Social Media Podcast 56 - Instagram prunes the Vine whilst Facebook try harder to harvest dollars

The team is back for Social Media Podcast No.56. fatBuzz team members, Gordon White, Derek Howie, Joanna Robb, Jon Mills and Graeme Geddes chat about a variety of social media and web design issues.

One or two things stand out in this podcast like the ever increasing calls to action that appear on your Facebook pages and how Instagram's new video functionality could be to the expense of Vine.  And, what actually happens to those Snapchat posts?

It's the usual light hearted banter as we explore a whole host of topics from the ever changing world of social media and design.  Among the topics are:

• The J C Penney Tea Kettle that caused a strom and how it would only have been a strom in a teacup just a few short years ago! Read the Guardian article
• Instagram's 100 million users get video functionality
• The fatBuzz Instagram account - we may capture our golfing clients
• Mich Joel's latest and brilliant book - Ctrl+Alt+Delete
• Wimbeldon serve up a feast of social media activity
• Facebook's 'Buy Tickets' link
• Facebook Hashtags - Are they a good or bad addition?
• Twitter Mirror - we reflect on it's potential uses
• Google Glass - we take a closer look
• Mo Farah - in trouble at Wimbledon for his video footage - what does this mean for Instagram and Vine users? Read The Guardian article
• Snapchat - Is there a delete button on the internet?
• Facebook 'calls to action' (sales messages) are they too monetized?
• Snapkids - Good, bad or ugly
• The new Personal page layout on Facebook - have you got it and is the search facility as bad as we say?
• Responsive design - the new standard for web design and why it's so important to consider it in the future
• The latest responsive design web site from fatBuzz - Punk Royal
• Customer Service and Social Media - is this going to be the new driver for brand participation?

We hope you enjoy the podcast, if you have any comments to make or topics you would like us to discuss, please leave them here on the blog or on our Facebook Page.

Play the podcast here:

Subscribe/Download Social Media Podcast on iTunes

Would you like a presentation on social media and customer service?
We're offering a range of bespoke or generic presentations on the topic of social media and customer service, if you would like to find out more please go to the following link: Are you prepared to lose control?

Have you listened to the digital copyright podcast?

We continue to see people using images, video content and other files taken from the internet without consideration to potential copyright issues. We would encourage all of our listeners to download Social Media Podcast 50 which clearly outlines what you should and shouldn't do with images sourced online. Find it on iTunes now.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE US TO TALK ABOUT?
If there is a specific topic you would like us to cover in a future podcast please let us know. You can email gordon@fatbuzz.com or send us a message on Twitter @MediaPodcast or, you can post it as a comment on the Social Media Podcast Facebook page.

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your on-line community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

Wimbledon Making a Racket in the Social Media World

Fans flocked to SW19 yesterday for the first day of Wimbledon, and as usual, there were plenty of serves, shocks and strawberries - but at fatBuzz, we're more excited by the activities on line rather than on court!

Although the competition is only in its second day, we have been thoroughly impressed by Wimbeldon's commitment to social media this year.

From Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Google+ (yes, even Google+), Wimbledon has got a visible presence across multiple platforms - and so far - they're really making a racket in the social media world. 

For the purposes of this blog post, we're going to focus on Facebook, Twitter and the brand new iPad app, The Championships, Wimbledon 2013, but before we do so, we had to mention the dedicated Social Media page on the Wimbledon website.

On this page, you can view featured hashtags, video and radio clips and slideshows, as well as its latest Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds. There is also a blog and live blog, where you can keep up to date with the latest news and results, as well as see behind-the-scenes.

Facebook

At the time of writing this blog post, there are 1, 206, 018 likes on Facebook, and we're sure that figure will increase dramatically throughout the next two weeks - so what features and functionality have encouraged over 1 million people to 'Like' the Wimbledon page?

Aside from general pictures, videos and status updates, there are three separate custom iframe tabs; Our Tweets, where you can view the Wimbledon Twitter feed, Instagram #wimbledon, where you can view the latest Instagram feed, and Our Videos, where you can, of course, watch the latest videos.

There are also daily polls to engage the community, and we have noticed that a new event is being created every single day, where people are directed to the website to buy tickets. Clever.

One relatively new Facebook feature which Wimbledon is effectively using is the hashtag functionality. No prizes for guessing that the most used hashtag on the Wimbledon Facebook page is, of course, #Wimbledon.

Twitter

As of today, Wimbledon currently has 581, 840 Twitter followers, and although this is substantially less than the 1, 206, 018 likes on Facebook, there certainly seems to be a lot of engagement.

