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McDonalds Twitter Hashtag Promotion Backfires

By Andrew Redfern @ 24th January 2012 12:26 pm Social Media

Fast food giant McDonalds has had a social media nightmare after a promotional hashtag it launched on Twitter was hijacked by angry customers.

Using the paid-for tweeting service to promote hashtags to the top of the trending lists, McDonalds created the #MeetTheFarmers hashtag last week in order to post wholesome stories about the fresh produce supplied by farmers to the famous Golden Arches.

However, a couple of tweets used the more general #McDStories hashtag, and it was this that was seized upon by Twitter users wanting to air their grievances about the chain.

Customers tweeted about their negative experiences eating at McDonalds, with endless tales of chipped teeth and cases of food poisoning, while one user claimed to have found a fingernail in a Big Mac burger.

Other users took to the #McDStories hashtag to share their bad McDonalds experiences, until the chain decided to pull the promoted hashtag as it had veered so drastically off-message they felt it was unrecoverable.

McDonalds social media director Rick Wion said of the failed campaign: “Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned. It was negative enough that we set about a change of course.”

The original #MeetTheFarmers hashtag has managed to escape the McDonalds backlash, and is still being used on Twitter.

Google+ iPhone App Shoots to Top of iTunes

By Andrew Redfern @ 23rd July 2011 8:25 am Social Media

It seems that there is quite some demand for Google’s new social networking site, as their recently launched iPhone app for Google+ was released this week and almost immediately rose to the top of the iTunes chart.

Google’s newest social media venture was launched around three weeks ago, along with an app designed for Android phones, and so it was only a matter of time before an iOS version of the app was released.

The iPhone app is all but identical to its Android counterpart, giving users all of Google+’s vital features, including “Huddles” group chat, “Circles” for grouping your Google+ friends together, and the “Stream” of updates from people in your Circles.

Within hours of launching the iOS app, Google+ released an update for the app, which addressed teething bug in the original app. The update included easier photo attachment to posts, blocking unwanted Huddle messages, and fixes for minor bugs.

The Google+ iOS app is currently only available for iPhones running 3.1 or higher versions of the iOS software, although Punit Soni, head of mobile development for Google+, has promised that there will be corresponding apps available for the iPad and iPod Touch very soon.

Punit Soni said of the update: “When we launched, the App Store started serving a previous test version of the App which didn’t have the stability and fixes that the latest version had. It started serving the correct version a little later.”

Currently, Google+ can only be accessed by invite only, although whispers are abound that it will be made available to all towards the end of this month.

Is News Internationals Bad Week About to Get Worse As MySpace Bring Onboard Justin Timberlake

By Andrew Redfern @ 8th July 2011 2:55 pm Social Media

Not only have News International been forced to close Britains biggest selling Sunday newspaper , The News of the World, but they have sold MySpace for a massive loss with MySpace now seeing a rosier future outside of Rupert Murdoch’s control.

News International has not only been dealing with the fallout from this week’s phone hacking scandal but has also announced the sale of the once mighty MySpace for a measly $35million. Bear in mind that back in 2005 News International paid $580million for the social media giant and have now sold it for around 6% of the original purchase price.

MySpace, once the worlds’ number one social media site, has seen an astonishing decline in the past 6 years. Back when News international paid $580million it had 300million active users and the world was only just on the cusp of the social media revolution. Now MySpace has 90million users, many dormant, and this figure has been in decline for years.

The reason for this is not just the rise of Facebook and Twitter but a lack of innovation within MySpace after the takeover by News International. Facebook sought to make their site as simple to use as possible to increase signups and made social contact the very essence of the site to keep people engaged.

MySpace unquestionably allowed its users to personalise their pages more than Facebook, however in the long term this can be seen as a mistake as pages became slow to load, cluttered and engagement with other users was not placed at the heart of the site.

The uniformity of Facebook was not a handicap but a positive as all users had to do to set up a page was add a few personal details, a picture and simply find a few friends on the network. MySpace on the other hand was populated by hardcore users with highly developed individual pages which seemed to put off the casual browser from joining up. Once a newer, easier to use Social Network appeared MySpace simply faded into the background.

