<br /> Since the internet developed into being a mass market, the concept of “crowdsourcing” – using the mass of online connected consumers to come up with product or marketing ideas – has been a popular one, though it is often misapplied. Getting users to vote on a list of product names is not, for example, crowdsourcing – it’s simply voting!</p> <p>Volvo and Coca-Cola reaching out for consumer ideas</p> <p>However, with social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook now offering easier ways to access thousands of target users, big brands are beginning to use crowdsourcing (or canvassing consume input) in a more concerted manner as an often cheap way of creating online content. </p> <p>Both Volvo and Coca-Cola have recently launched new campaigns that invite consumers to create content for them, which is then shared with the universe of fellow brand fans. Volvo’s campaign involves interactive outdoor marketing (at areas such as bus stops), inviting consumers to design their personal version of Volvo’s new V40 vehicle. Users can chose colour, trim and alloy options to create their own vehicle, and once completed, will be shown an interpretation of their personality based on the options they chose. This content will also be shown on large outdoor screens at various UK railway stations. </p> <p>Coke looking to increase “happiness” with Facebook campaign</p> <p>Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is reaching out to its 50 million fans on Facebook to ask them to create ideas (or tag individuals who are doing so) that help drive activities that make others happy. Fans will also be invited to help shape and promote the ideas. </p> <p>Of course, not all fan-driven content will actually be any good, and it certainly isn’t a replacement for high-quality, original brand content; but as an addition to a strong content marketing strategy, it can provide a unique, cost-effective source of innovative ideas.<br />

Despite marketers and content managers knowing that optimising content and collateral for social networks and being active in social media are important, it’s sometimes hard to put concrete rationales for this investment in place.</p> <p>Personalised offers to boost influenced sales</p> <p>Some new research from eBay has produced some impressive figures in terms of retail sales that illustrate just how consumers are influenced in their purchase decisions by social media content. According to the research, some £210m of retail sales will be conducted directly through social media this year, with that figure being forecast to grow to £290m in 2014. What is more, the value of sales that are influenced by social media will rise to some £3bn in 2014. For example, the study expects retailers to target social media users with personalised offers and deals, probably based on a combination of historical behavioural data, social media activities and personal data gleaned from their public social media presences. </p> <p>Two fifths of users already relying on social media for buying advice</p> <p>The study suggests that nearly half (46%) of social media users are already using content from social media when thinking of making a purchase – for example, asking their network which family car they recommend, or where they should go for a late summer holiday. Around 40% of users are then actively deciding what they should buy based on the research they do across social media platforms, which of course includes ratings and reviews, such as those on Tripadvisor</p> <p>Of course, the research is from eBay, who clearly have a vested interest in talking-up the online retail market. However, even if it proves somewhat over optimistic, it suggests that billions of sales will ride on getting your social media content strategy right over the next three years.<br />

The endless battle between SEO and PPC rages on - which attracts more valuable consumers, which is more cost-effective, how do they work together? Meanwhile a new survey suggests that SEO is generating by far the lion’s share of consumer clicks.</p> <p>Survey covers 28 million users over a month</p> <p>The survey, published by GroupM UK but carried out by Nielsen, is based on the search activities of some 28 million users in the UK, who apparently made 1.4bn search queries in June last year. Yes, we know that’s a year old, but search behaviours are unlikely to have changed dramatically in that time, especially with a dataset this size.</p> <p>According to the research, 94% of searches resulted in a natural search result being clicked, with PPC results being selected just 6% of the time. Women were slightly more likely to click on the PPC results, as were older users. Apparently 95% of searchers on Google were “successful” with just 76% on Bing being so, though it’s unclear on the definition of “successful” (a click from the original search? A click with no immediate bounce back to the search engine?)</p> <p>Users searching for brands focus on top three results</p> <p>When searching for brands, 80% of searches resulted in a click on the first three results, suggesting that either all brands have got their SEO really established to appear in those results or that users expect the official site to be in those results; in reality we expect a mix of both. Of course, the research tells us nothing about the relative value of clicks on PPC and SEO results, but it does emphasize that simply spending on PPC isn’t the answer; a well-crafted, SEO optimised site full of high-quality original content is also essential for search success.<br />

