The Emerging Media of Today and Tomorrow – Part IV

The Emerging Media and Today and Tomorrow – Part II

Part two in the five-part series.

Applying Social Measures to Mobile Media and Marketing

(NOTE: Material originally written for graduate level course work.)

 

I find myself quite thrilled with the topic of week 8’s discussion because my new employer finds itself on the verge of a large digital marketing push. I find myself fortunate to be a part of this new journey and one of the main goals of the new push will be affirming our place in the mobile marketplace. Our industry is international safety equipment so it’s imperative that if customers were looking to purchase our equipment from any place in the world, at any time, a mobile interaction must be of the highest quality. I have chosen three of the measures that I believe all interact together and to harness one, you must harness them all.

(Shared from: JeffBullas.com)

Measures of Attitude

As our lesson notes, “Some of the most common types of measures used to examine interactive marketing communications are measures of attitudes. These measures evaluate the consumers’ overall feelings, thoughts or opinions regarding executions. (2013)”

I find this to be absolutely crucial in regards to mobile media. Measuring a potential customer’s attitude is measuring their first impression of the interaction. This initial emotional response, this attitude, dictates the rest of the current interaction, as well as any future that may take place. Certainly, a negative attitude toward a mobile interaction will lead to negative behavioral responses. Negative responds, generally, do not lead to positive ROI out of the interaction.

For many companies, the initial mobile interaction with a potential customer is a pop-up ad during a free app, or game, or website so right away, the goal of that ad should be to create a pleasing, welcoming attitude from the viewer. (From personal experience, this means do not make your ad a :45 second video in a free, dingy game.) Only by creating an initially appealing interaction, does a brand have any chance of that viewer turning into a customer.

Measures of Intensity and Quality of Interaction

The previous measure ties into this one as initial reaction and judgment has a direct influence on the quality of the interaction. As our lesson describes it, “one of the goals of interactive marketing communications is to make the intensity and quality of these interactions comparable to those of face-to-face. Specifically, consumers should feel that the online experience is efficient, individualized and accessible. (2013)”

If your brand does elicit a positive response from the viewer, then you have successfully delivered unto them an efficient and intense interaction. It means your message didn’t bore them, didn’t go on too long, was relevant to their interests at the time, and was aesthetically pleasing. This is all very important because as common knowledge goes, click-through rates are at less than .10% of viewers in front of whom the ads are presented.

But where I believe this measure plays its biggest part in mobile, to quote our lesson, ” If a Web site can convey relative product information that helps in evaluation and eventual purchase behavior, that is product diagnosticity. Two key themes of product diagnosticity are visual control and functional control. Visual control allows consumers to manipulate Web product images as well as to look at products at different angles and distances; functional control refers to online product trials. Both aid in consumer decision making, as they help shoppers compare and contrast products. (2013)”

One of the ideas that my employer has discussed with me as we move forward, is an interactive app that allows our potential customers to build customized safety equipment diagrams and quote sheets based on their specific needs. In our industry, these machines are dozens of feet in all directions and thousands of pounds so the most visually interactive purchasing method we can deliver, the better off we will be for it.

Measures of Behavior, Usage, and Gratification

“Click through rates, hit rates and click streams are derived from cost metrics commonly used to measure online behaviors. However, recent research suggests that these measures may actually examine inattention to advertising instead of the effectiveness of advertising. Instead, measures of behavior, usage and gratification have been proposed as a way to measure the effectiveness of interactive marketing communications. Studies have shown a correlation between the measures discussed below and click through rates, hit rates and click stream. (2013)”

The previous measures directly lead into and correlate with behavior and usage, especially with my employer as acting example, as behavior and usage measures delve into overall and lasting enjoyment of the interaction. To use our possible mobile application as an example again, it could potentially hit four of the biggest behavior measures:

Arousal
Focused Attention
Web Site Entertainment
Shopping Enjoyment

I’ve always been a firm believer in info-tainment as a legitimate form of advertising (perfect hand-in-hand with social media and emerging media, advertising disguised as interaction). In our field, having the possibility of engineering and construction and mining customers getting wrapped up into the aforementioned app, would absolutely create immediate and future, and hopefully repeat, interactions because the app will have hit so many behavioral triggers.

