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20 Jul 10
SOCIAL MEDIA PITCH INVASION: SECOND HALF

Twitter dropped the ball at the beginning of the World Cup finals when it buckled under the weight of tweets in the build-up to the first match on 11 June.  It experienced a few outages and had to post an explanation on the technical difficulties which led to its poor performance.

But, as the competition got underway, momentum really built and records for online traffic were broken. For example, there were a record-breaking 3,283 tweets per second sent at the end of Japan’s victory over Denmark.  Fan enthusiasm wasn’t just limited to 140 characters.  On June 24, 20.7 million people looked to news sites on the day Slovakia knocked out Italy, according to Akami.  At the start of the finals, there were just over 12 million surfers.

The Netherlands was the most tweeted team and Cristiano Ronaldo was the most tweeted player, (Mashable 15/7).  The World Cup topped What’s the Trend’s Twitter Top 10 for the week ending 17/6.  The Vuvuzela stayed in the charts for six days.   When England’s tournament started with its match as the USA, a staggering 30 per cent of all status updates on Facebook were linked to the game.

So, that was some of the general numbers.  We tailored our research to the conversation around the World Cup and social media and had a quick look at the lead topics for both Twitter, and the wider conversation on social media and the finals.

Figure 1: Buzz volumes for Twitter in the social media discussion for the World Cup -11/6 to 11/7

Figure 2:  Twitter Topic cloud for the World Cup conversation around social media – 11/6 to 11/7

We noticed a couple of stand-out topics from the usual suspects in terms of the media.  The Guardian had the most prominent mention among media sources.  One tweet linked to the paper’s stunning Twitter replay graphic of real-time tweets sent as matches played out.  Mashable’s official World Cup tracking page was also one of the most tweeted topics.

It wasn’t just the fans that had a social media tournament.  The official sponsors moved from traditional advertising channels to social media.  The big winner was Coca Cola, which even advertised as a trending topic on Twitter.  It registered 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6 per cent in the 24 hours following its first promoted trend ad (Mashable 27/6). The company added 1.4 million fans during the tournament.

All in all, this time, it was right to believe the hype, there really was a social media pitch invasion at the World Cup.

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6 Jul 10
SMALL BUSINESSES ARE MISSING SOCIAL MARKETING TRAIN

Are you sitting at work thinking how lost you’d be without Twitter or Facebook to communicate with your customers and show you are listening?  Recent research has shown that engagement through social media hadn’t caught on at every company, particularly at SMEs.

A study by Insurantz.com found that just 16 per cent of UK SMEs had Twitter or Facebook accounts.  Their absence from the world of social networking was a missed marketing opportunity according to the business insurance firm, which surveyed a 1,000 small businesses.

MD James Pickering said: “Millions of people visit social-networking sites each day at work or at home and yet just 16 per cent of small businesses see digital media as an essential means of marketing their products and services.” (The Independent 5/7)

Age was a key driver in social media uptake and younger business owners embraced the medium for engagement.  Almost 25 per cent of SME owners aged 18 – 21 valued social media as an essential tool while less than 10 per cent of their older counterparts agreed and could not see the benefits.

However, widespread uptake may not be too far away.  Pickering explained: “Our research revealed that SME owners under 30 are the most likely to embrace this type of customer engagement, so don’t be surprised if online social marketing becomes increasingly important to the modern small business.”

On the flipside, 65 per cent of Fortune 100 companies had a corporate Twitter account and 82 per cent used the micro-blog to communicate with customers.  79 per cent used at least one social media site for engagement. (iStrategy 2010 7/6)

We’ve found that our clients – from SMEs to FTSE 100 companies – used social media to monitor the entire conversation around their brand to show they are listening and manage their reputation.  It only takes a few seconds to tweet, but missing a comment or viral campaign could cost more than time – whatever the size of your company.

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15 Jun 10
Twitter buckles under World Cup weight

It was early doors, but all the signs were there: World Cup fans have already gone Twitter mad.

