by Kyle | Mar 27, 2014
What’s New with Mattr?
Our changes this week help to answer the questions:
-What publications should PR people or media buyers target?
-Who should PR people target for their pitching?
Recently, one of our users asked:
“Which of my engaged users Interests are most important, or stand out, for my Personas?”
It’s a good question and certainly valuable information to have. This week we made some updates to Mattr to answer this question for you.
When you look at interests now, you’ll see a new tab for “Unique Interests.”
Your engaged users have a higher affinity for these interests than non-engaged users. This information can help you with things like:
-Finding Surprising influencers to target
-Determining which publications might be best for pitching or media placement
-Identifying potential brands, media outlets or influencers that might be effective partners
Another comment we’ve received from many users is:
“I’m not sure what to do with the Average Klout score.”
So, we’ve replaced it with the most popular shared links. Any Historical Snapshot or Active/Future Campaigns still processing will now show the top shared links instead of the average Klout score. This will show you which media outlets or social media channels are shared most by your engaged followers.
This is another tool that might help you determine media/content placement and potential pitching targets to reach the greatest number of people, such as your engaged followers.
Previous ‘Your Feedback Mattrs’ Updates
In the last update, we talked about the changes to Historical Snapshots, Active or Future Campaigns, and your Teams. Click here if you’d like to read more about those changes.
I want to know what you think
Each week I look at the feedback we receive to prioritize where we should be making adjustments. Is there functionality you wish existed? Can we make changes to a process to make the experience better for you? Is there something that you don’t use or maybe don’t understand? Your feedback gives us answers to questions like these and helps us drive what additions or modifications we make each week. You are important to us. We listen to you, the Mattr user community, before making any changes.
Is there something you’d like us to be working on for you? Email me, [email protected], and I’ll get it on the list.
by Mattr Marketing | Mar 27, 2014
(Originally posted in Adotas)
As the news breaks about Klout’s impending acquisition by Lithium Technologies, the social media influence application is poised to be 2014’s sleeping giant — but only if marketers can work through their confused feelings for the platform after the startup’s very public display of growing pains.
Marketers were initially infatuated with Klout, a shiny new platform that teased companies across the board with its potential for harvesting information and insight. However, its fickle attitude got the best of it, and many Marketers abandoned the premise of scoring followers based on their “influence.”
Where Klout Went Wrong: Business vs. Consumer
The beginning of Klout’s decline was caused by the media frenzy over its lack of algorithm transparency. If you’re paying attention, that should seem odd. After all, many social companies like Facebook and Google have opaque algorithms behind their products. Why should Klout be any different?
Look at Facebook’s News Feed engine as an example. You see posts from the people you interact with most, along with some outlier posts from people you rarely interact with. It’s really a bit of a mystery what you do — and don’t — see.
Now, apply Klout’s concept to the News Feed. When a customer shares one of your brand’s Facebook updates with his social circle, how do you think he’d feel if he saw a score next to his post that shows how many of his friends it was shown to?
He’d probably be surprised, right? In fact, he might even be mad and wonder why the post he wanted to share with his social circle wasn’t shared with every member. This is basically what Klout has done. It shows the success and failure of a personal consumer account to the consumer — essentially showing users just how (un)influential they are.
Facebook is too smart to make this statistic transparent to consumers, but that doesn’t stop it from giving the Klout treatment to business accounts. Here’s a snapshot from a Facebook Insights Overview:
Facebook doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that your business posts don’t go out to all of your brand fans, even if those fans have “liked” your page and interacted with your posts in the past. Business owners usually understand that their updates may not appeal to all followers, so they accept it without feeling insulted.
The heart of Klout’s problem is this: You simply can’t serve up the same kind of information to consumers as you do businesses. Consumers don’t want to think that their messages are selectively appealing. They want each message to be noticeable and engaging. Yet the original “ego” appeal of Klout depends upon providing just those kinds of statistics. Its business plan is at odds with itself.
