Best case studies from Social Media Week London: Brewdog beer, Samsung Galaxy SII and Nokia/ELLE magazine

Posted by Jessica Young, Community Manager at eModeration

During the recent Social Media Week in London, I was treated to some really valuable and inspiring case studies and thought I’d curate them for you here.

I attended the Social Media Case Study 4×4 hosted by This Little Lady Went To London  and CloudNine on the fantastic HMS President on the Thames. Leading lights from the industry each delivered a brief synopsis of their greatest social media campaign. I picked these ones out because they were really inspiring for me.

1. Samsung Galaxy SII ----presented by Mel Kirk from Jam



In Samsung Galaxy SII’s Extreme Unboxing series, Jam invited 7 popular technical bloggers and asked them to review Galaxy SII in different but equally extreme ways, for example, in a helicopter, roller-coaster, racing car or while parachuting.

Those videos created great buzz for Samsung Galaxy SII and went viral afterwards. The videos hit 1m views and there were around 800 blogs mentioned the campaign reaching 20m readers. In total, there were 23,000 mentions in this campaign.  

Jam concluded that the success of these videos was down to:

• The craziness of unboxing
• Co-creation of content
• The genuine relationships between Samsung, its bloggers and  their audience


2. Brewdog beer ----presented by Alex Myers from Manifest Communications
In the case studies Manifest Communications presented for their client Brewdog, the agency used really creative ways to impress the crowd.
(1) Royal wedding special edition
During the royal wedding month, many of the brands were trying to seize the opportunity and promote the special souvenir version beer of their brands.   Manifest sensed people’s ennui with the on-going commercial war and took advantage of it, making a special edition sure - but from another angle:

(2) Crap beer amnesty
BrewDog are holding the first ever ‘crap beer amnesty’, which will allow beer drinkers to swap a can of branded lager for a Punk IPA. The swap will be made at BrewDog’s Aberdeen bar on Friday, March 18th, and BrewDog’s co-founders will drive the exchanged branded mainstream beers to the nearest recycle centre - and reccyle them with a golf club ...

(3) A tattoo for lifetime discount
In a wonderful virtual-to-reality promotion, Brewdog crowd-sourced locations for their new craft beer bars and then celebrated the opening of the first one in Edinburgh’s Cowgate,  by offering a lifetime 20 percent discount for patrons bearing a BrewDog tattoo.

(4) Brewpedia hashtag campaign
The #BrewPedia campaign was created by Manifest Communications the day of the Wikipedia Blackout. Alex Myers and his team noticed that when people could not get access to Wikipedia, they started to ask each other loads of factual questions online. Manifest Communications decided to launch the BrewPedia hashtag campaign, offering answers to any questions that BrewDog drinking social media users might have – these ranged from wondering when Chuck Norris was born to where kebabs originate from ...

3. Nokia + ELLE magazine ----presented by Molly Flatt from 1000heads

1000heads worked on a fashion blogger outreach campaign for Nokia N8: “Search for next style correspondent”, which aimed to attract young female customers.

Unusually for a social media campaign, 1000heads have been happy to share their ROI:  generated 97% new mentions and equivalent of €903.620 media value and 200% ROI.  Integrating traditional and social media, the new audience was 77% female. The key to the success? Choose up-coming KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) and let them grow with the brand.

Here's the video promoting the campaign:

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Marching against Cyberbullying: Beatbullying's Big March

Organised by the campaigning charity Beatbullying, The Big March 2012 is the world's first virtual global march for children's right to be safe. Tens of thousands of virtual marchers will cross the websites of the world's biggest brands, and call on the United Nations to enshrine explicitly in the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child, 'The right of every child to be safe from bullying, violence and the fear of violence by their peers as well as abuse from adults'. (If you want to be involved, find out how here).

Perhaps less headline grabbing - but equally important - are the resources for teachers which Beatbullying and the TES have put together to help teachers, who are frequently under pressure of time and lack of knowldge, to combat bullying in tbeir schools.

Because, according to the recently-commissioned UK study 'Virtual Violence II: The Real Impact Of Cyberbullying Revealed', cyberbullying is showing no sign of abating. According to the study, up to 1 in 13 young people experiencing persistent and intentional cyberbullying, with just under a quarter (23%) reporting that the bullying lasted for a year or more, and two in five (40%) said that it lasted for months or weeks.

The damage this can cause?

• 20% of children and young people indicating that fear of cyberbullies made them reluctant to go to school
• One in five (19%) reporting they experienced reduced confidence and self-esteem
• 14% living in fear for their safety
• 5% resorting to self-harm and 3% reporting an attempt of suicide as a direct result of cyberbullying.