In addition to creating hashtags on a daily basis to engage their users in topical conversation (e.g. #Wimbledon, #tennis, and #SW19) one of the most interesting aspects of Wimbledon's Twitter output is Twitter's 'Magic Mirror'.

First used at The Oscars earlier this year, the mirror, which will be placed where only players can access it, will give tennis fans the chance to see behind-the-scenes photos at SW19. Once the photo has been taken, the images will automatically be posted on Wimbledon's official Twitter account, accompanied by the hashtags #TwitterMirror and #Wimbledon.

iPad App

Last, but certainly not least, is Wimbledon's brand-new iPad app, which is available from iTunes.

The app, The Championships, Wimbledon 2013, allows users to navigate around the grounds via a photographic map, zooming in on specific courts to get updates on the state of play.

The app also provides live scores, results and stats, draws and play schedules, profiles of players, live radio, and a live video show with interviews, highlights and features on the tournament.

Other features of the app include live time lapse images from the grounds, favourite player performance alerts, fan feedback, and much more.

With so many different ways of connecting and sharing your experience of Wimbledon, be it at home or at SWG3, we think they are most definitely social media ready - and we're already looking forward to seeing what tricks they have up their sleeves in the coming weeks.

Do you think the the use of social media will enhance your experience of Wimbledon? Is there anything else social media related that has impressed you this year at Wimbledon? Let us know over the next couple of weeks on Facebook and Twitter, or of course, you can also leave a comment on the blog.

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your online community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

    

  

June New Media Breakfast - ROI of a 'free' strategy demonstrated

    

  

How "free" can transform your marketing in a digital world and the ROI of a 'free' strategy demonstrated

Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow

Date: Friday 28th June 2013

Time: 7.45 for 8am

Those who have attended New Media Breakfasts in the past will have heard Gordon White and other presenters saying,

"The more you give, the more you get".  

Or, will have heard them explain the value in sharing knowledge as part of a Content Marketing Strategy.  

It's something the New Media Breakfast presenters have been very keen to promote in the past even though it is a radical concept. Most people still want to get something in return for their information; it could be you want people to pay to access your content or as simple as requiring an email address from someone before they get your eBook - we say publish it, get it out there and things will start to happen for you.

At this breakfast we highlight the change in economics (as championed by Chris Anderson in his book "Free: the future of a radical price") that makes these business models possible. We'll take a look at how marketers and business owners can use “free” to gain the attention of both mass market consumer or niche business-to-business audiences.

On the flip side we will also examine how “free” could broadside your business if you don't embrace it yourself.

(Of course, being the New Media Breakfast, we’ll link the concept of “free” into social media marketing.)

About the Speaker

Tim Barlow from Attacat is a regular speaker at the New Media Breakfast and we know him well for his insights into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and analytics in particular, garnered from his 15 years of online marketing experience. But as success in SEO and marketing in general requires increasing levels of innovation, it is unsurprising that he has a view on online business models and an interest in disruptive innovation. He promises to mention the word “algorithm” no more than three times (though he will expect a round of applause if he manages it!).

HOW TO BOOK
Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 28th June 2013
Time: 7.35 for 8am

BOOK FOR NEW MEDIA BREAKFAST GLASGOW HERE:

No.29 MEMBERS GO FREE 

If you are a 29 Member you can attend the breakfast free of charge. Please email fiona@fatbuzz.com with you membership number and he will add you to the attendance list.

We hope you can make it along to this event. If so, I look forward to seeing you on the day.

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your online community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

    

  

A look at Responsive Design

If you’re a regular reader of the fatBuzz blog, you will have worked your way through plenty of content regarding the evolution of social media; how it affects our every day lives, the way it has changed for the better or for worse, as well as updates on some of our clients' progress.

However, rather than focus on social media in today's blog post, one of our web developers, Jon, will share his thoughts on one of the key aspects that differentiates one of our latest web projects - a new website for clothing brand, Punk Royal - from most others. Responsive Design. 

Over the years, the way that we view websites has changed massively. If we go back 20 years to the early 90s, you had one platform (the Personal Computer) in which to view Internet content, through either Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or the Netscape browser, which is essentially now known as Firefox.

Building content was pretty straightforward; you had two browsers, rendering content in a very similar fashion, so what you designed on your home/work machine is what all your customers/followers would see on their machine. It was a simple time to be a web developer

Fast forward ten years to the millennium and things had really progressed. We had more browsers, more styling techniques, and ultimately, more permutations to design and build for. You could say this is where things started to get tricky, to make sure that 100% of your audience would see your site, or more specifically, your content, as you intended them to see it.

