Content Matters

Flipboard's New Curation Platform a Boon for Brands

Last night, Flipboard 2.0 was released. 

The new version includes a curation platform that allows anyone to create a Flipboard "magazine" by curating content and sharing it with others. Here's Tech Readings, a Flipboard magazine I've created this morning.

The user interface couldn't be easier. From any article, simply click the + icon and add it to your magazine.

For the avid RSS reader/curator, this is a great new tool. Against the backdrop of outrage at Google dropping Reader, I realized that between most of my content consumption comes via Twitter and Flipboard these days, with Reader a distant third. With this new curation tool, Flipboard should become an even more important tool for me.

Yet I think the real opportunity for Flipboard will come with brands. As brands move into the publishing space, there's tremendous opportunity for them to create custom magazines for niche communities, using proprietary content, curated external content, or, ideally, a blend of both.

And this potentially creates new revenue opportunities for Flipboard. A professional version of the curation platform might allow brands to have some control over layout, to include their own branding and to package it up as their own branded app.

Those capabilities could also be of interest to publishers and informal curators within the enterprise. 

Flipboard has delivered a great reading experience since its launch. There's an opportunity for them to create a similarly great experience for curation and publishing. I'm excited to see how brands and publishers begin to experiment with these new tools.

 

LinkedIn, Amex Drive Pseudo Viral Buzz

If you're like me, your twitter stream this week was filled with two oft-repeated messages:

• Hurray! I have one of the top 5% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012; and
• #BuyAmexGiftCard25

The first message was driven by a LinkedIn (LNKD) campaign to notify owners of the 20 million most active profiles that theirs was among the "top 5%" or "top 10%" most-viewed profiles. Clicking the link brought you to a page which encouraged you to share this message over Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn:

Hurray! I have one of the top 5% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/profile/0/066/72a

It's not the first time LinkedIn has taken this approach. In March of 2011, LinkedIn sent an email blast to many of its early adopters showing them that they had been among the first million users to sign up for the platform. For a week or so, we all saw many tweets boasting of users' early adopter status (for the record, I was user number 135,826). 

There's nothing wrong with what LinkedIn is doing, but it does feel a little forced. And by the 4th or 5th time you see that message in your stream, it begins to feel a little spammy. And, of course, for those who bothered to do the math, being among the top 10% of LinkedIn's 200 million users doesn't really feel that special. But LinkedIn knows that rankings and gamification works, and they have been clever in getting users to promote their message.

This week also brought a marketing partnership between Twitter and American Express (AXP) aimed at testing out Twitter-based social commerce (TCommerce?). As you've no doubt seen and heard by now, users could link their Twitter account to their American Express account, then make purchases by tweet. To encourage users to try it, American Express offered a $25 gift card for $15 for those using the process. 

Unlike the LinkedIn approach, where sharing the message was optional, users were required to tweet a message using a specific hashtag #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to start the transaction. This was the way that American Express could identify buyers, but it also clearly was used to promote the message to that users' social network. In order to complete the transaction, users needed to then link their card to their account, then tweet a final confirmation message including the hashtag #ConfirmAmexGiftCard25.

Using Twitter for commerce, and particularly mobile commerce, is interesting. You can tell that American Express was trying to emulate the simple approaches used for fundraising via text message. But the multi-step process felt a bit clunky. Part of that was due to the need to link a card with a Twitter account. I have to assume that the conversion rate, from those who tweeted the initial #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to actually completing the process was probably less than 50%. But apparently the offer is now sold out, so American Express must have achieved their targets.

Twitter and other social media platforms are clearly becoming more commercial. Innovative companies like LinkedIn and American Express will experiment - and that's all good. At the same time, companies will need to be careful not to appear too spammy, as a backlash can come quickly and is likely to spread more virally than the original message.

Related articles

American Express will let Twitter users buy real products with a hashtag

20 Million LinkedIn Users Fell for the Top 10% Marketing Scheme

Sorry, LinkedIn Users: You're Not All That Special

Social Media Strategies for Black Friday

As we move into Thanksgiving week, brands, retailers and ecommerce sites are focused on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the 32 shopping days leading up to Christmas. All, of course, have active social media components to their marketing efforts. And some will do it well, while many others will not. Let’s take a look at what makes for an effective social media Black Friday strategy.

