Five by Five

Our very own Steve Sponder, Managing Director of Five by Five, has published this article, revealing how you can make Social Media Optimisation work for your brand.

Now, as the credit crunch finally begins to bite into company profits, it is vital for brands to be able to reach consumers in more effective and engaging ways, especially when the target consumer audience for the brand is one that has been traditionally hard to reach. For example, brands selling to young consumers are now realizing the impossibility of having “controlled conversations” with a fast moving and hard to reach audience that came of age in the post Web 2.0 landscape.

Making the challenge even harder, social media, a phenomenon that has boomed almost overnight, has to be factored into marketing plans if brands want to be sure of getting on the radar of today’s 18-24 year olds. Social Media Optimization (SMO), a new approach that acknowledges a constantly evolving and fragmenting media, is seen by many as the one way to build a viable communications bridge between the brand and the young consumer.

So will it work for your brand?

On a tactical level social media optimization only works for those who thoroughly understand the rapidly changing social media universe and who are willing to make their approach in a compelling but “softly softly” way that won’t cause the recipient of a marketing message to throw the switch on possible dialogue with the brand.

Brand messages need to be specifically optimised for consumption within social media. On the one hand this can be achieved by ensuring web site content is easily linkable and that signposts to their content are visible across the social media landscape. On the other hand it is far more effective perhaps to ensure that the message itself is transportable and therefore easily spread.

On a strategic level SMO reflects a fundamental watershed moment in marketing. It personifies the shift in power from marketer to audience. It’s all about ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’. In other words accepting that it will become increasingly difficult from now on to simply herd consumers to your web site.

With an audience that not only chooses it’s own media path but also authors it’s own media content the brand must have something interesting or relevant to say or it will be ignored. If there was ever a pivotal point when the advertising weary and the brand cynical are in control and there is an urgent need for true innovation and originality from marketers it is now.

So, what exactly is the state of play on the social media scene? Are we going to see a fundamental change in the way that web sites work as a result of the rise in Social Media? Some pundits insist that, in the not-too-distant future, web site ‘containers’ will become unvisited ghost sites as the messages and content get unlocked to exist within and entwined throughout the social media landscape.

The figures thrown up by Universal MaCann’s Social Media Tracker, the world’s most detailed survey of the Social Media revolution, outline the phenomenal growth of media usage outside of the more traditional web site ‘containers’. This year’s survey of 17000 respondents shows that 78% read blogs and 57% are now members of a social network. RSS consumption is growing rapidly and has more than doubled in a year to 39%. Podcasts are now mainstream digital content, listened to by 48%. All this points to Social Media as a mass medium and brands need to adjust rapidly to this revolution in the way that consumers are creating and digesting content.

So how do we access this burgeoning media universe?

If search engine optimization is about breaking down crawling barriers to help engines fully index your site, social media optimization is about knocking down site walls so content can be easily found, distributed and shared by the community. The SMO process may simply mean embedding a “Digg This” button on your site blog or it may mean spending hours to create a piece of compelling content or “linkbait” that could either drive thousands of visitors to your site or have no effect at all. The right “link magnet”, presented at the right time, to the right audience can create huge traffic for your site. The key to social media is your ability to leverage it and that depends on your ability to attract, engage and convert new visitors.

As with SEO, most sites can benefit from some form of SMO but your strategy needs to be designed to compliment the specifics of your site and what you are trying to market. A technology company with a great blog, submitting posts to Digg may reap huge benefits. However, if your Web site specializes in kids clothes, the Digg profile will fall totally outside your demographic. In this scenario, you’re probably better of tagging your content at one of the social bookmarking sites or creating a community profile on Flickr.

Without knowing your audience there’s no way to offer them a great tool or compelling content. So, consider what will produce the strongest reaction and always take into account what your desired outcome is. For example, are you looking for increased conversions, traffic, links, industry credibility, brand recognition, or something else entirely?

Here are some tips that will help you establish the fundamentals of SMO.

Know your goals and be linkable. One of the quickest ways to make your content more accessible is to allow tags and to add a “Digg This”, “Add to del.icio.us” or Technorati chicklet to your Web site and RSS feed. Make tagging and bookmarking easy and it will it encourage readers to do the hard work for you by submitting you material to their favourite sites. This not only helps to increase readership, but it also builds your community across a site or a number of sites.

Create something unique, compelling and worthy enough of being submitted and linked to. Everybody can do this not just the sexy brands. Because you are a company that sells kitchens, sofas, or bird tables there is no reason why you can’t be submitting linkbait about your product. They don’t have to be flashy just good.

Why not try to write something original that will engage the user of your product? For example, those birds tables might sell well off the back of a piece about the mysterious disappearance of the British Sparrow. Where have 70% of our sparrows gone and why, and how can your bird table help to solve the problem (this happens to be true by the way!). Or perhaps writing a viable information piece, for example an Idiots Guide to the Digital switchover authored by Sky TV or Freeview. The possibilities are literally endless. It just takes thought and a little creativity to generate the collateral.

