Things to consider when using Facebook and Twitter to build your business brand

Following the recent coverage about the dangers of social media I wanted to write this column about its use in business. Say ‘social media’ and most people also only think of the two behemoths; Facebook and Twitter. This is a shame, as it actually covers a wide range of activities including that unfashionable and highly underrated thing, blogging, however I will concentrate on the first two.

This week I watched an hour long BBC documentary on Facebook, including an interview with someone setting up Facebook pages for local businesses.  Interestingly the first thing she said, I agreed with, which was that being on social media means you can listen to what people are saying about your business. Unfortunately the current hype can mean that people think they are missing out on something that will drive massive profits for their business. This has not been proven yet, but clever businesses with the right product or service offering do use social media not just to listen, but to work with the people who pay the wages, their customers, to find out what they want and develop products and services around that. A recent example of this is the Citroen C1 car, due to go into production in July, which was developed and designed in part by users accessing a specially designed app on Citroen’s Facebook page.

Social media - and the clue is in the title - taps into the basic human need to share and engage. Whether it is photos, what people are doing or what they think about a brand or product. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating office said in February “People don’t expect to be talked at anymore they want to be a full part of the conversation”. So let’s go back to the lady selling Facebook pages to local businesses. How many of those businesses are taking her up based on hype rather than careful business decision. How many have thought about RETURN ON INVESTMENT (caps for a reason) and how they will link social media activity to the rest of their brand building and tactical marketing activities.   

I am a massive advocate of social media and the benefits it can bring to businesses when used correctly, but I am the first to say it might not be for everyone. You cannot just create a page and update once a month and think that’s it. Likewise spending all your time and effort on social media and neglecting more traditional forms of marketing is equally wrong. It will not sell a product like a TV, a print or radio ad. It also takes time and effort to do it properly. Done badly with little engagement does more harm than good.

So always first consider your objectives, whatever they are, from product sales, brand building or people through the door. Then look at all the ways to do this and choose those that deliver the best return for the little time and reducing budgets we all have. Facebook and Twitter are modern marketing tools and if you treat them as such, as just another part of the marketing mix, they may become a valuable part of your activities or one that is held until you can do it properly.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him @timyoungman

Data is not just for geeks......seriously

Hello dear readers. You may have noticed that I have recently been missing from the esteemed pages of the Eastern Daily Press. It is because for the last three months I have been ensconced in the editorial departments looking at the web versions of our excellent Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire newspapers. Some of you, I hope, have noticed the changes to the EDP24 and others from the design of the sites to more social engagement to new content sections delivered from new ways of working. Certainly the record growth we have seen seems to back this up.

Driving all this activity was a very simple question, “Who are our customers and what do they want?” Unfortunately the reason many businesses don’t have the level of customer understanding they really should is because to do so means that you have to crunch that scary stuff; data.

Before the Internet, customer data only really came from market research. You might think that market research is just some lady who stops you in the street and asks you if you eat Weetabix but it’s a science in its own right. The internet though was created by geeks so by definition came with a bunch of data. Luckily another bunch of geeks came along to make it easy to understand the data and the art of analytics was born.

From my laptop I can see how many people are looking at any Archant site right now, at what and for how long. By adding another layer of behavioural technology we can analyse the type of content people are reading and deliver similar articles to them. You might think that’s all big brother but ecommerce sites have been doing this for a long time. How do you think when you look at a products on sites like Argos or Amazon it shows you “Other customers also looked at….”

If you have embraced social media you may have started just by listening to what people said about you. Then, over time, graduated to using it as a tool to work with your customers to develop new products and services. You may have a Facebook page and through Facebook Insights know a bit about the people who “like” you and what they do on your page. How many of you though know that now Facebook is selling ads, through its ad booking software, you can see for example how many people on Facebook are cat owners of a certain age live in Norwich. You might not want to buy an ad but a pet shop owner could use it to get an idea of potential market size.   

Like everything in life, understanding all this data and the products that can help you do so range from the very simple to the very complicated and from free to very expensive. However in the current economic climate understanding who your customers are and what they want is more important than ever. So for those of you trying to use the internet to grow your businesses spend some time to understand how your customers are using your sites the lessons you learn may surprise you and will definitely help you.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing at Archant - follow him @timyoungman

Winter Hibernation

Hello anyone reading this. If you are wondering why there have not been any posts since November it is because  I have been busy on secondment to one of Archant newspaper divisions looking at improving the websites, how we get news online and the structure of the newsrooms to deliver this.

However i will be back creating columns for the EDP www.edp24.co.uk and also the Ipswich Star www.ipswichstar.co.uk so this blog will be updated again come spring.

