Social media Archives

Facebook at work, for work

You may or may not know that over the past year, Facebook have been working to determine how the platform can be used in a work capacity – via its news feeds, groups, and messaging. If you look at Facebook you’ll find there’s now a separate page login, a separate mobile app, and a Messenger app for your work. If you’ve not seen it, take a look at the link here.

At first we wondered whether Facebook’s end game was about creating a real competitor against the formidable force of LinkedIn, currently valued at 26 billion dollars, but now it appears the plans are considerably more ambitious. Instead of aiming to create a direct LinkedIn competitor per se, Facebook appear to be planning to encourage businesses to use their social graph technology in-house. This Facebook mindshift will enable employees to communicate with one another at work, leaders to interact with business partners – and will even enable the forging of new business relationships via the power of shared contacts.

The list of possibilities becomes endless if you consider how new Facebook for Work apps might be created by an organisation using Facebook’s APIs

With an existing Facebook user base of 1.6 billion people, the interface is certainly already usable, and it would appear to be fairly easy to migrate its user base and start using it to share information about everyday work activities. Facebook’s recent move to encourage Facebook Pages for businesses, along with the launch of tools to create intelligent chat bots to encourage direct customer communication via Facebook Messenger, would appear to fit perfectly into such a strategy.

It doesn’t take a giant leap of imagination to see how employees might be invited to meetings through Facebook Events, how they might create a Facebook Page for a particular project or team, brainstorm creative ideas or see notifications about project progress. Add to this the use of Facebook Messenger video conferencing, or quick-fire response text questions whilst on the move. The list of possibilities becomes endless if you consider how new Facebook for Work apps might be created by an organisation using Facebook’s APIs. As with the regular Facebook, privacy settings could be used in companies to create sub-groups, private pages, groups, and events, sharing this information selectively and confidentially.

It’s easy to imagine how an employee might receive a notification telling them they’ve just been paid or maybe have a holiday request granted (cue Facebook ad recommending all inclusive trip to the Maldives)

And just imagine if all that new information were made available for a company centrally, to search through, to analyse, and to act upon – like a continuous feed of invaluable in-house data. Facebook and Twitter call this ‘firehose’ access. Analyses could be run centrally for all manner of tasks, and Facebook have produced a White Paper on security and how they plan to look after your data. This programme of work is being taken very seriously, and for good reason as security will be a defining factor.

How are third-party apps going to get in on the action?

The likes of Salesforce or Dropbox could fit snugly into a user’s profile page on Facebook for Work, with their existing work applications that make use of Facebook Connect technology and allow employees to log in using their Facebook for Work account. It’s easy to imagine how an employee might receive a notification telling them they’ve just been paid or maybe have a holiday request granted (cue Facebook ad recommending all inclusive trip to the Maldives).

So what if Facebook’s ambitions are far greater than creating an elaborate LinkedIn? Are they planning to offer their own integrated native services? It’s quite possible there is an ambition to compete with a whole bunch of existing business services, from Shutterstock to Mailchimp – and why not? They could even enable an asymmetrical social graph and compete with Twitter. There are a wealth of possibilities including the creation of an employment portal for employers’ recruiters to span across organisations, a bit like LinkedIn, enabling recommendations from existing employees and employees in different organisations. You get the idea.

So what does the future look like?

If you sign up for Facebook for Work, we expect you to see an alarmingly pertinent newsfeed – ultimately with B2B adverts related to your work, job ads to tempt you away from your place of work, and sundry business opportunities that suit your very particular demographic. Let’s face it, where best to advertise if you can target seniors in an organisation who have the authority to buy products and services? We’re also predicting that Facebook will create a commercial app ecosystem through their APIs – almost adopting an Operating System approach and encouraging integration from all manner of third-party and popular services. Importantly, all these interactions will be quintessentially social, shareable, collaborative – and accessible.

It wouldn’t be so unusual for Facebook to target the business market after its global success in dominating the social graph, especially when you consider that enterprise software spend last year was estimated by Gartner to be $344bn. Microsoft has recently purchased Yammer for $1.2bn to enable collaborative working via a social networking infrastructure – and Slack is relatively new on the market but its chat tool is already popular in project management and software engineering management and is pliable for bespoke development.

Facebook is already piloting the technology with large companies like Heineken and the Royal Bank of Scotland, and they’re still accepting pilots, so we’re excited to see the results – perhaps especially so because Facebook for Work is being developed in London.

Now, Facebook for Dating? Watch this space…

Social Media meets Bots and Artificial Intelligence

You may have seen today’s Chat Bots announcement for the Facebook platform for the Facebook f8 conference. Last week saw Microsoft’s CEO declare bots as the next big thing, with the company creating a platform for the creation of bots on other platforms, including its own Skype Instant Messenger channel.

So what ARE bots? Broadly speaking, a bot is software that runs automated tasks over the Internet – you could create a bot that watches your Facebook status and automatically posts that status on your Twitter feed, for example. The service ifttt.com enables you to create such bots. A chat bot is a different beast entirely, and an intelligent chat bot is different again.

The recent popularity of chat bots owes to the fact that a great number of people are spending a good deal of their time in Instant Messaging platforms, chatting with friends, privately debating, even playing games. Facebook just announced 900m monthly users on Messenger with 60billion messages sent every single month. Below are examples of simple bots shown through Facebook Messenger and Skype IM, currently launched on a Beta basis.

fbchess

microsoftbot

So, what’s the plan, Stan?

The idea behind chat bots is that a user can activate a game of chess (or similar) in mid conversation with a friend, and then intersperse their gaming with their personal chat. It’s not quite sitting in your living room, playing a game with a cup of tea, but the boundaries are getting fuzzier.

The more interesting chat bot technology will algorithmically learn based on instructions taught to it, and interacts with users using natural language. Bots learn to understand what you write. You probably saw the recent stories of Microsoft’s Bot running riot on Twitter after it automatically adopted racist behaviours from users. Whilst this bot became quite offensive and had to be taken off the shelf, the achievement was significant, and it’s why the likes of Microsoft’s CEO is hailing bots as the next big thing. We agree. The recent announcements by Skype and Facebook along with the likes of Kik Messenger and Line, and the opening of IM platforms to third-party services, herald the start of a boom that parallels the arrival of smartphone apps.