If we jump forward to the present day, the number of permutations has increased exponentially. We not only have multiple browsers to contend with, we also have multiple platforms, with the introduction of tablets and smartphones. It goes without saying that your site will display on all of the above, but, of course, you want it optimised for your audience. This is where responsive design comes in.

The main premise of having a responsive site is the ability to have one content management system and one set of content, but essentially a different looking site optimised to whatever device you’re viewing on. Roughly five years ago, we did have the option of creating mobile specific sites, but generally, this required having two separate sites, separate domains with two separate lots of content, which when scaled up, is not at all manageable.

Simply using CSS, we can now change how a user views a site, purely based on the width of the device that they are using. This then allows us to optimise websites for not only mobile devices, but for desktop machines too; a category that Punk Royal falls into, with its maximum width sitting at 1440 pixels, generally considered too big for a standard site brochure site.

However, the main target is still mobile devices. 28% of Internet traffic is from a mobile device and a new smartphone is bought every 2 seconds on eBay! And in 2011, mobile transactions accounted for $241billion worth of sales on online stores[1]. Just think of the customers that you could be missing out on if your site isn’t optimised for their use?

The site will change depending on your device - view it for yourself 

The Punk Royal site was built responsively in conjunction with the Twitter Bootstrap, an HTML/CSS framework that helps to maintain cross browser compatibility, something that is equally essential to ensuring as many people as possible see your site as intended. There are essentially two different ways of building responsively; either with breakpoints or as a fluid site.

A site with breakpoints is pretty self explanatory, in that when the browser width gets to point A, it changes, point B, changes again etc. A fluid site constantly changes width and size as the browser size gets smaller and covers every pixel between the maximum and minimum size. If you drag the browser windows horizontally to as small a size as possible, you will understand what is meant.

Building a site with fluidity is very time consuming and requires a lot of patience but it does create the best result in terms of creating something that will optimize to any screen (in the case of Punk Royal, screens between 320 pixels and 1440 pixels wide).

The key part of the site was the navigation and how to handle this on a mobile browser. When a website has only a handful of links, the need to change the menu is probably minimal, however to future proof things, you need to consider that somewhere in the future, further pages may be added and the menu may evolve. This is why with the Punk Royal site, the menu evolves to a dropdown when viewed on mobile devices, essentially removing any restrictions from the design element.

We (well, I...) look at the Punk Royal site most days with pride in what we’ve created, and probably spend a bit too much time moving the browser back and forth to watch the elements morph into their new home. If you didn’t before, you really need to try it!

Hopefully you have something to think about regarding the importance of responsive design and the need to meet as much of your target audience as possible. Remember to have a look at the new Punk Royal website, on either your desktop, tablet or mobile device, and let us know what you think!

If you want to discuss responsive design further, or indeed any aspect of web design or development, just give myself or David a call on 0141 427 0727.

[1] http://mobilewebrockstar.com/13-killer-mobile-web-usage-statistics/

Do #UWANTIT?

If you follow the fatBuzz blog, you might have read Graeme's post about Twitter infiltrating the music industry?

Either the use of the hashtag or the half naked girls in Robin Thicke's music video Blurred Lines helped make the song such a huge success - and now the advertising industry are following suit.

Beats by Dre have just recently launched a new product called 'Beats Pill' and have joined together with RadioShack to create an advert which certainly attracts your attention with the scantily clad girls from Thicke's Blurred Lines music video dancing around with a rather suggestive looking speaker...

The hashtags used in the ad are #UWANTIT and #BEATSPILL, and with a quick search on Twitter, you will literally see hundreds of tweets about the Beats Pill. The use of the hashtags in this ad have certainly created a buzz about the product online and have helped raise awareness about it.

We think this advert further highlights not only the power of Twitter but the power of the hashtag.

 

 Let us know what you think of it? Is it a good example of traditional and new media integrating?

Twitter Infiltrating Music Videos

In the world of social media, Twitter is undoubtedly one of the most powerful tools. What started off as a platform for people to communicate what they’re doing to each other has become a massively successful business tool.

Unsurprisingly, Twitter has also infiltrated the music industry, and fatBuzz Account Manager, Graeme, has noticed a song currently riding high in the charts that has a rather interesting video accompanying it.

Being a keen music enthusiast (and DJ in some of Glasgow’s premier nightclubs), Graeme decided to share his thoughts with you...

I’m sure we’ve all seen TV shows embrace Twitter. Quite often, you’ll see a hashtag appear at the bottom of your screen during a show, hoping to encourage viewers to hop onto their computer/smartphone/tablet and get the show ‘trending’.

