Social media optimization - Practical tips.

Social media optimization (SMO) was a term originally coined by Rohit Bhargava. In a newer post written in 2010 he states the 5 new rules of SMO as being: Create shareable content, Make sharing easy, Reward engagement, Proactively share content and finally Encourage the mashup.



Creating shareable content

Where to share & what to share for best results?

Where to share content.
Research by Shareholic (2012) shows that the best platform for sharing is Facebook (20.4%) followed by Twitter (11.1%) and Digg (7.5%).

Highest content shared.
For content sharing the most effective has been found to be animation, news stories, cute animals, nature and humour. According to Track Social (2012), the top 5 most shared brands on Facebook are as follows: Disney gaining 12,713 shares a day with holiday themes at the fore followed by the news site Huffington Post with 7,996 shares, National Geographic focusing on cute and nature content at 7,151 shares, Cheezburger which claims to have 'all your funny in one place' gaining 6,409 shares and finally the popular American Fox news channel which gathers 5,870 shares daily.

The best social objects
Social media expert Dan Zarella has researched into over a million Facebook posts to discover that Content that is by far shared the most is photos followed by videos, with the optimum length of characters in the message being around 450 characters.

Time to post
According to research by Radium One of over 10,000 publishers, the optimal time for sharing social content varies based on location, platform and device. The study shows the UK as having the highest shares generally at 6pm against the USA who are most active at 9am. Certain platforms have additionally revealed particular trends such as Twitter which is optimum at 1pm, Facebook at 5pm, Pinterest at 11pm, Google+ at 10am and finally mobile devices are most popular for shares at 10pm.

Visual power
Whilst Facebook is the leader in the social space, Photo sharing sites like Pinterest are quickly gaining ground possibly due to the time poor and cluttered world of messages that we experience in our daily lives. The thirst for emotional propositions are growing all the time as we chose to digest content in a more visual way, According to Hussain and Leaning at Hubspot "90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, which are processed 60,000x faster than in the brain text" which explains the need for inspirational imagery even further.In a new study, Simply Measured has discovered that Pinterest now rivals Google+ in social adoption growth rate. According to Anna Washenko (2013) the best way to pick Pinterest content for viral spread is to think like an artist, emphasize lifestyle, to get graphic with infographics, to tag and categorize your pins and to ensure that the links are kept up to date.

Facilitating sharing

Don't forget to utilize Pinterest sharing buttons!

In addition to good content being posted at the right time on the right platform, facilitating the sharing process is important for both awareness and results. One company that has profited from engaging with new customers on Pinterest is Petplan. This insurance firm aimed to increase awareness and need for their pet insurance products. Following the addition of Pin it sharing buttons to their website, Pinterest follow buttons on their emails and social campaigns and optimizing their site content for Pinterest, they experienced a 87% increase in new site traffic a 35% increase in page views and a 12.5% increase in insurance quote requests which has helped to build the brand and lead to sales.

Reward engagement

Reward the right behaviours for best results.

Reward programmes have become increasingly popular in tying together engagement with results, particularly in gamification. Rewarding the user for the right behaviour is important when building customer engagement, monetizing your endeavours and developing a more loyal following through social media. Marczweski describes 5 key areas where rewards programmes can be effective; Welcoming the user, Encouraging and reinforcing in early stages of the customer journey, Scarcity (offering rewards in a regular but limited fashion) rewarding loyalty and by way of a surprise.
Reinforcing the customer journey and rewarding in the right way has been successfully showcased through the efforts of Canada’s AIRMILES reward programme. In a study by Loyalty One they discovered a direct link between social media activity and transaction volume when participating in the discussion and use of incentives such as bonus miles and lotteries. They found that those who shared their thoughts about the AIRMILES and the benefits of the program boosted transactions with AIRMILES companies between 15-28% in a 8 week period, with the correct behaviour being rewarded, for example the ones contributing the longest comments seemed to gain the highest rewards.

Proactively sharing content

Tell a story

Rewards have been shown to prove effective when used in the right way to drive the right sorts of behaviour. Another way to optimize social media, however, is to proactively share branded content and one effective way to do this has been through story telling.
Grab networks syndicated content for a firm named CPG. The company created a 12 story episode about expectant parents and how their lives changed as a result, Grab Networks then syndicated webisodes across the web to drive awareness and engagement with expectant and new mums. The results were high view through rates, leading to positive brand appeal and an uplift in purchase intent by 7 points among one episode viewers, and an uplift to 22 points among multiple episode views which also supported a rise in organic growth of 3-4%.

Encourage the mashup.

Involve others in telling the story

To encourage sharing and participation on social media it requires being exclusive, inclusive, enticing and responsive. One way to be compelling and to encourage mash up is to tell a story that others can continue. The literary scholar, Gottschall, explains how emotional propositions via story telling are effective at persuasion:
"The new gospel of business storytelling offers a challenge to common views of human nature. When we call ourselves Homo sapiens, we are arguing that it is human sapience--wisdom, intelligence--that really sets our species apart. And when we think we can best persuade with dispassionate presentation of costs and benefits, we are implicitly endorsing this view. But we are beasts of emotion more than logic. We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with “Once upon a time.”

