Pinterest
Unless you have been living under a rock, you should already know about this platform, we have posted about it on Facebook enough times! As one of our attendees described it at the end of our tutorial, it is basically an online mood board. A mood board that you can share with your friends and followers and use for daily inspiration. Once you sign up and have begun to make friends, you are given a ‘newsfeed’ of photos from the people that you follow and you are encouraged to pin (like) posts or repin them to your boards if you really love them! You can create as many boards as you like, about anything that you like! Some of my boards include fashion, food (mainly cakes) home décor and photography.

Brands have been quick to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon, with companies such as Whole Foods, Gap, Sony and Glasses Direct all pinning away. Rather than be a frivolous exercise, it is actually helping to build referrals to their main websites and blogs, ensuring their brand message is not lost.

Tumblr
Not as new as Pinterest, it has been going since 2007; it is still a platform to respect with over 13 million unique users a month! Primarily based on sharing content easily and quickly, it is a much easier-to-navigate blogging platform than its rivals Blogger and Wordpress. It allows you to upload images, text, videos and links as quick as a flash without having to know any html or code. Similar to Pinterest, you are encouraged to like and reblog posts, building engagement with other users and gaining a following of your own.

There have been brands on Tumblr for quite a while now, most notably fashion and lifestyle brands as they tend to have content that fits with the audience. Brands of note on Tumble are Target, who style their page like a magazine, and Coca Cola who post great original content as well as reblogging other relevant imagery. Whilst not necessarily helping with sales just yet, engaging with fans on platforms such as Tumblr does help to build affinity.

So there we go, a recap of what the digital team in Citizen Brando likes to teach people about in our ‘Lunch & Learns’. If you need more information or would like us to help set up one of your own presences on these platforms, please do let us know.

Sarah Austin
Digital Campaign Manager, Citizen Brando

It is true that some users actively seek customer service on Facebook, which in most cases largely appeals to certain groups of people since it’s more convenient than going through many loops on official websites, filling in multiple forms, answering a lot of questions and ticking a lot of tick-boxes. It’s instant and it’s “loud”, since a brand brave enough to allow commenting on their public wall exposes herself often to wild accusations, all while it satisfies a disgruntled customer’s urge to be heard. But this seems only to be a by-product. It is safe to assume that the majority of users mainly want to be entertained. And, of course, get stuff for free. And quite honestly, who wouldn’t?

A nice little project, we recently had the pleasure to work on for one of our clients, required a fun & engaging way to increase the number of page fans quick, but in an exciting and non-intrusive manner.

So we needed three ingredients: entertainment, rewards and simplicity.

The outcome of this process was “Spin to Win”, a fruit machine-style app that allowed every user to spin the wheels three times per day at a simple click of a button, enabling them to win instant spot prizes ranging from prepaid SIM cards at the lower end, all the way up to the latest & greatest smartphones. The user could only play this simple game by previously liking the page; and our attractive prizes very much encouraged them to do so. The app also encouraged users to return and play again by resetting the three credits every next day throughout the entire duration of the campaign. But we had one additional nifty feature up our sleeves: If a user shared the game with their friends on Facebook, we’d credit them an additional three spins. This last feature hugely helped to virally spread the game; story click-through rates went through the roof.

Today, we can proudly look back at a low-cost app, that had all the right ingredients, was conceived at the right time and on the right platform. It not only increased our client’s page fans by 10,000 and had many happy winners, but also has significantly raised brand-awareness through more than a quarter of a million story impressions within only a short period of time of just over two weeks.

This works on Facebook.

I’m sure we can help you too, so please call us, speak to us through email, message us on Twitter or say hello on our Facebook page. We do award-winning activities on Twitter too!

Uemit Oezcan
Digital Creative Director, Citizen Brando

Armed with my love for cakes, Christmas jumpers and thousands of blogging tips, I overcame my fears and created a blog about knitting, baking and general attempts at domestication.

I’ve managed to whittle down the thousands of blogging tips I found when I set up my blog, to give you my ‘Five First Steps’ for creating a successful blog:

1. Don’t Panic Its Organic
One of the simplest ways to drive organic traffic to your blog is to have a good domain name. The best domain names are those that tell a visitor what the website is likely to be about. This will also help your SEO ranking.

