How to Make Your Holiday Campaigns Mobile

Waiting in long lines – it’s one holiday tradition no one treasures.

But consumers will seek distractions browsing social networks on their smartphones during those long waits at the mall.

It’s a fact: more people will access Facebook and Twitter from mobile than desktop this season. For social marketers, that means thinking mobile-first. These tips will help you engage the mobile masses with your holiday campaigns.

Keep it simple.The best holiday campaigns make it easy to enter on the go. So choose a third-party app that’s mobile-ready. And if fan growth is one of your campaign goals, make sure it supports mobile fan-gating.

Running a sweepstakes? Limit your entry forms to four fields or less. Nobody likes clicking through multiple pages on their phone. The easier it is for your fans to enter, the more sign ups you’ll get.

The same holds true for Photo Contests. Give your fans simple prompts with low barriers to entry. Ask them to snap a selfie with a favorite shopping buddy, or a picture of their favorite holiday treat. Don’t get too specific, and you’ll see great traction.

Hashtag it.Hashtags do more than classify social content – they unite your audience around one conversation. And they help consumers participate in conversations when they’re on the go.

Many brands promote hashtags across social, TV, print and digital advertisements. But you can’t just slap a hashtag on a flyer and call it a day. Give consumers reasons to connect. Run sweepstakes that simply require tweeting a certain hashtag to enter. Or run Photo Contests that allow fans to submit photos via a hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. You’ll see mobile participation skyrocket.

The feed is your friend.Reading the news feed is the most popular activity for Facebook’s mobile users.  Shouldn’t they spot your posts when they scroll?

Ramp up your social posting. Communicate frequently about your sales and campaigns. Make sure to grab their attention with big, engaging visuals. And don’t forget to put some budget around it. Promoting your posts will get that extra visibility.

Connect social to the store.If retail sales matter to your brand, then connecting them to social should too.

Give your customers reasons to pick up their phones and follow you, by promoting your holiday sweepstakes or letting them know they can save on their next purchase by liking you. You can even ask them to share pictures of their favorite finds or in-store displays.

And make sure it works the other way too. Use your social channels to distribute mobile-ready coupons and promote in-store deals. Share customer tweets, photos and comments. Convert those fans into in-store sales.

Want more tips for running mobile-ready campaigns? Check out our tip sheet here.

Keywords: Best Practices, Behavior, Strategy, holiday marketing, mobile advertising

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Facebook Issues User Data Transparency Report

After speculation that major companies like Facebook were involved in PRISM, a secret government program that monitors user data, Facebook aims to bring more transparency to its privacy policy. Previously, Facebook released a statement regarding the user data request process in place for government authorities. Now Facebook follows up on that statement by releasing its first Global Government Requests Report. "Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook. We strive to embody them in all aspects of our services, including our approach to responding to government data requests," the company wrote when it released the report. The report quantifies user data requests from governments around the world, including information on:

• Countries that have requested information about Facebook users
• The number of requests made by each of those countries
• How many users or user accounts were included in those requests
• The percentage of requests for which Facebook was required by law to disclose data

Global Government Requests Report - User Data

The report covers all requests made during the first six months of 2013, through June 30th. Some of these government queries were related to criminal cases like robberies, kidnappings, and even national security matters, where information was needed to aid ongoing investigations. That information included basic user information, IP address logs, and post content. Looking at the data for each country below, it's interesting to note that the United States made many more user data requests than any other country; While the U.S. made between 11 and 12 thousand requests, the next-highest requester, India, 3245 requests, and the third-highest, the United Kingdom, just 1,975. Somehow major powers like Russia, Egypt, and Japan made under 10 requests each!Facebook uses the legal means available to limit the amount of user information handed over to governments. The company said,

"As we have made clear in recent weeks, we have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests. We believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service, and requires governments to meet a very high legal bar with each individual request in order to receive any information about any of our users. We scrutinize each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request. We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name. As we have said many times, we believe that while governments have an important responsibility to keep people safe, it is possible to do so while also being transparent. Government transparency and public safety are not mutually exclusive ideals. Each can exist simultaneously in free and open societies, and they help make us stronger. We strongly encourage all governments to provide greater transparency about their efforts aimed at keeping the public safe, and we will continue to be aggressive advocates for greater disclosure."

