A report from the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), Oxford, Spring 2015
Over four days in Oxford, the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) took place, at the Mathematical Institute. The event sponsors include Facebook and Yahoo and it’s not a huge conference, just over 250 researchers in computer science and social science who gather to “share knowledge, discuss ideas, exchange information, and learn about cutting-edge research in diverse fields with the common theme of online social media.”
I’d stumbled upon the conference whilst reading articles for my PhD. The conference is often in far flung locations (2016 it’s Cologne, 2017 it could be Montreal, Doha or Seattle) and discovered it was taking place in the UK. I managed to attend just one day and sat through 20 presentations. Here’s what I discovered.
Beware of trolls
Justin Cheng of Stanford University and others are researching ‘Antisocial…
Day 1 round-up from Social Media World Forum, June 2015, London
I had the pleasure of attending Day 1 of the Social Media World Forum in London on the 8th June. As you'd expect from an event like this, there was a lot of great stories, insights and new information from the world of social media on topics ranging from humanising your brand and content through to UGC, CGC and online reviews.
Instead of producing a round-up of the individual sessions I attended at #SMWF, I thought it better instead to highlight some of the key themes and trends I took from the event. From day 1 alone I picked up on a number of recurring topics, with the top five including:
Paid amplification vs. organic growth
Reviews, user-generated content (UGC) and community
Rational vs. emotional thinking
Disrupted business models
The power of brand storytelling
1. Paid amplification vs. organic growth
It's been long documented that organic reach on…
It only takes 5 minutes a day on LinkedIn to maximise your presence
Whether you're a new or advanced LinkedIn member, it can be a challenge to make the time to make the most of your account as other priorities arise during the week.
In this infographic Bluewiremedia suggests that with a more focused approach, then all you need is 5 minutes a day to connect, acknowledge or share your content depending on how advanced you are with LinkedIn. We're not sure it's this simple, but hope the tips may spark a change in your behaviour and save you some precious time.
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A reference for designers and social media managers to check their social presence
Prohibition HQ's cheat sheet can save you valuable time if you are looking to optimise your videos and pictures/headers across your social media platforms and not sure on the format and the dimensions for each one. With so many different social streams it can be hard to keep them all optimised to look as good as possible. However it is important to make sure all your accounts do have images with the correct images. If you don't they can look blurred and unprofessional. So this infographic can really help you keep track of what sized images you need for each site.
Have the specifications handy
Like content, it should never stay static on social media, so it's a great infographic to pin on your wall to remind you of the specifications. It covers all formats across 12 social media…
With objective-based campaigns, businesses can promote to directly prompt leads and sales
Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Twitter announcement on objective-based campaigns
You may remember when Twitter started to monetise through offering ads to advertisers, the model was to use paid Promoted Tweets to encourage more followers, but it was lacking a way to directly prompt leads and sales. Then, in 2013 they launched Lead Generation cards that were particularly useful for business-to-business marketing.
Now, in a similar move to Facebook's new Call-to-action buttons, Twitter is making it easier to create ads that enable direct clickthrough to a website to meet objectives for leads and sales. The option is not entirely new since this was originally available in a US beta from August last year, but from 21 May 2015 all advertisers worldwide can use this new feature. For example, a retailer can now setup ads to encourage clickthrough to sale using this approach.
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5 ways to connect on a more personal level across your social media platforms
Establishing a successful social media strategy involves more than just posting the right types of updates about a new product or a service, sharing a piece of relevant information, or accumulating followers. Essentially, it all boils down to human connections, the one thing that most marketers overlook when they plan and execute social media strategies.
If you want to achieve an effective social media strategy with your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn accounts, make sure that you are able to engage and interact with your target audience. Operative word: target audience. In social media marketing, it is not about the quantity, but the quality. You want your followers to be comprised of people who are actually interested in you, your brand, your product or service, or your business.
Being liked or followed by your target niche allows your message…
...and what are the implications for managing social media?
Every wondered how different brands share Twitter followers... or not? Simply Measured have analysed over 100,000 new followers against the top 10 most 'followed brands'.
As you might expect, there is little overlap between unrelated brands such as Disney and Nike. For related brands, there is more similarity. Burberry Twitter followers also tend to be Louise Vuitton fans which you would expect considering their demographics and affluence, though it's interesting that they like Disney.
Looking at Starbucks, they share 16% of their followers with H&M. This is aligned to their core demographics who are aged 18-24 year olds and account for 40% of sales, mirroring H&M's segment which account for 30% of their visitor traffic. So Starbucks now know they share 16% of followers with H&M, their fans are fashion conscious adults and even more…
Creative tips to plan Vine videos for marketing
If you’re a pro marketer, you must already know that the best advertisements are the shortest (usually 30 seconds long). For some reason, (and let’s not blame everything on technology yet) as time goes on and new generations are born, the attention spans seem to be reducing. So, if your customer loves smart phones, uses Netflix, and owns several different portable devices, his attention span may be shorter than you think.
Like any professional marketer, we could use these odd transformations in time to our advantage. How? Think: applications!
You’d want to market where the crowds are, and clearly that’s not the television anymore. Recently, many companies have been using Twitter’s video uploading application Vine to produce and share creative 6-second videos of their products. That’s right. You get only six seconds to make an impact. Used well, it could be the best shortest ad you’ve…
How to add Calls-to-action to your Facebook business page and ads
Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Facebook Help: Enhanced Calls-to-Action for your Adverts
Another day, another update from Facebook.
Today it's a relatively minor ad change.
But an opportunity to remind you about the similar, but more significant change relevant to all page owners, i.e. the ability to add organic call to action button options from your home page which was introduced earlier in 2015.
For example, here is the Smart Insights Facebook page with a 'Sign-up' Call-to-action (CTA) selected.
To learn more about how to implement these company page CTAs, see this Facebook help advice.
Now brands are now given the ability to promote the CTA with an ad. The benefit of this is that you can more prominently drive business outcomes rather than page likes.
Open up Facebook and you'll likely see this:
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How to respond to your Twitter interactions to increase engagement
Twitter users have high expectations and if you have a Twitter presence, regardless of whether you are using it as a platform for customer service or brand awareness, then it's important to respond quickly and appropriately, or it could be damaging to your brand.
Did you know that only 15% of the FTSE 250 companies respond to tweets? this is worrying given that 17% of consumers are using this channel to ask questions to leading brands.
Like any social media channel, you should only post content if you have a strategy and the resources to interact in a two-way conversation to engage with your followers. Leadsift's research has drawn up a snappy visual to provide a toolkit for responding to your Tweeters to maximise engagement.
So how should…
