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Analysis is a crucial part of social media management. It’s not enough to simply schedule Facebook posts, tweets and updates on a regular basis. While this will give you a regular stream of content, it provides very little feedback or evaluation.
By Ahmed Ahmed, Senior Account Manager at Clarity
Monitoring your social media community is important because it allows you to:
All of the above should feed into your thought process as you generate ideas for new content, changing the weekly ‘what-shall-we-post-this-time?’ into an informed, continuous improvement process.
These tools are free to use, and offer a baseline level of insight for social media managers. They focus on monitoring your own channels’ performance.
Features
Found within the Facebook Page Manager. Provides statistics on: Likes, reach, visits, individual post performance and audience demographics.
Pros
Detailed age demographics, reveals sources of page likes and times when community most active. Also allows easy monitoring of competitor pages.
Cons
Difficult to determine numbers of likes, comments, shares day by day.
Cost
Free
Features
Found within Twitter, via Settings>Twitter ads. Provides statistics on response to tweets (including clicks on links), follower growth
Pros
Follower interests provided, as well as other accounts they follow, ‘Websites’ tool allows tracking of all links to your site shared by Twitter users
Cons
Very basic demographics compared to Facebook Insights
Cost
Free
Features
Link analytics (if you use the ow.ly shortener), basic reports on profile growth and engagement
Pros
Provides customisable reports for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
Cons
Figures sometimes lag behind real-time, anything beyond very basic stats overview requires spend
Cost
Free overview report, deeper level information requires upgrading to Hootsuite Pro (from $8.99/month) or Enterprise.
Features
Statistics on follower growth, mentions and retweets. Also allows hashtag analysis
Pros
Very detailed, easy to export statistics
Cons
Only analyses one social network: Twitter. Detailed information
Cost
Premium costs $19 per month.
These advanced tools are paid for, and offer a deeper levels of insight, with access to historical data, and the ability to monitor conversations and identify influencers on given search topics.
Features
Works via queries; searches that you set up for particular terms, which can be refined by excluding other similar but unrelated terms in order to maximise relevance. It provides data on the sources, scale and sentiment (positive or negative)of conversation around topics or brands.
Pros
Sentiment accuracy is high, system can be adjusted to ‘learn’ language patterns, good tool for online reputation management
Cons
Queries can be complex to grasp initially, and may return a high volume of irrelevant results that eat into you allowance (which is based on number of social media mentions monitored)
Cost
Basic package starts at £500/month, rising to £2000 per month for Enterprise packages
Features
Monitors and measures by topics, audience and content, allowing tracking of published assets as they spread organically,
Pros
Collects all publicly available data, attractive data visualisations, customisable detailed reports, more reliable influencer rankings based on expertise as well as size of following
Cons
Can take a while to collect data,
Cost
Entry price of £500/month for basic package.
It’s been over a year since Vine burst onto the social media scene introducing us all to the world of 6 second videos.
There’s no surprise that some brands have taken to this new channel like a duck to water but not everyone is getting is right.
To understand more about what content works on Vine we’ve taken a look around and classified the content into four categories;
The Vine Star – see Jessie Smiles & Curtis Lepore. A love story gone bad.
The Vine artist – see Pinot seemingly bringing to life 2D drawings using stop animation
Brands on Vine - Which brands are getting it right on Vine? Visa, AirBnB and Ford are worth mentioning. They understand the power of good quality content and have integrated a range of visual platforms across their campaigns.
Unfortunately Vining for UK brands isn’t quite up to the standards of our American counterparts. While there are a handful of good examples there are also plentiful examples of poorly thought out Vines.
Vine isn’t like some other social media channels where the marketing assistant or customer service desk can bang out a load of updates. This content takes a little creativity mixed with a steady hand if you want to get it right.
Or alternatively brands should turn to the artists/Viners to create content for them.
A good example
A good example of this comes from Visa. They enlisted the help of stop motion artist/graphic designer Ian Padgham aka @origiful to create some creative and entertaining content to be shared across Visa’s social channels.
Visa sent the artist to the Sochi to document his journey and experience through the medium of Vine which has so far produced some brilliantly engaging content.
And the not so good
But on the other end of the scale you have brands trying to do it for themselves. Please stop. There is nothing worse than a half-baked attempt at being funny or creative. You wouldn’t put up a 48 sheet drawn by the marketing intern so please don’t let them near Vine. (No disrespect to all the interns out there. Some of you are by far the most creative and digitally switched on people in the marketing department but for the purpose of this analogy you’re the fall guy.)
What we’re saying is if you’re going to make content which you’re putting out in the public domain spend some time getting the right people on board.
Here’s some examples of brands not quite hitting the mark;
Nissan Europe – making a big brand car manufacturer look like a dodgy second-hand car dealer from Dagenham.
Chelsea FC – has the person behind the camera got as few brain cells as some of the players on the field?
Conclusion
Brand managers – if you’re going to get involve in Vine think strategically. Vine’s might look cheap but that shouldn’t guide your approach. Spend some money, invest some time and create something your customers want to watch, share and enjoy.
by Lucy Kemp, Director at Clarity
Online payments, mobile commerce and even money itself are being disrupted. The 2008 financial crisis has seen a burst of innovative startups looking to disrupt the traditional financial providers.
Read more
There is no doubt that the Clarity team loves a drop of beer, and in July last year our dreams came true when we won one of the UK’s best loved beer brands.
Hobgoblin is the third biggest selling ale in the bottled beer category with a significant online presence: a Wychwood website as well as profiles on Google+, Twitter & Facebook.