And it is not only the children directly affected who are suffering. The report also highlights the financial strain cyberbullying places on the education system with:

• Teachers spending an average of six hours a week dealing with cases of cyberbullying
• And an estimated £18 million of the education budget being spent dealing with cases of cyberbullying per annum.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook and MSN were the platforms where cyberbullying is found to be most prevalent: over half the children interviewed  identified Facebook as the place where they'd personally experienced cyberbullying.

"It is worse being bullied over the internet because everyone can see and it makes you feel really little and small". (Girl, 13)

You can download the full report here, or find out more about Beatbullying's Cybermentor's programme here.

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eModeration LOTW: thinspo, the Oscars, privacy, and what's next for the Internet

A social media links of the week list curated from a (mostly) US perspective.
Enjoy!

The 7 Types of iPhone Users
We were tickled by this infographic for seven types of iPhone users, especially as all of the iPhone peeps we know seem to jibe neatly with one of the categories.   (We will admit to having a bulky case that turns a sleek tech phenom into something resembling a brick from 1994, but when you have a toddler addicted to Peekaboo Barn, you do what you have to do.) 

The Oscars and Twitter
Sunday, February 26 will bring us the Oscars: the 84th Academy Awards, anticipated by the Wall Street Journal to break social media use records previously set by events like the Super Bowl and Grammy Awards.  After analyzing 300K+ social media conversations leading up to the big day, social  monitoring company Radian6 offers its "social media" winners in an engaging infographic.  ABC, the network broadcasting the event, is hoping to maximize coverage by having two off-screen, backstage commentary tweeters.  Viewer tweets during the broadcast using the hashtags "#oscars," "#redcarpetqa" and "#bestdressed" will appear on Oscar.com and the Oscars app.  At stake?  Tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising dollars. 

Tumblr Banning Self-Harm Themes
In a week that has surfaced the disturbing trend of young girls on YouTube asking people "Am I pretty?", Tumblr is tackling the thinspo topic raised by HuffPo earlier this month and is considering changing its Community Policy to prohibit other negative topics about identity and body image.  Tumblr will moderate blogs that "glorify or promote anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders; self-mutilation; or suicide," the company explains on their staff blog.  Taking a cue from Facebook's initiative on providing help to suicidal users, Tumblr also plans to offer blog authors on these moderated topics self-help and hotline information. 

Facebook Users Getting Better at Managing Privacy
As part of its Internet and American Life Project, The Pew Research Center has released a report that finds Internet users taking a more active role in managing and pruning their social network content.  Among those polled, it is the 18-29 years old age group that is most adept at using Facebook's privacy controls, but all age groups have made gains in use since the last survey in 2009, a positive step as more employers and even college admission officers add online reputation checks to their processes. 

Unhyped Internet and Mobile
Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosia writing for TechCrunch shares his predictions for the next big things for the internet tech space, including expansions in collaborative social experiences, interest based networks, the management of identity, privacy, security and verification, personal collaborative publishing (Pinterest, Tumblr, Storify, Snip.it), analytics, payments, and the "under 25" portion of Generation C:  a type of entrepreneur particularly well-represented on YCombinator.  We're excited.  How about you?

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Pearls from the first day of Social Media Week London

Social Media Week was hosted globally for the week of 13th-17th  February and with my eModeration community manager hat on,  I had the opportunity to go to many of the events which happened in London.
 
I couldn’t possibly distill all the wisdom gleaned from that intense week into a blog post, so instead I’ll just record a few of the views and opinions of the experts which particularly impressed me.
 

 
On ... future trend
(Examining the Social Media-sphere for 2012, Total Media)  

I attended the Examining the Social Media-sphere for 2012 hosted by Total Media on the first day. 

Kwai Chi from Total Media believes that the timeline layout, coming shortly to Facebook brand pages, will add hugely to the business related Facebook functions (although I’ve also noted separately that @mediaczar thinks that the Facebook shopfront is dead).


On .. Google +
Paulo Ribeiro, head of research of Total Media, shared his research and opinion on Google+.

Google+ is still very new and may looks rather confusing for many people. Is Google+ going to start a revolution in social media and be the next king? Paulo Ribeiro doesn’t think so. 
 
Google+ certainly has its strength, for example, in separating different customer groups and heavy integration with Android. But Paulo thinks that this is rather a “forced” rise of Google+. Google has failed on many social media related products and was really keen on getting a slice of this market. Google empowered Google+ with shared data from other Google products, such as Google Analyst. Undeniably, this is a big progress in social media, but Paulo Ribeiro thinks that Facebook will still be the dominant one for a long time.

