If you can’t make it along to our Online Marketing for Profit knowledge session fear not – you can still view the presentation right here

The aforementioned website had all the usual links to twitter, the candidates’ blog and YouTube videos, but was, in all honesty, nothing special.

It got me thinking, how well is social media being leveraged by the political parties in the run up to the election? At first glance you might think fairly well, we’re not talking Barack Obama well but, still, fairly well. Labour have their twitter czar and there are repeated reports in the media of how the conservatives have more fans than everyone else on facebook.

But taking a closer look they all seem to be missing the point. Labour’s ‘twitter czar’, Kerry McCarthy’s tweet at 5.28pm yesterday, “This may be the first tweet sent from the House of Lords! It’s prorogation… rather bizarre ceremony.”, isn’t exactly engaging. I’m guessing ‘prorogation’ means little to the voting public and, more importantly, even less to the non-voting public.

Is twitter being leveraged to maximum effect?

Many of the tweets from the Labour and Conservative read like childish, albeit eloquent, playground taunts; ‘The Tory economic strategy – tell someone it’s not true’ and ‘Labour have failed to stop children starting a life of crime. Most of those released from custody reoffend within a year’. That’s not to say twitter hasn’t created a great forum for political discussion but with a little thought and creativity that forum could have much greater reach.

Obama admitted last year that he had never used twitter but, aside from his ‘rockstar’ status drawing followers, with a constant stream of interesting narrative style tweets he clearly knows some people that do.

Before engaging in any social media activity we would always ask clients to think ‘why should people care?’ – if you are planning to leverage such social networking platforms you’ll need to appeal to the audience there, speak in their language, etc.

A brief look at the top three election contenders’ facebook pages is a bland experience. I’d suggest that only the most staunch party followers are likely to publicly become ‘fans’ of such lacklustre facebook pages. I often quote the likes of Dominos in reference to how to facebook can be used to effectively. Their pages are filled with interactive content that you want to share – I guarantee you will spend more time there than on the facebook pages of any of the political parties! If you disagree, pizza’s on me.

Marmite are perhaps a better example of how to leverage both social media and the current election in a way that engages an audience;  follow the links from the Marmite News Network to take look.

At the end of the day it all comes back to content and the presentation thereof. More importantly, there has to be consideration for whom that content is intended and then ensuring it is both relevant and engaging for that audience. Political parties, you would imagine, should have a clear understanding of the audiences they are targeting and the media channels that engage those audiences.

But maybe they don’t or they would realise that the majority of young new voters are not going to be inclined to become twitter followers or facebook fans of their current offerings, much less diggers of ‘Sowing The Seeds of The Big Society’ or sharers of various campaign pledges.

Piqued your interest? Me too. Essentially CMB Consumer Pulse (the company who undertook the research project) asked the following questions:

To the Facebook ‘fans’:

Are you more likely to buy since becoming a fan?

Are you more likely to recommend to a friend since becoming a fan?

To the Twitter ‘followers’:

Are you more likely to buy since becoming a follower?

Are you more likely to recommend to a friend since becoming a follower?

The results were as follows:

Facebook ‘fans’:

51% of respondents said they would be more likely to buy from at least one brand since becoming a fan.

60% of respondents said they would be more likely to recommend at least one brand since becoming a fan.

Twitter ‘followers’:

67% of respondents said they would be more likely to buy from at least one brand since becoming a follower.

79% of respondents said they would be more likely to recommend at least one brand since becoming a follower.

On the face of it at least – Twitter followers look pretty engaged, no?

But the Facebook fans? Surely if 51% said they would be more like to buy; then 49% said either they didn’t know; or would be less likely to buy. Not exactly compelling. Oh, and it gets worse – 49% said that one of the reasons they became a Facebook fan in the first place was because they were already a customer. So we’ve an uplift… but only just…

This is getting messy now, right?

I’ve also got concerns with the research methodology used -  I think that the questions asked are a bit confusing/complex:

‘Are you more likely to buy since becoming a fan/follower?’

