August round up - Facebook, QR codes and more

Here are a few great little articles that we’ve seen recently that you might find interesting.

A guide to the Facebook Edgerank algorithm

The Edgerank algorithm is used by Facebook to decide which content to display in your news feed and when you search for content. It, for instance, shows me Diet Coke rather than Coke when I search for Coke on Facebook, because more of my friends are fans of Diet Coke than Coke.

This guide is the best explanation of Edgerank I’ve seen.

How connected are you?

We’re proud of this app we produced for Western Union, that shows you how globally connected you are compared to your friends. I’m currently ranked 138,084^th out of 225,000 app users.

What does mobile mean for marketing?

Rory Sutherland’s talk at Google’s Think Mobile conference is characteristically entertaining and insightful on how mobile’s ability to provide contextual relevance can be influential for marketers

Misuse of QR codes by Crowne Plaza

Crowne Plaza’s recent advertising campaign that uses QR codes is nicely analysed here, explaining why a much simpler mechanic would probably have been successful.

When online PR goes wrong

This write up of a PR paid blogger trip to Magaluf is a great example of how badly executed blogger relations can go horribly wrong. [Warning – not for the faint hearted].

Google Plus round up

A lot has been written about Google Plus. While I’m a fan of its functionality, I’m not convinced that it’s taking off in the UK. With a relatively digital set of friends and colleagues I’ve only seen one update in my G+ stream in the last few days.

Here are two views that are worth reading:

• ‘What Google Plus is really about’ – a view that it’s mainly about moving paid services to the cloud
• ‘Is social in Google’s DNA’ – a comparison of Google’s algorithmic approach to Facebook’s more behavioural approach to relevance by Tom Anderson, the founder of MySpace

Data use by Tesco, Capital One and dating websites

McKinsey’s recent report on ten major trends includes a number of trends driven by data, including product testing and data mining by corporates such as Tesco, Capital One and Ford, and crime mapping to identify problem areas.

On a similar note, Marketing Week’s feature on the use of data by online dating companies has a variety of useful insights. Lovestruck.com’s use of behavioural data with people’s stated preferences is interesting in that it’s a the centre of their business model, not just in their marketing:

Lovestruck has two types of algorithm. When users first join the site, they will be matched with potential partners using Lovestruck’s in-house algorithm based on interests, what they are looking for, age, location and so on.

But when they start to use the site, that data is overridden by an IntroAnalytics matching algorithm which learns from the user’s behaviour.

What is Google Plus?

Google Plus attempts to capture ‘social’ from Facebook*. In other words it tries to mix Google’s successful search, mobile (Android) and Gmail businesses with Facebook’s successful social business.

Why is Google doing this?

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, once said that everything is better if it’s social. By this he means that we are interested in what our friends do about almost anything, whether it’s a film they watch, their job or a restaurant they visit. Market research and data show that people are far more likely to buy a product, and to pay a premium for it, if a friend recommends it.

If a friend of yours clicks ‘Like’ on the new Transformers film, then you are more likely to watch it. If you see a Transformers advert, showing you that your friend John has ‘Liked’ Transformers, then you are hugely more likely to click on the advert and to actually watch the film. This means that social advertising is massively more effective, and lucrative, than simple Google advertising that is based on what you search for or the words that appear in your emails.

How does it work?

Beneath it all Google and Facebook have created two similar systems:

· A stream of content that your friends have posted up. So your sister posts up a video of your nephew, and you can see it.

· Email, messaging, video and phone chat and other communications tools are integrated, so that all of your history of communication with a friend is captured. So if you’ve emailed a friend, shared a photo with them and organised a BBQ that you invited them to, this is all obvious to you.

· When you ‘Like’ or ‘+1’ a piece of content (e.g. the new Transformers film) your friends are told, and this preference appears in their search results.

· Social tools, so that, for instance you can see who your mutual friends with people are.

So what’s the difference between Google Plus and Facebook?

The key difference is how friends are treated. In Facebook the default choice you make is between a piece of content (e.g. your holiday photos) being public or restricted to your friends. More sophisticated settings exist, but people usually just share things with their friends.

The problem with Facebook’s default[1] is that most people have very different groups of friends. So their work friends and friends from university may be very different. And many people have had a mildly embarrassing situation when these two groups have seen the same content. For instance their work friends see photos of them at Glastonbury, or an ex-boyfriend sees your holiday photos.