Greatest social media contributors

To better learn who is most likely to encourage the 'mash up' we need to investigate who contributes the most to social media. According to Pew Research (2012) the biggest users on social networks are female, aged 18-29, with some college education and a household income of less than $30,000 dollars a year. Furthermore, research by Ipsos in a presentation by Icrossing state that 73% of young adult women describe themselves as influential information sources.

Dave Kerpen, who has been very successful at earning customers through storytelling, in an interview with Social Media Examiner, explains why stories attract more customers. He expresses how it helps to persuade customers and creates a deeper connection through involving them in your story;"By being able to tell a story, you’re able to bring some real personality to what it is you do, and at the same time, convince people that you know what you are doing...It's important to truly listen because people would rather talk about themselves"

Customers are no longer seeking transactions with brands, they want to share experiences, conversations and have two way 'relationships'. Lululemon, a yoga wear company, has seen success through integrating its users in helping to tell the story of their brand. The company preaches 'inspirational wisdom' and created a campaign called #thesweatlife; whereby users were asked to tweet or instagram photos of them 'getting their sweat on'. An inspirational and aspirational story of the brand was developed through crowdsourcing that garnered 7,000 images from its community and 40,000 unique visitors since launch.

Using UGC to bring your brand to life, which in turn tells a story, is likely to continue to be the key mash up success of the future. Harnessing the creative wisdom of the crowds and influencing the 'hives' will no doubt be key to unlocking the best 'mash up' for developing true engagement, enchantment and connections with customers, ultimately leading to relationships and sales.

What works well for your brand?

Why competitors may not be the best benchmark..

We are all used to ensuring that our strategy is secured around monitoring our competitors and developing our business in a way that will compete with others. However, it may well be that long term success is not delivered by having this type of focus. Here are a few reasons why competitors may not be the best benchmark to follow.

Too short sited

It is clear that putting the customer, as opposed to the product, at the centre of developing business is essential to any effective marketing campaign. But when we consider what will excite the customer and the type of value they attribute to our brands many of us may well be suffering from marketing myopia. To illustrate this point I would like to point to the success of Cirque du Soleil, they have effectively managed to make a dying industry (the circus) into a worldwide phenomenon. They did this by fusing 2 industries together, the theatre and the best of the circus. By removing elements that had lost their value (such as animal acts) the brand focused on an entirely new concept that was new and innovative, but most of all contained value for the customer by meeting an unmet desire of interpretive theatre merged with the best of circus quality. See the excellent writing by Ocean Blue Strategy for more on this topic.

Lack of emotional connection

Over time a brand loses focus with its customer. It gets so enticed into the measurement of its opponents that eventually the true desires of the future consumer are lost. The monitoring of cultural & social dynamics in the world are also often overlooked and many businesses focus on either cost savings or on answering immediate customer requests with a solution based model that initially appears customer centric. But what does this actually mean in challenging a change in consumer feeling in order to create new markets? This is where innovation needs to meet consumer value in order to create a real experience for the customer, this is more likely to endure in the long term and most importantly surpass competitors. An example of this is in Facebook where the inherent need to be social, coupled with an ever expanding global migration of people, made way for an entirely new format of innovation online.


Creating more risk in the long term

While initially the opportunity to measure, based on the same premise as competitors seems to be attractive, in the long run it can actually present the most risk. Consider how few businesses last that don't alter their value led creativity. And look at the leaders who are they following? This shows that out of the box thinking, merged with developing unmet needs by means of value to the customer, is by far the best strategy to take, even if there is currently no benchmark or historical data to prove this is the case.

So what do you think of your competitors now? The question is do you want to follow or to lead?

Behavioural targeting or permission marketing for lifetime value?

Both behavioural targeting(BT) and permission marketing (PM) can prove very profitable in driving business forward, but which is best for delivering long term business value?.

Behavioural targeting can help brands cut through the clutter and become more personalized in the acquisition process, it can also help customers via isolating more salient options and thus alleviating the trouble of ‘cognitive load’ in a cluttered marketplace. However, whilst this may be rewarding for a ‘quick win’ solution it does not necessarily remain helpful in building ‘relationships’ nor accommodating in attracting ‘loyalty’.

Permission marketing helps us to understand the customer further and doesn’t assume what the customer wants nor does it play on overt manipulation of a customer’s fleeting thoughts/journey. In this sense permission marketing is the unassuming friend of the customer by actually ‘asking’ the customer first and suggesting later. The process is longer in PM, and is akin to a ‘relationship’ as opposed to a ‘fling’, essentially it is less desperate.

With PM the opportunity for building a clean and relevant list, whilst long, is worth it in the long haul. Not only do you start to learn about your customers but you also can begin to understand their limits. In a world of ever increasing transparency and intrusion, there may well be a point where customers start to say no and then we need to know why.

The other benefits of permission marketing (especially when integrated into the automated workflow of e-CRM) is that you can create a contract from the beginning. Customers are then more open in offering the best ways for developing the relationship further, especially in regards to frequency of contact and timeliness, two of the most important matters in maintaining trust and acceptance.

