#UnitedWelcome – Manchester United’s Social Faux Pas

With news of Sir Alex Ferguson retiring on Tuesday we were shown social media at its most powerful with reports of David Moyes taking over. To our surprise on Thursday we managed to find a link that was to a tab on the Manchester United Facebook page and the text read – ‘#UnitedWelcome – Send your personal welcome to our new manager David Moyes’. This was up on the site before any confirmation of the appointment of David Moyes and news confirming the reports didn’t come for a couple of hours after this was leaked. The leak was caused by United’s only official Twitter (@Manutd_PO).

The power of social media strikes again, showing how sometimes preparation for announcements can go wrong and lead to the unveiling of a whole campaign before its actually live. The app is still yet to be published on the Facebook page, so our guesses are… Who did they fire for leaking the information too early? After they spent so long searching for a Social Media Campaign Manager in December. 

Tuesday’s announcement led to unprecedented interest in Sir Alex Ferguson and his retirement, the Guardian via Twitter said they received the biggest ever day of traffic, even bigger than the Pope’s retirement!

The power of football. Biggest day ever for traffic on @guardian website yesterday (bigger than the Pope)

— Daniel Taylor (@DTguardian) May 9, 2013

YouTube Trends 

This week YouTube launched its Trends Map, which provides a statistical breakdown of the different kinds of content that are popular in the United States. The dashboard allows you to view statistics based on shares, views, city region, gender, and age. Lets hope they make this a worldwide feature at some point soon!

Solaborate – Social Network for Tech Professionals

This week saw a new social platform being released into beta, targeted at tech professional to interact with other tech professionals. Based on the early previews and videos/pictures we can see it allows professionals to share documents and presentations, publish questions, conference, chat, video and best practices.

Solaborate even allows for collaboration on the other social platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.

If you’re interested in signing up to Solaborate you can request a Beta Invite here.

Viber Desktop

Viber is to challenge Skype’s dominance by launching a desktop app which would enable calls, texts and video calls.

Dubbed Viber 3.0 the desktop release is coinciding with major updates for Android, iOS and Blackberry versions.

Viber chief executive  Talmon Marco said;

People spend a substantial amount of time on their smartphones. However, a lot of that usage takes place at home or in the office, where they have laptops or desktops close by.

Bing using Klout as ranking factor

Klout has expanded its partnership with Microsoft by bringing its search results to the top of bing.

Questions that are put on Bing that have long been unanswered will be answered by ‘experts’ who are appointed by Klout ‘influencers’.

CEO of Klout Joe Fernandez said

People are starting to be interested not only in finding information, but also knowing where that information is coming from. When getting advice on how to take care of your garden, for instance, you’d probably much rather get advice from an influencer in the subject rather than someone who was just getting started gardening.

We know what questions people are asking, so we’ve curated the best questions and tied them back to the topics where people are influential.

Users could then +K with the answer if the answer was useful, adding to the experts Klout score.

SAScon

The keynote speakers for the upcoming SAScon have been announced. They are Clancy Childs and John Veichmanis.

Clancy Childs is a Google Analytics’ product manager and is in the know regarding the most crucial tool for marketers. John Veichmanis is Expedia’s VP for Global Paid Search.

SAScon co-founder Simon Wharton said

SAScon is about the accountable modern marketer, digital is at the heart of any modern organisation. Bringing together speakers not only of this notoriety but of this extreme calibre in such a high level conference. It is a real statement of intent from SAScon. 

SAScon is the perfect conference for both the client side agent and the in house marketer.

SAScon takes place on the 6th/7^th of June 2013 and tickets can be bought here.

That’s the end of the roundUP this week we will leave you with this funny VIne that we saw.  You can see more here

The post Digital RoundUP 13/05/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Facebook Home

This past Thursday Facebook Home was announced as a new app for Android. The idea behind Home is to make the Android phone a social experience. ‘Home’ is akin to a skin on the phone with the Facebook OS constantly running.

In effect the user would be constantly on Facebook and every action is pushed from Facebook. For example ‘Chat Heads’ (seen on the third image above) shows the friends that you have had or have most contact with recently. The idea being that you can tap on the picture and start a conversation instantly.