Intelligent chat bots provide an intuitive and de-parameterised user experience in which transactions can be made whilst on the move with a mobile phone. The premise is simple, an intelligent chat bot doesn’t require you to book a hotel and get all of the variables right or ask for the hotel using a geeky language. If you miss something important, like the check in date, it simply asks you or even makes an assumption that you’re talking about tonight – a bit like a human hotel receptionist. You could message an intelligent hotel bot in the same way you’d message a friend, and it will understand you via its very nifty artificial intelligence engine.

So what makes all this relevant to social media? Well the answer is in the social aspect of chat bots. Most social networks offer Instant Messaging channels, and with a billion users, shows us that it’s where people hang out. If large numbers of users spend time in a messaging platform, then the owners of that platform will naturally try to figure out how to monetise that activity. Yes, advertising is an obvious method, but a more meaningful and less intrusive activity is supporting commerce transactions – enter, Instant Messaging Commerce, known as ‘Conversational Commerce’.

The AI takes care of all of the tedious detail for you

Conversational Commerce allows you to do anything that’s possible with an app, such as ordering a taxi, only through a text-based interface. But don’t be afraid of any tedious associated activities such as having to specify ‘pickup’ and ‘destination; worrying about spelling errors and or writing in code or a particular format. None of that will matter if you order an uber car using Conversational Commerce, for example.

That’s the beauty of this type of social intelligence. The AI takes care of all of the tedious detail for you, recognising what you want to do from a normal textual dialogue, like “I wanna grab a cab from my house to the airport”. Easy. It knows you’re talking about home, knows where you live, and knows that you want to go to the airport. And it’ll assume it’s the local major airport. Now imagine the possibilities, and you’ll see why everyone’s getting so excited about it. It’s like Siri on Steroids, and as a bonus, nobody gets to hear you clumsily and repeatedly speaking out loud into your phone like you’ve gone clinically insane.

Imagine a world where you can just ask, “can I get my usual pizza delivered now please”, or “can you pick up my laundry and take my dog for a walk” or even, “can I order a repeat prescription”. Conversational Commerce suits on-demand services because of the frictionless way in which users can activate a commerce instruction. Well, if you embrace the future of technology, you’ll be excited to know that it’s a world that’s not so far away, especially with the major platforms opening their doors to allow software developers to create intelligent bots. And where is that channel best located? Why, in your pocket, of course. On your mobile phone.

The technology potential is enormous

And let’s take the concept just a little further and talk to the social nature of the technology. Imagine being able to order that taxi you wanted while you’re in the middle of a chat with a friend, with the chat bot monitoring your conversation arranging to meet. Or perhaps you want to order a birthday present for someone after suddenly realising it’s their birthday when chatting, or buying something your friend is recommending to you (before you forget). All of a sudden, we have social shopping, performed in an intimate, natural manner. The technology potential is enormous, providing for interwoven conversations with information about items plucked off the web using an AI chat bot, “Are these the shoes you had on yesterday?”, or “Do you want this for your b-day? I’ll order it now!”, or “I was drinking this whisky last night, it’s amazing.” The opportunities presented from social conversational commerce over social media are significant.

Finally, there’s no reason why this bot technology needs to interact solely with just text. Not only can a bot send you a picture of the hotel you’re thinking of, or the taxi rating and a picture of your driver, but it can send you video – and video now can be made interactive. Skype’s new APIs available through Microsoft’s Cognitive Services are offering some very wizzy functionality, and it won’t be long before you can ask to change the colour of a clothing item worn by a catwalk model you’re watching on your phone through video. And why not check into a physical store by simply sending a message. Your phone will be doing it all – and probably just using a single app, an IM Messenger.

So watch out for Conversational Commerce. It’s coming, strong and hard, and it’s going to get VERY social. It won’t replace our standard high street nor our eCommerce experiences, but it’ll add to the mix, and make the buying experience richer and potentially more fun.

How to choose a social media agency to manage your company’s Twitter channel

There are a number of reasons why you would do well to outsource your business Twitter account to a specialist social media agency rather than to a PR or marketing agency – but how do you know how proficient the social media handling will be? This blog provides you with some useful questions to consider during your selection process. The key is to do your homework before you entrust anyone to showcase your business to the worldwide social web.

There is a growing number of marketing and PR agencies who claim to be experts in social media, and yet their own social channels are poorly run and show little sign of growth and engagement. Many marketing agencies classify themselves as ‘integrated’ agencies, covering the broad marketing and advertising spectrum, but in our experience, the deep hybrid expertise needed for social media is often missing in these organisations. One of our clients is a marketing agency, and they acknowledge their own limitations in social media skills. The interesting element is that despite this deficiency, they will still take new clients on as an integrated package – which includes social media. The agency we represent is not alone in this – which tells us all a clear story.

First and foremost, we strongly recommend that when you choose an agency to manage your social media, you use the social feeds of that company as a useful benchmark. Check what channels they’re on, check how many followers they have and what growth rate they have, and check how much engagement they receive. If they can’t create a thriving and engaging presence for themselves on social media, then how on earth can they be effective for your company? If you hear your marketing agency explain how your social media channel management will be bundled together with a larger marketing programme, it’s a warning sign. Social media requires specialist expertise to stop you looking like a clone of that marketing company, slightly impotent, unengaging, and perhaps worse still. As obvious as it may sound, they need to make you look successful and professional or your credibility will take a nosedive.

So let’s be more specific and explore what exactly you should be looking for in a social agency if you’re looking to outsource management of your social media. The following questions will all need answering, whether via light online investigation or outright interrogation under harsh spotlight.

Can they command growth themselves?

We recommend the company you choose has at least seven thousand followers on Twitter, preferably more.

Are they genuinely keeping it real?

Check that these followers are real, because (as explained in a previous blog), false followers are easy to buy and can result in unprecedented damage to your reputation and Google ranking. There are free tools such as statuspeople.com you can use to quickly check the authenticity of another’s followers, seeing how many are fake. We’ve grown many of our client Twitter accounts north of ten thousand followers, and we do it quickly owing to in-house software targetting tools we’ve developed. A couple of thousand followers just won’t do and we suggest you run a free follower audit on an agency before even talking to them.

Are they regular?