2. We all judge a book by its cover…so it had better look good
I must see hundreds of different blogs each week and I find the biggest issue is that many bloggers don’t put enough thought in to how their blog looks and what that says about their content.  Many blogs can look quite uniform and uninspiring; don’t let this happen to you! Find a clean, sleek template and make it your own.

3. This isn’t War & Peace…make it snappy
Most people don’t want to read an essay, they want know what you’re talking about, the point you’re making and they want it in a small digestible chunk.

4. Do it often
Be consistent! If your readers can’t rely on you to post regularly they’ll get bored and stop visiting. The more often you post the better value Google will place on your blog in its search rankings.

5. Share it with the world
In order to spread the word about your blog you need to make sure people know about it! Share the link on your other social media platforms i.e. Twitter, Facebook and even Google+!

So this is what the world of social media analysts, experts and bloggers advise for those folks with apprehensions about blogging. Hope it helps you take the plunge!

Here are some examples of excellent blogs:

Bedroom Factory Knits

Maison Cupcake

Katie Cakes

Layla Hatia
Junior Digital Analyst, Citizen Brando

Despite being almost ubiquitous with PR and indeed integrated comms campaigns, there is often confusion as to exactly what hashtags are and how they should be used. Although the hashtag was born in August 2007, invented by an open source developer called Chris Messina, it wasn’t until three months later that the hashtag became an eminent trend. When wildfires took hold of San Diego prompted residents to use the hashtag #sandiegofire to quickly share information. Thus the hashtag cemented itself as a widely accepted way of posting information on Twitter. However, even as late as 2011, 10% of people don’t know what a hashtag is…

A hashtag can take two basic forms – an advertising method through using a ‘Promoted’ hashtag, or an organic topic of conversation which sparks widespread interest. Brands will often pay Twitter to have their hashtag sit at the top of trending topics either worldwide or at a national level, in order to gain visibility on the microblogging site. Snickers, for example, have paid for #Hungry to appear this week as they run a competition to give away a crate of chocolate. This approach, whilst securing visibility can sometimes backfire, causing a hashtag to trend for days for all the wrong reasons. McDonalds is in the news this week after promoting #McDStories. The idea was to encourage people to tweet positive experiences at McDonalds; however it was hijacked and descended into a tirade of abuse from disgruntled customers and animal rights groups, making it something of a #McFail.

A safer approach which avoids cynicism from consumers is to base a hashtag on engaging activity. If your hashtag is centred on interesting content, consumers will want to share it naturally and you’ll quickly find yourself trending. When we worked with Three to ensure that they trended in the UK, we streamed an interactive ‘Pairs’ game on Twitter, encouraging people to enter using the hashtag #ThreePairs. This resulted in 63 entries per minute over the course of activity and the hashtag trended number two on a global scale.

Another key consideration is to integrate a hashtag within your campaign activity as much as possible. Rather than be an after-thought, the hashtag should be as prevelant as possible – appearing in above-the-line ads, promotional material etc. It also makes it a lot easier to monitor coverage and the reach of your hashtag if it has been agreed in advance as it will make it easier to construct Boolean search terms and fully utilise your social media monitoring tools.

Although hashtags are a relatively new phenomena in the world of PR, the key behind their success is a tried and tested method. Create great content and people will talk about it.

Joe Cronin,
Social Media Analyst, Citizen Brando

Tumblr’s a relatively new microblogging platform with a young audience (50% are under 25), born in 2007 it has grown exceptionally fast. Brands have been using it for a while but it was Coca Cola’s recent appearance on the platform that got news sites buzzing and no doubt social media teams around the world questioning how they could use it for their clients.

I used to blog on Blogger. I say blog but I’m quite lazy and would write a proper post maybe once every few months (always about myself – after all, social media users love nothing more than to talk about themselves right?) and the rest of the time I’d scroll through my Google Reader, save down images that I liked and then post them up with little fanfare. For a site owned by Google it made blogging very un-Google like. Yes I was using Reader to get most of my content and yes people were flocking to my page having been sent there from Google Search but it was fiddly, drawn out and interaction was dire. I was lucky to get a comment or two a month. I had one big issue with it though, it looked dated and amateurish no matter what I did to it and even now I think it has a ‘my first blog’ feel about it. 