Learn more about Facebook's approach to government data requests here, and look out for more in the future, as Facebook intends to release these reports regularly.  

Keywords: Facebook, Monitoring Tools, Research, Behavior, Content, News, Governance, Government 2.0, Policy & Guidelines, Privacy, Social Media, Social Networks

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Socially Stephanie: Negative Online Reviews

Dear Socially Stephanie, 

I am so annoyed. I am a personal trainer and have had great results with many of my clients, and they praise me online for it. Of course, they themselves need to put in an effort to see results! One of my past clients didn't see any change in her body and decided to bash me on the Internet. Now, when you search my name, you can see a few of her bad reviews. The one that really bothers me is on Yelp, and it comes up on the first page of Google. How do I put out the fire? 

Annoyed in Anchorage

 

Dear Annoyed in Anchorage,

Welcome! You've officially been initiated into the social crisis club. It happens to every business. But relax, because it isn't really a crisis and there are ways to turn the negative attention into a positive situation.  It's time for you to flex your social media muscles. 

There's good news and there's bad news. Which do you want first? Good? Yeah, I thought you'd say that. Basically, the good news is that you have customers who love you, and they share that love online. The good reviews, in many cases, will outweigh the bad.

Now for the bad. (Don't worry. You can swallow it.) Here it is: new and potential customers are going to see that negative review when they search your name on Yelp or Google. According to research, a one-star difference in ratings can result in a 9% difference in revenue.  

But wait, did I forget to mention there's more good news?  (I feel like the tooth fairy right now - you know, delivering presents after a little bit of pain.) You have power to respond on Yelp, showing that you care about A) your reputation, and B) changing the mind of your ex-client. And let me tell you, it works!

Let's talk, for a minute, about how you're going to respond. It's called operating in rebuttal mode. And I want you to think like a lawyer—but a professional one, not a bite-your-head-off type. Think about how you want to appear. Mean? Defensive? Probably not the best idea. Encouraging? Pacifying? Yeah, that's a better approach. Because this message of yours will be permanent, it should show you off in the best light possible. Even if, in fact, you had been the responsible party to blame, owning up to your mistake would go along way. At the very least, it will signify that you're only human.

You should also address specific issues raised by your arch-nemesis - *ahem*, I mean ex-client. Since you're already logged in there for one response, go ahead and take a few moments to write back to your good reviewers too. The more engaged you are as a business owner, the more engaged your customers will be. Everyone likes a "thank you," so get in there and shower your clients with some reviewer love. 

Now you have a mission, a duty, and a responsibility to get as many new reviews as possible. And here's why. The more new reviews you get, the further the bad one will push down the line. So how are you going to do that?

First, execute Step 1: Email marketing campaign. The benefit of your line of work is that you're super close to your clients. In fact, you might even have a personal relationship with them. Like a hair stylist's customers, your clients may often spill their deepest woes, triumphs and gossip to you in order to make that grueling workout time go faster. Use a non-salesy, relatively personal tone in your email, gently appealing to their natural gratitude for how you've helped them. And sure, a blast would be okay, but a personal email (if scalable) to your "best" clients who haven't reviewed you yet would be best. Ask them to review you on Yelp, and for those who have seen great results, ask them to post their before and after photos. Photos on review sites take your ratings to the next level.

Now for Step 2: Create some content. Training videos, blog posts on how to eat healthy while training, and maybe an Infographic on the history of working out. If your content is really engaging, it'll get top billing in search results - and so will the name attached: yours. Now when someone Googles you, you not only have great reviews, but you have the educational content to back it up. Plus, creating great content gives you something to share socially, as well as stuff for others to share, which means you'll have others spreading the word for you. BINGO!

