So what exactly is the difference between how we use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, et al? Like most everything in life, it’s easiest when you think in terms of pee. [Vanished Omen via PRSD via EpicPonyz]More »
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
The instant popularity of Instagram’s iPhone app — now with more than two million users — and the cross-platform appeal of Picplz have inspired early adopter brands and small companies to explore the business potential of this emerging trend.
On the Instagram side, you have big names like Starbucks, NPR and Brisk Iced Tea, as well as smaller players like Hatchcraft, Photojojo and Charity: Water. In Picplz’s corner are the San Diego Chargers, Madison Square Garden, artist Trey Songz, DJ Neil Armstrong and the L.A. Lakers.
Here’s a look at how brands are using mobile photo sharing services, like Instagram and Picplz.
Mobile photo sharing has exploded as savvy application developers exploit the continually improving camera quality of newer handset hardware and tailor experiences that promote instantaneous sharing of stunning photographs.
Instagram and Picplz have done a stellar job at adding to the intrinsic emotional quality of photographs with filters that allow the everyman smartphone owner to point-and-shoot-and-share and feel like a professional photographer.
What, then, is the appeal for businesses? Those who are trying mobile photo sharing services are still figuring that piece out, but several are showing a willingness to test the receptiveness of their fans and the users of each service.
Both Picplz and Instagram have responded to organic in-bound brand interest with business-friendly updates. Picplz now has an analytics dashboard that helps business users chart views, likes and comments for each photo. Instagram, on the other hand, has introduced hashtags, a community tagging feature that opens the service up to brand campaigns.
Under the leadership of Manager of Internet Services Joel Price, the San Diego Chargers have taken to Picplz. The team account includes a collection of photos, taken by Price, of team members, stadiums, staff members, travel highlights and behind-the-scenes shots of the team’s offices.
“We get a lot of views, and the analytics are great,” says Price, “but we don’t get a ton of comments yet.”
Recently, Price used Picplz to give fans a photo tour inside Charger Park, the team’s home office. The effort received an enormous amount of positive feedback, he says, with several commenters pointing out how nice it is to feel connected to the team during the off season.
The Chargers have two primary objectives for Picplz: To better engage fans and to monetize photos through sponsorships. The former, says Price, is about bringing fans closer to the team, and in turn encouraging them to spend more on merchandise and tickets. The latter is a bit less tangible, though Price hopes the team can creatively engage with sponsors and potentially recruit players to post sponsored shots on Picplz.
Price consciously chose Picplz over higher profile competitor Instagram to connect with Chargers fans on Android, iPhone and the web, among other things. “Instagram feels like an advertisement for Instagram,” he adds, pointing out that Instagram photos shared to the web are cloaked in Instagram branding.
Starbucks, one of the first brands to set up an account on Instagram, is pleased with early results.
“We’ve been using Instagram for a couple of months and think it’s a fun, different way to share photos of what’s going on behind the scenes,” says Product Manager Brad Nelson. “We’ve also found a lot of people already sharing Starbucks photos, so it’s been a joy to look through those.”
Indeed. Look up the #starbucks hashtag and you’ll find more than 1,000 photos that users have tagged, all of their own accord, with the Starbucks label.
“While we are still exploring initial opportunities, we already have almost 5,000 engaged followers,” says Nelson.
Instagram may be limited to iPhone users, but the two million member strong community appears especially responsive to calls to action. Take, for instance, a hashtag campaign from Instagram user @JoshJohnson and startup Hatchcraft. The two partnered and challenged Instagram users to tag their best Lomo-filtered photos with #jjchallenge for a chance to win a bamboo shadow box from Hatchcraft. More than 2,000 photos then poured in with the #jjchallenge hashtag.
“We had been doing these weekly challenges for about a month previous to the introduction of hashtags,” says Hatchcraft founder Shane Rich. “The response was tremendous, as it made it easier to enter the challenge.”
As these services mature, so too will the brands who use them.
Price would love to see Picplz introduce branding options at some point. For now, though, he’s looking forward to the Chargers next season and plans to post more travel photos, share away game stadium walkthroughs and find ways to incorporate and reward fan photo submissions.
And Rich sees a future ripe for business potential on Instagram. “If any business is willing to get a little creative, put some time into connecting with the community, and have some fun with it, then they will be received well and their product or service will naturally begin to be seen in the same light.”
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More About: brands, instagram, MARKETING, mobile photo sharing, picplz, small business, trending
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Score one for social media.
A new study has shown it’s not how much you spend on advertising that gets you more favorable mentions on Twitter, it’s how creative you are when putting your brand out there.
