This week is Social Media Week in London with a range of events taking place including two presentations here in our Shoreditch office!  This years theme is Open & Connected reflecting on the global impact of social media and its role as a catalyst in driving cultural, political, economic and social change. Tug are delivering two presentations this week around this topic.

Marshall McLuhan and Social Media – Wednesday 25th September 2013

The first looks at Canada’s famous theorist, Marshall McLuhan, who was of the belief that media acts as an extension of a persons sense or perception e.g. hearing, sight, touch etc. which is even more relevant in the age of social media. The emergence of social media marketing becomes a lot clearer when looking at it from his revolutionary perspective.

How to Build a Social Media Community from Scratch – Friday 27th September 2013

Building a robust community on social media can often be an expensive and time-consuming prospect. Targeting, audience profiling, brand tone of voice and conversational planning are all key parts to getting the community right from the get-go. Tug recently undertook the task of building the social media community for Bombardier Beer, creating one of the largest ale communities on Facebook. In this presentation we show what needs to be considered and how we got Bombardier’s community from 0 – 75,000 fans.

To view the full schedule for Social Media Week, click here: http://socialmediaweek.org/london/schedule

 

The fashion industry takes advantage of social media in various ways; brands now use social networks to connect with their audience, approach consumers, whilst getting to know their purchasing habits and preferences. As a result social media strategies can be used to enhance the brand content and equity.

Some fashion brands have already understood that and have accomplished a great deal, gaining a large following on their different social media channels be it Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or Vine. Two of these brands are Burberry and Mulberry, on the other hand some huge brands either are struggling to implement their social strategy or are not even trying!

The way brands engage with consumers is crucial and social media is requisite especially in today’s hypercompetitive climate.

London Fashion Week is one event in particular that has hugely embraced social media and digital enhancement this year.

Live streamed catwalks have become more and more common and have been massively used during NYC & London events. It was possible to view the catwalk shows in New York and London from their respective official websites (http://newyork.mbfashionweek.com/live for NY & http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/live.aspx for London), but also on other channels such as Twitter, or the LFW’s YouTube page.

However, this is not the sole improvement, Instagram has also played a very important role bringing live updates to its users. Photographs and videos were posted straight from the catwalks, as well as backstage, giving the exclusivity of the event a brand new dimension. The worldwide reputed fashion event was made available to the masses bringing high fashion into our daily routine.

This year Pinterest, which unveiled a Fashion week photo hub, including no less than100 influencers (designers, bloggers & others) was a core focus for a lot of brands.

London Fashion Week openly embraces social media in order to increase their exposure to a wider audience. This initiative came from a deep desire by the British Fashion Council to spread British Fashion. They want LFW to not only be for the ‘Fashion elite’ & the celebrities but the British Fashion Council counts on social networks to encourage consumers to contribute and share their opinions about fashion and trends. Accordingly, if you can’t get VIP access to the catwalks, the catwalks will come to you. Live streaming shows available on your mobile, plus live updates on Instagram & Pinterest, were not the only initiatives launched at LFW. In addition, digital screens around London’s Underground stations will broadcast fashion news.

As Wallblog magazine highlighted, the most mentioned brand in social media during LFW was Burberry. The British heritage brand is one of the few successfully using social media and has once more shown its proficiency, creating content for Instagram, Vine & Pinterest but also live streaming its catwalk shows on its own website & Twitter.

It will be interesting to see which brand will have improved its social media strategy for the Fashion week in Milan and Paris.

Last week Airbnb launched a six-day long social campaign encouraging Vine users to submit a video in order to be selected to feature in a full-length movie using the moniker “Hollywood Vines”.  This is an interesting twist in using the new social network to promote individuals as a wider part of a film’s production.

This campaign was monitored via Airbnb’s Twitter account, where ten tweets were posted daily with instructions to shoot the scenes. The full movie will then be produced for a September release on the Sundance channel. Wired  reported a slow start to the campaign, but this picked up due to a number of online influencers including Ashton Kutcher (see photo).

 

The campaign seems particularly challenging. We can assume that the tight timescale of six days, made it difficult to secure enough footage, as well the possibility of users finding it difficult to follow scene instructions.These could be factors that make the compilation of the final video problematic.

If you are curious about Airbnb’s accommodation, you can browse some Vine videos via the website Seenive.com. When searching for the Vine videos with the #airbnb hashtag, you will find both happy and unhappy customers providing reviews.

Airbnb has a proactive social media strategy, trying to engage with its community in a fun way. The full movie will be available on the 13^th of September, good luck to Airbnb!

