Social Media meets Commerce

Giving further credence to the power of social networking, on the 2nd of November, eBay launched their Group Gifts service in the US (just in time for Christmas). See the above promo video from eBay which invites you to think 'Big'.

The service has been designed, say eBay to make “it easier for friends and relatives to chip in for gifts because it eliminates the headache of collecting contributions”.

How it works is: A gift is chosen, then others are invited to contribute to the gift via Facebook or email, they show their commitment via making the payment.

Should Group Gift Service make it to the eBay UK, I can see this working amongst my friends, for group payments for Hen Dos, Baby Showers, however I can’t see this working with older relatives, who unless this is advertised well may be sceptical about the security of this group gift option (if they haven’t heard of it before).

Group Gifts is just one of a number of social commerce tools currently being developed by eBay. Last week it unveiled a payment mechanism for digital purchases that allow people to make purchases through Facebook too.

It will be interesting to see how Group Gifts takes off in the US.

New Media Age recently reported that the UK market isn’t yet mature enough for social commerce, despite commitment from brands such as Dell and Disney.

Are we ready, time will tell.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Facebook Pages - Building the REAL community

Facebook say Facebook Pages allow you to: “Connect with your audience, share your story and participate in real-time conversations quickly and easily on Facebook”. Read more over at Facebook here; http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages

The below provides quick tips from the Rocktime Flashlight team on how to build a community on Facebook using Facebook Pages.

Building the Authentic Community

Facebook for business should be about genuine, valuable interaction with fans the most effective way to build the community is by engaging with your customer base. Critical mass online often takes time, remember it was the "Tortoise (slowly but surely) that won the race, when the Hare took a little nap”. Talk to us more about this analogy if you like, basically it sums up that slow organic growth in social media is not a bad thing.

Your Facebook Page needs to be engaging and interesting to ensure your fans/customers/potential customers, keep you in their news feeds. It doesn’t need to be “wham bam wham” with production of chat on your page wall, you just need to talk to your fans at a time suitable for them (when they are most engaged).
Ads can be used to give your community a boost, perhaps expanding to a new demographic, but the key is content, content, content.

Lessons in Engagement

• Give your fans a reason to visit
• Get them to love your page so they can recommend you to others
• Provide interesting insights of value (to the fan)
• Share news
• Competitions
• Deliver informative information which indicates that you know your industry and don't constantly promote your products or service
• Give people a reason to talk about the page
• Introduce people to the reasons as to why they should be visiting or liking the page
• Be chatty & human to encourage conversation and ensure ongoing interaction
• When delivering Facebook Ads, keep the target audience in mind, deliver an ad that will resonate with your fan rather than shouting about how great you are
• Advertise on the Facebook page to encourage further interaction on your site
• Make a note of all your customer touch points (Newsletters, Lost password, Page 404 not found) and how you can advertise your networks of interaction there to encourage Facebook Page fan growth
• Finally, keep it real (think topical stories and conversations)

Considerations:

People tend to join a community when they see it has many fans already. You may develop a campaign (on or off Facebook) to encourage fans to join, but you must always return to the quality over quantity argument - will you get return?

You will if you devise a campaign closely linked to your target audience, that will deliver value.
A biggy to consider is that when launching any campaign attention needs to be given to the resource of social media & a strategy established for this to work. Along with delivering Facebook Pages strategy the Rocktime Flashlight team can assist with these Social Media resource issues, talk to us to find out more.

If you would like to share any further tips for Facebook Page Growth, feel free to comment below. I am sure we could share more, re: Facebook Mark Up Language (Facebook HTML) and Social Plugins, Apps, Multi Channel Integration, but we simply wanted to provide a simple list of 'do's', that our readers can use to help them get on the right track to Fan Page growth.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Amazon Black Friday hits the UK

We have been moaning recently about the premature Christmas adverts on the telly, which all seem to include dancing & singing this year (Iceland, M&S, Confused.com). We are pretty confident that they will all become very annoying by the time Christmas arrives.

But here's something that we're not moaning about; Amazon has brought the American "Black Friday" retail campaign to the UK. Yeah!! A popular campaign in the States, where shops (both online & offline) slash their prices to encourage shoppers to part with their Thanksgiving bonuses.

