This week in Social

Happy Australia Day! While to some our national day is all about the Hottest 100, Big Day Out or riding inflatable oversized Havianas on our beaches, to the community managers of some of our major media outlets it’s a headache as the public takes to their social networks to share their opinions on sensitive topics. 9 News* and news.com.au both had to do some damage control on their Facebook pages as tensions flared.

Top news of the week

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google + profile image specs

This could be the most frustrating time to set up social media accounts – Twitter is mid changeover to a new look, Facebook’s Timeline is ready to drop for brands any day now, YouTube just had a refresh and Google+ is new on the scene. So if you’re looking for profile image specs or background specs for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Google+, here’s your one stop shop!

Facebook

Profile image: 540 x 180            Thumbnail: 200 wide (allow 12 for border)

Profile stream: 97 x 68 (5 images required)

Landing tab image: 800 x 500

NB: Facebook will be changing from the existing brand page layout to the new Timeline layout soon. Artwork will need to be changed then. Expected (not confirmed) specs for this layout are:

Cover photo: 850 x 315

Profile picture: 180 x (max) 540

Twitter

Profile image: 128 x 128 (scaled down to 48 x 48 in stream)

Larger than 48k but no more than 700k

Background: 1280 width, 66 – 194 for the left hand side of the background [Twitter fixed width of 865px]

Smaller than 800k, left aligned

Hat tip to Banyan Branch for some of these details

NB: Twitter will be changing from the existing standard profile page layout to a new enhanced layout soon. Artwork will need to be changed then. Confirmed specs for this layout are:

Profile image: 835 x 90 header image

https://business.twitter.com/advertise/enhanced-profile/

YouTube

Channel background: 1500px and 2000px wide, 1200px and 2500px tall

Smaller than 256k

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=1735230

Google+

Profile image: 192 x 202

Scrapbook stream: 126 x 126 (5 images required)

The fight against trolls and the bystander effect

Social media isn’t all lolcats and Farmville. On Wednesday a Melbourne teenager posted a suicide note on Tumblr and her followers sprung into action. Using their social media stalking powers for good, several Melbourne and Sydney based tweeps found links to other social accounts and therefore relatives who could help the girl. Names of relatives were identified and contact was made through Facebook and Victorian Police. Radio station 3AW also picked up the cause. The teen was found conscious and taken to hospital. Later that night she updated her Tumblr from hospital with an image of the equipment monitoring her life.

While the Twitter crew were unrelenting in their mission to make her safe, her update highlighted the cruel taunts of online trolls:

Update:
So I’m alive.
I’m in hospital.
The police came to my house and found me.. well,
lets just say it wasn’t a pretty scene.
so yeah, I’m so sorry to the people I worried.
and thankyou to the people telling me to hurry up and kill myself already.
It’s really just what I needed right now.
I’ll keep you updated.

 The guilt and pain was clearly top of mind; as an after-thought she posted again:

Also, thank you so much to everyone who sent me a message.
You have no idea how much it means to me.
I wish I could respond to all of them but there’s 1000+
and I wouldn’t know where to begin.
But seriously, from the bottom of my heart,
thank you. 

The incident highlights a growing concern – as younger generations use social networks as an extension of regular communication, their online relationships can be influenced by a new enemy. Multiple enemies. The troll who provokes and attacks out of a sick desire for conflict. The cyberbully whose taunts are unrelenting and further reaching than a note passed in class or graffiti on a bathroom wall. The overexposed bystander who decides this isn’t their fight, there’s nothing they can do, or that this is just a selfish generation’s exhaustive and empty cry for help.

I am ridiculously proud of friends involved in finding the teen’s family so they could get police to her before it was too late. I’m grateful that the issue came to the attention of those people, and not an apathetic group of bystanders unwilling to recognise or accept the severity of the situation. I am impressed with the duty of care shown by 3AW by not just reporting the story as breaking news and taking the responsibility to remove tweets after hearing of her safety (also encouraging the same for others) to avoid confusion. I am sickened that bullying and apathy have found this common breeding ground that can be even more damaging than ever before and have spent many an hour trying to find the beginnings of an idea that’s going to stop it. I’m a little lost. Despite the fact that there’s still a long road ahead for the teen, yesterday’s outcome – and the fact that she has an opportunity to walk that road – I have hope that it’ll be found and an understanding that it will take a lot of effort.

ROI and social media smackdown

There’s been a rather heated debated about ROI and social media from Olivier Blanchard,  David Meerman Scott and Matt Ridings.

I’ve used Storify for the highlights but here’s a few links that might get you inspired to jump into the debate.

The points of view:

Social Media ROI Hypocrisy 

Social Media and Return on Investment: Some clarity

There’s no ROI in Social Media Marketing

Twitter accounts:

Olivier Blanchard

David Meerman Scott

Matt Ridings

So are you Team Blanchard or Team Scott? Is there ROI in social media? How do you explain it to your c-level execs?

I’m Team Blanchard. It’s all down to the type of activity, how it matches your objectives and what you actually do to trigger sales. If people are wondering why their Facey page is yet to earn a sale the first place to check is where and when you’ve told people to go and buy your stuff and how they can do it.  In the crush to become oh-so-social and avoid the hard sell too many companies are avoiding the actual sell. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

The story of storytelling

The SBS catchphrase says it all, “6 billion stories and counting”. And with so many stories to tell there is no doubt that there are also billions of different ways to tell a story.

I love this presentation about storytelling. It takes you through quotes from cinematic storytellers, philosphers, branding experts and from the now 7 billion on every day life. Each quote tells its own story, with a carefully chosen visual to support the idea. And the sum of the quotes tells the story of storytelling – its power, relevance and impact.

