Get Ready For New Twitter : Your 5 Point Checklist
December 15, 2011 at 9:00 am
Twitter was all a-twitter last week about the launch of New Twitter design layout which will empower brands to get their message across in a much more visual way when it comes. New Twitter hasn’t reached our shores yet, but when it does you should be ready. Here are 5 things to start thinking about between now and D day:
- What kind of avatar are you going to use? I think something more exciting than a logo is good, as it’s the main asset that people will interact with. But make sure the image you use works in real tiny size.
- What tagline do we wish to display across the top? You’ll of course be limited in characters, but here is a great place to distil your key marketing message. (Purists will of course be appalled at the use of key marketing messages on their beloved Twitter!)
- The promoted Tweet – now you can also control the first tweet that people see when they land on your page, and it gets displayed in expanded (or open) mode. It’s a good idea to give people a flavour of what you’re really about on Twitter and don’t just fill this with an ad type video. There’s great scope to be really creative here – you could produce a short ‘why follow us on Twitter video’, or post a beautiful evocative image that will make people click follow… highlight your most engaging and important content and better connect with your target audience. Given that images and video are no longer going to diplay as links on Twitter, you might want to reconsider your post types for this platform. Try and incorporate at least 1 or 2 pics or vids a few times a week so you break up the right hand side visually.
- Design skin: there is still room for beautiful design on the left, use it!
- And finally - make sure you include links to all your other digital addresses: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
More on Edgerank
October 14, 2011 at 9:29 am
I remember I used to have a sheet somewhere that had the top 10 words that resonated with people online, according to some Harvard Research. I wish I could find it. I’d like to say I’ve absorbed the information and use the words naturally, so I don’t need it. Now I’ve just come across a similar piece but for Facebook’s Edgerank. The top words that drive engagement (according to Buddymedia):
- where
- when
- would
- should
The word “would” drives the highest spike in ‘Likes’ due to fans using ‘like’ as a way to vote “yes” on the question rather than posting “yes” to a Wall.
Edgerank is what makes Facebook tick, and if you understand it, then you’re well on the way to making sure your posts get read. There’s nothing worse than writing posts for Facebook and getting zero reaction. This can happen because your posts just aren’t being shown. Edgerank is Facebook’s algorithim (formula) that helps it decide what posts to show and what posts not.
Things To Consider When Writing To Be Read:
- People like to show off their knowledge, so be sure to include a trivia / chitty chat component in your editorial planning. If I don’t know that much about your product, I can’t comment. But if you write about things that are happening generally – eg. Presidential Election, Hallowe’en, clocks changing then I am more likely to be able to have something to say (adding to your comments and upping your Edgerank score).
- Be sure to comment on comments as this will also up your score. Keep the conversation going. And if you’ve got someone who’s posting negatively on your wall, that’s OK because every interaction is pushing your Edgerank up.
- And the usual stuff we all know such as posting pics to drive comment, links, and of course ‘asking for the like’. Don’t be afraid to tell people what to do.
Tags: edgerank
Facebook Landing Tabs – Yes or No?
August 15, 2011 at 8:01 am
I’m doing some testing at the moment as to whether having a landing or welcome tab on your Facebook Page increases the likelihood of a like, or whether it acts as a barrier (like an old school ‘skip intro’ page on websites). I don’t think there is a hard and fast answer; it depends on YOUR fans and their preferences. But I’ve carried out a little research into what some brands do, and collate below my thinking towards best practice on Facebook landing tabs. If you’re trying to decide whether to have one or not, I hope this helps.
Important Features of Facebook Landing Tabs
- Engage and get the max impact with the first 10-15 words
- Ask for the like and be human about it – I like this “We like you, do you like us?”
- Show the best of the Page’s content, and give people an idea of what they can expect as part of your community
- If you’re in hotels, or car hire, or ecommerce, it can be a good idea to offer some form of incentive to encourage visitors to become a fan – such as a money off coupon.
https://www.facebook.com/threadless
Design Led Landing Tabs
Here are some of my favourite examples of landing tabs that go straight in and ask for the ‘like’ but in a visually creative way:
http://www.facebook.com/VirginItalia
https://www.facebook.com/EnjoyEngland
http://www.facebook.com/TescoIreland
http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft
http://www.facebook.com/redbull
Getting The Tone Right
It’s really important to set the right tone. Don’t overwhelm people who are browsing, and don’t demand that they DO stuff straightaway – “upload all your pics and tell us why [our brand] is so great”. Kind of like what these guys do, but that could just be a cultural thing {smirks}.