I suppose it’s a form of advertising, and a way of justifying the price advertisers pay to advertise during these shows - or even the prices brands will pay for product placement.

It now seems this phenomenon has made its way into the music industry.

First we had The Voice judge, Will.I.Am, release a track with Justin Bieber, entitled #thatPOWER, but someone’s decided to take it a little bit further.

Now, I’m not sure if many of you who pay attention to today’s popular music, or the Official Charts for that matter, however anyone who does, will know of the song I’m about to discuss.

Currently, the number one song in the UK charts is Blurred Lines, by Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and rapper, T.I. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I love this song.

The video for the song (which you can view below) features the three artists dancing and messing about, accompanied by young, scantily-clad females. Interestingly though, they’re also surrounded by a regular series of hashtags; #THICKE and #BLURREDLINES.

Although there are only two hashtags used in the video, what I found staggering was the amount of times they appear in the video.

I actually sat and counted (outwith work hours, of course...) as many as five hashtags in the first 30 seconds of the video, with the entire video displaying a total of 30.

The Blurred Lines hashtag only appears three times - it’s the RnB singer’s hashtagged surname that appears most often. At the end of the video, it’s even simply displayed on a black screen, making sure viewers are left in no doubt as to who sang the song, and how to talk about him on Twitter.

Now, as Mashable explains, hashtags don't traditionally appear in music videos, especially as big or as frequently as #Thicke appears in Blurred Lines. So, why now?

It could simply be a case of his management deploying a pretty crude way of building his Twitter following. Or it could be a ploy to raise awareness of Thicke being ‘back’ with new material, and more importantly, to get his name trending in the run-up to the release of his new album.

I’m not even sure if these hashtags have helped him gain his number one status in the charts - his first ever UK number one - but put it this way, they certainly didn’t hurt his chances, did they?

We’d love to know what you all think of Thicke’s use of hashtags. Was it a social media success? Have you seen any other good examples of artists using social media in music videos?

Let us know on Twitter, and heck, you might even want to use the hashtag #THICKE!

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your on-line community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

Social Media Podcast 55 - Social Media and Employment Law - Are you taking the proper precautions?

The latest installment of the Social Media Podcast saw Innes Clark, Partner and Head of Employment Law at Morton Fraser, and Gordon White discuss the world of social media when intertwined with the world of employment.

Innes touched upon many topics - some of which even took Gordon by surprise.

For instance, we’ve all heard of employers wanting to take ownership of contacts an employee has amassed during his/her time with the company. Many, including Gordon, thought this would be rather hard to enforce, but Innes explained how such an occurrence could take place.

The example of contact ownership is just one instance. Innes told of how most employers aren’t actually up to speed with social media - with only around 25% of UK businesses having a social media policy.

Moreover, one of the most commonly used sentences on Twitter was also touched upon - views are my own. Innes explained how such disclaimers aren’t as watertight as you would think.

During the podcast, a number of case studies were touched upon, including one of a teacher in America who was fired because she refused to give the headteacher her Facebook login details - something which is actually against Facebook’s terms of use.

However, such an event shouldn’t happen, especially with the likes of data protection laws protecting the public in the UK.

Did you know more and more employers are using social media as a means to find suitable employees? The number of of potential employers using social media to influence their hiring decisions is incredibly disproportionate to that of candidates who don’t think what they post and tweet is relevant.

This shows more people need to take social media more seriously - either if you’re job-hunting, or currently in a job.

There are many other points and pitfalls which Innes and Gordon’s discussion touched upon. To listen to the podcast, just click on the player below.

If you’ve any other points or tips on this subject that haven’t been covered, feel free to leave a comment below letting us know what they are.

We hope you enjoy the podcast, if you have any comments to make or topics you would like us to discuss, please leave them here on the blog or on our Facebook Page.

Play the podcast here:

Subscribe/Download Social Media Podcast on iTunes

Would you like a presentation on social media and customer service?
We're offering a range of bespoke or generic presentations on the topic of social media and customer service, if you would like to find out more please go to the following link: Are you prepared to lose control?

Have you listened to the digital copyright podcast?

We continue to see people using images, video content and other files taken from the internet without consideration to potential copyright issues. We would encourage all of our listeners to download Social Media Podcast 50 which clearly outlines what you should and shouldn't do with images sourced online. Find it on iTunes now.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE US TO TALK ABOUT?
If there is a specific topic you would like us to cover in a future podcast please let us know. You can email gordon@fatbuzz.com or send us a message on Twitter @MediaPodcast or, you can post it as a comment on the Social Media Podcast Facebook page.

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your on-line community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.