Pinterest users create a number of pin boards for categories such as interior design, food, fashion and as they discover things they like they can “Pin It” to one or more of their boards. This is nothing special in the social bookmarking field, but Pinterest’s heavy emphasis on imagery has seen it become popular amongst women, who are interested in fashion and other aspects of retail.

Since September Pinterest has seen its user base increase fourfold, resulting in 7.51 million new visitors in December and in a single week (Dec 10-17th) it received 11 million return visits. This obviously resulted in the amount of traffic Pinterest was referring to other sites increased substantially

Brands that were early to use the service, such as Nordstrom, have used Pinterest as an online catalogue where other users can re-pin their favourite clothes items and outfits to share with their friends, while always linking back to their online store. More apparel brands are odopting this strategy help users share their favourite clothes.

This is  a trend that is likely to come across the pond as more and more people become aware of Pinterest in the UK, but unfortunately you will have to wait for an invite. You can add yourself to the waiting list here.

Below is an infographic about Pinterest potentially becoming a social commerce game changer, made by Monetate.

Social interactions are hugely influential on travel customers when they are looking a sorting out a holiday/trip, with recommendations from friends having more weight than a piece of advertising. This can also be thought of as your customers influencing their friends and effectively becoming ambassadors to your brand.

For the travel industry, the local aspect of SoLoMo is obviously important due to customers wanting to know information about where they are going or wanting to discover information once they are at the physical location. 1 in 3 searches done from mobile phones in 2011 had local intent, meaning that people are looking for information from their immediate area.

Back in September we said the 26% of the western population had a smartphone and that the number of people owning them was increasing by 3% each month. New predictions suggest that percentage of people owning smartphones will go beyond 50% in 2012. Add the fact that the mobile phone is one of the few personal possession that travel customers take on their holidays, you now have an extremely strong reason to engage with your customers on mobile devices.

As we look into 2012 and beyond we can see that travel customers are accessing information and sharing their experiences in real time from their location aware smartphones and tablets.

SoLoMo Strategy

Mobile websites and applications need to be robust, cater for all sizes of smartphone screens and have clear navigation. It is also important to has cross channel consistency because it is likely that visitors to your website might of been on your desktop site or seen your social media presence and will expect to navigate around your mobile site in a similar fashion to the desktop and for it to have the same aesthetics.

For local, the most important action is to make sure that all the location information about your hotels, attractions or destinations are correct. Without correct local information any strategy you implement will be immediately ineffective. Once all the geo-location information is correct then, thanks to location aware devices, your mobile website or application can access the user’s location in order to provide then with the most relevant information for their area. This could take the form of showing the user where your nearest hotel is, information about the local area or public transport information.

With a robust mobile website that can provide location based information the next step would be to integrate social functionality to allow users to easily share the information they have found or use services like Facebook connect to create a more personal mobile experience. Social media integration can go further than just sharing experiences, it can help users to ask for recommendations from their friends through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, rate a product.

Although we’ve talked briefly about SoLoMo as a whole package, they can also easily exist separately and paired together in order to achieve your business objectives. If you would like to discuss SoLoMo in more depth and how it can work for your organisation then please get in touch.

As anyone within the Travel Industry will know there are seasonal peaks at January and then again in July. These are due to people first looking for early deals for their summer holiday and late deals on winter sun trips in January and then again in July/August with late summer and early winter deals. This pattern occurs in both the high street and online but research carried out by Hitwise has shown that online consumers are changing their habits and we are seeing that the peaks where people used to search for and booking holidays is, year on year, slowly being eroded to an even spread throughout the year.

By looking at online traffic from the Travel Industry for the past 3 year we can see how this change is happening.

The graph shows that the seasonal peaks in January and July/August have seen a decline in traffic, whereas the months running up to them have seen a year-on-year increase, with December experiencing the greatest amount of growth. This indicates that the Travel Industry is becoming less reliant on the seasonal peaks and if this trend continues, travel companies might have to adapt their digital strategy to accommodate this change.

This will involve shifting focus to capturing more customers outside of the traditional peaks, in particular during the months December, May and June where we can see the largest increases.

If you would like to discuss this trend and how it should change your digital strategy then please get in touch.

Essential Skills

• Thorough understanding & experience of Java J2EE used for developing web applications, at a senior level.
• Java Script / jQuery
• Experience of working with relational databases from major vendors
• HTML/CSS

Desirable Skills

• MS SQL Server
• IBM DB2
• Experience of PHP
• Experience of CMS platforms such as Domino, Sitecore, UMBRACO
• Experience of .NET MVC
• Experience of IBM Web Sphere

Location: Stockport

Duration: Permanent

Probation: 6 months

Salary: Negotiable

Benefits: Annual team bonus scheme and Free lunch on a Thursday

NO AGENCIES

Please send your CV to KMP Digitata Recruitment or ring 0161 4291497 for more information

Here we look at what’s been done, what we suspect might happen and what it all means for brands.

