NSDesign was delighted to hear the news that BBC 6 Music is to be saved, and even more excited to hear that the BBC Trust’s reprieve is largely thanks to the power of social media.

Since the BBC announced the closure of BBC 6 Music, its home for new and upcoming bands, in March the public outcry has been immense with celebrities and citizens going online to offer their support for the station, seen as one of the few bastions of independent music in the UK.

An internet campaign using various social media sites sprang up almost instantly. This was not a coordinated effort, but started by different individuals who wanted to show their support for the station and encourage others to do the same. The Facebook campaign gathered 180,000 followers, while Twitter’s #save6music hashtag appeared to be constantly trending as several million tweets featured it.

These campaigns led supporters to online petition sites, which formalised the support and created documents that could then be handed to the BBC trust, creating a definite record of the station’s popularity amongst the public. When these petitions closed in May, they held nearly 100,000 signatures between them.

Added to this was the inundation of 50,000 online responses and 25,000 emails the BBC Trust received in support, as opposed to 250 snail mail letters, and you can truly begin to appreciate just how much difference the internet made in this highly successful internet and social media campaign.

The perfect case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of social media marketing!

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A lot of social media tutorials focus on how to use the various tools these sites provide to open a dialogue and engage with consumers. While this is absolutely correct, the role of social media sites in providing cost-effective, and, some might say more traditional advertising methods is often overlooked.

Earlier this year, a report by Nielsen and Facebook found conclusive evidence that social media advertising led to a dramatic increase in advert recall, brand awareness, and purchase intent. This is not only down to the wording and placement of the advert, but also the effect of ‘personal recommendations’ as trusted friends become fans of the product.

The sample of 800,000 illustrated that the best social advertising campaigns followed a two-pronged approach that combined paid media (pay-per-click and banner adverts) and earned media (advert viewers driving their friends to become fans). This approach combines the best of traditional advertising while utilising all the benefits that social media has to offer to create an advertising campaign which is immediate, personalised and can have a long life, even once the initial adverts have stopped running.

This is a highly cost-effective way to drive business, as using pay-per-click adverts means that a company only pays to receive traffic with a confirmed interest in a product. Add to this the snowball effect of social media, whereby each paid for advert has the potential to enlist hundreds of ‘fans’ all spreading your brand awareness for free and the fiscal benefits become remarkably clear.

Combining social media advertising with a strong campaign can effectively push a company forward to quickly reach an entire new audience.

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As social media has become such a large and undefined group of applications, it can be difficult to identify which platforms will work best for your company. Social media is a fantastic way to experiment with marketing ideas, but unless you have clearly delineated, and auditable, targets, you’ll never know how truly successful any given campaign is – so, how do you set and track your social media targets?

Setting your targets is the same as for any other form of marketing – do you want to drive sales or increase engagement with your brand? Are you looking to create links back to your website or position yourself as a market thought-leader? Choosing just one or two clearly defined and focused aims will make selecting your platforms a lot easier; for example, a brand looking to engage will focus heavily on tools such as Twitter and Facebook, while one looking to share knowledge may prefer to utilise a social bookmark site, such as Digg.

Analysis should be undertaken monthly; this is a short enough time that you stay in control of your data, but long enough to hint at developing and emerging trends in your traffic. Many companies have their own form of analytical tool, but Google’s analytics is perfectly adequate if you don’t want to invest. Pick a handful of metrics to compare and focus on these figures month-to-month to see what effect any campaign is having. Possible metrics include bounce rate, source traffic and time on site.

Taking a focused approach will allow you to see where the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign lie, and adjust them accordingly, so that you are constantly improving your results.

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In the last couple of years social media has come to dominate digital marketing. It offers new and varied ways to share content, engage consumers and create dialogue. However, the sheer number of sites available and the scope for campaigns can leave even the most hardened marketer feeling overwhelmed.

So this week, NSDesign Social Media Training has a case study to help you pinpoint what makes a successful social media campaign. It’s from a surprising source – traditional brand Marmite, first established in 1902, and now leading the way in social media marketing.

Marmite has always revelled in its ‘controversial’ status and has run several traditional advertising campaigns around the love/ hate aspect of the product. To capitalise on the 2010 general election they conceived a social media equivalent, setting up ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ Facebook groups. Within four weeks they had 350,000 fans across the two groups, the result of a massive multi-media marketing push.

Why were they so successful? Marmite created a debate, which required people to actively think and engage with their brand; this created an online discussion between consumers and the brand, which created an excellent source of rich and original content, helping to boost the product’s online footprint.