Mobile measures do require a different focus as things are on a much more immediate scale. A brand’s ad, or app, or interactive message in anyway, must be instantly grabbing, pleasing, not overwhelming, and non-intrusive. Certainly, a task far easier said than done but the brands that are able achieve such a feat will easily have the positive ROI and metric increases to show such an accomplishment.

References:

P.I. Reed School of Journalism, WVU. IMC 619: Emerging Media & The Market, Lesson 8: Measures of Effectiveness in Emerging Media. eCampus. Retrieved on March 6, 2013 from http://ecampus.wvu.edu.

An Analysis of a Fantasy Sport’s Website’s Social Media Immersion

(Note: The content in this post was compiled for a report for a graduate course through West Virginia University. This blog has no affiliation with Rotoworld.com and the content below should be regarded as educational and informational.)

 

 Rotoworld.com is a fantasy sports website powered by the national powerhouse NBC Sports and provides up-to-the-minute sports news (with an emphasis on the fantasy ramifications) for all of the major sports across the country. The site has been utilized by fantasy sports players for over ten years to acquire the information necessary to compete in their leagues with regards to news, line-up changes, injuries, and weather.

The information is free on a basic level, with premium content for all of the sports being charged as a one time fee—generally in the $25-$40 range depending on sport and information package—which provides the fantasy player season-long, in-depth information and suggestions/recommendations. Currently, Rotoworld.com utilizes the three large backbones of the social media landscape: Facebook, Twitter (extensively), and the blogging sphere.

With regards to current use, Rotoworld.com utilizes Twitter the most extensively and successfully. Rotoworld.com provides fantasy players access to six fantasy baseball tweeters, four fantasy football tweeters, six for basketball, and five for hockey. It’s baseball feed has over 36,000 followers, football over 58,000, basketball over 14,000, and almost 5,000 in hockey. Despite its solid Twitter base, the Rotoworld.com Facebook page has only 5,7000 likes. The blogs are slowly gaining more popularity but despite its affiliation with NBC Sports, still do not compete with the likes of ESPN and other conglomerate sports sites.

There is an opportunity here, with a growing sports brand and un-biased fantasy sports news service, to utilize a strong, forward-thinking social media campaign to rank Rotoworld.com as an elite service. With over 100,000 combined followers on Twitter, the social media hole that is the Rotoworld.com Facebook page is apparent and nonsensical. The service and products that Rotoworld.com provide are entirely online and digital, thus, their digital communities should be at their peaks at all times. The opportunity to grow their social media platform, from their all ready solid online presence, could be what puts the brand over-the-top.

ESPN, 8 million+ Facebook likes. Fox Sports, 775,000+ Facebook likes. CBS Sports, 105,000+ Facebook likes. Rotoworld.com, 5,500+ likes. The competition and the numbers look dire when comparing Rotoworld.com to the powerhouses of sports and fantasy sports coverage on the main social media vehicle known as Facebook. While it cannot be denied that Rotoworld.com provides coverage that can compete with the other resources, as shown by the faith in the brand by NBC Sports with their acquisition of the service. Despite what presents itself as a daunting up-hill climb to reach the echelon of the fantasy sports elite, gaining ground through social media can be extremely effective and extremely immediate. Online re-branding and increased awareness is now something that can be looked at in monthly terms instead of yearly.

 With a re-dedication to connecting all online vehicles, the social media and digital hub of Rotoworld.com can be as inclusive and extensive as any fantasy sports site on the internet.

By interweaving the Facebook page with Twitter updates, and profiling top blog responses across all vehicles, and promoting interaction, giants like ESPN and Fox Sports who simply can’t make their online resources fully interactive because of sheer size and numbers, are at a disadvantage in creating a true user-driven and user-involved community.

With Rotoworld.com’s substantial viewership as a backbone, the groundwork is laid out for creating and developing a self-sustaining and fully immersing digital environment. Allowing consumers to use the site’s paid services across social media platforms is one such idea.

 As a brand and company that has its home online, Rotoworld.com happens to be one that requires a bevy of social media success to increase its ROI, paid subscribers, and content sharers. Rotoworld.com currently utilizes Twitter and blogs as their primary means for social media interaction. The channels presented here, after being researched, are believed to provide other positive avenues for Rotoworld.com to accomplish its primary goal in a crowded sports marketplace: increase engagement with the target market to create brand loyalists.

