‘Shoot The Show’ is a camera based app that allows users to capture frames of the Topshop catwalk show “as if they were sitting in the front row” snapping away. The sharing of these shots is key to the app’s growth as the people who then see the posts from their friends are the ones that Topshop will want to be the next ones to download it.

Along with the sharing, the other obvious aim was to get app users buying the products that they see and have chosen to share. They can do this using the ecommerce function built into the app in which everything featured in the show can be bought, including the clothes, styling and beauty products and even the music accompanying the catwalk show. Shoppers can also buy all of the aforementioned from the Topshop online store too.

The London Fashion Week scheme wasn’t going to be all about Facebook though, Topshop also created a competition that they are called ‘Tweet Off’, where participants have the length of a single Tweet to review the Topshop collection. The winners will then be invited to attend Topshop’s next fashion show.

Using social media throughout an event like London Fashion Week is a great way of brands like Topshop telling their target customers exactly what they are doing in the event and what this can offer them. Facebook fans and twitter followers of Topshop are the ones that this scheme is aimed at, but the potential for adding new Facebook fans and Twitter followers is huge, with sharing being so well integrated to the app and the competition. More shares and more tweets will lead to more app downloads and essentially, more sales.

The new platform is going to be called simply, My HMV and will aim to bring together the currently fragmented structure of their marketing initiatives. As part of this new roll out, the company will be getting rid of the rewards scheme Pure HMV and the existing Pure HMV users will be automatically migrated over to My HMV where they can be rewarded for their loyalty.

Along with rewarding loyalty, My HMV will offer users the ability to combine online and in store retail, link to social networks effortlessly and offer exclusive content. In order to make this possible HMV will be introducing free WiFi in all 270 high street stores where shoppers can use their devices to access My HMV. For shoppers who do not use My HMV already, when they log on using the free in store WiFi they will be invited to join there and then.

Along with the free WiFi, the larger HMV stores will also contain My HMV Cafes which they hope will act as a social hub where shoppers can take advantage of charging points along with the WiFi and also socialise physically and online. My HMV will become the go to source for all of the stores promotions, features and events where members will be given all of the information first and this will in turn build up the profile of these events. Shoppers will be able to view product demonstrations, movie clips, music track samples and other exclusive content to offer a more enriching shopping experience.

HMV hopes that the introduction of My HMV will reverse the downfall in sales of recent years and that by Christmas the figures will be going the right way once again. A strong and positive strategy to kick start a huge company that has recently found itself struggling.

Play.com are hoping that this scheme will go viral, with users that have high social media klout posting and tweeting about the site, which in turn will encourage their followers and friends to click onto the page and also share to their connections.

If this process works as planned, this is a cutting edge way of cost effective advertising. The only major financial outlays will be the cost of the rewards they give to their best promoters, which is likely to be discounts and vouchers.

Shoppers who make their purchase from Play.com after clicking through from a post they have seen on Facebook spend 30% more over the year the site recently revealed. This fact, along with the confirmation that they put over £2million worth of sales throughout 2011 down to Facebook, shows that social media marketing is a fantastic way for Play.com to go when moving forward.

Many online retailers use social networks to promote certain products, to push deals and to share exclusive information with their fans and followers; however this is not always the most effective way of working. A recommendation coming from a friend on Facebook is a lot more powerful than coming from a brand and this kind of recommendation will be seen by potentially hundreds if not thousands of people that are connected with that person that may not already be connected to Play.com. There is also the opportunity for the people that see a shared post to take part in the campaign by becoming regular posters in order to also reap the benefits and rewards.

This new strategy from Play.com is very low risk with potentially huge reward. If they can recruit a handful of social media savvy people that will share posts to their large follower and friend bases, the rest should all fall into place, sending out a lot of good social media signals for Play.com, increasing brand awareness and most importantly increasing sales.

