisement This advertisements functions like so, firstly a person click a video and depending the actual video an advertising varying in length from 30 seconds to 120 seconds will begin to play. However the longer advertisements will display a button known as skip this ad, this will enable the viewer to skip the advertisement after 5 seconds and this is similar to the after roll advertisement. The advantages of using this type of ad slot is that people will see the ad, because the advert will be unexpected as the audience is expecting to watch the featured content they selected. The big disadvantage of this advertisement is people can become very annoyed at these adverts as they are interrupting what they came to do, this can automatically create a bad brand relationship for the customer as the company has been a minor hindrance to them. 61

Effectiveness of Advertising More and more businesses are beginning to use YouTube as a medium to advertise to their target consumers, however is the content what YouTube has to offer them a good investment to make? Perhaps the ROI for the ad space YouTube are selling is too low and some businesses are just jumping on the digital bandwagon just so they do not get left behind? According to a YouTube spokesman in late 2009, the price for a standard homepage masthead unit basic figure would cost an advertiser approximately $175,000 (BusinessInsider, 2009). On top of that huge cost when the homepage masthead units became available for purchase the first 9 months were sold out, in today’s climate more and more businesses have woke up to this method of advertising so the back log for this space could have stretched even further. Another insider said that YouTube charge $15 per thousand views per video, this translates as roughly a basic advertisement will cost an agency a flat rate of $15 per 1000 views on a single video (BusinessInsider, 2009).

YouTube does offer their customers some insight, however unless you have created a video advertisement, which has been uploaded, then you will gain no insight what so ever. No insight into the click through rate for your advertisements is published via YouTube instead according to them they provide you a “self-‐service analytics and reporting tool that gives you detailed audience and interaction statistics for all the videos in your YouTube account. It's a powerful way to analyse your marketing efforts and discover how best to optimize your campaigns. YouTube Insight even includes stats on mobile users, subscribers, and discovery over time.” (YouTube, 2012) As stated earlier this information Is useless to a customer who has only created banner advertisements for example, however when research more deeply Marbles and Conkers found that this type of analytical data is available to them via Google Adwords, as YouTube is owned by the digital giant Google. 62

Case Studies

Old Spice for men, used to suffer from unfair stereotyping by the public, which was that only “old men” wear the fragrance. In order to combat this stigmatism a new advertising campaign was set up based around their funny and original commercial. With the aid of the tools YouTube had to offer them and a combination of all of them the younger audience began to listen to the new message which was being stressed by Old Spice, sales had increased by 107% since their YouTube campaign had begun on top of this the owned media of Old spice specifically their website saw a 300% increase in traffic. The reason why this campaign was such a success is down to the method which YouTube pinpoints possible people who will display some interest in the product, Old Spice recognised that the audience they wanted to attract which was the younger audience were according to YouTube on their website as they have 59% of the world’s teenager population are registered users. (YouTube, 2012)

EPIC FAIL!

Cisco Systems set up a YouTube campaign which displayed elements of the successful Old Spice campaign, however Cisco did not make nearly enough of a dent via YouTube as Old Spice had done. Cisco’s campaign started with a video containing a man aptly named Ted who worked in the accounting department a similar spin to the Old Spice advert, but what Cisco did not do was introduce who Ted was before the video launched, this would of let the audience have some idea of what the video was meant to achieve whether it be a serious informative video or perhaps it’s intended purpose which was to be a funny viral. According to the Social Times Cisco’s 18 video campaign reached an abysmal 2,750 views over 24 hours compared to Old Spice’s 40 Million views (Social Times, 2011). Cisco went wrong because they did not copy enough from the Old Spice viral and should have included in the description in the video “What do you think of Ted?” and enabled the audience to submit a video response back, this would have led to a more interactive experience for the user meaning a more successful campaign

A Look into Facebook…

The History of

for Business

Advertising Opportunities

Costing & Insight

Case Studies: Good Example

EPIC FAIL!

InsightMedia’s Verdict So here we are, coming to the final section of this edition. I know, I know this is the bit you’ve all been waiting for, InsighMedia’s verdict. After researching and reading into social media as a platform and dissecting the ‘big five,’ InsightMedia has given you examples of how each platform has been used well and badly. This next section will look into what has been said, how this can be used together to create a lasting campaign, giving you real insight from people who know and use these platforms as a native communication. So without further ado…

Best Practise For Social Media

How Your Company Could Utilise The Tools Available – For Free

The previous chapters have identified the biggest, most popular social networks currently on the web. Each article has presented you with the various different advertising opportunities and also how the sites communicate with the user. But not all the social methods will be applicable to your unique business. For example, does a funeral director need a Twitter? Would this be an appropriate and beneficial route toward marketing communications, for this kind of business? This section will put forward an example of a SME business, and demonstrate how it could approach embarking into the digital world via social media communications.

