Social Mobile Local Global and the Olympics

Team GB uniforms by Stella McCartney and adidas

At the time of writing this, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, or Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or more recently 'Team GB' are doing rather well at London 2012 Summer Olympics. With a haul of 26 gold, 16 silver and 14 bronze medals - it’s our best showing for over a century. With 204 countries competing, this Olympic Games is truly a global event and shared throughout the world on social networks.

Social - Twitter
Before the games even started a Greek athlete was kicked off the team for tweeting with a racist overtone and it’s been a story of highs and lows for Twitter ever since. After posting some pretty malicious tweets about the diver Tom Daley, a teenager from Weymouth was arrested and given a dressing down by the police. For a fleeting moment this story was global headline news and seems to have re-ignited the debate as to how the authorities should deal with social network incidents of this nature.

Adam Naisbitt set up @2012TicketAlert after he tried to get hold of gymnastics tickets for his fiancée. This unofficial ticket alert helped thousands of people get tickets and filled the empty seats that were causing such a stir in the media. Of course the people at Ticketmaster and  LOCOG didn’t like his code crawling their site and they put a stop to it. But 30,000 angry Twitter users ensured that the service was re-instated. The Ticket Alert profile now has 54,466 followers.

Google
Each day Google has been running little games on their home page that typically take less than 30 seconds to play. They look nice, well illustrated as with all Google Doodles, are easy to play and are relevant to the day's sporting events.

Any search involving the keyword ‘medals’ results in an up to date medal table at the top of the SERPS. Yep, the UK does seem to be doing rather well!

Facebook
After winning gold in the Women's Heptathlon, Jessica Ennis had amassed over 600,000 followers and counting: today it is 726,516 with 957,976 talking about this page. Chances are that at least one of your Facebook ‘friends’ has liked her official page. But that is still a way off from the American basketball player, Kobe Bryant’s who has 13 million 'Likes'!  David Beckham, Britain's most decorated football player of all time, has 20 million. There’s even a trend in celebrity chart  if you prefer that to the actual medal count! Naturally, Usain Bolt is the most popular Olympian today.

There’s an app for that.
Shortly after the first athletes started arriving at the Olympic village, 'GPS, location-based Grindr', an app, or also known as a 'geosocial networking application', that hooks up gay men with others in the local vicinity, crashed due to the increase in traffic. Both the BBC Olympics and the official London 2012 apps have proved extremely popular. The free BBC Olympics app for iOS and Android devices gives headlines, video features, schedules and details about every sport, country and competitor.

The Join In app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones connect viewers with local news updates and information about everything that is going on, in and around the Olympics, such as maps, guides, schedules, information on cash machine locations, ticketing issues and wheelchair access.

Rule 40
“Except as permitted by the IOC Executive Board, no competitor, coach, trainer or official who participates in the Olympic Games may allow his person, name, picture or sports performances to be used for advertising purposes during the Olympic Games.”  In the interests of protecting big global business sponsors, this effectively barred athletes from thanking any unofficial sponsors on social media platforms. The athletes are considered 'labelled marketing assets' and Twitter as a 'marketing tool'.

Media - BBC
The BBC, as usual, have done us proud. The 'Danny Boyle, Isle of Wonders' opening ceremony had 27M UK viewers and not surprisingly, generated more tweets than the entire Beijing Olympic Games four years ago and amassed a staggering 9.66 million worldwide tweets . Nice touch honouring Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web, in the ceremony. You can watch any event live on the BBC website. You can get involved with live comments and nowadays the BBC even retweet comments.

All the major newspapers like @Telegraph2012  have set up dedicated Twitter streams of Olympic coverage. Many of the newspapers regularly make direct quotes from Twitter posts.

The Olympics inspired blogs from all over the world, from sport clothing designs, jokes, politics, women's rights, celebrity to youth engagement ideals.

Transport
In addition to Transport for London’s (TfL) permanent Twitter account (@TfLOfficial) a number of Transport for London Twitter accounts were set up to provide additional local advice on how services and roads are operating during the Games @TfLTrafficNews, @TfLTraveAlerts and @GAOTG.

The 'social media accounts' and 'travel mailing lists' introduced by TfL are supplemented by a number of other online travel platforms. Concentra launched an interactive graphic detailing which Tube stations were likely to face the most severe disruptions on any given day of the Olympics; Google maps offered cycling directions for Londoners planning on cycling to work during the Games.

Mashable Tech did their own article on The Olympics of tech which makes some entertaining reading about achievements in digital, mobile, social and programming.