The study, released by search marketing agency Covario is a survey of 81 of the world’s largest advertisers as ranked by Advertising Age magazine, and it found that a correlation between money spent and positive opinion did not hold true when extended to all forms of advertising.
Those included advertising in digital and offline, television, radio, print and out-of-home ad campaigns.
The study also found “zero statistical correlation” between a company’s ad expenditures, whether just digital or in total, and its brand sentiment, as reflected by positive Twitter references.
But Covario did find a direct correlation to the amount a brand spent on digital advertising and the amount it is discussed on Twitter, which showed that consumers don’t react to money poured into more traditional advertising, but they do to ads via social media.
Because of how fast word spreads on the microblogging service, Covario CMO Craig Macdonald said Twitter is an ideal barometer for how and where companies are getting the most attention.
“We figured Twitter would be a great place to see if they are getting some return on that investment,” Macdonald told me. “Those brands that spend more should have more brand recognition and more conversation about their products and brands.”
Covario collected the data through its new software reporting platform, Social Media Insight, which it built last year for client Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The company then used the platform to measure brand popularity by plugging in search-marketing keywords, then analyzing the sentiment of a brand’s terms across social media sites.
Based on the comments about a brand, Covario then created a score to rank what kind of bang for its buck a company was getting — and where.
“[We saw] that consumers would react positively to brand presence. That they would talk confidently and positively about the brands they heard about the most and saw the most,” said Macdonald.
So who got the most (or least) love across the brands studied?
Well, among the best-loved brands on Twitter that Covario studied were Kohl’s Department Store, which scored a 9.2 (10 being the highest possible score, -10 being the lowest), followed by Berkshire Hathaway (9.0), Coca-Cola (7.3), Hershey’s Chocolate (7.3), Qwest (7.1), and The Walt Disney Co. (5.6).
When measured by industry, brands in the telecommunications industry scored lowest (-0.59 cumulatively) no matter how or where they advertised. Despite it having one of the largest advertising budgets out there, nobody is fond of the phone company.
Companies: ad age magazine, American Express, Berkshire Hathaway, Campbell’s Soup, Coca-Cola, Covario, General Mills, Hershey’s Chocolate, Kohl’s Department Store, Lowes, Macy’s, Mattel, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Qwest, Sears, Sony Entertainment, The Walt Disney Co, Twitter, Unilever
People: craig macdonald
For this year’s SXSW festival, CNN debuted a new platform for journalism to combat the sort of technological hearsay that festers in the world of social media. The way CNN sees it, the best way to keep your website relevant amongst the ever-changing #sxsw Twitter feed is to make its CNN.com into its own sort of social media outlet.
In collaboration with the Barbarian Group (which of course created the CNN.com T-shirt application a few years back), the cable news network is launching “Open Stories,” with SXSWi appropriately enough as its first topic for reportage. By utilizing its 750,000 active “reporters worldwide,” CNN is putting their stories in the hands of the public, creating a living, breathing story that changes as the news comes in. The first Open Story is posted to CNN’s site currently, and it features maps, pictures and real-time updates as the hoopla is Austin continues for the next week.
The site’s flexibility allows for personal video updates and commentary, live CNN video across devices and smart content playlists that users can use to switch between media devices. Right now, it’s obviously a work in progress, but we suspect anyone with the CNN mobile app and smartphone who has a B.A. is journalism might find the opportunity too sweet to pass up. Maybe if it’s accurate enough, CNN will just cut costs and get rid of all of their actual reporters. After all, CNN: The Blog might reach that Generation Y consumer where cable TV doesn’t.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
I’m writing from a Jetblue flight from Austin back to Silly Valley, it’s a great chance for me reflect on what happened in the last few days at SXSW and sober up both from last night’s party and the excess of stimuli –they both require some detox. First of all, this is the type of event people love talk about when they’re there, but those who aren’t there may find the noise excessive. I’ll try to boil down the key things I observed, caveat, this is just one person’s perspective, leave a comment with your experience.
SXSW, Bigger Than Ever
Attendance was up, many rumored that it was up around 30% over last year, which was also growing. There were so many events and panels that even spilled out of the traditional convention center to neighboring hotels some as far as 6+blocks up hill at the Sheraton. The attendees trend a similar look: often younger than older, stylish glasses, blinking device in hands, the occasional ironic tattoo, and glossy shimmer of sweat from last night’s drinking binge.
