Customer Experience

By adaptive - December 18th, 2013

2013 was the year that social media took major strides forward, as corporations began to fully leverage the potential that these networks now offer.

Looking back over 2013, it’s been an amazing year right across the corporate social media landscape. 2013 was the year social media became more of an essential component of marketing campaigns than simply an afterthought. Innovative campaigns also graced the social media landscape, as agencies flexed their creative muscles across the leading social media networks.

Deepening the personal data that is available on any given consumer was the focus for many brands. Starbucks for instance offered anyone the chance to buy a free coffee for a friend by connecting their Twitter account to their account with Starbucks. Some $180,000 in purchases was made, but more importantly, the company gained 54,000 users Twitter IDs linked to their mobile phones, which is a powerful marketing tool by any definition and could not have been possible without the influence of social media. All corporations should take note.

Nikon also used the propensity to share content – most notably video – with its links to the SXSW Interactive, Film, and Music Festival. Attendees were given Nikon cameras to film performances sponsored by the Warner Music Group that were then live-streamed using the #NikonWarnerSound and Facebook posts. An amazing 500,000 watched this content.

Katy Perry released PrismLights that uses Instagram photos tagged with #KatyUnconditionally to create a unique online map. Linked to her ‘unconditionally’ using Instagram as the source material for the site’s interactive elements is innovative. As more images are logged into the site, the map of the world – make up of prisms – became more illuminated and animated. And anyone can connect their Instagram account to the site, which will highlight their images.

And the Dove ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ campaign shows a forensic sketch artist creating portraits of women from just the descriptions given by the women themselves, and also people that just met them. The campaign wanted to leverage the idea that women are their own worst critics. The three-minute video had over 50 million views when the campaign ran making it the most watch video ad ever.

"The moment that the Dove Real Beauty Sketches film was uploaded to the Dove YouTube page, it quickly started to gain traction around the world with men, women, media and even other brands sharing the film," said Fernando Machado, VP of Dove Skin, in a statement. "The campaign evoked an emotional reaction in millions of people that inspired them to share the positive message with others. Beyond just the millions of views and publicity impressions, it is the outpouring of testimonials from around the world that are exciting us."

Turning to the social media networks themselves, Facebook recovered somewhat from its wobble after completing its IPO, but the star of the show was undoubtedly Twitter that revealed how powerful 140 characters can be. Also, social media platforms such as Pinterest, Google+ and Vine moved out of the shadow cast by Twitter and Facebook to take up their rightful place amongst the leading social channels.

The legal standing of social media was also in the spotlight. In some high profile cases social media was the focus of the courts displeasure resulting in new guidelines being issues by the CPS that all corporations should pay close attention to. 2013 became the year where brands loosened their grip on social media usage by their employees, who became their in-house advocates, sometimes with dire consequences.

On the social media networks themselves, Facebook evolved with its Graph Search and clickable hashtags were also enabled. Also, moving the network towards content curation the EdgeRank algorithm and increasing the importance of visual content, illustrated how Facebook had paid attention to the shifting sands, which are today’s social media networks. 2013 became the year where visual content became visual commerce thanks largely to Pinterest.

Speaking of Pinterest, 2013 was a turnkey year for the platform. The company moved their network into the realm of business with the arrival of their own analytical system. Promoted pins also made an appearance in 2013, with Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann stating that this move would make the social media platform transparent and relevant and quickly followed with Rich pins to allow more rich media to be linked to.

Staying with visual marketing, Instagram offered users of its platform the ability to take video and not just still images for the first time. Research has suggested that video is shared 12 times more than still photos.

Twitter of course went public in 2013, and quickly moved to capitalise on its more business-like stance with the introduction of images within streams and lead generation cards to offer marketers an easy way to leverage their tweets. Google+ also got a redesign, and also a unified dashboard for brands and marketers to manage all of their Google-based collateral in one place.

Brands have also developed campaigns that missed their mark entirely. Durex and its SOS campaign for instance, offered its social media friends the chance to vote for a city where emergency condoms might be needed. The result? Batman in Turkey – a predominantly Muslim city. The corporation where quick to take the whole campaign down.

British Gas thought it a good idea to hold a Q&A session via Twitter on the same day it announced its current price rises. British Airways also fell foul to ‘complaintvertising’ when one disgruntled customer spent over $1,000 on self-service Twitter ads to vent his anger against the airline. His tweets were seen by more than 50,000 UK and US consumers where the promoted tweets were run. And Tesco decided to use its Twitter account to tell its followers the company was off for the day, just as the horsemeat story broke across the mainstream media.

2013 has certainly had its social media stars and corporations that simply got it wrong. What is clear is that social media has gained in importance right across the business environment and is now a vital component of any brands marketing messages. Consumers are increasingly using social media networks to influence others and as these interactions move increasingly onto mobile devices and happen almost in real time, brand owners will need to up their game in 2014 to capitalise on these interactions.

Innovation in marketing, new analytical tools, and the support of the social media networks themselves that have evolved their platforms through 2013, has delivered to corporations a chance to connect with their consumers on many more personal levels. As always, there are hits and misses, but 2013 was characterised by more hits than misses in any other year. It appears that social businesses have a much clearer idea of that the social networks mean to them. They have not yet decoded social media, but they have a roadmap that is rapidly coming into focus.

The State of Social Media 2013 by Infographic Promotion