What does this mean to us? Whilst we might not have any Thanksgiving bonuses to burn, DISCOUNTS on the other hand are always a good thing.

Amazon state that for the first time ever, they will be replicating many of the deals for UK users on Friday 26th of November. They are promoting "unbelievable, pinch-me-to-prove-they're-real, Black Friday deals", the nature of which will be revealed on the 22nd of November.

We hope you grab a bargain, we will certainly be checking out their deals on tech and gadget stuff, cameras, consoles, games etc.

Here's hoping the deals live up to our expectations.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

Most of us have heard of augmented reality, but what about diminished reality? The name is pretty self explanatory, and here's a pretty amazing example! This video was put together as a research project by Jan Herling and Wolfgang Broll from the Illmenau University of Technology in Germany and gives a fantastic demonstration of a diminished reality in your own home.





Just think of the possibilities! Removing that annoying tall persons head from your view at the cinema? That ex you'd rather not think about from some video? Maybe even a camera where you can dynamically remove passers by from your photo before taking it? And thats just on the small scale...


Author: Alice Cheetham

An Introduction to QR codes

What are QR codes?

QR (Quick Response) codes are similar to bar codes, but they are two dimensional and therefore these codes can hold a lot more information than a standard barcode found on many products (up to 10 numerical digits).

QR Codes allow everyday items to become a website (print to mobile to web messaging), a QR code can be used to store information such as text, URLs or any other data. If the QR code is being used to store numerical data only 7089 digits can be stored. For alphanumeric data up to 4296 characters can be stored.

QR codes can be used anywhere that printed material may exist (magazines, signs, webpages etc.) as a convenience way of allowing users to access some information without having to type any text, all the user needs to do is scan the QR code with their device and the QR code will be decoded and acted upon based on its content.

Who is using them?

QR codes have been around for some time now, a few examples of QR codes being used in Marketing can be found over at a Mashable Blog post (Jan 09).

Currently the majority of QR codes are used to provide a “tell me more” function with the QR code appearing on albums, posters etc. which when scanned take the user to a URL which provides more information about product.

But the codes can be used for E-ticketing applications. In this case a code can be generated and sent to a mobile phone, when the owner of the mobile phone arrives the QR code is scanned and then marked as used so it cannot be re-used. This reduces the requirement to print and post actual tickets and if the recipient loses their code they can just request a new one via text or email.

Coca-Cola have been using QR codes to allow Japanese customers to collect loyalty points for free drinks.

The Flashlight Search Marketing Team at Rocktime report, that they have seen QR codes used on a number of offline items including:

Business Cards
Posters
Products
Art and Tatoos
Fashion Items

The most exciting campaign they (Flashlight) have seen (to date) using QR codes was back in August 2010, where a Russian mobile provider MTS launched a digital campaign inviting consumers to play a weekly adventure game using their smartphone in order to win a prize, see above picture and read more about it over at the Brand Republic website.

Even Facebook has its own QR Code community, full of interesting oddities, ideas and discussion.

How to activate a QR code?

Many modern phones now come with a QR code reader installed as standard, these include Android phones, Nokia phones running S60 3rd Edition or newer and Blackberry’s with Messenger 5.0 or newer.

There are a number of free QR code reading apps available for both iPhones and Android Phones. These can be obtained via the iTunes App Store and the Android Market. These apps allow the user to scan the QR code and perform an action based on their content.

Android: Scanner often installed as standard.
iPhone: Apps available via the iTunes App Store.
Blackberry: Scan a group barcode option in the BBM menu.
Nokia Symbian: Has a barcode scanner which can read QR codes.
Nokia Maemo: Uses “mbarcode” to read QR codes.


Rocktime and QR codes

We can produce the codes and then our clients can print them somewhere, we can then provide statistics about the number of times the QR code was used within the clients content management system.

If you need any help or inspiration in using QR codes in your business.

Contact us




Author: Andy Edwards (Ed)

Welcomed New Feature in Google Analytics

Weighted sort is a welcomed new feature in Google Analytics for all of us who have been using column sorting and desiring a way to have actual, useful meaning behind it. Google introduce the new weighted sort feature over at their blog, and have provided the above video to help explain further. 