How will Home impact on the app use on the iPhone? Will there be more adverts as a consequence? Lets us know your thoughts.

Twitter cards

Twitter introduced its new feature called Twitter cards, they richly represent photos, videos, songs and everything between.

There are three types of new Twitter cards:

App: Will show information about an app such as the name, price and rating.

Product:  It shows products by showing an image and description its aimed at retailers. Every time a user shares a product, the card will display the product in an image accompanied by a description.

Gallery: This represents an album or collection of photographs via a preview of the photo gallery. This indicates a gallery has been shared by the user.

Using 5 or More Social Networks? You are a top employee!

In a  recent survey by Evolv it was found that workers using social networks, proved to be more productive that other employees that didn’t. Evolv are a start-up agency that monitors hundreds of the Fortune 500 companies’ metrics.

It was proven that the more social networks they were on, the more productive they were in the work they did. Based on hourly time, employees that used up to four social networks, make more sales and answered customer service calls faster than those who weren’t on any social networks.

Based on the 5 social networks, it was found that they were better at sales and answering customer service calls, only slightly higher with 1.5% and 2.8%.

This means that we should all be signing up to as many social networks as possible, here’s a few to get started on: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Path, Instagram, YouTube, Foursquare, Myspace and LinkedIn.

Baidu Google Glasses

China’s largest search engine has announced it will be developing ‘digital eyewear’ similar to Google Glass. Reportedly code named “Baidu Eye”

Although reports are sketchy at present it is currently being tested and an announcement on the release date has yet to be confirmed.

Facebook Charges for Celebrity Messages

Facebook has started charging UK users a fee to send a message to ‘celebrities’. The fees range from 71 pence for a lesser known person to £10.68 for Olympic diver Tom Daley.

The price is determined by what Facebook describe as ‘the number of followers and a secret fame algorithm.’

Will you be using this service to contact someone famous?

That’s the end of the RoundUP for this week, we will leave you with this site which should be of interest if you work within SEO.

The post Digital RoundUP 08/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Google Reader

Last week via the Google Reader blog it was announced that Google Reader would be shut down as of 1^st July.

The statement said;

usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products.If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout.

This has upset and affected a lot of its current users such as myself! It’s clear that Google want us to be using Google + as a resource for any news feeds we have. However at present there is no way to export your subscription list without doing it manually into G+.

I like many users use Google Reader on a daily basis; it’s the way I get all my news first thing in the morning all in one place.  On the other hand, will we really miss it?

RSS feeds have been around for a long time and how we digest our news has changed, these days people check Twitter for the latest goings on, or follow people/ groups on social media.

But what are the alternatives when Google Reader closes?

Feedly

Since the announcement that Google Reader is going to close I tried out Feedly and have not been alone with around 500,000 new users signing up for the service in the last few days.

The best feature is the fact that by signing using your Google account all your Google Reader subscriptions transfer over, which is great if you have a large number of subscriptions. The layout is simple and easy to use and it does what Google Reader does and will satisfy most users.

Flipboard

Currently Flipboard is stricty an app for Tablets and smart phones. It uses RSS feeds much like the way Feedly does however it is presented in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The post Digital RoundUP 18/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

“Welcome to the event and thank you to pro.manchester for facilitating this. If you have a tablet or phone, please turn it ON. This is about how we do things going forward – what does it do for us as businesses”

We have a #promansm – please use it if you can.

This isn’t the start of the event, it started last night. We’ve taken it digital using social media – creating a list. There is a list of attendees you can go and follow. All starts the interaction early.

Use social media to talk about this event, here to communicate about how social media can help with your objectives. The only way to do this is to immerse yourself in the medium.

One barrier is actual engagement with digital channels – best clients for PushOn are those who have immersed themselves. You have to personally become involved. Social media is great for brand confidence. Immerse yourself if you are a marketer or even a senior business leader.

What are events? What do you want to get out of them? If you have prepared all that literature and content you want to propagate this outside of the event. If you can push it out further you can get more credibility.

You can also build relationships and create synergy. Looking someone up on social media and then taking itit to the real world. If you participate meaningfully you can have theserelationships on the go. Social media  empowers  networking.

Also good for search if you have good content, good links – benefits all the way through. Live blogging this now is great for links and showcasing the event.

