Managers and Monitoring Metrics

Posted on 18/05/2012 by Rob

With the England squad being announced this week, I thought it would be a good time to revisit a blog post I wrote a few months ago which discussed a tongue in cheek idea I had for using social media to elect the new England football manager.

Evidently the FA decided not to go with my flight of fancy idea, having appointed Roy Hodgson as the man who will lead England out in Poland and Ukraine this summer (maybe it’s a good thing – for what it’s worth, I think Hodgson makes a lot more sense long term).

My main justification for the social media scheme was to ensure that the new manager was – in the FA’s own words – a ‘popular’ choice. Roy’s appointment hasn’t been universally popular, with many lamenting that ‘Arry’ Redknapp wasn’t given the job.

The reason I bring all this up is because, had the social media poll been used, we could very clearly see how ‘popular’ a choice the new manager would be. To me, the divided opinions over the incumbent England Manager highlighted the value of measurable metrics and the difference between qualitative and quantitative data for monitoring social media.

Sentiment isn’t always an easy thing to measure in social media as people essentially have free reign to write what they like. As a result, you’re collecting a vast range of unrestricted and unquantifiable information that isn’t formatted all in the same way. Ask a thousand people to write their opinion on a subject and you’ll probably get a thousand different responses. That’s a lot of data to manually process.

That’s why surveys have always been a popular way of measuring the opinions of a large group of people – rather than comb through all those responses, you’re simply working with quantitative data. The England Manager job is a good example. Imagine trying to measure sentiment just by reading everyone’s opinions – that’s going to be very time consuming. Now, imagine how much easier it would be if we could monitor specific metrics: we could see the number of votes cast and for whom, and whether there was anything in particular that drove that sentiment, like a popular journalist influencing opinion.

To make things a bit easier, here are our two golden metrics you must measure to make the most of social media:

1. Timing
Social media runs around the clock – we might check it on the commute to work or whilst we’re relaxing at the weekend. It’s important to find out when your audience is most receptive to your posts – there’s no point writing great content if you post it at the wrong time. People often only check the most recent posts on their stream or timeline, so you need to make sure that your content is at the top of their list. Experiment and when you identify a pattern of high response, hone in on that window of opportunity.

2. Content
It’s all very well being bang on time, but what’s the point if you’ve got nothing worthwhile to say? If anything, irrelevant or uninteresting posts will encourage people to click the ‘unfollow’ or ‘unlike’ buttons. Experiment with different types of content to discover what resonates with your audience. The key metric to watch out for? The number of actions a post receives (think opens, shares, likes or retweets). If people like your content, they’ll want to tell others. We often find that top tips articles work well: they are concise, quick and easy to read – perfect for the busy modern world.

If your business needs help monitoring your metrics, or anything else with social media, get in touch.

Say hello to our new Graphic Designer

Posted on 03/05/2012 by Rob

Smart Monkey is delighted to announce the arrival of a new member to the team. Say hello to Luke, our new in-house Graphic Designer.

Luke has over 10 years experience in both graphic and web design having previously worked at Ogilvy & Mather and Sony BMG records. He has worked for clients including American Express, Coca Cola, Nestle Mind mental health charity.

Luke brings with him key experience in design for both digital and print as well as illustration and HTML coding. He is also rather fond of cake.

Here are some of Luke’s finest moments. Feel free to hum your own music whilst viewing the gallery.

LINk Dignity in Care Campaign

Posted on 30/04/2012 by Rob

We have just completed some brand design work for West Sussex LINk.

Local Involvement Networks (LINks) are made up of individuals and community groups who work together to improve health and social care services. Having worked with Smart Monkey on previous campaigns, West Sussex LINk asked us to create new branding to help promote the Dignity in Care campaign.

Dignity and respect are two of the most important elements to providing good quality care. As the aim of the campaign is to spread the good work already being carried out around dignity and respect, we came up with branding to reflect this: the West Sussex Dignity Wave.

Just as small waves grow bigger, even the smallest acts of dignity and respect make a big difference. The Dignity Wave is a network which helps to spread the cause of Dignity in Care across the county, and provides support to those who help Make A Difference.

As part of the Dignity in Care campaign, the West Sussex LINk is supporting Dignity Champions – positive role models who demonstrate a commitment to creating a care system that has compassion and respect for those using its services.

The branding was used across leaflets and posters at events across the county. Take a look below.

Find out more about the Dignity in Care campaign or LINks.

A Pinterest-ing problem

Posted on 02/04/2012 by Lauren

Here at Smart Monkey Marketing we love exploring new and emerging social media platforms – with over 12 million users, Pinterest has taken the concept of a virtual pin board and made it extremely addictive!

Have you recently moved house? Then why not ‘pin’ onto a board your favourite images of living room layouts, colour palettes, flowers for your garden etc. Planning a wedding? Fantastic – look online for inspiration and store all of your dresses, flowers, venues and more in the one place. Pinterest makes it simple to display all of your ideas, and it makes it easy to share them with friends – a little too easy, perhaps.