GB Fishing. An independently owned Fishing

Equipment shop located in Mid Wales. This company has just started trading, and the shop is approaching it’s grand opening. But how can they branch out to the widest possible audience, with the lowest possible overhead? Social Media allows even the smallest of businesses the opportunity to attain a platform in which to broadcast a message to a targeted audience. Coates Tackle could create a Facebook account, for example, their account could be set up as a Fan page, giving them a space in which to act as a website. They can personalise it and input data including shop opening times, information on products, contact details, prices, company history etc. Following this, they could then take advantage of the “Like” and “Group” pages. Searching Facebook for existing Fan/Like/Group pages that are focussed on Fishing, or more specifically Fishing in South Wales, then provides the company with a targeted audience in which they can join, and plug a link to their shop, and introduce themselves on a personal level with their potential customers. This way the shop can communicate transparently with the audience, and raise awareness of the shop. Furthering this, by encouraging people to join their Fan page, Coates Tackle is essentially building a database of customers, which will allow them to contact them directly at any time, this is advantageous for promotions, dealing with customer complaints and even organising in store events. In conjunction with this, the shop could create a YouTube channel, in which to demonstrate in store products, fishing tutorials, customer video uploads of fishing. Essentially using this platform to provide customers with useful interactive video content, and actively encouraging the customer to engage with the company. Linked In is more for networking with business professionals, and so Coates Tackle would be misplaced here. Twitter could be implemented after the opening, given Twitter is dependant on users choosing to follow your personal account, messages sent out with zero followers, are being heard by nobody. The shops Twitter address could be printed on each receipt, and customers encouraged to follow with a competition incentive. Once collected, the shop can once more directly speak to its customers in live real time. 75 It would not be advisable that Coates Tackle register with Google+ at this time, given this site is still essentially in ‘beta’ and is not as widely recognised or accessed as other networks.

Final Thoughts on the Key 5 Social Media Players? We hope to finalise your view, settle concerns, and share our insight into this massive area in this, the final chapter of our second issue. Without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s the low down on the 5 social media platforms

Our primary research suggested this to be 2nd most popular in terms of membership, yet one of the lowest in duration of time spent using the site. Key findings highlighted that advertising was noticed substantially less than competitors. The insight attained from our research is that this platform is best for engagement, because it is regarded as ‘live’ with an ethos that you are speaking directly with a brand. The best utilisation of this platform is to speak directly with your customer, providing useful content. Think of Twitter not only as an extension of Customer services, but also a product ambassador, able to speak to customers on a ‘personal’ level. Mintel confirms Facebook as the market leader, with a social design that puts members at the heart of the service. Amazingly 73% of all Internet users have visited Facebook, and in this has been confirmed through our own primary research which placed Facebook as the consumer favourite. Not all companies should swarm to Facebook, for some this network just isn’t appropriate, remember Facebook is people focussed, if your business chooses to use Facebook then use it advantageously -‐ make events, provide photos, update the status. Your business has to share its personality with the site in order for it to succeed here, simply displaying an ad is not enough. If Facebook is the extra curricular club, then Linked In is the water cooler for professionals, a virtual business card if you will. 64% of users agree linked in is a tool for development of business relationships, and members are 2 times more likely to trust this as a source of information than other networks. Great tool for B2B advertisements, as you can connect directly with heads of departments, for instance buyers or planners, and place your ad direct to them. Most importantly you can build a portfolio of recommendations, which spreads your product and service across new channels of relative people. Google+ is very much in it’s Beta stage, where some will have you believe that it’s growing faster than Facebook so it is successful, the fact is after sign up there is very little longevity in terms of engagement with the site. This network has some great potential especially having Adwords in it’s arsenal, however at this time, it’s not the greatest place to advertise namely because of the lack of engagement. Essentially the lack of presence in the market raises question to this being a viable channel to connecting with customers. Our primary research showed almost zero involvement with this platform. Primary research indicated that advertisements were noticed however this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Companies are more likely to engage with the consumer, leading to better ROI, if they produce an original video as opposed to paying for a pre roll advertisement. The reasoning behind this is simple. Ads slow the process of watching the video that has been search for, and the temptation to skip the ad often outweighs a viewer’s patience. We’ve found that more users simply watch videos as a ‘guest’ as opposed to signing up, so investing in a channel, which requires sign up to, capture members. This may be a flawed avenue when using YouTube as a platform.

“What sort of bunce are we talking”

What are the forecasted budgets for social media marketing?

“Facebook at the moment is about 25% of US display impacts, because it’s one of the most visited sites but also because people spend so much more time on Facebook than they do anywhere else” -‐Jonathan Barnard, the head of forecasting at ZenithOptimedia

"Social media ads should also be expected to increase in price, based on current patterns, the influx of new advertisers, new creative formats, and improved targeting." -‐Jonathan Barnard

Here we look at the digital spend from one of the largest agencies, a multinational organisation Zenith Optimedia, who are owned by Publicis Group. They have predicted the following expenditure going forward

This budget forecast table has been reissued this month due to a massive budget increases. This is evidenced from their revised spend in their US market, which had been previously attached to a budget of £851million in Dec 2011, yet now (March 2012) the budget has been pegged nearer to £2.2billion – a huge step up from the original budget. This proves that social media is vastly becoming the go to method for advertisers, and growing at an expediential rate.

“Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all building platforms that are attractive to small businesses, in addition to Fortune 500 companies.” -‐Jonathan Barnard

Our Thoughts On Social Media’s Future

No Room For The New Guy? The marketplace is far from saturated in terms of platforms, however from an advertisers perspective, the places to advertise with any degree of return on investment, definitely are. This issue has focussed exclusively on the ‘Big 5’ social media platforms, and with good reason, because these are the places advertisers are near guaranteed to see some sort of return on their ad spend money. After all that’s the aim of the game. What does this mean for the future? One perspective could be that, due to the dominance of the Big 5 social media platforms, eventually these platforms will become so saturated with advertisements, eventually adverts will become less noticed, and more worryingly, less remembered. The flipside of the coin is, with the influence of mobile marketing and the recently introduced augmented reality technology, these factors will only go on to strengthen social media, and lead to better more engaging content from advertisers, to be shared through social network platforms, leading to bigger and better returns on investment. If you take anything from this issue, may it be this statement...

“No Digital Plan, No Future Plan” 78

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