I am describing this a winter hibernation but my early potatoes are chitting and when they go in this blog will continue to run again.

In the meantime follow me on Twitter @timyoungman for lots of cool things

tim

Lack of marketing budget? Time to think smarter

Many of you may have seen the recent furore about the number of ad breaks in the X Factor and the current series of Downtown Abbey. Many have complained how the sheer volume of ad breaks and sponsorship slots was ruining their enjoyment of the programmes. I will leave you to decide whether that is either possible or true.

I suspect though that along with concerned of Surbiton there may have been a few individuals either watching the shows or reading about the controversy who simply wished they could afford that level of marketing. Lets put it this way, the estimated cost for a 30 second slot in the final of X Factor last year was in excess of £250,000 and that is without the cost of making the ad in the first place. So this style of advertising is just for the big boys with big pockets which makes it difficult for a local advertiser to stand out.

So if you are a small company looking to promote its products on a tight budget how do you compete with the big boys? The answer is you have to think smart.

My favourite two examples of this are from very different industries. The first is from Scottish brewer Brew Dog who have made a name for themselves not on the basis of its beers but for its ability to get a lot of coverage by being clever. They launched a beer described as the "UK's Strongest beer", Tokyo beer, at an incredible 18.2% abv.

This created a huge backlash from a number of alcohol issue related charities and bodies concerned over the need and glamorisation of such a high strength beer. I suspect though that they have missed the point. This launch has nothing to do with selling a few bottles of beer and everything to do with gaining profile for Brew Dog. In fact they only brewed 3,000 bottles as a special edition. In reality over 29 millions barrels of beer are sold in the UK every year. You can now see brewdog beers in most supermarkets, a big win for a small company.

My other favourite example is from American clothing company Betabrand (www.betabrand.com). Like the drinks industry, fashion is dominated by big brands and big retailers so its very difficult for a small online only brand to standout. The founder of Betabrand knew he had to come up with something different so last year they created the seven deadly sins series of trousers. It started with the “Gluttony Pants” which included three expander buttons labelled piglet, sow and boar. Trousers were then created for each sin. For envy for example they created just one unique pair of trousers for an auction so others would envy the winner.

Clever idea, clever product and clever marketing generated social media and press coverage and took sales to over $1m in just a couple of years. With ongoing product innovations such as horizontal cord trousers and trousers with reflective turn ups for cyclists they continue to carve a name for themselves in a difficult market place.

Sometimes it does not take millions thrown at marketing to make a brand. It takes creativity, thought and perseverance and a good product to start with.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on twitter @timyoungman

The business of gaming

In a week when we move into autumn along with the cheery message that there is a 1 in 6 chance of a double dip recession one media moves into its biggest profit generating season. You might be forgiven if you think that the most profitable media in the world is television with its ad revenues or film with its takings and merchandise, in fact, its gaming.

Consoles such as the Nintendo Wii moved gaming from the bedroom of the teenage boy to the family lounge. Gaming has moved into a more mainstream environment but the names of the big autumn releases: Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 give the game away, so to speak, of where the real money lies.

Lets take the most anticipated game release of this year, Modern Warfare 3, part of the Call of Duty series. This will mean nothing to most of you however the last game in the series; Call of Duty Black Ops, sold 5.6 million copies on the first day of release last November in the UK and US alone. Since then it has gone on to sell over 25 million copies worldwide in just 10 months with a launch price on average of £40.

The Call of Duty titles are created and owned by publisher Activision Blizzard. This one games publisher in 2010 posted revenues of $4.8 billion with a 29% operating margin. It had $1.4 billion operating cash flow with a total of $3.5 billion of cash and investments and no debt. The Call of Duty games alone brought Activision $1.2 billion in 2010. They also made $1.7 billion in digital revenues from online subscriptions to web based games such as World of Warcraft and also map packs for games. These allow gamers who play others online to buy new digital worlds to shoot each other in and with 20m worldwide sold of a Black Ops extension pack at an average of $10-$15 per sale you can see how it ads up.

They are not alone Electronic Arts which publishes the Battlefield series and the Sims among others reported $3.8 billion in revenues for the year ending March 2011. These are just two of the bigger publishers and this does not account for the revenues gained for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for their multiple console sales. It is now, undeniably, a massive industry but how has it moved from teenage boy’s bedrooms to one of the worlds most profitable industries?