Panel Content: Hit or Miss
While I didn’t attend many panels, several folks mentioned to me the quality of content in panels was very hit and miss, often dependent on the quality of the moderator to draw out insights and guide the panel. Because SXSW deploys the scalable way of voting up panels to determine who will speak this leads to panels that have popular speakers (but that doesn’t guarantee the best speakers) or topics that are liked by the mainstream. Fortunately, given the vast assortment of panels, the opportunity to find niche topics is available, providing you can easily get to the physical location. Colleague Susan Etlinger blogs how Deb Schultz lead an insightful session on the ‘manners’ of the internet and social web. I think it was Robert Scoble who said that the best content at SXSW will just appear on blogs later, so Ill continue to keep a watch out for the panels that were a “hit”.
Yet Parties, Events, and Dinners Galore
There were many, many parties and events, even during the day. During the evening there were several events, parties, and dinners all happening consecutively. In particular, the Social Business crowd was assembled around the All Hat (pics) even held by David Armano and Richard Binhammer off campus, the Corporate Social Strategists and those that serve them were present, this was the market I serve, and was glad to see them all. To me this was the best event, as it was off campus, a mixture of dialog, meet and greeting, and good food and music, great mixer. I heard that the SocialMedia.org (formerly SMBC) event was a great mix for Corporate Soicial Strategists who glean a lot of value from peer to peer interactions.
Influencer Outreach: Samsung, Chevy, AMEX, Apple, Pepsi.
One of my mottos is to ABR (Always be Researching) and I did just that for clients. In fact, several a few brands were present, and sought to reach this influencer and early adopter crowd, notables include:
Samsung hosts bloggers, and showcases electronic products. I spent time in the Samsung blogger lounge, which was well attended by influencers, and featured product demos and their tweeting fridge. One nice treat was Guy Kawasaki was giving away signed books, Enchantment, (which I read and recommend) at the blogger lounge. Also, Samsung brought the social media space to their own devices and worked with Jess3 an information design firm to showcase hand-selected curated tweets in their large airport-styled screens for passerbys to see what the zeitgeist was of the event. I even was a panelist in an impromptu “unpanel” on the topic of curation.
Chevy doubles down on this influencer market. Last year, Ford had a strong presence at the event, which likely drew the interest of General Motors, who I learned was the sole exclusive sponsor for the show, I’d estimate that buy out certainly be in the millions as they had integrated branding, product demos, charging stations, sponsors of the Techset party, and had inter-city rides available to anyone using their vehicles. Ford was not present this year, nor other auto-manufactures. See Twitter exchange between myself and Scott Monty who commented on spending, here, here, and here.
American Express seeks WOM. I learned from Jennifer van Grove of Mashable how American Express has launched a form of a loyalty program that encouraged users of their credit cards to receive money credited to their account after purchases after they shared it on foursquare. This form of social commerce initiates advocacy at point of sale –increasing spread of the service. Very smart integration.
Apple pops up a store in downtown. Apple assembled a “pop up” store in downtown where lines went around the block to purchase the iPad 2 and hours extended to the wee hours of the night. The store was a former Gold’s gym, and was assembled virtually overnight to serve this specific market. I saw several proud owners of this shiny device with colored covers touting their purchase at a variety of venues, it was the hot physical product (see friend David Berkowitz with his orange topped one). I experimented with it and believe the features to be evolutionary, but not a major upgrade, that being depending on new software to emerge to take advantage of the cameras such as augmented reality gaming, or new forms of video conferencing.
Pepsi tells their story. Other notable brand out-reach booths was Pepsi’s touchdown station that let people recharge and learn about the variety of products. Clearly an influence play, as Pepsi as a lifestyle brand isn’t directly related to ‘interactive’ that SXSW sports.
No Technology Winners –Although “Intimate” and “Hyper Local” are Trends to Watch. I was at SXSW when Twitter, Foursquare ‘broke out’ in previous years, yet this year there were no clear winners our ‘breakout technologies’ that I saw from the space. Why? There’s an over saturation of products due to low barriers to entry –while innovation certainly isn’t stifled the number similar or ‘like’ products is hard to swallow.
The closest to it was SMS chat tools with a small social group of friends like GroupMe and Beluga were being used by this early adopter crowd, even the press picked up on some of these trends (thanks Julie Viola for the link). Secondly, I asked my network what technologies to watch for and saw some adoption of local Q&A tool LocalMind (screenshot from iPhone). This tool allows you to ask very specific question “where are the cleanest restrooms in this hotel?” and it shows it on a localized map.
In both of these new toolsets, they are less about mass broadcasting to your network like Twitter and blogs, but are more about intimate discussions with your most immediate circle and localized content down to the building that you’re present at.
So that’s my perspective: This year, SXSW was great for networking. New technologies trend towards smaller personal networks and hyper localized content, but I didn’t see any clear winners, at least from my limited perspective.
Please leave a comment or link to your experience so we can share what we heard.
