2011 Irish Social Media Awards - Winners Case Studies

Supported by Bord Gáis Energy

Celebrating the best of social media

Winners Case Studies

ContentS
Introduction & Foreword 2 Best Customer Care using Social Media
Best Twitter Account eircom 3 Vodafone 24

Best Facebook Page for a Business Spin 1038 8 Best Business Twitter Account
Blacknight Solutions 27
Social Media Effectiveness Award
Morning Ireland 12 Best Integrated Facebook Campaign Maltesers 29

Best Facebook Page Meteor Mobile 15 Best Use of Social Media for a Sponsorship
Campaign Bank of Ireland, Leinster Rugby 32
Most Innovative Use of Social Media
the Rumour Room 18 Acknowledgements 35

Best Online PR Campaign WeddingDates.ie 21 2011 Winners 36

2 Social Media Awards 2011 Winners Case Studies

Introduction
The first year of the Social Media Awards saw a fantastic number of quality entries,
and we wanted to share submissions from just some of the winners in the various
categories. It took us much longer than expected to get these together; but we
decided to match the quality entries by putting a quality document together to
show off these case studies.

We’d like to thank the sponsors, the judges and those who came along on our
first outing for their support. A very special thanks goes to everyone that works
to promote social media in their organisations, and who sometimes have to turn
around a whole organisation that might not see the value in social media to
start with.

Damien Mulley @damienmulley
Social Media Awards Organiser

Foreword
It is evident from this year’s entries, shortlisted entries and winners that there is a
top tier of Irish companies who have moved beyond ‘social media marketing’ and
have become truly social organisations. this permeates across everything they do
- from how they communicate internally and externally, to how they service and
market to their customers.

Content, king and all as it is, should no longer be the sole driver of strategy. Pushing
content out across social media without any communications strategy is all well and
good, but outside of it being a relatively cheap channel to ship content, it drives
little value. It is now clear that you must pay equal, if not more, attention to the
non-content driven challenges and opportunities that come with running a social
media program.

We’re looking forward to the 2012 Social Media Awards, and we are delighted to
be in a position to support these great awards for the second year running. We
are especially looking forward to seeing a few new names being in the running for
Ireland’s most auspicious social media honours.

Eoin Ó Súilleabháin @eoinos
Digital & Social Media Manager

* Stats quoted are as per awards submissions, screenshots are more recent.

Best Twitter Account eircom 3

Best
Twitter
Account S
Support, CM

OvERvIEW
@eircom Eircom is Ireland’s largest telecommunications company controlling over 60%
2,155 followers of the fixed line telephony market and 47.5% of the country’s 1.66m broadband
subscriptions. Its subsidiaries Meteor and eMobile are both significant players
w Case Study: in the mobile communications market. Gina Bowes is the group’s head of social
Gina Bowes media and is responsible for the social media presence for all three companies.
Head of Social Media
Eircom Group the purpose of the @eircom twitter account is to be first and foremost a
customer service channel.

We want to be able to listen and respond promptly and personally to our
customers and allow them to help us to understand their needs.
w
our twitter presence forms a part of the overall social media strategy within
the organisation. one of the very first steps to approaching our twitter set-up
was to be very clear in our overall social and business objectives, understand
where our customers were and what they wanted from us in this space,

Gina Bowes
Head of Social Media, Eircom Group

Like many other businesses with an online presence, eircom allow their customers
to help themselves in the first instance by providing a ‘self-help’ section on their
website with tutorials for customers, a visible frequently asked questions section,
and an online customer service forum.


4 Best Twitter Account eircom

their social media team also run a twitter account,
We are flexible in relation a Facebook account and they maintain an official
presence on Boards.ie. they are also in the process
to on-going changes to the of uploading support tutorials to Youtube.
opening hours given Twitter is
How Social Media Works at Eircom
‘always on’. Our customers and Led by Gina, the social media customer care team
their demand will ultimately consists of four full-time agents; tony, Mark, Ant &
Steve, who listen, monitor, respond and engage in
decide our opening hours. social conversations across all platforms on a daily
basis. the team manages all of the social channels with
the exception of Facebook & Youtube, although any CRM queries on these channels
are flagged up and responded to by one of the four agents.

the team monitor social media and are open for queries from 9am to 8pm Monday
to Friday, opening hours which were amended based on feedback and demand.
the team were even open to respond to queries on twitter over Christmas 2010 to
offer customers their services during off-peak hours and help parents/kids with the
wireless set up of some of Santa’s presents.