4 Reasons Klout Should Stay on Your To-Do List
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. Klout has four serious benefits that make it worthwhile for marketers.
1. Targeted perks: Klout offers users perks as incentives to keep their social stream connections up-to-date. These perks, in the form of deals or coupons, can be valuable for marketers wanting to make connections with social-savvy consumers. As Klout’s use of targeted perks becomes more sophisticated, its platform will appeal to more and more brands.
2. Demographics: Klout has the user’s authorization to share personal information with marketers, which allows brands to tap into an incredible amount of demographic data. This data can be used to target perks and offers even more precisely, leading to higher conversion rates for marketers using the platform.
3. Clustering and segmentation: Klout also has access to all of a user’s data from other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Foursquare. This creates a complete picture of a user’s interests, passions, and personality — information that marketers want and need.
4. Campaign and product endorsement: Marketers working on the launch of a major product want to know which users on social media are most influential on topics related to the campaign. Klout provides easy access to influencer data according to keywords and lists of followers.
The Future of a More Valuable Klout
It’s a real shame that Klout continues to lose commercial appeal because marketers need a Klout-like index tool. To make Klout enormously useful, there are two powerful ideas Klout could implement:
1. Create an influence graph. A consumer can currently share a news item on Twitter, and it would appear that Klout is headed this way with the ability to track a post. Klout needs to take it one step further. If marketers could understand who a user influences and what influences the user, that would be very useful for brands hyper-targeting content like “tech in Austin, TX” or other specific events and topics.
Because many users provide Klout access across their networks, Klout could potentially offer a cross-network graph that reaches into the influence of Facebook friends and Twitter followers as well.
2. Allow for true brand pages. Once the influence graph is in place, Klout needs to allow for bona fide brand pages with promoted posts and small in-stream ads like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. With all the rich cross-platform metadata available, this would be a veritable field day for the brand marketer. It would let a marketer measure the performance of promoted posts and ads and see which were shared (and by whom), ranked by influencer score.
With a multimillion-dollar acquisition and the potential for high-powered updates on the horizon, Klout has a bright future despite its wayward adolescence. Marketers who might have thought twice about the young startup and given up on the potential of “social media influence” should reconsider. The future of social media marketing will rely heavily on influence across all social platforms, and Klout may be just the platform to lead us there.
by Mattr Marketing | Mar 26, 2014
(Originally posted in Tech Cocktail)
Marketing blunders happen all the time. Do you remember when Pontiac gave away nearly 300 sleek, testosterone-fueled G6 sports cars on that talk show in 2004 — or do you remember the time Oprah gave everyone in her audience a new car? Pontiac might not have gained the attention it wanted from that stunt, but Oprah certainly did.
Ellen DeGeneres’s selfie from the Oscars is already 2014’s biggest tweet. It was taken on a Samsung Galaxy S5 and staged by Samsung to correlate with its #TheNextBigThing Twitter campaign. It marks the first record-breaking brand-sponsored tweet.
This tweet is already being touted by the agency of record as a victory. What’s the problem, then? For Samsung, this was a big missed opportunity since the tweet was missing its hashtag, #TheNextBigThing.
What should have been a great branding opportunity for both brands only benefitted Ellen. However, the event did spotlight Twitter (still in its first year as a public company) as a viable marketing option.
So, what lessons can you learn from this gaffe for your next Twitter campaign?
1. A sponsored tweet can go viral.
The top retweets on Twitter prior to Ellen’s selfie were Barack Obama’s 2012 win, the deaths of Cory Monteith and Paul Walker, and anything Justin Bieber had tweeted. You might not have the follower counts that Bieber or Barack do, so your best bet is to stick to current events. Oreo hit it big with its “Dunk in the Dark” tweet during the Super Bowl blackout; you, too, can capitalize appropriately on the unexpected.
Keep an eye out for major events, and find ways to spontaneously attach your brand to the hype. Samsung was smart to partner with Ellen. She’s the top interest among @SamsungMobileUS’s engaged audience, but Samsung didn’t fully capitalize on this appeal.