For most of the individual users,Google+ is still only a bookmark tool for them. No one is actively engaged in Google+ simply because their friends are not active on it either. So, forGoogle+ to survive, it still needs to find a niche market for itself. 


On ... how to talk to bloggers
(How to talk to bloggers and your social media community, Total Media)
 
How to talk to bloggers and your social media community is the second event I have attended in Total Media on the same day. As a community manager, the tips from Sophia Littledale,  a veteran fashion blogger, were gold dust.
 

• Brands need to provide exclusive content to intrigue the bloggers to write about them. A newsletter will simply not do the job anymore.    

• Make it a personal approach. If a brand contacted her addressing her real name instead of “Dear blogger”, or, ideally, have shown that they have spent time reading her articles, she would be much more willing to spend the equally valuable time to reply and cooperate.

• Respect the blogger’s influence. Sophia also pointed out some existing problems in the relationships between fashion brands and bloggers. In a fashion show the brand would normally give the most prime seats to professional journalists and squeeze all of the bloggers in a corner. But if you measure the number of people blogger can reach and the reader’s loyalty, bloggers may not be any less important than journalists. 

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eModeration's Guide to Managing Social Media Engagement for Financial Organisations

There was a time, not so many years ago, when a message from your bank popping up on your computer monitor would have been downright unwelcome. When befriending your bank on a social network was unthinkable. Complain to your bank and get a written personal response in minutes? Don't make us laugh ...

Even as recently as a year ago, Thefinancialbrand.com published Why Social Media Is a Waste of Time for Most Banks and Credit Unions, arguing that social media is useless for the financial sector.

Well, as we know, that's all changing. Banks and other financial institutions are becoming increasing social: because they have to (customers are demanding it) and because they want to (win our custom by engaging with us).

Banks can see the benefits of social media for:

• Customer Service (for example, the @askciti Twitter account)
• Research and Development (in the way that First Direct uses its First Direct Lab to develop and road test new products)
• Insight - what better way to learn what your customers are saying about you?
• Recruitment (JP Morgan’s Facebook community gives potential employees sneak preview)
• Sharing information, for example about your corporate responsibility programme
• Creating brand ambassadors
• Reaching a younger audience, as HSBC does so successfully with its Facebook student programme.

But it's a steep learning curve for financial organisations: learning how to work within the tightly regulated environment; how to set rules for their communities; how to control staff social media use; learning how to accept and respond to criticism; moderate and engage.

eModeration has consulted experts (including the redoubtable Christophe Langlois) in the field and looked at examples where social media is being used intelligently. Our Guide to to Managing Social Media Engagement for Financial Organisations (free to download from our site) includes advice on developing and managing online customer communities as well as offering guidance on handling potential social media crises.

eModeration_Guide_to_Social_Media_for_Financial_Organisations

View more documents from eModeration

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eModeration LOTW: Lucy Ricardo, Duckface, and Timeline for Brands

A social media links of the week list curated from a (mostly) US perspective.
Enjoy!

Video Game Characters and their (fascinating) Fake Facebook Pics
Artist Andrew Golden explores an alternate reality where video game characters exist outside of their game narratives.  His faux Facebook profile pics come complete with friend commentary and feature characters vacationing, preening, and giving Zoolander quality duckface are both fascinating and yet disturbing ... just like our Aunt Judy's.

Facebook Timeline for Brands on its Way
Ad Age is reporting that Facebook will use its Feb. 29 conference for marketers in New York to announce that Facebook Timeline for Brands will soon be available for select beta partners.

Ogilvy & Mather Staff Up
One of the biggest advertising agencies, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, is starting practice units that are devoted to helping clients navigate two areas that are sticky areas for 2012 and beyond.  The units Social@Ogilvy and OgilvyYouth will address social media and youth marketing, with overlap between the two. 

I Love Lucy, the Facebook Game
Lucy Ricardo is coming to Facebook via Entertainment Games's RetroWorld interactive episodic series, focused on bringing classic, branded nostalgia icons to life in the virtual world.  For the episodes featuring "I Love Lucy," the makers promise that we will be able to reenact Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.  A social retro chocolate lover's dream come true!

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The Vircomm2012 Summit - A community of community folk

Last Thursday I attended the first ever e-mint international event called Vircomm Summit 2012. For any who don't know, e-mint is a Yahoo group (old-fashioned, but it works remarkably well) for online community management professionals, and is a friendly and supportive source of news and information. The Vircomm Summit 2012 was a great opportunity to meet face-to-face and talk about the issues, trends and hot topics affecting community managers today.