We are flexible in relation to on-going changes to the opening hours given that
twitter is ‘always on’. our customers and their demand will ultimately decide
our opening hours.

each morning they log on to all of the customer care systems and social
channels and check for mentions of the brand and other key search words.
Customers with general queries which can be managed by the team are
categorised as ‘queries’, while those needing additional technical assessment
are categorised as ‘escalations’. the interactions with customers across all
platforms are captured on an internal system manually, and reported. Agents
are set up with access to the same systems as call centre agents and even have
some additional tech support systems based on the frequently asked questions
they receive.

the social media customer care team have a number of key performance
indicators to measure their impact and ensure a consistent level of service
to all customers who interact with the brand across all media. Agents must
adhere to a response time of 20-30 minutes for each direct customer query
received within their opening hours.

the team also have a second-level support team at their disposal which is
made up of subject matter experts across the company. If a social media
agent cannot resolve the customer query at first point of contact, the team
escalate the query via email to the tech support team. We have set time frames
for resolution once a query cannot be resolved at first point of contact and
requires further investigation.

the social media team inform the customer of the time frame and log the
interaction as an ‘escalation’ on the system. this escalation is then tracked

Social Media Awards 2011 Winners Case Studies

5

and monitored by the social media team until the tech support team update
the system and give a technical response. the customer is then contacted via
email/phone call or DM – whichever is the customer’s preference.

other KPIs include a commitment to resolving customer queries at the first point
of contact, conducting a keyword search refresh every 30 minutes, driving traffic
to website content, escalating queries within a specific time frame if necessary and
increasing online interactions and community growth.

the social media team capture the reason for contact across all the social platforms
on their internal customer care tool, and feed this data back into the organisation
on a weekly basis. there is also a weekly dashboard with all of the KPIs tracked and
measured; and while the team used to email customers for feedback, they are now
planning to launch nPS (net Promoter Score) across all of their social platforms to
give a robust measurement of their customers’ satisfaction.

the team also make use of free analytical tools to help them listen and monitor
online conversations, such as Google alerts, tweetdeck, Klout, tweetstats, and
hashtags.org. they have also used several paid-for social listening tools and
services and are currently working with a third-party vendor to implement a robust
social platform to allow in depth social listening capability for all social channels,
including twitter.

eircom provides ongoing training for the team on new twitter trends, competitor
SWot analysis and through weekly feedback sessions. they have also set up ‘teach
and tweet’ sessions for wider areas of the Group so that everyone can become
familiar with twitter, the benefits of twitter for eircom, and to update them on the
twitter team’s progress. there is an internal intranet site set up for employees to
access the twitter feeds, access the customer comments, and also to educate them
on the company’s social media and twitter guidelines.

eircom also integrates its social channels into its marketing and content calendars.

Given our objective is to extend our reach and engage with our customers,
we realise that sharing information about new products works well socially,
particularly via twitter — but only when the content is relevant and timely.
We continuously look to share interesting content and tweak this on a weekly
basis to ensure we are adding value to the community.

the social media customer care team receive an internal advanced update on
launches, messages, and offline/online campaigns weekly. they are also updated on
the quarterly business objectives across Customer Service, Marketing and online;
and assess how twitter and other social channels can assist in the delivery of key
business objectives in order to maximise the benefits of the company’s social
media presence.

the team have a weekly content calendar they populate with key social messages
and themes. these are aligned with the marketing calendar and campaigns. Specific
metrics are put in place to measure the success of the activity in the twitter channel.


6 Best Twitter Account eircom

vOlUME

• With 2,155 followers currently on twitter, the @eircom social media team deal
with approximately 75 queries and escalations per week through around 320
tweets and DMs.

• Shortened links for self-help tutorials and FAQs generate an average of 250+
click-thrus to their support forum and website on a weekly basis. the same
traffic increases tenfold if the account runs a competition.

• there are 5,000 registered users of the customer service forum (eircom
connect) making 1,200 visits per week. A further 150 queries are resolved on
Boards.ie, also on a weekly basis.

• When the team recently clashed a sample list of registered active users on
their forums and customers who gave account details on other social sites
against the call centre data, they found that 70% of this sample of social
customers did not call the call centres post-social interaction.

Gina’s Advice for Social Media Newbies

Know your own business goals, vision and values.

Understand your customers – who they are, where they are and
what matters to them.

Gina believes that before a business can know what type of persona to create in the
realm of social media, they should first get to know their customers.

Talk to them, email them and send them a questionnaire – ask
as many questions as possible! Use the social media sites to
understand the landscape and get a feel for the conversations.
Ask the experts, ask people who are working in social media,
ask other businesses – it’s a sharing environment and there are
lots of clever people out there willing to give you the benefit of
their experiences.