Update to OpenGraph vocabulary

A update to the OpenGraph system means that the current “Like” system could be ready for a major change. The current system of liking a page or a product is a good one keeping up to date about what you’re interested in and then sharing with peer but it didn’t always fit with certain products. The latest update will bring new vocabulary that will allow people to interact with content more creatively by not being restricted to just “Like”. In the future brands will be able to define the verb and the noun before their product or brand, making it possible to create activity updates such as:

• KMP Digitata “read” a “Book”
• KMP Digitata “Watched” a “Movie”
• KMP Digitata “Designed” a “Website”

So for a company that is about to launch a product they can let people announce that they “want” it, for example “KMP Digitata wants an iPhone5″,  and then once the product is launched the Facebook user can update their activity to “has” or “owns”. With the information this feature would provide brands can create focused updates targeted towards those who want and those who have the product. To those who “want” the product, updates can be targeted towards them containing information to entice them to purchase or special offers, whereas people who “own” wouldn’t be shown those updates and instead could be shown updates about the latest developments or fun things being done with the product.

Updated News Feed Structure

The news feed on users home screen now consists of multiple feeds. For a brands their updates still appear in the main feed but those who rely on the appearance of friends “Liking” a page in order to achieve more fans will be disappointed to hear that “Likes” no longer appear in the feed and instead appears in the Friends Activity ticker in the top right mean that the updates are buried deeper and harder to find. Although it means “Like” update will be a lot less visible we are believers that if you rely on the Like feature to attract more fans then your strategy is flawed and instead you should be actively engaging your fans to get them talking and truly sharing your news.

Although activity updates now appear in the top right of the home screen Facebook now recognises when multiple people are doing the same thing and promotes that activity to the top of the news feed. An example of this would be if a number of friends were listening to the same album or mentioning a movie, then it will now feature at the top of the news feed.

Focus on Engagement

The change to how Facebook promotes popular activities is a shift from trying to get more people on Facebook to trying to get people engaging with each other and the brands they are interested in. No longer will the focus be on how many people “Like” your page but instead it will be about how engaged your fans are with you. If you have 100,000 fans but only 1% of them actively comment or share your news then you will be less likely to be promoted in the news feeds then another brand that might only have 20,000 fans but 80% of which engage with them regularly.

Potential of Timeline

Timeline is designed to create an individual’s life story through their Facebook profile, where they are able to identify key points in their life, for an example of what Timeline is then watch the video below;

There was no official word on how Timeline will fit into Brand pages just yet, but if the design is applied to pages then brands will have the opportunity to express themselves creatively and create a page that features updates as usual but also build an engaging story to how the brand got to where they are now. A good example of how it could be used is by Coca-Cola who could set their brand designs over the past 125 years as a key point and so their Timeline would feature large images of each new design.

Increased Advertising Space

Facebook has played around with its measurement metrics to provide marketers with a larger premium ad format that although it’s not too noticeable to the end user it does provide more space for adverts. With this extra space Facebook will apply a similar system as the Sponsored Stories feature, so that adverts will display friends who have engaged with the brand presented. This will add validity to your Facebook adverts because people will see that their friends have also chosen to click on the advert or engage with the brand another way.

The demise of the Discussions Tab

Facebook alerted Page owners about the removal of the discussions tabs with a message saying “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall” despite AppData showing that there are 22 million monthly discussion users.
The problem with removing the Discussions Tab to focus on the wall is that the wall doesn’t provide the functionality to group comments around a single topic or archive them. Facebook did comment about the issues though, saying “We’ve removed these tabs for now as we work on tools to help you moderate and filter content. Our goal is to help you can manage everything from one powerful place. Stay tuned”. Whether this means that discussions could return in another form or if the wall will receive new functionality we can’t be sure just yet but we are keeping a close eye on it.

What are your thoughts on these latest updates for brands? Leave us a comment below or tweets us at @KMPDigitata.

It is important to stay ahead of the curve to get the most out of your Facebook strategy. If you would like to discuss anything above or your digital strategy on a whole then please get in touch.

F-Commerce can be broken into three categories:

• On-Site F-Commerce – This consists of adding Facebook functionality to your existing E-Commerce website that allows your customers to rate your products then share with their peers.
• In-Store – You can provide Facebook enhanced retail by integrating systems such as Facebook deals with check-ins.
• Facebook Stores – More and more brands are now creating stores on their Facebook brand pages. We will focus on these for the rest of this article.