Don’t spam social media sites. The only way your SMO campaign will be successful is if it’s genuine. Don’t submit content that doesn’t fit with the community you’re entering. Sites like Digg or Wikipedia are very good at seeing through blatant self-promotion. Make sure you’re offering a clear benefit to the community, otherwise prepare to be flamed and thrown out on your ear. If you abuse the community then you will experience a backlash that will eradicate any possible good you hoped to achieve for your brand.

Make it personal. If you’re going to submit content to sites like Digg, Reddit or Newsvine, write a personalized email to a dozen or so relevant bloggers before you submit in order to get some early links. Some well researched groundwork will get things moving and have a positive effect on the overall success of the campaign.

Used properly Social Media Optimization has the ability to be a powerful tool for building brand recognition. But it’s vital that you don’t see SMO as a substitute for SEO. The former gives brands useful new tool but it’s still early days to know how effective this will be when compared to more established forms of web marketing. My tip is to keep using the optimization tactics that have proven to be successful so far and to use SMO as an experimental parallel activity just to stay ahead of the curve.

See the article in the press:
E-consultancy
Creative match

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There’s lots of clapping of hands and patting on backs here today as we’ve learnt that Five by Five have been shortlisted in the E-consultancy Innovation Awards!

Our bespoke affiliate banner tool developed for our client, B&Q, has been shortlisted in the Innovation in Online Acquisition Category, alongside GAME Stores Group, Synthetix, Online Media Group and Thomas Cook.

The software allows the client to update offers in real time across all their affiliate sites, a tool that has greatly increased click though rates and ROI.

Watch this space on 2nd December when we hope to announce scooping a win!

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As developers we seem to naturally always want to be on the cutting edge, the internet therefore often seems to be the best place to be to scratch this itch. Whilst this is largely true we also have a bit of a large downside to deal with as well, the horror that is legacy issues. Let me show you a practical example, I was recently reading a horror story of a feature from Javascript extraordinaire John Resig. Essentially it boils down to a feature which was developed rather short-sightedly a number of years ago. Because this is a long standing feature it is therefore potentially utilised in billions of web pages. Can we fix this “bug”? The short answer is unfortunately no, fixing this “bug” will potentially break far too many sites. What we are left with are legacy problems which we have to work with. It is the same issue as having to deal with the blight of IE6, we all know it is broken, we developers hate it with a passion, but we can’t do a lot about it. There’s a bleeding edge of development we’d all love to be working on but it is tantalisingly out of reach because of the legacy we all live with.

I have long been of the opinion of - well that sucks but hey what can we do? Lately though I have been wondering how long we can continue working like this? I shudder to think how much money the economy bleeds through supporting these legacy issues, I know we spend a large proportion of front-end development time wrestling with cross browser support. What if we just said no, we will no longer do that. We will no longer accommodate these issues. I can see two things happening here, first let’s take the bug mentioned above. Let’s say we will say no more to DOM0 expando properties, from now on they are gone. What will happen is that we may break a ton of code, but is this such a bad thing? If the code is that important wouldn’t it be worth fixing for the greater good? Don’t break the web has long been a mantra from Microsoft, yet even they have seen the folly in this approach and in their next release of IE8 they have opted for standards which will potentially break a lot of existing code.

The second thing I could see happening if we were to say no to legacy issues is pretty much what the concept of progressive enhancement is built on. We say ok we know there are legacy issues, but accommodating these legacy issues is too much work. As long as the application works, if it isn’t the best experience, hey we can live with it. People affected may have an option here, users may be able upgrade their browsers to remove the legacy issues and probably should be actively encouraged to do so. It would be a bold move for sure, however if you have followed the development technique of progressive enhancement you are not actively excluding people.

Another thought I had (or more likely read somewhere else and took as my own) was updating some of the legacy issues which are actually bugs through automatic updates. Browser vendors fix security bugs, why not fix layout bugs as well? Whether this would work or not I’m not sure. If people don’t upgrade their browsers, they’re probably unable or unlikely to install automatic updates. Still it could potentially get around one of the problems highlighted here, enterprises could choose not to install such updates and then their internal applications wouldn’t get affected. Or imagine being able to switch your layout engine or javascript engine on the fly, an update for IE6/7 could be created which did just this. Ok my brain just overloaded with the potential confusion this could cause.

What we really need is a brilliantly simple solution to the legacy issues, anybody?

Five by Five have won a website development pitch for North America and Canada travel specialist, Bon Voyage.

The new website will pitch Bon Voyage’s sales offering entirely on the North American and Canadian travel market and will position the brand as experts in the region. Five by Five will be focusing on improving usability to help drive traffic through the site and converting users to contact the Bon Voyage call centre, as well as positioning the Bon Voyage brand as a high quality tailor made holiday supplier.

