Natalie Kitcher is Social Media Manager at Simplyhealth and (full disclosure) is a former member of the Headstream. We spoke to her about how the insurance provider approaches content planning and how the team stays on top of content opportunities with offices spread out around the country. Continue Reading
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This is the second post of our conversation with Bing’s Dave Coplin about the search engine’s approach to social media. Continue Reading
Yorkshire Tea has been around since the 1970s and is owned by Taylors of Harrogate. We spoke to Brand Communications Manager Dom Dwight about how the tea brand creates the right social media blend.
In today’s post, Dom explains how Yorkshire Tea uses active listening and an agile content plan to reward loyalty and attract new tea drinkers. Continue Reading
By Tom Chapman, Head of Innovation for Lawton Communications Group
This article originally appeared in the Social Brands 100.
The next generation of social media is already being defined. Amongst the key trends explored below it is apparent that there are two main drivers: technology and sophisticated data.
Brands will need to keep pace by evolving flexible strategies, up-skilling teams, and experimenting with communications designed to put the customer first. Continue Reading
ARKive: Driving engagement through content
This article originally appeared in the Social Brands 100.
Ranking: 6
Panel Score: 87
Data Score: 145
Social Brand Score: 232
- No. 1 charity brand for overall performance on platforms.
I’ve been hearing random snorts of laughter around the office all week. It’s generally because someone’s just spotted the latest from #snakeonthetown on Twitter.
For those who haven’t heard about New York’s most intrepid snake, an adolescent Egyptian Cobra escaped from Bronx Zoo’s reptile enclosure last Friday and has yet to be found. The Zoo released a statement on 26 March, all as one might expect. However, by Monday the dastardly cobra popped up! only on Twitter.
For the last few days, @bronxzooscobra has been slithering around the big apple and tweeting about her experiences along the way. Within about 24 hours, she had almost 40,000 followers and #snakeonthetown was busy. As of this morning, she’s got over 185,000 followers, @BronxZookeeper, @bronx_mongoose, and @bronxzoocobrany (can Twitter please verify the correct fake account soon?) are tweeting away creating a huge amount of buzz and entertaining thousands of people.
Strangely, the Bronx Zoo is not capitalising on this PR bonanza at all. This must be the biggest story they have had in years, but they’ve only tweeted twice since Monday, only one of those acknowledging the story. Other brands, however are making the most of things; @HiltonNewYork has offered the cobra use of its Penthouse Sssssuite, @sesamestreet has asked someone to give the snake directions to Sesame Street, and on our side of the Atlantic, @BristolOldVic has recommended a play she might see.
At Headstream, we call this meme riding, when brands capitalise on social currency that has already gained momentum by adopting the concept for a campaign. When done well it can work to great advantage for brands and it’s a shame the Bronx Zoo hasn’t grabbed this opportunity with both, um, fangs.
Chris Buckley spoke at the IAB‘s Social Media Week event yesterday. Here are his slides (with notes).
With a Little Help From my Friends: What we can learn from real life relationships
http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=iabsmwwithscript-110211075951-phpapp02&stripped_title=with-a-little-help-from-my-friends-what-we-can-learn-from-real-life-relationships&userName=Headstream
http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=iabsmwwithscript-110211075951-phpapp02&stripped_title=with-a-little-help-from-my-friends-what-we-can-learn-from-real-life-relationships&userName=Headstream
View more presentations from Headstream.
A core part of any social media strategy is the content element. Whether the brand is adopting various outposts or embarking on an influencer network programme a well thought out content strategy and plan is going to be important, in fact if the brand is doing both of these plus has a website, a comprehensive content strategy is critical.
To formulate a content strategy can be a difficult process partly due to the many considerations and partly due to the number of stakeholders. So, to help our clients we have a simple 9 step systematic process.
First off we suggest setting some principles, this allows for a healthy discussion around authenticity, transparency and humility as well as the clients views on engagement.
Next we get into the ‘Why’, clarifying objectives, linking them with appropriate metrics and if possible setting targets.
‘What’ comes next covering stage 3 Substance and stage 4 Sources. Substance focuses the mind on what topics, subjects and point of views the brand wants to have as well as considering the type of social currency value – entertainment, useful, monetary, information or personal value.
Sources looks at who is going to be creating or producing this content, from employees to agencies to crowd-sourcing.
Next we get into the ‘How’, who’s going to be managing the content, which social and digital channels will the content be going out thru, which formats are most appropriate and a schedule over an agreed time period.
Lastly, with active listening in place we are able to constantly review the conversational effect of our content against our objectives and the brand will be able to respond in accordance with their engagement policy.
