A Celebration Of Social By Design
Posted: January 4, 2012 Filed under: Social By Design, Social Media Leave a comment »During September 2011 a few companies announced they had built applications which were “social by design” and by end of November some staggering early results were announced.
The Independent newspaper launched a great social feature which enables you to stumble onto content your Facebook friends have read.
In my case what better authority to recommend the article “students admit lewd sex acts on bus” than a friend who is in the final year of university, who during holidays works behind my local pub bar visibly charming all the local ladies, is a DJ on the uni radio station and on the college rowing team and who I’m sure had a whale of a time with the ladies on both sides of the pond on a course which saw him spend a year in the US before returning to the UK?
Also – why wouldn’t I sit up and take notice of an article about “griddled scallops with ham hock and split peas” when I can see that my friend from school, who is a very enthusiastic professional chef investigated the recipe himself first?
The Human Race Has Such Great Taste
Posted: October 27, 2011 Filed under: Speaking | Tags: F-Commerce, Facebook Commerce, Radian6, Slideshare, Valtech Leave a comment »Maria uploaded a copy of my slides from my speech at eCommerce Expo onto Slideshare last night. From amongst the thousands of presentations uploaded each day it’s been singled out as sufficiently worthy to display as featured content on SlideShare’s homepage. Is this the nearest I’ll ever get to winning an Oscar 
Plus I really am that vain to be sufficiently pleased to also receive the message: “Simplifying Facebook Commerce” is being tweeted more than anything else on SlideShare right now. So we’ve put it on the homepage of the SlideShare (in the “Hot on Twitter” section).
It’s also great to see my stuff featured right up alongside the likes of Radian6 who I admire greatly, especially after they kicked Sysomos behind in my Social Media listening race on my old blog.
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Cultural Events Marketing and F-Commerce
Posted: August 30, 2011 Filed under: Marketing, Social Media | Tags: Cultural Events, Cultural Marketing, F-Commerce, Facebook, Marketing Leave a comment »Simple solutions are often the best. Forget those complicated Facebook Commerce marketing strategies and just stick to common sense and plan your marketing around cultural events throughout the year – according to this evidence anyway
The graph shows Facebook’s own data for the UK from their study of Gross National Happiness, a measure of peoples relative happiness based on their use of positive and negative words in status updates.
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So what do the largest spikes relate to:
1. Christmas Eve – December 24th 2009 – positive sentiment spike
2. New Years Eve – December 31st 2009 – positive sentiment spike
3. Valentines Day – February 14th 2010 – positive sentiment spike
4. Mothering Sunday – March 14th 2010 – positive sentiment spike
5. Grand National horse race – April 10th 2010 – positive sentiment spike
6. Heatwave in The UK - May 23rd 2010 – positive sentiment spike
7. Fathers Day – June 20th 2010 – positive sentiment spike
8. Aftermath of student riots - December 10th 2010 – negative sentiment spike
9. Christmas Eve – December 24th 2010 – positive sentiment spike
10. New Years Eve – December 31st 2010 – positive sentiment spike
11. Valentines Day – February 14th 2011 – positive sentiment spike
12. Mothering Sunday – April 3rd 2011 – positive sentiment spike
13. Grand National horse race – April 9th 2011 – positive sentiment spike
14. Fathers Day – June 19th 2011 – positive sentiment spike
15. UK Riots - August 9th 2011 – negative sentiment spike
At first glance this looks like common sense, but given half the UK population are Facebook users this data is more than statistically significant and merits further consideration. So here is some analysis:
- User Traffic - Whilst the data relates to use of positive or negative words, the spikes must also relate in some way to traffic spikes across Facebook. For instance note that New Years Eve also provides Facebook with the greatest spike in photos uploaded.
- Positive Versus Negative – Note how few negative spikes there are and that you can also predict when the population will be feeling most positive (and yes bizarrely that does include the day of the Grand National horse race). Time to read up on the psychology of consumer purchasing behaviour when people are feeling positive. Are impulse purchases more likely when people are feeling happy?
- Traditional Cultural Events – Is the UK population dull and predictable? Well according to the data very probably yes. Why did the football World Cup final not register as a significant spike? How come the Grand National spiked more significantly than the Royal Wedding? Should marketeers focus their budget and effort around the predictable annual events that are sure winners and have worked their way into the cultural fabric of the UK?
Is Social The Most Important Digital Cultural Trend?
Posted: August 23, 2011 Filed under: Social Media | Tags: Cultural Trends, Digital, Facebook, Facebook Commerce, Local, Mobile, Social, SoLoMo Leave a comment »Whilst researching cultural trends for a customer I began to play with Google’s cultural trend tool, which provides trend data against a library of millions of books which have been digitised.
As a control test I thought I’d type in Facebook – whoooo look at that rapid spike in growth
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That spike isn’t really a surprise, but look how the word Facebook compares to the word Social. Mentions of Facebook are so few it doesn’t even register on the graph and flatlines on the bottom, but it is interesting to note that prevalence of the word Social has grown steadily since 1800:
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Since in the digital world you can’t get away from the term SoLoMo – then lets also graph Local and Mobile:
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Mobile as a cultural trend is barely visible, whereas Local has a reasonable showing, yet it is still dwarfed by Social. Thus I wonder is it reasonable to conclude that Social is culturally the most important aspect of SoLoMo and the element where digital brands should focus the majority of their investment?
Talking Facebook Commerce
Posted: August 2, 2011 Filed under: Speaking | Tags: eCommerce Expo, F-Commerce, Facebook Commerce, The Guardian, Valtech Leave a comment »
I’m going to be speaking at the eCommerce Expo on the subject of Facebook Commerce on October 11th at London, Olympia – you lucky people
My subject is “Simplifying Facebook Commerce” and I’ll be building on Valtech’s recent article published in The Guardian newspaper. The emphasis will be on putting the customer at the heart of planning and the tools, techniques and approaches that are necessary to build platforms on a people centric platform such as Facebook.
My presentation will be aimed towards business managers and those responsible for making money from on-line customers.
If you wish to register to attend then click here. If you’re already socially clued up then maybe you’d like to recommend a friend on Facebook would like to attend by clicking here.
