In the past three months or so since the Facebook explosion, we have been active in trying to align ourselves to accommodate the changes in the Internet landscape this year.
I thought it would be a good idea to report here what we have done at the agency during this time which may fall into the category of social network marketing and perhaps over the next few months see how these projects are working out. The first thing we did back in May was to set up our Facebook profiles. Many of the younger staff (recent college graduates) already had a presence on Facebook and they were keen to show us but were curious as to why we were interested!
After we had established our personal profiles on Facebook we set up a “new media” interest group for Manchester (Interactive & Digital Marketing), populated it with blog comment. Almost immediately we started to get people joining. Members were freelancers and small new media groups promoting themselves, people pointing at web sites and general social chat. We placed 2 recruitment ads for the agency in the group and within 3 weeks we had hired a new member of staff. I am now actively trying to build my business network on Facebook and we’ll see over the next few months what successes that brings.
KMP has been working with Chester Zoo, building a brand new site using the Sitecore CMS. Since one the main activities of zoo visitors is taking photographs, so we proposed that we set up a user group which
would allow visitors to upload photos on the site and comment on their photos. We integrated the website with the Flickr API so that the group was held on the Flickr server but the upload was moderated through the Sitecore CMS.
Every photo was also tagged with the watermark “ChesterZoo.org” which meant that when the photos were viewed via the Flickr site links are promoted back to the Chester Zoo site. The site
is expected to go live in September.
One of our technology partners Market Sentinel, can monitor all blogs and mentions on the Internet against keywords or brand attributes. We have recently signed up the Co-op Bank and are currently pursuing a number of other financial institutions who see the monitoring of unbridled user generated content as an important part of their marketing strategy. We feel that monitoring and corporate blogging could be a major part of our offering in the second half of this year.
Finally we have been building Facebook widgets. The first is a voting system designed to work with FMCG products. This would appear in a “what’s hot and what’s not” window on a Facebook profile. When users load the application they will be encouraged to vote on a selection of products. We are expecting to place this application with a major brand later this month. We also have been working on another similar widget which is similar to a digital “pin board” which will allow users to place free text comments on any item which is placed on the board. e.g., websites, recordings, films, tv programmes etc.
So in addition to the regular digital marketing projects the agency is involved in we are definitely seeing a growth in the social media activity. Watch this blog to see how this trend develops!
