Vicky Laing's blog

When E-commerce And Social Media Collide - #AmazonBasket

It’s late afternoon, your rate of procrastination is at its highest and you’re scrolling through your twitter feed trying to pass the time until 5.30, when you see it.

That laptop you’ve had your eye on is now on sale.

Mental note: Get that later.

But by the time you’ve made your way to the bottom of your feed, you’ve forgotten all about it, it remains forgotten about for weeks, even months and by the time you remember it’s gone back to full price.

To combat this, Amazon and Twitter have combined forces to create #AmazonBasket. It allows customers to shop via their social media feed, keep tabs on their favourite items and is a lovely little way for retailers to engage with current and prospective consumers.

#AmazonBasket (or #AmazonCart if you’re in the US), allows Twitter users to save products to their Amazon carts to purchase later. You first need to link your Twitter account to your Amazon one and from then on, anytime you see an Amazon product link in your Twitter feed, all you need to do is reply with “#AmazonBasket” for the item to be immediately added to your Amazon shopping cart. To finalise the purchase, just log into your Amazon account and hey presto, there will be a list of the items you’ve added from Twitter in your cart.

The practice of tying ecommerce with social media will not only save consumers’ valuable time but retailers can also use it as a tool to remind users of their product.

Amazon have also told a source they are open to working with other social networking sites meaning the trend is growing…

It’s late afternoon, your rate of procrastination is at its highest and you’re scrolling through your twitter feed trying to pass the time until 5.30, when you see it.

That laptop you’ve had your eye on is now on sale.

Mental note: Get that later.

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29 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Social Media In Ten Years - A Prediction

Over the last decade, so many of us have become slaves to our Twitter feed or Facebook posts. With Twitter turning 8 this year and Facebook turning 10, who could have predicted how much these networks would take off. Klood takes a look at what social media might be like 10 years from now.

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28 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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The Plug Has Been Pulled On Twitter And Soundcloud Collaboration

Soundcloud may be known as the Youtube of audio but will it really enhance the core service of Twitter? With a huge number of music celebrities already using the site to communicate with their many followers, it does seem a sensible progression for the company to evolve into a music service.

SoundCloud is a free service that lets users, from individuals to DJ collectives to bands, upload and share audio files around the Web and according to Relode, Twitter were in talks with the Berlin-based startup to strike up a deal.

This would have been a huge move for Twitter and it’s investors, who are becoming concerned with the slow growth of the company. After going public last November at $26 a share, it quickly rose to $74.73 before beginning a long downward slide.

However, it’s now come to light that Twitter have said no to this new deal. Why? Well we’re not 100% sure, but we could hazard a guess.

Users

With over 250 million users and estimated value of $700 million, Soundcloud are certainly attractive to Twitter’s big guys, however a large number of the DJ community are abandoning ship and joining other services such as MixCloud, MixCrate and Play.fm.

To cover their back, Soundcloud use Audible Magic technology to flag up unlicensed songs. Soundcloud then issue a take-down notice. Unfortunately, errors often happen with this technology and users are ordered to take down their own music, resulting in some miffed off customers having to defend their own compositions meaning more and more are switching.

Revenue

Soundcloud isn’t particularly well set up for advertising in the same way similar streaming services are so its revenue is limited. Of course, there is the option to pay for higher tier service, complete with unlimited uploads & detailed statistics on who’s listening but we all like free and so the majority of users just stick to the free stuff.

Licensing

Possibly the biggest red flag. Soundcloud doesn’t have any licenses from music labels or publishers meaning for a smaller entity like Twitter, obtaining these licences could be hugely expensive and full of hassle.

So Twitter may need a way to kick up its stock price, but it would seem they’ve seen the light and would agree Soundcloud isn’t the way to go. Back to the drawing board for Twitter then.

Soundcloud may be known as the Youtube of audio but could it really enhance the core service of Twitter? With a huge number of music celebrities already using the site to communicate with their many followers, it does seem a sensible progression for the company to evolve into a music service.

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27 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Chinwag Psych - The Wrap

We just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who came and helped make our second Chinwag Psych Conference a success.

So just in case you missed the day, we have a quick snippet of the roundup here, for the full run down visit PsychMatters.

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21 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Converting Social to Sales

All but one of the top 100 global retailers fail to convert social into sales.

That's the claim from a new report, The Three Stages of Social Maturity, from social commerce specialists Buyapowa. The lone success?

Tesco.

While most companies invest in creating a multi-platform presence, they aren’t chasing sales by using co-buys, gamification and dynamic pricing.

The report's key findings include:

• Only one global retailer has reached stage 3 of social maturity (building a social sales channel) while 82% are stuck firmly at stage one (concentrating on attracting fans and followers).

• Follow for a follow. For every 100 followers they gain, 66% of leading retailers follow five or less, meaning the giants are more concerned with broadcasting to their audience rather than listening to them.

• Have you reached that point when you want to complain about a service but the company's Twitter feed is full of funny/silly pictures? It intensifies the annoyance.

• The social media doghouse includes Lidl, with 72% of their posts being about products, and Aldi, whose audience is four times less engaged with their content than M&S or CostCo.

Social media doesn’t just have to cost you money; it can help you make it too. Someone tell the big boys.

All but one of the top 100 global retailers fail to convert social into sales.

That's the claim from a new report, The Three Stages of Social Maturity, from social commerce specialists Buyapowa. The lone success?

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14 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Steal A Creative's Idea Today

Inventing is no easy feat; we just have to watch an episode of Dragons Den to appreciate that.

Remember some of the more, shall we say, interesting ideas?

Mike Carr who entered the den with an idea to solve all Expats driving nightmares. A single glove that you put on your right hand when you travel abroad to remind you to drive on the correct side of the road.