It was streamed live on the day so I know plenty of people not based in London on Thursday were able to hear some of the insights. For those of you unlucky not to attend, you can search Twitter for some nuggets using the hashtag #vircomm12 - obviously after you have read my summary of the day ;)

Having been to a lot of community and social media events over the years, I have to say this one was my first dedicated community event and was so relevant for me. As Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration - and my boss said: "It has never been a better time to be a Community Manager."

So let me give you a flavour of some of the debates and panel discussions that took place:

The User Behaviour slot was lively and debated the hot issue of tools and the role they play in community management. It was felt tools can play a role when the scale of activity is too much but they will not be able to replace the human interaction. Tools help with automation but you still need the community manager to provide the human touch with the members. It was great to hear topics such as how to deal with suicide threats being debated with honesty and practicality: this was a panel and audience accustomed to dealing with this daily, and the lack of kid gloves made it a refreshing change.

The Gaming and Community panel, which was chaired by eModeration's Head of Community Management and Engagement, Blaise Grimes-Viort, debated the issues around scalability and how important it is to get the processes, procedures in place that can grow as your audience gets bigger. The panel agreed that a Gaming Community Manager is different from the traditional B2B and B2C ones - as they need in-depth knowledge of the game, be the voice of the community for internal departments, be the funnel into development and provide lots of feedback.

In the Legal session, we learnt it makes no difference where your servers are based or where your company is based, the website you work on has to take reasonable care to take down any unlawful information. The legal experts warned Community Managers not to be scared of the Community reaction if you take down unlawful content but to take reasonable steps to take down the offending content to avoid any liabilities for companies. (Btw, check out the 'legal' tags on this blog - we've got plenty of guidance on current social media legal issues).

The Managing Online Communities panel (presided over by the huge - and hugely entertaining - Skype screen-god Patrick o'Keefe) talked about how companies are choosing to build their communities on third party sites, rather than building their own forums. Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration, argued there has never been a better time to be a Community Manager, as they are at the heart of the company - playing a role in customer service, crisis management, product development and marketing. It was agreed technology can never replace Community Managers but technology can be put in place to help automate some of the repetitive tasks. You need to put in the processes and workflow in place so Community Managers can focus on interaction and communication with members. While you cannot thank all of your members all of the time, if you thank some of them, then the goodwill will spread.

The Community and Marketing session centred on the debate of creating the balance between marketing and overt selling. While some agreed that you should never overt sell, other panellists agreed that it is about managing expectations of being honest, transparent and explaining the rules of the community. One panellist stated if you have the engagement, then the members will want to buy your products - high trust is proven to give you more sales.

The final session of the day was Social Media, Content and Community. The panel agreed that successful communities should let their members speak for themselves, so it is their community with their opinions. By allowing this to happen, there is no need for a content strategy as the community decides. There were stories of companies investing more in the technology, rather than spending the money on a good Community Manager. The line between Community Managers and social media staff is still blurred, with too many people thinking entry level tweeters are community managers. The Community Management process is still upside down, while there are important tools to satisfy senior management, community managers are not high enough within the organisation. Organisations are still deciding where Community Managers should sit within the overall structure but the reality is that Community Managers have to work within every department to make a success of their community.

If the panel had more money ....? They would take on more Community Managers to run their communities :) Of course they would.

Between panels there were some excellent slots by Joshua March from Conversocial, Dom Sparks from Tempero and Peter Maude on behalf of Crisp. 

My own thanks for getting this event organised go to Rebecca Newton of MindCandy (chair of e-mint), Oxana Morozowska of Ginger Events, and of course my own company, eModeration, who sorted out the well-lubricated aftershow party.

So what did you think of the summit? I’d love to hear your thoughts and feelings on the day.
There are plenty of you out there that followed #Vircomm12. 1,033 tweets generated 1,589,940 impressions, reaching an audience of 304,042 followers within the first 24 hours - wow!

To see the agenda and list of speakers and panellists, check out the link here http://virtualcommunitysummit.com/

Update:
The on-demand videos are now available on the site from VirComm - http://live.virtualcommunitysummit.com/VOD/index.php

The login details are:

Username:  vircomm2012
Password: london

Lisa Barnett, Community Manager at eModeration

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eModeration LOTW: Hipsters from the future, Woody Harrelson, and Super stats

A social media links of the week list curated from a (mostly) US perspective.
Enjoy!

Future Hipsters
In promotion of Social Media Week, digital agency Entrinsic brings us Social Media hipsters from the year 2062.  More catchphrase fun can be found at the Future Hipsters' Tumblr, where Entrinsic promises a long cut of the viral video can be found soon.  We will admit to watching the Future Hipsters vid almost as many times as the other viral favorite on Facebook this week, Facebook Parenting for the Troubled Teen, aka Dad Shooting Laptop.  There's a mash-up in all this somewhere, we just know it.


