GoPro's Social Media Best Practices

          With so many social media platforms available to marketers, the question becomes should a company choose only one platform as its main/primary channel.  Like the answer to most questions, this depends.  Regardless of the platform, the author agrees with Novak that “Conversation is king, content is just something to talk about” (Novak, 2010).  “Content is just something to talk about that puts human interaction at the center of the picture,” which then creates conversations (Novak, 2010).  Social media platforms provide the tools to create conversations that lead to customer engagement. Even if conversation is king, content must still be interesting or conversations do not occur and then warranting the real power of social media platforms as almost useless.      The real power of social media is to generate conversations and interactions.  Social media platforms are a two way conversation vehicles.

            Conversations encourage customer engagement.  “When thinking about social optimization (aka social media), we’re actually trying to drive engagement and interaction” (Reed College of Media, 2015).  Chris Lake states “the objective of any social media strategy [including choice of platform] is to provide the right tools, so that people can engage with your brand/people/products/service onsite and offsite” (Reed College of Media, 2015).  Using this approach, a company creates “a community-centric organization” involving and investing in customer engagement, which is key to any social media strategy. 

          “Social media isn’t a fad or trend.  It’s an enduring reality of online existence…and is an indispensable tool for marketers”(Helmrich, 2015).  Each platform has features that work best for particular businesses and its audience.  Figure 1 shows the numbers for these platforms that include:

Figure 1: Social Media Numbers

• ·         Facebook is this largest social network with more than 1.39 billion active users. This is great tool for connecting people from all over the world to a business and is a great starting point for most businesses.
• ·         Twitter is next with more than 974 million users and allows for easy interaction through hashtags.  With interesting content, Twitter is a great tool for quickly spreading the word and is a good tool for handling customer service issues.
• ·         Pinterest is a digital bulletin.  Considered more of niche network than Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is used most by females and is great platform for create categories for later reference. 
• ·         Instagram is “visual social media platform based on phone and video posts.”  This is a platform “where more artistic niches excel.”
• ·         YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.  What is best is “a video doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy in order to effective in brand promotion.  It just needs to be on YouTube.” (Helmrich, 2015).

         Other social platforms include Trumbler, StumbleUpon, Reditt and a few other more niche sites, such as GoodReads for people who like reading (Helmrich, 2015). With so many social media platforms available, the author believes most companies would benefit from focusing most efforts on

Figure 2

two or three platforms that make sense to that company and the audience it wants to reach.  If a company has little resources to do, it makes sense to generate the best content it can on just one or two platforms.  One company that seems to harness the power of social media extremely well is GoPro. GoPro is winning awards honoring the best in social media presence (See Figure 2).

            GoPro is “transforming advertising as we know it” and truly understands customer engagement/interaction on social media platform particular the ones cited above.  “The company has more than doubled its net income from 2010 to 2011 to $26.6 million but only spent $50,000 more on marketing” (Bobowski, 2014).  GoPro repeated this in 2013 by increasing marketing cost by only $41,000 but made $28 million more in net income. (Bobowski, 2014)

            GoPro uses many of the rules of best practices to engage customers outlined by Brian Solis in “21 Rules for Social Media Engagement”.  How? To elaborate on a few, first and foremost, GoPro empowers users. “GoPro looks externally for amazing social media posts by harnessing the power of user-generated content. The camera manufacturer often encourages those using its product to send in some of their best shots. This not only makes for great content to share on social media, but it also shows off the product in action” (AdWeek, 2015).

            Next, GoPro has “determined the identity, character and personality of the brand and has matched it to the persona of the individuals representing it online” (Solis, 2010).  GoPro is more than a wearable camera.  GoPro “has sold consumers not on the camera, itself, but on something the smartphone can’t easily replace: the experience of using the camera” (Lapowsky, 2014).  Newer models allow users to up load videos from the camera right to their phones using an app making it very easy for customers to generate content. “In place of an art director, acting cast, and a team of videographers,” GoPro “simply hands a wearable camera to amazing athletes and get back advertising and marketing gold” (Bobowski, 2014).  Regular consumers are advertisers as well, “shooting high-quality video, loading it onto YouTube and social networks, and advertising the capabilities of camera to friends, family and even strangers” (Bobowski, 2014).            

            GoPro today is now harnessing it exposure [on social media] to go a step beyond and create a media company. GoPro is using “leading social networks and content platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube” to transform itself into a media company. GoPro to date has 6.6 million followers on Instagram, more than 9 million friends on Facebook, 1.4 followers on Twitter, and more than 3.2 million subscribers to GoPro channel on YouTube.  More than 6,000 GoPro tagged videos are uploaded every day to YouTube.  “GoProing” is now a now and even a hashtag on Twitter used to describe the occurrence.  Go Pro has garnered more than 50 million from 388 videos from athletes sponsored by GoPro. (Albee, 2015)

            Back to the original questions stated in the beginning, should a company adopt only one social media platform as its primary channel, GoPro bears

Figure 3

out that it is not just the company that maintains it presence on social media.  GoPro has connected the power in numbers and continues the conversation allowing its own users to generate interesting content to engage its own audience.  GoPro can afford to adopt more social media platforms because of this power of connecting.  See picture of GoPro’s home page (See Figure 3).  GoPro’s adopts Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. 

