GetGlue is a social networking site that has actually been around for close to four years. It lets users ‘check in’ with their favourite modes of entertainment while they watch, read, listen or play. Once the user becomes a fan, and checks in enough times or on certain occasions they receive a virtual ‘sticker’ based on that specific product. And the end of every month, GetGlue offers the user the chance to receive their sticker collection for real, sending them through the post free of charge.

My modest GetGlue sticker collection

Media Darling

GetGlue has unsurprisingly established partnerships with numerous big US media entities, who have clearly realised the potential of the app. Never before has as direct a route to viewers’ habits been offered, and in such a measurable way. And as television moves online, so too will actual engagement with programmes, and GetGlue fits snugly into this new area.

The platform ties together a number of key social trends; location-based check-ins, mobile use and fandom. It’s the sort of app that plays into the hands of those people who complain that Facebook and Twitter consists only of people talking about their breakfasts. It’s a cult product, for geeks, nerds and obsessives, and it makes no bones about appealing specifically to this audience.

A Breaking Bad GetGlue sticker

Made for Mobile

Just like how internet developers are embracing devices smaller than a laptop. GetGlue has been put together with mobile in mind. It’s made for the multi-tasker who tweets about the TV they’re watching while they’re watching it; who looks at their phone every two minutes. Like most social media it’s also about showing off and sharing with people the world over, only this time with an actual offline product up for grabs in the form of collectible stickers (a quick look on eBay shows people are willing to pay for the rarer ones).

The free GetGlue stickers are beginning to turn up on eBay

Sticky?

Does GetGlue stick? Like most ‘check-in’-based apps, it takes time and plenty of check-ins for GetGlue to get going. Within 24 hours of registering not much will have happened with your account other than receiving the standard ‘New Starter’ stickers. It’s worth persisting though, as the idea itself (especially the free physical stickers) is novel enough to hold a person’s attention.

GetGlue isn’t quite as addictive or cut-throat as those days doing swaps for Merlin Premier League stickers back in the 90s, but it provides a quick and easy way to get closer to your favourite movies, books, music and TV. Whether it’ll satisfy you as much as getting an Eric Cantona shiny remains to be seen…

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Group A

Perhaps the two most unfancied teams managed to shock Europe and make their way through to the knockout stages in Group A. Hosts @SEOcreative crashed out after a 1-0 loss to @KMPdigitata, while @EuroRSCG surprised @ManLinkBuilding with a 1-0 win.

Return On Digital's Dave Ashworth with the #PushONeuros wallchart

Group B

@Photolink‘s miserable competition came to an end with a 2-1 loss to Indiespring. In the other fixture, favourites @ModernEnglish beat @SEOwned by the same scoreline.

Group C

Group C came to a close with @DefibShop edging past Feather Brooksbank with a late strike. Also, @MyCleverAgency booked their place in the quarter finals with a comfortable 2-0 victory over @N0RTHERNlights.

Group D

The last two games of the group stages saw @ReturnOnDigital hold on for a nervy 1-0 win against @Mediacom. At the same time, the departing @PRAgencyOne surprised @MelbourneHost with a 2-0 win.

Mediacom are now out of #PushONeuros

#PushONeuros Quarter Finalists:
Euro RSCG
KMP Digitata
IndieSpring
Modern English
Defib Shop
My Clever Agency
Melbourne Hosting
Return On Digital

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Group A

@SEOcreative squandered home advantage as they were held 1-1 by @ManLinkBuilding, and a 2-0 victory for @KMPdigitata against @EuroRSCG has left the group wide open. Anything could happen…

Group B

Could @seowned follow-up their shock win against @Photolink with another memorable result? Answer: ‘Nah’. They went down 3-2 to Indiespring, although they certainly put up a fight.

The misery continued for @Photolink, losing 2-1 to @ModernEnglish, who look more than chuffed with the result:

Group C

Thursday night in Group C ended with @DefibShop thrashing @N0RTHERNlights 4-0, while a 1-1 draw between Feather Brooksbank  and @MyCleverAgency has left all to play for in the third round of games.