When somethings new in Web Analytics the first place I go is Avinash Kaushik’s Blog, he is a total Analytics genius/god amongst Web Analytic Managers.

I was first introduced to Avinash after his book ‘Web: Analytics an Hour a Day’ was recommended to me on a Web Trends Analytics course (about 4 yrs ago). I was quickly made aware of Avinash’s great ability to make Web Analytics almost human, explaining the finer points in Simple English, providing you with situations that you can refer to, on your own website. I highly recommend it.




I visited / turned to, Avinash’s blog to find out more about the new Google Analytic feature and I wasn’t disappointed. The blog post is rather long, but it is all needed to help understand what he describes as ‘magic’. 


A great sum up of the new tool was in Avinash's reply to a readers blog comment who 
mentioned that the new feature was similar to Google Analytic’s ‘Advanced Filters’.

I will share with you that snippet below...do visit & read the full blog post here: 'End of Dumb Tables in Web Analytics Tools! Hello: Weighted sort’.

And note, like I have, that he has a new (Oct 2009) book Web Analytics 2.0 which is definitely going on my Amazon Wish List this Christmas.

The blog comment on Avinash’s Blog that sums up the 'weighted sort feature' well:


“I suspect in everyone's life it is about volume. :) But how do you focus on: 1. Where are we getting less volume where we should get a lot and 2. Where is it that we are getting lots of volume but we can improve a lot more. You can filter using Advanced Filters, but that still leaves you with thousands of rows of data where you have to apply judgment and pick and choose and figure out how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Weighted Sort was built exactly with that goal in mind: To make it even more efficient for you to find "interestingness" in thousands of rows of data – and without you making guesses.

Then you apply advanced filters.

If you first do advanced filters and then weighted sort you might filter out some low volume sites that present the most interesting opportunities. If you do weighted sort and then advanced filter you won't have that problem. I want to stress that I am not saying advanced filters are not great or that you don't need them. Weighted sort is just one more tool in your arsenal”

Read more here: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2010/09/end-dumb-tables-web-analytics-tools-weighted-sorts.html

Rocktime's Flashlight Team are eager to help you illuminate your web analytic tables, feel free to call us to discuss how Web Analytics can bring value to your business.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Social Media and Mobile Platform

MePlease has announced the launch of its social media and mobile platform, which enables businesses to connect with customers on their mobile, along with offering very easy social media sharing. This integrated social media and mobile platform, will help transform relationships between businesses and customers via social media & mobile marketing.

We are very excited indeed !!

Last week we heard (via: New Media Age) that MePlease had partnered with Pizza Express to help power the voting of their recent “Create Your Pizza Challenge”. If you happen to visit a Pizza Express Restaurant between 18th October to November 14th, you may note an on table display to vote for one of five pizza finalists. People participating will also have the option to post their opinion directly to Facebook, to further encourage viral spread for the brand.

Why not pop into a Pizza Express next week and try it out, alternatively view this video for a demonstration on how Me Please works in situ.

MePlease In Action at PizzaExpress from MePlease on Vimeo.

Although MePlease is similar to sites such as FourSquare (which we blogged about back in June), the difference about MePlease is, that it's largely powered by SMS, so it will work on any phone (ie; not just smart phones), suiting both National brands and small businesses.

MePlease is such a great idea !! Secretly wish it was ours...

The mobile platform provides business to customer engagement via voting, competitions, generate customer feedback and will also encourage customer acquisition, retention and most importantly drive footfall. A number of high street names have already signed up, and as we consider letting our clients know about this portal, we are keeping up to date with the Me Please news over at their blog:
http://mepls.wordpress.com/

The only critique we would give is the name ‘me please’ as you can imagine a lot of people saying this in social media (which will appear in search engines). “can you review this site for me please”, “can you look at this link for me please” etc...However after writing that, although Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) would help if you had heard about the brand and wanted to be part of it, SEO wouldn’t be as relevant as the activity would be virally spread.


Interesting stuff....

If you want to discuss more about mobile marketing and social media strategies and how they could fit with your business, feel free to call the Rocktime Flashlight team, so they can then view your integrated approach potential.

Author: Sarah Griffiths