Decide your content, marketing activity and social channels
based on the above and define your social media strategy in
collaboration with the key stakeholders of your business and
agree social media objectives.


7

Have someone co-ordinating the multiple areas/activities.
There are many stakeholders and it needs to have someone
driving the agenda pulling it all together and championing/
listening to your customer at all times.

Set up tools to measure the social media objectives (these can
be free Facebook analytics/Google alerts/Tweetstats/bit.yl or
paid-for social monitoring services).

Ensure social media policies/governance/escalation processes/
crisis management procedures are all in place.

Make sure you have the right amount of resources in place and
make sure they are customer focused and social media savvy.

lastly, in the words of Nike – Just Do It! It’s not an exact
science, it’s not going to be perfect, you don’t have control over
the outcome but you can be prepared as much as possible.

Be authentic, be personable, be social!

WINNER’S STATEMENT
the recognition, at peer and industry level, that our social media presence is
having a positive impact was a huge boost for the internal team and for the
brand. It can help internally champion the social media message to those less
engaged and it re-energises the cross-functional social media teams.

Putting the information together for submission made me evaluate and review
the operational structure of the social media activity across both eircom and
Meteor and really take stock of our processes and achievements to date. It also
gave the business an opportunity to reflect on the social objectives set, bench-
mark our progress and align our metrics.

At times we are so engrossed in our daily routines we forget to look up and
around and share our experiences both positive and negative, this can help
strengthen the social media community in Ireland.


8 Best Facebook Page for a Business Spin 1038

Best
Facebook
Page for a
Business
gn
Non-Campai

OvERvIEW
facebook.com/ Spin 103.8fm is an independent radio station based in Dublin catering for the
spin1038 capital and the surrounding areas with a target listenership of those under 30.
w
112,139 fans
We place a huge emphasis on interactivity and audience participation from
Case Study: song requests to talk show discussions.
Jamie Crawford
CEO, Spin 1038 traditionally, radio stations use text and phone calls to interact with their
audience, and until the birth of Facebook, Spin 1038 was no different. However,
Facebook now enables us to engage our audience in a new way, and to a level
that was previously not possible.
w
Jamie Crawford
CEO, Spin 1038

Spin 1038’s Facebook page is now used on a number of different levels, primarily,
Jamie says, to engage in a conversation with their audience. But, he says, the station
is increasingly using the page to generate listener-driven content for shows such as
the breakfast show and talk show.

each topic on the talk show is communicated to our Facebook fans to allow
them to get involved and give us their valued opinion. But our Facebook page
isn’t just a forum for interaction; users can also listen to Spin 1038 and watch
Spin 1038’s online tV channel Spin tV.


9

How Social Media Works at Spin 1038
Within our social network
Social media is a vital component of our
marketing strategy, so much so that in 2010 we have our own community
we developed a new role within the company of staff working on our
of Social Media editor
page, which we feel reflects
this function is cross-departmental and the the nature and ethos of
Social Media editor liaises daily with the
marketing, programming and sales departments social networking
within Spin 1038. He also patrols all of the
Facebook activity from our fans ensuring there are
no extreme comments, bullying or spam from other
brands being posted on our page.

However, the Social Media editor is not the only person within Spin 1038 who
updates their Facebook Page. Spin have designated over 20 administrators for the
page ranging from the marketing department, to presenters, to the Ceo.

Within our social network we have our own community of staff working on our
page, which we feel reflects the nature and ethos of social networking. each
presenter has their own style, plays their own music and therefore it is critical
that their identity and personality is reflected on the Facebook page during
their shows, where they use it to get people to request songs and get people
to read their blogs on our website or participate in on-air competitions,

they do not do this without guidelines however. Spin 1038 has developed a strict
Social Media Policy which is issued to all users and monitored closely by the Social
Media editor, Webmaster and Programming Director.

We take care to avoid annoying our users and we do not allow more than one
post per hour, unless there is breaking news which we feel our users want to
hear about. We also have banned straight marketing messages. every single
post on Spin 1038 is designed to encourage participation, feedback and
engagement. Should any member of staff post a straight marketing message
on the wall, the Social Media editor will remove the post immediately,

Weekly fan targets are set by the management team and the page is currently
exceeding approximately 1,250 new fans per week. Management have a monthly
Facebook strategy meeting with the Social Media editor, marketing department
and programming department to develop plans to hit these targets each month.
the Spin 1038 Facebook page is also promoted on Spin 1038 via 30-second promos
and live mentions. Where relevant, all marketing material (ranging from print ads to
merchandise) carries the Spin 1038 Facebook page address.


