Facebook Pages accrue fans as a result of many different clusters of connected people becoming fans. The single most important action that creates these clusters is when a user becomes a Fan and broadcasts this action to their friends’ news feeds (Gesundheit! Modeling Contagion through Facebook Newsfeed).  In order to achieve this, iPlatform built an application that can even pull in status updates from Facebook Users’ Wall feed after users have signed up to the app. Every report for Jack Daniel’s is an optimisation of Facebook News Feeds to pass fans’ words on to friends, friends of friends, and so on.

iPlatform also built an algorithm which displays a range of content types relevant to the user. Users will be able to select areas they are interested in and the page will then display data which matches these preferences. Show your fans what they like to see and they will stay for more. Using Facebook, Jack Daniel’s fans were given the opportunity to be an official Jack Daniel’s reporter, air their views and engage with other fellow fans of music and Jack Daniel’s alike during the festival season of Jack Daniel’s On Tour in 2011.

As part of the report-generating process, the application captured data from fans for future promotions and used the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey Facebook Page to drive awareness of other Jack Daniel’s activities. Over 1,400 reports were created following the app’s soft launch, bringing over 1 million fans to the global Jack Daniel’s Page in less than a month, doubling their fan size in total. From the initial start of the Jack Daniel’s global Page, the app slowly gained momentum throughout the other Jack Daniel’s European Market Pages, spanning from the Netherlands to Lithuania and more.

The majority of users come from the United States, followed by Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain and Brazil. 66% are male and 29% are female, whilst 25 to 34 year-olds make up the largest proportion of Jack Daniel’s Music Reporter users, at 40%. This is followed by 18 to 24 year-olds at 27.4%. The campaign proved effective in targeting the appropriate age group of fans and responsible drinking respectively.

With 2,158,003 fans and counting, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey is one of the top most popular alcohol brands on Facebook.

Teaming up with Comic Relief, iPlatform developed the Red Nose Makeover Takeover Facebook application to encourage people to share their support on Red Nose Day. The app allows users to put their face into the frame of one of Comic Relief’s exclusive Vivienne Westwood designer t-shirts. Users can then upload their Red Nose Day masterpiece as their profile picture to show support.

Besides this, we also give users the option to sign up to Comic Relief’s email newsletters via Facebook. This allows users and future supporters to get more information on the latest happenings and be involved in the fundraising.

Over 285,000 people now like Comic Relief: Red Nose Day on Facebook. Do something funny for money on Red Nose Day and you get to help countless people living in some of the toughest conditions imaginable across the UK and throughout Africa.

All the fun and mayhem helps to raise cash and transform lives. The time is now to get involved and make a difference.

But you needn’t wait for a natural disaster to make Facebook work for your non-profit, as said by Sara Inés Calderón in her 10 Tips for Non-Profits on Facebook. There are many different ways to utilise the service for your non-profit, from creating an application to running a campaign or even buying Facebook ads.

1. Create a Competition, Game or Quiz

Finding creative ways to engage your fans is an important part of fostering an active Facebook community that will want to take their engagement from the virtual to real world by becoming involved in your group physically or fiscally. One way to do this is creating an application, game or quiz that fans can use once, or ideally, several times. This can include creating fun content that they can post to their Walls so friends in their networks can also learn about your organisation.

Today, the Fairtrade Foundation launches a social-media campaign to mark its annual promotional event, Fairtrade Fortnight, which runs from 28 February to 13 March 2011.

iPlatform is part of building the campaign in creating the Show Off Your Label, a unique competition with 14 challenges to get people showing off Fairtrade’s label with the chance of winning some amazing prizes. One of the challenges invites users on Facebook to upload a photo of themselves using their favourite Fairtrade product, such as a banana to create a ‘banana smile’.

2. Integrate with other Social Platforms

Fairtrade’s campaign utilised social media to the max, not only focusing on Facebook and Twitter, but also utilising their own website, emails, phone calls and web banners.

The best campaigns use multiple channels. You can optimise your existing Facebook Page to promote awareness, discussion, and attract new activists and members. Fairtrade’s “Show Off Your Label” catchphrase and graphics are featured in every promotion and all over the site.

3. Tie in with other Brands

Richard Stobart, head of consumer marketing at The Fairtrade Foundation, said the annual event provided a significant platform for brands to showcase their CSR credentials. iPlatform’s app for Fairtrade includes specific sponsors for each challenge, encouraging those brands to help drive traffic to the campaign. “Any brand with Fairtrade-certified products has an opportunity to join in the fun of Fairtrade Fortnight and talk about their relationship with producers in developing countries,” Stobart added.

4. Friend Get A Friend

The “Friend Get A Friend” method was encouraged on Fairtrade’s promotional video. “Tell your Friend. Your Friend’s Friend, And your 563 Facebook Friends about it. Help us make the world’s longest bunting.” When supporters can get instant feedback on the effects of their efforts (seeing fan numbers grow), it makes them even more motivated.

