All of a Twitter: How businesses are turning tweets into dollars
This article was published in the May 2009 issues of Canary Wharf magazine and City magazine.
Image: Matt Hamm (Flickr)
Twitter's growth has been exponential over the last year with an ever increasing army of people and brands joining the service's ranks of microbloggers. The reason for its growth is undoubtedly down to Twitter's simplicity and the way in which it allows users to receive each other's updates without entering into anything approaching the social bind of a 'friendship'; the system employed by the networking behemoths Facebook and Myspace. If you're interested in what someone's saying then you can 'follow' them and hear more and when you get tired of them you can sever your ties without the slightest twinge of social guilt.
Technology businesses have naturally been some of the first and most effective to use Twitter as a platform for brand awareness and consumer engagement. Dell Outlet UK, the arm of Dell that sells its cut-price returned and refurbished computers regularly tweets about new offers and deals. This is a win-win situation as consumers get alerted to money saving offers and Dell harnesses the power of the microblog to create an exclusive club of potential customers who are privy to the best deals and are actually more likely to purchase them because of the implied scarcity of products offered only to a minority of people.
Twitter has also allowed businesses to keep track of what their customers are saying about them. 5 years ago a customer might have called or emailed their friends to tell them what terrible customer service they had received; a complaint that would have cut the company out of the loop. But now that same customer might tweet about their bad experience and, as Twitter updates are publicly viewable, the company can not only listen to the complaint but also respond to it.
Indeed, Southwest Airlines recently received a slew of free advertising for spotting a tweet by a technology journalist who was dissatisfied with the company's communication regarding his canceled flight. A representative of the airline got in touch with the journalist to smooth things out and the result was a widely read article praising Southwest Airlines' use of Twitter as a customer engagement tool that hit all the major social media news portals.
In the current employment market Twitter has also become a tool of finding work. The social media site mashable.com recently ran an article on finding a job on Twitter and reports seem to suggest that many people have been successful. With the right tweets, retweets and followers it seems like Twitter really can get you a job although this also means that those still in the market for a job should take care of what they say on Twitter as employers are now sure to be watching potential employee's accounts as closely as their blogs, LinkedIn profiles and Facebook activity.
Correctly harnessed then, Twitter can be an unrivaled tool for brand awareness, customer engagement and personal gain but all would do well to remember that Twitter now has the power to make and break reputations and businesses and it would be prudent to plan your engagement strategy before joining one of the world's fastest growing networks.
User engagement insights: a case study
This article was published in the August 2009 issue of Figaro Digital magazine.
Although tools such as heat maps and eye tracking provide in-depth analysis of our users' behaviour there is also a wealth of simple user engagement experiments that can be carried out to better understand your users and achieve actionable insights that you can apply to your site.
The first step to generating user engagement insights involves devising robust experiments that will give you worthwhile data to interpret. If you know your site you should have no problem coming up with changes to make based on your hunches about what you think would make your website better but there are other, equally good sources of experiments too. I was looking into increasing sign ups on our events pages so one place I turned to for inspiration were direct competitors: more images, testimonials, a more emphatic call to action - I noted these techniques down along with my own ideas and drew up a plan of action.
Measuring your experiments is relatively straightforward as long as you avoid the pitfalls of choosing the wrong metrics; you only want to deal in metrics that cannot be too easily affected by external factors. I settled on examining four main metrics to assess the success of my experiments: average time on page, bounce rate, exit rate and, most importantly, conversion rate.
Our events pages generally only featured one image related to the event so the first experiment I did was to add another picture to our Great Wall of China trek page. After gathering 3 weeks worth of data I compared my user engagement metrics to the previous incarnation of the page for the same time period. I expected the effect of my change to be positive but minimal so I was surprised at the results the test yielded: average time on page was up 28%, bounce rate was down 25%, exit rate was down 14% and, crucially, conversion rate was up by 56%. In order to make sure that my results weren't an anomaly I added an additional picture to a different event page and received the same gains: bounce rate and exit rate went down whereas average time on page and conversion rate increased. These experiments led me to the insight that multiple images seem to have a positive effect on user engagement and that our events pages should be changed to incorporate this learning.
Taking a look at some competitors' sites convinced me to experiment with a testimonial on one of our events pages so I gathered some feedback from previous event participants and set up the new page. I expected the testimonial to show results similar to my previous experiment but what the results actually showed was a little more complicated. In the first iteration of the experiment the average time on page went up by 37% but the bounce rate went up by 60% and the exit rate by 50%. This all looked very counter-intuitive until I noticed that the conversion rate had increased by nearly 20%. It occurred to me that what I had created was a page that made the event look like a more serious prospect and was therefore driving away the casual enquirer but more effectively converting those users that were strongly considering taking part in the event.
It is, of course, imperative to recognize the limitations of these kinds of experiments. Just because a testimonial or an extra image increased the conversion rate on a certain page it doesn't necessarily hold true that the technique will work for all similar pages. Likewise it may be the nature of the individual image or the compelling copy of the testimonial that made those particular elements so effective in increasing the conversion rate; a different image or testimonial would have certainly provided different, and possibly negative, results.
Provided that you bear this in mind and design your experiments carefully with enough time to gather accurate results you will see how small refinements to your site can result in big rewards.
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER
About
Tom Hubbard-Green is the E-marketing Executive at Alzheimer's Society and a freelance technology journalist.
His articles have been published in a variety of magazines and industry publications including Figaro Digital, O2 Venue magazine and City magazine.
Music Tech Round Up: April 2009
This article was published in the April 2009 issue of o2 Venue magazine.