10 Best Facebook Page for a Business Spin 1038

Unique Content

We also use our Facebook page to inform, entertain and reward our loyal fans.
Recently a pair of tickets for Bruno Mars received over 2000 comments in
two hours. After two minutes, the post received over 120 comments, that’s
one comment per second which demonstrates an extremely active and
responsive community.

Spin 1038 have also teamed up with Universal Pictures to provide their fans
with exclusive content, such as the online premier for the trailer of Bridesmaids.
Rewarding their fans with such current content is also beneficial to Universal, which
uses the community Spin 1038 has built as a forum for feedback on Universal
movies prior to release.

Jamie’s Advice to Social Media Newbies

Whether through twitter or Facebook (or a combination of both) social media
can be an exciting way to engage with your customer and create positive
brand awareness. It is important however to get this right as using social media
badly can turn people off very quickly.

Here are some tips on how Spin 1038 have used Facebook effectively:

Keep it simple. Nobody likes to see long-worded updates pop
up on their wall, and the eye generally skims over paragraphs.
Try to keep an update down to one or two snappy sentences.
Get your point across in bite-sized form and the response rate
will increase.

Respond and listen to your followers. Keep an eye on what
people are saying to and about your company. Try to respond to
any queries posted on your wall and keep the dialogue open.

Do what you do well. Focus on what you would like to achieve
with social media and have a clear idea of what your company
is ‘about’. We focus on entertainment stories and competitions,
our Facebook followers know what to expect from us, and we
deliver on that expectation.


11

Be a friend rather than a faceless brand. Don’t push your brand
or product too much — social media users will see through
a hard-sell tactic straight away. Update with something that
has interested you today or kick-off a discussion as you would
with friends. We often post something as simple as ‘what do
you prefer, baked beans or mushy peas?’ which starts a chat
amongst our followers and brings Spin 1038 into the centre of
a fun chat online. This vibe of a casual friend creates a positive
feeling toward the brand.

Competitions are a great way to reward your followers. Some
companies use competitions as a blatant means to increase
their followers — ‘get five friends to follow us and you could be
in a draw’ etc. We feel it is better to reward the followers we
have with great prizes and the good word about the brand will
naturally spread.


12 Social Media Effectiveness Morning Ireland

Social
@morning_ireland
Media
Effective-
25,000 followers

w
ness
facebook.com/
morningireland
w
427 fans

w
w

Case Study: OvERvIEW
lisa Pereira Morning Ireland is Ireland’s most popular current affairs radio programme with
Studio & Web an average daily listenership of 450,000. The show is one of Ireland’s longest
Producer running too; having been on air for over 27 years.
Morning Ireland
Appointed two years ago, Lisa Pereira, Morning Ireland’s studio and web producer,
has overseen the development and delivery of the show’s social media and online
presence. Lisa has worked closely with RtÉ’s technical and publishing departments
to provide content for new platforms such as podcasting the show, allowing listeners
to watch the studio via live webcam and interact with the show via social media. the
programme also engages listeners through a weekly news quiz.

Before going go on air at 7am each day, Lisa publishes the news bulletin on their
website (rte.ie/morningireland), then tweets the link and posts it on Facebook.
She does the same with the link to the studio webcam. During the course of the
programme, Lisa says she tweets as much as possible, although admits;


13

this is subject to how busy we are.
We wanted to hear what our
Lisa Pereira
Studio & Web Producer
listeners had to say; we wanted
Morning Ireland their views, their feedback, and
After the programme, Lisa will tweet links to
their input into stories
interviews that were on the programme, and
posts them on the show’s Facebook page.

Morning Ireland knew that it needed to adapt to the new media landscape.
Listeners are no longer passive recipients of news and current affairs,
and they no longer listen in the traditional way (at home or in the car, via
analogue radio).

our aim was to bring the programme to people in whichever way they chose to
listen, and at whatever time. We also wanted to hear what they had to say; we
wanted their views, their feedback, and their input into stories which we were
trying to cover.

Impact

our campaign has been more effective than we could have imagined. not only
have we established a dialogue with our listeners which we never had before
(almost 20,000 followers on twitter, hundreds of letters to the Letters to the
editor page, several pages of blogs, photo galleries including pictures taken
by our listeners, some 80,000 podcasts per month, a news quiz which gets
hundreds of respondents every week) but we have also tapped into a vast
source of contacts and information which were not available to us before.

With the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, we were able, via twitter, to
contact people, including Irish people, very quickly. Social media has made
it much easier for us to find people around the world who can give us
information. nowadays when we Google a person, more often than not, their
entry will come up first on Facebook, twitter or LinkedIn.