There are many different variables to take into account when discussing the ROI of Facebook advertising, many more than you’d get with Google advertising for example. With Facebook advertising, the impetus doesn’t necessarily mean that traffic must be steered to the site where transactions will take place, the aim may be to get more people visiting the brand’s Facebook page to try and increase the number of ‘likes’, or by advertising a competition being run by that brand that will again, encourage people to hit ‘like’.

This strategy may not be the most successful to make a quick ROI, however it can be strongly beneficial by increasing brand awareness via social networks. Getting ‘likes’ on Facebook offers brands the opportunity to then target potential customers who have shown an interest in some aspect of their business, which makes those people the perfect ones to target with exclusive offers on Facebook.

When running a Facebook advertising campaign, it is very important to remember a few key points:

• Aim – What do you want to achieve from the campaign, increased sales? More ‘Likes’? Increase fan base/brand awareness?
• Budget – Set out a reasonable and affordable budget and stick to it.
• Target Consumers – Aim for those who will be most likely to hit ‘like’ or buy from your company by selecting interests and businesses similar to yours.
• Content – Having short, snappy and eye catching content will be the difference between getting clicks and not.
• Useful Information – Make sure that you use the information that you gain from those who click through in the best possible way, a well constructed Facebook page will ask for permission from users to access their info, which can be used for further campaigns.

This seems to be a sensible step from these organisations, to ensure that their workforce not only realises what is and isn’t acceptable to post on their own personal social media accounts, but to build relationships with other businesses via these social media portals where they can exchange information and generate business.

The majority of employers however, fear the prospect of their employees using social media for such reasons, and feel that the potential of said employees performing an action that could not only jeopardise a potential relationship but could be counter productive to the whole organisation is just too big of a risk. A recent study revealed that fewer than 1 in 5 employers have confidence in their employees to be able to use social media networks in a way that will benefit the company, showing that more employers need to be proactive in educating their staff in social media etiquette.

By determining the current level of their workforces understanding of social media, the employer can then establish how much time it will take to train this workforce and at what stages the staff can begin to take control of certain areas within social media. This process can be split into three stages which are displayed in the chart below.

Stage one is where the foundations are built and in which a basic understanding on the impact of social media can be taught. This will give the employees the knowledge which will prevent them from causing issues that could damage the brands reputation when using their own personal social media accounts. The focus should lie on enforcing which actions are acceptable and beneficial and which actions could be potentially detrimental.

Stage two should be where employees are shown how social media can make their working life easier on a purely internal basis, saving the company money and making the business more efficient overall.

Stage three is where the workforce is fully ‘socialised’. At this point, selected employees will be educated to use social media to create and strengthen relationships with customers and other businesses. They are taught how to efficiently and effectively answer consumer questions and queries and contact people in a new way.

Completing these three stages will ensure that each business that implements the strategy has a workforce which knows the benefits of social media, but more importantly knows how and when to use it for the benefit of themselves and their company.

But what if it’s not managed well? What far-too-common Twitter crimes are businesses still committing?

The usual suspects…

1. The invisible man (or woman)

THE CHARGE – wilful neglect of a Twitter profile.

It takes minutes to set up a Twitter profile and it’s easy. If you want folks to follow you then anything less than a complete biography, avatar and branded background won’t cut it. The invisible man/ woman prefers anonymity which, to everyone else, looks lazy, unprofessional and untrustworthy.

THE SENTENCE – 10mins easy labour (updating said profile)

2. The spam monkey

THE CHARGE – going equipped to sell

If an incomplete profile is original sin, then creating a ‘hard sell’ profile is mortal sin. The spam monkey has a Twitter background that screams ‘corporate sales machine’ and has some lame SEO-spam drivel for a handle like “UsedCarsRomford”. Everything about the spam monkey’s Twitter presence is the hard sell. That’s not relationship building, there’s no reason for people to follow, it just screams ‘block’.

Every tweet is a sales pitch, and not even a thinly veiled one. There’s no value being added, no inclusion, no fresh insight or interaction just “buy, buy” which is the quickest route to “bye, bye” and an unfollow.

