Posts by Rich:
Facebook to make job hunting Social
September 17th, 2012Facebook’s widely anticipated job portal will launch on the back of their successful joint foray into job advertising with the US Department of Labor. If recruitment focussed sites like LinkedIn, Seek and Monster aren’t worried, they should be. A strong push into classified advertising, starting with jobs, is a logical play for Facebook and one which when combined with the networking capability of Facebook will be a game changer for online recruitment.
Social media is an indisputable phenomenon. One in every four minutes spent online in Australia is now spent on a social site. Facebook alone has more than 900 million members worldwide; 11 million are Australian and 75% of these members visit the site every day.
Facebook’s users are connected to 170 friends on average and spend over seven hours each month on the site, averaging 20 minutes on every visit. Between them, they upload 250 million photos a day to Facebook and ‘Like’ 80 Pages.
But will we connect Facebook with job seeking? What do you think?
Read the rest of this article at http://bit.ly/Qkg25o
Share and Share aLike
August 27th, 2012Social Media has fundamentally changed the manner in which we consume and share media and one of the biggest shifts is towards the consumption of video online. Internet video now accounts for 40% of consumer internet traffic and is predicted to rise to 62% by 2015 (Source; Reproductions).
YouTube now serves 4 billion global online video views each day, a 25% increase over the past eight months which aggregates to over 1 trillion video playbacks per annum or, according to Pingdom, 140 for every person on Earth.
In Australia alone, ComScore has 11 million Internet users watching an average of 10 hours of online video each month, so what is the best approach to creating video content that users will want to watch and share?
With over 48 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute, creating content which people will want to share and harnessing the potential of personal referral is vital and according to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, video content which is inspiring is highly likely to be shared through Facebook.
This is great news for corporate marketers keen to harness the power of video. Corporates that don’t have a youth oriented brand may struggle to create hilarious and/or shocking video content as their brands may be too conservative or risk averse. Inspirational content on the other hand is often much more achievable.
What’s a great video that you’ve seen recently that you’ve shared or had sent to you?
All Wrapped up
August 4th, 2012The latest social innovation, Social Gifting, arrived in Australia this week with the launch of Wrapp. Founded in Sweden last year, Wrapp allows users to give their Facebook friends gift cards valid at a wide range of local retailers. Some of the foundation retail partners in Australia include Roses Only, La Senza, Lorna Jane, Mossimo and The Men’s Shop.
According to Wrapp, we spend about $2.5billion per year in Australia on gift cards and they’re going to make it easier for us to decide who to buy for and which gift card to get.
All wrapped up!
At first view Wrapp seems to have it all wrapped up (pun intended!)
The platform integrates seamlessly with Facebook and instantly prompts purchase based on upcoming birthdays, which is now good news for at least one of my Facebook friends! The option to send a free gift card with up to $20 value is also a great entry point.
Check it out for yourself and sign up at www.wrapp.com/au
Microsoft launches new social network
May 22nd, 2012Microsoft Research’s Fuse Labs has this weekend released So.cl (designed to be pronounced social)
This newest of social networks is apparently aimed at students. Any similarity to Facebook’s early years is surely circumstantial and in a sign of the times, So.cl even allows you to sign in with Facebook Connect. Targeting students clearly did Facebook no harm, but is So.cl a social networking play or a response to the search potential of Google+? G+ has really struggled to excite users and the number of accounts appears artificially boosted by Gmail, so is So.cl likely to have it any easier?
Check out the new network in town at http://www.so.cl/
What do you think? Search play, Facebook clone or something new?
New business wins for social media specialists TWO Social
March 28th, 2012Social media specialists, TWO Social, have announced they’ll be working with Konica Minolta and Elastoplast on exciting new projects this year.
Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta has engaged TWO Social to develop the social media element of their new Office Hero campaign launching later this month.
TWO Social have worked with Konica Minolta on a number of pure social media projects, most recently on their Show Your Colours campaign during the 2011 Rugby World Cup. However, in a first for Konica Minolta, Office Hero will be integrated across all marketing channels with TWO Social charged with creating its YouTube, Facebook and Twitter components.