There are all types of features you can add to your Page that allow your fans to feel ownership of your organisation, like a fan badge or a web banner for their profile pages. In Fairtrade’s case, the added bonus of a promotion with an application is that, whether it’s published to your fan’s wall or their profile page, it also gets many users’ and their friends’ attention.

5. Listen to Feedback

Finally, communication is key in a social network. It’s important to monitor your Facebook Page to see what’s working and what’s not. Do your photo posts get more comments than your video posts? Are fans checking out your Application page or your blog? iPlatform builds a customised admin panel for each project that allows you to moderate and view entries. As the administrator of a Page you can always check an admin panel or Insights Dashboard for specific information on the age, sex and location of your fans to see what’s working with different groups.

Of course, these tips aren’t limited to non-profit corporations. Anyone can use social media to leverage those same motivations.

It was a fun event where I learnt, amongst other things, that Channel 4′s Shameless has one of the highest engagement levels on Facebook while Skins, Eastenders and Hollyoaks are each one of the lowest in comparison.

Josh was making the argument that engaging with viewers should be a high priority for broadcasters at a time where there is now much more flexibility and choice, with TV on demand available both online and on television sets directly; the public are becoming less dependent on the times at which media companies decide to air. As programmes are watched on the web, conversations around them follow – broadcasters should be involved. Social media is a great channel to get people talking about your programmes and spreading the word to create the next hit show.

Some facts:

• 85% of fan page interactions are in the Newsfeed – fans rarely go to a Facebook page directly.
• Facebook’s algorithm is based upon interactions such as comments and likes, and the more engagement updates receive, the longer they will be held in the news feed.
• In Twitter, @replies and re-tweets directly increase visibility in the feed.
• Measuring and analysing engagement is key if you want to increase it – failing to address engagement levels can mean brands risk losing out on the value of social channels.
• Communication in social channels is two way – marketing and customer support channels occupy the same space.
• The more successfully you push a Facebook page or a Twitter account for marketing, the more your customers will use it to ask questions or grieve their complaints. Failure to deliver can alienate existing and potential customers.
• Silence is golden – Strictly Come Dancing maintained a quiet period between seasons to create a big bang in late 2010 rather than risk losing fans at a time when it was less relevant.
• Non-profit organisations are a natural fit for social media campaigns (See Channel 4′s Hugh’s Fish Fight). People (who believe in your cause) want to help, often don’t want to expend much time or money, and want to look good to their friends, family, and social network. A social media campaign lies at the nexus of these three motivations. And, most importantly, it gives your fans an easy way to act!

These certainly suggest that social media has a unique role in TV to expand conversation and interaction around programming content, from campaign to commentary to community building.  Looking at the best practices in the world of TV and social media are lessons we can learn from to take to the advent of social TV.

You simply cannot ignore social networking.
• We see a real acceptance of the dominance and importance of Facebook (and Twitter, to some extent).
• Businesses shift marketing budget into social platforms in huge amounts.
• Businesses dedicate real resource across departments – especially customer support.
Before you spend any money, get the communication management right.
Encourage existing customers to join you online before spending money advertising to reach others.
• When you get people to click that ‘Like’ button on Facebook, what it really gives you is the ability to speak to them.

At the last Facebook Developer Garage London event, I learnt from Thomas Neumark of the RSA that many of the problems which we face as a society can best be solved by understanding how networks work – understanding our connections with other people and organisations. Going further than that, the Internet – in the examples of Facebook, and in our own small way, iPlatform – has a really important role to play in this.

Image by Facebook, Visualizing Friendships

Our networks determine our behaviour, norms or even beliefs. With the promise of Facebook “to help people share and make the world more open and connected”, people’s actions can now be coordinated quickly and information can circulate more effectively. This explains iPlatform’s role in the launch of The Big March – an inaugural collaborative campaign hosted entirely online. Virtual marchers handed in a Petition asking the Government for help to protect children from bullying, violence and harassment. Joining forces with other companies and brands including Google, YouTube, Facebook, the National Union of Students, Robinsons Fruit Shoot, and the Metropolitan Police, iPlatform participated to make a united stand against bullying.

“We’d like to say a *big* thank you to our developer friends at iPlatform who have worked on the application in a pro bono capacity – they have made a wonderful contribution to the campaign!”

Beatbullying, minimentors.org.uk

This is not iPlatform’s first, as we were commissioned by Facebook to produce the CEOP application, an online child safety campaign. We think that every brand has an important place in society, and iPlatform continues to help all our clients to effectively engage with their customers and understand their networks. Preventing bullying has an obvious positive impact on society but don’t forget that your brand is a part of all of your fans’ make-up – and how they connect to society.

Paul Armstrong, Director of Social Media at Kindred Agency, and blogger at PR Week, has written an interview and review of Conversocial. You can read it here. It’s a great review, although Paul does point out that it would be great to have more automated sentiment and more in-depth analysis of fans. It’s coming!

“to say I’ve been impressed would be an understatement. Coming out for the masses today Conversocial will certainly help to belay any remaining fears that Facebook is not manageable for any organization. The premise is simple: a dashboard/alert system that enables a real-time way of managing content as it comes in (this is important – see later). It’s the best tool currently out there (other options include coTweet, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Context Optional, Socialite etc) to stem the tide of a busy fan page.”

Paul Armstrong, PR Week

Follow iPlatform on Twitter here.

]]> http://theiplatform.com/news/conversocial-write-up-in-pr-week/feed/ 0 http://theiplatform.com/news/conversocial-v-1-launching-next-week-at-facebook-for-business-event/ http://theiplatform.com/news/conversocial-v-1-launching-next-week-at-facebook-for-business-event/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:38:55 +0000 joshuamarch http://theiplatform.com/?p=861 We’ve been working hard all of this year on Conversocial, a tool to help companies have effective conversations with their customers online. Right now that means helping companies manage the comments and posts on their fan page – keeping on top of new comments, focusing where it’s needed through search, auto-flagging, easy moderation and team workflow.

You can read more about our motivation for building Conversocial here.

Over the last few months, many of our customers have been using the beta version of Conversocial to help manage their fan pages. We already have several paying customers. Next week, we’re launching version 1 – the culmination of our work over the year, the feedback we’ve received, and what we’ve found is most important for our customers. We’ll be demoing it at Facebook for Business, an event organised by Tempero, one of Conversocial’s early customers. Numbers are limited – you can sign up here. If you don’t manage to come, don’t worry – get in touch and we can arrange a demo of Conversocial and a free trial.

Tempero will be discussing their moderation packages for Facebook, and we’ll also have a raft of speakers from integrated agencies, and Facebook themselves. We’ll be sharing some of our own internal research on what type of posts create the most real engagement, and sharing the results during the event (a blog post will come after!).

Follow iPlatform on Twitter here.

TechCrunch hailed it as the first real online child safety campaign, designed to connect and engage with the user. They pointed out that previous ‘panic button’ styled formats, including that of Bebo, were little more than documents about online safety.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/07/12/facebook-has-not-launched-a-panic-button-its-smarter-than-that/

We learnt from previous efforts to keep children safe online, and looked carefully at the format in which the information was presented to children.  Previous formats have been information-heavy, not something that children would find particularly interesting. Rather than trying to engage with the user they tend to speak at them, or moreover, speak to the adults who were far more likely to be reading them.

The CEOP app that we built with Facebook for CEOP intends to educate children on how to be safer online and is designed to encourage children to come forward and address issues that worry them online. Whether that is from negative wall postings from people they do know, or chats from people they don’t. It isn’t designed to appear as an overbearing adult, but rather ‘speak’ with the user and make them feel it is one of them. Its look and feel is simplistic making it easy for the user to navigate, whilst the tone remains friendly and reassuring.

Joshua March, CEO of iPlatform, says:

“It’s been great to have the opportunity to work alongside Facebook and CEOP, in a continuing relationship, not only to build this application but also to more generally help CEOP engage properly with teenagers on the Facebook website; making it a safer place and connecting with CEOP’s schools outreach programmes to really educate users”

CEOP Facebook Application

The application isn’t designed to scare children into believing that the online world is bad, but rather act as a safe haven where children can reach out if they feel threatened.

One of the most important roles the application may play is its ability to ward off sexual predators and cyber bullies.  As TechCrunch discussed, the app acts as a visual warning and deterrent. It shows the user has an understanding of the need to be safe online and serves as a warning to those with less than good intentions.

In terms of users’ interest in the campaign, thus far it is proving a great success. In its first week over 100,000 children engaged with the app, with 20% adding the application’s tab to their profiles – ranking it highly even compared to big brand campaigns. For this campaign however, the true measure will not be the standard user stats, but whether or not it does make the web safer for children.

iPlatform worked alongside Facebook to produce the CEOP application, and Conversocial, iPlatform’s fan page management tool, is being used by Tempero to help moderate and manage the Click CEOP fan page.

An idea devised by Dare Digital and brought to life by iPlatform, the app allows users to get their very own unique England squad shirt and number, which is shown in a giant squad gallery (which includes the real squad, and lots of celebs who’ve signed up for their own unique shirts!), and can be shared back to their Facebook profile.

Join the Squad

Within the first day an overwhelming 30,000 users had joined the squad and had their own unique shirt number.

Stephen Fry tweeted about it, Campaign Magazine rated it 5 stars and due to the vast amounts of money spent on alcohol after many late nights of working on it, iPlatform may now own the rights to our local.

Stephen Fry, loving the app!

Over 77,000 users now have their own individual shirt name and number. As this will be the closest that any of us mere mortals, oh and Walcott, get to wearing the England shirt, long may it continue to grow.