Here are some of my favourites that get the tone right:
http://www.facebook.com/holdenaustralia
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sweden/49607452291
http://www.facebook.com/sonyericsson
And finally, I have to give this one a mention – Ford.
I like the way they creatively use the profile pic and landing tab image, and very neatly show off their team. Ford gets a lot of kudos online about how great they are on social media, yet I have contacts on the inside who tell me that they are only now nutting down a strategy for Facebook and are in the process of rolling out monitoring software. I think the reason they get such good press is because they are doing better than most other car companies. If you are a car company and you want to earn yourself lots of online love, get started, invest a little and create a community.
Tags: facebook landing tabs, facebook welcome tab
How Electricity Companies Should Use Twitter
April 13, 2011 at 9:50 am
It’s quite simple really – there are only 3 competitors in the Irish market. Very easy to use Twitter effectively to listen out to people at their ‘point of need’. This could be negative….
Or, er, negative (I couldn’t find any positive tweets about Airtricity, Bord Gais, or ESB!)
Assuming that we’re ESB, the newly relaunched competitor.
How to find people who are itching to switch? And score some positive WOM while you’re at it
- Open up Advanced Twitter Search
- Do a search for “Airtricity”… you’ll find a lot of tweets coming up about the football league, and job ads, etc.
- Insert those words in the “none of these words’ box
4. Review your results. In the case of disgruntled customers, consider tweeting them with a special offer code. It’s very important to get your tone right. Be engaging, empathise. Whatever you do, don’t be too salesy. That will backfire.
5. For the example above about charging higher standing charges, I’d suggest tweeting “ESB standing charges X. Bord Gais X+2. Airtricity X+3 #we’renotsneaky“. Straightforward display of pricing, with a nod to the original tweeter’s use of the hash tag.
6. Wait for the person above to respond – because folks – this IS a conversation and that’s how conversation works. If they choose to engage with you (the brand), then you can come back with an offer code. See what they say, be polite, answer their question, and end with a call to action – preferably a trackable link – for making the switch.
7. I’d suggest creating a switching page on your website that is written to disgruntled Twitter people coming over. Everyone knows personalisation works, so why not write your body copy on this page to talk to directly to these people? All links to this page should be tracked so you can capture the number of leads you’re getting from Twitter.
As regards the positive WOM stuff… I use an example in training about how impressed I was when @VodafoneIreland responded to a tweet I made about Vodafone network being down, Twitter being all I’ve got. Vodafone tweeted me back a few hours later to say “we’re back on now”. That simple tweet was very effective. It turned a negative (the network being down) into a warm and fuzzy feeling (“oh they listen to me… they care…”). Whenever I share this story (telling people = positive WOM), course participants are always quick to jump in with similar tales of positive actions such as this. So apart from hoovering up leads by using Twitter in this way, you’re also generating lots of instances of positive WOM. I still believe that, despite what one of my more cynical buddies on Twitter had to say on the matter yesterday! What do you think?
I do hope you can understand my equation stuff above, I did go to seek out the electricity standing charges in Ireland to use real numbers, but it’s a bit of a minefield and I couldn’t get my head around it in the time I have now. I’ll come back to it.
Note the use of the hash tag. I will write about hashtags shortly. They are, simultaneously, the most abused, and the most well used device on Twitter. Hashtags were invented (by Chris Messina) specifically for use on Twitter. Sadly, they’ve been hijacked by overzealous marketers.
Finally, while you can create searches in Twitter applications such as Tweetdeck to deliver tweets to your app on specific search terms, the big failing here is that you can’t use negative keywords, and you cannot geotarget, so while you can set them up, you may be at risk of getting a whole load of noise. But if that’s what you want, that’s OK. I like the “since this date” feature in Advanced Twitter Search because you can task your team to perform this activity every couple of days (hoovering up sales leads!) – so all they have to do is insert their keywords since the last date they performed this search, and away they go
What about your business?