Woody Harrelson's Reddit Fail
Reddit, the social news website, has a tradition of crowd sourced interviews in its "Ask Me Anything" themed threads.  This week, Woody Harrelson's publicist mistook the highly social AMA for a traditional promotional fluff point.  The original material, complete with publicist evasion and the Reddit community's reactions, offers a ready made case study in how misunderstanding a community's traditions is a guaranteed social media fail.  In the words of the Rediquette song, "This is our Reddit.  It's serious freakin' business."


LinkedIn Buying Rapportive
We are big fans of Rapportive, the contact profile enhancement add-on for Gmail.  It will be interesting to see how LinkedIn leverages the tool.


Obama's Spotify Playlist
The campaign kids for Obama 2012 announced via Twitter a suscribable Spotify playlist for Obama's re-election season.  Artists include Wilco, Aretha Franklin, No Doubt and Arcade Fire.  Also included?  Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," a song performed improvisationally by Obama a few short weeks ago.


Superbowl XLVI by the Numbers
Twitter metrics show that SuperBowl XLVI set two new records for most tweets per second, with the game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots taking second place and Madonna's half-time show snagging a none-to-shabby third.  AllFacebook charts the Social Media Superbowl winner via Facebook numbers.  WebProNews takes a long look at metrics and Super Bowl ads, saying success is all in how you measure it.


Anonymous Knocks the CIA Offline
On Friday, hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility for taking the United States Central Intelligence Agency's website offline.   “This is going to happen more and more frequently — they’re unstoppable,” said Jerry Irvine, a member of the National Cyber Security Task Force. “Why can’t they be stopped? Because security technologies have not kept up with the extent of the vulnerabilities that exist.”

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The Complete Guide to Pinterest for Brands; eModeration e-book

Pinterest is changing the way people communicate online. The popular visual bookmarking site has seen an impressive 11.7 million users join the community in the last nine months. Pinterest aims to connect people who share the same tastes by allowing them to share and “like” pictures which they have organised into categories.

This combination of visual, categorisation and social hits a number of sweet spots and succeeds in pulling in visitors, who then want to share their own tastes with others.

Our new e-book, ‘The Complete Pinterest Guide for Brands’ is designed to showcase how brands can get involved in Pinterest, while avoiding alienating Pinterest users by being too self-promotional (which goes against the ethos of Pinterest).

Written from our successful blog post series on Pinterest, and free to download from our publications section, the guide provides a quick overview of Pinterest before going through content optimisation and curation , offering some tips on using the site and detailing 100 brands that are already using the platform.

Tamara Littleton, CEO, eModeration, says: 

“Although Pinterest has been around since 2010, it’s seen user numbers spike over recent months. Brands can’t ignore its popularity with digital savvy consumers, but they have to embrace the values of Pinterest if they want to participate in the community. It’s all about sharing, and being an individual. It’s completely un-self-promotional and not just a pretty corporate comms channel. Pinterest is about showing personality, and as with other social media platforms, the brands that thrive will be the ones that come up with creative and original ways to entertain and inform.”

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How to Choose Safe Social Networking for Your Kids

As you may already know, today is Safer Internet Day (SID) and this year's theme is ‘Connecting generations and educating each other’, with the slogan "Discover the digital World together…safely!"

As a parent of primary school children, I'm very aware that we have a responsibility to not only keep our children safe online, but to ensure that they become responsible, enabled digital citizens.  As tempting as it sometimes is, we really can't just bar our children from social networking altogether with the excuses that attempting to control it would ask too much of us, of our knowledge, of our time. 

Social networking is going to be a major part of their lives as today's BBC report emphasises, and one that very soon we will have little or no influence over.  So we need to start exploring it together now (whilst they still let us)- but which networks, where?  I don't need to remind you that Facebook is for over 13's, and in any case, doesn't offer the educational and safety resources of a 'Social Learning Network'  aimed at pre-teens.

There are an increasing number of social networking sites aimed at children, and it's hard to know how to choose, especially if your child is coming home demanding to be a member of the one his friends are in.  So I talked to Carole Hart-Fletcher, Director of KidsOKOnline, experts in child online safety and eModeration's preferred online safety consultants, and asked her what to look out for. Here's what she told me:

You need to know just 4 things to help your children get the very best from Social Networking:

1. What can my children do in Social Learning Networks?
2. What can my children learn?
3. How can I help to keep my children safe?
4. Where can I find a safe Social Learning Network?