The micro-blog buckled under the weight of tweets in the build-up to the first match on 11 June.  The site had already experienced a few outages and had to post an explanation on the technical difficulties which led to its poor performance.  (Twitter.com 11/6)

The Twitter team went on to warn: “As more people turn to Twitter to see what’s happening in the world (or in the World Cup), you may still see the whale when there are unprecedented spikes in traffic“.  (Twitter.com 11/6)

During the opening game between hosts South Africa and Mexico, CNN.com’s Twitter buzz counted around 300,000 tweets.  (NewTeeVee 11/6)

We’re monitoring the impact of social media on the World Cup, so had a quick look at the buzz driving the surge on Twitter on 11 June.  By drilling down by channel, we were able to generate the top 75 lead topics on the micro-blog. This enabled us to analyse the noise-to-signal ratio of tweets and filter conversations which kicked off debates which would linger longer than many hangovers.

Figure 1: Twitter topic cloud – 11/6

For example, a quick click on mentions of The Guardian in the topic cloud led us to a discussion about football fans and brewers joining forces to fight a hike in beer tax during the tournament.

In terms of sentiment on Twitter (11/6):

There were 2015 positive mentions, 3561 neutral mentions and 331 negative mentions.

Most of the positive chatter was driven by sheer exuberance that the World Cup was starting.

The arrest of the head of Rwanda’s Football Federation, Brig-Gen Jean Bosco Kazura, for attempting to leave the country without permission was one of the key negative mentions.  The soldier was heading to the World Cup.

So, what’s on the horizon?

In the weeks leading up to the first match, the Vuvuzela topped Mashable’s Twitter Trends chart (12/6).  The plastic stadium horn sounds like a drone of bees – music to some ears – worse than tinnitus to others – musical Marmite.

As the teams got down to business, France captain Patrice Evra complained that he couldn’t sleep because of the Vuvuzela racket.   The Serb team complained that the din impacted their concentration and they gave away a ’stupid’ penalty during the Ghana game, (Yahoo.com 13/6).  FIFA had already considered banning the horns.  It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.

If first-day traffic numbers for Twitter are an indication of what’s to come, then it seems there will at least be a micro-blog pitch invasion at this year’s World Cup.

p.s. There was another link last week to an old report on BBC News’ popular stories. This time it was a report on a sponsorship settlement between FIFA and Mastercard – from 2007!  (BBC News 21/6/07)

Wonder if this issue will be resuscitated by social media, just like the Mars story? (See post on 10 June – Why was Mars back in the conversation?)

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7 Jun 10
Social media pitch invasion

Will there be a social media pitch invasion when the World Cup finally kicks off on Friday?  Before a ball has even been kicked, fans,  players, bookies, sponsors, the media, tourism and footballing bodies have ignited the web, blogosphere and Twitter with World Cup news, chat and campaigns.  This year’s tournament could break all social media records. 

Here are a few examples of the mentions of the World Cup and social media that we’ve picked up in the past week.

There are 400 million active users on Facebook and 50 million tweets are sent each day.  YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have become the lions of social networking.  A post by Daryl on the World Cup Blog (1/6) claimed that the final England team selected for South Africa was, in a round-a-bout way, first announced on Twitter.  Journalists tweeted reports on the players not selected hours before the official team statement at 4pm on 1 June.  Earlier that morning, the husband of a worker at Heathrow posted information that Theo Walcott had checked in for a flight to the Caribbean. (cowboymartin on 606 1/6)

Football’s governing bodies, already engaged with social media, have ramped up campaigns for the tournament.  On 1 June, the FA launched its biggest social media campaign to date, which sparked a buzz on Twitter.  The Association rolled out its Facebook app for fans to join the ‘Official England Squad’.  Head of marketing Simon Freedman explained: “We want to win the (first) unofficial social media World Cup on Facebook, and drive greater connection with our consumers,” (Campaign 1/6).  The app, created by Dare, was launched to let supporters create their own shirts to use as profile pictures.  Stephen Fry took number 30, Nick Clegg 67 and Ray Winstone 25.  Rooney et al had shirts 1 – 23.