The first channel that should be utilized is having a sophisticated and immersing Facebook page for the Rotoworld.com brand. A quick visit to Facebook and a search for Rotoworld will present a Facebook page that, at first, appears to be a suitable landing page for the brand. Upon further inspection, one finds broken links to Twitter or article feeds, an inability to pick a particular sport in its integrated news feed, and very little conversation. For a site partnered with NBCSports, one of the largest broadcast brands in the world, to have only 5,100 “likes,” is detrimental to increasing its online presence and awareness.

As a new study presented by Samantha Murphy at mashable.com reveals, “About 50% percent of consumers think a brand’s Facebook page is more useful than a brand’s website, a new study suggests. Market research company Lab42 — which surveyed 1,000 social media users about how they interact with brands on Facebook — found that consumers are viewing a brand’s Facebook presence as more important than ever. In fact, about 82% of respondents said Facebook page is a good place to interact with brands. (2012)”

This clearly shows that a concentrated effort must be underway to improve the interactivity and rich content of the Rotoworld.com Facebook landing page, considering half of the brand’s potential readers and subscribers may not visit the actual site first. As noted, there are links to Rotoworld.com partner blogs and Twitter accounts but the content must be seamlessly integrated into the Facebook page. There must be an ability to access various sports. An incentive program should be implemented for users to upload/post their own content, which leads to more user-to-user linking, “liking,” and news feed shares. There is no downside to a professional, immersive Facebook page with Facebook’s current social media position.

A secondary online social media channel that would benefit the Rotoworld.com brand is using the social network Delicious.

Shannon George of Lifed.com describes the social network as, “into a category of social networking sites called social bookmarking (others include Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and a host of others). You can use social bookmarking to collect, tag and share links to content on the Internet. Depending on what you’re into – tech news, fashion, travel, cooking, or quantum physics – social bookmarking can be the most effective way for information junkies, bloggers and self-described content curators to find and disseminate the latest and greatest web content. (2012)”

The positive to creating and focusing on a business account on Delicious is that “Social bookmarking incorporates tagging, which has a search engine-like function – except with social bookmarking, results are delivered based on tags made by other social sharers like yourself, rather than by search engine algorithms. For anyone who aims to drive traffic to their website using the methods of search engine optimization, or SEO, social bookmarking sites like Delicious are an essential piece of the puzzle.

By bookmarking your valuable website content (articles, white papers, blog posts, infographics) on Delicious and tagging it with relevant keywords, you can create backlinks to your website which will increase your clout on search engines like Google. (George, 2012)” The downside to using a network like Delicious is that it still is not an “elite tier” level of social network so much of the brand’s success on that platform, is reliant on the site’s ability to grow into a social media giant. This should be a more long-term focus for increasing awareness and interaction than short-term.

The third channel that needs to be addressed is increasing the brand’s mobile content and the user’s ability to easily access their desired information. As it stands, Rotworld.com has four mobile applications: an RSS news feed, a fantasy football draft kit, a fantasy baseball draft kit, and an app that links to all of the brand’s blogs. A focus needs to be put on incorporating all of these features that Rotoworld.com readers and subscribers love, into one “umbrella” app.

For example, with the Rotworld.com online page, a user has to have an account to access their draft kits (the pay services of Rotoworld.com), but after logged in, preferred sport and/or drafted players get priority in the news feed, making it personalized to the specific user. Not only do you need two separate applications downloaded to see both of these brand features, there is no connection between the two and nothing mirrors the actual site.

To compare, a similar sports brand like ESPN has a mobile application that is a streamlined and user-friendly version of the full website, allowing users, through one application, to access: ESPN the Magazine articles, fantasy sports and line-ups, full player statistics, every sport, sports pictures, box scores, and anything else an interested user would want to find online.

 

 

 

 References:

 

George, Shannon. (2012). Beyond Facebook and Twitter: Other Social Sites to Consider. Lifed.com. Retrieved on March 2, 2013 from http://www.lifed.com/beyond-facebook-and-twitter-other-social-sites-to-consider

 

Murphy, Samantha. (2012). 50% of Consumers Value a Brand’s Facebook Page More Than Its Website [INFOGRAHPIC]. Mashable.com. Retrieved on March 4, 2013 from http://mashable.com/2012/09/24/facebook-brand-page-value/