Then I noticed a lot of the pictures I was posting were originating from Tumblr, a site I’d never really paid much attention to. I wanted to comment on these posts but couldn’t without an account. I also noticed that a lot of Tumblrs had a really great look and feel to them (dare I say a touch of the old school Myspace about them) where people had taken the time to add a touch of themselves to their pages. I get involved with a lot of fandoms, you name it and I like it, and they all seemed to be on this one platform, engaging with each other and creating great screengrabs and gifs. I decided to make the switch, importing as many of my Blogger posts to Tumblr as I could.

I’ve never looked back, I love it. I’ve noticed that people are spending longer on my Tumblr than they were on my Blogger and my bounce rate has dropped. However, I only receive a third of the unique visitors I used to which I believe to be a consequence of Google not optimising the content the same as it would for Blogger. But my repeat traffic is good and I know my content is being engaged with much more.

As with any social media there are things that could be improved, and so I’ve listed things you should bear in mind if considering a switch to Tumblr, the good and the bad:

The Good:

1. 1. It’s easily to customise, either by using and existing theme or custom CSS.
2. 2. The best thing about Tumblr is that it’s a combination of all the best bits from other social platforms and you can link it to other platforms easily so that content can be shared.

• Twitter
• Tumblr is best used for short, snappy updates and it presents content in a chronological stream.
• Tumblr has tracked tags, allowing you to track your favourite topics easily, similar to Twitter Lists although concerning content rather than users.
• Facebook
• Posts can be liked or reblogged very much like Facebook’s Like and Share functionality.
• A variety of content can be shared, images, text, audio, video. Tumblr has the added bonus of allowing gifs which makes the whole platform feel more dynamic.
• Instagram
• Tumblr is mostly used for sharing images

The Bad:

1. 1. If you like to write long wordy blog posts then Tumblr might not be right for you. It’s a microblogging site and people tend to share images and short updates rather than indepth posts. The recent introduction of FanMail (essentially a fancy looking text message) shows that Tumblr wants to stay looking pretty rather than sounding intelligent.
2. 2. It’s not as social as you first think. Yes it’s easy to like and share content but commenting is hard unless replies are enabled and even then the original poster can’t comment back. There are ways around this but Tumblr don’t make it easy.
3. 3. Unlike Google Reader you can’t see how many unviewed blog posts you have and if you have to shut down midway through your stream there’s no way to find your spot again meaning it’s easy to miss stuff, especially if you follow a lot of people who post a lot. It’s one of the most annoying things about Tumblr.

I’d be interested to see what others think about Tumblr and other blogging platforms, and also how your clients have reacted to Tumblr’s new found popularity. Is it the new Twitter or just a jazzed up Wordpress?

Sarah Elkins
Social Media Analyst, Citizen Brando

However it might not be so great for those blasting that guilty pleasure or have left Spotify wide open to the hands of work colleagues. Or worse – your parent’s taste in Phil Collins.

I experienced something similar to this myself when listening to one of the radio channels (see above slideshow). No big deal for me or for most, right? But I imagine that it could have an effect on younger audiences who forget to turn on ‘private listening’ and whose peers may ridicule/bully them for tracks posted to Facebook.

So has the integration led to more music being listened to and shared? Well, the latest figures give good indication that it has. According to the Facebook blog users have shared their listening activity more than 1.5 billion times using Facebook-integrated apps, with Spotify being the biggest beneficiary, rapidly growing from 1.2 million to 5.4 million daily active users* since their f8 event. Today alone there has been an increase of 2.1 million active users* using the Facebook API to share the music they listen to on Spotify.

The Future
Back in December Spotify announced that third party apps are on the way. They are currently only available to users who have downloaded the beta preview but are shaping up well with a number of major partners on board. To name a few there are apps which let you find out who is on tour (Songkick), browse publication recommendations (Guardian), collaborate with other users on playlists (SoundDrop) and more.