Group D

@ReturnOnDigital went in front and then came back from behind to beat @PRAgencyOne in the tie of the week. @MelbourneHost top the group on goal difference though, having beaten @Mediacom 2-0. They travelled to Hans Christian Andersen’s imagination to pose for this pic:

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The idea behind The Social Radio is simple: a computerised voice (alternately male and female) reads out the latest tweets while music plays, like a robotic version of the links in This Morning only less robotic.

Some things you probably won't do while listening to The Social Radio (click to enlarge)

Who’s behind it?

The team of four behind The Social Radio includes CEO and co-founder @RobertoGluck, CTO and co-founder @Anegrete, Software Engineer and co-founder @Drenzulli, and sound engineer and online marketing strategist @FacundoArena.

Is it any good?

It depends on what you’re using it for. It’s no good for agencies, or even personal Twitter use, but for a free app, there’s mild entertainment to be had.

Dashboard for the desktop Social Radio - trending hashtag information is a nice touch to help keep up with breaking news/topics (click to enlarge)

Conclusion

There’s no escaping the fact that The Social Radio is essentially pointless and daft, yet it still manages to be entertaining. It’s not going to change your life, or even improve how you access your tweets at all, but it is a somewhat amusing and novel way to waste a few minutes.

The post PushON Insights: The Social Radio appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Group A

@SEOcreative and @EuroRSCG got the tournament off to a flyer with a 1-1 draw which featured just about everything. Two sendings off and a saved penalty kept the referee occupied, and saw the two teams share the spoils. Later on, @ManLinkBuilding obliterated @KMPdigitata 4-1 to top the group. PushON’s Mark Mayne tweeted “Just had a sandwich lol” as the second goal went in. Here he is, looking like a 1970s snooker player:

Mark Mayne - World Snooker Champion 1976

Group B

We’re one week into the #PushONeuros competition and we’re getting an indication as to how the tournament will progress. The first round of games saw @seowned shock @Photolink 1-0, with the latter flashing a variety of shots wide of the mark. We don’t know why their company rep is smiling on receipt of the official #PushONeuros wall chart…

Meanwhile, @ModernEnglish came through a particularly tough test against Indiespring, winning by the same scoreline.

Group C

@N0RTHERNlights went down 3-1 to an impressive Feather Brooksbank, and look out of the tournament. And the hotly-anticipated clash between @DefibShop and @MyCleverAgency did not disappoint, with the former fielding an unorthodox 4-6-0 formation. MyCleverAgency scored first, however, before a well-worked equaliser left the tie settled at 1-1. The latter still found time to pose with their wallchart…

Group D

The final fixtures in the first round of games saw @MelbourneHost draw 1-1 with @ReturnOnDigital, while later in the night @Mediacom upset the fancied @PRAgencyOne, coming from behind to secure a 2-1 win.

The post #PushONeuros Round 1 Round-Up appeared first on PushON Ltd.

I hated McDonalds with a passion, and I wasn’t alone. Eric Schlosser had written Fast Food Nation which, along with the movie Supersize Me, revealed to the world that food priced cheaply and made quickly might not be too good for you or ethical; the McLibel case had revealed that corporations obviously only interested in making money were only interested in making money; and the quality of Happy Meal toys declined sharply (serious, what is this?!).

To counteract this ill public feeling, McDonalds reinvented itself, introducing all manner of healthy options and, in what turned out to be a very shrewd move, opened the Make Up Your Own Mind website. This site served as a public relations exercise to combat all of the negativity that existed towards the company, inviting members of the public to ask questions about McDonalds food and business practices. It was essentially a business Twitter account before its time.

Crucially, however, McDonalds took the time to ensure all variety of questions were answered. So, for instance, a genuine question about what goes into a Big Mac patty would receive the same straight-faced response as questions like “is it true big max are made from childrens lol”. An example of this (or perhaps feedback on an ill-thought-out milkshake promotion attempt) can be seen below:

The Make Up Your Own Mind website became viral, and I remember spending daft amounts of time reading through all the questions at my then-new SEO job. And I wasn’t the only one. But the site wasn’t just about gaining traffic, it was about improving its public image. McDonalds had made themselves a laugh, and had proved they didn’t take themselves too seriously.