THE SENTENCE – solitary confinement with no chance of an audience

3. The Twitternator

THE CHARGE – going equipped to sell

Whether it’s automated tweets or just chunks of 140-character verbal diarrhoea clogging-up the twitter stream – there’s nothing like over-tweeting to get a whole bunch of unfollows. The Twitternator will bombard you – often repeating the same thing and often in hit-and-run sessions with a dozen tweets per minute. Whether it’s over-promoting something, constant status updates from some linked service or simply filling your twitter stream with constant drivel… the Twitternator never tires, never sleeps and will never stop.

THE SENTENCE – deactivation (block and report) preferably involving time travel.

4. The stalker

THE CHARGE – following with intent

One dead giveaway of the stalker is an imbalance between followers and followees. In extreme cases it’s a spambot using an automated follow tool to collect followers like Tesco ClubCard points. These are the phantom followers you have no idea where they came from, who they are and often vanish as quickly if you don’t follow back.

THE SENTENCE – an ASBO (otherwise known as ‘block’).

5. The preacher

THE CHARGE – obtaining prophets by self-deception

The preacher is a self-declared guru who has an unholy craving for followers. You will find the priest delivering 140-character sermon after sermon from their Twitter pulpit all on the subject of their glorification. Don’t confuse the loathing of these false idols with the jealous sniping that the genuinely praiseworthy attract. The preacher won’t debate, see the points of others or admit mistakes (other than yours). It’s not a 2-way conversation, there’s no miraculous insights or practical advice… just holier-than-though rhetoric and raining brimstone down on unbelievers. It’s just not social.

THE SENTENCE – loss of followers

Kia ora from the land of the long white cloud. Yes, today us lucky kiwis got our hands on the new Facebook timeline before most of you were even out of bed! It’s ironic that New Zealand, which generally lags a decade behind in technology, is quite often used as a testbed for up-coming gadgets and gizmos. We’re small (about 4.5 million), English-speaking (arguably) and are a nation of inventors and tinkerers, not afraid to ‘give things a go’.

The magazine-style layout

The magazine-style layout is far less cluttered, less chaotic and haphazard than the ‘traditional’ Facebook look. It doesn’t look like ‘waffle vommit’ as I’ve been known to call the old style random bombardment of crud.

Right up top are 2 of my favourite new features. The cover photo instantly makes the page more personalised, engaging and instantly more attractive (even if it’s got my ugly mug in it). To the right a quick way to navigate down to a particular date range. Notice I can go right from the day I was born and fill my timeline in the ‘pre-Facebook’ days. That opens up decades worth of crud for me to bore people with. Fantastic!

The timeline itself

I actually enjoyed scrolling down the page and seeing hundreds of things I’d ignored previously whooshing by. There are comments, photos and actions… a history of every interaction between me and my friends and everything I’ve liked.

Sure that may have been there before. But now it’s so accessible. It’s all neatly grouped and summarised, ready to toggle into more detail if I want to. And I found myself wanting to (more about why that’s a big deal at the end).

To add something to my timeline I just click in the appropriate place on the line and a menu pops up with what kind of content I’d like to add. Simple.

If I choose ‘life events’ then I get to choose from all kinds of events from Work & Education to Travel & Experiences. Each different type (and there are plenty) has it’s own template specifically suited to that event. For example, if I chose ‘new job’ I can fill in the company name and position. If it was travel it’d be places visited and some photos.

I can also remove things (including what Facebook has automatically populated my timeline with) or click ‘feature’ and they’ll expand out to the full width of the page for added ‘pow’. Cool.

My thoughts… or why the mountain Google+ has to climb just got higher

Now I would just like to say at this point that I’m not a big Facebook fanatic, I barely use it if I’m honest (in NZ social media is what we call graffiti in the urinals). It’s because I’m in my mid-thirties and a businessman. I’ve never seen Facebook as more than something to keep illiterate teens quiet.