The cross-channel approach by Konica Minolta is testament to TWO Social’s mantra that brands are no longer relying upon traditional channels alone to communicate effectively with all audiences.
Elastoplast
TWO Social has begun working again with Beiersdorf’s Elastoplast brand, The Official Supplier of Tapes and Bandages to the Australian 2012 Olympic Team to generate exposure for the brand leading into the 2012 London Olympics.
The reappointment follows Elastoplast Sports highly successful Ultimate Netball Fan competition, developed by TWO Social leading into the Netball World Cup in Singapore last year.
TWO Social have been briefed to design and promote a similar ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity for Olympic fans. The campaign is expected to launch in April.
Is the Guardian TVC the best ever?
March 2nd, 2012Is the Guardian TVC the best ever?
The Guardian (a national newspaper in the UK) has returned to TV for the first time in several decades.
The Guardian has a history of creating ground breaking creative, which it has done under the positioning of ‘the whole picture’ for some time.
The paper aired this TVC for the first time on Wednesday:
For me it is engaging, it is thought provoking, it creates conversation by illustrating conversation and is sure to win gongs.
More than that, if this isn’t the best TVC you have ever seen what is?
Don’t sign up for Google+…yet!
February 1st, 2012Is Google+ is ‘a bit like Facebook’?
The following link is to an opinion piece written for Adnews looking at the relative merits of Google+ and whether brands should engage now, later or not at all.
www.adnews.com.au/adnews/opinion-brands-don-t-sign-up-for-google-yet
Also, the following link is to an interesting and alternative view from Mike Zeederberg
Certainly an opportunity which will continue to develop over time.
2011 Xmas Quiz
December 2nd, 2011It won’t be long until the big man in the red suit pops down the chimney which means it’s time for the annual Daemon Xmas Quiz!
In line with the tradition of recent years, the 2011 edition asks you to guess the famous brands. Each of this year’s is synonymous with an Aussie Xmas.
Add your answers into the attached PDF and send it in when you’re done.
There’s a case of Aussie wine on offer to the winner. In the event of a tie, the first answer sheet submitted will be the winner.
Best of luck
Google+ brands = ?
November 9th, 2011This week Google launched Google+ Pages the entry point for brands and businesses. The future of Google+ will be determined by how well brands adopt the platform and at this point the initial reaction is underwhelming. There are a couple of issues that Google will have to address as a priority before most organisations will launch a Page, most notably that each Page can only have one administrator and that position is non-transferrable, a significant organisational risk if the administrator leaves the business for any reason.
That aside, undoubtedly an issue that Google will remedy quickly, many organisations and brands waited a long time to develop a presence in Facebook and on Twitter and they are unlikely to wait as long to launch into Google+.
Getting into Google+ early and staking a claim for your business or brand is an easy and cost effective proposition and at this stage something which could easily be managed as an extension of a Facebook presence.
Google+ will take a long time to compete directly with Facebook, if it ever really does, however, its ability to directly influence natural search results and therefore change the face of SEO is still a major weapon in the social networking war.
Not as LinkedIn as he thought!
November 9th, 2011One of the moot points surrounding the juxtaposition of business and personal use of LinkedIn has been at least partly decided (or arguably complicated) by a recent decision from the High Court in the UK.
A former consultant of the recruitment firm Hays left the business and started his own agency. Thus far, not an uncommon situation in an industry sector which has very low barriers to entry and has consistently trained its own competitors.
Hays argued that the consultant had connected on LinkedIn with clients and candidates whilst employed by the firm and that these contacts were the intellectual property of the firm. The Court has ordered that the consultant hand over to his former employer all of his LinkedIn contacts and any business generated through those contacts.
The consultant in question argued that Hays encouraged personal use of LinkedIn as a networking tool in an industry sector which prides itself on knowledge and contacts. In contrast, Hays seems to have successfully argued that the personal connections he generated while in their employ are not really his.
Recruitment is an industry that has no tangible assets and each firm effectively trades on three key assets, the awareness and positioning of their brand; the knowledge and skills of their people; and the strength and depth of their database.
LinkedIn has long been seen as a threat to the latter and it seems that Hays in particular is taking this threat very seriously.
What do you think this decision means for business use of Social Media and where does the line between personal and business use blur?