            GoPro certainly understand which

Figure 4

social media platform works best with it products with what may be one exception.   

With all of GoPro social media success, Pinterest is the one platform that may not be working well for the company (See Figure 4).  This makes sense. Pinterest is really a bulletin board and works for photos but not as well for video.  The numbers bear out with only 18,500 followers, this may be one platform GoPro could skip using.  Or maybe it has? 

References:

Ad Week. (2015). 10 brands doing an amazing job on social media.  Retrieved November 8, 2015 from: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/michael-patterson-10-brands-amazing-social-media/624169

Albee, A. (2015).  Get your fans to share their love: what every brand can learn from GoPro.  Retrieved November 8, 2015 from: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/09/brand-learn-from-gopro/

Bobowski, K. (2014).  How GoPro is transforming advertising as we know it.  Retrieved November 8, 2015 from: http://www.fastcompany.com/3032509/the-future-of-work/how-gopro-is-transforming-advertising-as-we-know-it

Jarboe, G. (2014). GoPro: One of the Biggest YouTube Success Stories Ever Retrieved November 8, 2015 from: http://www.reelseo.com/gopro-youtube-success/#ixzz3qvVvTTdq

Lapwosky, I. (2014).  Why GoPro’s success isn’t really about cameras. Retrieved November 8, 2015 from: http://www.wired.com/2014/06/gopro/

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved April 12, 2012 from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king

Reed College of Media. (2015). 642 – Lesson 3: Social Media Analytics and Advertising Channels. 

Solis, B. (2010). 21 rules for social media engagement. Mashable. Retrieved January 2, 2011, from: http://mashable.com/2010/05/18/rules-social-media-engagment/

Event Tracking Basics

Event Tracking

            Another foundational metric to web analytics is Events.  Events are “any logged or recorded action that has a specific date and time assigned to it by the web browser or the server” (Reed College of Media, 2015).  According to Kaushik, new event tracking tools “provide next-generation collection models to capture data from [user’s] rich experience” (Kaushik, 2010).  Adding to a user’s experience, events are now being built with new technologies that “embed pieces of rich content such as videos, widgets and so on” (Kaushik, 2010).  These websites that “understand rich-media experiences” can use event tracking to collect a great deal of data about their user’s experiences.  Kaushik states “the sky is the limit” as to what can be collected. 

            How so?  Event tracking “works by giving you empty containers for storing data” (Kaushik, 2010).  Google Analytics’ containers provide the following information: Category, Action, Label and Value.  Website owners can then determine how and what users choose as popular features or elements in each container. (Kaushik, 2010).   Kaushik suggests that page views are something of the past and event tracking is the future. 

           

Pratt & Lambert Paints

            Case in point, Pratt & Lambert Paints is a paint company that dates back to 1849.  According to the website:

Pratt & Lambert is the unsurpassed, uncompromising paint choice for designers, architects, professional painters and discerning consumers who insist on a flawless finish, beautiful, trend-right colors and true color accuracy.

The author had personal experience recently with Pratt & Lambert Paints’ website.  Pratt & Lambert Paints’ website has an ideal feature on its website for event tracking.  Pratt & Lambert uses a color visualizer on its website (see picture).  The tool is easy and fun to use. An individual can select a scene, select a color, upload the scene with the selected color and then can even save the scene in a user created account.  The color visualizer not only collects data for Pratt & Lambert Paints but is most helpful for customers.  The data created allows a company to put its “own spin on it” (Kaushik, 2010).  Not only can Pratt & Lambert find out which may be popular colors but for what rooms.  The company can “dive deeper into its data” to conclude favorites by even by geography (Kaushik, 2010).  

Pratt & Lambert Paints’ website, from personal experience, does accomplish an intended goal of a website of “Why does your website exist?” in the first place.  Pratt & Lambert Paints’ website gives customers’ an engaging and helpful experience.  According to RankW, “the number of unique users visiting Pratt & Lambert Paints website every day is 500. Each individual visits 4.8 unique pages per day. Approximate time spent on a web site 04:19. It has an average of 2,540 pages indexed in major search engines like Google™” (RankW, 2015).  A time of 4:19 on the web site is much more than the average of 15 seconds that 55 percent of the visitors spend on a web site (Soskey, 2014).  Is the color visualizer keeping visitor on the website longer?  The author’s answer to this question is yes. Of course Pratt & Lambert Paints is not the only paint company to use a color visualizer tool. Most paint companies do offer something similar on their website.  Just one final note, when a company chooses to use this type of technology, the company needs to remember to make these pages easy to load.  In Pratt & Lambert case the page loads easily. 

