Questioning the genders’ social media preferences, we ran a survey to find out how and why men and women participate and interact with brands on social media platforms. As it turns out, the female of the species is currently more social than the male, with 70% of women surveyed having had engaged with businesses, brands and organisations on social channels.

Both sexes agree that the platform to interact with brands on is facebook, followed by Google+ and YouTube. However, the motivation for this interest and support differs, with women wanting to support their favoured brands or a worthy cause and men being spurred on by an incentive or reward.

To help you understand the social media behaviour of the genders, take a look at our handy infographic.

Embed this infographic

<div style="width: 640px; background-color: #fff; padding: 10px 20px 20px; font: 14px/21px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"><br /> <h3 style="color: #565656; clear: both;">The Gender Split, How the sexes engage with brands on social media</h3><br /> <a href="http://www.soak.co.uk/blog/the-gender-split-how-the-sexes-engage-with-brands-on-social-media"><img src="http://www.soak.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/social-v2-0111.jpg" alt="The Gender Split, How the sexes engage with brands on social media" style="border:0" width="640" /></a></div><br />

This month has seen a number of politically challenging campaigns trending on Twitter and featuring in a huge amount of blog posts. From International Women’s Day to the aptly named ‘Pink Slime’ in school dinners, socially media users actively shared and participated in matters which would undoubtedly not have gained as much recognition or publicity in the days before social networking.

Glenda Stone, founder of www.internationalwomensday.com stated that “Activity on International Women’s Day has skyrocketed over the last five years. This is due to the rise of social media…Our [Twitter] community with around 10,000 followers is phenomenal for sharing videos, information and news as it happens. Offline large scale women’s rallies have become even larger through the use of social media.”

However, for one campaign in particular, KONY 2012, the social commentary took a variety of twists and turns, and what started as a video viral and twitter movement #STOPKONY to raise awareness of accused war criminal Joseph Kony, become a public debate on the legitimacy of the charity behind it, Invisible Children.

It took only 6 days for the 30 minute documentary, seeking to arrest LRA leader Joseph Kony, to rack up 100 million views, making it the most viral video of all time according to researcher Visible Measures. Yet the campaign seems to have raised more awareness of the behaviour of its creator Jason Russell and the questionable antics and financial activity of Invisible Children. As a result of this, KONY 2012 highlights the social media snowball effect and is representative of both the positives and negatives of using social media for activism…especially when your aim is to persuade your audience into buying supporter packs.

However, Kony also demonstrates the need for complete authenticity when social media platforms are used to raise awareness of a cause. The motivation behind the video came into serious question when the mass of other material, and digital information, surrounding Invisible Children resurfaced, leading to public criticism of the campaign. Charlie Brooker recently analysed the charity behind the viral phenomenon of the year during his slot on 10 o’clock Live – to say it portrayed Invisible Children in a negative light is an understatement.

There are a host of lessons that can be taken from KONY2012;

• Be genuine and represent your brand honestly
• Have an objective and ensure there’s a legitimate purpose behind your promotion
• Do your research and understand your market
• Consider the potential impact of everything you make public through digital and social channels
• Prepare yourself for both positive and negative feedback, and remember to respond to both!

When authenticity and motivation aren’t being questioned, the support that can be gained through social media channels shouldn’t be underestimated. Despite retweets, hashtags, shares and likes of activist subject matter being criticised by some as lazy ‘Slactivism’, the impact of such support is undeniable. For example, take the recent backlash and support against SOPA – the social support through networks and website strikes undoubtedly had an impact on the act not being passed.

At the time of writing this article, the story of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager who was shot last month by a neighbourhood watch captain in Florida, has been put under the spotlight on Twitter. In this instance, social media has fuelled a rush of publicity and activism around demands for justice. The flood of support for Martin’s family on social networking sites has been enormous; in 7 days a dedicated facebook page gained more than 31,000 fans and there have been more than 596,000 mentions on Twitter*, causing the hashtag #JusticeForTrayvon to internationally trend.