This is where Pinterest is – in our opinion at least – currently a little flawed. The moment you sign up (using Facebook or Twitter, as required) you are automatically linked to all of your contacts who also have a Pinterest account. This might not sound like a big deal at first, but do you really want the ex – who you only have as a Facebook ‘friend’ out of courtesy – looking at your narrowed down selection of wedding dresses? And would you prefer NOT to have the nosy neighbour – whose Facebook friend request it was easier to accept than not – criticising your plans for the upstairs bathroom?

Of course, Pinterest can be used for anything, and what you chose to pin might not actually be all that private to you, but still, it would be nice to have the choice as to whether your pin boards can be seen by everyone. Currently though, you simply don’t have the option. There is no way to create a private pin board and you can’t even put the people you are automatically linked to on any form of restricted viewing policy. On top of this, each and every pin board you can create can appear in a Google search and be viewed by complete strangers. Someone you have never met might chose to follow you and there is nothing you can do about it. Quite simply, if your board can be seen by one, it can be seen by all.

Pinterest has come under attack for a whole range of privacy related issues recently, from copyright of images to the nature of the content being posted. On Friday March 23^rd Pinterest revealed their updated privacy policy, to go into effect from April 6^th. Updated terms can be read in full here.

The majority of the issues to be addressed relate to ownership of images rather than personal privacy, but the terms do acknowledge that moving forward, Pinterest plans to “pave the way for new features such as a Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.”

It looks like ultimately we will be able to have a bit more control over who exactly sees our pin board creations – but just not yet. So will we continue using Pinterest before this happens? Probably, as it’s just too fun! But we will certainly be aware of what we are pinning.

It’s the little touches that make the big difference

Posted on 28/02/2012 by Beth

My husband, Graham, took part for the third year running in last year’s ‘Movember‘ – an ingenious and fun campaign to motivate men (and women) into helping raise money for men’s health.

Graham once again put great effort into growing a moustache for the month of November, gained sponsorship from his regular donators and went along to the Gala Parté to celebrate the wonder of the ‘tache.

The whole campaign is fantastically organised and I am sure Graham will, as long as his moustache continues to play ball, be helping to raise money for the cause. However, it is the little touches that make the big difference.

The other day, Graham received a card in the post from Movember thanking him for his effort. This really made us stop and look – the thank you card is a lovely idea in itself, but the card was a hand written, full on thank you.

This made the note so sincere and Graham felt really appreciated for the relatively small amount of effort that he put in to help the campaign. The note has also left a lasting impression that I think will give Graham even more impetus to join the Mocampaigners again this year.

Hats off to Movember.

‘Redknapp new England Manager’. Fabio Capello likes this.

Posted on 27/02/2012 by Rob

Following on from a theme I explored last week, I’ve thought of an innovative use for social media:

England manager – who goes to Euro 2012? You decide!

With Fabio Capello’s resignation England have just four months to find a new manager before the Euro 2012 Championship begins. England could lead the way in using social media to elect our new manager.

FA Chairman David Bernstein was careful not to exclude any potential candidates from the shortlist being drawn up, but stated that he thought that the manager should be a ‘popular’ choice. Surely, what better way to ensure this than by a Facebook poll?

After all, you can’t walk into a pub at the moment without someone discussing their preferences. Not only does every football fan in the country have an opinion on the matter, it’s usually more nuanced and carefully constructed than their opinions on the politicians that actually run our country. In fact, the process could become a model for future political elections. Well, it would increase the accountability of the manager at least.

Sure, you might be thinking this is a far-fetched idea – maybe it’s too risky when the interests and passions of millions are at stake. But the role of social media in election campaigns has precedent. The most powerful man in the world is a big advocate of social media for engagement and canvassing opinion and used it extensively in his election campaign: step forward, Barack Obama.

But what about those who couldn’t give a monkeys about football? I bet a lot of them would enjoy debating the voting system used to elect the manager; should it be first-past-the-post or AV?

If nothing else, and if England fail at a major international tournament again, it would quieten all those ‘fans’ who turn on the team the moment we lose and bemoan the manager for not being good enough. You chose the man, it’s your responsibility.

So, who would you vote for?

Innovative uses of social media

Posted on 22/02/2012 by Rob

A lot of people get social media wrong because, like every new bandwagon they hastily jump onto, they see it as the sole answer to all their problems. It’s important to think of social media as a toolset for engaging with your customers in new and exciting ways, rather than just another channel to shout your tired message through. After all, a bad workman blames his tools.

Whilst it takes a lot of creative thinking to break the mould and use social media in a truly original way it’s often the simplest of ideas that work best. It’s about looking at what tools each social network offers, and thinking about what you can do with them.