Facebook have updated their Pages Terms in order to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to create and administer promotions on a Facebook Page. Facebook have also removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps.

Now, promotions may be administered on Facebook Page Timelines and in apps on Facebook:

• Collect entries by having users post on the Page or comment/like a Page post
• Collect entries by having users message the Page
• Utilise likes as a voting mechanism

However, as before, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.

These updates will enable more businesses to use Facebook to launch promotions without expensive app builds.

You might be regular embedder of YouTube videos, Tweets and possibly even Vines too. Well if you’re a serial embedder (and not a publisher that already had access to the tool) you’re in luck. As of today you’ll be able to start embedding public Facebook posts to your website or blog.
Brands should already be taking note of the opportunities presented here as it’s a move that  strongly enhances the discoverability of pages and their content.

Going to a concert or an event? Booking tickets online? Social sharing buttons on ticket buying websites are now reducing the cost of the ticket price, incentivising you to share with your friends that you are attending. Companies are keen to get their customers to advertise their products and services on their social media profiles, incentivising them to do so is a quick and clear way to get this to happen. The math is quite simple, if you have 300 friends on Facebook or 100 followers on Twitter, the worth of those impressions from a customer providing positive word of mouth can be valued much higher than £0.50 (if you were to pay for this in display advertising).

Expect to see social incentives popping up on the websites you regularly use such as the ones below:

 

The latest piece of content making waves and circulating via social media currently is a collection of the “greatest” Vine videos available on the internet.

For those that aren’t already aware, Vine is a mobile app produced by Twitter that allows you to create and modify short video-clips six seconds in length.

Well worth a watch!

Content that is interesting and engaging is the key sought after mix for brands seeking exposure on social media. Finding a niche or displaying interesting content keeps a community engaged, a mix that has proven to be the key to unlocking wider exposure and attract interest from friends of friends. Nearly half of people aged 18 to 24 (43 per cent) prefer to use social networks to look for content compared to search engines such as Google and Bing, according to a study by video search website Blinkx. The company surveyed more than 2,000 UK adults about their online sharing habits and looked at how these change across different age groups.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/good-content-is-made-for-sharing/4007421.article

…but technically this is not news: the social blogging site Tumblr has been an open platform for online advertisers since May 2012, the first campaign it ran was for Adidas. However, it is only since Tumblr was bought by Yahoo in June 2013 that we have seen brands experimenting and testing their Tumblr marketing campaigns with greater curiosity and ingenuity.

In a nutshell, Tumblr’s key selling point is the ease with which brands can create and post original content in the form of photos, videos, texts etc., and with which they can share this content with many Tumblr users. The best work I’ve seen so far was produced by the Art Institute of Chicago: to promote its new exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. The institute created a Tumblr profile page specifically for a fictional character, Mr Jean-Paul Brunier, a 19^th-century Parisian fashion enthusiast who travels through time to 21^st-century Chicago, and posts his observations about contemporary fashion. Genius!

With every online advertising platform which has come into being, we have seen at least one exciting new innovation. Google Adwords has perfected paid search based on keyword bidding and Facebook Advertising has allowed us to show highly targeted ads to the right audiences based on Facebook users’ interests. Now, Tumblr seems set on pushing the boundaries of digital marketing through the sharing of engaging content.

Fortunately for digital marketers, analytics tools have already been developed to measure the performance of Tumblr activity, using variables such as total number of interactions and consumer reaction.

So what are YOU waiting for? Is Tumblr the right platform for promoting your business? Then do your research and get started!

For more information: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2284671/creating-a-meaningful-tumblr-campaign

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Since a feminist campaigner was abused on Twitter last week for supporting a woman’s face to appear on UK banknotes, the social network has decided to introduce a ‘report abuse’ button. This decision was made after thousand of Twitter users petitioned for the social network to take action.

Twitter ‘trolls’ attacked Caroline Criado-Perez with rape threats as they disapproved of her campaign. Criado-Perez, having contacted the police regarding the abusive tweets, criticised Twitter over the length of time it had taken them to take action in order to prevent further abusive tweets. More than 50,000 people signed a petition over a 48 hour period campaigning for Twitter to implement an easier method for reporting abuse. According to the Twitter UK manager, Tony Wong, the ‘report abuse’ button will suspend accounts that are found to have breached the rules of Twitter once reported.

The introduction of the ‘report abuse’ button has been criticised by Labour as an ‘inadequate response’ to online abuse. It’s true that a lot more needs to be done to help prevent abuse on social network sites, as well as the internet as a whole. However, at least Twitter has listened to its users and managed to help protect the online community one step further in the large task of trying to prevent abuse online.