We’re not drawing parallels with your daily ablutions, but it’s true, it’s important to be regular! It’s well established that tweeting multiple times daily is ‘optimum’, and if an agency doesn’t recognise this themselves, then we’d advise against you entrusting them with your business. If the agency doesn’t believe in, or isn’t knowledgeable about optimum postings (times of day, quantity of tweets), then look elsewhere. Google now crawls social media feeds and helps with ranking, authenticity, and trust. Ask to see growth rates of their client accounts.

Are they obsessive about accuracy?

Spelling errors, grammatical errors, tone of voice discrepancies or duplicate postings on an agency’s own Twitter feed are unacceptable. You need to ensure that your social management agency will positively represent the quality of your business via style, tone, accuracy and unfailing attention to the small stuff. How well are THEY representing themselves as a quality business? Steer away from working with organisations that fail on quality control – it talks to a broader question of quality and management of processes. If you see warning signs in the shape of poor spelling, grammar or general sloth, then sprint like Usain Bolt away from their offices.

Do they understand Twitter protocols? (i.e how to use a hashtag)

One of our clients left another social media agency to come to us, and we witnessed terrible mind-scarring scenes of hashtag misuse on their Twitter feed. Our first job involved multiple deletions of #Star #Wars rather than #StarWars and #business #travel instead of #businessTravel ad nauseum. OK granted – these are first world atrocities – but if your management agency doesn’t know how to use the most elementary resources on Twitter, then walk. They’ll make you look naïve and unprofessional.

Do they know what platforms you need? (and DON’T need)

Make sure they understand the benefits of choosing the right social channels for you. If they’re represented on Facebook and have a single post on Instagram, we’d question their general credibility. Why would they be as a B2B business? They’re certainly not going to exemplify their skills through engagement if that’s their intention, and they need to consider return on investment just like any other business. Generally, Twitter and LinkedIn are useful for B2B businesses, and Facebook and others such as Instagram are useful for B2C businesses. But this isn’t always the case, and a social media agency should be able to justify which channels should be attended to.

Have they discussed your ROI and business strategy with you?

Social media isn’t a trophy channel and you shouldn’t select an agency that doesn’t understand return on investment – even if the return isn’t directly monetary and comes in the form of credibility, quality or heightened visibility. An agency needs to understand the strategy and goals of your company to determine not only what social channels are suitable but how best to use them in order to align with your long-term and short-term business goals.

Thanksocial’s team comprises a hybrid of professional writers and social media authorities who have deep expertise in the social network space. We’re also experts in expediting relevant growth and have developed in-house engagement technology tools that allow your social activities to snowball forwards 24/7.

How to use hashtags when Tweeting for business

The Twitter hashtag was born on August 23rd 2007, invented by Chris Messina, with the first tweet reading “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups?” Not so long after that invention, one of our Thanksocial team members was at the Developer Conference in San Francisco when the hashtag was launched in earnest and accessible via Twitter’s API. It was an exciting time. Hashtags appear to be quite simple and can be used in multifarious ways, and it’s for these reasons they are often used incorrectly, particularly in business. This is rather surprising given the increasing popularity of the hashtag – which made its way into the Oxford dictionary way back in 2010.

In the simplest form, hashtags are made with a view to allowing other users to click on that hashtag and see search results with directly relevant content. It is used to categorise tweets by keyword, prefixed with a hash symbol, allowing users to see relevant tweets under that hashtag that they can then engage with outside of their immediate ‘interest graph’. Yes, Twitter refers to their social graph as an interest graph, as opposed to Facebook’s, and there’s an important difference in these networks due to the ability to asymmetrically follow someone on Twitter. With Facebook, you have symmetric friend relationships, but the interest graph on Twitter is different simply because someone can follow you without you reciprocating. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn are now providing for this asymmetric functionality using their new page structures that allow users to follow without mandating reciprocal follow-back. Indeed, one of our clients is benefitting from the use of #fitspo through her Facebook page, attracting others interested in ‘fitspiration’.

…hashtag hijacking can be annoying for businesses

We often see people on Twitter hijacking popular and trending hashtags with a view to forcing engagement, almost like someone turning up at Parliament and heckling the ministers about an unrelated matter. This misuse can be annoying for businesses, and talks more specifically to the benefit of using hashtags in the first place, but here are two extreme examples of hashtag hijacking.

The principal idea of hashtags is to create a means that reach outside your interest graph and encourage new engagement beyond your immediate circle of followers. When applied to business, someone at a tech conference such as #CES2016, can click on the hashtag and find people attending the event, engage with them, add them to Twitter lists, and perhaps even follow them. If they use that hashtag, you’ll find a stream of related content related to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas (great event by the way).

Using hashtags that are too broad will make you look socially naïve and won’t have any positive effect on engagement

The truth is, not all of your tweets are going to fit into a hashtag category, and there’s usually no real point in creating a unique hashtag that nobody else is going to use. Not unless you’re breaking the news and want to act as a catalyst for a new hashtag – or perhaps you’re commentating and adding to the news. If your tweet isn’t adding anything to the wider audience beyond your existing follower base and interest graph, don’t use a hashtag. Thanksocial uses hashtags on Twitter for one of their clients to share information about #CleanEating, a new movement encouraging healthy diet. Sharing a relevant tweet with others outside your follower base can lead to growing engagement and your follower base, but including something too general like #eating or #food is just too broad. Using hashtags that are too broad will make you look socially naïve and won’t have any positive effect on engagement. One of our clients provides SMS Marketing solutions to businesses but if you check #SMS, you’ll find a plethora of hashtags that point to foreign usage and everyday use by consumers rather than just #SMSMarketing – which is considerably better because it has increased focus. Some trending hashtags, (seen on the left side of your twitter interface) are prime candidates for hijacking.

Even during the festive season, for example, hashtags like #Christmas won’t have much effect and will get lost in the stream of everyone else using the same hashtag way too generally. This type of hashtag generalisation is likely to be of more use to end-users on Twitter rather than businesses.

There are of course exceptions to the rule. Hashtags can also be used for humour or emphasis – #fail #great – and let’s not forget that the geographic scope of followers you wish to attract and engage with are often limited through the use of hashtags – especially when they are made independent of geography. One of our clients is a premier hotel in London and so use of hashtags such as #travel won’t help anyone. That said, another of our clients offers international cruising packages, and so the hashtag is valid, although so many people use them incorrectly that the resultant stream of tweets is often cluttered with noise.