They also used various mediums to draw attention and focus it on their social media. The main social media thrust was supported by traditional mediums such as TV and newer avenues like online forums, all of which drove traffic to the Facebook hubs. They even offered hard copy ‘electioneering’ packs to the most energetic fans.

Marmite has a lot of resources behind it, but the lessons can be applied to companies of all sizes, so that your social media campaign becomes all about the ‘Love’.

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Social media is a new phenomenon which is very important in today’s business marketing strategies and should not be ignored. You may be a bit overwhelmed at first because of the sheer number of social networking sites, all claiming to offer a raft of benefits to businesses.

However to begin with, focus on the big two: Facebook and Twitter. Both of these sites allow you to keep in contact with hundreds, even thousands of people every day and enable you put your brand and message in front of them. You may have come across our introduction to Facebook blog article and our Twitter for business blog article.

Once you are familiar with the two sites, you can start to build up your social media reputation. This will require regular updates and it is important to let potential customers know exactly what you are offering. Sharing your knowledge and expertise on these sites is a good way to draw people in and by engaging with customers; answering queries, showcasing new products and sharing your company’s latest news, your profit margin will increase.

Customers are more likely to use/buy your services/ products if you offer something back in return. The key to profitable social media is interacting, rather than broadcasting.

Ultimately, social media is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to reach a wide audience, so make sure you plan your strategy carefully.

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Facebook is so ubiquitous that, whatever line of business you’re in, it’s likely many of your customers and potential customers are using the site to socialise and network. There are over 350 million active users of the world’s largest social network and, even though it was originally designed to help students plan their social lives, it has quickly evolved into a powerful internet marketing tool for businesses.

In the same way that individuals can set up profile pages, businesses can set up fan pages. You can upload your logo and company description to the page and post updates, links and photos on your wall. People can indicate they “like” your page, and your updates will then appear in their news feeds. A description of your page will also feature on your fans’ individual profiles. Given that the average Facebook user has 130 friends (according to Facebook’s own calculation), you can theoretically put your business in front of 13,000 people with just 100 fans!

You can also use a Facebook fan page to drive traffic to your website by posting links to your latest blog or news articles on the wall.

It’s easy to set up a Facebook fan page for your business: just click on this link and follow the instructions.

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It’s music to our ears to hear that social media sites are creating more election buzz amongst young people than ever before.

A study published today by Lightspeed Research on behalf of New Media Age showed that 46% of 18-21 year olds are more interested in the election as a direct result of the increased political activity on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The study also showed that 60% of 18-25 year olds look favourably on political parties who communicate with the electorate through social media and blog sites.

It remains to be seen whether this increased rapport with the young actually results in more votes being cast. The traditional campaign tools – i.e. party political broadcasts on TV and leaflet dropping – are still going strong. In fact, the Lightspeed/ NMA study showed that, notwithstanding the positive reaction to the parties’ campaigning on social media platforms, young people still regarding the traditional TV party political broadcast as the most trustworthy source of information.

Nevertheless, we like to take a glass-half-full approach here at NSDesign and we think it’s fantastic that, for the first time in living memory, young people have a platform on which they can get involved in the debate and discussion that surrounds the forthcoming General Election. Go Twitter!

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On the 6^th April, AOL publically announced it was looking for a buyer for Bebo, hinting it would be closed down if one wasn’t found. Or in their words, they are: “currently evaluating strategic alternatives, which could include a sale or shutdown of Bebo in 2010”.

The mentions of Bebo on Twitter that day and night came in fast and furious, with the majority of them from Bebo users, angry about the rumours of immediate closure (there seemed to be a belief it was closing that night).  Many of them stated that they were planning on jumping ship to Facebook in advance of any termination of their BEBO accounts.

Having personally never been a Bebo user myself, I signed up!  We’ll see how long it remains live!

Some Background Info

Bebo has a massively different demographic to the likes of LinkedIn and even Facebook.  Bebo has (or had) the biggest share of the under 17 year old market, and was the 2^nd largest social network in the UK (with an equally strong following in Australia).

But globally, and more specifically in the US, Bebo is, and has been lagging behind for some time – at it’s peak it had approx 40 million users, compare that to over 400 million active facebook accounts.

Up until early 2007, BEBO and Myspace had almost equal share of the social media market, but in the summer of that year Facebook almost came out of nowhere and established itself as the top dog.  Ever since, Bebo’s numbers have been falling…  and for a business that’s solely making money from advertising spend based on users and eyeballs, AOL has finally decided that enough’s enough.

 
Why did it fail?