Mobile
Half of all the searches and video streams in USA and UK are coming from mobiles and tablets during the Olympic games. Social Mobile Local Global; it’s all the same thing!

It is amazing to see all the technologies, social and search all coming together. Here at Rocktime we feel very proud of the Olympians and we are reminded yet again what a great industry of digital development we work in.

Which social or technical innovation inspired you the most at the Olympics?

Authors: Foz, Fiona Anderson

Adwords Location Targeted Improved

This time last year we were letting our clients know that local search engine optimisation was destined to be a hot topic in the natural search engine result pages. We advised our clients of the numerous ways in which our clients can increase their local traffic via natural search (i.e. not paid for search adverts) this included geo tagging, local business adverts, local mentions, local social network tribes. Paid for options have included local directory listings and local targeted paid search adverts.

Over the last year we have been working on our local targeted proposition and in the new year will be sharing with you a selection of success stories.
A recent development with location targeting is: at the end of October 2011, Google Adwords team announced that the local targeted features within Google Adwords are getting a makeover.

Google has noted that several businesses have been using Google location targeting features to drive more qualified customers through to their websites. With tighter targeting, Google report that one of their customers (digital agency) was able “to lower their cost per click (CPC) by 36%, driving in higher quality leads at a lower cost”.

We are pretty excited about the new location features, as it will make it easier to discover and obtain more detail for our clients, on potential target locations. Google is providing more information on ‘reach numbers by location’ to help estimate the potential audience/ leads available. These numbers relate to number of users seen on Google products in a given location and should be viewed as trends rather than accurate figures.

To find out more about the improved Adwords Location Targeted development, talk to the Flashlight “Local Targeting Ambassador” Fiona Anderson, or visit the Google Adwords Insider Blog here.

The above image shows current location targeting feature “Polygon targeting”. This feature is being migrated by the end of 2011. Google recommend using the ‘Target a radius’ feature which allows you to selectively add locations within the radius target. To help determine which to target, we suggest you should run a geographic performance report to get an idea of which locations received traffic within the custom shapes and then target those individual locations.

You can engage with Fiona on Twitter @GeekChicSocial; let her know you read this blog, as she loves Maps, Local, Google and Geo chats.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

How can Foursquare help your business

You may remember us talking about Foursquare before; we’ve even done an introductory post on Foursquare for businesses here on the blog.

As it is operation sharing useful content on the blog this month, a couple of days ago we found this great article from Mashable on how to set up a Foursquare Special, which we just had to share with you.

How to: Set up a FourSquare Special by Lauren Drell, Mashable

We have also provided our own take on FourSquare specials for your review. Enjoy ;)

So what are the advantages of registering your business with them?

For starters, it’s a popular service, growing in numbers; in 2010 alone on their official blog, Foursquare reveals they experienced a 3400% increase in growth, and a staggering 381 million check ins.

Not only does signing your venue up on Foursquare open up a huge potential audience, but you can actively encourage visitors through Foursquare via the use of their ‘Foursquare Specials', from a Friends Special encouraging groups to a Newbie Special to encourage newcomers through your doors, there’s a wide range of potential deals to set up with the aim of encouraging people to check into your venue.

When it comes to promoting these specials, Foursquare can lend you a helping hand providing you with official window stickers, encouraging visitors to check in.


In addition to Specials, ownership of the venue on Foursquare will allow you to view a full set of real-time data about your customers. Imagine it like a real-life analytics! On your dashboard you’ll be able to see statistics such as total daily check-ins over time to viewing your most recent and frequent visitors and even whether they are broadcasting their check-ins to Twitter and Facebook.

Of course, whilst Foursquare might be one of the larger and (currently) in our opinion the best established of these services, it is by no means the only option! We’ve covered other location based marketing services as MePlease and Facebook Deals among others, in previous blog posts, both of which are more than worth a peruse. Enjoy ;)


Author: Alice Cheetham

Google get their Swag on!

This month we’re talking "local targeting" at Rocktime and it looks like we’re not the only ones. April sees the release of the Google Places Business Kit Catalogue! Google is offering free promotional materials for qualifying businesses, allowing business owners to order in a whole range of goodies, from window stickers to neon signs and fortune cookies to sugar packets; a variety of goods for a variety of business types.