I know, I know… Facebook is a great platform for business and there are huge opportunities to reach and engage massive audiences. But I’ve never felt that Facebook is anything other than that, it’s not something I wanted to use.

But I have to say that introducing the timeline has, for the first time, made me look at Facebook and think “I could actually use this”. That’s something I wasn’t expecting. And that makes me think Google+ is going to have a tougher time differentiating itself as the ‘non-teen’ (my personal impression of what they’re aiming at) social media platform.

B2B or not B2B, that was the question…

The ability for businesses to create their own pages was, for many, a glaring omission that should’ve been in Google+ from the outset. Sure, individuals could create profiles and pages, but Google told businesses to wait.

The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses

Given Google’s historic approach to product launches, you might translate that as “We launched a product long on promises but short on functionality which we’re now busily adding”.

Of course, some businesses didn’t wait and went ahead in creating profiles and pages. Some got removed, others didn’t and that lead to some ruffled feathers for those that ‘played by the rules’ and waited.

An announcement and traffic stampede later, businesses can now ‘officially’ create Google+ brand profiles and pages.

Google+ brand pages are go!

So how did it turn out? Well, the ‘business experience’ they created seems a little underwhelming. It’s very much the same as a consumer, just with some minor tweaks (like not asking what gender your business is).

There are also concerns about fake accounts. There are 3 things that make this a genuine concern:

1. It’s really easy to set up a page and the system is very open
2. Google+ is still small by Facebook/ Twitter standards and so far less brand names are already in use (hence preventing their reuse)
3. Only global/ household brands look likely to get ‘verification badges’ to prove authenticity.

Readingall this, you might not be impressed with how Google+ brand pages have begun.

But should you create a Google+ Brand Page as well as your organisation’s Facebook Page?

Absolutely! And here’s why:

1. It’s relatively quick and simple so no real investment of time or money.
2. If you don’t claim your brand name, who else might? You don’t want a rival or some cyber-squatter snaffling-up your brand name.
3. Google+ has grown quickly (faster than any other social network in history) to tens of millions of users. Sure, there are serious doubts on future growth, but Google seem determined to take on Facebook. And that’s not something you don’t want to miss out on.
4. With Google’s approach to ‘friends’/ ‘followers’ (Circles) there would seem to be better opportunities for targeting and segmenting your audience.
5. Google+ could be described as ‘Facebook without the distractions’ or ‘Facebook for grownups’. There are plenty of folks who don’t want to be bombarded with games, ads and lolcats every time they log into their social media platform.
6. Google has so many other cloud services (Google search, Maps, Google Apps, Picassa, Documents, Calendar…) that should (or already do) integrate nicely with Google+ brand pages.

Sure, it looks like you’re going to have to be even more creative in using Google+ pages to drive traffic to contests or promotions. This is because you can’t run them directly on your Google+ page, merely link out to an external site (abiding by the T&Cs of course). But that’s not so different than a ‘like gate’ on Facebook.

And sure, compared to Facebook, the functionality and reach just aren’t there yet. But this is early days. It took Facebook years to grow into the behemoth it is now.

Even if Google+ ‘fails miserably’ and stalls at just 50 million or so users… why wouldn’t you spend a little time to try and connect with them?

Sure… someone will start a “Bring back the old Facebook” fan page and thousands will become fans and there’ll be a YouTube parody (probably in the form of a spoof Microsoft or Apple ad).

But what happens in reality?

This awesome image is from The Oatmeal. See the full comic here

Hundreds of millions of users just go ‘oh’ and carry on posting pictures of cute cats on their wall as if nothing happened.

Why all the changes?

With 1 in 9 people on the planet on Facebook (about 750 million) then it’s no surprise that Facebook changes can’t please all the people all the time. So why don’t they stick to another old adage “If it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it”?