It is argued that Facebook has become the best place to go to find out what friends and peers recommend, so it makes sense for brands to provide people with the ability to view and purchase products from within Facebook itself. Here are the 5 key reasons why it is the correct time to get involved with F-Commerce;

1. With over 600 million users, Facebook is the biggest shopping centre in the world, all that it is lacking are the stores. The creation of a storefront on your brand’s Facebook page (or a new page entirely, eg Coca-Cola Store) is a low barrier of entry.
2. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t apply in the digital world. For this reason it is important to be where the majority of your customers are, and that is most likely Facebook. 77% of adults in the UK are now actively on Facebook, with 37.4 million live accounts. “Fish where the fish are” should be your new mantra.
3. As social media continues to expand an overwhelming number of people are now exposed more to brands through their news feeds as opposed to more traditional methods. It is best practise to provide potential customers with the most direct link to a product from advertising, this can be achieved easily with a Facebook store.
4. E-Commerce is dominated by the likes of Amazon but it is unfeasible to the likes of them to open their own Facebook store due to the size of their product range. For this reason F-Commerce is more suited for targeted products based on what your fans like, making the Facebook shopping experience unique for each individual where it’s like going to a shopping centre full of only shops they’re interested in.
5. Facebook credits are Facebook’s own digital currency that can be bought as gifts as well as purchased with debit/credit cards and along with Facebook you would be able to create a more socially engaging retail experience. Facebook credits are used to purchase virtual products and content, for example extra in-game content for games like FarmVille.

There are some great examples of how brands are using F-Commerce generate new revenue streams. Below are two examples of Facebook stores that are built differently but both provide Facebook users with easy access to merchandise:

Dexter Facebook Store

The TV show Dexter has a range of merchandise on their Facebook page. The store is built upon an application with its own shopping basket and checkout/payment system. Fans of the Dexter page receive updates and announcements of exclusive offers only available to their Facebook fans, all of which drive traffic to their store and increase sharing.

Old Spice Facebook Store

Another example of a Facebook store, but designed a different way is on the Old Spice Facebook page which displays their merchandise but instead links through to each product listing on their own website.

Media Streaming on Facebook pages

The 3rd type of Facebook store or F-Commerce system available is one that uses Facebook Credits and does not require 3rd party applications or links to an external site. An example of how this is being used is a streaming service done by Warner Bros where Facebook credits can be used to watch Batman: The Dark Knight directly from their Facebook page. As Facebook Credits become more popular this option will become more widely used due to its ease of implementation, but it will be at a cost with Facebook taking 30% of transactions.

As Managers and Directors are demanding to see ROI from Facebook activity could driving traffic to a Facebook commerce application be the answer? Although it is still in its infancy with companies experimenting with how best to use F-Commerce, the most successful social media marketing strategies and initiatives belong to those who get into developments early and get a head start on their competition.

When it comes to looking into F-Commerce there are plenty of options as to how to approach it and it is important to choose the method that is best suited for both you and your customers. To discuss your options for utilising F-Commerce or your digital strategy as a whole then please get in touch.

Exonero approached us with two clear objectives. The first was to streamline the sign up process and therefore increase the number of sign-ups they achieve. The second was to improve the layout of the information on the website.

In order to complete the first objective we needed to understand what Basecamp users were looking for in a time reporting tool and build the sign up process around these needs. The main feature users are looking for is the pricing of the different plans bcToolkit offer, so it was important for us to design a pricing page which was simple and presented the 3 different plans in a clear way.

A common enquiry bcToolkit received was from Basecamp users requesting information on how they find out which Basecamp plan they were on in order to know which bcToolkit option was best for them. This was the reason for us to develop a tool which uses the Basecamp API to identify which plan the user has and present the best suited bcToolkit package for them.

Exonero realised that the previous bcToolkit website was content heavy and so required us the design the website in a way that the more important information would be promoted while the remainder of the content was still presented clearly. Our solution was to build the page templates around a top feature area where high impact statements or product features could be placed in order to attract attention or promote key points.

The new bcToolkit website is just the latest project of our on going partnership with Exonero. We will be continuing our work with them to further develop their products, website’s and digital strategy.

If you are looking to improve your sign up success or in need of a fresh new website then please feel free to get in touch to discuss your digital strategy.

The potential of QR codes is huge, with their ability to blend together online and offline marketing but so many times I’ve got the feeling that during a marketing meeting someone piped up with the comment “QR codes are cool, maybe we could use them for something”, then they are shoehorned into a campaign where they don’t naturally fit. I believe this poor shoehorning method could be part of the reason for many people disliking QR codes.

