Tagged with Christmas

The social media data behind christmas

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Looking at the online data behind the first week of December with the keywords ‘Christmas’ and ‘Xmas’ we can see certain interesting themes and therefore, opportunities.

As you might expect, the highest mentions of the search terms are to be found on Twitter and the like but that doesn’t always mean that is where you should focus your marketing activity. If we look at the second most popular destination for discussing Christmas, we can see that there is capital in the Forums. Forums have stronger networks, higher levels of trust and greater opportunities to convey your opinion beyond the length of a Tweet.

The conversations that take place on the likes of Mumsnet, Money Saving Expert and Offer of the Day are all about getting value for money, the biggest discounts and sharing this information with the network of community members to deliver tips and tricks to make it a more affordable Christmas.

When you drill down further into some of the conversations by platform, in the instance of the niche TES forums, there is a wealth of activity discussing what represents a sensible gift for teachers to give their pupils and lots of ideas on where to get the right gift for the right price. If you cant see the opportunity in that then give up now.

When we look at the themes of the online conversation, we can see that social, commercial and financial mentions are at the fore, religion is up there too but the underlying theme of Christmas lies in the bottom line.

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On the 12 Days of Christmas poorly targeted marketing delivered to me…

A Cheryl Cole video bundle, Father Ted Christmas special, Duran Duran EP, Fishing Kings game, Life of Pi novel, Michael Buble EP, Charlie Chaplin movie and fiiiiiiiiiive more unexciting things.

If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user then you will be familiar with the aforementioned list as you may have downloaded the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ application and received a daily text revealing the latest free offering from iTunes. I’m not staring down the molar barrel of a gift horse here, the Father Ted episode was great but if there is one thing that iTunes means to me, is the personalised experience that I create within it. Like it or not, (and long before the socialification of iTunes via Ping) you have a relationship with iTunes, you put in the content you like and download the stuff that you find appealing to your tastes, be this books, apps, films or games. The ‘i’ in ‘iTunes’ might as well stand for idiosyncratic.  No two iTunes libraries will be the same.

What does this mean? It means that the profile and persona you create is a valuable pool of data for Apple themselves. They already have the Genius feature that runs a recommendation algorithm based on your tastes and so we know they work with what you have got to enhance your media collection. If you want the science behind it all, I suggest you read this excellent post on TechnologyReview.com

So why get uptight about the 12 Days of Christmas offerings? Well, if the thinly veiled intention is to get you accustomed to the range of media available and the ease with which it can be downloaded and enjoyed on a device, would it not be of more benefit to both parties if content was supplied that tallied with a user’s existing media choices within their iTunes library? Of course you will be hard pushed to please everyone all the time but even if iTunes segmented customers into four categories across each line of media (video, podcast, music, games, books) it would undoubtedly yield a higher rate of customers making future purchases.                

I like podcasts, iTunes knows this, why not use that information to suggest a new podcast for me to enjoy based on the existing knowledge of podcasts I have downloaded? You know that I have a preferred style of music that I enjoy so why offer me Cheryl Cole?

iTunes didn’t even have to work hard to collect such data, it was freely volunteered, why not use it better and keenly target their offering. Let me know if you experienced similar poorly aimed marketing campaigns. Is this wasted budget?

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Nothing to see here

That’s right, move along now. This blog is undergoing a ‘strategic review’. It shall cease to provide content, a reduction in function and endless requests to click to here until the new year.

This is due to a relocation of Me and the need to change the purpose, design and function of this blog for Me. In the meantime you could do no worse than to check out the following blogs:

The Fixed Factor – cycling and sinister foods in equal measure

EmailFail – the good, the bad and the html purist

Trick Click – a great website packed with resources

…a pinch of salt – the tastiest blog in Bristol

Answer Me This! – The best podcast around

Happy Christmas y’all and see you in the shiny new year!

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