By Nick Johnson - October 26th, 2010

Hi everyone,It's that (wonderful) time again! See below for the biggest corporate social media news over the last 7 days: Location based social media: the pros and cons for your companyLocation ba...

Hi everyone,

It's that (wonderful) time again! See below for the biggest corporate social media news over the last 7 days:

 

Location based social media: the pros and cons for your company

Location based social media has taken off and is being used by all kinds of different groups. The launch of Facebook Places (discussed last week) has played a big part in that. After initial concern that it would swamp location start-ups such as Gowalla and Foursquare, it actually appears to have brought greater awareness to the concept, as these numbers would suggest.

There's an ongoing debate as to the usefulness of location for marketers. Some brands - like Jimmy Choo and Domino's Pizza in the UK, and Red Bull over in the States - have made real efforts to incorporate location into their marketing strategy - running treasurehunts, incentivising checkins and the like.

But before we wholeheartedly jump into location-based marketing, a word of caution. It does seem that mobile location services are well suited to niche brands but not so adaptable to large FMCG brands. For more info on this distinction, head to this New Media Age article.

 

How big fashion houses are using social media to make more money

Fashion has woken up to the benefits of using digital technology. Clothing companies are increasingly using social media as part of a continued attempt to modernize the industry. There are now multiple examples of how smaller fashion startups are leveraging social tools.  Virtual changing rooms that fit clothes to your personal measurements mean less item returns. Pre-ordering pieces minimises the waste of mass production. Shopping cart optimization means we click less and buy more. Mobiles track customer shopping locations and subsequently offer relevant promotions and Fashion GPS enables brands to track and optimise media and the press. To learn how it can work for you see this great piece from Yuli Ziv on Mashable.

 

The results are in..? "Twitter's better than Facebook for marketing"

Despite Facebook accounting for 78% of traffic among all social network and microblogging sites, Twitter has emerged as the more effective channel for marketing. According to a study by SocialTwist who offer viral social media marketing campaigns, tweets with embedded links get an average of 19 clicks while Facebook shared links only get three. The survey reveals other surprises: the fact that MySpace still has an infeasibly large 15% of the social media market, for one. A comparison of the two social media giants' marketing Pros and Cons list saw Twitter emerge victorious. And the factors that led to this definitely indisputable triumph? More return on investment, quick results and fewer distractions.

OK, that sounds pretty persuasive. But it's rather limited in practice. Surely a well-thought out social media campaign won't use the same messages on Twitter and Facebook? Each has it's own strength, and a tremendously powerful tweet simply wouldn't work as well when directly transposed over to Twitter. And if we take that as read, how did SocialTwist come up with this direct comparison between the two sites...?

 

Chevron punk'd - or not..

Online eco-activism has been gathering momentum with large NGOs such as Greenpeace successfully using digital presence and the speed of viral campaigns to demand honesty and transparency from the groups they target (have you seen their deeply disturbing anti-Nestle video?).

A recent stunt from Rainforest Action Network however shows that the public aren’t always impressed. Their elaborate project against oil giant Chevron with fake press releases to the media backed up by a fictitious website and press page, did not get the response expected by RAN. Although yes it may have dampened the Chevron campaign “We Agree”, Facebook users left unimpressed comments.  Social media brings people and companies closer together, but when used to trick a third party like a media outlet and therefore the public, it wasn’t such a popular move. Hat tip to the always-interesting Social Media Influence for that last story.

 

Until next week everyone!

Cheers,

Nick

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