While most traditional print newspapers are struggling with the concept of moving from print content to online news, one news site has taken an even bolder move across channels – from online to video.</p> <p>Channel goes live 12 hours a day</p> <p>The Huffington Post was launched in 2005 and features news stories, blogs, famous columnist and user-driven news content. It was acquired by AOL in 2011, and has long been seen as an innovator in online news coverage, so it’s not such a surprise that they would choose to do something a little out of left field. However, HuffPost Live is a brave and expensive move; streaming live for 12 hours a day each weekday, the network covers both news and general interest segments such as “What’s a Union?” Hosts are encouraged to incorporate community comments in their broadcasts, with comments appearing on the bottom of the screen.</p> <p>Sponsors thin on the ground so far</p> <p>The venture has been live for a few days now, and so far reactions have been mixed. The technology has proved rather flaky, though given that many hosts and their guests have been broadcasting via Skype or Google+ Hangouts that’s probably to be expected. HuffPost don’t want to be CNN, and there is no mileage in spending millions on TV grade equipment for a channel with no proven revenue streams. </p> <p>Indeed, having hoped for five or six launch sponsors, only two are evident, and they don’t get in-show commercials; they get logos, pre-roll ads and some other opportunities that haven’t emerged yet. Even so, if anyone can make a success of this ambitious idea, it’ll be the HuffPost - watch this space.

Even though Great Britain’s best Olympics in decades is still in full swing, advertisers supporting the Paralympics are planning ahead on how to capitalise on the nation’s unprecedented response to this summer of sporting fervour. </p> <p>Advertisers hope engagement in Olympics will carry over</p> <p>The level of involvement and excitement generated by the London 2012 games is shaping up to be the greatest ever for a UK sporting event, and Paralympic sponsors are looking to capitalise as part of their on and offline strategies. Sponsors such as BT, BP, Sainsbury’s supermarket and Lloyds Bank are all planning specific Paralympics campaigns to launch at the end of August. </p> <p>Unlike other brands, Sainsbury’s have sponsored just the Paralympics, not the Olympics, and have focused heavily on that in their marketing so far, offering tickets to those who purchased certain products as well as selling Paralympic specific clothing alongside general Olympic merchandise.<br /> They are said to be planning a major multimedia campaign around the games themselves in August and September.</p> <p>Online and offline activity planned </p> <p>BT, who sponsors both Games, have already been running ads in Channel 4’s Paralympic previews and is planning to switch its focus on to the “personalities” of GB paralympian stars, whilst BP is planning to run “good luck” ads and is on standby with congratulatory ads should GB athletes garner medals. Official “snacks provider" of both games Cadbury is planning significant social media activity, whilst Lloyds TSB will be heavily promoting the games with competitions, Twitter and Facebook activity as well as offline ads. With so much PR activity going on ahead of the Paralympics, sponsors are aiming to put "are you ready for the Paralympic Games?" right at the heart of their key messaging strategy.<br />

It seems obvious to most marketers that a brand presence on Twitter is a necessity these days, yet a surprisingly large number of big brands have yet to get on the bandwagon. A new study reveals that the micro blogging site hosts the majority of brand sites mentions that take place online, yet almost a fifth of the relevant brands don’t actually have their own Twitter sites with which to monitor and respond to these comments. </p> <p>Almost a fifth of brands don’t use Twitter yet</p> <p>According to the study, Burson-Marsteller’s Global Social Media Check-Up, companies in the Global Fortune 100 were mentioned online just over 10 million times in a one month period. Whilst the media tracked encompassed blogs to forums, the majority of these mentions were across Twitter, where companies were mentioned some 5.6 million times in the month. Some of the companies seeing the most number of social media mentions include HP, Ford, Sony, AT&T and Samsung. </p> <p>Majority are engaged with consumers in social media</p> <p>Whilst the majority of companies in the Global Fortune 100 are active on Twitter, with 67% of them actively engaging with users using retweets and @mentions, (for example, @pepsi) some 18% were noted as still not having accounts at all, missing out not only on insight into consumer opinion but also on building closer customer relationships. </p> <p>As Burson-Marsteller commented, gone are the days where companies could sit and look through all the online commentary about them each morning. Keeping on top of online sentiment these days requires constant vigilance, and failing to engage is a huge missed opportunity.<br />

