Kate Rose

What’s up with Instagram?

Published December 17, 2014 | By Kate Rose

Instagram recently announced that the App has passed the 300 million user mark, making it the world’s second largest social media platform, eclipsing Twitter’s 284 million. Although, to keep things in perspective, it’s still dwarfed by Facebook, which has around 1350 million monthly active users*.

What is Instagram doing so right?

If Twitter is about reading what’s new in the world, Instagram is about seeing it. That greater immediacy, and the “picture is worth a thousand words” principle, is obviously very powerful and attractive to users.

It may also mean that there’s just less “noise”. A substantial part of Twitter is taken up with signposting to other parts of the web (for example, people sharing links to interesting articles). That does have its own value, but a user being effectively limited to what’s right in front of them, right now (reshares notwithstanding) does cut back on the overall amount of content each user is likely to be generating.

In addition, Instagram has taken a number of other steps to keep the platform growing, such as:

Regularly offering new features that users love – for example, new filters;

Learning from Facebook in terms of taking steps to eliminate spam and bot accounts

Introducing advertising in a careful and quality controlled way, starting with brands who are already “power users” and know what works well on the platform. Future growth could well depend on how well controlled this continues to be; with video advertising on the way, there’s a huge potential for that to be very intrusive to users who are there to view still images only. If the level of complaints we’re hearing from YouTube users, where the length and volume of adverts has increased significantly over the last year, is anything to go by, there could be trouble ahead there.

As an aside, one can’t help but wonder whether Instagram could have been a little more creative in their monetisation approach. For example, allowing celebrities and power users to charge a subscription to their feeds, and taking a cut; or just partnering with one of the many photo printing services popping up in this space. But I digress…

What does this mean for businesses?

Firstly, that you’ll be seeing the usual blether from many agencies about how this is just another colossal opportunity that businesses should be paying them to get involved with. Funny how all roads lead to the large invoice Rome in terms of new and growing social media platforms.

In our opinion, the reality is more of a mixed bag. For businesses working in a naturally visual environment – making, designing, or working with beautiful things, locations or people: it’s a godsend. They’re being gifted a huge audience, and all they need to do is share what they’re seeing – provided there’s someone available who has basic competence with a smartphone, there’s not even any copywriting involved. Likewise for celebrities in whatever space: what fan wouldn’t jump at the chance to see the world through their idol’s eyes?

For businesses operating in more “mundane” fields – and really, that’s most of us – it’s less good news. Instagram is a much more exacting environment for marketing in than Twitter is; you need a reliable, regular flow of interesting first hand images, or you’re going to struggle. If most of your time is spent in an office, some really creative thinking is going to be needed about how to produce appealing content, and it’s likely to be much harder work because you’re not just constantly seeing interesting “stuff” in the course of an average day. That’s not to say it can’t be done, of course, but on the whole Twitter is likely to be a more natural fit and easier to provide value to your followers.

What should I be doing?

As with all social media platforms, if you’re thinking about using it for commercial purposes, the best advice is to get to grips with it personally first. Set up your own account, find things that interest you, get a real feel for what makes it tick. Then ask yourself the hard questions about who might be interested in the world through your business’s eyes, and what they would need to see from you to make it engaging.

* source: Socialbakers.com

Posted in Visual Social Media | Leave a comment

Why IPad giveaways on Facebook are a bad idea

Published November 6, 2014 | By Kate Rose

All these people would like an ipad. Does that make them potential customers?

Last week, I was sitting in a traffic jam on one of London’s major roads. To my left is a huge development under way, several high rise blocks being clad in shiny glass and steel.

And around the outside of the site hoardings, a bright banner advertising off plan sales of the new apartments, and inviting me to “follow {the developer} on Facebook to win an IPad!”.

That developer isn’t alone, by any means; most weeks I notice more than one advert offering a similar “bribe”, in magazines, window posters, or even on Facebook or Twitter.

Those companies are not just using their Facebook Competition in a really lazy, poorly thought out way, but they’re actively making trouble and expense for themselves further down the line. Here’s why.

What’s the point of a Facebook Giveaway?

Back to basics, why does anyone give stuff away on Facebook? Unless they’ve woken up one morning blocked into their house by a mountain of unwanted IPads, it’s because they want to attract people to Like their Facebook page.

