The iPlatform » Carolina

General Election Hits Facebook

Carolina — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:25:42 +0000

As the general election draws closer, Facebook looks set to be a key campaigning battleground. With that, the social networking website has decided to step up to encourage voter registration, debate and participation from its users launching Democracy UK. The page carries the latest campaign information and opinion from different political parties.

We partnered with Facebook to deliver two different applications for this page, aimed at engaging more than 23 million users in the country. The “I’m Voting” badge lets people tell their friends they are voting and why.

The VoteMatch, on the other hand, recognises that often it is not obvious which party best represents your views. So it invites you to answer some straightforward questions and match your views to the political party which best represents them. This was developed in partnership with Unlock Democracy and Telegraph.co.uk.

The UK general election will be held on Thursday 6 May 2010 and it is being dubbed “the first Facebook election” because of its use of the social networking website during campaign.

With applications like the ones we developed, Facebook becomes the main stage for every aspect of social interaction. If you want to find out how we can help you build and deliver successful campaigns on Facebook, get in touch now.

Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year-on-Year

Carolina — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:28:58 +0000

The average consumer spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook in December 2009, an increase of 82% in comparison to the same time a year before, according to a research report by The Nielsen Company. Australia led in average time per person spent (6 hours and 52 mins), with the United States and the United Kingdom in a close second and third, (6 hours 9 minutes and 6 hours 7 minutes respectively).

The overall traffic to social networking sites has also grown continually over the last three years. Social networks and blogs are the most popular online destination, followed by online games and instant messaging.

These numbers show once again how relevant Social Media is for marketing campaigns that wish to reach a growing part of the global population.

If you want to find out how we can help you build and deliver successful campaigns on Facebook, get in touch now.

How Well Red Are You?

Carolina — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:51:20 +0000

The Economist trusted us to develop part of their ambitious social media strategy. The first stage is the recently launched Well Red Quiz application, which challenges fans of the publication on Facebook to test their knowledge of global news and analysis covered in the magazine each week, and compete against fellow fans to top the public scoreboard.

“Our ambition is to be the global destination for intelligent discussion and debate. Being more social online is a core part of our strategy for achieving this ambition. Attracting new readers through our activity on Facebook and Twitter is one strand, but it’s also vital for us to develop a deeper relationship with existing readers and fans by developing fun games for social networks, such as Well Red”

Ron Diorio, Vice President of Product and Community Development at The Economist online.

The mechanics of this application encourage user interaction and stickiness. Those scoring over seven out of 10 can earn extra points by answering five bonus questions selected at random from the ‘Well Red’ archive. At the other end of the scale, the quiz is time sensitive and points are deducted if users take too long to answer.

iPlatform have the expertise to quickly launch fully branded quizzes as well as text, photo and video competitions with voting, leaderboards and full fan page integration. Get in touch to find out more.

We Have Risen to the Challenge

Carolina — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:04:21 +0000

We all know how Sport Relief encourages the whole of the UK to come together “to get active, raise cash and change lives”. This year, however, there’s something quite new about their fundraising approach. Sport Relief has turned to Social Media to encourage people to get involved and we have risen to the challenge and helped to implement their exciting Facebook application.

With it you can challenge your friends to do something to help raise money. Users choose a friend and a challenge to “spur them into action”. All the money raised is used by Comic Relief to help transform the lives of poor and vulnerable people, both at home and abroad.

The iPlatform can help you develop campaigns and competitions in Facebook and other social platforms. If you are interested in finding out how we can help, get in touch now. Follow us on Twitter here.

Facebook Fans Become More Loyal Customers

Carolina — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:01:12 +0000

Facebook has more than 3 million active pages, with 1.5 million maintained by local businesses. In total, these pages have more than 5.3 billion fans. These are impressive numbers, and show the extent to which Facebook has become a new major communications channel between brands and customers. However, despite the general view of fan behaviour being a ‘lightweight’ action from the customer, a recent study has found that Facebook fans actually become more loyal customers.

The study, by Rice University, examined the dollar value of Facebook fans on the sales of the cafe chain Dessert Gallery (DG), by setting up a Facebook fan page and measuring the effect on customer behaviour between fans and non-fans. The page was updated regularly with pictures, news and promotions.

Over the three months of the study, the research found that customers who became a fan of Dessert Gallery on Facebook became more loyal throughout the period. Although they spent the same average amount of money in each visit as non-fans, they visited the cafe 20% more often and were more likely to recommend the cafe to friends, and showed a stronger emotional attachment to the company.

It’s possible that simply the act of publicly declaring themselves a fan created a positive feedback loop with how they felt about the company, and this had a real affect on sales and recommendations. This shows the potential for all brands in increasing their fan page activity, even on a most basic and simple level.

The iPlatform delivers marketing campaigns and competitions in Facebook and other social platforms. If you are interested in finding out how we can help, get in touch now.