‘Slactivism’ might not be the most dignified term but you can’t deny it makes a difference, nor can critics continue to question the impact that social media can have on a campaign…whether it’s in respect to an activist cause or (apologies for the crude reference) raising brand awareness.

* Stats by social media monitoring firm PeopleBrowsr

The hilarious “Jesus Christ in Richmond Park” has been viewed over 600,000 times (at the time of writing this) since being uploaded only a few days before. Having been picked up by various media figures and publications, the viral initiated a host of parodies including Benton in London (American Werewolf in London), Benton Vs Bambi and Jurassic Park Benton, as well as the creation of a spoof Twitter account @BentonsOwner dedicated to the frantic “Oh Jesus Christ” shouting dog chaser.

You can’t help but wonder if the owner of Benton is actually aware of his infamy, and what success the stress of trying to catch up with his eager four legged friend and a herd of deer will bring to his life.

It was recently reported that YouTube fame can become a nice little earner for the stars of well timed video moments that go viral. The family of finger biting Charlie (Charlie Bit My Finger), arguably one of the biggest viral videos of recent times, have made over £100,000 from its success by introducing ads and signing up to YouTube’s partner programme.

For businesses trying to cash in on viral victory, the path to success is tricky as you have be very original when trying to create a video which will be shared and viewed by audiences, who are not necessarily interested in your brand or product. The point of a viral is that it gains you notoriety and brand recognition, and this needs to be remembered when coming up with a concept. The objective is that, yes, it does have an effect on your ROI but ultimately its first step is to create a buzz around your brand…one that will be associated to whatever content you put out there.

Earlier this month web agency SapientNitro posted a cringe inducing music video on their Facebook page which rapped about the role of their ‘Idea Engineer’. Predictably, from the minute it appeared the video was ridiculed and in a moment of thoughtlessness SapientNitro deleted the post and comments which resulted in a huge backlash and over exposure of the content, when it was re-uploaded onto YouTube and became the feature of many blogs. Their, probably heavily planned and costly, video became the target of many critics and their understanding of digital media was questioned. It really couldn’t have seemed worse for SapientNitro at the time – on the flip side though, it did get them trending on Twitter for a day or two!

The argument when it comes to achieving viral success is…is all publicity good publicity? Of course digital experts and agencies are going to voice their opinion if your video results in as many gasps of horror as SapientNitro’s, but ultimately they did achieve increased brand recognition…it’s just a shame that from now on their industry peers will always remember them as a badly rapping idea engineer surrounded by a small entourage of awkward looking ladies. SapientNitro’s clients may have loved it though, and in terms of recruitment its most likely not had a detrimental impact.

It should be said that SapientNitro are not the first company or web specialist to try and achieve success through a badly devised music video, and we’re sure they won’t be the last. Let’s face it though, unless you can compete with the likes of Yeo Valley it might be best to stick to something closer to your talents.

For those of you who haven’t yet come across possibly one of the most successful YouTube business case studies, let me introduce you to Blendtec. Makers of the ‘world’s best blenders, mixers and mills’, Blendec have made a series of videos showing how their product can blend pretty much anything. From iPad’s to Golfballs, Justin Bieber to Old Spice (nice little social media reference there) The Will it Blend? Campaign gained them over 400,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel , millions of hits and most importantly an enormous uplift in sales.

Bendtec YouTube Channel

Viral success is one big experiment and whether you’re an unsuspecting dog owner, a high profile web agency or the maker of blenders you really can’t predict how far a simple upload will take you. There are no rules, just a hungry audience waiting to rate your efforts if you’re fortunate (or in the case of some unfortunate) enough to get noticed in the first place. You can stick to what you know best or create something that appeals to a mass audience but is so far removed from your actual service or product you create a new identity.

One thing you can learn from though is others…Lesson One. Don’t rap unless you can. Lesson two. Don’t let your dog off the lead when around deer.

HTC Wildfire Broken

As the mobile development landscape is so diverse there are a number of issues that still arise thanks to every mobile platform moving in their own direction with no solid standards being adhered to. Some mobiles have different browsers and different versions of browsers. Take the HTC Wildfire, which runs a custom webkit based browser. From a developers viewpoint this can cause a host of issues.