On the flipside, there was also comment on the FA’s decision to stop players from using social media during the tournament.  (TigerTwoTiger 1/6) 

Gavin Bloys tweeted a link to an early discussion on CNN.com (4/5) on whether the World Cup will drive unprecedented social media traffic.  Matt Stone, FIFA head of new media said: “There will be so much more media consumed, used and published in 2010 than in 2006. Social media can bring fans closer together and give fans more opportunity to communicate with each other.” (CNN.com 4/5)

The site also reported that FIFA, with 1.6 million followers on its social networking service ‘The Club’, planned to add Facebook Connect for fans to share websites on the site.  Followed by an official Twitter account with tweets from people in the “top eschelons” of the organisation.

However, the FIFA official website has attracted early criticism.  Adam Vincenzini on theCOMMScorner (6/6) concluded that it ‘almost seems like FIFA are ‘anti’ social media’ after a quick tour of its site. Vincenzini pointed out that there wasn’t a link to FIFA’s Twitter account or Facebook page. Nor was there a link to an official Twitter hashtag.  In contrast, the blogger thought the sponsors got it right. (Social Media Influence 1/6)

South Africa Tourism (SAT) set up a blog, Twitter account and two Facebook pages for travellers from Australia and New Zealand.  SAT general manager, Australasia, Bangu Masisi explained: “Globally, South African Tourism has had a presence in the social media space for some time, however we are very excited to be able to provide relevant news and updates on South Africa specific to the Australian traveller using this platform”. (Marketing, 3/6)

The World Cup made it into eighth spot in Mashable’s Twitter Trends for the week ending 4 June. The scene has been set for a social media pitch invasion.  Watch this space for our 360-degree analysis of the impact of social media on what has been touted as one of the greatest sporting events on earth.

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23 Feb 10
Sentiment Metrics Launches an Industry First in Social Media Engagement Capabilities

LONDON, February 23, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Sentiment Metrics today announced the launch of its social media engagement module, powerful new web-based functionality fully integrated with the existing Sentiment Metrics social media monitoring and measurement platform.

The social media engagement module directly integrates with Twitter and Facebook, as well as supporting the creation of comments in blogs and forums from within the application itself. Via the workflow module, CRM functionality is also possible allowing the assignment and tracking of engagement activities, across all team members in an organisation.

Until now, Sentiment Metrics users have been able to monitor online conversations about brands, organisations and issues across all forms of social media including blogs, forums, and Twitter. Sentiment Metrics were the first company to include Facebook fanpage coverage last year and continues to embrace new arenas with Google Buzz. With this new module, Sentiment Metrics users will now be able to directly engage with individuals and enter the online conversation without needing to leave the application.

With the new highly visual social profile graphing tool, users can look up social media user profiles, including their Twitter handle, LinkedIn profile, blog address, and google profile, and then choose to engage via these profiles all with the touch of a button.

Directly engaging with an organisation’s customers has been proven to increase customer satisfaction, improve customer retention and generate greatly increased sales leads. By integrating engagement activities into the Sentiment Metrics social media monitoring platform, organisations can roll out a time-saving, convenient, and easy-to-use process with a full audit trail for historical reporting.

“We have been privileged to help many of the world’s leading brands and agencies monitor and measure social media over the past few years. Direct engagement was the next step for customer-facing organisations. We have responded to our clients’ requests and we are delighted to release these new features,” said Leon Chaddock, Managing Director of Sentiment Metrics.

Sentiment Metrics’ user-friendly web dashboard allows topics to be entered for monitoring and measurement. Content is delivered in real-time, graded by importance and sentiment. Users can then respond directly to mentions collected via Twitter, Facebook or through comment-based systems. For organisations, this means their customers can receive instant feedback, contact information can be identified via Google’s Social graph API and new leads can be funnelled back into the organisation’s sales processes.

For more information about Sentiment Metrics, visit http://www.sentimentmetrics.com.

Free trials and demonstrations available.

About Sentiment Metrics

Sentiment Metrics provides a social media monitoring, measurement and engagement platform for PR, marketing and communication professionals. The real-time dashboard monitors all forms of social media and online news, breaking down mentions by sentiment (positive, negative, neutral), demographics, influence and authority. Sentiment Metrics is focused on providing real actionable insight and analytics for their clients, allowing them to directly engage with their customers. For more information, go to http://www.sentimentmetrics.com.

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