There was little in the way of innovation from News International, they pulled a few strings from their movie subsidiary companies to place references in films such as Iron Man and most notably Kick-Ass however nothing in the way of true innovation that would attract users, the lifeblood of any social network.

In essence News International never understood the medium they had bought into and were out manoeuvred by a smaller company that was able to revolutionise social media.

However now MySpace has been freed from its corporate straightjacket it has signalled its intent to fight back and seems to have made a smart move by signing up singer/dancer/actor/all round good guy Justin Timberlake as a partner.

MySpace was initially conceived as a way for bands, musicians, performers and artists to communicate with each other and their fans and it seems as though bringing onboard Justin Timberlake they are going back to their roots. They could hardly have picked a better figurehead as Justin Timberlake has an immense international, cross-generational and cross genre appeal.

Could this be the first move in the renaissance of MySpace? If it is News International could end up with even more egg on their face for selling the company for $35million to go with the half a billion loss on their balance sheet, the loss of the Britain’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper and a hurricane of truly awful publicity to cap a nightmare week for Rupert Murdoch.

Google tells Businesses not to join Google+…yet

By Andrew Redfern @ 8th July 2011 12:29 pm Social Media

If you’re a business looking to pounce on the latest massive social media outlet, Google+, you’d do well to heed the latest warning from the Google camp.
The search engine giant has revealed that it is currently developing a Google+ experience specifically for businesses and asks brands who are interested in using the site to hold on and not create their Google+ profiles just yet.

Product Manager Christian Oestlien broke the news in a Google+ post and accompanying YouTube video. Oestlien explained that the Google+ team were working on a unique Google+ platform for businesses which would include extensive analytics and the ability to connect to other Google products such as AdWords, reasoning that “How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands”.

The news comes a little late for a number of prominent brands. Ford, Breaking News, and web news outlet Mashable are among a number of companies who already use the site. But Oestlien assures us that good things come to those who wait.

“The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” he says. “We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

The Google+ business user platform is not expected to be introduced until later in the year, but a prototype is expected to launch in the meantime, in order to trial the brand orientated profiles with “a few marketing partners”. This experiment will take place within a matter of months and companies can even apply to take part, within a Google Spreadsheet, accessible via the original post.

If you’re among the many non-user early birds, it is not clear as to whether or not Google+ will shut down your profile completely or attempt to augment it somehow. What is sure is that you won’t be catching the word, just yet.

Remarkably, Google+ isn’t the first social network to experience a seemingly unexpected influx of brand-based involvement. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Google Buzz were all invaded by big businesses and that Google+ would be the same shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Perhaps the only surprise is that the Google+ team hadn’t predicted as much and prepared and optimised Google+ experience for businesses from the outset.
For now, the message from Google+ is to exercise some patience and wait until your company can benefit from a dedicated brand-orientated experience. Until then, this new pool of internet-dwelling consumers will remain an untapped resource.

The business & commercial presence will be key to how the +1 buttons are used. If the Google+ system remains a network of friends and family then the commercial networking opportunities stemming from your pages being +1ed will be limited. If however Google+ has a LinkedIn style business niche aspect to it then it could well become a vital tool in promoting your site towards your key target audience. Whilst all this ignores the SEO implications of how the +1 votes will be incorporated into the Google Algorithm it will still be an extremely important issue for the take-up of this latest Google innovation

Google+ …….. the future of Social Networking?

By Andrew Redfern @ 30th June 2011 10:54 am Social Media

Google is preparing to roll out its Google+ system globally, but what will this mean to Google’s users? Google+ is primarily a social project designed to help users of Google to quickly and easily interact with friends.

The new Google+ functionality will allow you to interact with your circle of friends, quickly and easily upload images direct from your android phone, share videos and connect and share information with your friends within the Google+ page.

The most noticeable amendment to Google’s design that many people will have noticed is the implementation of the black bar at the top of the page, which has been rolled out throughout almost all of the Google product range, except for gmail. The simple explanation for the change in colour is simply to draw the user’s attention to the various products/services that Google has to offer in addition to it staple offering of gmail and search.