The problem we encountered was with a mobile specific website that uses the Meta Viewport tag, which isn’t implemented correctly across all devices:

Our Viewport Tag:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0">

This works fine on the iPhone and most smartphones, but the HTC Wildfire rendered everything with increased zoom.

Fix the viewport on HTC Wildfire

This was a little more tricky as the device DPI is so low and there isn’t a great deal of documentation on-line about rendering websites in the HTC Wildfire. After a few hours of playing we came up with this:

@media screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio: 0.75) {
/* CSS for low-density screens */
body { zoom:0.82; }
}

This fix appears to re-adjust the zoom to cater for the low density pixel ratio. It’s a good thing that media queries in CSS have been introduced or this would be impossible to fix.

The Finished Code:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0">
<style type="text/css">
@media screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio: 0.75) {
/* CSS for low-density screens */
body { zoom:0.82; }
}
</style>

HTC Wildfire Viewport Fixed

As you can see form the screen-shot to the left this worked a treat, you may want to tweak the zoom and font size in the CSS media queries to fit your design perfectly.

On the first screen shot you can see the text being cut off the right hand side of the browser, the images being cropped off the screen and the bottom navigation missing an item. Once the zoom is fixed it renders as expected.

If you’re a developer then hopefully we have just saved you some time and more importantly frustration!

Soak were asked to hold a workshop at the event which engaged and inspired students on choosing a career in the industry, and informed on the best paths in to it.

We’ll be honest, we were slightly apprehensive about the level of enthusiasm and interest we were going to be greeted with, especially as we’d prepared a compulsory task for them (yes we had braced ourselves for a chorus of groans and “do we have to’s”). Thankfully we were proved entirely wrong and a rather nervous looking Adam, Chris and Emily soon relaxed in front of their most potentially critical audience to date.

With unemployment affecting over one million young people in the UK, we decided it would be apt to give some advice on how to succeed when attempting to find a job. Given that we’re bombarded with CVs from hopeful job seekers throughout the year, we wanted to challenge the students to think about how they can play on their own strengths and create an original online CV, which makes them stand out from an ever growing crowd.

We held two workshops which required groups of students to create digital marketing strategies for an imaginary candidate of a similar age, and with similar experience, to them.

Fuelled by the incentive of HMV vouchers and the chance to win a week’s work experience at Soak, the groups got to work and devised some truly imaginative tactics for promoting the skills and attributes of their chosen candidate to would be employers. Both workshops were a huge success and the teams considered an impressive variety of web strategies, social media channels and digital platforms to gain maximum exposure – with very little help from us we might add!

Well done to the bright sparks from City College Norwich and Great Yarmouth College who won our (probably pretty lame) voucher prizes and who we are very excited about interviewing for our work experience placement.

Hopefully in the future we will see an array of innovate CV’s hit our inbox. Remember…we can sniff out a bulk emailed CV a mile off!!

Here’s a really innovate example!

Users want to be informed, entertained and have something exciting to share with others. Therefore, the key to a successful social strategy is to know the rules of social media etiquette.

Rule 1
When communicating with your audience do it authentically, openly, and know the world is watching.

Rule 2
Remember, there needs to be a conversation…not a one way push.

Rule 3
Let go to gain more. Have fun with it and show your customers you’re human.

Rule 4
It’s important to understand that the participants of these tools are in charge. The more an organisation is seen to control the dialogue the less effective it will be.

Rule 5
Know what Social Media is about, what it represents and what its values are:

It is…

• Consumer Driven
• Transparent
• Engaging
• Inclusive
• Sincere

And it is not…

• Controlled
• Impersonal
• Exclusive
• Formal
• One-sided

Rule 6
Remember that user generated content is now an integral part in peoples research and decision making process. If your customers are talking about you it’s better to talk with them. This means responding to both the good and the bad.

Rule 7
Share, inform and educate. Social media audiences want to learn new things they can then discuss with their friends and followers. They do not want to be sold to or preached, so think of new and refreshing ways to get your audience to engage with your product.