But that’s where it starts to go wrong. In fact, MOST companies don’t really want “people” to Like their Facebook page; they want potential customers to Like their Facebook page.

How big the gap is between “people” and “potential customers” does depend to an extent on what your product or service is. If you’re selling multi million pound yachts (or expensive flats in London), it’s pretty big. If you’re selling crisps, it’s smaller – although some people may not particularly like crisps, yours might be so great that they do like them, and at least it’s fair to say that most people have a use for them (eating) and can afford them.

Most companies though, aren’t making FMCG products.

So what those companies are actually doing, every time they have some kind of generic giveaway, is building a big audience of people who like IPads. Great if you’re Apple, less so if you’re building apartments.

And as building that audience is just step one of the process, they then have a hard time keeping that audience engaged; after a few posts about yachts or flats, the “Un-Like” statistics will start going in entirely the wrong direction.

And then the bills start

But as I said at the beginning, there’s even worse news if you’ve built an audience that way. A year or two back, you’d have just wasted the money you spent on that IPad, and probably seen your hard earned audience dwindle over time. Since the Facebook News Feed algorithm changes though, it’s actually going to cost you money to get your posts in front of all those people who are never going to buy your product.

We know that “organic” (free, to you and I) reach has been decimated since the end of last year, so paying Facebook, at least some of the time, to get your Posts out there, is a necessary evil. That’s one thing if you know that your audience is a relevant and receptive one. As soon as you run a “generic” giveaway, you’re building up a mix of “people” and “potential customers” – and there’s no way to separate those once you have to start paying to reach them.

How to improve your Facebook giveways by 100%

To avoid this, businesses need to be a LOT more strategic in their choice of giveaway. In fact, the best possible giveaway item is one that will appeal to the FEWEST people - but those people who absolutely love your product or service.

This isn’t as hard as it sounds. Going back to my developer, they could have offered the same value as the IPad, but in free conveyancing on your flat purchase. Completely useless to anyone not considering buying one of those flats, but very valuable to anyone who is.

Giving away your own product, or something very closely related to it (like the conveyancing) is usually the best place to start with a giveaway – not only does it guarantee that the Likers are keen on what you do, it’s also likely to have a lower direct cost to you than buying someone else’s product! It’s also a good idea to think about the things you can provide that money can’t usually buy. For example, rather than just giving away tickets to your event or show, provide some VIP privileges along with them.

So, start thinking smarter about what you can offer that will attract your die hard fans. It’ll make the world of difference.

Posted in Facebook | Leave a comment

The ONE thing that you must do on Facebook as a local business

Published September 30, 2014 | By Kate Rose

There’s a really helpful research piece recently released by US Agency GO Digital, looking at a number of aspects of increasing sales through Facebook – we’ve put a link in at the bottom of this post and recommend that everyone running a local business (restaurant, shop, hotel etc) take a look through it.

But there’s one finding that REALLY stood out for us. The number one thing that potential customers want from you on Facebook, in order to help them decide to buy. It’s not zany, amazing content. It’s not having a huge army of Likers.

What’s the most important thing about a Facebook Page for your customers?

It’s customer reviews.

Why? Before a customer has experienced what you offer, they don’t really trust you. They’d quite like to believe what you’re telling them about your amazingly comfortable rooms or your incredible cocktails, but, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you.

They need to hear it from others who don’t have anything to gain or lose from their buying decision.

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Consumers are constantly looking to increase the amount of information they have access to before they make a decision, even a relatively small one like where to eat out at the weekend.

They can get your opening times from your website (we hope!). They might find your insights into the business helpful, and they’d certainly love a special offer or two. But the one thing they really want to know is, am I going to like this. And often the only way to predict that is to see who else likes it, too.

Get those comments rolling in

So every Page in the Local Business category automatically gets a Reviews box, whether they like it or not (and plenty don’t). Unless you’re doing a terrible job at what you do and manage to really upset a customer, though, it’s unlikely to get a huge amount of use. You need to encourage customers to use it.

There are lots of ways of doing that, but they mainly fall into two categories: incentives, and opportunism.

Incentives are easy: you offer a small gift, preferably one which is more valuable to the customer than it is costly to you, in return for them reviewing you. So for a restaurant, you might offer a free glass of wine on their next visit. A hotel could offer a room upgrade if there’s availability, to their most active reviewers. And so on.

