Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

Facebook had a ‘do’ on the roof of their Palo Alto offices last week, specifically for PR people, imparting useful  information such as how to “like” any article online, use a Firefox plug-in and tips on live-streaming.

They’ve set up a PR page too (of course) which now has 3000+ fans and perhaps have started to take PRs seriously as future partners. There’s no doubt the interest is reciprocated, though most big brands are proceeding with caution.

Ford has just made a bold move however in eschewing the traditional auto show and advertising biltz, to launch their new Explorer model on Facebook.

They’ve used it a a kind of hyprid press room/consumer information hub, containing several video interviews, pre and post ‘reveal’ photos, a competition to win a new Explorer and a schedule of live city events.

Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook revenue may have neared $800m in 2009, almost double previously estimates, according to a report from Reuters.

Last July, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen told Reuters the company was on track to surpass $500 million in annual revenue for 2009. In September, Facebook said that it had become free cash flow positive, meaning that the company was generating enough cash to cover its operating expenses as well as its capital spending needs.

Estimates in various media reports had previously pegged the company’s 2009 revenue at $550 million to $700 million.

The two sources said revenue in 2009 was in fact $700 million to $800 million.

“They are downplaying their performance,” one source told Reuters, adding that 2009 revenue was more than double the previous year’s total. “There’s no upside in getting people’s expectations high, it’s always better to go low.”

If Facebook eventually seeks to go public, unveiling financial figures above expectations could help bolster investor interest. Read the rest of this entry »

The value to brand marketers of attracting consumers to sign up to their Facebook pages has been calculated in a new survey from Syncapse.

They found Facebook fans spend $71.84 more per year on brands they ‘Like’ and they are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using that brand.

In addition, fans are 41% more likely to recommend a fanned product to their friends. Amongst the 20 top brands* measured, the average value of an individual fan rises to $136.38.

Among the 20, McDonald’s registered the largest variability in annualised spending between fans and non-fans, with fans spending $159.79 more per year.

In contrast, Oreo registered the lowest variability in spending between fans and non-fans, with fans spending $28.52 more per year.

The five measured variables that contributed to the study were product spending, brand loyalty, propensity to recommend, brand affinity, and earned media value. Read the rest of this entry »

Top ten countries on Facebook, with growth figures, to March 31st 2010, from Nick Burcher’s blog and UK Facebook demographics from Inside Facebook

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The Icelandic government has called for all 320,000 of its citizens to use Facebook at 2pm GMT today to promote their country in an emergency move to try and repair damage the ash cloud has had on their main industry – tourism.

“It’s a worldwide campaign to let the rest of the world know that Iceland isn’t completely covered in ash,” Icelandic tourist board director of marketing Jon Gunnar Borgthorsson said.

“The eruption has indeed had very little effect here in Iceland, it’s only about three to five per cent of the country that’s been affected by it,” he said, adding “the volcanoes are all far from urban areas, and anyways, we are well prepared for eruptions.”

A Facebook page ‘Inspired by Iceland’ has been created along with a Twitter account, a Vimeo video upload page and a dedicated website. With fours hours to go to launch, Facebook fans stand at 10,847 and Twitter followers at 466.

Iceland’s government said in April it would provide 300 million kronur (£1.6 million), in aid to the country’s tourism industry, which was bracing for mass cancellations due to the ongoing volcano eruption.

Iceland’s move is the most dramatic example to date of tourist boards using social media to promote tourism, following last years Best job in the world from Queensland and Philadelphia’s announcement of a Foursquare promotion this month.

Source: heraldsun.com.au

Jimmy Choo has pioneered a location based social media campaign around London, using Foursquare, Twitter & Facebook to promote their new trainers.

The concept, developed by FreshNetworks, is that you can follow a pink bag of Jimmy Choo shoes around a variety of smart locations in London, and if you manage to intercept them, they’ll give you a pair of trainers free.

While Foursquare is relatively unknown in the UK compared to the US, the resolutely upmarket locations are also posted on Twitter & Facebook and have ranged from Harvey Nichols and Sloane Square to the inside of a Bentley.

The ‘CatchAChoo’ campaign currently has 408 Facebook friends, 825 Twitter followers and around 585 Foursquare friends. No doubt the most marketing benefit is to be had from publicity about the campaign itself, which has been reported over the last couple of days. Read the rest of this entry »

The use of LinkedIn for B2B sales prospecting has increased by 47.8% since last year, according to US research from OneSource, reported in Emarketer.

Around 20 percent of those polled were also increasing their use of  blogs, Facebook and Twitter for prospecting purposes, though the overall majority still do not use social media for prospecting.

The most popular approach for gaining qualified leads remains outbound prospecting, which was rated 3.7 out of five for effectiveness, followed by the company website (2.9), inbound calls (2.6), email campaigns (2.6), shows & events (2.5), social networking (2.1) , direct mail (2.1)  and webinars (1.8).

In January Hubspot research showed that 45% of US companies who have used LinkedIn for marketing had acquired a customer through the site. Company blogs were considered effective for 43% of respondents, while Twitter for 38%  and Facebook for 33%.

Starbucks’ 6.5 million Facebook fans are worth the equivalent of a $23.4 million annual media spend, according to calculations by social media specialists Vitrue, reported in Adweek.

The firm has worked out  that, on average, a fan base of 1 million translates to at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year, or $3.6 per fan.

Vitrue arrived at its $3.6 million figure by working off a $5 CPM, meaning a brand’s 1 million fans generate about $300,000 in media value each month.

Vitrue analysed Facebook data from its clients’ 41 million fans and found that most fans yielded an extra impression. That means a marketer posting twice a day can expect about 60 million impressions per month through the news feed. Read the rest of this entry »

Stella Artois has launched a Facebook centred campaign to promote its 4% brand in the build up to the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The idea, developed by advertising agency Mother, is based on the premise that a famous french film director, Jacques d’Azur has gone missing, presumed dead and his estate has made an appeal to the public to find his heir.

The really clever social media bit is when you sign up to the competition through Facebook, your profile picture becomes integrated in a film taking place in his solicitor’s office about the possible beneficiary of the estate – very cool.

The winner of the competition takes Jacques’s place as a VIP at the Cannes Film Festival.

The campaign is supported with a Twitter page and a FlickR photostream of Jacques’s life.

The preposterously glamorous life of Jacques Read the rest of this entry »

The Liberal Democrats have overtaken The Labour Party on Facebook with 7,103 fans compared to Labour’s 7,055,  though both parties are some way behind The Conservatives Party which has 23,553 fans.

In the Twitter rankings, Lib Dems remain third with 9,307 followers behind Labour with 11,073 who are again some way behind the Tories with 21,324.

In iphone application terms, Lib Dems have yet to launch an election app, though they do have a euro manifesto version. The two other main parties launched apps earlier this month, though UKIP were ahead of both with their February launch.

The Tories have also launched a secure Blackberry app for canvassing candidates which allows them to check into a central database and tread a consistent party line.

The smartphone known as a crackberry for its addictive qualities is more of a crack-the-whip-berry in this case it seems!