Over the weekend Facebook rolled out the new timeline pages for brands. This presents both challenges and opportunities for social media marketers to optimize content for the new layout, new features and specifications. Here’s a quick summery of the changes and how you can take advantage of them:

Facebook’s new pages incorporate the new timeline layout recently rolled out to personal pages. There’s now a greater emphasis on media sharing and posting updates, questions, photos, links and other content on your page on a regular basis is designed to engage your audience further. This also means that brand pages are rewarded with a larger reach (higher visibility of posts) the more you share and comment.

In many ways the new pages allow for more controlled branding and provide better tools for community management, the ‘insights’ with all your statistics now a much bigger feature. You can use features such as cover photos and page timelines to express your identity and use the timeline to effectively tell your story and engage with your audience on a rather personal level. Their feedback becomes very much a part of the story you tell.

Cover photo:

It’s the first thing people see when they visit your page and should illustrate your business or organization in way that is engaging and interesting. This is the ideal space for logos, headers and taglines. The ideal dimensions for cover photos are 851×315 pixels. Facebook will automatically resize all cover photos that do not meet these dimensions, but they may become distorted.

However, Facebook has set up some rules: The cover photo cannot include price or purchase information, calls to action or display a web address, email or mailing address, phone number or other contact information, etc.

Profile picture:

Your profile picture is an image that represents your business or organisation across Facebook as a smaller thumbnail image (similar to your twitter avatar). It is used in news feed stories as well as advertising units, so should be easily recognizable. The ideal dimensions of a profile picture are 180×180 pixels.

Content Management:

New pages allow more custom management of content. Although this is good news, it does mean that you’ll need to allocate more time and resources to SMM (social media management). For example, businesses and organisations can pin posts to the top of pages each week. These posts are anchored for seven days and highlight an important piece of content so it is the first thing people see when they arrive on the page. Administrators can continue to post content on a daily basis to drive engagement and conversations with fans while the pinned post remains fixed. Posts can be pinned and unpinned using the pencil icon on each post. When a post is unpinned, it will revert to the original formatting and place on the timeline.

You’re also now able to hide posts. The pencil function can be used to hide posts to prevent them from being seen from all visitors on the page. Administrators can still see hidden posts in the activity log, where they can also be deleted.

You can star posts, which makes them appear wider on the page but does not change their location. You just need to click the star button to highlight a piece of content at any place in your timeline. You can revert a featured post to the original size anytime you like by clicking the star icon again.

Another new feature are the “Milestones”, which define your key moments. Like starred posts, Milestones take up the whole width of the page. You can highlight things such as a location, a year, a photo or a story. Milestones appear in the correct position on a pages timeline according to the date entered.

Community Management:

In general, the brand pages are now much more similar to the personal pages in style and functionality. Therefore, you now can (finally!) see the people who “like” your page as friends. This gives users a more personal page experience: If a page fan has liked, visited, tagged or checked a page into a location, that activity will be viewable to all of that fan’s friends in a box right on the business’s or organisation’s page.

The Admin panel has been much improved: The feature organizes all notifications, insights and other key information so administrators can quickly and easily gather information and respond to fans, who can now have one-on-one conversations with businesses and organizations through private messaging on pages, and these conversations can be managed through the admin panel.

It will be interesting to see peoples initial reactions to the changes. If you have any questions or need any help, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Users of Facebook are accustomed to change. The ‘like button’ and the recently introduced ‘timeline’ are only two examples of how the social network has evolved over the last 7 years. Now Facebook prepares to go public and is looking to raise $10 billion selling shares in an initial public offering (IPO). The announcement has already caused much speculation and anticipation for what is to be the biggest tech IPO since Google. The implications are wide and varied: SMO and fan acquisition will become evermore important for brands (B2B and B2C) and users will change the way they use the social network as their seemingly personal online space will shrink when new advertising takes over. Slam has trawled through the avalanche of web articles and news stories on the matter and has come up with predictions as to how this will affect brands and users on Facebook:

1. The Bottom Line – Facebook rolls out new advertisement opportunities

Anything Facebook does will have to ultimately serve the bottom line. The IPO could value the social network at as much as $100 billion. Therefore, Facebook needs to prove it can bring in real advertising money.