Gaming recently enjoyed its own series on BBC Four and therein lies the clue. I first played with a Spectrum 48k when I was in high school. Many a Saturday afternoon was lost playing such classics as Manic Miner or Sabre Wulf. That generation, who were brought up on the Specturm and Commodore 64, grew up and graduated to the Playstation and the X Box. Then, games were bought by saving pocket money. Those 1980s teenagers are now in their 30’s and 40’s and can now afford the £40 cost of a new game, albeit wincing when paying. The gaming industry has been accused of many things, but with enviable revenues and profits and a growing market a double dip recession is not a concern for those involved.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow in on Twitter @timyoungman

Cheese, cigarettes and brand architecture

Question, what has Philadelphia Cheese and Marlboro Lights got in common. 

Answer, well you need to read on and I will explain later. 

Some stories, unlike this column, do not need a hook to keep readers interested and some stick around for longer than people first thought they would. The best current example of this is the phone hacking scandal. This seems to have dragged on forever, but it has done because every time you think it will die down something else comes out that beggar’s belief.

I am sure that you all will have read or watched ad nauseum details of this scandal.  Most interesting to me however was that this story has moved from something affecting a single newspaper to something affecting a global corporation.

So back to the question of what has Philadelphia Cheese and Marlboro Lights got in common? The answer is that at one point they were both owned by the same holding company, Phillip Morris. This is the point with global companies, they can own vastly different products and brands, contentious and otherwise, and the general public never know.

So now a brief lesson in brand architecture, or the way that companies structure brands they own. You can have product brands such as pampers, sub brands such as Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and also corporate/umbrella brands such as Virgin. These are the most dangerous as if something goes wrong with one part, as the others are so closely associated with it, it can affect the others. So if Virgin Money were to suffer a major issue it might creative a negative perception on other Virgin brands i.e. Rail, Atlantic etc. This has not stopped some previously relatively unknown corporate brands start to make themselves known such as Proctor and Gamble with its “proud sponsor of mums” campaign in readiness making the most of its Olympic activities.

A house of brands approach however is the complete opposite. Here a relatively unknown parent brand owns lots of very disparate sub brands and if one gets in trouble, it is unlikely to be associated with another and the holding company.  So when the News of the World got in trouble you may have realised that it could affect The Times or The Sun as they are all part of News International. But what about Fox News, or any of the 120 newspaper News Corporation, the overall parent company, own in Australia alone and I could go on.

What has been most interesting is that the focus and talk around phone hacking has moved from individual product brands to the ultimate owner News Corporation and more and more the largest shareholders the Murdoch’s themselves. The enquiries may be looking at specific products but media coverage and social media chatter now generalises about News Corp as a whole, something that has a house of brands it probably thought would never happen. With the News Corp BSkyB bid gone and the scandal ongoing, no matter how clever you run your corporate affairs, sometimes a single event can pull the critical piece from the Jenga tower and we wait to see if it will all fall down.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant – follow him on twitter @timyoungman

Copywriting for sales materials - less is often more

In the last month I have been at both the Suffolk County Show and the Norfolk Show. Of course Archant Towers are heavily involved supporting our local county shows but we are of course at them as well selling lots of newspapers. This year we also had people signing people up to our new Tickles offering, which sends out daily emails of local money saving offers, at both shows.

After coming back from two very long but fruitful days at the Norfolk show I sat nursing sore legs and a large mug of tea thinking about what others were doing at the show. Walking around, you get to see the wonderful and rather creative ways people describe what they do. I also have a habit of picking up sales brochures at shows like that. It was not that I was interested in these businesses, but it is a great opportunity to collect examples of sales materials and branding aids from different industries to see if there any ideas I could steal, sorry I meant learn from.

So while trying to regain feeling in my legs, I flicked through a large pile of brochures I had picked up as I walked around the packed show. It came apparent that most were created by people who run with the adage “why use 3 words when you can use 300”. The words, innovative and trusted company were used by at least a half a dozen of them. Few actually told me what they would deliver to me as a potential customer in a concise and easy to remember format that would stand them apart from their competitors.

Sales materials, especially sales brochures, are often beautiful things packed with words that potential customers simply don’t read. This is mainly as the person who wrote them either was under instruction from his or her manager to make sure that they include all the benefits and descriptive text they think should be in there (forever known and The Crammer). Or because they think that with 4 pages of a brochure to fill you should fill it even if it means long winded descriptions and lots of flowery text that says lots and yet nothing at the same time.

Only one company of all the brochures I picked up described in 4 concise words what they did and stood for. That simple statement set them apart and drew me into its literature which itself was concise well designed and well written. Whoever created that had sat back and taken time to think through what key messages they were trying to communicate to its potential customers and then delivered them clearly and concisely.

Creative writing and design is an art and writing concisely is a skill, ask any journalist or columnist who has to stick to 500 words. So if you are thinking about creating something to promote your business think about what you are trying to convey and remember in this case, less is often more.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on twitter @timyoungman