September New Media Breakfast: Online Competitions and Promotions

    

  

ONLINE COMPETITIONS AND PROMOTIONS
Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 27th September 2013
Time: 7.30 for 8am

Competitions are a great way to generate awareness, extend your reach and build a community but there are also problems associated with this kind of promotion.

Facebook have recently announced changes that make it much simpler to run competitions and promotions, but is this necessarily a good thing? Will businesses run more competitions in pursuit of a greater number of followers or, will it lead to more spamming, fake accounts and irrelevant followers?

We are constantly asked for advice about online competitions and how they should be set up and managed. Very often this advice is sought because the terms and conditions are not clear and open to misinterpretation but the more important question is why are you doing it? Too many organisations and businesses run competitions and promotions without any clear understanding of their objectives - they have no strategy.

We strongly believe competitions and promotions have there place in online marketing, raising awareness and community building however there must be a purpose to running them and some clearly defined aims and objectives.

The September New Media Breakfast will take a look at online competitions and provide some advice about best practice for your future competitions.

We will consider the following:

• Is your competition within the rules of the platform/s you're using?
• Is the competition going to achieve your objectives?
• Is it going to build a relevant community?
• Will it extend the reach and build awareness with relevant people?
• Will you be able to capture data?
• Are you using the right platform/s?
• How will you promote your competition?
• How to get the most from the campaign post-competition

These are just some of the things we will explore at the breakfast. If you have anything you specifically would like us to cover about online competitions please email us at hello@fatbuzz.com and we'll try to include it in the presentation.

THE SPEAKER
The September New Media Breakfast will be presented by Gordon White, Managing Director, fatBuzz Ltd.

HOW TO BOOK
Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 27th September 2013
Time: 7.30 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.

    

  

Facebook change the rules...but should you change your strategy?

    

  

Two weeks ago I announced at the Edinburgh New Media Breakfast that the September breakfast topic would be about Competitions - we wanted to help people understand more about the strategy, purpose and goals when running competitions.

The decision to do this was the subject of much debate in the office, primarily because of the difficulty interpreting the Facebook rules about competitions and promotions. We knew it would be a potentially difficult topic but we decided to tackle it anyway.

I spent much of last weekend reading up various resources specifically about the Facebook rules and finding examples of competitions and promotions that were compliant and non-compliant with the rules.

Last night they changed the rules! Read the announcement from Facebook

Facebook announced significant changes to the rules last night making it a whole lot easier to run competitions and promotions in the future. Never mind, it will give us much more time to focus on the real issue - how to get value from your competitions. Too many organisations are running competitions with no real strategy or purpose, often all they are doing is building an irrelevant following and missing the opportunity to capture data or create meaningful engagement.

Details of the next New Media Breakfast for Edinburgh are already available and the Glasgow details will be posted soon - first we have to do the Pinterest and Instagram breakfast this Friday. Interestingly, both these platforms offer brilliant opportunities for competitions and promotions and real engagement - why not come along and find out how?

Here is a link to details about Friday's breakfast or you can use the button below to book your place ...More details

Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 30th August 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.

    

  

What did Edinburgh think of the Pinterest / Instagram breakfast?

    

  

We are delighted with the response to the Instagram and Pinterest presentation in Edinburgh last week.  So much so that I posted a comment on Facebook earlier today say I couldn't recall a previous breakfast where so many people appear to have taken action and either set up accounts or reviewed what they were already using them for.  

You can see below the comments from three of the attendees, all of them found it useful.  Joanna Goddard has even indicated that she has made new connections via Pinterest...and she operates in the B2B sector, as indeed do Belinda Roberts and Gill Eastgate!  Perhaps this is further proof that we now operate in a P2P world.

I must admit, it wasn't until I started to put the presentation together that I realised the full potential and power of both platforms.  I also realised at that stage that the two platforms, although both image based, are completely different, I could probably even justify a presentation for each.  Not only are they sufficiently different, there is so much to talk about with each that they both warrant more time.

I hope the Glasgow New Media Breakfast attendees get as much from the breakfast on Friday 30th August and, if you haven't booked yet, I would strongly advise you to come along.  Please see the original breakfast blog post below for full details.

Instagram and Pinterest - Using image based platforms for social media marketing

Venue: 29 Members Club

Date: Friday 30th August 2013

Time: 7.45 for 8am

Images create more engagement than any other content on social media platforms; people love to share, like and comment on images on just about any topic you can imagine. Sharing images is not a new phenomenon, people have sharing images since ancient times via cave drawings, now advances in mobile technology make it possible to capture, upload and share images and video very easily, even whilst on the move.

Instagram and Pinterest are among the fastest growing social media platforms ever. Launched in November 2010, Instagram reached 100 million users by April 2013 - that figure has officially risen to 130 million users in the last 3 months. With the recent addition of video functionality, the user numbers are set to sore once again. Also launched in 2010, Pinterest boasts some 70 million users and the figure is growing substantially every month.

Both platforms offer great marketing opportunities for all kinds of businesses and the August New Media Breakfast will examine both and explore how their functionality can be used to raise awareness and create engagement for your brand.

THE SPEAKER

The August New Media Breakfast will be presented by Gordon White, Managing Director, fatBuzz Ltd.

HOW TO BOOK
Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 30th August 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.

    

  

Social Media Podcast 58: Crowd funding is blooming whilst Channel 4 television exposes some ridiculous crowd sourcing

In Social Media Podcast No.58 has a fairly full team in attendance; Gordon White is joined by Derek Howie, Graeme Geddes and Malcolm White from fatBuzz and, Michelle Rodger and Jamie Moore from Bloom VC.

Michelle explains the various crowd funding models and helps us to understand the key differences of each.  She also talks about the valuable role social media plays in the promotion and ultimate success of any crowd funding project.  

As usual, we have lots of laughs as we take a fairly light-hearted but informative look at what's been happening in the world of social media.  We did have a lot to get through with some great questions coming from listeners posting their questions on Facebook and Twitter.

Here are some of the topics we cover in the podcast:

• New laws in America to stop employers asking potential employees for social media passwords ...READ ARTICLE
• Channel 4's recent programme - Celebs, Brands and Fake Fans
• Buying Likes and followers - what's the point?
• Facebook Hashtags - Are they a good or bad addition to the platform?
• New Facebook page layout - does anyone know the protocol for the roll out?
• Facebook announce they will announce!
• Facebook Table Booking ...READ ARTICLE
• 29 Member's Club - Their new Instagram Menu
• Facebook VIP - Verified pages for celebrities - is this a move to challenge Twitter for high profile users ...READ ARTICLE
• Top 10 Celebrities on Facebook ...READ ARTICLE
• What makes a video go viral - Can anyone really answer this?
• Setting aims and objectives on social media is the only real way to measure success
• Bebo is set to return and the whiteboard seems to be set to reappear with it! ...READ ARTICLE
• Social Outreach - How to attract key influencers to your community
• Can online tools ever replace one-to-one engagement?
• Klout - Does it have any real clout?
• Crowd funding - Why is the FCA interested in crowd funding? ...READ ARTICLE
• How can social media help to drive crowd funding projects?
• How crowd funding a project brings more than just monetary rewards

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.