Six years on and McDonalds has built on this approach to become something of a digital marketing trailblazer among corporations. This week’s Blogworld event in New York saw Rick Wion, director of Social Media for the brand, gave a few hints as to how he believes companies should behave online. He said they should look to be funny, so long as its in context and fits the brand. They should look to steer away from standard ‘corporate messages’, and they should always be willing to evolve and try different methods of gaining success.

The Make Up Your Own Mind website has long since ceased operations, replaced instead with a simple FAQ page. Its legacy, that of being one of the first companies to truly engage with its critics via digital, can easily be seen in the corporate Twitter accounts of thousands of companies worldwide.

For more on the McDonalds digital strategy, read this Econsultancy piece.

The post Lovin’ It: McDonalds’ Digital Strategy Then & Now appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Barca, Real and United have a combined Facebook following close to 100 million, but it wouldn’t take a genius to place these three at the top of the pile. Of course they have big ‘Like’ numbers – they’re the biggest, most famous clubs in the world – and they already have huge fanbases which would stay huge regardless of social media.

This is potentially a problem, and the issue was brought up by Barcelona business intelligence manager Pasi Lankinen during a talk at the ‘Sport and New Media’ Sport Business Group seminar. At over 31 million, Barcelona enjoys the biggest Facebook following for a football club in the world, but Lankinen admits there is a strange anomaly sports teams face on social networks.

He said: “Commercial organisations have big budgets and purchasing clients, who they are trying to make into ‘fans’ of their products. We are trying to do the reverse, we are trying to use the emotion of fans to create clients and consumers – and not just viewers – around the world.”

This reversal of fandom – or preaching to the converted – poses problems. A fan is a fan for life, in theory at least, so can a Facebook account only serve to grease the wheel? “New media does not build fans or make more fans,” Lankinen believes. “It is not about how many fans we have, it is what we do with them.”

One club clearly catering to fans and fans alone is Liverpool. Liverpool’s Pinterest account features everything from fan art and fan tattoos to baby pictures and previous kits – all with a Liverpool flavour, of course. It’s a massive collection, put together with the fervour of an obsessive fan for other obsessives, and a brilliant example of exploiting a social network to cater to a pre-existing fan base.

Liverpool on Pinterest

Some clubs are caught in a flux when it comes to social media. Manchester United on Facebook, for example, seems stuck between appealing to core fans and casuals. Of course, the casual appeal of United has helped it become the worldwide football heavyweight it is today, with the likes of George Best, David Beckham to Cristiano Ronaldo drawing unprecedented worldwide mainstream attention to the club for over 50 years. However, the ‘casual appeal’ of United’s Facebook page could easily be viewed as lax by club fans. These same club fans will be ‘grinning and bearing it’ in the aftermath of local rivals City winning the league at their expense, so perhaps its Facebook presence should mirror this approach rather than posting generic status updates like the below (posted just a week after the 2011/12 season’s dramatic final day):

Manchester United on Facebook

If there’s one thing United has done right, then it’s using Facebook timeline to maximum effect. Scroll back in time and you’ll find exclusive, hi-res imagery from famous club moments such as the 1968 European Cup win against Benfica, and even sobering photographs from the Munich Air Disaster. It’s not as in-depth as Liverpool’s Pinterest page, but it provides an interesting glimpse of what all clubs will hopefully be providing for Facebook fans in the future.

Manchester City's @mcfc Twitter account

Across the city, and on Twitter, United’s ‘noisy neighbours’ City would barely raise a squeak with only 359,285 followers compared to United’s 25 million on Facebook. The quality of their output more than makes up for it though, as Manchester City’s Twitter account is a shining example of how teams should use the platform.

With hourly updates linking to exclusive video content and news, the account does the main thing United’s Facebook doesn’t: it services fans’ needs. Whereas the United Facebook account will rarely offer something a fan doesn’t already know, City’s Twitter constantly offers up exclusive video and interviews and, crucially, interacts with fans. The account will never coax someone into supporting City but, and like Barcelona’s Lankinen believes social media should, it will strengthen the bond between existing fans and the club: “We want to move fans to buying our products, whether it is tickets or merchandising, buying both online and offline … To monetise – that is where the challenge is. The short-term goal is to monetise the emotion felt for the club.

“Communicating values is more long-term, talking about what we are and making more loyal fans, so that when you stop winning then something stays and they don’t move to the next team that is winning.”