Are you using Twitter in this way, which incidentally is Number 3 on Mashable’s List of 9 Digital Marketing Lessons. Do you need a little help?
Great 404 Pages
February 3, 2011 at 5:47 pm
Discovered this great page of 404′s via @nicholaspatten on Twitter. My favourite is below, but there are lots of great ones over here.
Very Responsive Home Page
February 13, 2010 at 1:08 pm
@burkie noted this on Twitter on Saturday:
Ulster Bank have a welcome message to Halifax on its home page.
Tags: Home page, ulster bank
To Close The Blacknight Matter
November 17, 2009 at 11:29 am
I posted on Friday about my disappointment that Blacknight doesn’t properly use the tools available to it in times of crisis. While many people commented on the blog, seemingly Michele Neylon (MD of Blacknight) wasn’t able to. He claimed to have posted his comment twice and insinuated on Twitter that I was receiving these comments and choosing not to publish.
That is not true.
It’s also irritating that someone who was clearly having technical difficulties at his end chose to publicly insinuate an untruth about me on Twitter (a very public space) – about something that was factually incorrect.
On Friday I emailed Michele and asked him to email me directly and I would publish his comments. I heard nothing back. I emailed him again yesterday because I believe in open discussion and sincerely wanted to publish his comments as they would add to the discussion. He came back to me late yesterday and I’m happy to publish what he has to say below:
Most of what I would have said has been said by other people in the comments. In common with a lot of companies in our sector we maintain two separate blogs:
http://blog.blacknight.com – news, offers, marketing etc.,
http://www.blacknightstatus.com – technical service notifications both from us and from companies that impact on our services eg. domain registries or bandwidth carriersWe have not posted technical information to our main company blog in well over a year. All our technical support staff would direct clients to the status site and it’s also linked to from all pages on our main site and in all outgoing emails from the support desk
The status site is 100% independent from the main Blacknight network etc., and doesn’t even use our DNS servers. Basically as long as we can get online in some way we can get onto it to post updates to our clients.
All updates posted to the status site appear on Twitter as well. See: http://twitter.com/blacknight/status/5709231280 for but one example. You posted a screenshot of our Twitter account to your blog. If you’d gone further down (back) you’d have seen several posts in relation to the issue on morgana from Thursday afternoon.
So there you have it. The word from Blacknight.
I’m doing a lot of reading around how people engage online. The academics would tell us that people tend to engage more quickly and more deeply due to the levels of anonymity; that they feel they can hide behind the anonymity in order to express themselves in ways that they wouldn’t do face to face. I think Twitter is an interesting phenomenon (for many reasons) but mostly because I’m noticing a variety of people who act like it’s anonymous when clearly it’s not. I wonder if Michele would have published his derogatory remarks about me on another online forum – I think not? Obviously Blacknight keep their blog to the superficial PR/marketing level. They wouldn’t blacken it with a personal attack that is unfounded and not proven. But yet he feels that it’s OK to do this on Twitter? Same size audience, same damage done.
What ever happened to the telephone? If I was heading up a company that was in crisis management mode, and a client (ie. me) published a blog about their poor handling of the situation, I would do everything in my power to get my opinion across; to attempt to rectify the situation and to clarify things. If I was unable to publish a comment and the client expressed concern at not receiving my comments, I’d pick up the phone. Or I’d email. Or do something to make myself heard. I wouldn’t go ahead and publish a derogatory remark to an audience of the client’s peers and colleagues.
Maybe that’s just me and how I do business?
Tags: Blacknight fail, Twitter behaviour
Top 5 Tips For Sign-Up Forms
May 18, 2009 at 10:04 am
Ryan Singer at FOWD in London a few weeks ago. If you haven’t got 10 mins to watch it, here’s what he says:
- Put the easy stuff first. Things people don’t have to think about. That way they’re more invested and have a bit of momentum going when it comes to things they have to think about – like choosing a user name.
- Add Ajax goodness for think about fields, eg. choosing user names. Show people on the spot if that name is taken. It’s much more satisfying than completing the form and having to go back and change.
- Only ask for what you need. If you need to ask more, you can always ask it inside the app.