Lisa says it’s difficult to measure the effect of social media on the programme’s
listenership figures. the latest JnLR figures have the show at a listenership of
450,000, an increase of 23,000 on the previous figure. But Lisa says it’s hard to
know what caused this.

It has been crucial, and very instructive, for us to be able to measure precise
responses to our programme. We can now count exactly how many times
a particular interview was streamed, or how many times our webcam was
viewed, or how many podcasts were downloaded.

We know, for example, that during last winter’s snow disruption, the number
of hits to our website went up dramatically when we published links to the


14 Social Media Effectiveness Morning Ireland

different transport operators (Bus eireann, Dublin Bus, Luas, Iarnrod eireann
etc.). these measurements guide us on what’s important to our listeners, and
help us design the ways in which we deliver our information in a way which
suits listeners best.

lisa’s Advice to Social Media Newbies

I’d advise people to get to know how Twitter and Facebook
work before using them for your company.

Set up a personal account and experiment with how the
interaction works. It’s better to make a mistake as an individual
than as a company. The other piece of advice I’d give is, don’t
put anything online that you wouldn’t be happy to see on the
front page of a newspaper.


Best Facebook Meteor 15

Best
Facebook
Page

OvERvIEW
facebook.com/ Meteor is one of Ireland’s main mobile telecommunications providers and is part
meteor of the Eircom group. Caitriona O’Connell is a member of the marketing team at
w
66,909 fans Meteor and manages the Facebook page on behalf of the company.

Case Study: the purpose of Meteor’s Facebook
Caitriona O’Connell CAMPAIGN STATS
page is to communicate with
Marketing Team (May 2011)
our customers in a space where
Meteor Mobile they are active and engage with
• new Likes per month 4,391
them by providing fun, interesting
content which is relevant to them. • Monthly unique
w
page views 13,628
We aim to bring the Meteor brand
• Monthly active users 33,101
to life online and encourage and
generate genuine brand advocates. • Monthly Likes & Comments 3,221

Caitriona O’Connell
Marketing Team, Meteor Mobile

the Meteor Facebook page is managed and run internally by one full-time resource
solely focused on the brand’s Facebook page and other social media channels.
Caitriona believes managing the Meteor Facebook page internally, especially by
someone inherently involved in social media, allows for real time interaction with
fans; as well as the ability to be slightly more edgy and much less ‘corporate’.


16 Best Facebook Meteor

Caitriona ensures that comments are quickly
At Christmas we gave responded to and says there is regular ‘friendly banter’
between the Meteor Facebook team and their fans.
away ‘Xmas pressies’ to our
Facebook fans. They could
Driving Traffic and Sales
choose between a ¤10 Meteor’s Facebook page now forms a part of any
voucher off a phone or mobile integrated marketing campaign run by the company.
Caitriona liaises with a digital agency to create bespoke
broadband. We ran this artwork and media for Facebook competitions and
through an application on our games which support the relevant campaigns such as
the latest BlackBerry launch.
Facebook page
We work closely with our product marketing and
handset teams to ensure we capture any important Meteor product and
service news, and new handset releases, in our schedule. We also try to keep
our content relevant. We monitor pop culture trends, Irish news, events, etc.
and post updates pertinent to those.

to drive awareness of our Facebook page we incorporate links to our page
on all online touch points with customers — on our customer forums (forums.
meteor.ie), our Goodie Bag website (meteorgoodiebag.ie), e-zines and online
store order confirmation emails.

We recently launched our ‘Meteor Mighty top Up Deals’ campaign which
included PR activity and on street activity. We used our Facebook page to
announce to fans the location and times at which the team would be visiting
our retail stores and giving away free call credit. this helped to drive foot fall
to stores and sign up to our new pre pay offers.

At Christmas we gave away ‘Xmas pressies’ to our Facebook fans. they could
choose between a ¤10 voucher off a phone or mobile broadband. We ran this
through an application on our Facebook page. Fans submitted their name and
email address and were then sent a promotional code which they could use
in store or online to redeem against the cost of a phone or mobile broadband
device. this helped to drive sales in the busy Christmas period, as fans used
the vouchers to purchase gifts for friends and family.

Caitriona regularly uses Facebook ads to drive ‘Likes’ to the Meteor page as well as
create awareness of current marketing campaigns.

When launching our page, we found Facebook Ads were a great way of
creating awareness of our page. During months where we run Facebook Ads
we see a spike in the number of ‘Likes’ we receive. We have seen good results
from Facebook Ads with a low CPC in comparison to other online advertising.
We don’t focus solely on the number of ‘Likes’ as we don’t feel the actual
numbers are as important as an active and engaged fan, but we monitor our
active users and aim to keep a high percentage of our fan base.