2. “Social Advertising” – brand pages won’t survive without a content strategy

Facebook has already started to roll out a new advertising concept. Premium ads built from brand Page news feed posts will appear in the mobile- and web newsfeeds as well as on the logout page and sidebar.  Facebook calls this “social advertising”, as the ads will look and feel more like organic conversations (or ‘stories’), showing how many of your friends have already liked this particular brand and show their comments and interaction with it. These brand ads can appear in the user’s newsfeed if the user, or any of the user’s connections have liked the brand.  Facebook’s challenge will be to keep these ads as unobtrusive as possible so that users are not alienated or driven to “unlike” pages. Brands will be able to increase the number of fans they reach with a ‘story’ (i.e. status update on a brand page) by over 50%. Brands will have to reach a threshold of a certain number of ‘likes’ in order to qualify for the premium ads.

It does beg the question of why views per story are so low to begin with (generally around 16%). In our experience, the smaller a brand page is, the harder it is to reach a large percentage of your fans (Facebook’s algorithm penalises pages with less than 1000 ‘likes’). Fan acquisition and SMO will become evermore important for brands. Furthermore, as the premium ads are based on content rather than messaging, brands will need to have a long-term content strategy in place in order to fully exploit Facebook advertising.

3. The initial backlash  - invasion of “privacy”

The first time I saw a sponsored tweet appear in my Twitter feed, my intuitive reaction was to click it away and mark it as spam. There may well be a backlash to the new premium ads and users might express their discontent and might event start to jump ship.

4. Users wising up – if you’re not paying you’re the product

Too many users are still ignorant of the fact that Facebook is a public space and that they’re giving away tons of personal and potentially sensitive data. Brand stories appearing in the newsfeed may be a bit of a wakeup call for those who consider it a private platform. Users might become a bit less frivolous when it comes to ‘liking’ brand pages and may also start to take more control of their profile’s privacy settings.

5. A chance for competitors – new social networks

Like Google amongst search engines, Facebook very much has a monopoly in social networks. As universal as it has become to “write on someone’s wall” or “like” someone’s status, it is bound to reach a level where users migrate to newer networks that have a more open policy on data. This, if not its sheer size, could become Facebook’s Achilles heal and enable a healthy competition.

The exponential growth of mobile is changing the world we live in significantly. Whereas some are already embracing it fully, many B2B, professional services and membership organisations have yet to exploit the full potential of mobile, and apps in particular.  Events and conferences are one of the many aspects of business life in which an app proves to be more than just a useful tool. It can bring new capabilities to your event that will save you money, show your commitment to green and above all, wow your attendees.

For any event organiser, attendee satisfaction is the single most important point of concern. An event app enhances networking opportunities, improves session experience and increases engagement, resulting in satisfied attendees who will return year after year.  We’ve had a look at key factors attributed to attendee satisfaction and explored how an app can support them.

A Happy Attendee… has high networking activity

Networking is continually cited as the number one reason for people to attend events and many attendees will judge the value of an event in terms of the connections they make. In order to facilitate successful networking, you need to ensure that the right people have the opportunity to meet and exchange information: something that is often left to chance. An app can offer the facility for users to create profiles, browse other attendees as well as speaker profiles and contact people of interest directly. While attendees can message each other freely, personal contact details are only shared on mutual consent. It is even possible to configure your app so that it automatically suggests the best people to connect with through matching people who attend the same sessions and have shown similar interests.

