Best Twitter conversation ever

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A lot of what makes a brand stand out is the tone of voice used.  It’s integral to the brand personality and says a lot about the company.

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Here’s the wonderful Innocent with “Stop looking at my bottom” written on the bottom of their cartons.

And Google with a “Stats for nerds” hyperlink

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Tesco Mobile took this the next level and ran riot on Twitter late last year, creating a lot of publicity and making friends along the way (Yorkshire tea, Jaffa Cakes, Cadbury…).  #wishihaddonethis

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Burger King – pretty, pretty cunning

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Burger King are the King of social, imho.  Well within their category anyway.  So whatever they do it’s worth keeping an eye on.  Everyone knows about their controversial Whopper Sacrifice campaign on Facebook that encouraged a spout of Friend Denunciation in return for a free Whopper.  This time the crazy Norwegians have taken the whole Genuine Friend thing a bit further with the Whopper Sellout.  

It was a brave move and must have taken some convincing to the marketing bosses, but I think it was pretty clever.  The value of a real Fan is something new in Facebook marketing, and is definitely an area that is worth exploring and brands investing in. I can’t tell you how many Facebook page competitions I’ve run where the entrants are either compies, or totally physically incapable of enjoying the prize at stake (entrants from India hoping to win a movie pass that evening in Dublin).

How’s Vine doing?

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It will be a while, I imagine before brands will be familiar with and comfortable using Vine. Unlike Instagram you can’t upload ready made videos, so it’s more restrictive and reliant on having someone on board who’s handy with the app and creative with a camera.  Also the six second time limit is a challenge in itself.  Instagram is much more marketeer-friendly with 15 seconds.

How and ever, it’s interesting to look at best practise examples and Social Media Examiner have a great article on the way businesses are using it.  And the ever-excellent Hubspot blog has another suite of examples here.

vine best practise

Valenvine

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Mashable did a great challenge for Valentine’s day using the latest trending social media phenomenon Vine and creating the hashtag #valenvine.

vine, twitter, social media, kerry fitzgerald, consultant

Everyone is saying Vine is the new Pinterest.  If images are king, video is god, I guess.

Since Twitter is backing Vine it’s knocked all the competition sideways.  Viddy must be seething as they turned down an acquisition offer from Twitter… the words Decca and The Beatles spring to mind.

Brands are already advertising on Vine and celebs are entertaining their fans with it.  It’s going to be  a great way for brands to garner interaction through competitions.  However, one major drawback is that infuriatingly they have only launched it for i-phones.  I naively thought those days were over, since android users far outweigh i-phone users now and are steadily and dramatically increasing year on year.  Droids – you can browse the videos using Vine Flow, but isn’t that a bit like watching people enjoy a great meal through the restaurant window?

So long as Twitter continue protecting people from unsolicited promoted messages and asinine branding, I suspect it is going to enjoy a Pinterest-like ascent.

Update:  June 2013 – it’s on Android now….flawed, but available. For exampleon the i-phone you can search for people that you’re not connected to…on the Android at the moment you can only invite people by text or email… or twitter. Which is quite laborious.

Small businesses shouldn’t have to struggle

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This article from Silicon Republic demonstrates the need for social media but reinforces the fact that many small companies struggle to implement it.  It does eat into your staff’s time, but I can show you ways to create an efficient social media strategy that minimises time spent and resources used.  Social media is a fabulous way to keep consumers up to date and aware of your services and products and needn’t be the headache that pushes you away from it.

Ways I can help:

  • Identify essential social media channels
  • Develop a content strategy that pushes out your key messages
  • Determine the most suitable candidates in the organisation to post, monitor and maintain the sites – or do that for you
  • Workshop a conversation calendar that takes the head-scratching away from what to post

social media, small businesses

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/30008-small-businesses-struggle-w#

Corporate Facebook page parody

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This Facebook page is doing the rounds on Twitter… @rickygervais just sent it to @Glinner – two of the biggest tweeters in the UK.facebook, parody, social media, strategy, content strategy

Proving the rather obvious point that brands need interesting and relevant content and not just blatant self-promoting drone and facebook, parody, social media, strategy, content strategy
quick wins all the time.   It’s pretty easy to keep posting up photo caption competitions, photos of sunset beaches and cute cat videos in a bid to get “likes” and “people talking about you”.  This social media whoring will not benefit the brand in any sense – whatever the communication objectives are, and it’s unlikely people will even remember the brand name even if they do engage and like and share and so on.

The very core of my business is establishing communication pillars that will help sustain a brand’s social media (and other) presence long-term.  Certainly branding is an important part of the mix, but as communications with consumers evolve, the key is to find a way to present interesting and valuable content to your target audience that will consistently put your brand in a relevant light.

Take South Africa Uncorked – a project I am working on to promote South African wines in Ireland.  In a nutshell, we establish a very clear target – male foodies who are interested in wine and who would like to broaden their horizons and improve their wine tasting skills.  Our objective is to put South African wines on their consideration list when they are shopping for wine to go with a meal that they are preparing.  The facts are firstly that this target is currently more familiar with wines from other countries, and secondly that South African wine is a robust tipple, best appreciated with food.  And so we map out our content strategy to give this cohort tips about wine, recipes that go well with South African wines, information about the country and its wine heritage.  We’ve loads to write about now, and the aim is that it will resonate with our audience and build a connection that goes above and beyond, at best generic entertainment, at worst spam.

Question is will Facebook take it down or will they have a sense of humour about it?facebook, parody, social media, strategy, content strategy