I think Bebo’s problem was that it simply didn’t innovate.  It started out as almost a carbon-copy of Myspace, and didn’t adapt when it needed to.  Like Myspace even now, it’s a bit slow, a bit clunky, and still looks like one of the early social networking sites.  In the meantime, along comes Facebook, with a real buzz about it globally, and it brings a a fresh approach to social networking with it’s focus on status updates and live news feeds.  The result is a truly mainstream social resource, used not just by the schoolkids, but by everyone.

Which all leads to the question – why didn’t it evolve?  I personally think that Bebo’s decline wasn’t helped by it’s acquisition by AOL (Time Warner).  I think they were just too big, with too many fingers in too many pies, and Bebo was just something else for them to play with.  They used their financial clout to jump on the social media bandwagon without the real investment and understanding of making it a long term success.

Look at other examples such as MySpace -acquired by traditional news man Rupert Murdoch (News Corp) in 2005 for $580million (now valued at next to nothing), and also Friends Reunited – one of the UK’s first social networking sites before any of us knew what social networking was.  It was purchased by ITV for £175million in 2005, and recently sold for a mere £25million following a massive downturn in usage (although it does appear to have found some momentum again).

It’s no coincidence that the other big names in social media which ARE still performing – Networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – are all still under the original ownership of the then small startup companies whose passion and drive made them the successes they were and still are today.   Unlike Bebo’s current owners, they included evolution in their strategies. 

Future:

Despite everything, surely for someone, Bebo can be a success – it’s still the 4^th most popular Social networking site, and 31^st most popular website in general! (globally) – according to recent webstats from Hitwise.   Just like the other main players, I don’t believe that Bebo should be written off just yet, and if your business or organisation wants to engage with a younger market, then Bebo is still (for now) a main player. 

Unfortunately, I think the announcement regarding Bebo being up for sale, and the rumours that followed of immediate closure won’t help the decline in usage, which in turn doesn’t help the likelihood of a suitable buyer stepping forward.

I’m sure Bebo will find a buyer, and maybe even a UK one (given its popularity here), but certainly AOL will struggle to recoup anything close to the $850 million they paid just 2 years ago, and by the sounds of it – they’ll settle for almost anything.  Quite tempted myself..

More over at Scotland on Sunday – Why Bebo lost its bounce

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The mobile web has been the subject of debate for a few years with predications of its growth and usage, but this year looks set to be the year where the it finally becomes mainstream. The technologies required to display websites on mobiles are now here and as they become more varied and affordable, the way in which we search and use the web is surely going to change.

With the emergence of devices like the iphone and Blackberry which use direct user manipulation with the screen, this has allowed screen sizes to be maximised, allowing users to see a lot more data. This is a big advantage for designers. The way in which people appear to be using the mobile web seems to be based very much more on practical functionality, communication, and accessing data/carrying out tasks quickly on the move. In this respect and with the challenge of designing for a smaller screen, its clear that mobile interfaces must be designed with content and usability at the forefront, whilst still conveying a companies branding and image successfully. Some mobile sites which demonstrate successful examples of this stripped down design, content focused approach are Amazon and Twitter.

The interface possibilities associated with phones also open new opportunities for designing the best user experience. Built in features like touchscreen, the mobile keypad, accelerator keys, the iphones motion detection and even vibrate could be used to maximise the efficiency of accessing mobile data. The type of sites that have proved most popular among web users support this idea of a more functionality and content focused web. News, weather and sports sites, email, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and of course search engines all rank very highly.

The statistics for mobile use in Britain are also interesting with Britain making up 20% of worldwide mobile web usage, second only to America. The number of mobile internet users grew from 5.8 million to 7.3 million is the third quarter of 2008 according to research from Neilson Online, meaning the mobile web is growing 8 times faster than desktop. The result of this rapid increase in mobile web usage has taken many businesses by surprise and are unaware that a large amount of their potential market are now surfing the web via mobile. In 2009 I think that many companies will start to see the advantage of having a mobile version of their site – not as a replacement but as a peripheral part of their overall brand strategy, allowing them to maximise their exposure to their markets.

As mentioned, social networking and the ability to update accounts like Twitter, Facebook and blogs, on the move and improve communication plays a big part in the mobile web and web in general. At a seminar we attended last week, one of the speakers Joe Hughes from Yomego suggested the theory that in the future social networking will take a more focuses approach where users in certain communities will have their own social networking and communication sites to discuss their interests, hence allowing advertisers to be more focuses aswell. Whether or not this happens to the extent he suggested is debatable, but the web definitely looks set to continue to embrace this social and community aspect of communication and generating content and the role the mobile web plays in this will continue to increase.

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