Developers seem to be on board to make this a success – with one in four apps created at London’s Music Hack Day taking advantage of Spotify’s new functionality.

I don’t think physically owning music will totally die out, not for a long time. But with a further shift to subscription or ad based models to keep artists and record companies afloat, it’s going to be interesting year for music.

What are your thoughts? Do you think it’s inevitable that digital music replaces the CD?

Yasir Alani
Account Manager, Citizen Brando

*Figures as of 6th January 2012

Buffer
This helpful service is available in app format and as a Google Chrome plugin. It calculates the best time to post Twitter updates based on your previous levels of engagement and its own insight. Rather than bombard your followers with updates each time you are on Twitter, simply click the Buffer icon within your browser and it will be queued up, ready to be tweeted when Buffer sees fit. You also adjust the settings to pick custom times if you’d rather tweets go out at specific points in the day.

TweetStats
This free tool is an invaluable way of grabbing a quick overview of the way you tweet. Simply drop in your chosen Twitter name and it will conjure up graphs showing who you reply to most, who retweets you and what interface you usually use to access Twitter. It also lets you know how often you tweet, at what time and what days you use Twitter most. Not only that, but it will generate wordclouds showing your most used keywords and hashtags.

Rowfeeder
If you want to track a hashtags usage, you could do far worse than register it with RowFeeder. The free service only lets you track one term and will track a maximum of 500 uses a month but you can earn an extra 250 uses if you share the service with a friend. If you’re after more heavy duty monitoring, the paid for plans start at $35 a month and give you access to 5,000 uses a month of up to three hashtags. Once you’ve set up RowFeeder (be careful to do this before your campaign begins) it will let you download all manner of customised reports showing you who has tweeted your hashtag, whether they were tweets, replies or retweets and the most used keywords used in conjunction with your hashtag. Definitely worth a go.

Kred
Although Klout is the most prolific method of monitoring influence online, it has its fair share of naysayers. Its way of calculating its scores and the regular fluctuations in its analysis of users lends some to believe placing emphasis on your changing Klout score is counter intuitive – it often decides you’re influential in topics that you’ve no interest in whatsoever. Kred, from the guys behind PeopleBrowsr, is more open in its approach. Currently in beta, Kred marks your influence level out of 1,000 and clearly displays what activity you’ve done to earn your Kred. You can read all about their methodology over on the Kred Blog. It’s an interesting monitoring tool that we’ll be keeping an eye on in 2012.

How It ‘ll work
Between 7pm - 8pm on Monday 19th December @CitizenBrando will tweet pre-selected interview questions, using the hashtag #BecomeaCitizen. The moderator will be the Director of Digital Innovation at Citizen Brando, Jono Marcus. Every ten minutes, a question will be tweeted and participants should answer in a tweet using the #BecomeaCitizen. 

We cannot guarantee a job, or further interviews after the Twitter session, but we will read over a transcript of the conversation afterwards and DM any participant we would like to talk further with.

See you there!

Consumer electronics manufacturers, game console firms, tech companies and pay-TV operators are all competing to connect home TV sets to the Internet. The potential profits have attracted companies which are not traditionally associated with living room TV. Google TV, Yahoo Connected TV, Apple TV and even Microsoft are now all hotly competing for TV viewers in the era of connected TV.

Xbox Live and PS3 game consoles, for example, are capable of delivering video and some interactivity but Microsoft and Sony want to expand the consoles’ role from dedicated gaming devices to entertainment centres.

How will connected TV’s change things?

Large numbers of TV viewers are already simultaneously online whilst watching TV, be it on their mobile phones or laptops. Given the popularity of social networks, this two-screen activity means people are talking about TV shows while they are watching them. Access to apps on the TV itself, will allow viewers to discuss shows and influence each other’s viewing even more readily than via a second screen.

The connected TV movement is happening now with more and more web-enabled TVs on the market with libraries of on-demand movies and TV shows available directly from your television. There are TV apps to play games, socialise, shop and get the latest in sports and news. Just as DVRs and on-demand programming have become the norm, soon we won’t be able to remember a time when our TVs were not web-enabled.