The black bar has been designed to attract more people to try a host of existing products that Google has to offer including Google Docs, Google Shopping, Google Reader and many more products that will be rolled out in the short and long-term future. Additionally the more perceptive users of Google search will also notice that the URL of the page listing is displayed directly below the page title, instead of traditionally being below the meta-description.

In addition to the roll out of Google+, Google’s other product Google Maps is also in the process of being upgraded, with various design tweaks currently being implemented within this popular tool. This amends will be more subtle than the recent amend to Google’s search page with power users probably being the only people to notice the design tweaks that are being rolled out.

Only time will tell if the roll out of Google+ will provide a viable alternative to social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, but the social media “epidemic” shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

Promoted Tweets to “Invade” Our Twitter Streams in 2 Months

By Andrew Redfern @ 24th June 2011 3:43 pm Social Media

As social networking and microblogging site Twitter bids to consolidate its status as one of the web’s big guns, plans to include paid-for advertising tweets within our timelines have now been given a deadline.

Promoted tweets will appear within Twitter user’s personal feeds within the next 8 weeks, according to several sources who have been briefed on the matter.
These commercially driven, paid for tweets are not a new phenomenon, but had previously only appeared within relevant Twitter searches and on the social media dashboard Hootsuite. Now, advertisers have been told that these tweets will pop up within member’s personal streams, a massive step forward for ad campaigns within the site.

Advertisers are assured that promoted tweets are here to say, and Twitter plans to make sure that we see them. One idea is to make the paid-for tweets ‘sticky’, meaning that no matter how far we scroll down, these pesky ads will stay at the top of the page.

Users of the Twitter iPhone app will already be familiar with this sort of intrusive advertisement. The iPhone app’s unpopular Quick Bar stuck to the top of the Twitter user’s display screen and earned itself the less than affectionate nickname Dick Bar (in honour of CEO Dick Costello).

Twitter clearly thinks that the Quick Bar technique will seem less intrusive on a computer screen and, given the amount of advertisements already cluttering the average web page, they’re probably right.

The social media giant certainly seems desperate to move forward with the idea. And why wouldn’t they? If the plan comes together, Twitter will expose us to a wealth of lucrative advertising without suffering a major backlash; and improving their already impressive returns – Twitter is expected to gross a whopping $100 million this year.

But will the promoted tweet pay off? Will advertisers see the profit in the scheme and give Twitter the sort of advertising pulling power that Facebook enjoys? We don’t know the answers yet. But what we do know for sure is that promoted tweets are coming to Twitter, they’re coming very soon, and they won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.

The Google Purchase of PostRank Emphasises the Importance of Engagement For Search Engine Optimisation

By Andrew Redfern @ 9th June 2011 10:45 am Social Media

One of Google’s newest company acquisitions is called PostRank, a company founded in 2007 and based in Waterloo, Ontario. PostRank is a company specialising in the measurement of browsers engagement with Social Media, allowing businesses to see how people engage with its social media and content.

Google has stated that this acquisition will improve its social media capability “We’re always looking for new ways to measure and analyse data. The PostRank team has developed an innovative approach to measuring web engagement, and we think they can help us improve our products for our users and advertisers”

One of PostRanks founders Iiya Grigorik is optimistic that being part of the Google empire will only help the company “We are extremely excited to join Google. We believe there is simply no better company on the web today that both understand the value of the engagement data we have been focusing on, and has the platform and reach to bring its benefits to the untold millions of daily, active Internet users.”

As well as fitting into Google’s plans for incorporating social media into Search it is also a significant pointer as to the future of Search Engine Optimisation. Already this year with the Google algorithm changes we can see that user engagement is increasing in importance for ranking within Google.

Now with the acquisition of PostRank Google will be better able to monitor a company’s engagement with social media. Combined with the introduction of Google’s new +1 feature we can see that producing high quality on-site content and truly engaging with browsers is not going to only help Conversion rates but will help your overall rankings on Google

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