This question asks you to think about the likelihood of a future purchase – which is pretty woolly anyways, right? Then adds additional complexity by chucking in the ’since becoming a fan/follower’. Are you asking if becoming a fan/follower influences purchasing decisions? Is that a question that someone can really answer?

I’d be far more interested to see what people have *actually* done. Not what they think they might do, one day, perhaps, maybe, possibly – you get the point.

Now a question like this might be more interesting -

‘Have you purchased from <brand x> since you became a fan/follower?’

Likewise:

Have you recommended <brand x> to a friend since you became a fan/follower?’

One of the first things I was taught about market research was that what people have done is far more predictive of their future behaviour than what they ‘think’ they might do. I’d love to see the results of those questions (if they were asked). Sure, they might not make for such a compelling headline; but they would at least be genuinely useful.

However, the cynic in me suspects that this piece of research was really about linkbaiting – and we’ve (the search industry) all bitten, right? On that front, they’ve done really very well indeed…

This sounds like a great way to get content about your business immediately onto Google. So should you invest time and effort into promoting your business with a  Facebook Fan Page?

Of course, why wouldn’t you want to use a free service that can reach hundreds or thousands or even millions of potential clients? Many small to medium businesses benefit from having people following them on Facebook. Some usually start off by having the people they know become fans at the start. The friends of these friends can see that they are a fan of that business and the company builds small scale viral recognition.

Provided that a business can give people a reason to become a fan – e.g. a high street boutique may offer exclusive discounts, while a nightclub might announce events, offers, who is DJing at it’s venue each night.  If you can offer information that people might want to have then you could gain potential business.

However there is a lot that  could  go wrong with using Facebook as means of publicising your business.

If you read an article on Outspoken Media you can find out about American reality TV show Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. It followed small salon owner Nikki Mallon of Brownes & Co. portrayed on national TV as a cold hearted boss from hell. Most likely edited to make her look worse than she probably was. It was a PR nightmare. The Brownes and Co. Facebook Fan Page was ransacked with negative comments from outraged viewers of the show. Unfortunately it took  them 12 hours to moderate the damage done and they have garnered some much unneeded notoriety.

Now whilst this is an extreme case, and probably very unlikely to happen to your business, it is worth noting that as fans can comment on your page, you will need to allocate some time and resource to answer any queries your fans might have; take part in discussions and of course in some cases act as a moderator. If you can give people a good reason to “Become a Fan”; by all means use it as a tool to promote your business. Just remember to manage it, as your brand’s reputation could be at stake.

SEO

Rand Fishkin explains how search engines judge the value of a link - essential reading.

Social Media

Over at 10e20 Rebecca Kelley teaches Social Media - McHammer style, 2 legit 2 quit - marvellous.

PPC

Chelsea Blacker shares an adwords tip – including your keywords in display URL subdomains - definitely worth a test, methinks. 

Usability

Tom Critchlow has penned an excellent post on improving conversion rates, and deserves a link for the title alone

Aaannnd Finally, Friday’s Saturday’s Funny

Courtesy of xkcd:

Image credit Flawka

SEO

Danny Dover has written an excellent guide to moving domains - definitely bookmark -worthy!

Social Media

Over at Search Engine Land Ciaran Norris highlights the spate of brands using social media as a band aid and urges companies to stop saying sorry and start getting really social.

PPC

Always wondered why Adwords conversion tracking doesn’t match up to the conversion tracking in Analytics? Matthew from Receptional does a top notch job of explaining the discrepancy.

George Michie talks about his research collaborationwith direct mail practitioners in an attempt to ascertain whether or not key learnings from the traditional catalogue shopping industry can be similarly applied to PPC campaigns.

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Got some time to kill?  Waste a few minutes clicking on this Pringles Banner ad (don’t worry, you’ll not be taken anywhere dodgy) – it’s a really rather mavellous way to waste some time – hat tip to Ciaran for this one.

