John Barton

Head of Planning & Social Media

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION (FR) from R+I creative on Vimeo.

Influencers is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.

The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.

The film is a Polaroid snapshot of New York influential creatives (advertising, design, fashion and entertainment) who are shaping today’s pop culture.
“Influencers” belongs to the new generation of short films, webdocs, which combine the documentary style and the online experience

John Barton

Head of Planning & Social Media

As of this morning users can now upgrade their Facebook pages with a new layout designed to allow your friends to learn more about your personal profile at a glance. Its much more visual than before incorporating live streams of photographs you have uploaded recently or have been tagged in while the ‘info section’ has been completely overhauled allowing users to showcase their personal information and interests in a more visual way.

The key takeaway: New advertising formats

So why is this overhaul taking place? Sure it’s nice to have more ergonomically sound user profiles, but when media owners make these sort of changes and risk upsetting the status quo, it’s usually because they are building up to leveraging more real estate for advertsing purposes.

I received an email from Facebook HQ this morning confirming that there will indeed be a new Horizontal ad format available for advertisers from January 4th. As well as that, advertisers will also have the opportunity to purchase 100% share-of-voice on profile pages in the same way as premium ads can be purchased on the homepage.

From a user perspective I have just upgraded and as with every Facebook upgrade, I fear change…and then eventually come round to the new format. I imagine I will see the standard backlash and subsequent acceptance from friends in my news feed later this week as they all settle in.

You can learn more about the Facebook profile changes by clicking here.

John Barton

Head of Planning & Social Media

Thanks to some great investigative journalism, and a degree of open-ness from the two major search engines, we now have a degree of confirmation that social media links and mentions are indeed part of the ranking algorithms. This post appeared on Search Engine Land yesterday and confirms what many in the industry have been saying, publicly or privately for some time now.

Much of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone in SEO, the engines are always looking to refine their algorithms to serve better results based on what people expect to see when they search for particular keywords. Where better to look for that data then in the social media arena?

What this means for clients depends, to a degree on what their existing social media footprint looks like. No one should be advocating building hundreds of fake social media profiles and spamming everyone to death, the message from Google is as always leaning towards quality over quantity. So it would be more beneficial to get mentioned by one person with 750,000 followers than to get thousands of mentions from people with 0.

At Steak we don’t see Social media and SEO as mutually exclusive in terms of outreach, building relationships with key influencers and CRM policy in general. Using Social Media to build search authority means that it is more crucial than ever to ensure that campaigns are engaging innovative open and organic.

We have all seen the PR disasters from the likes of Nestle on their Facebook profile, and Google’s message is that far from  increasing your ranking due to getting lots of coverage, the negativity of that coverage will act to reduce ranking value rather than improve it.

What this means for clients is that alongside all of the KPI metrics that an SEO agency should monitor and take steps to improve, the following metrics should be added:

-      number of posts made

-      number of SM mentions (probably categorized into Twitter/Facebook etc)

-      number of direct responses (positive v negative)

-      number of links

That’s arguably not an exhaustive list, tools like Radian 6 may throw up other potential ranking factors that could be monitored. The key as always in SEO is to keep on top of what people are doing on the web and always consider how the information they share could be useful indicators of quality, how you might impact it for the better on behalf of your clients (or how they could impact on it themselves) and test your SEO theories whenever you get the chance.

There are so many reasons to be impressed with this campaign aside from the obvious.

Here are my top three…

Firstly: Brands have a relatively short window to go get a season range ready for a regular Fashion show, let alone planning 4d integration into a static building so it looks flawless.

Secondly: Fashion Shows are deemed over the top by many with crazy themes and unwearable clothing. However they are about creating buzz and pushing the boundaries this serves to re-enforce the notion that creativity still exists within the fashion house itself and is at its core driving the mass market brands. How fitting then that digital innovation takes pride of place at Ralph Lauren.

Thirdly: This is an interesting take on content aimed primarily at the digital/Social Media environment. Sure, it makes a great live show for the critics and a great PR story for the traditional media. But where it really comes to life is within the Social Media environment. Its never been easier to express to the masses your love for a brand or for something a brand is responsible for. It works… you are digesting my opinion right now and whether or not you agree with it, your awareness of the brand has risen. Content like this mobilises genuine digital evangelists and arguably in marketing terms that is priceless.

Wavemetrix, have released some stats around this campaign:

• Brand mentions
• Products featured in the video (What the video is selling)
• Social media content itself ie. people who arent so concerned with the evangelising about the brand but more the concept/video and its quality as an idea.

The chart below represents percentages of uplift in mentions and very much speaks for itself…

John Barton – Head of Planning & Social Media

Lovely piece of work from Perfect Fools/DDB Paris for Bouygues Telecom…

When Facebook becomes a book from Siavosh Zabeti on Vimeo.

Siavosh Zabeti writes…

“Bouygues Telecom asked us to come up with an idea to launch their facebook platform.
They wanted us to create something that would go beyond using your profile picture in a funny way, or pranking your friends with a small joke.
We decided to look at the way we use facebook and found that even though we use the social networking site everyday, we forget our favorite moments we share online.

So we created an app that could change that, and keep your facebook, in a book.”