The post Social Media and the ‘Reversal’ of Football Fans appeared first on PushON Ltd.

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• Kristal Ireland, Propoganda Agency
• Philip Coen, Social Media Ventures
• Robin Wilson, McCann
• Simon Alexander, Carat
• Andrew Grill, Kred
• Danielle Fudge, Forward

What are the key metrics for social platforms?

• For Twitter, the effectiveness of linguistics used, interactions, and retweets
• What people take from tweets
• Most important thing is determining how to analyse metrics in a business sense; pick out your objectives early
• ‘Outreach’ is the likelihood of people engaging with your social media account
• Develop a model in which the metrics you are collecting bear relevance to traditional marketing metrics
• Traditional marketing models cannot simply be discarded now social is here. Also helps bridge gap between agencies and clients
• Social platforms are disruptive to marketing as they give users a voice which people do listen to

Discussion arose as to last year’s Yeo Valley advert, shown during the X Factor and made using all of the company’s ad budget. It told a story and got people talking. This was called “smart marketing” Andrew Grill from Kred, although it was debated as to whether every firm should use it as an example.

The ‘Like’

Philip Coen cited research which found that people ‘Liked’ brands that they had already bought from, rather than had intentions to buy from for the first time. This developed into an aside on Google Instant and how that whole process essentially tracks users journeys and intent from the moment the first key is pushed on the keyboard.

Sentiment

Sentiment is really hard to develop in social, the panel agreed. However, they also agreed that the vast variables involved mean it isn’t the ‘be all end all’.  Danielle Fudge says her company has a set system of positive and negative words for use with each client i.e. a youth company would use ‘sick’ in a positive way, while a health company would use it negatively.

 Key strategies and tools for identifying and user social influencers

Andrew Grill brings up bloggers and their importance, adding that it is a very good idea for people to know their social tools very well before taking stock from their results. He also said that big companies are now looking for “unsigned bloggers”.

Notes:

• Danielle Fudge: “People see social media as a free area – ‘Why should we spend any money on it?’”
• A good reporting method is simply sticking tweets into a Word Cloud and seeing what comes out. This will be what is being spoken about
• Robin Wilson recommended putting analytics in context showing, for example, ‘TV advert was shown here’. Mentioned importance of overlaying information
• Coen: “B2B can be more successful than B2C using social media.”

The post SAScon 2012: Delivering Insights from Social Media appeared first on PushON Ltd.

• Dan Sodergen, Go Augmented

Our takeaway points from the session can be found below:-

“The future is already here, just unevenly distributed.”

Augmented Reality:
- A marketing reality in which we bring print and places to life using mobile phones
- AR is like ordinary reality, only moreso
- We will now go through the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ in the hype cycle re:AR, as people think it may not be what it promises
- AR is not as simple as the internet or web stuff; it splits into different areas and capacities
- Visual Search through AR may very well mean the death of SEO
- AR’s rise has been so fast because of technology and, specifically, mobile
- AR should be implemented more at home or an a mobile
- Man City use AR as part of their global strategy (to appeal to people who live in China, India etc and might never make a match)
- AR is limitless, it’s just that people don’t know what it is or what it does more
- “AR is QR on steroids” – everything is an advertising platform. Even our bodies

What can AR do for businesses and brands?
- More traffic to ecommerce sites
- More PR for interesting ideas
- More Facebook positings and sharings
- If you give people that Wow Factor through AR, it will lead to more conversions
- AR is part of mobile advertising; it should be used now

Could this mean the death of SEO in the future?
- People won’t need to search
- In some cases, SEO will be changing. AR will play a part in this

Why AR is the future
- Mobile processing will only get better
- GPS tracking will only get faster
- Roll out of mobile Tube coverage in London
- 4G testing and implementation in very near future
- Juniper Research say AR will be worth $1.5 billion by 2015
- Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 combine to instantly deliver digital, scalable, instant promotions
- Mixing Geolocation and social delivers a new user experience: AR

But…
- You can only do AR if you are a massive brand already. You can’t launch something with AR because it requires too much effort and emotional connection. People need to trust you already.
- Companies already doing social and, specifically, mobile, should consider moving into AR so long as they have established a strong consumer connection.

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