1. What can my children do in Social Learning Networks

Children have fun sharing their interests and learning from others. Social Networks help them to develop personal skills - communication, self expression and digital citizenship. These are some of the things they can do:

• Email friends – They can email their online friends and learn how to express themselves. In developing relationships with others they become more empathetic towards others
• Home pages – They can sometimes build their own home pages about their interests, engaging others who have a similar interest. 
• Discussions – Take part in discussion forums on fun and important topics - daily news, topics like films, games or campaigns.
• Games and Quizzes – They can participate in games which are collaborative or quizzes that test their knowledge.

2. What can my children learn?


The most important thing children need to learn in any online community is how to be safe and in good Social Learning Networks this is a strong focus.

• How to be safe online – Look after their passwords, what personal information is safe to give out and what to hold back.
• How to behave – To be respectful online, for example: no swearing, no bulling and no sex talk. Good online communities like good schools create a friendly atmosphere and a positive, mutually respectful ethos and they have mediators who look after the children.
• How to understand others – Children make friends and work with others from all religious, cultural and economic backgrounds and every one is equal online!
• How to communicate – Communication is a really important skill for adult life and children learn how to communicate in different ways.
• How to do – Children learn best by doing and in online communities they learn a host of useful IT skills like creating images, formatting text, using html codes on their home pages and a whole lot more.

3. How can I help to keep my children safe?


In a good Social Network your children will be safe, but you need to help them select a safe network. Before they join, you can ask a few important questions:


Who runs this community? Make sure the organization running the community is one you can trust and has a good reputation for child safety. Ask these questions:

• Do they publish their telephone number and address?
• Do they have a good track record of running online learning communities?
• Do they have any awards for child safety?
• Are they endorsed by people you trust – the government, child safety organizations?
• Are they approved by your child’s school or other parents?

How are members validated? If just anyone can join a children’s community, then unauthorized adults could join and possibly try to harm your children. So there must be a validation system to make sure applicants are real children of the right age. If pupils join through school the teacher can confirm they are genuine. If children join from home they should have their parents permission and the parent should be asked for full contact information that should be checked by the community organizers to make sure it’s reliable.


How is communication monitored? – All communications between all members of the community should be automatically scanned for bad language and alerts to a moderator when anyone tries to insult, bully or find out personal information that could make a child vulnerable. 


How are members looked after? – There should be trained human mediators online during the times when the children can communicate live - to keep them safe, to make sure they are behaving well and to help them with any questions. Make sure there is an emergency button your children can click if they see anything that worries them – it should send an urgent alert so that your children’s needs are dealt with immediately.


After your children join – here are a few things you can do to keep them safe.

• Be on call
• Be on hand - Encourage your children to use the computer in a room where you can keep an eye on them and engage in conversations about their activity and can turn to you for help.
• Be on guard - As a family protect each others passwords ensuring others respect your children’s privacy, encourage your children to keep passwords safe (not lying around on a scrap of paper) and make sure they “log out” every time they leave the computer.
• Get help - If you have any worries – contact the community helpline.

Social Networking can be such fun for children and really helps to build their self esteem, so better for children to be engaged in a community with a parents blessing. This will make it easier for children to talk to parents about their activity and not be active in secret.

Thanks Carole.  And if you are finding it difficult to know where to start talking to your children about their internet use, Safer Internet Day has published this handy 'Conversation Starter' to give you a few ideas about what to discuss and good activities to do together with your young netizens.

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Pinterest Part V: 100+ Brands on Pinterest

Everything you ever wanted to know about Pinterest
(but were afraid to ask)

Update: We've distilled the Pinterest wisdom from this series of blog posts into one handy downloadable eBook. We hope it's useful.
Pinterest is emerging to be one of the hottest social networks of 2012.

You might be wondering if your brand is a fit with Pinterest.  There is no harm is registering your brand's name, and that will help stake your claim against brandjackers.  Some industries have obvious curation tie-ins that make joining Pinterest a natural fit (retail, design, beauty.)  Other industries will need to be creative to find a way to make use of Pinterest's visual curation emphasis to benefit their overall community efforts.

Pinterest has identified the following “best practices" for brands:

- Pinning from various sources rather than one specific site.


- Repinning from within the site to engage with others – repinning is one of the most social activities on Pinterest and it’s how any user really builds his/her network of followers.


- Creating at least a few boards that cover a broad range of interests, rather than maintaining a single board devoted to one topic.

In working with Pinterest, it is evident that the platform in its current state has been built with individuals in mind, not brand curators.  It takes some creativity to bend a profile to suit a brand's needs.  Likewise, Pinterest's internal search delivers nebulous results.