The grand plan is that all of the free stuff is to be used by business owners to encourage their customers and clients to review them in Google Places. Unfortunately at the moment, it’s not quite so ‘local’ to us in the UK – currently only businesses in the US cities of Madison, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Portland and Austin are eligible, but hopefully time will tell if these Google goody bags spread in popularity! The Google Places Catalogue is just one of many indicators that Google is getting serious about Local Search!

If you’re interested in getting in on the action too, and want to know more about how Local Search can benefit you and your website then why not get in contact with the Flashlight Search Marketing Team at Rocktime and see how they can help you out.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Local Targeted Website Research

This month at Rocktime we’ve got our eye on local targeting, and April is our official “Operation Local Search Marketing” month! Local listings and local promotion sites will of course be of strongest benefit to those who wish to increase their local business reach.

Local is a pretty hot topic right now, and with good reason too as for starters, the Google Local Search Algorithm continues to evolve at a fast rate and recent reports indicate that 70% of users look for local information online first, and that 20% of all searches are location related. This month’s Geek Video was on “Google HotPot“ make sure you read the very latest (8th April 2011) news on why Google have decided to merge “HotPot” into their “Google Places” interface over at the Google Blog here.

The Google Places and HotPot merge also indicates there is much more to come with regards to reviews and recommendations within your Google Places account. Exciting times ahead!

Once you have optimised your Google Places account and devised a strategy plan for updates. You may be thinking where next? We hope that one day we will be able to say “We have a Local App for that!” however right now we haven’t. We do have a number of local directory websites that feed local search engines and we are also reviewing and engaging with local promotions sites and local social networks. Also when it comes to targeting your local market don’t forget about Geo Targeting options within paid search. It is a great feature, however our advice is for better ROI, opt for onsite local optimisation over paid-for models. You may wish to trial paid first though to review reach and potential for growth.

Having increased presence on local sites can create an environment for search engine rankings and support inclusion in a wide range of local apps and mapping software.

Local Targeted Website Research

We thought it would be interesting to find out the local targeted directory and local deal websites that the team at Rocktime use. As a team we have a 72% / 28% male/ female split, so in comparison to the UK online population as a whole which has a 52% / 48% male/female split, the results will be 20% Male biased.

Alice went round and quizzed the Rocktime staff on which local targeted sites they use and which they would consider using. A summary of the results are listed below.

If you’re interested in learning more about some of the following websites and apps, that are mentioned in the below results, we’ve talked about the majority of them previously on the Rocktime blog: such as Foursquare Deals, Facebook Deals, MePlease and Google HotPot.



As the chart shows, there’s a pretty equal mix and spread of the sites we picked out to ask about.

The ‘Other’ section entails services such as Think Local, The Best Of and Living Social to name a few. My Voucher Codes seems to be a fairly popular choice in the office, alongside the likes of globally popular sites such as Facebook.


The main finding from this research is the insight into the wide variety of local targeted websites we are using plus YELP (online Yellow Pages) and other local search engine pages were not mentioned once! The results indicate that as individuals we have not found one place yet in which to hang “our local targeted hat” with our friends. Perhaps with the developments on Google Places and the Google social share button (Google + 1) we will start to be more stream lined into where we go for local content and deals. Time will tell. We will review this again, same time next year.

Given the increasing popularity of the Local Targeting websites, it wouldn't suprise us if there's plenty more to choose from this time next year! Even now there's yet more sites popping up every month specialising in local deals and reviews, for example just last month Qype launched it's new (German) deals site, QypeDeals.

From the looks of it, here at Rocktime at least, Facebook Deals wins out over Foursquare. If you’re interested in reading more about the pros and cons between these two services then Social Media Examiner has put together a great comparison on its article Location-Based Services: Foursquare vs. Facebook Places.

If you require assistance connecting your business to local business talk to Rocktime’s Search Marketing (Flashlight) about bespoke local targeted campaigns.
We hope you found our above research of interest, we certainly did and if you would like to share with us the local targeted websites that you visit or would recommend, then feel free to post a comment below.


Authors: Sarah Griffiths & Alice Cheetham

Facebook Deals Launches in (UK)

We all know that Facebook is a master at ‘targeting’, be it by relationship, birthday or keyword and has built connection targeting tools like Fans, Applications, Groups and Events. It’s fair to say that Facebook is now set to dominate targeting by location.

I was encouraged to hear on Monday 31 January 2011 of the announcement that 'Facebook Deals' had launched in the UK, and thought to blog my opinion, as this year I will be very much focused on our 'Local Geo Targeted Search Campaigns'. I will seek to explain to you what this launch could mean for your business and why you should consider aligning Facebook Deals into your integrated marketing plans. Firstly I’ll provide a little introduction on what Facebook Deals is.