My favourites?

“Great stories happen to those who can tell them.”

Ira Glass

and

“To be a person is to have a story to tell.”

Isak Dinesen

and

“Stories have power. They delight, enchant, touch, teach, recall, inspire,motivate, challenge. They help us understand. They imprint a picture onour minds. Consequently, stories often pack more punch than sermons. Want to make a point or raise an issue? Tell a story.”

Janet Litherland

Customer service in the cloud

photo credit nateOne on Flickr

I have an ongoing internal battle over the issue of influence. Whether it’s my hesitation about tools like Klout offering product sampling to influential audiences or my concern over customer service teams treating those with large social followings with preferential treatment, there seems to be something amiss with the use of influence in social strategies. So today I was happy to hear that we may be getting closer to linking customer service, social media and influence.

The technology isn’t new but the uptake is slow. Several software companies offer products that can not only provide a link between a customer ID and a social profile but can also assign workflow tasks to customer service staff to reply to the customer if they use a tracked keyword on an identified and linked social account.

Today’s speaker, Ted Bray from software provider Right Now, used the Peter Shankman/Morton’s story as an example of the difference between marketing influence and customer service influence. To further illustrate his point he told us that as a regular Marriott guest, he recently deviated his travel plans and stayed with another hotel chain in Singapore. He tweeted his appreciation of their service and left it as that. Ted’s point was that this was an opportunity for the Marriott team to jump on his disloyalty and show him some love.

What’s new with Facebook

There have been a few changes to Facebook today. Here’s an overview:

Facebook has introduced a Subscribe button

You can now Subscribe to a user’s profile in Facebook without needing to send a friend request. This will only allow you to subscribe to public posts however yesterday Facebook announced improved friends lists as they encourage users to customise individual updates to different groups of people in your life, public no doubt being one of them.

Sponsored Stories will appear in a news feed ticker

As you browse through Facebook you may notice sponsored stories appearing in a news ticker on the right hand side of the page. This and the upcoming in stream advertising will no doubt increase Facebook’s estimated $1.6b ad revenue.

Vanity URLs are now easier to secure

You no longer need 25 fans to secure a vanity URL. Considering even some agencies need to beg and plead their friends to fan a page to get to the 25 mark this will make life a lot easier for most. I’m sure those wanting to squat on URLs of perceived value would have had 25 fake profiles set up to help them out in the first place anyway.

Know how your updates were shared

With an insight that will be making it’s way into social media page reports across the world, Facebook will now post details on how your updates were shared. Now maybe they could throw in some details of click through rates for links shared on Facebook. Please?

 

 

Social media and sampling

It’s a tried and tested marketing tactic to put your product in the hands of your audience. Whether it’s a Calippo sorbet handed out in beach car parks, sausage pieces dangling on the end of a toothpick at the butchers, Pantene passed on to commuters at Town Hall or a Napoleon lipgloss on the back of a magazine – samples make their way into our lives on a regular basis. It’s really no surprise that sampling has made an impact on social media. So how will it work?

To tweet or not to tweet

I kicked off the blog this year by promising to asking a question once a month. Much like my other resolutions, this never really made it past February. Without committing myself to another doomed resolution I’d still like to ask a few questions and open the topic up to debate.

I was catching up on some reading and came across a case study about the social media success of US airline JetBlue. One particular section got me thinking:

I won’t name agencies, but we had a couple of agencies who talked about how adept they were on Facebook and how incredible they were on Twitter, and one of the agencies — it wasn’t probably a day after we met with them — I started getting follows from people in the agencies and they were all from accounts that were created in the last two or three days.

Marty St. George, Senior Vice President, Marketing, JetBlue (source: Mashable)

Do agencies need to tweet to prove they “get” social media?

As the head of digital at H&K Sydney it may surprise you that I don’t think every marketer should be on Twitter. I find people to be apologetic if they explain that they’re not into it. So what? It’s a personal preference to use a social network that is appropriate to your style and your needs. I love it, and I’d love for my interest in it to be contagious but I’m not fussed if someone else doesn’t get it. If Marty St. George had struggled to find on Twitter a representative of the agency in question  I’d be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt – maybe a few key people ran personal accounts and numerous accounts for clients. Of course that wasn’t the case.

From an agency point of view, it would be odd if a good digital agency didn’t have a good digital presence. However marketing is supposed to be about knowing your audience. If clients need help in digital because they don’t understand it themselves, they’re probably not the type to stumble across your blog or follow you on Twitter. There’s a difference between proving yourself to your target audience or advocates and grandstanding in an echo chamber.

So what’s my answer? Yes, to prove you get a social network it would most likely be necessary to be active in that social network. However there’s nothing wrong with having a damn good reason why it’s not appropriate or suitable, as long as you’re happy to admit that.

Would love to hear your thoughts – fire it up in the comments! Do agencies need to tweet to prove they “get” social media?”

Make me a mixed tape

When simplicity inspires creativity the results are always impressive.

We’ve seen artists and bands explore digital opportunities with varying degrees of success, from Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown to Radiohead’s In Rainbows promotion to Lady Gaga style fan engagement strategies to Lily Allen’s MySpace “breakthrough”. They’re testing ways to release their music, to get noticed, to motivate fans to buy their music. The latest effort to make headlines comes from a collaboration between English band Kaiser Chiefs and advertising wunderkind Wieden+Kennedy.

The concept is simple:

1. Make your own Kaiser Chiefs The Future is Medieval mixed tape using 10 out of 20 songs available
2. Design your own cover artwork and promote your awesome album to friends
3. ????
4. Profit (well, £1 for each album you sell)

Love it?