References:

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing. ISBN# 978-0470529393

RankW. (2015). http://rankw.org/site/prattandlambert.com

Reed College of Media. (2015). Web Metrics and SEO. Lesson 2: Basic Web Analytics.

Soskey, G. (2014).  55% of visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website should you care? Retrieved November 1, 2015 from:  http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/chartbeat-website-engagement-data-nj

Unique Visitors and Cookies

Unique Visitors and Cookies

            People new to web analytics hear the terms Visitors, Time on Page and Time on Site, Bounce Rates, Exit Rates, Conversion Rates, and Engagement.  These are all important metrics in evaluating the actions of visitors to a web site.  To start and as a novice to web metrics, this post will explore one metric, Unique Visitors.  This is complicated and tough subject to explore for several reasons described below.  “Traffic, as represented by unique visitors, will always be estimated under the current technological regime” (Dean, 2015).  Despite this, marketers count on the number unique visitors to give them an idea of the ‘who’ that is visiting the website.  Unique visitors count is one of the four foundational web metrics.  The other three include Visit/Sessions, Page Views and Events.   Unique visitors count is defined as the amount of individual people during a time period that visit a site.  Each individual is counted only once for that particular time.  More specifically, marketers when using this as a metric need to remember that “it is likely, but not always true, that each unique visitor is a unique person; and, 2) The unique visitors metric can be influenced by browsers that don’t accept cookies” (Kaushik, 2010).  Unique visitor count cannot be done without the use of Cookies.  Cookies are sometimes considered the topic of “fear, uncertainty and doubt” (Kaushik, 2010).    Despite these stipulations, “Unique visitors metric continues to be a superior approximation of the number of people visiting a website” (Kaushik, 2010).  

How are Unique Visitors tracked?

            Important to tracking unique visitors is the use of cookies. As mentioned earlier, cookies are a topic of “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” among users but without them some measures of web analytics would not be the same.  What are cookies?  Simply put “Web cookies give the Web a memory” (Dean, 2015).  The illustration from hongkiat.com.  To further explain, cookies “are small test files containing an anonymous unique identifier that stitches together visits to the website by the same the person” (Kaushik, 2010).  Lou Montulli, inventor of cookies, described cookies as “online loyalty cares, stamped by a website every time you stopped by” (Dean, 2015).  

            Cookies can be transient or persistent. Transient cookies are used just during the time a user visits a site.  The persistent cookie is established when a user first visits a site.  These cookies stay for a period of time and “are the closest thing to tracking a person or unique visitor” (Kaushik, 2010).  Persistent cookies stay on a user’s browser until deleted. 

            Other parameters of cookies are types.  Cookie types are either first party or third party.  First party cookies are used by the web site itself as opposed to third party cookies.  When a visitor comes to the web site, the identifier is attached.  “Email providers such as hotmail.com or gmail.com, ecommerce websites such as amazon.com, banks, or even blogging platforms require you to accept first-party cookies” (Kaushik, 2010).  Third party cookies seem to be declining in use.  

Successful Unique Visitors Counts

            ComScore measures unique visitors similar to Nielsen ratings for TV.  Websites hire comScore or other measurement companies that “embed little one-pixel ‘beacons’ in each of their pages that report back to these measurement companies each time a page is loaded” (Dean, 2015).   This is where internal measurement and unique visitors measurement is complicated.  One web security firm found that ‘bots’ make up some of the unique traffic on website and may be counted in unique visitors counts. 

            One company that seems to be successful at counting is BuzzFeed.  According measurement firm, comScore, BuzzFeed had 74.6 million unique visitors in the month of August, 2015.  The author could not confirm that this is a marketing goal for each.  However, the numbers prove in general terms,  Buzzfeed had set a goal to gain unique visitors and are successful at doing so.  In 2013 BuzzFeed received a huge amount of unique visitors as a result of Facebook pushing users to “quality news” sites such as BuzzFeed (Dean, 2015).   But this may change with because Facebook is now hosting articles on its own serves to keep visitors on its own site.   Why? To change the cookie regime, Facebook knows it users and can use these exact numbers to market advertising opportunities.  Facebook intends to host articles on its servers that will make more people read the articles without leaving.  But what does this mean for BuzzFeed unique visitor count?  Time will tell.

References:

Alpert, B. (2014).  Buzzfeed Crosses $100 Million in Revenue, Staff Memo Says. Retrieved October 31, 2015 from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpress/buzzfeed-reaches-more-than-130-million-unique-visitors-in-no#.inDR9wR39 

BuzzFeed Press. (2013).  BuzzFeed Reacher More than 130 Million Unique Visitors in November.  Retrieved October 31, 2015 from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpress/buzzfeed-reaches-more-than-130-million-unique-visitors-in-no#.inDR9wR39

Dean, S. (2015).  It’s 2015 – You’d think we’d have figured out how to measure Web traffic by by now. Retrieved October 31, 2015 from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpress/buzzfeed-reaches-more-than-130-million-unique-visitors-in-no#.inDR9wR39

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing. ISBN# 978-0470529393