Opportunism requires a little more thought, and is all about timing: giving the customer something to do in “dead” time. The last thing you want to do is rely on a customer remembering to go to your Facebook page and give a review once they’ve finished interacting with you; unless their experience is extraordinarily, life changingly good or bad they are generally going to forget about you as they walk out the door, or at least by the time they get home.

Most people these days will have a smart phone on them, most of the time. So, if you’re a restaurant, why not give them a small card with a QR code leading to your Facebook page, and a request to review their experience, while they are waiting for the bill? Likewise in a hotel reception, have a big banner next to where people queue for checkout, or put cards on the nightstands. This alone should lead to a big increase in reviews, and coupled with an incentive will skyrocket them!

So, there’s how to make sure that any potential customer visiting your Page has access to exactly what they want in order to make a buying decision. The rest of the research is below, and there are plenty more gems in there too!

Full study facebook advertising, the social commerce lifeline for small businesses from Ken Yeung

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How to fail majestically at providing customer service on Twitter, courtesy of EasyJet

Published September 17, 2014 | By Kate Rose

I just got back from a trip to the South of France, and very lovely it was too, after the first 24 hours.

The trip there, though, was pretty much as bad as it gets. Thanks to my friends at Easyjet, with a little help from some bad weather, what should have been a quick 80-minute flight was turned into an almost 12 hour odyssey of discomfort and frustration. At the end of which I helped a number of elderly people unload their cases from a coach, get to their hire cars and find beds for the night, while thinking about how very distressed my own parents would have been in that situation.

But by way of compensation (and it looks very much as though this is all we’ll get!), in the couple of days that followed, EasyJet very kindly helped me to write a masterclass on how not to use social media for customer service. I don’t know why any of the below still shocks me, but it does. In 2014 and with all the technology available to a big company, there is just no excuse.

Don’t travel if you’re not fit enough to withstand a 12 hour journey and sleep on a pavement at the end of it

So the trip started with just the routine nonsense – first a 20-minute delay, then 40 minutes, then we’re all rushed to the gate but end up sitting on the runway for another half an hour due to missed takeoff slot. Ridiculous excuse of “sorry folks we’re having a busy day here” (er, what? Did some unexpected flights appear on your schedule, or…?!) is par for the course. Eventually we get under way, but just as we head in to land, the pilot aborts at the last moment due to heavy cloud covering the runway at 200ft. Fair enough, it’s a safety issue – albeit one that is short lived in the south of France in summer, and certainly wouldn’t have been an issue at 4.30pm when the flight should have landed.

So that’s where the fun really started. Eventually we land at an airport some 350km away from our original destination. Which we are eventually shipped back to, very slowly, on a bus. I’ll leave you to imagine the level of information and assistance that was provided at each stage. The crowning glory was dumping the entire group, including some quite distressed elderly people and two people in wheelchairs, on the pavement outside a now completely closed airport at almost 2am. From where it’s a bit tricky for anyone to get to their hire car (shut) or bed for the night (many had private rentals booked, who don’t exactly have 24hr reception).

With the level of customer care already established, the coach driver even felt quite comfortable employing the world’s largest Gallic Shrug in the face of a lot of panic, and leaving everyone to unload their own cases – a nice extra touch.

So, can social media save the day?

But, I’ve had some fantastic responses from other organisations over Twitter when things have gone wrong, so I thought i’d try out the “all the best customer service staff get allocated to Twitter” theory. Which EasyJet proceeded to blow out of the water – although to be fair, it may turn out that this is stellar compared with the responses over other channels, who knows.

So here it is: the guide to using social media to ensure your aggrieved customer will never, ever buy from you again. With grateful thanks to EasyJet for the illustrative tweets.

Masterclass point 1: On no account try to make it easier for your customer to correspond with you – YOU make the rules here, dammit, and they need to work to them.

Masterclass point 2: by the time you’ve made the customer jump through hoops, ensure you’ve totally forgotten what the conversation was about.

Masterclass Point 3: a double whammy. Point A: On no account empower your staff to take ownership of a situation. Point B: invoke infuriating platitudes at the first possible opportunity. **

Masterclass point 4: If in doubt, fall back on whatever corporatespeak is standard for your industry. In this case, blame everything on “safety” or “data protection” (see below).