Don’t overload your Tweet with hashtags #SoAnnoying #Justsayin

One of Thanksocial’s clients hosts daily competitions for increased engagement with their customers who also reside on Twitter. The client offers a consumer app for gifting, and followers on Twitter and Facebook engage with competitions on a regular basis. This has resulted in repeat usage of the app owing to keeping the consumer service front of mind. Daily competitions made use of unique hashtags for a particular stream, and this is an example of how they can be used beyond the standard search method. Users tweeted answers and photos to competition questions, and other competition entrants could not only see what they were up against, but their followers, in turn, could get a sense of the competition by clicking on the hashtag.

Don’t overload your tweet with hashtags as this prevents any useful focus on the content (and is the type of activity undertaken by spammers). Instagram users are often guilty of cramming in too many hashtags, but on Twitter this often results in diluting a message and can even come off as somewhat desperate. And don’t use them on LinkedIn posts. They don’t work. Using hashtags like #marketing are just too general and it’s important to ask whether it’s possible to hone in more on something more accurate, like #DirectMarketing or #DigitalMarketing.

Finally, don’t forget #FollowFriday, or as it’s now commonly abbreviated #FF. This was first used by Micah Baldwin back in January 2009, and the hashtag lives on and is a fun way to recommend someone to your interest graph and gain greater engagement by interested parties.

Social media for B2B tech startups. Kick off your social media before funding

We often hear B2B startups ask why on earth they’d spend time on social media for a new B2B business when the business model is still being iterated and there’s not even a whisper of revenue. The truth is, B2B businesses that use social media find it can be very effective in exhibiting the prospect of a dynamic and state-of-the-art company. This is even more useful when you’re yet to be funded and other areas of the company might look well established.

Social media is like everything you dreamed you’d get from PR – only it’s not PR. It’s less expensive and most importantly, it works. Unlike B2C businesses, B2B business models can generate revenue quickly through partnerships, and gauging interest from prospective partners and new clients can be useful to mark the territory – and command an authority in the new space being carved out. Of course, we’re assuming it’s a new space – bestowing technological advantage on old conventional practices and so doing the same thing better.

Come out of stealth and announce to the world what you’re doing and what problems you’re solving. Don’t be afraid of the light.

B2B business areas are typically more mundane than those in a B2C consumer service, but look for friction in conventional business practices and there’ll be gold if you can do it better with technology. You can get feedback quickly relative to a consumer service because of a smaller specialist B2B market, so take advantage of this, come out of stealth and announce to the world what you’re doing and what problems you’re solving. Don’t be afraid of the light.

One of our clients who we’ve worked with for many years started off as a specialist Microsoft Cloud supplier using Microsoft Azure as a backbone relative to standalone servers. It’s fair to say that Microsoft was late coming to the table with their cloud services relative to the likes of Amazon, but the technology has since advanced into a rich plethora of comprehensive services and an associated ecosystem, offering everything from machine learning to running instances of Linux and other operating systems – all centrally and all truly scalably.

We occasionally talked about failures of competitors, although keeping everything positive is generally sensible.

Microsoft tend to evangelise their technology and their partners, and even have employees with Technology Evangelist job titles, and so we set out with that in mind on behalf of our client to influence Microsoft through social media. We engaged with key players who were active on Twitter at Microsoft in the Azure arena, we read up and learnt about cloud technologies and competitors, and we used Twitter to inform a now thriving audience about breaking news and new cloud features. We occasionally talked about failures of competitors, although keeping everything positive is generally sensible. While we’re writers, we also have technical and commercial expertise in-house. Our client was early in their business career when they came to us, and they’ve now seen various rounds of VC and have been awarded Microsoft Partner of the year for multiple, successive years. Commentators often say they’ve heard of them due to their thriving and active Twitter account.

We’re highly versatile in adopting new tones of voice and understanding new technologies and commercial goals for all manner of organisations (indeed, one of our senior writers has a patent in telecommunications.) One of our clients is an award-winning, large tech recruitment agency. The agency came to Thanksocial because they wanted to create a new movement that champions a work-life balance for employers and employees in London. The company is forward-thinking and progressive in their mission, and are so convincing that our own business has adopted their philosophy and practices which are aimed at increasing happiness and wellbeing in the workplace.

The creation of a B2B movement that influenced employers and stirred up employees was a new challenge to Thanksocial and we decided that the best solution was to create the campaign from the bottom up, iterating the design of the movement like a minimal viable product – initially gauging interest from followers on Twitter. The initial stage of the project involved generating a regular blog and amplifying this on social channels, although there was no revenue – or even any sign of revenue. Like a tech startup, the strategy was to resonate with leaders in human resources and with employees, and then figure out how to monetise. We blog on behalf of the client every week, and engage with employers and human resource authorities such as the CIPD. The movement is advancing to new levels of engagement that has encouraged the increase of blog creation and has in turn increased social amplification through Twitter – by increased targetting and honing in on a sweet spot. So far the ongoing campaign is working well, and we’ve borrowed from our tech startup experiences in the B2B world.

Social media is disrupting the PR space, and doing so very effectively.

Another B2B client is creating new technology that permits companies to bolt an intelligent engine into messaging technology. It can be used by telco companies and social networks to allow users to send everyday language messages to an automated ‘assistive agent’ that then performs commerce-like actions based on the users’ intent. These actions might be having pizza delivered in an hour, ordering a cab, booking a hotel, or checking flight information. They’re currently looking at IoT control using everyday natural language commands. It’s all extremely clever and makes use of Natural Language Processing and a comprehensive API for third party vendors to onboard. But while the client’s goal is to form relationships with larger organisations, such as Google, the technology isn’t complete and it certainly isn’t generating revenue. In fact, they’re not yet funded. By amplifying progress of the technology and speaking to other businesses and followers like an authority in the space, active social media behaviours help claim the space and position the company as a leader in readiness for launch and funding. Success breeds success, and talking about development achievements and new functionality might seem counterintuitive, but it’s all part of the plan – the company is already gauging interest from major players and may well be acquired even before launch. The press and the tech community are excited and social media has helped achieve this anticipation.