John Barton – Head of Planning & Social Media

Facebook continue to be the innovation monsters of the moment with the announcement of Facebook Credits, that this week go on sale in Game and even Tesco supermarkets. We know that Social gaming shows no signs of slowing down and with over 50% of games (including Farmville) adopting Facebook Credits it would seem that Facebook are pioneering a virtual-to-physical currency offering in its truest sense. Users will be able to spend credits in social environments to obtain virtual tools and power-ups in the gaming environment.

For me, here are some of the more interesting takeaways:

Social to monetise Forresters ‘Young Teens’ classification:

Facebook have found a way to tap into the under-18 market effectively. This demographic are less likely to have access to credit or debit cards, yet according to Forrester, Young Teens will be the most active in the social space. Now school children can exchange their pocket money at the local Newsagent for Facebook Credits as opposed to Panini football stickers (or WWF when I was but a lad!)

Facebook Connect:

In theory there is nothing to stop Facebook expanding their offering past virtual currency to real tangible physical goods. Stores like Levis are hugely integrated with Connect already but still long for that real tangible benefit, but then again doesn’t every brand in the social space? Has Facebook Connect for instance, been one big plan to set up the most advanced virtual trading market the world has ever seen, under the guise of encouraging brands to be ‘more social’?

OK, OK… maybe that’s a little deep but it’s interesting to think about…

John Barton – Head of Planning & Social Media

We are very excited to announce that Steak won the sought after DADi award for ‘Best Digital Media Strategy’ for our work with Swiftcover.com and the ‘Summers’s Hottest Playlist’. Steak, also received a commendation for ‘Best Use of Organic Search’ for  Virgin Holidays.

The ‘Summer’s Hottest Playlist’ campaign harnessed the passion of Swiftcover’s music-loving audience and sought to engage with its fans through a fun online campaign.

Car insurance isn’t something that usually sparks much excitement but with Swiftcover we tapped into the music festival spirit with a Facebook app and interactive challenge to social media fans to devise the “Summer’s Hottest Playlist”. The campaign worked in collaboration with top Absolute Radio DJs and Spotify.  Facebook fans increased by 280% in a two-week period, and 22,000 people voted for the playlist.

We were also very pleased to receive recognition of our work with Virgin Holidays’ January Sale in SEO, where we beat our sales target by 168%!
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So it’s smiles all round.

John Barton, Head of Social Media and Lynsey Galashan, Senior Accout Executive, receiving the award for ‘Best Digital Strategy’ on Friday night.

Have you ever thought about just how much you post on Facebook? I’m a Facebook addict and have upset many people with ‘post overload’ particularly on a Wednesday night when I am cringing at The Apprentice – sharing my thoughts whilst rubbing my eyes…

I always look at old family pictures from times gone by when my parents were young and ‘courting’. I find it fascinating as every older album progresses and tells a story…

Imagine being 65 years old and literally being able to track your life day-by-day seeing relationships come and go, your thoughts vent and disappear, friendships form…

I find it truely intriguing… I must keep in mind to start a business that crawls your Facebook profile and builds a: Life book 40 or so years from now…

At Steak Social we are big advocates of community building. We are all about shifting the marketing relationship between brand and consumer, from a traditional monologue approach to a relationship which is collaborative, engaging and beneficial to both parties. In my opinion, this is the next natural step for digital marketing as channels such as Facebook become arguably the most valuable digital real estate in the savvy internet user’s daily life.

In addition to the obvious benefits of fostering a direct relationship with your consumer, brands within the Facebook environment also stand to gain from earned media or word of mouth. The value of earned media is pretty straight forward and is certainly something we can all relate to. Why? Because Word-of-Mouth, and the advocacy/recommendation of a trusted individual or body is older than advertising itself. In fact one of the core goals of any advertising campaign is to gain the advocacy of influencers within social circles ie. Your friends and associates.

Social media and Facebook in particular has made earned media more accessible than ever. When a user engages with a brand on Facebook, this interaction is posted to the newsfeed of users within that individual’s circle of friends. In many ways it’s like an indirect recommendation or advocacy building trust for that brand.

So we can all see the perceived benefits of earned media in that context, but what about real revenue? This has always been the sticking point for Social which few brands have managed to leverage well.

Facebook attempts to facilitate revenue generation within the Social space by working with mobile technology to generate not only footfall in the real world but real accountable sales. Voucher codes are nothing new and mobile voucher technology is certainly nothing new. However when combined with Facebook’s huge user base and their simple technology, the value of Word-of-Mouth or earned media has the opportunity to be truly accountable to revenue. I suspect this provides the best platform for the success of this strategy to date and I will be paying close attention to how rivals like Foursquare react and adapt to these developments. Particularly within the UK where their user base really needs to grow.

However it’s worth remembering that we should not use this technology to judge the true overall value of Word of Mouth. Lest we fall into the same trap as digital display where clients often negate the value of brand engagement and recall in favour of conversion and sales.

Everything you need to know about Facebook Check-In Deals:

• Deals: A new way to connect with customers: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100163028835713
• How-to create a deal : http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100163034713933
• Deals collateral guide for businesses: https://www.box.net/shared/static/i4i9aqk0yz.pdf
• Help center FAQs: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18846

Thanks to Alex Wright over at Facebook for the above resource.

John Barton – Head of Planning & Social Media