Dual screening – the tablets, phones etc are the focal point, the presenter or tv is secondary. If you’re a good enough presenter you embrace this. It is going tohappens anyway, so get on board. Widens the conversation. No issue with people dual screening during a presentation.

Whole range of different channels and content – blogs, microblog, video, photos, wikis, forums, geo-locator, podcasts.

 Agenda

1. 10 ways to involve and engage your audience

2. Social media event channels

3. Twitter

4. A rough and ready workshop

So on with the first presentation.

1. 10 ways to involve and engage your audience

Presented by Nigel Hughes

Not here to explain techy stuff, just how to use social.

Concerned that if you’re having a conversation in a public space, couldnpeople say something nasty? If they want to say something nasty, they’ll already be saying it

People can be shy. Think they have nothing to say – people feel like this, can be nervous ofnetworking andthief follows through to social media.

They ran an event from a standing start. Way to do this was to use PR – did all traditional channels, but it also appeared online. The third element was social – pepole sharing this content in social media sites.

1. Tell press about the events and then make sure that it is shared socially

2. Set up a page, track attendees and share news.

3. Start asking for input – people to supply questions in advance. They can shape the event. Feel like you’re properly participating

4. Use social for pre-event discussions, not just questions. Can be LinkedIn, blog, Twitter.

5. Don’t just restrict yourself to your owned media. Ask people to blog about you and become advocates for your event. Take advantage of their social media connections

6. Exclusive offers and discounts – same as in real world, but it’s easily shareable

7. At the event itself, encourage people to engage in social. Makes people outside of the room aware of the event and AK themselves “should I have gone?”

8. If it moves photograph it, or better still video it. Creating social media currency – this is basically shareable stuff. Still talking about it because these items are still turning up. Think about slides too…

9. Encourage people to review your event and say as much as possible. Again, generates content which could be shared. All of this has been relying on others speaking for you.

10.Sweat your assets, be aware – your content is also your currency. How much should you give away? Give too much and people will think they can just find out about it via social. Hold a little bit back to entice people to attend.

All of the above never really led of sell, sell, sell. It was all about creating a conversation and discussion. Event was a success and achieved it’s aims

2. Social Media Event Channels

Gamification – concept to introduce at this point. Is the use of game mechanics to engage people in none game things e.g LinkedIn – “complete sections”

Facebook at events – think about audience, brand pages, friends, content, check-ins and brand advocacy.

Geo-locations are really great in terms of knowing where people are, you can go and join them and do business.

Quick and easy to set up events on Facebook. Needless to say, number of people who say they will attend may not. Be aware of this. More about propagation than bums on seats.

LinkedIn – good for getting speakers, but generally not as good for an event. It does integrate with Facebook and WordPress. Use as a tertiary platform

FourSquare – if you have foursquare, check in! Can say what you’re doing right there and then. Take a picture and show what you’re doing. All about rich content, location based

Need to know about wi-fi access. All businesses need to know about the infrastructure to make sure they can support the event. You should be giving away the wireless access. Once the infrastructure is in place, people will go there.

Google+ – social network Google has brought in. All about data – search is critical for each and every business. Wants data on you, Google+ gives you that data. Reads like a magazine, allows for segmentation and categorisation. Hangout is video conferencing which costs nothing. For events – started the night before, start getting traction

Now just been joined by Richard Gregory from Latitude on a Hangout! Couldn’t make thoh physical event, but can participate externally (and wear silly virtual hats!)

3. Twitter

Nicky Wake from Don’t Panic

The channel she uses the most is Twitter -this is the channel they use the most.

#hastags are really important. Send it out well in advance and put it everywhere. Make sure people know about it and respond to it. Also monitor it during an event.

Don’t be afraid to use other people’s #hashtags – check it out with the owner and it’s a way to contact other audiences who are using similar #hashtags

Great events organiser – can spread your event worldwide in a matter of seconds. In terms of email, you have to work with huge numbers (still do this) but tweets can drive traffic more effectively. Get a RT from someone with credibility and you can see a huge spike. Get industry players to RT your content and the. Get some real traffic success.