- Use conversational language – and that includes on error messages. Instead of a bossy command style “you have not completed all the fields”, use “Can you check this? You’ve missed something.”
- Design your form to take numbers in whatever way the user wants to give you - if they want to put brackets around their number prefix – let them!
Plus one more!
- Show them what they’re getting at the end. Similar to how ecommerce sites allows you to review your purchase, similarly you need to show them what they’ve just signed up for.
Tags: FOWD, Ryan Singer, Sign Up Forms
What The Big Switch & Airtricity Don’t Advertise
April 22, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Yesterday I posted about how Airtricity and how they take €200 off new customers at sign up. I was a bit miffed about that, so I looked to the Big Switch.
As there is no information about customer entry fees on the Big Switch website either, I telephoned and found out that Bord Gais Energy also charge a switching fee. In fact, they have a matrix that helps them determine what that fee should be.
- If you’re already a Bord Gais customer and you are a tenant – you pay €100
- If you’re already a Bord Gais customer you’re a tenant living at your address less than 14 months – you pay €200
- If you’re a home owner living at your home less than 14 months – you pay €200.
The reason they say is because tenants have a habit of skipping off without paying their electricity bills. Fair enough. But what about a new home owner already beleagured with multiple costs? They’re hardly going to skip off.
- How long does Bord Gais get to sit on your money? 6 – 7 bills.
- That’s about 14 months of interest-free cash from you. Nice one.
Now this is all regular business practice I’m told.
But what I find highly irregular is the fact that Bord Gais do not advertise any of this on their website.
The Big Switch says nothing, nowhere, not even in the terms and conditions which I read. Nor does the Bord Gais mothership site. The first time you find out about this fee is when you’ve already done the switch (or so you thought) and you get a demanding letter in the post.
This is not how we do things on the web.
We give people full information as early as possible – so as not to waste their time and piss them off. Good sites show the full price (including shipping) as early as possible because that is the way things are done.
I take issue with Web Factory again because they ought to know this. OK, maybe they were a bit afraid to bring it up with their important client Bord Gais? But hey, the guys at Bord Gais ought to know this. They’re currently shortlisted as best internet marketers in the Net Visionary Awards. Is this how you’d expect such esteemed people to behave?
Either way people, if you are planning on switching from ESB to either Bord Gais or Airtricity, you WILL have to pay for the privilege if you don’t want to give away your bank account direct debit details. Suddenly big fat utility co ESB looks more attractive….
Tags: Airtricity, Bord Gais Networks, ESB, The Big Switch
What I Don’t Like About The Big Switch
April 6, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Everyone’s talking about how great the Big Switch campaign has been, but I would like to point out 3 things I don’t like about the site:
- There is a typo. On the “why switch” page, bullet point 1. Should be ‘your’ electricity costs. Also, that asterix doesn’t have a corresponding explanation on the page – anywhere! Wow, Web Factory need to check their work a little more closely. How embarrassing.
I wanted to see where they’re getting the basis of their calculation from. It says 10% saving – but how does it work? Is it a blanket 10% off whatever I’d pay with ESB? If so, then tell me that. Again in the box on the right hand side of that page, it’s referring to a 10%* but nowhere on the page does it tell me what the asterix is about. A nod and a wink from one of Ireland’s utility providers doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence. Especially when it’s the gas people, the ones who raise their rates by 20% at a time.
I can’t stand untalented ubiquitous RTE ‘celebrities’. Lucy Kennedy seems to be flavour of the month right now. So we get Lucy all over Ireland telling us to make the big switch. In non-controllable television-land I can’t do anything about that. But when she hits my computer screen, it’s rude to have her talking at me. Give me the ability to hit that ‘turn off sound’ button and shut her up. Actually if you gave me that button, I’d probably drop in and out of the big switch site just to shut her up!
So although Nicky Doran, head of marketing at Bord Gáis, Nicky Doran believes in interacting with bloggers, here’s one blogger who believes he hasn’t got it right. When you reach out to bloggers, or to Twitterers, or even run a natinonwide poster campaign directing people to your website, you should ensure that you get the basic www right.
UPDATE: What I don’t like about Airtricity’s website.
Tags: Big Switch Typo