It can be difficult to find examples of how brands are currently using Pinterest, as Pinterest's search will not always surface relevant content and many of the current articles on the web rehash the same case studies (West Elm, Whole Foods, Mashable, etc.)  In thinking about your brand's direction on Pinterest, you may find helpful the following index and loose categorization of 100+ brands currently participating on Pinterest.

100+ Brands on Pinterest 

Cabot Cheese's genuine appreciation for the company's roots
makes it one of our favorite brand curator examples.

Food and Cooking

Cabot Cheese

Epicurious

Chobani

Lindt Chocolate

Middle Sister Wines

Pillsbury

Domestica 

Food52

Peanut Butter & Co.

Pretzel Crisps

Little Debbie

Cooking Light devotes a pinboard to Blogs they love.

Tillamook Cheese

Hillshire Farm

Whole Foods
Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry 

Cooking Magazines

Cooking Light

Saveur

Clean Eating 

Television

The Weather Channel

Today Show

Travel Channel

HGTV and Pinterst are a natural fit.

HGTV

Food Network

Sesame Street

Journalism

Newsweek

Time

The Wall Street Journal

CTV News

CBS New York

PBS NewsHour

KOMO News 

USA Today segments its brand voice by using
different brand accounts for different topics.

USA Today College

Gannett Digital

Mashable

Fashion and Lifestyle Magazines

Real Simple Magazine

Brides Magazine

Shape Magazine

In Style

People

Rue Magazine

Better Homes and Gardens

Lonny Magazine

Matchbook Magazine

The Seattle Seahawks football team experiments with Pinterest.

Lucky Magazine

Ladies' Home Journal

Today's Parent

Sunset Magazine
Parenting Magazine

Sports

Seattle Seahawks

Major League Baseball

Apparel

Gap

Modcloth

Threadless curates its own content on Pinterest
by sorting t-shirt designs by theme.

Tom's Shoes

Lulu's

Threadless

Sevenly

Land's End 

Club Monaco

Barkers Clothing

Zulily

Anthropologie

Lily Pulitzer

Barneys New York

Kate Spade NY

Allens Boots 

Gilt Baby and Kids

Anthropologie claims its name without curating content.

Retailers

Nieman Marcus

Bergdorf Goodman

Nordstrom

West Elm

Michael's

Pottery Barn Kids

Zales

Etsy's early adoption and intense use
pays off in number of followers.

Etsy

Abe's Market

LaylaGrace

Feterie

Betsy White Stationary

Boticca

Melissa and Doug

Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft

Williams-Sonoma

Beauty and Fashion

Tarte Cosmetics shows staff photos and product picks.

Tarte Cosmetics

Rent the Runway

Birchbox

Shop It To Me

Honeycomb Salon

Pop Sugar

Celebrities/Tastemakers

Nina Garcia

Chris March

The Backstreet Boys

Nina Garcia (and staff) embraces her role as tastemaker.

Paula Deen

Michael Kors

Felicia Day

Martha Stewart

Ree Drummond

Alanis Morissette

Travel

American Airlines

Southwest Airlines

BedandBreakfast .com

HomeAway

Blogher curates from member blog content.

Publishing

Chronicle Books

Random House Books

Knopf Doubeday

Crown Publishing

Heinemann Publishing

BlogHer

Scholastic Inc.

 

Home Goods and Services

American Standard Brands

Benjamin Moore Paints curates for both the design
professional and the home DIY hobbiest.

Gilt Home

High Point Market

Apartment Therapy

Realtor .com

Benjamin Moore Paints

Lowes 

Non-Profits 

UNICEF

Humane Society of New York

National Wildlife Federation

AARP

Go Red for Women

Rotary International

Sacramento Public Library

Texas A&M University keeps its students and alums in mind
when adding content.

Colleges and Universities

Miami University

Drake University

Emory University

Yale University

Texas A&M

Skidmore College

Oberlin College

Miscellaneous

Verizon participates on Pinterest ... perhaps unwisely?

Barbie

AMD

LuxeFinds 

General Electric

Blockbuster

Klout

Verizon Wireless

Pinterest

The Catalyst Partnership

Pinterest Boards about Brands

Many thanks to the Pinners who are curating boards about brands on Pinterest:

Kelly Lieberman

Kami Huyse

Erica Reitman

Mariam. Shahab and Emily Spicklemire

For more reading, our complete list of posts from our week of Everything Pinterest:



Part V:  100+ Brands on Pinterest

Part IV:  Making the Most of Pinterest - Tips and Tricks

Part III:  Participating on Pinterest as a Brand Curator
Part II:  Optimizing Content For Pinterest
Part I:  Just What is Pinterest Anyway?