If you’re a C Level executive, you’ll know that you’ll be busy (very busy), so having weight taken off your plate is invaluable

We also look after social media accounts for CEOs and CTOs of companies at the pre-funding stages, often supplemented by tweets and postings directly from them. When we manage accounts such as these, we always stay in regular contact with the executives in order to understand and stay abreast of the business goals and recent advances. If you’re a C Level executive, you’ll know that you’ll be busy (very busy), so having this weight taken off your plate is invaluable. One of our clients wanted a series of LinkedIn Pulse blogs written for them for similar reasons – to present themselves as credible leaders and authorities in the space. We took the brief, wrote the blogs, went through a few iterations, and published onto their LinkedIn profile where the blogs remain persistent for immediate network consumption. Social media is disrupting the PR space, and doing so very effectively. PR agencies are being left behind with their expensive and often ineffective press releases, and being replaced by organic social amplification over networks of influencers.

Social media for B2B tech startups. Why go social AFTER funding?

Right now, we’re seeing an increasing number of tech business startups intent on disrupting the B2B scene. These startups are armed with superpowers in the form of web-based services, smartphone apps, and smart technologies. It’s an interesting time as we watch the business playing field levelled by smaller B2B startups that sprout up and execute great ideas to enable businesses to improve trading relationships. Let’s not forget, while B2B startups aren’t as sexy as the latest crazily named consumer app, B2B businesses tend to exhibit a useful characteristic: They have a propensity to make money, quickly. This contrasts with typical B2C businesses that tend to seek user uptake and growth, and then figure out afterwards how the hell to monetise.

All around us, social media is being used effectively to help businesses with their credibility and visibility, although we’ve noticed that many B2B businesses fail to recognise the benefits on offer. B2B businesses often ask questions like, “why do we need to be public facing when we only deal with other businesses?” The answer is simple: it makes commercial sense to be seen by, and engage with, client businesses and influencers, and particularly as a B2B business it makes sense to be seen to be a thought leader and influencer in your space.

…our experience shows that your B2B customers are unlikely to engage with a facebook post even if it’s relevant to their business

We recommend that B2B businesses focus on particular social networks, such as Twitter and LinkedIn. We sometimes see B2B businesses showcasing themselves on a facebook page, but we’ve yet to see an example of this working usefully. People use social networks to socialise. All of your customers and prospective customers will be on facebook. Let’s face it, everyone is. But our experience shows that your B2B customers are unlikely to engage with a facebook post even if it’s relevant to their business. In contrast, Twitter and LinkedIn connections typically comprise commercial relationships, and so speaking to representatives in that context is very effective. You’re still not going to directly show much in the way of new business, and we’ve talked about that in our blog about customer acquisition, but retaining and strengthening existing relationships with B2B clients is priceless. Getting a new B2B customer can be a big achievement, but keeping them is another, and ensuring you get a lifetime value from a B2B client is key because the acquisition cost is typically very high. That said, while B2B customer acquisition is expensive, one of our customers benefitted from a new customer via social media which has effectively enabled them to use our services without cost for several years. But don’t rely on it.

We often say that social helps on an above-the-line basis when it comes to customer acquisition. That makes it difficult to measure but you can be sure it’s there.

Another of our B2B2C clients provides specialist plugin technology for hoteliers. This tech enables consumers to find out what local attractions are available whilst reviewing a hotel to make a booking. The technology is clever and can be populated by the hotel easily to include and emphasise specific points of interest, and even adapts to accommodate the changing seasons. Why is this relevant to social? Well, recruiting hotels as customers is an expensive undertaking owing to the ever increasing range of technologies available in the tech travel industry. While social media isn’t used here to directly recruit hotels, most hotels use Twitter and so connecting with them on social networks familiarises them with your brand and engenders trust through illustrating knowledge in the field and being state of the art. We often say that social helps on an above-the-line basis when it comes to customer acquisition. That makes it difficult to measure but you can be sure it’s there.

One Thanksocial client sells fine Californian wine online on a B2B basis. The vast majority of their suppliers are on Twitter (in this case wineries in the US) and likewise the clients they supply to (who are mostly high-end shops and restaurants in London). This B2B company has an exclusive deal with suppliers whereby they are the sole importers of the wine, and the supplying winery is always keen to ensure representatives are strong advocates in the market for their wines. Indeed, some of the wine is only permitted for sale at Michelin starred restaurants.

Our wine client gleans tremendous credibility from their strong Twitter following and the strong levels of engagement from other suppliers and their restaurant companies. Wineries are delighted to see how their B2B client is not only promoting their wines, but being included in direct consumer dialogue. There are some instances when end-consumers are included in social engagement with the supplier. On Twitter, we have seen and encouraged the final consumer (the person drinking the wine in a restaurant), engage with the owner of the winery who has toiled to create the wine. This is an exciting chain to behold, reminding many of us why we do what we do. It brings newly found levels of authenticity to the table.

Social media can help a B2B business after funding by strengthening client retention and helping engender trust with new clients.

Another of our B2B clients provides a branded consumer tech device through supermarkets. While the company is reliant on selling the hardware directly to consumers, they do so through supermarkets who naturally command the footfall and clout of the consumer. Our strategy with this client seems at first counter-intuitive because the client’s goal is to engage directly with consumers, just like a B2C company would: through our social media management services, the company reaches out to consumers and engages with them directly on facebook and Twitter, engaging with the consumers, chatting to them, hosting competitions, and retweeting positive experiences about the product. This engagement is highly visible by prospective and existing supermarket suppliers who draw faith from the high consumer engagement, and our experience shows that they’re demonstrably more likely to stock and restock the consumer product. Getting into a supermarket is a major challenge for a B2B company and having prospective supermarkets see an active twitter feed can help secure that invaluable shelf space. There are broader lessons here.

Social media can help a B2B business after funding by strengthening client retention and helping engender trust with new clients. It can also help with supplier relationships, and can be used to command an authority in a very specialist field. Our experience shows how it’s important to produce regular content for sharing, such as White Papers and blogs from leaders in the company. This content can be very effectively amplified through social channels, as we discussed in our previous blog, here.

Social media for B2C tech startups – the benefits after funding

BlogPostStartupsPostFunding

In our previous blog, we discussed the role that social media can play for a B2C startup company before it has secured funding, (this effort being distinct from social media benefits for a B2B startup which has just secured funding). Following on from the previous blog, this week, we will be looking at the benefits of social media to a B2C startup in the post-funding stage.