2. Coordination is key.
One mistake Samsung made was that only the people in attendance during the actual tweet were able to see that it was taken on a Samsung phone. In fact, Ellen was seen using an iPhone backstage. Had the phone been programmed to autofill “#Oscars #TheNextBigThing,” everything would have run smoothly while maintaining the spontaneity of the moment. This is Hashtag 101. Those 16 characters meant the difference between everyone loving Ellen’s selfie at the Oscars and everyone loving Ellen’s selfie at the Oscars that was taken on a Samsung Galaxy.
Make sure everyone on your team understands the goal. Practice, test failures, and communicate with each other. Don’t make the mistake Ellen’s team made. Create that hopeful evergreen hashtag on the celebrity’s autocomplete so the next opportunity isn’t lost. We called this “Marine-proof” in the Marine Corps: Make it so simple to operate that you’ll be able to do it when the “fog of war” hits.
3. A call to action is essential.
If Ellen had directly tweeted “Buy a Samsung,” it probably wouldn’t have gone as viral as it did, but had Ellen added “#TheNextBigThing” to her tweet, that would have given Samsung a clickable call to action, and it likely would have trended right next to #Oscars and #Oscars2014. Upon clicking it, people would have seen Samsung’s call to action below, without Ellen losing any credibility.
Regardless of how you structure your Twitter campaign, ensure that there’s a solid call to action. You never know which tweet will resonate with your audience, so each should include some way to funnel people back to you for a potential purchase or conversion. Seize the opportunity to connect with your audience directly when possible.
Twitter is quickly growing as the opportunity for viral marketing campaigns. It’s difficult to directly track conversions, but there’s no denying that certain tweets are read and spread by a large portion of the population. This puts Twitter at the forefront for agencies and brands, and you can win with a sponsored tweet from an endorsement deal. Just make sure you take full advantage of every opportunity by celebrity-proofing your campaign.
The next record-breaking tweet could work for you.
by Kyle | Mar 19, 2014
At Mattr, we’re constantly trying to make our app work better for you.
That’s where I come in. My name is Kyle Leach. I’m one of the founders of Mattr, but more importantly, a big part of my job here is to listen to what you have to say about our App.
Each week I look at the feedback we receive to prioritize where we should be making adjustments. Is there functionality you wish existed? Can we make changes to a process to make the experience better for you? Is there something that you don’t use or maybe don’t understand? Your feedback gives us answers to questions like these and helps us drive what additions or modifications we make each week. You are important to us. We listen to you, the Mattr user community, before making any changes.
What’s New in the Mattr App?
There are a few notable additions and changes we’ve made to the app recently:
Brand Baseline Historical Snapshot
You may notice the Brand Baseline is missing now. That’s because we renamed it Historical Snapshot. This new name is a bit more descriptive of the function. We also now allow you to get a historical glance at Hashtags or Keywords, in addition to the Twitter Handle you were able to track previously.
Active and Future Campaigns
While the Historical Snapshot gives analysis of the past, Active and Future Campaigns provide a look at current and future activities. These are live reports which can be set up to follow handles, keywords and/or hashtags.
Brand Campaigns
The Brand Campaign is a grouping of all reports relevant to a Brand. Each Brand Campaign includes historical (Historical Snapshots) and forward looking (Active or Future Campaigns) reports.
Each Brand Campaign gives you one Historical Snapshot and two Active or Future Campaigns. If you need more than that, you can just click on “Add A New Brand Campaign” to add 1, 5 or 10 new Brand Campaigns.
Your Team
Your Team now shows everyone you have invited to manage your Brand Campaign in Mattr. If you’ve been invited to a Brand Campaign you’ll see everyone in that team as well. You can manage the teams of each Brand Campaign separately so people are included only on the Campaigns relevant to them (and excluded where they aren’t relevant).