Rule 8
Be passionate! If you don’t sound interested in what you’re talking about then you can’ t expect your audience to be.

Whatever your ultimate goal is from using social media, you need to establish trust with an audience for you to gain loyalty – and without a loyal audience you won’t get very far.

1. Listen to yourself

I said you’d hear it again…Know what you want you want to get out of social media and have an objective you constantly keep in mind. Social media is a space to interact and communicate, if you’re not doing this you’re doing it wrong. So remember what your mother told you and think before you speak!

2. Listen to others

The conversation about your brand, industry or service has already started, but before joining in, make sure you understand the atmosphere and protocol of it by doing your research first.

Start listening to:

• Key public figures
• Mentions of your company
• Popular industry/ advocacy sites
• Newsgroups
• Blog comments
• Companies like you

3. Create personas

Your audience want to interact with you as a person, not as a corporation. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to act professionally but relating to the mindset of your customers will help you to identify potential character traits, personalities, habits and attitudes of the consumer base you want to target.

This will enable you to create a social media plan of ideal scope and size, as well as helping you better understand how to interact.

4. Select resource

Got big plans for getting your brand heard across as many social media platforms as possible? Well before plan your social domination, make sure you consider how many hours and people you can devote to running it, and who needs to be involved in strategising.

Think about:

• Technical experience of staff
• Having a volunteer base (long-term v short term)
• The amount of time that staff members can devote to social media
• Time saving devises: repurpose existing content for social media sites

5. Define conversions

What are the things you want to achieve and measure the success of your social media activity against? Knowing this will prevent you from losing sight of your goals, which can easily be done in the ever changing and trend shifting environment of social.

• Build better relationships
• Raise brand awareness
• Increase sales
• Increase website traffic
• Build up your database
• Inspire people to action
• Increase donations

6. Create a proposition

Promoting yourself in a social space does not require long sales pitches and lengthy corporate spiels about your history and ideals. So think about how you define your company in a single, simple phrase.

Ensure your proposition is:

Focused and on point 

Has a cohesive, unifying theme

Easily grasped by short attention spans

7. Select channels

By researching the social landscape you’ll be able to select which channel(s) best suit:

• Your goals
• Your brand story
• Your resources
• Your target
• Your content

If you’re not sure how you’d fit into a platform then don’t use it! Start by selecting the social platforms you’re comfortable and build your strategy to incorporate more, if necessary, as your social status grows.

8. Join the conversation

So, you’ve listened to what’s being said and now you’re ready to join in and connect with your audience but remember to adhere to the basic principles of social media etiquette:

• Stay Transparent
• Keep It Conversational
• Write What You Know
• Admit Mistakes
• Don’t Ignore Negativity
• Trust Your Instincts

9. Listen and learn

Don’t ever stop listening, its how you found your audience in the first place and its how you’ll keep them.

• Find new conversations to join
• Track responses to your social media activity
• Discover what messaging works
• Re-evaluate your strategy and focus on growth through your successes
• Drop what isn’t engaging and learn from it

10. Don’t be afraid

Start now and fine tune later! The sooner you get started the better, and relax…remember every mistake you make in the beginning is an opportunity to improve.

Our Pumpkins

The Soak team have put togther a collection of pumpkin carvings, please take a look and vote for the one you like best, to vote simply Facebook like or Tweet the one you want to win!

• Uncle Percy

  

  Vote For Uncle Percy below:

  Tweet

• Fang

  

  Vote For Fang below:

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• Muncher

  

  Vote For Muncher below:

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• Roy

  

  Vote For Roy below:

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• Timmeh

  

  Vote For Timmeh below:

  Tweet

• Hello Kitty

  

  Vote For Hello Kitty below:

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• Skeletor

  

  Vote For Skeletor below:

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• Pac Man

  

  Vote For Pac Man below:

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• The Kernel

  

  Vote For The Kernel below:

  Tweet

Firstly you have to find your audience and when you do, before you jump feet first into trying to get them to like, share, +1 or engage in your content, you have to know how they expect you to interact with them. Get that wrong and you’ll quickly leave with your tail between your legs!

