Marketers delve into true meaning of real-time social media - Is it a waste of time?

Real-time social media is important, but it doesn’t always have to happen in real-time, according to David Parkinson, head of digital for Nissan in Africa, Middle East & India.

Speaking to The Drum at the Social Buzz Awards in London Parkinson responded to whether or not real-time social media marketing is a waste of time, stating that there are certain times in which real-time social media marketing needs to be planned ahed of time, rather than on the fly.

“Some real-time is actually real time, other real-time is planned in advance. We did real-time for royal baby, and that was actually six weeks in the making, and we just had to wait for the right time to produce it.

"But on the other side, we did the Kim Kardashian real-time a few weeks ago, it got us over 30,000 retweets on Twitter: and that was genuine real-time,” he explained.

The topic of whether social media marketing is a waste of time arose after Microsoft Mobile’s head of digital marketing, Selena Harrington, previously questioned whether real-time in social media was worthwhile given it is virtually impossible to fully measure success of real-time campaigns, and therefore the whole tactic can be hit-or-miss.

Stating that it’s not a waste of time, “but it’s got to be genuine,” Parkinson was one of several top names in social who discussed the question ‘is real-time in social media a waste of time’ while at the Social Buzz Awards.

James Whatley, social media director, Ogilvy & Mather, agreed that marketers should take a considered approach to real-time social media marketing, but added that service-based clients lend themselves well to the speediness of real time communications, particularly when it comes to customer service.

But he added that the true meaning of the term 'real time' should really reference 'right time' communications.

“Being there in the right time does not mean that you have to be there in real-time,” he added.

Merinda Peppard, marketing director EMEA at Hootsuite, described social media as “real time marketing, available at any time, to anyone”.

For Mícheál Nagle, sportsbook social media manager from Paddy Power, live tweeting is an important part of social, and it is here where real-time comes into play for the bookies.

“We live tweet big sporting events all the time because we know people at home want to see what Paddy Power has to say about that event.”

While other businesses might not embrace the real-time element to the same level as Paddy Power, it seems like it is something which social media managers should consider.

You can hear more on what all of the above – as well as Jim Dowling, managing director of Cake and Iain Matthews, strategy director at Jam – think about real-time social media by viewing the video above.

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Researchers warn against Facebook, Twitter data
TORONTO: As researchers are mining Facebook and Twitter data to learn about online and offline human behaviour, a new study warns them to be wary of serious pitfalls that arise when working with huge social media data sets. 

Such erroneous results can have huge implications as thousands of research papers each year are now based on data gleaned from social media.

"Publicly available data feeds used in social media research do not always provide an accurate representation of the platform's overall data — and researchers are generally in the dark about when and how social media providers filter their data streams," explained Derek Ruths, assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

"A large number of spammers and bots, which masquerade as normal users on social media, get mistakenly incorporated into many measurements and predictions of human behaviour," Ruths said.

The design of social media platforms can dictate how users behave and, therefore, what behaviour can be measured.

"For instance, on Facebook the absence of a 'dislike' button makes negative responses to content harder to detect than positive 'likes,' added study co-author Jurgen Pfeffer of Carnegie Mellon University's Institute for Software Research.

Researchers often report results for groups of easy-to-classify users, topics and events — making new methods seem more accurate than they actually are.

For instance, efforts to infer political orientation of Twitter users achieve barely 65% accuracy for typical users — even though studies (focusing on politically active users) have claimed 90% accuracy, the authors contended.

"The common thread in all these issues is the need for researchers to be more acutely aware of what they are actually analysing when working with social media data," Ruths concluded.

The article appeared in the journal Science.

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Facebook users warned against buying 'likes' from Indian click farms to boost popularity

The World Today 

Fri 28 Nov 2014, 4:00am

PHOTO: The buying and selling of 'likes' is banned by Facebook. (AFP)

A fast way to get more 'likes' for a Facebook page is to buy them from so-called click farms in India, but social media experts warn that paid popularity can be perilous.

The social networking site does not allow fake accounts, so those selling fake likes often try to do so discreetly.

"There are a lot of different companies, a lot of them are based in India which essentially work to just build Facebook and Twitter accounts and the like," said Matthew Cox, a strategic consultant at Dialogue Consulting.

"You can pay them however much money they require and they will just get those accounts to follow you."

Delhi click farm operator Rahul (not his real name) said his clients included politicians, celebrities, artists and businessmen.

Rahul said his click farm was a completely automated system and not a room full of people frantically tapping their computer mouse on multiple Facebook pages.

"The 'likes' are done with the help of a server," he said.

"We create them through programs but all the profiles are just for show. You can go to a profile and check it out and all the photos and the videos are fake."

Rahul charges one rupee per like, and can generate up to 15,000 clicks a day.

For $300, in 24 hours a person or company could be significantly more popular online than they were the day before.

Rahul is an IT professional by day and runs his click farm business on the side.

He said three days of generating fake 'likes' earned him the equivalent of a month's salary from his official job.

"It is totally wrong. Basically, I just do this to make money."

Tony Abbott denies paying for Facebook popularity

PHOTO: Tony Abbott has seen a surge in Facebook likes since meeting his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.(Twitter: @narendramodi)

It was revealed this week that the highest proportion of Tony Abbott's 396,000 Facebook followers are based in New Delhi, sparking accusations the Australian Prime Minister had paid for them.

Mr Abbott's office denied that was the case, saying that his popularity on the subcontinent was due to his close relationship with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who has 25 million Facebook followers.

"It is no secret that the Prime Minister hosted a number of world leaders in recent times, including Indian prime minister Narendra Modi," it said in a statement.

"These visits attracted large international audiences to the Prime Minister's social media channels, thus generating a spike in organic engagement with the page."

Dialogue Consulting's Matthew Cox said it would be easy to spot a fake Facebook user.

"They would look basically like a really unused Facebook account, so typically they are often characterised by the fact that they essentially like a whole heap of different things," he said.

He warns paying for popularity has its downsides because Facebook only posts content out to a certain number of a person's followers.

So the more fake friends you have, the fewer real followers see your posts.

"So that content is being pushed out to fake accounts, it is essentially like your content is falling on deaf ears. As a result of having those fake followers, you are essentially sabotaging yourself in the long run."

The social media expert said there was a better way to get more friends online.

"Yeah absolutely, the old-fashioned way. Or I shouldn't say the old-fashioned way - the right way, which is basically just to produce something that people are in essence interested in."

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