Google Plus’s approach is to force you to create ‘Circles’ of different friends, so that you can share content with specific groups of people. By doing this they hope to get people to use Circles to share more information, and to spend more time on Google sites.

On top of that Google Plus has many of the useful functions that Facebook has, as well as a few additional ones. In particular, for Android users of Google Plus, any photos taken on your phone will be automatically uploaded to a private website, ready to share with your ‘Circles’.

Who will win?

Both Facebook and Google have huge audiences, lots of experience at creating usable products and very sophisticated strategies. But even if its strategy seems right, at the moment Google Plus feels a bit dead and is not terribly intuitive.

If we had to bet, we’d go with Facebook, but the chances are that both will flourish in time.

Comparison of features between Google Plus & Facebook

Activity	Google	Facebook
Show that you like content	+1 button	Like button
See what your friends are doing	Streams showing what friends are doing, split by circles	Home page showing your friends, and brand, updates
Messaging tools	Email, IM. Unlimited size IM groups via Huddle function	Messaging includes email, IM and Facebook messages
Search	Google search shows you what your friends have +1’d	Bing search shows you what your friends have ‘Liked’
Mobile & location	Integrated with Google’s Android operating system for mobiles. Check In system is very similar to Facebook, using the popular Google Maps service	Facebook Places shows you where your friends are
Voice and video	Multiple video conferencing	Skype partnership
Photos	Photos from Android phones are automatically uploaded to your Google Plus account – encouraging you to share them.	Tagging of friends encourages sharing
Recommended content	In home feed, as with Facebook, as well as the ‘Sparks’ feed which caters for things you are interested in, but that come from strangers.	Just appears in your home feed, though you can review content from fan pages and groups later if you missed it.

*Facebook is a BR client. However I’ve tried to be as dispassionate as possible in writing this.

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[1] A problem explicitly addressed by Mark Zuckerberg when launching their new groups function. http://mashable.com/2010/10/06/mark-zuckerberg-on-the-biggest-problem-in-social-networking/

Digital campaigning

You can find some great views on what great digital campaigns looks like in the PR Week / Blue Rubicon Digital campaigning supplement, which you can find here.

Articles include:

• Aviva on the YouAreTheBigPicture campaign
• GiffGaff on their innovative use of members to provide customer services
• Facebook on social

When should you send emails?

Emails are slightly more likely to be opened when people are at work, particularly on their lunchbreak. This is changing though as people get more access to the internet on their mobiles, so are more prone to open their emails on the way to work or while at home (often while watching TV).

However a major study by Mailchimp shows that people are more likely to take an action resulting from an email if they receive the email over the weekend. This is probably because they have more time to consider the email and take action over it, particularly if it involves an action that requires typing (trickier on mobiles than on laptops/desktops) such as paying for something, booking tickets or signing a petition.

Takeaway for me:

• Weekdays - best for informational / brand building emails that don't require an action
• Weekends - best if you want people to buy something or do something

How to stop your email list from dying

It's common for organisations to build up an email database or a Facebook page, which they then forget for a while and abandon. At Blue Rubicon we've been doing some comparisons of how people react when you start using the database again, and there are some interesting common patterns:

• Response rates are significantly lower than they were previously. One email list we're reviving had a 35% average open rate in summer 2010 - which has fallen to 25% in the first few emails we've sent to it.
• Unsubscribe rates rise significantly compared to previously
• Bounce rates increase - because people have moved job or changed email address for another reason

When we've investigated these, they are unsurprising. People have forgotten who we were, so didn't bother opening our emails, or, worse, unsubscribed. And if they moved job they forgot to tell us that they'd moved, because they hadn't heard from us for a while.

The best advice to keep email lists and Facebook pages alive is to regularly (i.e. at least monthly) contact them. This helps by:

• Reminding people how wonderful you are so that even if they don't open the email, they remember that you are there. So they don't unsubscribe, and they'll occasionally engage.
• Reminding people to tell you when they move email address.

If you have let a list go some months without being emailed, then the best ways to revive it are:

• Start with content that reminds people of why they are subscribed. So if they subscribed for local news, start with an exciting bit of local news
• Make sure that the emails come from somebody they know
• Take it easy - if they haven't heard from you in months then only email them once every few weeks at first, otherwise it will feel like a shock