Here’s what happened at Facebook’s Hack Sydney event

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Opening of Facebook Studio's Sydney Hack session. Facebook Hack Sydney – slide highlights how your fans (i.e. customers) are about retention and media is required for reach (i.e. consumers).

I attended Facebook Studio’s Hack Sydney event at the Carriageworks and wanted to share some of the ideas and themes that resonated with me from a marketing and a 7P model perspective (7P model – using social media to refresh the traditional corporation).

Hack Sydney is one of around 30 global Facebook hack events educating brands and agencies to better engage people using Facebook.  The half day event had around 20 speakers, many coming from Facebook offices from around the world.  This was Facebook’s only hack event for Australia and New Zealand.

Case study shows how Yelp.com ratings can lead to 9% revenue increase

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When seeking senior management approval for a social media based marketing strategy, case studies are usually a ‘must have’ to help turn your strategy into a commercial reality.

Matching form and substance is tough to do (image credit: Carlos Porto)

In a working paper titled ‘Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com’ the author Michael Luca, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, states “a one-star increase in (a) Yelp rating lead(s) to a 5-9 percent increase in revenue”.

While the headline stat of a ‘5-9% increase in revenue’ directly relevant to the restaurant industry, here’s a couple of industry-agnostic insights that could be relevant as you work to get your social media strategy across the line.

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How Australian brands can produce better social media content

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Jeremiah Owyang recently published a post that states the audience needs are changing.  They want ‘faster, smaller and social’.

For better or for worst, mainstream Australian social media is concentrated within Facebook and Twitter.  With Australian audiences being exposed to so much content, from so many different sources, brands are under constant pressure to publish content that will earn the ongoing attention of their target consumers.

The problem is that traditional corporate marketing and PR teams are not built to regularly churn out unique pieces of content for various (social) channels.

So how do Australian brands evolve from strategy that includes a post every Friday that asks ‘plans for the weekend?’ and a post every Monday that asks ‘how was the weekend?’.

 

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This is why more Australian brands are not engaging in social media

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A report by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth states adoption of social media by 500 Fortune companies is static.

The percentage of Fortune 500 corporations that blogged in 2010 and 2011 didn’t change from 23%.  There was a slight increase in the use of Twitter and Facebook.  Twitter increased from 60% to 62% and Facebook increased from 56% to 58%.

 

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How social brands can manage an online PR crisis

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Did you follow the media coverage about Sony and Amazon’s cloud security issues and the Qantaslabour dispute?   What I found interesting about the coverage was the amount of focus given on the respective brand’s online response.In the cases listed above, the brand’s process was considered newsworthy.  In the era of the social consumer, effective online communication is an important element of good customer service.Brands with an online/social presence need to refresh their traditional PR crisis management strategies to include socially enabled customers.  Here’s some ideas how socialised brands can structure their online communications during a crisis.

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How can brand advocates guide businesses through the new media maze?

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New media is providing corporations the opportunity to reassess commonly accepted marketing practices.  At the top of my list is the marketing/purchase funnel.According to Wikipedia, the marketing/purchase funnel was developed in 1898.  The marketing/purchase funnel suggests to marketers that a customer gets pushed along a purchase path that starts at ‘awareness’ and ends at ‘purchase’.

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Has corporate Australia met the social media expectations of 2008?

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What does Barack Obama’s use of online to redefine political campaigning, Apple’s app store and Google’s Android mobile O/S all have in common?  These events all occurred in 2008.

Like eating ice cream too quickly, my brain hurts thinking about how things have grown/exploded online over the last three years.

In 2008, social media in Australia started to come into it’s own.

Ad:Tech Sydney 2009. From L to R - Jye Smith, Laurel Papworth, Gavin Heaton and me. Photo credit: Gary Hayes

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How to build a content strategy by listening to a two-year old

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Two year old kids are easy to communicate with.  Why?  Compared to adults, their lack of an internal filter leads to genuine and often immediate reactions.

Even though two-year old kids have limited vocabularies, if you pick up the right keywords and piece together their intent, you can (generally) understand what they want.

You don’t need to guess what I’m thinking … Photo credit: Jon Ovington

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Is your brand caught in the ‘pray & spray’ social trap?

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Recently I had the privilege of writing a post for Firebrand Talent titled Online Personal Branding for Introverts.  Firebrand is a web 2.0 enabled recruitment agency that supports the Marketing, Creative and Digital industries.

The premise of my Firebrand guest post is that I recently completed the Myers-Brigg personality assessment.  I was assessed as an INTP (Introvert, Intuition, Thinking and Perception).  In the post I state “introverts prefer to get their energy from spending time alone and reflecting on ideas“.  In contrast, extroverts get their energy from others.

My guest post suggested a couple of tips and tools for introverts to better understand where their energy comes from and to channel it effectively to build their online personal brand.

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