Make sure you have investigated all the key social media platforms available to you, and don’t discount the less obvious ones as they can be just as effective in achieving your objectives and strengthening consumer relations:

• Social Networks
• Blogs
• Online Video
• Chat Rooms
• Pod Casts
• Viral
• Widgets
• Forums

The initial, and ongoing, research involved with planning your social media strategy should give you an indication on which channels your campaign is best suited to but it’s also worth considering:

• If your target audience is likely to use a particular platform
• How the audience are likely to engage with you on said platform
• What the best style or format to present your content in is
• Can you share your content on other more niche / audience relevant platforms

The only true way to fully understand where your business will fit in to the landscape and what types of conversations are going on either about you or your competitors is to listen. The importance of learning about the environment you are about to publically connect in can’t be stressed enough. To help you get a gauge of this, and keep track of conversations about your brand or key business terms, employ a monitoring tool such as Google Alerts or social mention. There are a wide variety of these monitoring tools on the market, some free and some with a monthly tariff, so do your research and invest in one which ticks all your boxes.

Keep in mind that social media platforms are continually evolving and growing so be prepared to review your use of them regularly, and make sure that if you’re employing more than one your content isn’t duplicated across them. Social media audiences are typically registered with multiple channels, and repeated information is dull and will more than likely turn them off you altogether.

Having a content strategy and understanding what your audience are looking to engage with, on the various social media channels they are signed up to, will help you deliver fresh, relevant and interesting material that keeps audiences coming back for more.

There are of course situations where it is appropriate to share or promote content from one of your social media platforms to another, for example posting a link to your latest YouTube video on facebook or detailing a snippet of your blog through a link on twitter, but remember your audience will not be impressed if they are directed to another channel only to consume the exact same information.

It’s easy to get caught up in several social media platforms at once but they need to be maintained and regularly updated to keep your audience interested. Start by developing and perfecting one or two and then build up your repertoire as both your confidence, and audience, grows.

You wouldn’t invest in PPC, devise an email campaign or commission developments to your website without a firm strategy in place, and this premise should also be applied to a business’s social media activity. Besides, how are you able to measure the success of your campaign if you don’t know what you want to achieve.

So, if you’re going to develop a strategy (before or after the launch of your social media initiative) you’ll need to consider several important factors which will enable you to comprehend what’s involved in managing and developing your presence within this space.

• Get to know the social media landscape, understand what’s out there and how your brand can fit in.
• Listen and learn from what people are saying as this is the best way to identify what types of conversations are going on about you.
• Monitor your competitors and gain insight into what currently works, and what doesn’t. Start by using free tools such as Google Alerts and Social Mention to get to know your market, and pick up on conversions.
• Have objectives, know what you want to achieve, set goals and think how you’ll achieve a conversion.
• Engage, remember this is SOCIAL media and to appear legitimate you need to converse and interact with your audience.
• Plan, refresh and review your content as much as possible as it is the most crucial factor when trying to entertain and increase your social presence.
• Remember that it takes people and time to run a social media campaign so think about what resource you can commit. Involve your staff and let them engage with your audience as this will showcase your teams’ enthusiasm for your business or product.
• Have a budget, social media might be a less expensive form of advertising it does take time, and time is money. Ensure your budget accounts for all costs involved.
• Put in place a system to measure your activity on your chosen social platforms as it will enable you to identify what works and what doesn’t. Set realistic goals and be prepared to adjust your strategy in response.

Deciding on a strategy that encourages participation and shows off your company’s personality might take you away from your comfort zone, especially if you’re more familiar with logical, planned and methodical approaches to marketing your organisation, but to succeed in gaining trust and loyalty from your audience you need to communicate authentically, openly, and keep in mind that the world is watching.

Remember, there needs to be a conversion – not a one way push. It’s so important to understand that it’s the participants of social media that are the ones in charge and the more an organisation is seen to control the dialogue the less effective it will be. One thing is for certain, the more you get involved in a conversation at the start, the less risk you will have over time.