Marketers using the Facebook social network to reach consumers have long suggested that not all is as it seems with the enormous numbers the recently floated brand use to justify why marketers should spend with them. Now, numbers released from Facebook itself would seem to suggest their doubts have some basis in fact.</p> <p>Network admits to over 950 million fake profiles</p> <p>In official company financial documents filed in the US this week, Facebook states that some 8.7% of its current 955 million active accounts are illicit in some way – that is, they break one or more of the network’s rules on personal profile pages. That adds up to over 83 million accounts that don’t play by the rules.</p> <p>According to the filings, duplicate accounts (profiles set up by already registered users) account for 4.8% of all its accounts, with incorrectly classified accounts making up another 2.4%. These are accounts that may well have been set up with legitimate intention, but shouldn’t be personal accounts - for example, for a business, or even for a pet. Another 1.5% of accounts – over 14 million – are supposedly those of “undesirable” users, accounts which Facebook think have purposely been set up for reasons that violate its terms of business (such as spamming).</p> <p>False confidence to damage Facebook marketing?</p> <p>Having recently declared that they didn’t see fake profile as a problem, some 9% of accounts being fake in some way may suggest to Facebook that this statement was slightly overconfident; certainly, marketers will be asking some increasingly awkward questions about what exactly the network is doing to sort out the problem.<br />

With “to Google” entering the vernacular across the globe as a synonymous term referring to conducting an online search (much as “to hoover” is used to mean “to vacuum), it was only a matter of time before Google hit the media big time and became a movie star.</p> <p>Google to “star” in raunchy movie</p> <p>Well, now it’s happening, although Google bosses may not be thrilled with the outcome. The new movie is not a fact-based history of the search goliaths’ origin along the lines of Facebook’s “The Social Network” but is instead a lewd comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.</p> <p>The “Wedding Crashers” alumni are currently filming “The Internship”, pegged for release in 2013, in which they play 40-something men who lose their jobs and somehow manage to land themselves internships at Google, working for John Goodman. Georgia Tech is providing a suitably shiny and glass filled set, with one student posting snaps of the famous logo and suitably wacky squishy beanbags from one location on Reddit. </p> <p>Google unlikely to play official role in production</p> <p>The film is unlikely to provide much insight into the back lot, as it were, of Google itself; it remains unclear at present what, if any, official input Google have into the movie at all. Instead the film will be an “R-rated comedy” according to star Vaughn, where they “get free food…play ping ping…take naps”. Nice to see the stereotypes of Silicon Valley tech jobs still persist even in these cash-strapped days.<br />

Whilst Beijing in 2008 may have been the first time that athletes and commentators could really use the internet to communicate with fans and viewers, London 2012 has been billed by the organisers as the first “social media” Olympics. However, with Facebook, Twitter and other channels providing unparalleled access to competitors and experts, the often uncensored and rapid-fire nature of the media has made officials twitchy. </p> <p>Twitter comments cause officials headaches</p> <p>Twitter, in particular, appears to be causing headaches for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It began before the Games even started, with Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papchristou being eliminated from her country’s team for making racist tweets, and then continued with Swiss football player Michel Morganella being sent home also for an offensive tweet. Animated discussions have arisen about the ability to police Twitter with a teenager being arrested for his abusive messages directed towards Tom Daley. The IOC itself has even reached out to fans attending events to request they stop updating their social media profiles so often, as it was affecting data systems. </p> <p>Athletes object to official constraints</p> <p>Now, athletes themselves are protesting against an official rule that prevents them mentioning their own individual sponsors on social networks. Rule 40 prevents, for example, athletes tweeting pictures of their shoes if not from Adidas, or thanking on Facebook any sponsors who are not also official Olympic sponsors. </p> <p>The rule is to prevent ambush marketing, but to many both on and off the field of play, it seems that the officials are struggling to understand and integrate the impact of social media content on the London Games. Maybe they will have cracked it by Rio….<br />

It’s a pretty safe bet that most of us have used Google to search for Olympics related content over the last few days at some point. If you have, then you will have seen Google’s latest content related experiment in integrating content into search results pages. </p> <p>Extensive interactive sports content now incorporated into search</p> <p>For example, if you search for “Olympics schedule”, an interactive table appears with clickable dates and events. Clicking on an event leads to a page of search results relevant to that event, as well as a table of medals and other event related content from Google again. In many cases, searchers will get the information they need from this content without having to click on any other search results; around half of the content on an event page, for example, is from Google. </p> <p>What do Google have to gain?</p> <p>Why is Google doing this? After all, the content (largely on the right hand side of the page) is taking up valuable revenue earning ad space. Well, there could be a few reasons. An increased amount of high quality content will encourage users to spend more time on Google itself, and this be exposed to more ads, especially if the design changes over time to allow content and ads to co-exist. </p> <p>It’s also possible that the content could be used for product specifics, such as price or goods comparisons, which could become charged for space. For example, if users search for home insurance, a product comparison table or a table of ratings or reviews might appear.</p> <p>Either way, it’s safe to assume that Google’s experiment with Olympics content isn’t motivated by altruism.<br />