Image credit Yogma.

News

You can’t fail to have heard about the Microsoft – Yahoo deal which was struck on 29th July which will see Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ power Yahoo’s searches. Will it threaten Google’s dominance? In the UK it’s unlikely to, but it may mean that some advertisers elect trial advertising on Yahoo/Bing – time will tell.

SEO

Over at SEOmoz Rand’s written a fantastic summary on the implications of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal for SEO.

Meanwhile, a month on since Google’s ‘Vince’ Update, Richard from SEOgadget takes a gander at the results for the search term ‘car insurance’ – and asks brand or no brand?

Social Media

Matt Churchill talks about ‘Auntie’ getting all social media savvy with the launch of Shownar; a great post about how the BBC have been embracing social media.

Lisa Barone asks if Social Media is Becoming a Weapon - and how you might try to handle an attack on your brand. As usual, it’s facinating reading – and the comments are well worth a read too.

PPC

Thinking about outsourcing your PPC activity to an agency? Over at PPCHero Amber’s written a great post on the 10 questions you should ask when looking for a new agency.

Media

Matthew Robson caused a stir when he wrote a memo for Morgan Stanley on How Teenagers Consume Media, interesting reading, but I much preferred Dan Wilson’s response: How 31 Year Olds Consume Media :)

 Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

 Simon’s Cat

Image credit Unhindered by Talent

SEO

If like me, you think link building is the toughest part of any SEO project, you’d do well to read Garrett French’s post via Search Engine Land on how to research, create and distribute highly linkable content.

Still focusing on the link building theme, Shaun Anderson of Hobo-Web talks about reciprocal links, and whether or not they should be avoided.

PPC

Get some great tips from PPC Hero on PPC landing page optimisation - sterling work from Amber there.

Social Media

Over at Econsultancy, Patricio Robles asks does social media lead to better financial results for companies? As he quite rightly points out, correlation is not necessarily causation – essential reading.

Also well worth a look is the A-B-C’s of Social Media - not least because as Dr Pete said, they’ve come up with an ‘x’ which isn’t xylophone

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Thursday’s Funny

This brilliant picture is from passiveaggressivenotes (click the link to see it in it’s full glory). Hat tip to Rob - genius  

‘Thursday’ image credit adamwilson

SEO

Looking to build links with relevant blogs in your niche? Read Lucy’s guide on finding niche blogs over at SEOmoz.

Are your title tags in good order? Check out Marc’s guide to optimising title tags over at Bruce Clay Australasia.

PPC

Thinking about restructuring your Adwords campaigns? Be sure to pop over to PPC Hero and read their killer post on the affect of moving keywords in Adwords.

Social Media

Jason Murphy writes an open letter to United Airlines explaining how they might deal with their current reputation management issue - he’s come up with some fabulous ideas, it’s well worth a read.

Blogging

Think writing Guest Posts for other blogs is a waste of your precious time? Think again – read Lisa’s take on the benefits of guest blogging over at the Outspoken Media blog. 

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

This week’s funny comes courtesy of Dilbert – enjoy & have a lovely weekend!

Image credit faeryboots

SEO

Joanna Butler talks Gorillas, Meerkats & Michael Jackson and the importance of generating ‘buzz’ around your brand.

PPC

Over at Search Engine Land, Doug Drees comes up trumps once again with his excellent tips on Ad Scheduling to maximise your PPC results.

Social Media

Still not quite got your head around link bait? Stephan Spencer explains all.

Is that celeb you’re following on Twitter the real deal? Ciaran talks about the problem of hoax accounts on Twitter.

Blogging

Should your CEO be Blogging? Lisa says no. Thought provoking, funny, and so true… but you didn’t hear me say that – ok?

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Wondering what SEO’s do on Twitter all day long? Well, after a long day, they like nothing more than to talk Princess Bride

Have a lovely weekend!

Image credit Jonathan Beard