What’s Coming Soon to the Mattr App?
We’re busy working on a natural language breakdown of the top metrics for your personas. Soon we’ll also be including more flexibility in choosing the reports that are important to you and your Brand Campaigns. Keep watching our blog to hear more about these new features in the near future.
Is there something you’d like us to be working on for you? Email me, [email protected], and I’ll get it on the list.
by Mattr Marketing | Mar 14, 2014
(Originally posted in AgencySpy)
As a social media platform, could anything be better than $665 million in revenue? Surprisingly, yes. You could have Facebook’s $8 billion.
But instead of taking Facebook’s approach to cashing in, Twitter has fallen behind, leaving marketers everywhere rushing to understand the value of a follower, a retweet, and a hashtag — and finding nothing.
Have you heard the expression “better abused than ignored”? Well, marketers have one big, fat, totally rational fear of the latter — or, more specifically, silence. After all, only 29 percent of tweets get a reaction of any kind.
If you’re struggling to find an effective Twitter advertising strategy, you’re in good company. Brands big and small are fretting over what to tweet or post, and Twitter’s losing cash as a result. So how can Twitter kick-start 2014 to make up the difference? By catering its application updates to what marketers want to see.
#WSTD: What Should Twitter Do?
The most recent update to Twitter was disappointingly aesthetic. From a usability standpoint, Twitter has significantly reduced the size of and moved the tweet text box, lowering that activity’s weight on the page. And, by adding an icon action to enter a tweet on the top right corner, they’ve increased the call to action a bit, but it’s still not nearly as visually heavy as it was before.
Instead of focusing on aesthetics, Twitter needs to design an interface that’s conducive to engagement, not to finding new people to follow. More and more, marketers want to see the potential for results from Twitter, not a dilution of their strategies. They want a bona fide brand page with usage metrics — not simply a verified account. They want promoted tweets that are marketing-focused, not open to any and every user and barely used.
How Can Twitter Drive More Engagement?
Rather than rearranging how content is presented to users, here are some ideas that might help Twitter drive engagement for marketers and improve user satisfaction all around. The goal here is engagement — not simply finding new people to follow and new streams to search.
1. Auto-create a list of people I interact with most. As it stands now, building a list of the people you interact with most on Twitter — your Tweeps — is a necessary yet tedious task for Twitter power users. Most users put off this task for as long as they can. Twitter could dominate the social media realm by automatically giving users a list of their Tweeps.
2. Show me retweets of my Tweeps. Twitter should put more weight on the activity of users you engage with regularly. This is similar to how Facebook handles its “top stories” in a user’s news feed, and it works. Rather than making me sort through updates I don’t regularly engage with, show me the tweets my Tweeps are retweeting. If they find them interesting, I might, too.
3. Let me auto-follow. Here’s a chance to be a little ballsy: Provide an option in settings to “auto-follow” when you interact with a tweet from someone you don’t follow. Make it an opt-out, and see how users react.
4. Take the mystery out of trending content. Twitter shows you the hashtags trending now, which are determined either by region or a mysterious algorithm branded as “tailored trends.” In not divulging the logistics behind these “tailored trends,” Twitter missed out on a big lesson from Klout: You must be transparent about how you derive your automated features or reap the negative consequences. If Twitter is going to ask agencies to spend their clients’ money on its platform, its secrets must be uncloaked or advertisers won’t take the risk.
5. Make it easier to start a conversation. I can’t believe the Twitter homepage still doesn’t have a way to add text to a retweet. The mobile version has this feature (albeit with two character-sucking quotes), and TweetDeck (acquired by Twitter a few years ago) has always had it. You can “reply,” but that knocks out the context of the tweet for your followers and stifles conversation with the original user.
If Twitter wants to catch up to Facebook’s $8 billion, it needs to close the gap by giving its users and marketers what they want: access to increased engagement and information on topics unique to users’ interests. Anything less, and Twitter is bound to lose its clout in the social media marketing industry.