Some time ago, Beth wrote about how a Texas coffee shop used Twitter to take orders from customers in advance. It’s so simple isn’t it? The brainstorming session can’t have taken that long:

Last Thursday Beth and I headed down to Brighton for a CIM Sussex seminar on Digital trends and the impact on traditional marketing. In his typically laid back style, Ross Breadmore from NixonMcinnes highlighted some implementations of social media that were really thinking outside the box. Here’s some of our favourites to get your creative juices flowing:

1. Diesel Cam

Trying on a pair of jeans and want your friends’ opinion? Post a picture to your Facebook account using the booth in Diesel store changing room. I imagine the most popular caption is “Does my bum look big in this?

2. Fiat Eco:Drive

Fiat’s Eco:Drive system tracks your driving, relays it back to a central server and then provides you with easy to read graphs and stats to help you monitor your driving performance. It’s all about staying green and reducing your carbon footprint – something that most environmentally conscious people don’t mind talking about. So it’s handy that you can share this info with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

3. Miista – Cheaper With A Tweet

Hackney based shoe retailer Miista launched a Twitter campaign to beat the January blues. A single Tweet to @miistashoes and the price of your chosen item drops for everyone. As a further twist, the level of discount applied was proportionate to your klout score – a measure of your Twitter influence. Higher Twitter klout had higher klout on prices.

4. IBM

The interesting thing about one of the world’s largest companies is that they don’t have a single corporate Facebook or Twitter account. Instead, they have 17000 internal blogs from employees where they are free to write their own thoughts – as well as strong employee presence on Twitter and LinkedIn. All this helps humanise a huge company.

When given the time, none of these ideas are that hard to come up with. In fact, similar campaigns have been conducted with more traditional methods. Miista have taken the ‘do something for us to get a discount’ idea and applied it in the social media realm. Think about what advantages and tools each social network offers and don’t be afraid to experiment!

Why bother to blog?

Posted on 16/02/2012 by Sara

Blogging has become an essential part of any successful marketing and social media strategy. If you are already blogging, then congratulations on recognising the importance of this great marketing tool – the following article will help you to hone and refine your blogging skills. If you haven’t yet caught the blogging bug, then the same article will hopefully persuade you to get started.

Blogging is on the increase and, as high profile bloggers are becoming more influential to their readers, companies large and small are waking up to the power of the blog. So the message is clear, ignore blogging at your peril.

1. What exactly is a blog?

As there seems to be so much confusion around what constitutes a blog, I thought it would be helpful to clarify exactly what a blog is. Essentially it is a collection of fairly short articles in date order which are loosely connected to one or more specific themes. The main difference between a blog and a traditional article is that blogs tend to be more informal and express opinion over fact. The informal nature of blogging makes them interesting and engaging to the reader, a bit like a conversation should be. Blogging can be written pieces of content or video blogs.

2. What will blogging do for me/my business?

Blogging is about engaging with your audience. Done properly, it improves your credibility by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise in a chosen area. This means that people begin to trust and value your opinion on things. Ultimately people prefer to do business with people they know, like and trust and so, if your blog has successfully represented you, then you now have a captive audience.

3. What are the benefits of blogging?

Apart from the obvious benefits mentioned above, blogging is good for keeping people updated about your activities and your products and services. Remember that if you have managed to gain a captive audience you can now keep them informed. Be careful here though as blogging is not a way to sell things. The main difference being that blogging requires a much more subtle approach. If you ‘sell’ on your blog, don’t be surprised if no-one reads it.

4. How does blogging improve my SEO?

You have probably heard that Google and other search engines love blogs. Well, you heard right. The main reason why blogging improves your SEO is that it keeps your website fresh, current and interesting, which is really important from a SEO perspective. Keep in mind too that not all SEO is done by robots/computers and that there are actual human beings employed to evaluate sites for their interest, relevance and currency. The other reason why it helps with SEO is all that lovely search engine food, otherwise known as keywords, which are included in your blog posts.

5. Isn’t blogging really time consuming?

The great news about writing a blog is that it is less time consuming than say, writing an article, report or whitepaper. Obviously it’s got to read well, have accurate spelling and be grammatically correct but, due to the informal nature of blogging, it is easier and quicker to write.

Planning early on will save time later. The first thing to do is to establish why you’re writing your blog then pick a topic, theme or subject and write down your thoughts, opinions and observations. Let it flow and don’t edit too much at the early stage. A blog should be a set of loosely connected ideas informally written. It does not have to contain lots of relevant facts or answer important questions.

Like with so many other things, practice is key. Once you’ve had a go and found your ‘voice’, set the tone for your pieces and discovered the themes that you like writing about, you are well on your way. Happy blogging!

1. Provide relevant content

1. Diesel Cam

2. Fiat Eco:Drive

3. Miista – Cheaper With A Tweet

4. IBM