The major issue behind QR codes is not their functionality, instead it’s the experience they provide after the user has scan the code and that is purely down the marketers. They are meant to provide an extra content that is otherwise unavailable in the format where the QR code is promoted.

The worst case I’ve ever seen of using QR codes in the image to the right, which has become quite a famous QR failure, where the QR code is used to provide the user with a code that they then have to write down and post to a physical address.

Other issues facing QR codes is that their designs are not the most attractive and that many Smartphone users are still unaware of what they are and what they need to do, meaning many QR campaigns still require instructions.

If you’re interested in doing some marketing with QR codes here is a brief best practise guide;

QR Code best practise guide

• Keep the design simple – Although QR codes are unattractive applying colour and other designs to them can reduce the number of scanners that can read it. You want to keep it as open and available to as many people as possible.
• Make it mobile – People scan QR codes from their mobiles, so if you’re linking to a website make sure the website is mobile optimised.
• Provide Value – You want people to engage and scan your code so provide incentives such as special offers or exclusive experiences, such as trailers/videos.
• Make it easy – Be aware of where your QR code is placed. Make it easy for the user to spot and to scan.

We would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on QR codes, so please leave a comment below or tweets us @KMPDigitata

Control

The main argument for creating your own community is the increased control you will enjoy over the environment. Relying on third party tools that are constantly updating elements of their service can be a tricky business. Facebook is notorious for moving the goalposts without providing a great deal of notice. Just ask those brands who spent considerable time and money in developing Facebook apps when they were first launched only for Facebook to gradually phase out the prominence of these apps both in terms of profile page real estate and the ability to get into the newsfeed. Then there are all the various tweaks, adjustments and relaunches of the developer platforms, which usually happen as we are just about to launch a client Facebook project (paranoid, moi?). Most recently Facebook changed the width of the tabs used to deliver custom content and functionality. If you’re lucky, you can still see the odd brand page that has fallen foul of this change and has a chunk taken out of the right hand side of the tab content.

With your own branded social community you can work without the shackles and build whatever functionality you like. Here are a few key areas that this can be advantageous over, for example, a facebook page.

Moderation

Although it is possible to remove comments from a Facebook page wall, moderation certainly isn’t made easy. Our pals over at Tempero understand this only too well as they manage moderation for large brands on a daily basis.

Imagine that each time you publish a wall comment, within one hour, 600 people post a response and 10 to 15% of those are inappropriate, offensive, spam or downright rude.  Then imagine people are doing the same on your discussion area, your photos, videos — or any other area you’ve allowed them to interact. Clearing the latest content is your best plan of attack, but what happens when an older posts picks up attention for some reason?  You then have the issue of having to hunt around your now frenetic Facebook page for new posts, any one of which could be a reputation or legal nightmare waiting to happen.

There are many tools that aid community moderation by providing functionality such as moderation tools, swearing and spam filters, the option of pre/post/reactive moderation… none of which is possible in facebook.

*Update*

Facebook now provides a simple spam filter on company pages. The filter also picks up on certain swear words although this seems to be only American meaning English slang does not get flagged.

Content Promotion

Who decides which of the content added to your Facebook page gets priority? Certainly not the page owner. Facebook cares not a jot if you would rather push images or video, there is no concept of content tagging or “sticky” posts.

Messages

When on your facebook page, what other messages are your users seeing? You don’t know and never will. It’s quite possible that a competitor is advertising to your community via Facebook ads. On your own platform, you control the real estate giving you more opportunity to offer related services or promote the messages you want to promote.

User Journeys

Facebook and Twitter user journeys are designed around the news feed. Most page visits are prompted by the owner of the page publishing content then that content being shared or commented on by followers and their friends. With a limitation on design there is also a limitation on how well you can guide the user through a journey. There might be a link that leads the user offsite and into a different journey but then you’re taking them away from the community.

Useable Content

Content such as photos and videos uploaded to a Facebook page belongs to the users. As the owner of that page you are no more able to use that content than if you were to have found it on another site – unless you expressly ask the user who uploaded it of course. In your own environment it is possible to get users to agree that you can use uploaded content in a marketing capacity as part of your terms an conditions. You need to be transparent about this and be sensitive to the wishes of your community but if you are running a community with a heavy emphasis on photos, this can be a rich source of images for you.

Containment

One topic that constantly rears its head in regards to social media is metrics. How do you quantify success and track your return on investment and engagement? Most third party tools will have some form of analytics but if everything is in one place it’s much easier to keep track of what’s going on, define your performance indicators and set your targets. All this makes it easier to define and calculate your ROI.

