Are brands ruining #EdBallsDay?
It’s that time of year again.
#EdBallsDay is the top Twitter trend worldwide, and everyone outside the UK frantically searches ‘Ed Balls’ to get in on the joke.
10 of the best social stories & campaigns from April 2016
With the departure of writer Jack Simpson, there’ll be a new source of monthly social roundups.
That source is the new social media executive, Andrew Chrysostom (yes, I did refer to myself in the third person).
Now that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at what’s been hot during social in a month which has been both creatively exciting and innovative.
McDonald’s provides a new template for so-bad-it’s-good TV adverts
For the past two weeks nothing has occupied my mind as fixedly as the McDonald’s Monopoly TV adverts.
The burger giant has generated an incredible amount of word-of-mouth in the UK simply by creating a rather confused, social TV campaign.
Why? And what, if anything, can we learn from it?
What’s the point of social media for luxury brands?
Research from Emerson College’s Engagement Lab, suggests luxury brands performing well in social media engagement often lagged behind in word-of-mouth (WOM) performance.
At the same time, brands who performed well in the WOM arena were making less impact in social media.
Five social media campaigns celebrating women across the globe
Campaigns celebrating female empowerment are being used by brands to advertise everything from deodorant to designer clothes.
And it’s a theme which, if executed right, can resonate well with audiences both female and male alike.
In the last year there have been several high profile campaigns along this theme including the #thisgirlcan campaign by Sport England and Always’ #likeagirl campaign, which both achieved massive levels of reach and engagement.
Facebook & Twitter make UX changes in fight to stay social
Facebook and Twitter may be experiencing contrasting fortunes when it comes to monetising their user base, but they share many of the same problems.
Chief among which is the need to satisfy personal users and business users.
Both platforms need to maintain an enjoyable social network that helps users communicate, while allowing publishers and brands to prosper.
Facebook and Twitter have recently made changes towards these ends. Let’s have a look.
Five reasons Twitter’s character limit increase is a terrible idea
It’s somewhat sad that something as seemingly innocuous as an update to a social media site can cause so much online furore.
Twitter’s recent announcement, in which it said it is poised to increase the tweet character limit from 140 to as much as 10,000, has thrown keyboard warriors everywhere into a frenzy.
Is Pinterest or Instagram better for driving ecommerce?
Marketers are very aware of the potential that social media holds for ecommerce retailers.
In particular, Pinterest and Instagram are proving to be popular with many brands, as the image-based networks enable them to provide engaging content directly to consumer’s devices.
How to create simple brand tone-of-voice guidelines for Twitter
I’ve thrown together a very simple template to allow you to shape your tone of voice on Twitter.
It’s merely a basic form reminding you of what your brand stands for, alongside some examples of good and bad practice.
Consistent tone-of-voice is achieved with the occasional reinforcement of brand values and personality, and is something that most community managers pick up quickly.
New Twitter polls & the opportunities for marketers
Twitter recently launched a new polling feature on its site, and there has already been plenty of discussion around how marketers could use it to their advantage.
But the question remains as to whether this could be a genuinely useful tool through which brands can engage with followers, or whether it is simply a bit of a gimmick.
NFL video content: Should brands police Twitter?
Last week two Twitter accounts, Deadspin and SBNationGif, were taken down after the NFL reported them for sharing its footage.
The footage was, of course, in the form of Vine video, that most popular format for ‘real-time’ sports clips.
With many sports fans now accustomed to searching Twitter for ‘Vine Rooney goal’ or similar (insert joke here, UK soccer fans), these DMCA takedown notices are a big deal.
Is social media a double-edged sword for publishers?
Publishers and social networks have an increasingly symbiotic relationship.
Publishers seek larger audiences and social networks seek the most engaging content to keep users in-app and provide the most compelling context for advertisements.
Is there a danger in this ever-deepening relationship between social media and publishers?