It’s almost always harder to raise capital than you thought it would be, and it always takes longer, so plan for that if you’ve not reached that stage. If you’re there, watch the world change after the shareholder agreement is signed and the funding is released from escrow – whether at the seed stage or at the angel level. It’s fair to say that the more funding you raise, the greater the changes – a new office perhaps, new staff, board meetings, sick leave and holiday pay, reports to investors, performance reviews, personal guarantees (yikes!) – and the list goes on. In short, you’re busy. Very busy. And things matter now more than they did before. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and tech startups win by racing ahead with quality execution.

Even if a company has in-house marketing resources after funding, we would strongly advise against subsuming social media responsibilities within the new team. Entrepreneurs see what others can’t, so outsource your social media management and let those experts do what you can’t.

social media does need to be professionally managed

Taking social media duties in-house typically results in attending to your social presence ‘when there’s time’, or worse, letting the founder loose on the account, or worse still, allocating it to the intern. And who runs the account when the in-house social media resource is ill or is on vacation? By all means, supplement the social streams with relevant news and updates, but we’ve seen the problems that can arise after clients come to us with their tail between their legs. It’s not pretty, and if you’re going to start up, make sure you start up with excellence in mind. Most people can’t write to a professional level (despite everyone thinking they can) and it quickly shows in your front of house. Delegate to experts, build a team and a set of external resources to draw upon, cost effectively.

Once funding is secured, there is a natural inclination to switch attention away from everything other than sales and product. In fact, for a B2C tech start-up, the post-funding stage needs to be supported by intelligent and relevant social amplification and engagement with customers, prospective customers, the press, and authorities and influencers in your consumer space. While social media efforts won’t help with direct, easily measurable customer acquisition (see our blog here), it can be invaluable in other ways – and social media does need to be professionally managed. If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough, and outsourcing your social media to a professional agency will release your small team from highly specialist work so that you can all focus appropriately. You will need to focus and race ahead.

Seizing the moment

Immediately after your B2C business receives investment, you need, more than ever, to present the company as a leader in your space, and to hammer out your proposition towards growth and monetization. Let’s face it, no sector will ever be so important that merely participating in it will be enough to build a great company. In our experience, we recommend chasing the vision, and not the money. That way, the money will end up following you. And as the founder of LinkedIn points out, if you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late. Your company needs to start conversing over social channels about the successful experiences of customers, any partners it might have, and strengthening press coverage. It’s a task which requires professional social media experience combined with expert copywriting and some technical wizardry to maximise influence and amplification.

When you use Thank Social as a service, we’ll talk with you about your brand and competitors, familiarise ourselves with your team and structure, and understand your vision and direction. We then help define your tone of voice, understand your ambitions and aspirations, and map out respective social media techniques and campaigns. One of our clients relied on supermarkets to distribute their technology, and while they were a B2B business, they wanted to engage with consumers only so that they would appear popular so that other supermarkets would stock their tech. It worked. It’s all more sophisticated than handing over social media to the gap year student or office junior; in this instance, our strategies resulted in engendering consumer engagement and targetting retail suppliers. When the startup went in to speak with the supermarkets, the supermarkets already knew who they were. They even mentioned the great following on Twitter.

68% of consumers visit companies on social media sites before purchasing

Prospective customers look at social feeds of businesses in order to gauge trust and understanding before parting with their money, especially when they’re B2C tech businesses. They’ll be reviewing your Facebook page and following you on Twitter in a heartbeat. A recent study by Millward Brown revealed that 68% of consumers visit companies on social media sites before purchasing. While there may not be a measurable cause and effect between your social media streams and your customer acquisition costs, you can be sure that social is having a very positive impact. Moreover, keeping the customer front of mind through regular social media postings and engagement is great for repeat business and word-of-mouth recommendations. One of our clients sells low-cost digital music through a mobile app streaming service, and keeping the customer base engaged with the latest musical insights is key to keeping the service front of mind for the consumer. Sustaining the service in the mind of the consumer improves repeat purchasing, which in turn helps achieve a customer lifetime value. This is an example of customer retention rather than acquisition, and we ran regular competitions for the client on both Facebook and Twitter with consumer prizes of free music credits; consumers loved it, and for very little reward during competitions, publicised the service to their friends.

Our engagement

When we are first engaged by a new client, we take a close look at what they are about and what they want to achieve. We’ll fully expect this to change over time as they refine their technology, business model, and proposition. We respond to this change depending on where the company is in its development, whether pre- or post-funding, and what timelines have been set for goals. Indeed, one of our clients pivoted from B2C to B2B.

The techniques and the strategies we implement are bespoke fitted to your business model and business objectives. So that you can get on with the nitty-gritty of running your business and refining your strategy and building your consumer base, let us take care of your social media with our professional writers, researchers, technical experts, and social media specialists.

Social media for B2C tech startups. Why kick off your social media BEFORE funding?

Despite whispers of bubbles about to burst in Silicon Valley, the start-up tech industry continues to boom. Crowdfunding sources such as Seedrs and Crowdcube are helping cultivate an ecosystem of new businesses, and we’re seeing a plethora of disruptive consumer models materialise and thrive.

Social media is being used to help fertilise this ecosystem, and, without wanting to overstate the gardening analogy – it can make it flourish too. We regularly witness a strong intuition from B2C startups that they should be on social media, but their rationale for it is harder to define. In many cases, the potential of social media is being under-appreciated or expectations are misguided. The fact is, there isn’t enough understanding about the positive power of social media.

“Professional expertise in social media can be priceless for a blossoming tech startup company.”

Social media can successfully move a startup business forwards either before or after funding. Our biggest tip? Make sure that your social media tactics are dynamic and responsive, and your methods (content, engagement and targeting) are tailored to the short, medium, and long-term goals of the company.

Professional expertise in social media can be priceless for a blossoming tech startup company. In this blog, we review ways social media can be used by a tech startup before investment. In our next blog, we’ll explore social post-investment.

It’s never too early to start Tweeting

There is a popular misconception that social media only comes into its own once a company is up and running. The common view is that an online social profile is only of value when consumers are in a position to use the company’s services in earnest and when the business is experiencing a degree of success. This is a myth. In fact, for B2C tech startups, this line of thinking can be costly – social media can after all be a real asset in furthering the interests of a young company at any stage on the business development journey. The key is executing the right social media tactics at the right stage.

