brand-e

We reported recently that UK tech brands simply ain’t that great at communicating via social media. That’s a generalization, of course, because some are pretty good at dealing with the medium.
LoveFilm, for one, succeeds in getting it right. “LoveFilm uses its Facebook page to engage directly with its audience and it frequently updates the page with interesting, fresh content,” says Wildfire PR in its Putting The ‘Social’ Into Social Media report. “It also stimulates debate and conversation by asking fans questions to trigger discussions, posting videos with exclusive content, and letting customers know about latest offers.”

Just over one in three US companies currently have a public-facing blog used for marketing, but that proportion that will rise to 43% by 2012, according to eMarketer estimates.
And there’s good reason for that growth. “Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, [...]

Says GHMC’s Julian Routledge*. In a world of increased personal interaction and involvement, there’s a complex network of conversation taking place around brands and the influence on purchasing decisions which brands need to understand if they are to gain a foothold in the modern marketplace.
For modern marketers to raise their game, and ultimately their sales, they need to tap into these conversations and target a different kind of customer – one who takes pride in influencing the purchase decisions of family, friends and colleagues, and in the case of bloggers, their wider social network.

By Simon Fuller. Facebook users engaged in ‘ceaseless activity’? Coca-Cola residing in an ‘abode of angels’? Just a few snippets from a rather novel book on branding from London-based graphic designer Daniela Meloni which takes modern day brands and drops them into the middle of Dante’s vision of Hell, in a work entitled The Branding Comedy.
So where Divine Comedy found Dante encountering the inhabitants of each stage of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, here God has been replaced by the all-powerful consumer, with brands littering each level of existence as they try to get closer to this omnipresent being.

While UK tech brands are clearly taking steps forward in using social networks, the vast majority aren’t actually being that social, according to the Putting The ‘Social’ Into Social Media from Wildfire PR.
In fact, while 90% of technology firms in the Wildfire study were able to boasts presences on two or more social networks – with Twitter the most popular – good old push marketing still prevails, as 60% of companies with a Facebook page use it purely as a distribution channel, 57% of companies with a Twitter account use it solely for one-way marketing activity, and only 25% of blogs receive comments on a regular basis.

Says Andy Milligan* As the world’s media went into overdrive, reporting Fabio Capello’s blunt assessment that David Beckham would never play another competitive game for England, it appears the story had already taken another turn.
Within minutes of his announcement, the embattled managerial team had seemingly apologised to the player privately, for the less than diplomatic announcement, while the latest press reports tell of Beckham’s desire to fight his way back into consideration.
This is part of the magic that makes the Beckham brand so strong. It always throws up another twist and an extra turn, and the very size of his celebrity creates reactions that are often impossible to predict.

Companies tend to talk at people – not with them – on Twitter, and are failing to capitalise on opportunities to truly connect with consumers via two-way conversations, says 360i in its Twitter & The Consumer Marketer Dynamic report.
Just 12% of all marketer tweets demonstrate active dialogue with consumers, and only 1% of consumer tweets which mention a brand are part of a conversation with that brand, demonstrating that most brands aren’t using Twitter to its full potential.

By Hugh Jordan. Influencer brands save money on marketing costs in the long-run, according to Steve McKinley, director at marcomms agency GHMC. “Every brand has an influence,” he says. “Apple, for example, has a huge influence. It need only call one press conference and the world listens. By increasing the influence a brand has, the cost to market that brand becomes cheaper.”