Behavioural targeting is however, by no means unimportant or worthless. For a large number of brands, especially at certain touch points it can be highly influential and powerful, particularly in driving new business at speed. But perhaps the more deep layered segmented approach which is now applied via social media integration can make it more relevant and meaningful to the prospect.

The question we have left to answer is if we are seeking customers trust in order to build a long term ‘relationship’, then don’t we need to understand them first?. In this sense, therefore, is it not essential to know their limits and therefore actually ask them what they want? We all know where ‘assumption’ leads us in the end.

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By Ann-Marie Ivanova

Social Media, Privacy and Demographic Trends

"Social Media is here to stay, but who dares to question it?".

The question of whether social media is a fad may no longer need to be considered in so much depth. The truth is our younger generation now have the digital world so embedded in their life and culture that it is the very way they communicate. It is not just the young either, a rising population is growing in the over 30's and even greater in the over 50's. But the real question shouldn't be "Is social media here to stay?" but rather "Who allows us to use their information to penetrate a true one to one communication and do they invite it?"

My query here is in reference to the importance placed on privacy. For example, in behavioral targeting certain brands may yield fantastic results with a tailored message bespoke to a customer with suggestions based on their particular journey. But in certain product categories this may well be disastrous and seen as an invasion of privacy; for example, a surfer interested in sexual health is unlikely to want to be reminded where he or she has shopped with a personal message in their inbox or a pop up in their email. Furthermore, aside from product categories, perhaps there is a greater resistance generally in certain genders, age categories or socioeconomic groups. To take privacy one step further we can view the effect of the general mood in society in regards to on-line activity already.

One of the greatest trends of 2011 on Twitter was #Egypt showing the political following of this channel.However, we cannot ignore the massive popularity and influence of celebrities that has also created a major contribution and 'buzz' to social media as for example in the case of Beyonce and her baby news. This may well teach us something of the types of motivation and age groups we may have online but it is also a reminder that the web caters for everyone.

One third of all people open a Facebook account only to not use it again, this suggests some resistance. But the real concerns are more around the lack of trust in politics, the media and anti corporate sentiment in general. For example, the amalgamation of WikiLeaks, the hacking of Amazon and Hotmail along with the intrusion of Murdoch and the newspapers, has created an anti-corporate sentiment and a lack of trust in data sharing. Furthermore, with the power of the voice that has arisen out of the negative version of crowd sourcing seen recently in the 2011 riots, social media is now used to control society and to rebel. This shows how society is starting to be trusting only themselves and listening to their peers over any company, government or corporation, thus revealing how far we are away from anyone fully accepting full control of us or our data.

The truth is it is already happening, our lives are documented on Facebook in a timeline, our shopping is becoming more tracked and our behavior is more visible with a blending of our private and public lives. But the facts remain, social media is a trend, it's addictive for many and it is now our local "meeting house", it's convenient, interactive and fast which is also what are lives require, but perhaps we are missing a fundamental piece of research into how much we can take? Looking into demographic trends into privacy is a key topic that needs to be researched and developed if we are to truly understand the power and longevity of social media platforms for the future and especially for specific groups.

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Social Media for SMEs- " Why it's time to join the conversation but how to look before you leap!"

With the explosion of social media in the last few years the entire web is now viewed by many as a ‘social place’. The young have already made it their second home with 75% of active users being aged 18-24 and, in the last year, the older age groups are also jumping on board rapidly with 33% of 45-54 and 25% of over 55 year olds now engaging actively with social networks.

With marketing becoming a data driven industry, social media is an essential tool for research and a fantastic device in most cases for measurement of customer activity and engagement with the brand. However it is not quite as simple as setting up a fan page on facebook and expecting people to arrive, nor is it just a part of a wider marketing plan; it’s all about how to connect with your consumer on their terms so here are some interesting points to consider when venturing into the social media space:

Internal Focus first – Before you convince the rest of the world you need to ensure your internal communications match what is shared in the social web.

Engagement – Social media offers an opportunity to provide a collaborative relationship and a freshness of content that matches the needs of your customers, for example asking interesting questions that engage your audience can help drive responses.

Listen and Learn- Learn from your consumers and add value to their experiences from actively using and implementing what you have learnt.

Transparency- A key point about social media is that it is revealing. Be consistent as you can easily be found out online.

Authenticity – When engaging with online communities it is vital to remember that you are having real conversations (a voice behind the facebook page).

Honesty- Social media is not just a platform or a tool, it is a dimension of your brand’s personality. Ensure, like any good friend, that relationships are based on trust. Consumers are more sophisticated than ever and therefore social media must be used in a consistent and genuine way. It’s the moral, truthful, authentic voice that sells.

Whether you’re wanting to build a brand community, create applications for promotions, begin a dialogue with your customers or encourage co production of your products, social media when used effectively can be a springboard to success even for smaller firms. However, enter with caution as whatever you say on these platforms is sure to be something that will remain with you for a very long time. Most of all remember to be strategic; there is little point in using social media if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve and who you’re trying to reach. So, what is the state of play out there for you now in regards to social media? Have you already joined the conversation and what did you find out?