Not only is social media a great way to create a better relation with your customers, it can also be a powerful sales tool. Here’s a perfect example:
Stena Line’s Christmas campaign for cosmetics and perfume 2009 included a Facebook application in the form of a quiz, called “The Christmas gift quiz”. After having taken the quiz, the user was matched to a specific profile. Each profile was linked to a list of matching Christmas gifts.
6000 people took the quiz. Through social ads (“Person X has taken the Stena Line Christmas Quiz – he’s a Gentleman | Comment | Like | Take the Quiz”) the quiz was also visible to all their friends. A Facebook user has in average 120 friends. This means that 6,000×120=720,000 users were exposed to the Stena Line brand. This, in turn, means a cost of approximately 1 Euro per person in brand acknowledgement
This was an integrated campaign combining both print, e-newsletter and PR 2.0, i.e. reach out to shopping and make up bloggers with an offer to run competitions on their own blogs with Stena Line products as prizes.
Stena Line used Google Analytics to follow up the statistics regarding the campaign. Here are the results:
13% sales increase in cosmetics and perfumes.
100% increase in visitors to the Stena Line shopping pages.
Why was this campaign so successful?
1. It was a relevant – timed with Christmas shopping
2. The element of game/entertainment was included
3. Background research was made regarding which bloggers to talk to, to help spread the message
4. It was an integrated campaign, on-line/off-line combined
As you might have noticed, I love social media weather it sells or not, but it is so much easier to motivate to other people with this type of statistics!
The Red Cross has raised $5 million dollars through $10 dollar donation via text messages for the Haitian earthquake victims. Google has made a $1 million dollar donation.
The blog Mashable has put together a list of companies and sites donating and/or creating services to donate money:
Zynga: The social gaming company has added virtual goods to its games — including Farmville — that go toward Haiti relief. So far, the effort has raised $1.2 million according to Social Times.
Skype: The VoIP service has sent $2 vouchers to all of its customers in Haiti, allowing them to make up to one hour’s worth of calls to U.S.
Salesforce: The CRM software provider has set up a donation matching program: i.e. for every $1 you donate to Red Cross or World Vision, Salesforce will also give $1, up to $200,000 total.
T-Mobile: According to CNET, the carrier has dropped all charges for calls and texts to Haiti through the end of the month. Other carriers are waving charges for the donation text message that has been so successful for the Red Cross.
MyYearbook: The social network is allowing members to donate their virtual currency to the Haiti Relief Fund. So far, members have pledged $3.5 billion in “LunchMoney.” We’ve followed up with the company to see how much real world money that equals.
GoDaddy: The domain registrar has donated $500,000 to relief efforts.
Facebook: The company is leveraging its “Disaster Relief on Facebook” Page to spotlight ways that members can get involved. Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg blogged about the effort earlier today.
Twingly Live is a new application making it possible to sponsor real time services for media web sites. The first business case is a special version for the Climate Conference in Gothenburg, sponsored by Vattenfall. In this case, the application is fully integrated in one of the largest Swedish news sites, dn.se and, off course, it’s real time. The Cop15 Twingly Live is showing news articles that tweets with the hashtag #cop15 are linking to.
This is a good way for companies to get real time feedback and input on a specific subject. As the corporate world becomes more and more transparent thanks to social media, it’s important that companies start living their brand, otherwise, it might seem they’re high jacking a topic rather than contributing to and supplying a good overview of the real time conversation taking place on the Internet regarding a specific topic.
Vattenfall has been questioned in different social channels. Twingly Live is a good way for them to follow the discussion and also giving them an opportunity to act and communicate with their critics.
What would you like to have a live stream about? Amarone wines? Middle aged women snowboarding? Rare orchids? The possibilities are endless!
/ylva.
Last summer, I got HelloTxt; a tool that allows me to update my statuses in different social channels on the same time via MSN. Cool, I thought, and added Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Then I changed my mind. I only wanted to use LinkedIn and Twitter for business purposes, via HelloTxt, and Facebook for private stuff. It’s embarrassing, but I have to admit it, I didn’t succeed in removing Facebook from HelloTxt, so all my business status posts were shown in all 3 channels. However, I made a very valuable discovery. People were more active and responsive to my status updates, even business related ones, on Facebook then on Twitter and LinkedIn.
With over 350 million active users and growing, especially in the age group 35-65, as well as 3.5 million people becoming fans of a Facebook page every day (the business equivalent to a profile), Facebook is a marketing force to reckon with. And not only for B2C products targeting young people.
Possibilities for your company to ba active on Facebook:
- Start a page; connect with your customers, start discussions, keep up the dialogue
- Use event postings to promote off-line activities
- Use discussions as on-line customer service or recruitment
- Get photos and films from fans, and keep their interest by letting tag themselves in the photos.
- Entertain with apps, especially sticky ones that make your customers want to come back.
- Advertise – Facebook gives you a unique possibility to be very narrow and specific in communicating with your target group.
- Use social ads, they are very powerful (X is now a fan of Cordovan. Would you like to become a fan to?)