Some considerations

The “build it and they will come” theory does not apply to social media. Building your own community is not easy and there are some things you should consider when doing so.

Freedom of Voice

Don’t stifle your users. If they can’t say it on your official environment, they will go elsewhere to do so. If you have moderation, be clear what the rules are. Don’t delete or ignore posts that you see as negative.

Your business goals

Make sure you’re undertaking this activity for the right reasons. You should only go to the trouble of creating a community if you are going to benefit from it. Does the strategy line up with your overall business goals? It shouldn’t need to be said but you’d be surprised how many brands want to do “something cool and social” for the sake of the zeitgeist without thinking things though.

Ownership and privacy issues

Who owns the content, you or your users? It’s understandable you want to use the content uploaded to your site but be sensitive to your users’ wishes. Are users aware of your T&Cs? Are you aware of their wishes?

Make things easy

Integrate with the APIs of established networks as much as possible. Don’t make your users upload content twice. Allow two way publication of photos, video to existing social tools. If you force users to choose whether to place their efforts in creating and publishing content on your site or on their existing social networks, guess which they will choose (hint: not yours).

Use open authentication to allow users to sign up with existing profiles, no one likes remembering umpteen different usernames and passwords. Likewise, if they create a profile using their Facebook or twitter accounts, pull in profile information from their existing profiles.

A case in point – Trek America Live

KMP Digitata created Trek America Live for TrekAmerica, part of the TUI Travel group. The brief was to provide a platform for past, present and future trekkers to discuss their trips, allow them to make contact with travellers before embarking on their trips and let them share blogs, pictures and videos with friends and family as they travelled. The full case study is available and the community is off to a great start. TrekAmerica are delighted with the platform – especially with the flexibility of content display that allows them to group content around destinations.

Not wanting to build an isolated site, we allow users to publish photos they upload to Trek America live to Facebook and also pull in photos they already have in Facebook. More integration with sites such as Flickr is in the pipeline and TrekAmerica Live will continue to be developed to match the needs of both the community and the brand.

Read more about KMP Digitata and TrekAmerica Live

Download the case study

Smartphone users tend to be permanently connected to each other and the web (excluding some network black holes around the country) mean we are communicating with one another and accessing information like never before. The three most popular activities on Smartphones doesn’t actually include making and receiving phone calls, instead they are (in order of popularity, from ComScore):

1. Sending text messages
2. Using the web browser
3. Using downloaded applications

ComScore states that Google holds dominance over the mobile operating system (OS) market, with their Android OS taking a 41.8% share. Apple is in second position with 25.5% of the Smartphone market. Both of these operating systems are seeing continued growth in the industry, whereas the likes of RIM (Blackberry), Microsoft and Symbian (Nokia) are all losing ground to the big two. Nokia and Microsoft are hoping to strengthen/increase their marketing shares from 1.9% and 5.7% respectively, by combining efforts but it will take a huge effort to make a dent in Google and Apple’s dominance.

These stats show that companies should look into whether there are mobile opportunities for them and more importantly how to approach it. Downloadable, native applications are a popular method of providing users with mobile experiences but the development of such applications tends to focus on a single platform/OS meaning many users might be neglected. However, once an app is installed a brand will be seen regularly on the users home screen. Native applications are particularly useful when access to devices such as the devices camera or microphone are required.

The alternative to native applications are web apps and/or a mobile optimised website that work will a variety of mobile browsers. Mobile websites are, more often than not, a scaled down version of the desktop site that are more focused on key tasks. Because of this it can make sense to design a mobile website before a new desktop version safe in the knowledge that the small screen will focus the content and design around the brands key objectives and user journeys.

Mobile strategy

Statistics are great and we can learn a lot from them but what does that mean for you and your business? Well, we’ve been working closely with a number of our clients to develop their mobile strategies and establish how they can best utilise this ever increasing channel. As with most strategic planning it is important to gain insight from your analytics to gauge which mobile approach is best suited to how customers are engaging with you digitally.

In the case of Manchester Airport we were able to identify that a large number of people accessing the website were doing so from iPhones and subsequently, that they were predominantly looking for flight information and directions to the airport. This analysis meant that a native iPhone application was the ideal starting point in Manchester Airport’s mobile strategy.

Conversly, with Renold the analytics showed there was an even spread across the mobile browsers and devices being used to view the Renold website, meaning a mobile optimised website was the better option.

What’s your mobile strategy? If you’d like us to help, don’t be afraid to drop us a line to discuss it in depth.