Before a startup succeeds in raising any form of initial capital, whether seed stage or angel stage, they’ll be shaping their product or service by listening to feedback. If they’ve tested the business model on consumers, they’ll be looking at results to see what does and doesn’t resonate. Social media can play a key role in this process. It can be used to reach out to the Press for publicity and maintain relationships with journalists before and after launch. Social media businesses such as Thank Social use careful targeting and content techniques to pinpoint influencers and encourage them to follow the new startup.

“Alongside our honey coated social content, we very gently pre-soft launched the product, building a sense of anticipation”

One startup client of ours designed and created a physical device for adding bubbles to drinks. The product itself was a high design, luxury item aimed at specific age demographics that varied between male and female. The female demographic largely had families and the male demographics were younger, medium to high-income earners. During the crowdfunding investment stage of this project, our objective was to pull in relevant followers from this demographic by producing a ‘honeypot’ of relevant content, including in-house designed drinks ‘recipe cards’ for both cocktails and healthy family drinks. Alongside our honey coated social content, we very gently pre-soft-launched the product, building a sense of anticipation, and reaching out to online retailers and of course relevant journalists. By the time the product was ready to launch, we already had an engaged relevant following, ready to try out the product. We achieved similar with a new, online music streaming app as well as a novel app for instant gifting.

There are plenty of good reasons to invest time and effort into creating a responsive and dynamic social audience, whatever your platform. A lively social stream can present your company as being more advanced than it actually is, and in doing so, successfully provide a glimpse of what’s to come. By presenting your proposition publicly this way before trading, prospective investors will also be watching to assess whether your skills are rounded, commercial and viable. It’s an opportunity to shine brightly.

Use social to reach out pre-funding

For these and other reasons, organisations seeking crowdsourced funding are active on social media. Social media enables a business to talk to prospective clients and engage with authorities in their space. This can be invaluable for shaping and iterating a company’s proposition – through engagement, publicity, and feedback. We’ve used social media for startup clients to help build a sense of excitement for the service, even before launch. Many like the intrigue of a new startup in stealth mode. We target influencers and prospective customers, subtly asserting a business authority in the social space via research and sharing of relevant news.

“… don’t discourage your audience by showing content they’ve already seen. They want to know what you’ve achieved and where you’re going.”

We sometimes see new startups reaching out to prospective investors using Twitter. However, our experience shows this to be ineffective when blatant – our previous blog explored the problems of using social media as an acquisition tool, and this equally applies to the acquisition of investors. People who have followed your company Twitter account or ‘liked’ your Facebook account are interested in your prospective business operationally. They don’t want to see a steady stream of repeated requests for funding or direct requests to use the new service. If someone has taken the time to become interested, don’t discourage them by showing them content they’ve already seen. At this stage, they want to know what you’ve achieved and where you’re going. Avoid using social media as an advertising model like Google Ads, where ad impressions are distributed across a demographic. If you repeat the same or irrelevant information, your followers will leave, and more than likely never return.

Clearly, social media can have a number of functions for a pre-funding tech startup, but there are three key actions you will need to take in order to use it to your best advantage:

1. Define the goals you hope to achieve through your chosen social media platform.

2. Take time thinking out and planning your social strategy.

3. Lay the foundations for your business’ future development.

In our blog next week, we’ll look at how your social media presence can be a central part of this future. The post-funding stage for a tech start up is critical; your social media strategy and associated tactics need to adapt to suit the new aims, resources, and constraints that you will encounter. Once again, professional knowledge and experience in the social media world are priceless.

The real cost of buying Twitter followers

In today’s social media climate, appearing ‘popular’ can seem almost as important as it did in your schooldays. Businesses want to show themselves to be thriving, relevant and successful. Unlike your peers at school, though, platforms like Twitter and Facebook represent popularity as a numerical statistic which provides a sense of authority and general success.

The way we acted in our teenage years appears to persist in our modern online culture, and it is little surprise that businesses are tempted to try to purchase popularity. Many of us will have been approached digitally by dubious characters promising to give us 10,000 new Twitter followers in return for a suspiciously small fee. They use their bot technology to breach social network rules and quickly add thousands of followers to your account – naughty perhaps, but value for money. Or so it would first seem.

While buying this sense of popularity may come with an initial buzz of gratification, this method of boosting fame can be seriously detrimental to a brand. Not only do these followers get automatically identified and deleted by the social network administrators, this will also create a permanent mark on the history of your account. Social media platforms use algorithms which distinguish fake followers from real followers. It’s estimated that Barack Obama, the 3rd most followed person on Twitter with over 65 million followers, has around 20 million that are fake. When it comes to buying followers, it’s the deception associated with paying for them that causes the damage. In our experience, this association if uncovered will be far more detrimental to your brand than the short-lived kudos of boosting your numbers.

… an intern had tried to impress the boss by adding thousands of followers

Fake accounts can easily be detected through a range of free tools such as statuspeople.com. Tools like this can make businesses who buy followers a target for the ’Hall of Shame’ – a list of businesses that have tried to employ underhand tactics to artificially increase their status online. And this Hall of Shame is well indexed on Google. One of our clients came to us reporting that they had a bevy of false followers which they wanted to be removed. Google was indexing their account on the Hall of Shame – a place no company wants to be – and their discreditable entry appeared indexed above their organic URL entry on Google. It was subsequently discovered that it was an intern who had tried to impress the boss by adding thousands of ‘zombie’ followers to their company’s feed for a nominal payment. Fortunately, we know how to fix both of these problems: removing fakers and having the Hall of Shame entry removed. In this case, we could continue to run their account professionally and successfully.

Follower relevance

Another unscrupulous method of accruing false followers is using tools like Twiends.com. This model is based on a follow-back principle where you receive points for following real people, can offer points yourself and you can use these points to incentivise following from others. These followers are a combination of real and fake, but real ones may be teenagers or individuals with dubious motives and backgrounds and who will fill your feed with irrelevant tweets. Likewise your audience demographics (available from Twitter Analytics) will become polluted and valueless. Moreover, many of these followers will quickly unfollow you for a similar reason – the content you’re tweeting about just doesn’t interest them. If you are using social media to engage your target audience, then followers acquired this way are of no use to you.