Despite having a decent size audience on Facebook (29,000+ by the end of the key Halloween 2012 period), things had stalled.
Hobgoblin called in the services of Clarity to help them reach a younger demographic of drinker, grow their online audience and to develop an ongoing social presence to support the brand’s objective of increasing drinking occasions outside of the core October/Halloween period.
Before developing the strategy, we conducted a detailed review of the previous six months’ activity on the page, its impact on the brand site and consumer feedback via the page. We also looked at the volume and sentiment of brand mentions across the social space.
What stood out was a very strong, loyal following for Hobgoblin that was under-developed on the Facebook page.
The core strategy was to tap into the very high levels of affinity for the brand by creating ongoing content and campaigns that drove much higher engagement and interactions between the brand’s page and its audience.
The second strand to the strategy was in growing the audience. The brand is now the number three in take-home ale, yet in terms of Facebook audience, Hobgoblin ranked below smaller rivals BrewDog, Fullers and Bombardier (who also enjoyed higher engagement levels).
With the brands core audience of 25+ males and females we identified a disparity with who was actually engaging with social media posts.
Engagement levels were skewed towards 35 – 54 year old males. We’re not discriminating against the older audience but it’s well known in marketing terms you always target the younger audience and the oldies will follow.
Clarity took over the brand’s social channels on September 23rd and immediately implemented a creative content strategy.
We knew Hobgoblin fans loved the brand, its imagery and brand identity so we created a bespoke app that took over fans profile and cover images on Facebook. This was downloaded 2,500 times creating some free advertising for Hobgoblin.
We took a different approach to the image led content and using the brands ‘mischievous’ and ‘alternative’ personality subverted popular culture, giving it a Hobgoblin twist. These posts generated on average 2,000+ likes, comments and share.
And importantly we were engaging with the desired 25+ demographic.
And to promote the three new beers introduced by Wychwood Brewery and to support the on-trade activity we ran a series of ‘Spot the Pumpclip’ competition asking fans to send us a picture of the pumpclip in their local. This received 1,000 entries across social platforms.
The results so far have exceeded expectations.
Engagement levels have grown by 75% (using the measurement metric of likes + comments + shares/people reached) since the campaign started.
More use of visuals both product-led and brand-led have driven greater engagement. The most successful post (copy attached in the supporting documentation) saw 5,643 likes, 3,685 shares and 250 comments. This helped increased its reach to 277,000+ consumers, almost 5 times the size of our audience.
Audience growth has been equally spectacular.
Between September 23rd and November 5th, the number of likes doubled from 29,376 to 60,200.
Overall the audience increased by 103% during the campaign (4 times the rate of growth for 2012). October’s growth has been maintained with a further 1,500 organic likes in November.
And to top it all off we’ve been shortlisted for the PR Moment Golden Hedgehog Awards, Best Social Media Campaign 2014.
PR and communications experts are concerned with establishing trust between an organisation and its stakeholders – be they consumers, other businesses, voters or society at large.
No wonder then, that Edelman, one of the world’s largest PR agencies, has carried out a global survey into the public levels of trust in different institutions and organisations. Looking at the UK segment of the research, I’ve cherrypicked some interesting points for discussion.
By Ahmed Ahmed, Senior Account Manager at Clarity
Compared with the 2013 study, there was no difference in the level of trust shown in ‘business’ as a whole: 56%. Trust in both the media and the government, however, fell. Both previously at 47%, they dropped to 41 and 42%.
A number of political scandals broke last year, from Chris Huhne’s driving offences, to the revelations about NSA and GCHQ’s cooperation in internet eavesdropping.
While neither of these can be laid squarely at the feet of the present government, such episodes contribute to growing public suspicion of politics and politicians. ‘Poor performance’ was the top reason survey respondents gave, perhaps an indictment of the slow economic recovery.
The media has also had its share of damaging exposés: the continuing phone hacking saga, the Daily Mail’s attack on Milliband senior, and the BBC salaries and ‘payoffs’ row. The most common reason given for not trusting the media was ‘lack of regulation,’ suggesting the public may want more robust controls on the press.
It seems the trust we place in our handy smartphones and tablets is reflected on a larger scale. Technology was the most trusted industry, scoring 79% (up from 72% last year).
Interestingly for us at Clarity, given our work with Marstons and Aston Manor, the brewing industry scored a high 71%. This was up from 62% last year, due in part, we like to think, to the rising popularity of real ale.
When it comes to distrust, it seems Energy is the new Banking. We’d grown familiar with anti-City sentiment throughout the Recession, but towards the end of 2013, a new ‘villain’ emerged on the public stage: the energy companies. They dropped from a 38% to a 32% trust level.
Banking, however, did rise from 29% to 32% trust, perhaps indicating some ‘green shoots’ of recovery for the sector’s reputation in the public eye.
Leaving aside the warm- and-fuzzy side of things, there are clear business consequences when an organisation fails to build trust with its public.
In the Trust Barometer, participants reported that when they distrusted a company, they:
And conversely, when participants trusted the company, they:
Communicating the right message to the right people, in the right place, in the right way, is absolutely essential.
PR agencies like Edelman, and of course Clarity, spend time getting to know their clients’ audiences, and craft strategies designed to build trust. They do this not simply via traditional press activity or events, but through online interaction and engagement as well, harnessing a multi-way conversation.
In the age of microblogging and online reviews, when a single disgruntled customer can achieve instant global publicity, it’s vital to be able to respond and rebuild trust rapidly and continually.
Trust is no longer the end goal; it’s the whole process.