Yes, that’s right. A glove. And for this glove, he wanted £100,000.

Then there was SuperkneeS. Essentially an ugly pair of rollerskates to strap to your knees to go from one kneeling job to another at high speeds. Erm what?

But what if these ideas (or maybe some of the better but rejected ones) could be given a new lease of life as food for thought for others.

Well they can.

A new website, Ideas To Steal Today, offers just that, Created by Kalle Everland and Timo Klaarenbeek, the site encourages creatives to post their rejected work, with a short explanation and a visual. So all those creatives who poured blood, sweat and tears into their ideas, can now see it put to use. All of the ideas on the website are free to use as long as their new co-owners credit the person who originally posted it.

There is a huge range of ideas on the site. There’s an App that connects to your Nike Fuel Band but rather than urge you to pick up the pace, it urges you to take it easy, relax and enjoy what’s out there more.

A website that allows you to look busy for your boss using Excel/photoshop backgrounds while you can actually ‘be busy’ still reading your ebook.

And even an app that lets you find your keys, with your phone. How has that one not taken off yet?

Inventing is no easy feat; we just have to watch an episode of Dragons Den to appreciate that.

Remember some of the more, shall we say, interesting ideas?

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13 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Boom In Tech Recruitment

A report by KPMG and Markit illustrates hiring in Britain’s tech sector is almost at its highest for three years, demonstrating its resilience in the tough economic climate.

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12 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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The Power of Values: Why Emotional Optimization has the Highest ROI And More at Chinwag Psych…

With just one week to go before Psych comes to London, there’s not much time left to book your tickets to come along. In case you were in any doubt over whether to come, we’ve compiled an (almost complete) go-to guide for sponsors, speakers and their topics.

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8 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Cheeky New Ad From Apple Giving Samsung The Go-Ahead To Copy

It’s not the best kept secret that Samsung and Apple are not exactly best friends, with the latter often accusing the former of copying their products and even going so far as taking them to court to battle it out.

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6 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Mobile Advertising Is Taking Over The UK (Infographic)

Recent data just published by the Advertising Association shows that mobile and tablet advertising is taking over the UK. Within the £6.3bn spent each year on UK internet advertising, £1bn belongs to mobile.

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1 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Share Your Magical Moment With Marketers

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2014/04/18/can-facebook-instagram-predict-buying-behavior/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InsideFacebook+%28Inside+Facebook%29

Share Your Magical Moment With Marketers…

There are quite a few big life events, graduating, getting engaged, getting married etc and now it’s easier than ever to share these things with your family, friends, family friends and your sister’s ex-boyfriend’s hairdresser’s daughter. On Facebook/Twitter/Instagram that is.

But now marketers, take heed for there is a way to use these posts on significant life events to predict buyer behaviour.

Viralheat, a social marketing management firm, found that their clients have had success using this tactic by tracking a conversation. For example, a user that posts on Instagram their shiny new engagement ring with the hashtag #engaged. The client follows the conversation and hey presto, they can correspond with Ms Newly Engaged and become part of that special moment.

Viralheat, tracked the amount of public posts from mid-March to mid-April on Facebook with the hashtags #ImEngaged, #JustEngaged, #WereEngaged, #Engaged, #ISaidYes, #SheSaidYes, and the phrase “I’m engaged.” They found more than 19,000 posts with these terms — with one post getting as many as 9,200 likes. Who knew one engagement could be THAT exciting.

So we’ve told you how to target ads at Facebook users, but what about Instagram or Twitter? Viralheat CEO Jeff Revoy says,

“On Instagram or Twitter, a brand can join the conversation by simply responding to the post announcing some sort of buying intention. This can be a good way to turn a potential customer into someone who would be willing to become a brand advocate, since the brand took the time to respond.”

Viralheat’s social prediction program can also track who will be the biggest influence (pretty likely to be that person with the 9,000+ likes under their belt.) Brand managers can look at Klout Scores amongst other tools to see who would have the biggest impact if they decided to share and it’s then left to the brands to create the content that people want to share.

Correctly utilizing information like this can be huge for brands hoping to use Instagram or Facebook to drive sales. T-Mobile used this technology for a B2B campaign where the company launched a VoIP product aimed at small businesses.

Paul Sebastien, Chief Marketing Officer at T-Mobile’s Deutsche Telekom Hosted Business Services, said that he was surprised at the positive response,

“Before launching this pilot campaign, we had done some mass email marketing and things like that were just not effective at all. We decided to turn to social media and wanted to understand the competitive landscape.”

Sebastien searched for terms such as #VoIP and “moving offices,” and there he found his targets:

“For those customers, it was almost eery for them. “Hey I just had this need, how did you know?” It felt like we had predicted their needs in advance.”

So take note marketers, you don’t need to read minds to be able to predict buyer behaviour; you just need to read hashtags…

There are quite a few big life events, graduating, getting engaged, getting married etc and now it’s easier than ever to share these things with your family, friends, family friends and your sister’s ex-boyfriend’s hairdresser’s daughter. On Facebook/Twitter/Instagram that is.

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1 May 2014 by Vicky Laing

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What Does It Take To Stop A Londoner Getting To Work?

Snow? Wild animal stampede? Tube strike?

Not even the latter can stop some of us, even if we need to leave our houses at 9pm the night before to hit the office on time.

So, should we take a leaf out of Paris’ novella and use driverless trains?

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30 April 2014 by Vicky Laing

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Sharing Is The New Buying

The Collaborative Economy Movement is changing business as we know it.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the collaborative economy is where people are funding, making and sharing with each other rather than buying from corporations a combination of trends like the sharing economy, maker movement and co-innovation.