kullin – Page 26 – Media Culpa

Nissan in new Australian social media backlash

Yesterday we heard about the Qantas Twitter competition that failed – the so-called “epic PR fail” where angry customers kidnapped the hashtag #qantasluxury with nasty comments. Today we hear of yet another Australian social media campaign that didn’t end the way the company anticipated. Nissan Australia launched a Facebook competition called “Micraspotting” in which you could win a a $1250 voucher or a grand prize, which was a brand new car worth $20,000.

The problem was that the person that won the car was a good friend of the Nissan employee who ran the Facebook competition (calling him his BFF, best friend forever, on his blog). The $1250 voucher was also awarded to a person who is a Facebook friend of the same Nissan employee. Nissan was honest about the connection when they announced the winner and said, “The reality is that he won fair and square and all is fully above board.”

That didn’t stop consumers from saying that the competition was rigged and posting angry comments to the Facebook walls of Nissan Australia and Nissan Micra Australia.

People are really angry and Nissan aren’t responding very well to the comments. Almost no communication at all from the company to the Facebook fury. Instead, what do they do? Launch another competition! Do you think that competition is recieved well? No, of course not.

What Nissan should do is take a step back, withdraw plans for any new competitions and handle the reactions from angry fans before launching a new PR stunt. Not well done.

Update: See Nissans’ response in the comments.

Six Swedish companies among the Top 100 Global Innovators

Thomson Reuters just released a new report that presents the world leaders in innovation. Companies with more than 100 innovative patens from the last three years were analyzed and six Swedish companies are among the final Top 100 Global Innovators:

Alfa Laval
Atlas Copco
Ericsson
Sandvik
Scania
Volvo

Sweden is only lagging behind the US, Japan and France when it comes to number of companies included in the list. No companies from our neighbours Denmark, Norway or Finland are included.

Full report can be found here.

Optimizing press release content for social sharing pays off

The concept of social media releases and social media newsrooms is not new. By adding photos, videos and audio and easy sharing functionality, the chances that the content is spread across different social media channels increase. At least, that’s what we have been arguing for several years. Now there is also a study that confirms this notion.

PR Newswire and Crowd Factory looked at tens of thousands of press releases, to analyze where, when and how news releases were shared across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The findings are really interesting and I include the key conclusions from the analysis below:

1. Each press release share generates 2 new views; expands total audience by 70%.

Creating shareable content and enabling sharing capabilities through the relevant channels can dramatically increase the number of views for releases. PR Newswire and Crowd Factory found that each share generates an average of nearly 2 click-backs to the original press release. Additionally, sharing of press releases across social networks increases the total audience, or social reach, for this content by nearly 70 percent.

2. Press releases are shared more on Facebook, but Twitter sharing drives more traffic.

Among the three largest U.S. social networks, Facebook is tops when it comes to sharing of press releases: 48 percent of press release sharing happens on Facebook, 37 percent of sharing happens on Twitter and 15 percent happens on LinkedIn.

But not all shares are created equal: in spite of Facebook’s greater popularity for sharing, each share on Twitter actually drives about 30 percent more press release views than a share on Facebook.

3. Multimedia press releases generate 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

Not surprisingly, multimedia press releases that include photos, videos or audio generate more views, shares and clicks than text-only press releases. Adding a photo to a press release increases engagement by 14 percent; adding a video and a photo actually doubles the engagement rate. Press releases that contain photos, video and audio generate the most engagement, with 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.

How US retailers use Facebook for customer service

A new study from Conversocial describes how the largest US retailers use Facebook for customer service. The white paper, entitled Who’s Ignoring Their Customers?: A Survey Of The Largest US Retailers and Their Use of Social Media, includes findings such as these:

– Walmart, the largest retailer, was missing 41% of all customer service enquiries. Costco, Kmart and Kroger missed 100%. Safeway were doing relatively well, missing only 5%. Overall, 65% of all complaints and questions were missed by the sample group.

– Safeway was given praise for dealing with the full complaint on the wall. Safeway redirected some complaints to a Facebook dedicated email and a Freephone number, but a significant number of conversations about customer satisfaction are handled on social media outlets which means the solutions are visible to everyone.

– US retailers are generally slower at responding to customers than UK retailers. None of the ten in the US study were averaging at under an hour, compared with two retailers in the UK sample achieving a quick average time.

Read the full report below, it is worth the time.

Who's Ignoring Their Customers? A Survey of the Largest US Retailers and Their Use of Social Media

View more documents from Conversocial

The Swedish Liberal Party leaves Twitter

[Updated] In September 2010, there was a general election to the Swedish parliament. Once again, it was expected that this would be the election in which social media would prove to have a strong influence on opinion. The jury is still out on what the real effects were, but most political parties and many politicians were active with blogs, on Twitter and on Facebook.

Since then, Twitter and Facebook have continued to grow at amazing speed. Twitter now has more than 200 million users who publish some 250 million tweets per day. One would like to believe that the importance of Twitter as a communications channel has grown even more during the last 12 months. But apparently some think it is too much work to pay attention to what is being discussed on the microblog. The Swedish Liberal Party, which was the fourth largest party in the last election and is currently part of the ruling centre-right coalition, yesterday announced they were no longer going to log on to Twitter, at least not for a while.

The tweet reads, my translation:

“We are now logging off from Twitter for a while. We don’t have enough personell to sit and monitor this channel. If you want to continue discussion [sic] you’re welcome to do it on (link to Facebook page)”.

As I noted in this analysis of Swedish political parties on Twitter, the Liberal Party was the last of the established parties to start using Twitter. The account was registered in January 2009, but while all the other parties started tweeting during that period, the Liberal Party didn’t start tweeting actively until November 2009. Now, they are also the first to leave Twitter, if only for the time being.

The account currently has 4,133 followers but it has only been active in periods. It went almost silent after May this year, with the strange exception of two days in October. During the party’s national congress, it sent out 150 tweets in two days. Only two days later, it is announced that the party is logging off.

Below: number of tweets in October 2011.

If find it interesting and a bit surprising to make such a move, especially since we are seeing more and more evidence that Twitter is at the heart of movements such as Occupy Wall Street and others. Twitter is and will continue to be a great place for interacting with opinion leaders and to bring forward political views. As a party, it will be at your disadvantage to log off for longer periods of time and try to come back when there is an election coming up. You can’t start to build relationships when you need them. They need to be cultivated over time.

Update: When people started commenting about this on Twitter (?!), the Liberal Party felt a need to clarify that they have not abandoned Twitter entirely. They are reorganizing and will still use the account, although “not as frequently as they would wish”.

Via Makthavare.se.

Media Culpa is one of 10 PR Blogs with Chutzpah!

Tired of reading ranking lists with the same old A-list blogs that everyone is already following? Well here’s a fresh take from CommPRO, a service from Marketwire and Sysomos. They have listed what they call “The New Breed: 10 PR Blogs With Chutzpah!” and I am extremely proud to be included among these great blogs.

Here’s what they write about Media Culpa:

I am humbled and honoured to be included. Here is the presentation of the ten blogs:

The New Breed: 10 PR Blogs with Chutzpah

View more presentations from CommPRO.biz

Footnote: Chutzpah – definition here.

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