Masterclass point 5: ON NO ACCOUNT use a social CRM or make any other attempt to keep track of the conversation. That should make it easier to “misunderstand” what you’re being told.

Extra points if you can get in a misguided and unnecessary (so i’m told by a qualified expert on the legislation) reference to Data Protection.

Masterclass point 6: Congratulations! You’ve reduced your pesky customer to banging their head on a wall in frustration. Having proved you’re utterly useless, the customer will go away and not bother you again. Or ever use your products and services, but never mind!

** You may be amused (or not) to hear that the Customer Satisfaction Manager’s response was to send me an email reiterating that EasyJet are sorry, (but, my inference, not sorry enough to compensate us or improve the way they handle these situations). But they hope that we’ll travel again with them very soon.

What have we learned?

You just have to ask, what is the POINT of all of this? Why bother having a Twitter account if the people using it don’t know how to follow a conversation on Twitter, and have no authority to take action of any kind?

I wish I could answer that, but I can’t – except to say once again that if your company culture and customer service is poor, do not touch social media with a barge pole. Expectations are higher on social media, and people expect to be treated thoughtfully and as individuals, not fobbed off with corporate rubbish. If that isn’t possible for whatever reason, you’re going to fail horribly.

Posted in social media strategy, Twitter | Leave a comment

Our Top 5 marketing and social media blogs

Published September 3, 2014 | By Kate Rose

Keeping up with the latest developments in social media is hard work – and even for us, working in the industry full time, it’s difficult not to let it take over waay too much of the day job.

Having a handful of really great blogs on your RSS reader helps a lot with this; but really great blogs aren’t that easy to find. Some of the “old favourites” (mentioning no names here – no really, for once we’re actually not going to mention any names!) have got a little stale and repetitive, and others have got drawn into hyperbolic, clickbait headlines which they can’t really deliver on when you read the article.

That’s pretty much our pet hate, because ten minutes spent finding out that “Six Guaranteed Pro Tips for getting business from Google+!!” actually consists of amazing advice like “fill out your profile” and “connect with people you know!”, is ten minutes we can’t use for doing something useful.

So, if you’re looking for something a little more quality (of course you are, that’s why you’re here, right?!), below is our Top 5 list of current social media blog greatness. These are some of the folk we read here to get fresh opinions and interesting takes on what’s going down in the Social Media world. In no particular order:

1) Just Ask Kim

A great source for tips and tricks of all kinds related to social media and online marketing. No fluff, just valuable, well explained content. Slightly more on the technical side, and some great posts about parts of WordPress that make the less confident user start to tremble a little.

2) Jon Loomer Digital

We recently heard Jon described as “where it’s at with Advanced Facebook marketing – kinda like where you go when you’ve outgrown Mari Smith”!. Possibly a alittle harsh, but Jon certainly focuses on the more advanced aspects of Facebook, particularly the trickier aspects of the Facebook Advertising Power Editor. We’ve not come across anyone else providing information at near this level of complexity, so Jon has to make the list.

3) Postplanner

We’re a little bit lairy of “social media product company” blogs on the whole, but this one has really won us over. It’s more suitable for beginner to intermediate social media marketers, but nonetheless has consistently valuable articles and is particularly strong on real-world, case study type examples of using social media well.

Our only criticism is the incredibly annoying popup which you can’t get rid of without signing up for the PostPlanner product – but add the Blog to your RSS reader and that’s no longer an issue.

4) Instagram for Business

Most people are aware of the LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter official business blogs, but not everyone has found the Instagram equivalent yet. It’s not the prettiest site (oh, the irony) but it’s solid at delivering nice case studies of brands using Instagram in innovative ways, as well as technical and product release updates.

5) Viperchill

Not new, and not really social media, but still always interesting! Glenn at Viperchill talks about what’s *really* working to get visibility online – as against what Google *says* should work. He was on to the clickbait ViralNova type sites and their business model way before we saw anyone else talking about it. The blog is mostly SEO focused, but also looks at broader ways that people are making money online (such as advertising on social media), too.

We’d love recommendations from our readers, too! If there’s a company or individual who you think is doing a quality job with their blog, and where you regularly find interesting or helpful stuff, please do post it up in the comments section.

Posted in Blogging | Leave a comment