It's time for your reputation overhaul. You can do it! Good luck. 

Socially,
Stephanie
Do you have a question for Socially Stephanie?


Keywords: Best Practices, Behavior, Strategy, Customer Service, Public Relations, Reputation Management, Search, Socially Stephanie, yelp

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Social Startups: RescueTime Adds Hours to Your Day

Do you often ask yourself where the time went? In the computer age, it’s not easy to account for those lost minutes from the previous day. That’s why, “We built RescueTime for ourselves. We were tired of trying to answer that question, ‘What did I do yesterday?’” says Joe Hruska, founder and CEO of the time management and productivity tracking software.

“We knew more and more people were spending a majority of their day in front of a computer, so we wanted to build a tool that would take advantage of technology to help those people understand exactly what they did when they were at the computer,” he says. “Just like a monthly bank statement can reveal potentially bad spending behaviors, RescueTime gives people a detailed, second-by-second accounting of where they spend their time on their computers and many other devices.”

As Hruska and his two other co-founders developed an initial alpha version of RescueTime for themselves, they launched a public signup page. Just based on a screenshot and their description, RescueTime collected more than 2,000 email addresses in less than a month of people wanting access to their early beta.

“We were featured on TechCrunch in May 2007 even before we launched our beta. It was shortly after that point that we decided to quit our day jobs and focus on building RescueTime as a real business,” says Hruska, who was the president of a 20+ person IT consulting company in Anchorage, Alaska.

“For an IT consulting company, you live and die by the billable hour, and getting accurate billing information was a constant battle,” Hruska says. “Forcing employees to fill in time sheets at the end of a day and do custom project reports added a lot of overhead and stress. For me, RescueTime was a way to automate a lot of effort and give people a tool that would let them look back at any time period and quickly see what they were doing, with no data entry.”

RescueTime is developed specifically to be lightweight, unobtrusive, and to provide the maximum amount of feedback with as minimal amount of distraction. It does have interactive features, but they can be disabled or muted to allow each user to decide how they want to use RescueTime. 

Since founding RescueTime in April 2007, Hruska’s two co-founders have moved on to pursue other startup ventures but continue to be trusted advisors. “We've heard some great feedback in the last five+ years, and the one that still makes me a bit emotional is hearing from a father who was able to spend more time with his kids each week because of what he learned by using RescueTime,” Hruska says. “If RescueTime helped him get four more hours a week with his family over a period of a year, that guy potentially gained a whole work week of time that would have otherwise been spent away from his family.”  

“On average, we see people spend four hours a week less on distracting activities and boost their overall productivity,” says Hruska. “That doesn't mean that people are working four hours more a week, it means that they now have a choice on how they want to use those extra four hours.”

For companies, RescueTime promotes that same self-understanding for the individuals within a company, while giving a higher-level overview for management to see how a team is functioning in the aggregate. It also shows why we’re unproductive, as this RescueTime blog post shows.

Fortunately, goal setting is built in with the ability for the system to send alerts based on excessive use or improved use defined by the user. Users are also able to compare their time management skills with others, block distracting sites, track time spent away from the computer, and get custom reports and email summaries.

“We've had organizations use RescueTime to help them save money on software licensing by being able to tell how many people actually use specific software packages,” says Hruska. “One of our very first business customers was able to use RescueTime to show management that specific people were as productive or even more productive when working at home.” 

Come September, RescueTime will be announcing the single largest change since its launch as well as some exciting news for mobile device users. “Our goal is to make it easier for our users to get value out of the data that they are collecting about themselves,” Hruska says. “The way that we present analytics on our website will be more narrative and easier for the typical user. We will still have all of the second-by-second data for those people that want all of the nitty-gritty details, but with a much friendlier interface that will support a broader range of devices.”

Keywords: Best Practices, Behavior, Social Media, RescueTime, social startups, time management, work

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