17

Caitriona also says she occasionally uses the bit.ly service to track clicks on links,
mainly those pointing to the Meteor online store.

We also use Google Analytics to analyse traffic sources coming to meteor.ie
from Facebook. Facebook Insights also tells us a lot about views of our page.

Caitriona’s Advice to Social Media Newbies

Put the resources behind it – people and budget.

If you are going to set up a presence on Facebook or Twitter, it
needs to be monitored daily and updated regularly.

Prepare for and be willing to accept positive and negative
feedback from customers and put the processes in place to
resolve any customer queries or complaints quickly.

Use social media for research – ask customers what they think,
what they like and don’t like, but don’t just do it for the sake of
it, be prepared to act on their responses.

We gained awareness of our page and of our effort in the social media space
through the Social Media Awards. It boosted the morale of staff working in the
area and allowed those who attended the awards to meet others in the industry.

We also got the chance to see what other brands are up to through the social
media awards website and we learned that while we have made good inroads
into the social space, there is more that can, and will, be done. A lot done, more
to do, as they say!


18 Most Innovative use of Social Media the Rumour Room

Most
Innovative
use of
Social
Media

OvERvIEW
@therumourroom** Through social media, RTE’s The Rumour Room aimed to connect with its young
2,479 followers audience on their level. It offered a live and interactive platform for them to
contribute their opinions on issues and topics that related to them while the show
w facebook.com/ was both on and off air. The show aired three times a week from October 2010
The-Rumour-Room** until April 2011.
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4,718 fans
the team say they always tried to let the teenagers watching feel they were as much
Case Study: a part of the show as the presenters; and for them to feel the presenters Sinead,
Stephen Byrne Stephen, Katie and Jarlath were their friends.
TV Presenter
The Rumour Room the objective was always to allow young people to voice their opinions
w and give them control from the comfort of their couch through creating
a 360-degree media experience. Viewers knew to have their twitter and
w Facebook accounts open either on their lap with a laptop or in the palm of
their hand with their phone when they were watching.

Stephen Byrne
TV Presenter, The Rumour Room

Stephen believes that what made the Rumour Room innovative was a constant
connection with its audience. A topic was introduced at the top of the show and
it would be discussed and concluded by the end. Katie Van Buren, one of the
presenters, would let viewers know the results of the polls conducted on twitter
through twitpoll.com which were run throughout the show.
** Please note: These profiles
are no longer active


19

Stephen was always on his iPad delivering comments,
opinions and ideas from the viewers through twitter All throughout the week,
and Facebook.
morning, day and evening, the
It was exciting because viewers would, at times, presenters stayed present
change the direction of the entire show, A guest
would also be present, allowing the viewers at
online discussing various
home to have a conversation with them, asking relevant teenage topics so
questions and putting them on the spot with
information that couldn’t be rehearsed.
that the viewers really felt they
were just like a friend
A key thing for Stephen and the team was the show
didn’t end when the studio lights dimmed.

All throughout the week, morning, day and evening, the presenters stayed
present online discussing various relevant teenage topics so that the viewers
really did feel that they were just like a friend they could text and talk to with the
click of a keyboard.

even Stephen’s involvement in the show was the product of his own innovation with
social media. He began his career producing Youtube videos with a webcam in
his bedroom as a teenager, going on to reach 22,000 twitter followers, five million
Youtube views and 77,000 subscribers to his content.

Impact

the social media presence definitely had an impact on viewing figures, both
online and on television. It immediately turned what was a national Irish show
into an international one with both the live streams and Rte catch-up attracting
daily audiences in the UK, Sweden, the netherlands and the United States.

Stephen says 15% of the people who participated in conversation with the presenters
on twitter and Facebook during the show were from outside of Ireland.

the results were phenomenal, and the response from teenagers watching the
show was a real testament to how important social media is in their lives today,

on twitter, the show twice reached the top ten Irish trending topics; beating out the
general election itself to top spot the week of polling. It even once broke into the
worldwide top 10 back in February 2011. the week which saw the highest number of
interactions had over 3,000 @replies received, with 1,700 of them coming in the space
of a 30 minutes live show.

on Facebook, things were just as impressive; with the show receiving over 13,300 post
responses since January 2011 alone and over 650,000 post views on the page since
January 2011. the page now stands at just over 4,700 likes. Content produced in the
show also went viral through mediums such as Youtube. the music video Sk8r Gurl
reached 46,000 views and Super emo Disco Party 20,000 views.