A Happy Attendee… has a fantastic session experience

The session experience starts with the scheduling and apps allow your attendees to put together and manage their personal event calendar. With larger events there may be a great deal of additional information you could provide via the app that attendees can then cross reference with speaker information, documents, presentations, etc. You can also easily amend and update your entire audience through the database.
The quality of speakers and sessions of course plays a major role in audience satisfaction. Interactivity enhances enjoyment and meaningful interaction within sessions can be aided by mobile apps. Integrated social networks such as Facebook and Twitter via API allow the users to directly join the discussion from the app in real time. Speakers can address concerns, questions and suggestions, which ultimately creates a more dynamic and inclusive session experience.

A Happy Attendee… sees early affect

As an attendee, there’s nothing more frustrating than feeling the take-a-ways of an event or conference have not been worthwhile. Even if the experience was good at the time, if you have to wait days and sometimes even weeks for materials, be they videos, follow up sessions, certificates or documents, the event loses momentum and the lingering feeling will be that of unmet expectations rather than satisfaction. The event app gives attendees more control over information gathered at events. Users can text or voice notes within the app and attach them to sessions, exhibitors etc. and even share them with other users. Additional materials (speaker PPTs or exhibitor details) can also be shared instantly via QR codes.

Getting quality feedback from your attendees at the end of the event is key in order for you to know how to improve your offer. An app allows you to create custom forms and is a great way to gather information including session feedback, attendee surveys or opinion polls.

The mobile future is here and in less than two years people are predicted to access the internet via their mobile phones more than via their desktop. Implementing an app for events will become standard when we reach that point. Right now however, an app can help your organisation be perceived as an early adopter and visionary around emerging technologies in your field.

Call Slam for more information on how an app can be tailored to your precise event needs.

What do you picture when you hear the term “Investment banker”? Bonuses, high-flying, designer suits and sport cars? You can’t blame graduates for choosing career paths in professions that strike them as desirable: Fashion, Investment Banking or Marketing, they all conjure up images of an exciting day-to-day life of fabulousness. They’re perceived as being desirable not least because of the power of messaging to focus on the positive while other career areas with the potential to be just as exciting and diverse are drifting towards the shallow end of the popularity pool. So what do you picture when you hear the terms “food scientist”, “chemist” or “microbiologist”: Geeky, Bunsen burners and lab coats? Time to consider the power of words and how they can work in your favour.

The UK needs more Chemists – bring on Tony Ryan!

It’s fundamental for the British economy to invest in the scientific research that will drive future breakthroughs and productivity, and inspiring new generations of talent to recognise the opportunities in scientific fields is as important as funding to keep the UK at the forefront. Yesterday morning on our trusted Radio 4, Tony Ryan, Dean of Science at Sheffield University, discussed the manifold opportunities within the field. A “Big Picture” man with an inspiring way of communicating, Ryan paints a picture that is holistic and imaginative. It’s this kind of enthusiasm a la Brian Cox that can heave science right up the popularity ladder and help capture the imagination of students.

Just as a book will always be better than the film

Words, like no other medium have the power to evoke and inspire. Exploration, imagination and the race for discovery, along with the power to change the world and the prestige of Nobel prizes are just some of the messages that need to be promoted in science, consistently, through media which are attuned to the audience.  The messaging needs to quickly resonate, captivate and engage. The student needs to see them self in a life that delivers on their ambitions through communication that captures their attention.

Do you speak the lingo?

The Investment banking world has created a whole vernacular around their profession to make you feel like you’re with the in crowd if you speak the lingo. Trading on “the Street” (wall, not sesame) sets the scene for your life of bonuses and closing dinners.

But back to those Chemists…

Tony Ryan describes that being a chemist is to be curious about everything. Be it pollution, the energy crisis, global food supplies, the common denominator is chemistry and, as Radio 4 concludes: “If you look at the world through the eyes of a chemist, there are many solutions” (…pun intended…).