The sudden slump in followers which invariably follows a ‘points purchasing’ method is a clear indication that your social media presence isn’t what it claims to be. This can result in being unable to manually follow anyone because the ratios of following and follower are uneven. The technique can also put your real followers in danger. Many fake profiles engage in scams which can be used to gather passwords and other personal information. The result can be automatic posting of Direct Messages to all of your followers, including those who are legitimate. People’s social media accounts can be hacked from such infiltration, and can this can in turn lead to serious identity and credit card fraud. If you really care about your customers and clients, you won’t want to expose them to this risk.

Given that many businesses seek to establish a sense of trust and authority through Twitter, these techniques can defeat the very purpose of social media engagement

Both of these techniques can be exposed by anyone inspecting your company’s Twitter growth. Being associated with buying followers will not only hinder your ability to look credible as a business but also prevent you from eventually becoming a Verified twitter account. Verification allows your real followers to know it’s your genuine account when they wish to engage with you on social media. Furthermore, using these underhand tactics can result in your account being classified as ‘spam’ and being permanently blocked by Twitter. Given that many businesses seek to establish a sense of trust and authority through Twitter, these techniques can defeat the very purpose of social media engagement. It’s the crime that really doesn’t pay.

Perform a quick search and you’ll see how many companies, pop stars and even individual’s accounts have been exposed for using false followers. If you don’t have the time to spend researching and contacting real potential followers then there are social media agencies who can take care of it for you professionally and ethically, meaning you don’t run the risk of harming your brand by taking shortcuts. Thank Social can grow your account legitimately and quickly using our in-house tools and professional social media content.

Social media’s return on investment

The way social media is valued by businesses has been a hot topic of debate since social media leapt onto the business scene a decade ago. We’re frequently asked how it’s possible to measure the value of social media in commercial terms, and indeed whether such measurement is even possible. In recent years, these questions have developed into something of a heavyweight contest between commercial specialists and online experts. The likes of Lon Safko’s book ‘The Social Media Bible’ is a testament to the weight of discourse that has been produced on the subject.

On the one hand, there are those who believe that the success of online engagement should be gauged by the number of customers it brings in directly. In this case, it’s pretty easy to quantify the value of social media as it’s a relatively straightforward financial calculation. On the other hand, there are those who maintain that social media benefits are much harder to measure, and that benefits are to be found in establishing trust and a voice of authority with customers and peers. In our experience, the value of social media to a business varies greatly depending on the nature of the industry and the commercial strategy of the company in question. In this blog, we’ll look at some of the evidence and some of the arguments.

The value of social media for different client types and commercial strategies

The impact of social media on a brand depends on the type of business in question. It can also be influenced strongly by the company’s commercial strategy. One of our B2B clients is a large software company that provides cloud-based software solutions to major organisations. In this case, the profit available for finding a single new customer through social media can be substantial. The cost of customer acquisition, in this case, can be far greater than the cost of using Thank Social services for several years. Indeed, this company has been with us for three years and reported a single and direct customer acquisition worth millions through our social media management. In this instance, the value of social media can be pretty clearly validated and justified.

We also have clients with significantly lower customer acquisition costs. One of our B2C clients provides an app that enables consumers to gift low-value confectionary items to friends. The commercial model of the gifting service relies on acquiring customers who repeat purchase again and again – and through those purchases constitute an aggregated profit and so customer lifetime value. In terms of their acquisition model, they are a wholly different kettle of fish from our software client. The company doesn’t have a huge advertising budget and has an exit goal of being acquired – that’s why it’s just as important for them to show themselves to be a vibrant, engaging and successful consumer service. Social media strategies have been effectively implemented by Thank Social to satisfy those goals.

…turn off social media and they see a gradual drop in repeat sales

When it comes to direct repeat purchasing, it can be very difficult to measure the influence of social actions. For example, the technology required to track from the web to an app is limited and can be cumbersome for users, but we do know that the social feed for our app client keeps the service ‘front of mind’ for consumers. Social media for the gifting company needs to help with repeat purchasing, and our campaigns and strategies reflect that goal. Coarsely, turn off social media and they see a gradual drop in repeat sales and new customer acquisition. Like the software company, we’ve had the gifting company as a client for three years now. The way the two clients gauge the value of our services though is very different.

Social media and financial success – cause or correlation?

The less measurable benefits of social media to a business are not limited to those with low acquisition costs. The software company is increasingly treated as an authority in their field because of the quality of the topical content we produce on their behalf. They have won numerous awards from Microsoft as the partner of the year, for example, and our strategy has helped target and attract a relevant audience with that goal in mind. Many colleagues of that organisation make reference to knowing that company through social media, and we see this time and again with our clients reporting such benefits heard at conferences and so forth. It would seem that the company’s influence and reach through social action are at least correlated with part of their success. They command a status as a ‘thought leader’. However, it remains impossible to ever really know the extent to which this success correlates with social media activities or is, in fact, causal.

Let’s look at another case study. A B2B fine wine company we act for often receives plaudits from their US winery clients on how well they present their wine. We see strong engagement from both the supplied restaurants and major stores. The fine wine company has also been with Thank Social for many years and is now recognised as a digital thought leader in their space. Their profits are growing, with hospitality and retail businesses now approaching them specifically because they demonstrate high online engagement from winery to final consumer. When possible, we facilitate social dialogue between restaurants and wineries stimulated through the wine company’s social channels. The value of serving as such a facilitator is impossible to measure in purely financial terms. It’s clear here that the types of behaviour associated with this social activity can be vital to the success of a brand, priceless even.

The scorecards are in…

So, who comes out on top in a ‘value of social media’ prize fight? After twelve rounds of slugging it out, we’re calling it a draw. Ultimately, the question of acquisition from social media comes down to the question of return on investment (ROI). Organic social media shouldn’t be considered as an advertising channel, and the cost of customer acquisition varies across organisations and clearly affects the capacity to gauge worth in purely financial terms. The value gained from becoming an authority in a field is often impossible to quantify, but there is a great deal of evidence to suggest such value can be vital to businesses across all sectors, whether B2C, B2B, or B2B2C. It seems that the value of social media to a brand is a complex question with no single or simple answer except that there is clearly value worthy of commercial investment. Value exists in both ‘hard’ immediate returns and ‘soft’, long term benefits. The key is tailoring a social media strategy to increase the potential for both.

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