20 Most Innovative use of Social Media the Rumour Room

Stephen’s Advice to Social Media Newbies

First off you need to know your audience and where they are
online. What do they use? How can you make social interaction
with your brand less of a chore for them to be involved with?
You should always try to make your demographic feel like
they’ll miss out on something if they don’t investigate what it is
you’re doing.

What worked for The Rumour Room was the fact that the
audience could not only participate in the show from their
Twitter feed, but they were interacting directly with the
presenters void of any filtering system or prior moderation by
a production team. It opened up a conversation through the
television set, from their phone or computer straight to the
studio iPad.

Any brand should definitely look at making the person or group
tweeting for them familiar to their audience. Why would I want
to just read something a brand says? You have to know that
there is a person there and know what it is they know and do.
If its multiple people, then create a personality and character
that can be maintained by them all. It’s the difference between
talking to a friend and talking to a robot.

We definitely entered the awards to see how our attempts in social media
compared to those across Ireland. We would consider ourselves to be well
informed on social media trends and the process it takes to build a well-
structured campaign and maintain it.

one of the great things about social media is that everyone has a different
experience of it. For some people it can create new worlds that bridge different
cultures and societies, while for others it just takes the form of a free text
message service.


Best Online PR Campaign WeddingDates.ie 21

Best
@weddingdates
1,285 followers Online
PR
Campaign
w facebook.com/
weddingdates
w
1,880 fans

youtube.com/
weddingdates
13,392 views

w
w


22 Best Online PR Campaign WeddingDates.ie

OvERvIEW
Case Study: WeddingDates.ie is a directory website which helps Irish couples select a venue
Ciara Crossan for their wedding celebrations. Run by MD, Ciara Crossan, the website won Best
Managing Director Online PR Campaign at the Social Media Awards in 2011 for their participation in
WeddingDates.ie the World Wife-Carrying Championships in July 2010.

As part of the campaign the
CAMPAIGN STATS
WeddingDates.ie team travelled
(1st June 2010 - 31st July 2010)
across europe in a camper van and
documented the whole journey and the
• Website traffic 2,165 Page views
event itself over an eight-day period
to ‘Wife Carrying’
by filming, editing and uploading daily
section of blog
videos to their Youtube channel, and
by updating Facebook and twitter and • Facebook Likes Increased by 80
interacting with followers at home in
• Facebook Page views 3,549
Ireland. the trip involved two full-time
staff members and took two weeks’
travel time.

Ciara and her team raised ¤5000 in sponsorship from the Carlton Hotel Group
who ran a special offer on the back of the campaign, which helped to increase
the exposure of the campaign for WeddingDates.ie by teaming up with a
related business.

the campaign was sponsored by a number of other companies who also highlighted
the campaign on their social media channels including Celtic Campervans, Fastnet
Line, Maxroam, tom Murphy Menswear, Hairy Baby and Red Fly Marketing.

In all, the team created eight videos which can all
We became known as a be found on the WeddingDates.ie Youtube channel
(youtube.com/weddingdates) or on their dedicated
company that embraces quirky, blog (weddingdates.ie/wifecarrying). they also kept
fun events and this has enabled people at home up to date with progress by tweeting
and updating their Facebook page as well as posting
us to relate to our customers, photos from the trip.
venues and suppliers
the campaign received a large amount of attention
back home over its duration. Much of this traffic
Ciara puts down to a high volume of mentions and retweets on twitter during the
travelling period including mentions by two users with high follower counts:
@RickoShea and @CarltonHotels.

the campaign was a huge success. the story was picked up by Irish examiner
journalist eoin english (@eoinBearla), and we did ten radio interviews (local
and national) as a result including 2FM, today FM, newstalk, 4FM, Red FM.

We also became known as a company that embraces quirky, fun events and
this has enabled us to relate to our customers, venues and suppliers who want


23

to reach out to quirky brides and do unusual weddings. We are seen in the
industry as an alternative to some of the more traditional wedding sites.

Ciara Crossan
Managing Director, WeddingDates.ie

Ciara says the campaign objective was to increase the profile of the business rather
than acting as a direct sales tool, pointing to the exposure in the national and
local press.

We make sales by signing up hotels to the website. there were no additional
sales that were directly attributed to this campaign alone, but the goodwill and
positive feeling as a result of the campaign were high.

Ciara’s Advice to Social Media Newbies

Make it engaging — try to think of things that have not been
done before for large scale campaigns. Try things in a small
way first to test them and then invest if the response to the test
is good.