In December we wrote about face recognition technology in advertising and mused about future ads that will know who they’re talking to and whether they’re being looked at. In Britain this week, Slam’s musings become reality. A 20 second interactive ad that uses face recognition technology to determine the gender of the person looking at it and vary its content accordingly is about to be launched.

The £30 000 advert is commissioned by the children’s charity Plan UK as part of it’s “Because I’m a Girl” campaign and will be unveiled on a bus stop on Oxford Street in London’s West End this Wednesday.  Targeting women only, the advert will use a high-definition camera to scan passers by and guess their gender with an accuracy of 90%. If males view the advert it will display a message directing him to the charity website.

“We’re not giving men and boys the choice to see the full ad on this occasion – so they get a glimpse of what it’s like to have basic choices taken away,” said Marie Staunton, Plan UK’s chief executive (From The Independent).

Although the plunge into innovative advertising is commendable, there are still many privacy issues around face recognition technology that have yet to be resolved. Neil Chapman, the head of the creative team at Clear Channel UK, the company who designed the ad, stressed his advert would not record or save any of the data it detects. Be that as it may, with data violation in the headlines on an almost daily basis, we feel this advert is destined to receive mixed reviews.

Technology, however enticing, should only ever be used when it makes sense and supports the point you’re trying to make: it should be a means to an end rather than the end itself.  In this instance we’re not convinced the campaign hasn’t been developed to use the technology rather than vice versa.

There is bound to be a fair share of trial and error with face recognition software. One this is certain, we are sure to see much more of this sort of advertising in the very near future – and they are sure to see us!

Membership bodies to a great extent rely on member motivation. Whether in relation to lending their time to participate in events, successfully completing CPD programs, or simply joining, members need to feel a positive impetus to do so and to continue to do so throughout their career. When it comes to motivation techniques, there is a huge disconnect in what social science knows and what businesses and organisations do.

Psychologists distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The former is doing something for its own sake, while the latter is doing something in order to experience something else, such as a reward. In many aspects of our professional lives we will encounter extrinsic (also referred to as “if-then”) motivation. If we go to work, we get a pay check at the end of the month. If we do well, we are rewarded with a bonus. But are traditional rewards always as effective as we think?

Rewards stifle productivity

Traditional reward-based motivation works well with routine, rule-based work (i.e. Here’s the manual, the team that assembles the Ikea cupboard the fastest gets £100). As long as the task involves mechanical skill, bonuses work as expected – the higher the incentive, the better the performance.  However, in this day and age most of the tasks we are faced with are more complex and require a creative solution. Research shows that extrinsic motivation does not help productivity in cognitive assignments. In fact, rewards narrow your focus, thereby stifling your ability to be creative and, ultimately, productive. The London School of Economics is one of many universities to have conducted research in this field. They examined 51 ‘pay for performance’ cases and found that not only was the impact on overall performance negative, but also that higher incentives lead to worse performance.

Let the work be the reward

So how does one motivate people effectively? The answer has to revolve around a more intrinsic approach. We all have an innate desire to do things because they matter, because we find them interesting and because we have a yearning to be part of something larger than ourselves. Traditional management will work if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, as is the case with membership organisations, self-direction is a better approach. A very successful example comes from 21^st century giant Google, where employees can use 20% of their time to work on whatever they please. This works so well that around half of new Google products each year are created within that autonomous time.

With professional membership bodies there’s a tremendous opportunity to evoke these innate desires – to be that ‘greater something’ members would want to be a part of. Rewards for participation (or punishment for not) will only make it feel a chore rather than a privilege. The key is communication. The language you use, the brand you build and how you involve members has to be intrinsically motivational rather than that uninspiring dangling carrot.

Last week we explored the difference between promotional and prevention motivation and how this might impact messaging. This week the debate continues as neuroscientist Tali Sharot reveals the latest findings on how we digest information. On this morning’s BBC Radio 4’s woman’s hour she explained that human beings are actually hard wired to be optimistic. So what does that mean to us as individuals and how does that impact on how we communicate with one another?

