Customer Experience

By Nick Johnson - August 27th, 2013

Twitter insight, the best times to post to on Facebook and how social commerce is expanding.

Help with Twitter

Creating the right hashtag is a critical component of a successful marketing campaign. Twitter have just created a great flow chart you can use to ensure your hashtags can leverage the level of engagement your business is looking for. Twitter say: “One way to make sure it is memorable is through media integration. The best hashtags are tightly integrated with other marketing activity from TV advertising, to press ads and direct mail material.

“We’re often asked if a brand new hashtag always has to be created (rather than using a word or phrase people already use). The answer is, not always. If people are already using a hashtag, and having conversations, part of your work is already done. All your brand needs to do is ensure that when it joins that conversation it is adding value.”

Because of the immediacy of Twitter campaigns should ensure a steady flow of messages that offer escalating levels of engagement. Consumers want to share information, but only if this is interesting and engages with them and the groups they are part of.

More Facebook insight

Socialbakers have released research that shows that the best days to release new Facebook posts are Monday’s, Thursday’s and Friday’s. Based on a survey of 23,000 Facebook posts from brand pages. Clearly consumers have better things to do at weekends than share their Facebook updates. Socialbakers concluded:

“The search for the ideal day to post on Facebook will never tire because brands will always be cautious about timing when it comes to reaching their audience. But to be frank, there is no ideal day for posting, as so many factors influence the level of engagement the content triggers. The industry you operate in, the market specifics, the nature of your product or service portfolio, the demographic characteristics of your target audience, and things like the season of the year will inevitably have an impact on your performance.”

In addition, it would appear that Facebook ad conversion is on the way up, which will bring a sigh of relief to many businesses that have been struggling to align their Facebook ad spend with ROI. According to a study from Kenshoo Social, Facebook ad revenues have made a massive jump by over 28%.

Commenting Todd Herrold, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Kenshoo Social, said: “Advertisers are finding success using Facebook ads to drive toward their direct marketing goals, most importantly conversions and revenue. There are several factors influencing this evolution. Facebook has been steadily optimising its ad units and launching new ad targeting products designed specifically for direct response, including Custom and Lookalike Audiences, Partner Categories and the Facebook Exchange (FBX).

“At the same time, advertisers are getting better at narrowing down their target audiences and honing in more appropriately on users who may find the ad engaging. They’re becoming more sophisticated and are increasingly leveraging advertising platforms, like Kenshoo Social, to build and manage scale using automated bid optimization, audience targeting and expansion algorithms."

For brand owners Facebook is becoming a vital component of their social media engagement, and now has the figures to backup its claims to be the premier platform for brands. This doesn’t mean however, that campaigns can be complacent. It’s still critical to get the mix right, with Facebook only one component of a wider social media ad strategy.

Social commerce expands

Corporations have been toying with F-commerce for some time, but have until now it seems had little take off with these efforts. However, new research from ShopSocially indicates that the age of F-commerce is now upon us. According their figures, there has been a massive 357% increase in social shopping compared to just a year ago.

The research does however show that this growth is being fuelled by offers and couponing. The results also include: 8.5% increase in traffic from word of mouth recommendations. A 2.1x higher customer acquisition rate for visits from social referrals. And 91% of e-commerce websites saw a lift in SEO rank from social sharing actions.

Says Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially: “Most brands equate social commerce with their ability to generate sales on social channels. That’s just plain wrong. The true power of social commerce is in adding social elements in the commerce flow and not the other way around. It is criminal to send a hard-acquired visitor away to Facebook for social validation. You must use embedded social modules to keep her on the website, to convert her to a sale, and to get her to refer her friends in the process!”

A properly structured F-commerce campaign can clearly be successful, but the mechanics of the engagement must be understood. The motivation of a consumer could begin with a coupon or poll, but needs to be quickly followed with other relevant content to maintain a level of engagement that allows for conversion after what could be a long customer journey.

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.