- Create a marketplace and sell your products
- Be mobile
Now that the cold holds the whole of Sweden in a tight grip, the use of touch screen mobile phones becomes almost impossible – at least outside. Luckily enough, for all of us who can’t wait until we’re home or at work to call, sms or twitter on our phones, Dots Gloves have developed special gloves, tailor made for iPhone (hope they work on other touch screen phones too).
I’ve e-mailed them to ask if their gloves work on other touch screen phones (I have a SonyEricsson Xperia myself) and I’ll let you know as soon as they get back to me, ‘cause man, do I need a pair. In the mean time, you can join them on Facebook.
Take it easy out there in the ice and snow. And remember; watch out where the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow!
/ylva.
Most people I know have new year resolutions like; ”start working out”, “lose weight”, “stop smoking”, “spend more time with the kids”. The HubSpot season’s greetings card, however, can inspire to another type of new years’ resolution:
Or, if you’re more into eBuniessthan social media, this greeting is for you:
David Armano, Dachis Group, recently wrote a post on the Harvard blog, Conversation Starter predicting the social media trends for 2010. In short, according to Armano, social media in 2010 will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive. And this is why:
1. Social media begins to look less social
Armano writes; “With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive.”
This is the social media natural selection. With the existing overload of information, people start looking for specific content in specific channels such as branch communities.
“The bottom line is that users are willing to pay for social network content as long as sites cater to specific market niches as opposed to broader, mainstream audiences,” according to eMarketer.
2. Corporations look to scale
Armano predicts corporations will begin to incorporate social media initiatives on a larger scale, moving beyond their one-off marketing experiments and general communication activity.
When companies realize that social media can help them get more efficient when it comes to brand building activities, customer relations, information searching and news monitoring and customer support, there will be an attitude change and instead of limiting access to different social media channels, they will encourage it instead.
According to the Social Media examiner, research supports this prediction. For example, 94% of companies sponsoring online communities plan to increase their social networking support as well as engage with other social media tools, according to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte.
3. Social business becomes serious play
Armano predicts companies will use entertainment, especially in the form of games, in their social media activities in order to incentivize the users. Just look at how popular FarmVille on Facebook has grown – not to say the least here at our office
Here is more proof from Social Media Examiner to support the prediction:
Games rank #1 in top-performing mobile applications, followed by social networking apps, according to a recent report by Distimo. Games and networking are often closely related in many social media environments.
A great example of this emerging trend: Volkswagen recently went 100% mobile for their GTI launch and created a virtual game via the Apple App Store. It includes a chance to compete to win one of six limited-edition 2010 GTIs. This is a great example of social media “game” marketing—and relates to trend #5.
4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
Armano writes “ If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely that you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.”
Hopefully, your company’s social media policy will be inspirational rather than a bunch of restrictions.
5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline Armano predicts “With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices.”
Using the mobile to post tweets during seminars and events is perfect as well as taking notes for blog posts while on the run and following up your news feed on Facebook. A computer isn’t always the primary Internet access device anymore. This is even more true in the developing countries where the number one Internet access device is a mobile phone.
6. Sharing no longer means e-mail
Armano predicts that users will choose to share information on their social networks rather than via e-mail. For instance, he mentions that The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And Netoptions’ e-newsletter tool, BizWizard offers the possibility to share content in an e-newsletter via different social networks.
The use of social intranets to share information will also help limiting the number of “all”-e-mails in our inboxes.
I think David Armano is definitely on the right track. However, now that companies have become aware of both the possibilities and limitations of social media, they will become more careful and reflective before engaging in social media activities. Therefore, my personal bet is on using social media as tools for information searching and news monitoring. I also think that the benefits of using social media as customer service are easy to measure and understand and will therefore be very popular.
The good thing about trend predictions is that most people only read them when the future is yet to come, and do not go back to them to see if the forecasts were correct. With 2010 not being that far away, I hope you will only remember the predictions that actually came true. If not, I’ll blame Armano and his crystal ball.
/ylva.
What if there were physical hyperlinks IRL that could give information from other people on what they thought about a certain restaurant, shop or museum? Wouldn’t that be cool?
Well, it seems it’s already reality. This is how it works; Google has sent out over 100.000 window decals to local businesses in the US that have been most sought out or researched on google.com and Google Maps. Each decal has a QR code on it. The user scans the code with his/her mobile phone (using the camera) and the codes takes the user to that business’ Place Page. Here, the user finds reviews, get a coupon (if offered by that business) and has the possibility to “star” that business as a place to remember. Google puts it like this: “This launch is part of our overall effort — online and offline — to provide you with the best local business results whenever you’re trying to figure out where to go, whether it’s a trendy Cuban restaurant in Philly, a comics shop in L.A., a hip hotel in NYC or a little bit of photographic history in Rochester, N.Y.”
Isn’t this great?!? Now, all we have to do is to make it international and not just a US-thing.
/ylva.
Every now and then we actually get the time to sit down and reflect how we can work better and exceed our clients expectations. Yes, I know, it sounds like bull*, but at least this is a nice photo from our project management meeting in one of our meeting rooms (New York).
Just needed to show how extremely good the iPhone camera is