As is often the case, this discovery was made accidently when Sharot was trying to examine whether the same part of the brain responsible for remembering the past was also responsible for imagining the future. When asked to picture future events, the test audience had an overwhelming bias towards the positive, automatically assuming the best possibly scenario, be it that their plane journey would be smooth or a haircut fantastic.  It transpired that approximately 80% of people in the western world are innately positive, whereas only 20% will expect a negative outcome to future events.  The majority of people, therefore, are fuelled and enticed by what’s to gain, rather than what’s at risk.

Who are we kidding?

So we assume the best for us as individuals and, at least in this part of our brain, put ourselves above the rule (“That happens to others, but that will never happen to me”). So much so, that our brain will trick us into believing we’ll live to be 100 years old and live a life of health and happiness, even when our own life experience and statistics should teach us better. Tali Sharot gives the example of a couple about to get married predicting a 0% chance that they’ll one day get a divorce, even though the statistic in reality lies at about 50% in the western world. Optimism is a surviving mechanism, perhaps a tool that allows us to take risks that as rational human beings we would not take if it weren’t for the belief that we’ll be fine, against the odds.

The stubborn optimist – how to reach people

After being presented with the real statistic, the test audience was then again asked to make the personal prediction. Interestingly, the facts did alter their belief, but only when the real statistic was better, more positive, than what they had initially predicted. Data that was negative (i.e. a 30% chance in getting cancer as opposed to a predicted 10%) was perpetually ignored. We therefore do not relate bad news to ourselves and we don’t learn from negative information.  This has implications on how we communicate. If we are aware of our mental blind spots, we can ensure to craft our messages in such a way that will stick as opposed to being ignored and filed in the “not relevant to me” bin. It’s important to note that factors such as age and cultural background will also have an impact on our optimism (at least on how conscious we are of it). As a conscious optimist, it’s reassuring to know that a positive message will have a larger impact than a negative one – now go and have yourself a nice, oblivious day!

Smiling in the face of reality – Youtube

One-phrase slogans can have a profound effect on how customers see your product or service. One key factor in crafting that phrase is matching its content to the customer’s mind-set, and in particular to the way they view opportunity. The Harvard business review recently explored the two fundamentally different kinds of consumer motivation: prevention and promotion.

Promotion Motivation – what’s to gain?

Research in psychology shows that some people are more energised by optimism and praise. They see their goals as opportunity for gain or advancement. Research also suggests that these people are also more likely to embrace risk, seize opportunities and excel at creativity and innovation.  Generally speaking, younger people are more promotion-minded.

Prevention Motivation – what’s to lose?

A different type of person will view opportunity to avoid loss and / or stay safe. The prevention-minded are more driven by criticism and the possibility of failure and are risk-averse, but thorough and accurate in their work.

So which approach should you take with your product and its tagline? Products, activities and ideas can have different motivational focuses just as people do and it’s simple if your product is obviously in one category or the other. If you are selling term life insurance, you will be dealing with prevention-motivated buyers; high-return but risky investments, on the other hand, will be purchased by promotion-motivated customers. However, many products and services fall into a broad middle ground and can be presented in either way, as The Harvard Business Review illustrates:

“The nuances in description can be subtle. If you are selling cars, you can choose to talk about “better mileage” (promotion) or “lower fuel costs” (prevention). You can emphasize the “bonus” features customers get if they buy the Limited Edition, or what they’d be missing out on if they didn’t buy it”.

Knowing your audience is key and research pays off. People will pay more for a product or service if you describe their choice in a way that matches their view of opportunity. You will increase engagement and your customers will ascribe more value to the product or service in question, as shown in changes in attitude, behaviour and spending.