1. Pre-event

- All use the #hashtag

- Use teasers about the event

- launch your event via Twitter and build a buzz

- tweet regularly (on a daily basis, but don’t spam)

- consider having specific accounts for specific events

- get your speakers / judges / panelists to tweet for you. Choose high profile people

- secure speakers and build relationships

- ask for RTs. People will do as they’re told!

- Always ask for delegate Twitter IDs before the event and share them via a list on Twitter. Got a network before the event.

- monitor and respond to questions, queries and complaints.

- build followers and follow relevant people

- RT relevant news around the event and establish yourself as an authority

- daily countdown to build excitement

During the event:

- Twitter wall, but with LIVE moderation! Especially with alcohol…!

- use hashtag and RT during the event

- have a dedicate person to tweet. They have to know their stuff and know the messages

- tweet important messages and quotes

- RT any complimentary tweets

- use it for Q&A to give to conference chair

- build followers and follow everyone in the room

Post-event:

- create a report of all the tweets from the event

- thank people

- ask for their feedback and grow network

- share content, but not everything

- RT any blog, video or pics

- announce subsequent events or key messages

Twitter wall: Tweet thing. Completely branded and has sponsorship slots available. Only displays last 10 tweets. Just pulls in tweets from #hashtag. Some people don’t like it being on when they are speaking, just check with them.

The post Socialising your event appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Any questions?

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What kind of companies have the best idea of what they want to do in social media?

WM – Companies usually come to us with a question mark rather than an answer. We hope that our role in social media is temporary – clients and organisation should be doing social media themselves. Who should be owning social media within the company? Nobody should own it, but yet everybody should own it.

JuL – As usual Judith distributes chocolate to everybody. Any form is social media is about interaction – you should be able to talk to a company and get a response, rather than submitting an enquiry and not hearing back. Inside of a company everybody should be given guidelines with social media, but with the freedom to move and engage.

PF – Social media can be looked at as reputation management or many other things. The objectives of comms teams within a company may be different to the customer service team – it’s not practical to give everybody a voice.

MB – Social media isn’t just about being on Facebook. Companies need to understand their core goals and identify the priorities, then you can identify the resources and outline the strategy in terms of targeting.

WM – Most of the brands that impact on our lives have been built with media by doing much more than story telling. Search looks at social media to trick the game, and look at how you can get your message to the top of the list.

JL – You need to work with your customer and interact with them.

PF – Using mercenary SEO techniques to get something visible isn’t the way forward. But having a great social site that has many active visitors isn’t great if it is appearing on page 5 of Google. SEO and social media are two distinct disciplines, but the agencies who embrace and use both of them effectively are the ones that will do the best.

With social media being so big, where do you start?

PF – You should ask yourself ‘why do it?’ – you shouldn’t just be doing something within social media just because your competitors are doing it. You need to understand why you are doing something and what value you can get from that. You need to make sure your message is relevant.

JL – The personal who is responsible for social media within a company should be the person who is most responsible for the overall goal. If you want to be interacting with your customers in terms of resolving issues, etc, then it should be the customer service team taking responsibility. However, if you want to drive the company and increase the awareness of the brand, then maybe it should be someone higher up in the company taking charge.

JuL – Whatever you do within a company has to have a measurable output.

The post Exploiting the Social Media Opportunity – SAScon 2010 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The viral video has clocked up over 7,000 views in the short time it has been live.  It has proved to be controversial, as it has generated both encouraging comments and scathying one liners from the usual YouTube resident flamers.

Along with the video, the microsite offers the chance to win iPods and iTunes treats for Cheshire under 25 residents who can keep a clean licence and a crash free record for one year.

The competition also takes into account the opinion of friends.  It may shock some drivers who are unaware of their friends’ perception of how safe they are behind the wheel.

Some may say it’s jumping on the social networking bandwagon, but I think this social aspect with feedback and reviews from friends may bring up a conversation that would otherwise be left unsaid.

I’ve heard one of my own friends say “I drive fast, but I’m in control”, and have seen my other friends shake thier heads in disbelief.

It may just take an honest and uncomfortable comment from a close friend to get through to a young driver – unaware they are not as safe as they think.

So, if you’re young enough, safe enough and Cheshire enough, why don’t you see if you can win:

R8URM8 Road Safety Campaign

And if you’re too old, can’t drive or have any comments, let me know what you think on here or on YouTube.

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