Sennheiser remaster an old classic
No doubt spurred on by Apple's release of their own canal earphones Sennheiser have re-vamped and re-issued their best selling CX 300 earphones. The original CX 300's were considered by many to be the premier upgrade choice from the iPod's packaged earbuds and Sennheiser claim the CX 300-II's will be even better with 'improved bass, greater clarity, improved dynamics and more finely balanced sound'.
Weighing in at just 4 grams these earphones are perfect for commuters; not only because of their miniscule weight but also due to their emphasis on blocking outside noise by completely plugging your ear. As an added bonus for long journeys the earphones have been designed with very high efficiency in mind to help reduce the drain on your MP3 player's battery life.
The Sennheiser CX 300-II earphones are available in black, white, silver, red and pink and come with a protective pouch and 3 different sizes of buds to help keep the earphones in place.
Sennheiser CX 300-II earphones, around £40
www.sennheiser.co.uk
Take your dream studio on the road
The all-in-one studio is a musician's dream that has only begun to be realized in the last few years and the release of Abelton Live 8 represents a significant leap towards such a mighty software solution. Whether producing tracks using Live's built-in synths or recording an instrument directly Ableton boasts a suite of tools ready to unleash your musical creations on the world.
Core to the Live philosophy is the 'Session View' mode that presents the user with a large grid of cells that can hold anything from a drum beat to a piano sample. These cells can be triggered at any time in any order; emulating the feel of using multiple pieces of MIDI hardware while keeping it all on one screen. This is a god send to performing musicians who wish there was an easier way of launching samples without poking at a mutitude of boxes replete with banks of flashing LEDs and poorly marked switches. Those not wishing to take their musical inventions on tour will also be more than satisfied with Live 8's 'Arrangement View' that sets the elements of a track out in a more traditional timeline view.
A workhorse of a program like Ableton Live 8 has too many features to mention but some of the additions to it's previous incarnation are particularly exciting. Live 8 features a revamped groove engine which allows you to apply groove patterns in real time, a looper for sound-on-sound techniques that function without hardware limitations, a new warping engine for more accurate audio slicing and brand new effects including overdrive, a frequency limiter and the ever popular vocoder.
If you're looking for a bells and whistles software studio you can't go far wrong with Ableton Live 8 and its impressive roster of satisfied customers that include Daft Punk, Nine Inch Nails and Pete Townshend.
Ableton Live 8, from $700
www.ableton.com
Low-budget rocking from ex-Marshall men
It used to be that high gain tube amps hit their sweet spot for volume long after you'd been lynched by your neighbours so when a team of ex-Marshall Amp employees promised to develop a tube amp that sounded just as sweet at a perfectly respectable bedroom level of 5 Watts, the guitar world began to take notice.
Powered by 10" Celestion speakers the Blackstar HT-5 comes in 3 flavours: a combo, a mini stack and a head for those who want to use one of their existing speaker cabinets. All 3 interpretations offer pretty much the same features including the much talked about 'Infinite Shape Feature' or ISF. This allows unique customization of the amp's tone control network which lets you dial in a boosted-mids American tone, a more 'woody' British sound or anything in between.
For the low price you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Blackstar HT-5's feature list ended at the ISF feature. However, the Blackstar boys also found the cash to include a 3-band EQ, seperate volume controls for the clean and distorted channels and an FX loop so you can use your effects pedal collection to modify the HT-5's sound even further.
Having won several accolades for this amp, including Guitarist Magazine's 'Guitarist Choice' award, there's never been a better time to jump on the HT-5's luscious sounding bandwagon before every man and his slightly deaf dog starts to want one.
Blackstar HT-5, from £299
www.blackstaramps.co.uk
Express yourself with the new Sony Ericsson W508
Even though some might think that the iPhone has won the war when it comes to music phones Sony Ericsson are hoping to create some serious competition with their newest phone in the popular Walkman series of handsets. The W508 features a unique 'Shake and Gesture' system that allows you to become your own DJ by simply giving your phone a brief shake. This interactive system that recognizes movement can be used to switch tracks, alter volume or turn an alarm off with a swipe of your hand. Ideal for those who just can't seem to find the snooze button in the morning.
Personalization is the key to the W508 and as such it comes with the option to switch between eight different coloured fascias. The phone's music system also embraces its user's individuality with Sony Ericsson's SensMe technology which analyses the mood of a song and groups it into a playlist with other songs with a similar feel. The end result is personal playlists tuned perfectly for anything from a lazy summer afternoon to the build-up to a big night out.
A 3.2 megapixel camera and a 1GB M2 card complete this package which is ideal for anyone who wants to bring their own particular style to their music and their phone.
Sony Ericsson, price TBA
www.sonyericsson.com
Bang & Olufsen broadcast from the future
The futuristic Beosound 5 is a single panel jukebox that looks like it has come straight from the set of a high budget sci-fi film. It's black and silver trimmings contain an impressive screen and a touch wheel combination. The physical movements of the aluminium selection wheel are perfectly in sync with the screen which displays the music you're browsing in a variety of exciting colour schemes. The Beosound 5 plays tunes from a hidden black box designed to hold up to 500 GB of your music and act as a streaming device for countless internet radio stations.
The killer feature of this Bang & Olufsen system is its intelligent MOTS (More Of The Same) system which profiles your favourite music by it's rhythm and syncopation and creates a personalized musical journey for you. This masterpiece of sonic engineering is a must-try and, if you can afford it, a must-buy too.
Bang & Olufsen, price TBA
www.bang-olufsen.com