Segmenting Your Customers

It’s likely that that you have both kinds of people within your target base. An effective approach would be to segment your customer base. A financial organisation may find that younger investors are strongly gain oriented, whereas older investors with substantial assets would tend to be far more protective of what they have. Hence, direct mail or Web ads targeted at younger customers could emphasize gains and long-term growth potential, while ads for older customers would stress safety, particularly in terms of avoiding losses and preventing a reduction in future income.

Motivational fit is powerful. If applied successfully, your audience will find your story more compelling and your arguments more convincing on an intuitive level. Like goes to like and will continue to endorse your idea, product or service to others. So, are you feeling motivated?

You are far more interesting than the average TV programme and that’s why your television is now watching you. The technology to have a webcam observe your facial expressions exists and may be deployed in ad platforms, games and other areas. It’s only a matter of time before ads will change or linger according to how you respond to them emotionally.

“Facial coding” techniques have been used for a while by academics and marketers to analyse the emotional reactions of people to stimuli. Apparently, we’re incapable of completely hiding true emotions and experts are able to tell whether we like or dislike something by the most minuscule changes in our expressions. Now companies are automating the process of gauging emotional reactions. By combining emotion-monitoring and conventional eye tracking, one can accurately measure viewer engagement with web ads, web sites, print ads, etc. UK based firm ‘Realeyes’ is currently conducting tests across the US and Europe.
In an interview with The Economist, founder Mihkel Jäätma says:

“our system is able to gauge a person’s mood by plotting the position of facial features, such as eyebrows, mouth and nostrils, and employing clever algorithms to interpret changes in their alignment—as when eyebrows are raised in surprise, say. Add eye-movement tracking, hinting at which display ads were overlooked and which were studied for any period of time, and the approach offers precisely the sort of quantitative data brand managers yearn for”.

While initial applications may be geared to analysing ads and other content, the real potential of these tools could be realised if they allowed ads, games, and websites to react instantly to changes in viewer emotion. Thanks to the power of image-processing software and the ubiquity of tiny cameras in computers and mobile devices, ads will soon know when you’re looking at them and how you feel about them. Uses for this technology will of course not be limited to advertising. Areas such as security, computer gaming, education and health care could all benefit greatly from it. Advertising agencies, however, are among the first to embrace the concept in earnest to help improve online campaigns. Therefore, there’s not much left for me to say here other than: I can see you!

On this morning’s BBC Radio 4 ‘today’ show, James Dyson talked about the shortage of Engineers in the UK and supported the campaign to keep Design and Technology a mandatory subject in the school curriculum. The national curriculum is currently under review and business leaders fear that removing the subject may have a serious impact on Britain’s competitiveness in the field.

In our work in schools and graduate recruitment campaigns for financial services companies and related professional bodies, Slam has been aware of concerns in recent years over the lack of applicants for science, maths and technology subjects. 2011 has seen an improvement in university applications in these areas probably more due to tougher economic conditions and concerns over fees than our own single-handed efforts. However, changes to the core curriculum that deflect focus from these hard subjects could negate the small gains that have been made.

The UK currently produces about half the number of engineers required. In fact, the whole of Europe is experiencing the same issue. Despite being valued more highly as a career in comparison to the UK, the Association of German Engineers (VDI) reported earlier this year that there were over 76,000 vacant engineering jobs – an all time high.

James Dyson is part of the group ‘We believe in DNT’, campaigning to maintain and improve the subject. It should be high-tech, preparing children for the fast changing world of technology and should be underpinned by the other, more theoretical, science subjects.

Engineering, technology and design professions may want to get behind the fight to keep Design and Technology in schools in order to ensure future success.  There are many opportunities today to link industry with schools through talks, sponsorships, inspirational campaigns and careers packs. There needs to be an increase of general awareness of the range of design and engineering career options currently available, along with inspirational and creative methods employed to build understanding and excitement.

Dyson invests heavily in research and development and recognises the importance of filling the current skills gap. In the interview he concludes: “We have a real competitive problem her: If we don’t engineer and design our products better, we’ll be importing everybody else’s and not exporting our own”.