Multi-platform

The first thing, of course, is to not focus your efforts on a single platform. Customers use various tools, so don’t fall in love with your favorite platform, while neglecting others. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest should all be part of your Black Friday Social Strategy. For those with brick-and-mortar stores, Foursquare is important. Why not offer special discounts for check-ins? And as mobile takes hold, the web is becoming more and more visual. Retailers should take advantage of visual platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

Existing or Specialty Accounts?

One key decision is whether to use your existing brand accounts to communicate Black Friday deals or to create new ones. In other words, should you push deal offers through your existing social media accounts or create custom Black Friday accounts? I recommend the latter. If I’ve been following a brand and am accustomed to seeing 3-5 messages per day from them, I don’t want to see that change to 40 deal offers per day for the holidays. Use your existing accounts to promote awareness of these Black Friday deal accounts, but don’t suddenly change how your existing brand accounts function. Your customers chose to follow you for a reason; don’t alienate them by changing behavior for five weeks.

Personalize

Should your social media streams be “one size fits all” or should you have multiple streams for different buyers? That depends a lot on the size and diversity of your offerings. For some brands, that’s easy. For a retailer like dELiA’s, catering to a single demographic, one stream will suffice. Amazon uses a single Twitter address, @amazondeals, for all its Gold Box deals, though I think they would benefit by adding category-specific deal streams as well for electronics, media, home and other key categories. A good rule of thumb might be if at least 25-30% of your deals could be relevant to a given customer, keep it as one stream. If less than that, you should consider splitting it into multiple streams.

Rewards

There must be a benefit to your customers for following you. Benefits might include early access to a deal, notification of what deals are coming up, or special discounts available only to social media followers. And keep timing and inventory in mind. Just as physical stores alienate customers by not having enough inventory on doorbuster items, etailers can lose customers by promoting items that are sold out by the time you click.

Awareness

So, you’ve created one or more Black Friday streams – how do you promote them? First, use your existing social media accounts. Sprinkle messages into existing streams with messages like “for early updates on Black Friday deals, follow us at …”.

Make sure that the social media buttons appear prominently on your BF Deals page. Amazon (AMZN) uses a text link “Stay connected via e-mail, Facebook and more” with a pulldown menu on its Gold Box page, but it took me a minute or two to find it. They’d be better served by adding the graphical buttons there.

Amazon’s links may not be prominent, but at least they have them. Walmart (WMT), which uses its standard Twitter and Facebook accounts to promote its deals, does not have any link to those accounts on its Pre-Black Friday page. Best Buy (BBY) and Target (TGT) offer the ability to sign up for Black Friday deal email alerts, but no links to their social media accounts.

Retailers have been talking about integrated, multichannel marketing efforts for several years. Yet, few of them seem to be taking even the simplest steps to make that happen. Your social media marketing should not be isolated; it must be integrated with your other online and offline marketing efforts.

Engage and Monitor

Most retailers still treat social media as a broadcast medium, but the real value comes from engagement and monitoring.

There are many ways to engage with your customers on social media platforms. Why not allow them to vote on which item will be the next deal? Or use Instagram to post pics of the hot deals they land? And, of couse, you should listen for frustrated customers. Your messages will be shared in positive and negative ways. Watch for criticisms of items that are sold out by the time customers click or other negative comments. Work to make those customers happy if you can.

Track hashtags like #blackfriday to see where your content is being shared – as well as that of your brands and competitors.

Mobile

Mobile commerce is growing rapidly. Your customers will be researching Black Friday deals on their tablets and phones. And they will price-check their purchases in the stores. Many will complete purchases on their mobile devices. Yet the user experience on most ecommerce sites is less than ideal on mobile.  While you can’t solve that overnight, there are steps retailers can put into place today to improve the customer experience. Make sure that all your social media links go to mobile friendly pages. Don’t overload your deal pages with unnecessary fluff. Amazon does this better than almost anyone. While their website landing pages are a crowded mess, their Lightning Deal pages are clean and simple.

 

Some retailers choose to create or modify their apps for their Black Friday sales. Macy’s, Walmart and others have launched apps. Apps are great for those customers who will be shopping at your brick & mortar store, but I’m not as bullish on Black Friday apps as some.  I think shoppers will only use apps from the one or two places they plan to do most of their shopping. For me, that’s Amazon, and that’s the only BF app I use. I believe it’s more important to get your content into the streams that customers will be using – and those are Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and of course, email.

The 32 days starting this Friday are the make-or-break period for most retailers. Social media is a key part of an integrated marketing program, yet most retailers still struggle with the "integration" aspect. The rewards are great for those who can truly do so.