What is Facebook Deals?
Facebook deals is an App that lets local businesses interact with Facebook users using Facebook Places, to check in to their physical shop or venue. The Facebook user is rewarded with incentivised promotions, discounts, loyalty schemes and offers when they visit the retailer. As you can probably imagine, the benefits for repeat purchases, customer engagement and brand loyalty are vast.

In summary, if you (as a user) have a Facebook Profile and have allowed access to the Facebook Places Application, then you can start to find out more about Facebook Deals in your area/close to your location.

You will just need to look out for a little yellow or green icon when you check into venues using Facebook Places, then click on the deal and claim it. Simple!
The Facebook blog says:
You'll see a few different types of Deals: individual deals for a discount, free merchandise or other reward; friend deals where you and your friends claim an offer together; loyalty deals for being a frequent visitor to a place; and charity deals where businesses pledge to donate to a cause when you check in.

If you are a business, then you may be interested to know that 50% of merchants who used Facebook Deals (in the US from Nov 2010 to start of year) have decided to renew their offers, and with millions of people using the service, we can only imagine that this has generated a positive ROI.



I will share some key points below.

Facebook deals for local businesses
Facebook Deals has been developed as a marketing tool to not only lure customers but to repay them by for spreading the word about your business when they check in. As such, Facebook Deals needs to be treated like any aspect of an integrated marketing strategy. The actual time to physically create the deal has been nicely simplified by the clever developers at Facebook.

Other Geo Location Targeted Apps
There are already other competitors in this geolocation market, most notably FourSquare which makes a shopping experience in to a reward-based mobile game. It’s all about rewarding the customer and building a stronger brand loyalty. Naturally, not all Facebook users will take up these offers but as our experience of the internet is increasingly defined by what our friends are logging, sharing and posting, then Facebook will be able to translate that experience into the real world.


Progressive move from places to deals
Last year, we wrote about Facebook introducing Facebook Places a Facebook mobile application, which allows ‘out and about Facebook users’, with their smartphone, to let their network of friends know, in real time, about the locations they are visiting, and check their friends into those locations too. For businesses and brands that have a physical location it makes sense to target Facebook users that have a Facebook Place and offer them a deal if they come into the shop and participate in a promotion.

Once geolocation service; Facebook Places, was established, it was a logical progression to then start offering deals. These deals will become increasingly more personalised and competitive, especially when small, local businesses recognise the benefits of being found more easily, locally online and encouraging their customers to share information about themselves, in exchange for deals.

This is the real strength behind Facebook Deals; where a brand is able to really get to the core of what their customers are looking for in terms of service, interaction with the brand via social networks, relevant offers and preferred technologies. At the same time, customers that check in to the retailer have already allowed the brand full access to a wealth of personal information, directly from their Facebook profile i.e. gender, age, aspects of their social graph and shared information, which under other circumstances shoppers can be reluctant to divulge.

Facebook Deals allows retailers to get friendlier with their customers and allows the customers to share not just the pleasure of the purchased product but the whole shopping experience and with more than just the person sitting next to them. Geolocation targeting is here to stay!

Once the retailers have got their customer relations teams crunching the data on visits, successful campaigns, analytics and demographics you can be sure that the customers will be ‘rewarded’ with yet more tempting and targeted deals. Customers can expect much more than just a free cup of coffee. How about 20% off a Mazda MX for starters. Whatever the deal, retailers will now be very carefully considering Facebook Deals as part of their Integrated Marketing Plans and Mobile Strategy.

Some retailers ‘in’ on the launch include Argos, Benetton and Debenhams. Both Argos and Benetton are offering charity donations in return for checkins by customers”

There is some great advice here on how deals work for business:




Find out more about Facebook Places
For additional options: a few articles that we have bookmarked on 'Facebook Deals launching in the UK' are listed below, we particularly like the comments made by Andrew Grill from London Calling, where he talks about 'Foursquare Fatique' and what it means for the just launched Facebook Deals service in the UK.

You can also read more about Facebook Deals on the Wall Blog What does Facebook Deals mean for brands?

Facebook deals Goes Live in Europe blog from Mashable;

Facebook Deals – adding the ‘what’ to the where and who on InternetRetailing.


The Flashlight Team would be very happy to talk to you further about how you can integrate Facebook into your marketing plans, we look forward to hearing from you.


Author: Fiona Anderson