Krishna De: Insights From Ireland On Digital Marketing, Social Media And Entrepreneurship

Online retailers have forecast record sales as they prepare for the busiest internet shopping day of the year.

The first Monday in December is considered the peak and one-day sales are expected to top £350m, with the busiest hour between 1300 and 1400 GMT.

Stores have already seen a surge in sales compared with 2008, when about £320m was spent on the busiest day.

Whilst shopping online is likely to be at record levels today, The office of Fair Trading in the UK commented that almost a third of internet users do not shop online due to concerns about online security.

The BBC.co.uk aritcle went on to mention that 29 million people in the UK used the internet to purchase Christmas presents - 5.2 million of them doing so at work. And to think that employers are considering banning Facebook at work!

Research released today by Morse, the IT services and technology company, has shown that use of Twitter and other social networks by employees at work is costing UK businesses £1.38 billion* each year in lost productivity. 

From the 1,460 office workers surveyed over half (57%) said that they used social networking sites during the working day for personal use.

On average those people were spending 40 minutes on these sites each week, equating to just under a full working week being wasted each year by employees using social networking sites at work.

The survey of 1,460 office workers was commissioned by Morse and conducted by independent research company TNS. Further details of the survey are available from Spark Communications on 020 7436 0420.

Portsmouth City Council was reported to be banning Facebook on its computers after it was revealed staff spent on average 400 hours on the site every month. Portsmouth City Council said it had decided to change its policy and block access to the social networking site along side use of Bebo, Twitter and eBay (YouTube had already been banned) in September 2009. You can read about this case at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/8231234.stm

The report also indicated that 76% of the respondents stated their employer had not issued them with specific guidelines with regards to using Twitter.

The press release from Morse.com also commented that there have been several high-profile incidents recently, involving the likes of Curry’s, PC World, BA and Virgin Atlantic, where employees have abused customers on social networks and other public-facing sites therefore damaging the reputation of the company.

The research also states that a third of office workers stated that they had seen sensitive information posted on social networks, overall 84% felt that it should be up to them as to what they post online.

Of the office workers surveyed 81% admitted that they were worried they might be clicking on a link to an unsecure website when for example they clicked on shortened URL's especially prevalent in Tweets.

Interestingly, I am working with a non-profit organisation who have taken the opposite approach. It is important for them to allow their employees access many different sites in the course of their work so instead they have put in place systems that check for viruses at the network level and at an individual PC's level and they are developing codes of practice for their employees and other stakeholder groups.

Does your organisation have an IT or communications policy that addresses employee access to social media sites?

When do you Tweet? When driving, at work or on vacation?

A recent Gadgetology study by consumer electronics shopping site, Retrevo.com found that most people check Facebook and Twitter a couple of times a day.

27% of respondents to the survey who are under 35 years of age however are checking Facebook more than 10 times a day.

The survey also found that that 36% of people under the age of 35 often use Facebook or Twitter after sex - men being more likely to do this than women - and iPhone users are three times more likely to do so than Blackberry owners.

The Retrevo.com Gadgetology study indicates that only 19% of the over 35 year olds use a phone as the preferred device for social media services with 81% preferring instead a desktop or laptop computer. However 46% of the under 35 year old survey respondents prefer to use a mobile devise to engage with social media..

Among the survey respondents under age 35, 27% of Facebook users check it more than 10 times a day compared to 39% of Twitter users checking in on Twitter more than 10 times a day.

When do you Tweet? And how addicted to Facebook and Twitter are you?

ABOUT THE RESEARCH

The Retrevo Gadgetology Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from Retrevo, the consumer electronics shopping site.

The survey was an online study of individuals (non-Retrevo customers) conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was 771 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States.

I love Facebook. I love social networking. I love the way that many brands are adopting Facebook to connect directly to their customers.

But I do hate it when many brands are providing offers that are US centric even if they are a global brand.

Take for example Estee Lauder who I read about last week. They have a Facebook page with over 27,700 fans and I am sure those fans are from across the globe. They have realised that on Facebook we all have a profile photo so they are offering an opportunity for people to have a free makeover and a photoshoot.

The promotion, which starts on October 16 at Bloomingdale's in New York and will extend initially to Macy's, Saks and other Bloomingdale's stores in Southern California, Miami and Chicago, also includes a giveaway of a 10-day supply of foundation. Let's hope that their initial trial will run internationally.

With a target age of 35 to 55, Estee Lauder is trying to reach out to a younger age group and also recognises that many people aged 35 and over are using social media. And while no purchase is necessary, Estee Lauder has the opportunity to have their employees connect to consumers directly through the free make-over.

The Estee Lauder brand will be the back drop for the photo shoot, so unless you photoshop out the logo, they are hoping their brand will increase in visibility online. Read more about the Estee Lauder promotion here on Adage.

It's a great idea though I am not so sure that I would want to be endorsing Estee Lauder through every profile photo I use on my social networking pages.

Alternatively and thankfully, if you are in Ireland, you don't have to miss out on an opportunity to get a great photo taken for your Facebook profile. Award winning photographers Photogenic Photographers are offering people the opportunity to have their portrait photo taken by on Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th October 2009 in aid of the Marie Keating Foundation. This is part of a weekend of activities running in Dundrum Town Centre as part of Breast Cancer Awareness month.

As long as you are over 18 years of age, Photogenic Photographers are offering you the opportunity to have a new profile photograph taken.

The photo shoot takes place at Dundrum Town Centre - there is a nominal fee of €20 (100% of this will go directly to the Marie Keating Foundation).

Find out more about the Photogenic Photographers Be Facebook Fabulous event here.

What are your favourite examples of brands are offering value to their customers yet at the same time building their visibility through Facebook?

Disclosure: Photogenic Photographers are our family photographers and one of their directors and family friend invited me to their event.

Facebook Connect launched to the public less than a year ago, and already it’s seen an incredible amount of traction. Unfortunately, for those people with little to no coding experience, implementing Facebook Connect has seemed like more trouble that it was worth. Today, Facebook has an answer: Facebook Connect Wizard and Playground.

Facebook writes that “you can now incorporate Facebook Connect into your site in 3 easy steps.” The process is simple. First, you enter the name of your site and its URL. Then Facebook asks you to download and then upload a special file to your site’s main directory. And.. that’s about it. Once you’ve done that, Facebook will present you with its Playground — a list of code snippets you can embed on your site to round out the functionality, including Login buttons, profile photos, publishing items to News Feeds, and rendering photos of a user’s friends.

Deciding to put their little wizard to the test, I tried to implement Connect on one of my personal sites (note that I’ve never tried to implement Connect before so I really didn’t know what I was doing). And to my surprise, it worked: I managed to have a very basic form of Connect up and running on my site within all of two minutes. It will obviously take longer to make sure the new icons and buttons play nicely with your site’s design, but it’s really surprisingly easy.

 

If you haven't added Facebook Connect to your website, you might want to explore the new Facebook Connect Wizard.

I've not added it to my blog at the moment. but if you have perhaps you'd like to share your experiences?

And which sites do you think have implemented Facebook Connect effectively and are using it to build their community online?