 

Read more...

Pinterest Part IV: Making the Most of Pinterest - Tips and Tricks

Everything you ever wanted to know about Pinterest
(but were afraid to ask)

Update: We've distilled the Pinterest wisdom from this series of blog posts into one handy downloadable eBook. We hope it's useful.

Hailed as one of the top ten social networks in terms of active population, Pinterest's numbers continue to grow.  A relatively young network, some features and tools are a little creaky.  Pinterest's search feature is less than powerful.  Nothing about Pinterest is optimized for brand or marketing use.  Other features could also use improvement.

The site changes often, so be sure to keep an eye on the Pinterest  blog for updates and new features.  Below are a series of tips to help you make the most of your time with Pinterest. 

Making the Most of Pinterest - Tips and Tricks

Include Pricing Info
Pinterest's site includes a section for users to browse for gifts (for others, for themselves) by price.  To appear in this section, a pin must include pricing information in the description so that the pins will repopulate in the gift selection .  If pinning your own content, add a "$" or a "£" to the Pin's description and make sure the url is a direct link to the product.  Be sure to make use of Pinterest's search feature so that when your content is shared and is discussed on Pinterest, your community manager can organically join the conversation.  Often times, consumer goods are pinned and then pinned again, and the purchasing information or url link is lost.  In Pinterest etiquette, it isn’t just ok to comment to provide sourcing information, it is welcomed.

Use Keywords in Descriptions
Pinterest's search feature is a literal beast.  If a searcher inputs a term like "blue dress," the results that will display for the individual pin search will contain only pins that include that term in the pin description.  Help your would-be followers discover your content by including apt descriptions.  Descriptions also act as a "title" for an individual pin, so making the description pleasing to the eye and ear is also important.

Search Your Name
Use the creaky Pinterest search feature to find mentions of your brand on other boards.  You’ll find new people to follow this way and sources of inspiration for your own curation.  A search for Brooks Brothers finds products being highlighted in a board called “Preppy Cool,” while Sephora products find new life in pinboards being used for color stories.

Search for Mentions
You can also find content people have pinned directly from your website by adding, “/source/” and your website address to the Pinterest homepage URL. For example, if we want to look at what content people have shared from Mashable, we can enter http://pinterest.com/source/mashable.com.  Searching for people who already are sharing your product is a good way to find followers who might be interested in following your brand curated boards back.

"Liking"
Unlike repinning, the “liking” action  is a low profile way for a brand to engage with the larger Pinterest community.  Liking is a viewable list by other members.  If there are tangential subjects to your brand that you do not wish to curate as a whole board, you may wish to “like” another members content on the subject instead of repinning.  Examples of this might be:  a children’s clothing brand that curates content for children’s play activities “liking” a creative child bento box lunch, a cooking/epicurean brand that curates kitchen equipment and dishes “liking” kitchen remodels.  Making use of the like feature is a good way to build a following.

@symbol
You can directly engage with anyone for whom you are already following at least one board.  Tag descriptions of pins/repins and comments with the @ symbol followed by username and a notification will be sent directly to the user.  Direct mentions are great ways to reinforce relationships and build your community.

Reward Your Fans
Repinning and Liking take very little time/bandwidth compared to custom curating and commenting on other users’ pins.  Notifications of your activity will appear to the others in their activity feeds and notification emails.  By taking time to explore your follower's boards, it would be possible to create a “brand” board of lifestyle inspiration completely filled with “What Brand X Fans Love” and repins.

Connecting Platforms

When creating a Pinterest account, you can choose to connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts, along with your website.  Indeed, this step is mandatory in creating an account, although the social network display can  be toggled off after registration.  If enabled, social account widgets appear below your profile bio to your followers. 

It is important to note that currently, brand pages cannot be selected via the Facebook integration.  When registering a brand Pinterest account, the safest choice is to choose to integrate your brand Twitter account.  Once social network sharing is enabled, you can choose to share your Pins across the networks (although this sharing works on the personal profile level, not the brand page level,) or to embed them onto your website.  (Currently, only pins can be embedded, but the Pinterest designers have plans to make boards embeddable in Q1 of this year.)  Driving traffic by posting links to your Pinterest profile and pins via an update on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or wherever your audience is actively discussing your brand will benefit your presence on Pinterest.



For more reading, our complete list of posts from our week of Everything Pinterest:



Part V:  100+ Brands on Pinterest

Part IV:  Making the Most of Pinterest - Tips and Tricks

Part III:  Participating on Pinterest as a Brand Curator
Part II:  Optimizing Content For Pinterest
Part I:  Just What is Pinterest Anyway?

Read more...