I recently wrote that one of the trends in social media for 2010 was to be games and entertainment. The fact is that there are now at least 8 Facebook games with over 18 million players. In comparison, the game that’s ranked as the biggest online game in the world, World of Warcraft, has only 11 million players.
According to the Swedish news magazine, Fokus, here are the most popular Facebook games:
- 1. Name: Farmville.
What do you do: Grow plants on your farm.
Number of active players: 73,7 million.
- 2: Name: Cafe World.
What do you do: Run your own café.
Number of active players: 30,1 million.
- 3: Name: Happy Aquarium.
What do you do: Take care of and decorate an aquarium.
Number of active players: 28,4 million.
- 4: Name: Fishville.
What do you do: Basically the same thing as Happy Aquarium.
Number of active players: 24,6 million.
- 5: Name: Texas Hold’em.
What do you do: Play poker.
Number of active players: 23,7 million.
- 6: Name: Mafia Wars.
What do you do: Build a strong mafia family together with Facebook friends.
Number of active players: 22,7 million.
- 7: Name: Pet Society.
What do you do: Get a pet to play with.
Number of active players: 20,6 million.
- 8: Name: Petville.
What do you do: Basically the same thing as Pet Society.
Number of active players: 18,2 million.
Most of the popular social games listed above have a caring and nurturing dimension (taking care of plants, fish, pets and a family). The fact that the Facebook audience differs from the regular online players have made game developers adapt their games to fit this new target group. These social games are made very simple to get started with as a lot of players on Facebook have no or little experience from TV or computer games. They need to be rich in awards and news in order to become popular.
This flexibility and constant flow of new stuff is probably the explanation to the quick success of these games. For instance, only a couple of days after the earthquake in Haiti, a special white oat was made available for purchase. The profit the game developing company behind Farmville, Zynga, made from selling this oat was sent to the earthquake victims.
The possibilities of engaging users on Facebook are huge. This is also relevant for companies who have Facebook Pages, i.e. relevant, interesting or plain fun applications make the users come back. If you haven’t already, also reed: Why should companies be present on Facebook?
According to Global Language Monitor, Twitter was the hottest word 2009. An automatic analysis program was used to find out the most popular English word on the Internet. The same method was used to find the most popular name, Barack Obama, and that “The King of Pop” (Michael Jacksson’s nickname) is the phrase that best characterizes 2009.
According to the Swedish magazine, Språk, Google’s top list over the users’ search words is another good method to find “the word of the year”, then the list looks like this:
1. Michael Jacksson
2. Facebook
3. Tuenti (a Spanish speaking network site)
4. Twitter
In Sweden, the most popular search word is Facebook and Spotify is the search word that increases the fastest in popularity.
A bit of pop, social media sites and the US president… 2009 in a nutshell.
Ad-ology’s study of 1100 small business owners, Small Business Marketing Forecast, shows that 50 % of small businesses think that lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking.
Percentage of how useful the most popular benefits were perceived:
50 %: Generating leads
45 %: Keeping up with the industry
44 %: Monitoring online conversation
38 %: Finding vendors/suppliers
Even though 67 % stated that social media is a good way to increase business, 39 % of those surveyed said they did not plan to use social networking in their marketing plan in 2010. Why? Well, I guess it’s quite common to think that our customers aren’t computer savvy, not online and have no clue when it comes to social media. But is it really so? I think it’s time to stop thinking that our target groups are on a caveman level. It’s neither fair nor true.
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 whether 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:
