iris q1 recap: key social media trends & updates

1 1 Confidential © 2014 Confidential © 2014

Q1 recap what’s new in social?

2 2 Confidential © 2014

contents §  Rethinking Facebook: New Tweaks for Making the Most of a new Mass Media

Channel §  Newsjacking is Mainstream

§  Storytelling Unfolds Across Platforms: paper, Tumblr Grows Up, & More

§  Paid Social: New Opportunities for Making Stories Visible to the Right People

§  Where have all the Teens gone?

§  The Anti-Social Backlash? §  Plus-ing Up: Why Google+ is Next


Rethinking Facebook


As the amount of content in the newsfeed grows faster than people can consume, the Newsfeed Algorithm has had to evolve to show only the best, most relevant items: Story Bumping & Last Actor:

•  Ensures you see only new stories

•  Weights last 50 people or brands a user interacts

Publisher Content Elevation •  Algorithm gave more weight

to publisher content. http://on.fb.me/1qVkZAz

In q4, the Newsfeed algorithm became ruthless on brands…


Those changes resulted in reach dropping to ~2-3% of fan bases without media. The implication: Facebook is no longer a place for organically reaching communities. Facebook is now a mass media channel.

Resulting in The death of organic reach

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-admits-organic-reach-brand-posts-dipping/245530/


Platform value lies in its reach, but fans provide social context Ads with Social Context work harder for your money. Implication: Your ads should be served with social context; if not, you’re not maximizing what the platform offers. Action Items: FB now allows you to see if ads are served with Social Context. Adjust media plans to cover fan growth in addition to engagement/awareness.

Facebook; 1Nielsen; 2DataLogix

Social Context is the notion a user is more likely to

try it/click it/buy it if they see friends have.

Ads with Social Context are more

effective: 50% Higher Ad

Recall1 35% Lift in Sales2


New ad formats make the most of social context FB Posts and Ads are now optimized to drive offsite conversion. Getting the most out of Facebook requires using the right format for each objective. Action Items: Review your content and objectives. Posts driving awareness (no links) should leverage Page Posts/Ads. Posts driving off-newsfeed (have links in them) should be using the Page Link Posts/Ads format.

NEW: - 2.2x higher ROI - Whole Post is

Clickable


Newsjacking is now mainstream Ever since Oreo’s ‘Dunk in the Dark’ post during the 2013 Super Bowl, Urgent Genius has become an expectation of brands.


Consumers are paying attention, so use it It's now as common to rate brands’ real time efforts as it is to rate the TV spots or the red carpet dresses during major events. Action Items: Address community management plans for your brand to ensure your brand is creating budget to support this function


Facebook launches paper Paper is a more visual way to experience your newsfeed, along with curated editorial content based on your interests, with a bigger emphasis on stories and images. Implications: There are currently no opportunities within Paper for brands, but future native advertising within interest verticals seems a potential place for Facebook to monetize the product. Ability for users o receive all notifications within paper means some users will be out of targeting reach.

“Paper has transformed how I use Facebook and I have no

intention of opening the original iPhone app again.”

– Nick Summer, TheNextWeb http://bit.ly/1tiAX9Z http://vimeo.com/85421325


Facebook App Paper

Nav. GUI/button-driven navigation Gesture-driven navigation, including tilting to see

expanded photos, twisting to zoom in and tapping to drill further

Disc

over

y Content is discovered by navigating directly to a page, or 2nd-hand from

newsfeed

Content is now surfaced by interest category

Cont

ent

News content from publishers performs best and is what consumers want to

see, based on metrics, but is often less frequent when mixed in with status

updates and ads in most users’ newsfeeds

Newsfeed becomes a reimagined news experience, with your newsfeed as just one section of many

sections of publisher content, creating an experience with more of what users want to see.

Ads Reached consumers in-newsfeed in a

variety of formats No current options.

How is paper different from the Facebook app?


Tumblr is the fastest growing social platform in terms of revenue per visit, 2nd only to Facebook and gaining

TUMBLR SO hot right now

http://socialfresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Tumblr_infographic.jpg


tumblr = powerful visual storytelling Tumblr is a key platform for content discovery, especially among teens –with users averaging 14 min. per visit. Some top brands leveraging the freedom to explore all content format, including GIFs, are Target, GE, L’Oreal Paris, Disney and Lowe’s. Implication: People being exposed to quality brand content through a friend’s shares or reblogs is an incredibly powerful metric- especially for millennials. Action Items: If your brand is targeting millennials, absolutely consider a Tumblr strategy.

70% Lift in Brand Favorability

50% Researched Brand After

% of Consumers Who Saw Sponsored Posts

10K Average Sponsored

Post Reblogs (higher than FB or

Twitter)

http://lowesfixinsix.tumblr.com/ http://targetstyle.tumblr.com/


Twitter gets visual: the redesign Twitter rolled out an updated profile design that has a greater focus on photos and content cards. The most engaging content will appear larger, tweets can be pinned to the top of the feed, Tweets can also now show up to 4 in-line photos. http://bit.ly/1tiD3GZ Action Items: Review profiles and ensure they are using the most up to date specs and leveraging new features. Always pair tweets with solid visual content to make the most of it!

SPECS: Profile Image:

400x400

Header: 1500x500


Other ways to storytell? Instagram released storytelling for brands with examples of how the best on the platform bring their stories to life. Custom Timelines are a new way to curate stories on Twitter, like Carson Daily’s use of one to accompany The Voice: https://twitter.com/CarsonDaly/timelines/400108543488974849 Action Items: Consider how to augment events with new live storytelling formats.

http://instagram-business.tumblr.com/post/76235731349/tools-and-tips-to-help-marketers-inspire-and


Video Ads = another new storytelling format Facebook rolled out video ads that auto-play in the Newsfeed, offering a more emotional connection for advertisers to leverage. Action Items: Review objectives and discuss if Facebook video ads are a fit. If so, don’t just use a TV spot – the first few seconds must be rich and engaging, with thumb-stopping power

“Marketers will be able to use this new format to tell their stories to a large number of

people on Facebook in a short amount of time—with high

quality sight, sound and motion.” – Facebook

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/12/testing-a-new-way-to-watch-promoted-videos-in-news-feed/


New targeting helps new stories reach the right people.

Custom Audiences can now be made from not only email lists, but from users’ activities on brand websites or apps, using Facebook's retargeting pixel. Facebook also now has 58 types of custom gender pronouns to choose from on the platform, tapping into new niche audiences. Implications: Brands can now reach audiences segmented by where they are on the purchase journey, allowing each campaign to be that much more effective against the target. eCommerce brands can target a specific campaign like those that shopped but didn’t purchase – or brands with a specific LGBT audience can now reach these people with specific, targeted campaigns.

Action Items: Place Facebook’s retargeting pixel on you brand sites and properties. Do you have an LGBT audience segment? Then, discuss these options with media teams. Do you have a CRM databases? These may contain social IDs that can be targeted against. .

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/custom-audiences


Right-hand ads get updated Facebook announced an update to RHS ads (known to have low CTRs and really just serve the purpose of lowering a media plan’s eCPM) as marketers move towards concentrating only on Newsfeed. The ads will be 2x as big, and users will now see about three, compared to the current average of seven. http://on.fb.me/1mLVkel Action Items: As images are now similarly sized to Link Post ads, you won’t necessarily need to create separate assets for these ad units anymore.


Twitter Tailored audiences offer customized reach on Twitter.

Similar to Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature, Twitter’s Tailored Audiences allows ads to be retargeted to website visitors who also use Twitter (new or existing customers) via matching cookies to Twitter profiles. This can also now be done using Twitter usernames or IDs or CRM lists or partner IDs, and multiple campaigns can run at once. https://blog.twitter.com/2013/more-relevant-ads-with-tailored-audiences https://blog.twitter.com/2014/new-ways-to-create-and-use-tailored-audiences

Implications: This allows brands to reach potential customers that may have visited site and not converted, or customers who have been on the site but aren’t connected with you in social yet. Action Items: Is Twitter part of your media strategy? Do your objectives include conversion? If so, discuss the options above with your media and strategy team.


TV x Twitter TV ad targeting extends the value of TV spots by driving real time engagement at the moment the brand is top of mind. For example, @Oikos continued the conversation from :30 to Twitter by serving promoted tweets featuring Greek-yogurt based healthy recipes from influencers such as Chef Michael Symon to users who had seen their ads Action items: Include hashtags with clear CTAs and add depth and richness through photo and video content.


teens are leaving facebook… Facebook saw a 3% drop in active usage between Q2 and Q4 2012. However, Facebook still remains the #1 social network in terms of total accounts (73% of teens are still on Facebook) and frequency of visits (59% login more than 1x/day). Actions: Don’t be too quick to drop Facebook from your plan. Consider Facebook’s role as a reach/awareness play, and explore other channels for participation, engagement, and more 1:1 communication with fans.