The team will be busy bees over the coming weeks as the new site is due to launch in the New Year.

www.bon-voyage.co.uk/

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Check out these hot new banners promoting the new Guitar Hero World Tour game, being launched by Activision on 14 November 2008.

The state-of-the-art interactive banners employ live-action video to bring the Roadie character to life, and in doing so achieve awesome page standout. Five by Five combined shooting the character interacting with both the viewer and the game instruments to get across the playability and scope of the new game. Interactive Flash elements of the game’s features also explain how the game works.

The banners are being seeded across a variety of sites for limited periods in the lead up to the launch. Pre-orders have rocketed since the online campaign started.

Check out The Sun only on Friday 7 November http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/

Eurogamer running until 9 November http://www.eurogamer.net/

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After kicking off a podcast series, the tables were turned and I became the interviewee for David Campbell’s podcast series, Love Digital Out Loud. David works for Australian agency, Love Digital.

You can listen to the entire podcast here or using the enhanced presentation on SlideShare.

Some nuggets:

On mobile search:

You look at things like the iPhone which is changing the mobile sphere apace and we might yet, finally see the year of mobile that everyone has been predicting for the past five years or so. That tied up with Google Android where the ability to search by your mobile is now so easy because the graphical interface is there, the speed is there. Absolutely the investment in search will continue but it will diversify into the different areas and particularly into mobile.

On social search:

…the power of social search is … you can get recommendations from your friends, you can see where they’ve been, you can see what they’ve written about, you get their user view. So, again it’s a more personal sphere as opposed to going to a content aggregation site or an editorial site which will promote what their beliefs are. What you want is to search what your friends’ experienced and therefore more likely to appeal to you as an individual. So, again it’s this whole changing face of search from the very passive, put in a term and get a list of results to things that become much more meaningful, much more resonant to you as an individual and ultimately more actionable.

And here’s what just my section looks like on Wordle.

This content is also posted in the following spaces:

Five by Five Brand Republic blog

Five by Five Podcasts

bluurb.wordpress.com

Chime in with your comments below.

Who to heckle for this post:

Nicholas Gill, Planner | nick.gill@fivebyfivedigital.com | @nicholasgill | bluurb.wordpress.com

Get in touch:

fivebyfivedigital.com

19 Bolsover Street, London W1W 5NA
4 Grosvenor Square Southampton SO15 2BE

Anyone who has experienced a user testing session on one of their websites will be familiar with the frustration of users missing the blindingly obvious. It’s a good job most testing sessions involve 2 rooms, as the design team’s language is usually fairly blue!

Don’t forget that the act of testing itself influences user behaviour to a greater or lesser extent depending on the skill of the tester and the susceptibility of the subject. A/B and multivariate testing help to eliminate some of these problems, but the results only show you ‘what’ works not ‘why’.

The influence of size and colour (http://www.getelastic.com/cart-button-size/) on the click rates of action buttons is interesting, but the context of the buttons is as important as the button itself. A single big orange button with an arrow, on and page with a lot of white space, will achieve a high click rate. Add another 5 similar buttons, and a lot of graphical full colour images, and the rate will drop off.

Just a note of caution though. If you A/B test each element on a web page to find its optimum setting, the page with all elements optimised will not necessarily outperform other combinations. Think of all your favourite flavours – chocolate, strawberry, cinnamon etc, and then think of all of these combined into one cake – not quite Jamie Oliver is it? Stats and user testing provide great information, but you can’t beat expert interpretation to add real value and show you what to test in the first place.

Breaking site content down so that pages have only one or two main calls to action really helps. However, faced with the need to design a home page and satisfy multiple competing stakeholders, this can become impossible. So you need to allow your users to browse easily to identify their sales channel before pushing them to buy. Once into the sales funnel, you need to direct the inexorably towards the sale whilst re-assuring them at all stages.

Those of us men who are allowed to do the shopping, - and God help us if we come back with the wrong brand of washing machine tablets, - will be familiar with the ‘last packet on the shelf’ syndrome. In this situation, the item on the shelf matches what we want, but because there is no alternative we don’t want to commit ourselves to buying it. This perverse human psychological trait can also be seen at work on website user journeys.

Web developers know that the correct name for the button at the bottom of a form (and default browser setting) is ‘submit’. However, this word is psychologically final, - we only submit something when we’re completely happy with it don’t we? Once submitted there is no going back is there?

So what happens if we change the word ‘submit’ to ‘continue’? Well, ‘continue’ implies two things: we are not at the final stage, and we can go back if we want. And guess what? The number of clicks on the button goes up substantially. So more carrot less stick may be the answer to increasing conversions. This means thinking about button text and sales funnel steps making actions sound less final and providing users with escape routes. The best sites allow you to step back and forwards within a process without having to re-enter data, - there is still the perception among some older internet users that clicking on a ‘Buy Now’ button will somehow automatically debit their bank account - including adding service charges and carriage - with no further steps.

On the other hand, if your site is for kids, maybe your action buttons should contain the text: ‘whatever you do don’t click this’!