Here’s where you’ll get different opinions from different folks:

• Facebook – they’ll tell you it’s about improving the user experience, increasing engagement and implementing features folks will want.
• Sceptics – they’ll see changes as nothing more than a way for Facebook to increase their advertising revenue.
• Cynics – they’ll be closely scrutinising any changes to user privacy, betting there’ll be more data about you getting shared.
• Alarmists – they’ll interpret changes as omens of the fall of Facebook given the threatened rise of the false God Google+ or the idolised Twitter.

But the reality? Probably a bit of all of the above.

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t amass a stack of cash whilst other social networks failed by forgetting that Facebook should make money. So you can bet that changes will help give advertisers more data, tighter targeting and more opportunities. But then ask yourself why a search engine giant like Google wants in on the action?

Twitter and Google+ combined have less users than Facebook. And, no matter how disgruntled folks get, they never actually do leave in droves – a social network without their friends on it just isn’t social.

So why make changes? Cave-painting, the original ‘post to wall’…

If every time Facebook moves a pixel or adds a button there’s an outcry of betrayal from loyal users… surely that goes against elementary customer service 101?

Thing is, if Facebook didn’t make changes then it would have gone the way of MySpace. It doesn’t matter how big you are… to stay market leader in any sector means constantly adapting to keep customers happy and stay ahead of the competition. Sure, some folks simply don’t like change, but it’s inevitable and vital for future growth.

At the moment it’s definitely a case of ‘whatever Twitter/ Google+ can do, Facebook has to do’ (and vice-versa). But that’s what competition is all about. Without change social media would be hiking miles to someone else’s cave to paint a nice picture of the mammoth you saw last week.

The 5 steps to climb

1. Discovery

We make purchases to fulfil perceived needs or desires. The first step is therefore discovering those needs or desires. At this embryonic stage your social media efforts should be focusing on raising awareness, educating and informing.

The goal here is to reach potential customers and plant the seed that what you’re offering is something they need/ want. You want to create a buzz, delivering interesting content that gets people talking. And you want to come across as the authority on the subject.

2. Realisation

This is tipping point that sparks action from passive awareness. It is the beginning of the decision-making process.

You’ve got people who’ve discovered your niche and built some buzz around it. Now you want to turn ‘I’d like that’ into ‘I want/ need it’. This is the time for more targeted, more powerful and timely messages.

The goal isn’t to reach the widest audience, the challenge is to reach individuals and push the right buttons. This is where engagement, actually having conversations, rather than ‘mass marketing’ comes to the fore and where social media shines. Really build that authority.

3. Consideration

With the choice to purchase made, now comes considering the options. If you’ve used social media to engage right from discovery and through realisation, it’s all about keeping that conversation going. And that’s much easier than just targeting the consideration stage.

Make sure your audience at this stage are aware of how great your offering is, how it beats the competition and meets all their needs/ desires. Also be sure to combat any negative press and counter what your competitors are up to.

But don’t try to force clumsy and aggressive marketing. Be honest, quick to give advice, build empathy and trust. If you’ve set yourself up as the authority in your niche, then your offering is the logical choice.

4. Conversion

With the decision made, your role in this stage is to facilitate the purchase. Social media is a great vehicle for answering last minute questions, providing fast support and helping people actually make the transaction.

This is pure customer service. Be available, ready and willing to help in every way. Don’t fall at the final hurdle. And now is not the time for clumsy aggressive marketing. Conversion depends on all that’s gone before… don’t use social media efforts only to try and push a ‘cold’ conversion.

5. Retention

So you’ve climbed the mountain and landed yourself a new customer. But keeping that customer, repeat business, up-selling, cross-selling, getting a referral, turning that customer into an advocate… there’s still plenty to do before you plant your flag and head home.

Social media is ideal for keeping and building relationships, heading-off problems and creating ongoing opportunities. Customer care, support, keeping clients informed, listening to suggestions, creating a community… all these things make for long-term profitability.

The take home message

Social media is all about influence. Direct measurement of ROI isn’t always easy and doesn’t give the full picture. Make sure you’re influencing every step of typical buying behaviour, not just focusing on driving conversion and counting simple metrics.