Hello, we are social. We’re a global conversation agency with offices in Singapore, New York, London, Paris, Milan, Munich, Sydney & São Paulo. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media.
We’re a new kind of agency, but conversations between people are nothing new. Neither is the idea that ‘markets are conversations’.
We’re already helping adidas, Heinz, Unilever, Heineken, eBay, Jaguar, Intel, Moët & Chandon & Expedia.
If you’d like to chat about us helping you too, then give us a call on +65 9146 5356 or drop us an email.
Crackdown on social media in parts of Asia
In China, police arrested six and shut down 16 websites after rumours spread online that military vehicles were on the streets of Beijing. As a result, microblogging sites Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo have prevented users commenting on other users’ posts from 31 March to 3 April in a bid to stem the spread of news, even though they can still use other functions such as “retweet” or post on their own channels.
We aim to clean Twitter’s space from any abuse. We want to make it a social networking medium and not a tool to create disharmony and disintegration.
Online word-of-mouth source credibility in China
Social business intelligence provider CIC‘s research reveals that consumers find review and recommendation sites the most credible online source of word-of-mouth information, followed by wiki sites and social shopping sites. It’s interesting that crowdsourced information is deemed more credible than what’s disseminated through microblogging sites such as Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo or social networking sites such as Renren, which rank 7th and 10th on the list respectively, even though information on these sites are likely to be shared by close friends and family.
Foreign enterprise accounts on Sina Weibo
We previously wrote about Sina Weibo’s 130,565 enterprise accounts, of which a large majority are ran by restaurants. The more intriguing question is, how important is Sina Weibo to foreign enterprises wishing to tap into the 1.4 billion population of China, of which more than half are on the Internet? According to Sina, there are 1060 overseas enterprise Weibo accounts, of which the majority helm from the US, followed by Japan, Australia, UK and France. Sina also claims that 143 Fortune 500 companies are on Weibo. Even though it’s not an overwhelming figure, it’s as good a start as any considering that Sina Weibo is not available in English.
Spending on digital marketing continues to rise
According to a survey conducted by Duke University, US marketing budgets will rise by 8.1% over the coming twelve months. This rise will mainly be spent online, with digital marketing budgets forecast to rise 12.8% over the next year, whilst ad spend on traditional media will drop by 0.8%.
The area which will rise most is social media: marketers said that they planned to allocate 7.4% of their overall budgets to social media in the coming year.
L’Oreal has a team of 400 staff working in social media
At Wednesday’s Facebook Marketing Conference in London, L’Oreal CMO Marc Menesguen revealed that L’Oreal has a team of 400 staff working in social media who post new content on Facebook everyday:
It’s a lot of work and requires a lot of commitment. The digital revolution is on at L’Oreal and we are integrating digital and social as early as possible in the marketing process.
Tumblr now on Timeline Similar to Pinterest and Instagram, your Tumblr posts will now appear on your Facebook Timeline in addition to your News Feed when you choose the “send to Facebook” option from Tumblr, whereby your Tumblr activities such as “reblogging”, “liking” or posting will be grouped together just like Pinterest pins and Instagram photos for easy viewing. This option is adjustable through users’ blog settings.
10.5 billion minutes spent on Facebook daily, what’s Timeline’s effect? According to a tidbit of info released by Facebook, in January users spent an average of 10.5 billion minutes on the site daily, excluding mobile – or around twelve and a half minutes each a day.
This increase has mainly come from a growth in the userbase: aggregate minutes per day increased 57% and average minutes per user per day increased 14% year-on-year.
Nonetheless, it’s unclear whether Timeline is driving a boost in engagement, in addition to the figures above. Inside Facebook detailed a few studies which have been released about Timeline engagement rates, but the small sample size, coupled with the important caveat that most engagement takes place in the News Feed, means that it’s essentially impossible to draw a verifiable conclusion. The most reliable study comes from Edgerank Checker, which has looked at over 3,500 Pages and they have struggled to find anything which suggests Timeline has a discernible impact on engagement.
It goes to show that for businesses with multiple small branches – say, McDonalds – there’s value in having both a corporate Page, and a local Page for each store.
Facebook expands Sponsored Stories, keeps Offers niche for now Facebook has expanded Sponsored Stories in the News Feed, with a new ‘Page Like’ unit that includes the page’s profile image and thumbnails of more friends who are connected to the page.
Although the change applies to all new Page Likes – sponsored or unsponsored – it’s fair to say the greater impact will be for Sponsored Stories, as the old News Feed Sponsored Stories were easily missed.
Starting today through April 18, applications will be open for sixteen promising vloggers to take part in three months of intimate educational workshops held on Google+ Hangouts. Each vlogger will receive $5,000 worth of video equipment and more than $10,000 worth of promotion on and off YouTube. Participants will also receive mentoring from industry experts, such as iJustine, one of the most successful vloggers and content creators on YouTube!
Finally, in a busy week for YouTube, they’ve launched YouTube Slam, where users can create their own video duels, and people can vote for which video they prefer. Although YouTube has been experimenting with this for a few weeks, it’s the first time users can manage the game themselves by choosing the videos included. Nice.
LinkedIn updates ‘People You May Know’
LinkedIn has launched an update to ‘People You May Know’, one of the site’s features which helps users grow their network. The biggest change is its now possible to filter by company/university, to find relevant contacts more easily.
Google+ adds new features
Google+ continues to add new features in their seemingly desperate attempts to get more active users. The latest new features include a series of apps in Hangouts, including a face-to-face poker game, and Google Effects.
The Economist reaches one million Facebook fans
Political magazine The Economist reached a million Facebook fans last week, an impressive milestone considering Time and the Wall Street Journal haven’t even reached half a million.
It’s noteworthy how they’ve set their Page up to cater to a global audience – re-posting stories at different times to hit different markets. Spot on.
Heineken unveils bottle designed by two Facebook fans
Beer brand Heineken has released a limited edition bottle which was designed by Facebook fans. The competition asked fans to design a bottle and then pair it with another in the gallery, and it attracted 30,000 entries. Nice.
Arby’s, an American fast-food chain is offering Facebook Credits in return for in-store purchases, thereby driving greater footfall.
In similar news, Pepsico has announced a tie in with reward company Kiip to offer fitness enthusiasts ‘achievement rewards’ when they log a run through fitness apps such as Nexercise and MapMyRun.
After a workout, bike ride or run users are rewarded with PepsiCo’s Propel Zero drinks mix packets.
Econsultancy’s David Moth drew a salient conclusion from the two campaigns:
The two examples are slightly different – Pepsico is offering physical rewards for digital engagement while Arby’s is offering digital rewards for physical purchases – but in essence they are part of the same trend. Consumers have come to expect discounts and rewards and increasingly we are seeing that brands are willing come up with the goods.
Samsung in search for Olympic bloggers Samsung is searching for 100 bloggers to blog for them during the Olympics and join their Samsung Global Blogger (SGB) programme. Winners will blog and produce a daily show across the entire Olympic Games period using Samsung products, including the Samsung Galaxy Note, which the company wants to position as the perfect blogging device.
Spotify puts over 1,000 years of music on Facebook Timeline
Spotify have launched a really cool Facebook Timeline, which goes through 1,000 years of music history, and lets users discover some music they might otherwise have missed. On song.
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