Source: GlobalWebIndex


They’ve moved on to Instagram. Instagram’s growth is particularly impressive relative to other platforms (nearly doubling in penetration over the past year). All platform usage dipped in Fall '13 but then rose in Spring '14, suggesting that possibly more teens total are now using social as these platforms increase in popularity. Actions: Instagram offers a way to bring brands to life visually. If your audience is teens, explore it as a way to connect.

Most important social networks to teens:

Source: Piper Jaffray

Instagram nearly doubled vs. last year

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Anti-social backlash? Users are flocking to chat apps that offer either 1:1, or even anonymous, communication


Secret & whisper anonymity vs. authenticity

While everything about you is increasingly public on Facebook, users are flocking to social networking apps based on anonymity, like Secret & Whisper. Users share text overlaid on images with total anonymity, to networks from their phones’ contacts. Hulu was the first brand to test branded promoted “whispers” for a new series about Ghosts. Implications: For entertainment brands looking to tease upcoming plot twists or brands with products aligned with the theme, this could fit.. Action Items: Evaluate by platform if messaging apps are right, especially if your audience is the millennial target ( 90% of Whisper’s users are between 18 – 24). https://www.secret.ly/ http://whisper.sh/


messaging aps offer a more direct way of connecting

Services such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, Line and Tango are part of the new “SMS+” ecosystem that offer group messaging, chat, voice calling and other services like built in games, custom stickers and QR code readers. Telegram, Confide and SnapChat support ephemeral, self-destructing messages. These apps are rising in popularity among millennials, with 29% of adults 18-24 using them daily. Implications: Users are showing a tendency to circumvent the concept of a newsfeed altogether, looking for more direct ways of connecting.

Action Items: Consider if you have a millennial target – 1:1 connections offer a more personal, surprising way to get in touch with consumers.

Monthly Users: WhatsApp: 465mm

WeChat: 100mm Viber: 300mm Line: 380mm Tango: 70mm

Source: AdAge, March 2014


Cloak uses data to help you avoid your networks all together

With its tagline "incognito mode for real life," Cloak is the newest "antisocial network" that gleans information from social apps like Foursquare and Instagram to map out where your friends are based on their recent check-ins or geo-locations. https://www.getcloak.com/ Implications: Will brands be able to leverage the reasons for NOT wanting to be found? Or will people (presumably) not want to be found by brands either? Will be interesting to see if we can leverage signals in reverse - e.g. Clearasil toner ads to girls using Cloak after the gym to avoid people they know? Actions: Evaluate on a per brand basis. .


Google+ you’re probably already there – so use it!

Actions: Any brand that has a YouTube channel already has a Google+ page, and can leverage content they are producing for other social channels to open up new conversations on G+.

Google+ is more than a social network - engagement on the platform can contribute to search equity, helping drive brand presence. Higher SEO indexing for your content helps drives overall awareness. G+ features like Hangouts also provide new ways for brands to interact with consumers, and recent studies have shown that referrals from G+ spend more time on site and view more pages than other social sources.

“Brands’ Google Plus posts generated nearly as much

engagement per follower as their Facebook posts — and almost twice as much engagement per follower as their Twitter posts.”

- Forrester


Examples: Hangouts and HelpOuts take engagement and customer service to the next level: •  Toms Shoes hosted a 6 day hangout

On Air featuring local artists who customized shoes on the spot

•  #AskMally with Birchbox •  Topshop democratized London

Fashion Week with Model Cams •  Home Depot is offering help on DIY

projects using HelpOuts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/tyler-ramsey-box_n_3653919.html http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/topshop_casestudy.pdf


Google+ Ads can help amplify your stories at scale

As of February 2014, G+ Post Ads basically turn Google+ Posts into display ads that run on the Google Display Network (GDN). Any content - posts, videos, photos, even hangouts – can be boosted into an ad. Some of the first brands doing this: Toyota, Ritz Crackers, Cadbury. http://www.google.com/+/business/brands/ads.html

Implications: This social ad format allows you to make conversations and stories with consumers and fans visible to new people. Action Items: All brands need to consider Google+ as a channel. G+ posts have the benefit of greater SEO equity.


THANKS

iris q1 recap: key social media trends & updates

Marketing