24 Customer Care using Social Media Vodafone

w Customer
linkedin.com/
vodafone-ireland Care using
1,228 connections Social
facebook.com/ Media
vodafoneireland
w
68,443 fans
w
@vodafoneireland
13,473 followers

w

w

w


25

OvERvIEW
As one of Ireland’s largest mobile communications companies, it’s not surprising Case Study:
vodafone’s Joanne Jenkinson, one of the company’s social media executives, Joanne Jenkinson
believes social media has an important role to play in how the company interacts Social Media
with its customers. Executive
Vodafone Ireland
the objectives of customer care through social media is to interact with
customers on a more in-depth level and provide them with a comprehensive
level of service. Using social media as an in depth customer care tool has
shown to be extremely useful, greatly enhancing a customer’s ability to easily
contact us about any issue they may be having and have it dealt with in a
timely manner; while also informing new and existing customers of new offers,
promotions and news related to Vodafone services.

Joanne Jenkinson
Social Media Executive Vodafone Ireland

Using social media as a channel to resolve customer queries about their products
and services is not by any means a new phenomenon, but what makes Vodafone’s
approach so successful? Vodafone currently deals with
around 360 customer queries via their Facebook page
with another 500 (approximately) via their twitter Using social media as an in-
account every month.
depth customer care tool has
Both networks are used to interact with and point shown to be extremely useful,
customers to support forums where frequently asked
questions can be browsed and searched by the
greatly enhancing a customer’s
customer themselves. However, when issues cannot ability to easily contact us
easily be dealt with publicly and require more in depth
levels of customer care, these queries are moved to
about any issue they may
either direct messages, private messages or email. be having
once a comment or query is posted on the
Facebook wall, twitter feed or Boards.ie forum, the social media team will
check the issue and respond to the customer in a timely manner.

Sometimes we need to refer customers to email addresses which will allow for
each query to be dealt with personally and privately given the often sensitive
nature of details. If an issue is more simply responded to, it is sometimes
referred to tech support for further assistance, and a comment assisting or
answering a query is posted or tweeted.

Going forward, Joanne says Vodafone are planning to measure the impact their
social media presence has on the volume of calls they receive to their helpdesk.

We’re currently in the process of implementing a new CRM system that will
allow us to directly link post views on our social media channels and call
prevention to the helpdesk so we’ll have hard metrics soon.


26 Customer Care using Social Media Vodafone

Joanne’s Advice to Social Media Newbies
So what advice does Joanne have for those starting out on the social media path?

Before setting out, a company needs to define clear objectives
and decide what they want to achieve through social media —
be it to improve customer care, raise brand awareness and
loyalty or deliver on sales targets. This will help a company
manage expectations and ensure that it is measuring its activity
to meet its overall objectives.

They shouldn’t look at social media as a broadcasting tool but
rather approach each interaction and initiative on a case by
case basis.


Best Business Twitter Account Blacknight 27

Best
Business
Twitter
Account keting
Sales & Mar

OvERvIEW
Blacknight is an Irish company specialising in web hosting and co-location and @blacknight
has over 120,000 domains hosted on their servers. Run by MD Michele Neylon, 7148 followers
the company have used Twitter for both sales and marketing and customer
care purposes. w Case Study:
Michele Neylon
We don’t track the number of interactions on a weekly basis as this isn’t a Managing Director
useful metric for what we are doing. our twitter account is a core part of our Blacknight Solutions
customer service and sales strategy. We use it to assist clients with queries,
deal with customer service issues, technical service updates as well as pushing
out promotions and special offers and company news.

Michele Neylon w
Managing Director, Blacknight Solutions

Michele estimates he and his team tweet on average 24 times per day.

there’s a mixture of announcements and replies to customer queries.

the account is recommended by twitter as
one of the ‘must-follow’ accounts for Ireland. Either do social media
properly, or don’t do it at all
When asked about sales conversions from tweets,
Michele says measuring such statistics is not an
exact science for his team.


28 Best Business Twitter Account Blacknight

It’s hard to track direct increases, but we have promoted twitter-specific
promotions that have converted directly into sales. We promote several sites
via social media channels and we segment them, for example; our discount
codes and promotions are all on domainoffers.me.

Looking at our account, we appear to be getting a couple of thousand referrals
per month from twitter, but the exact percentage of sales that convert is hard
to say, as a coupon code or other offer is only traceable as part of the overall
campaign and not a specific source.

Michele’s Advice to Social Media Newbies

Either do it properly or don’t do it at all. What I mean by that is
that social media is all about engagement and relationships. You
can’t expect it to be an ‘overnight success’ so you need to be
ready and willing to stick with it over a long period of time, as it
will eventually (if done correctly) reward you.

our social media presence is a team effort and getting recognition for it is
an achievement that we as a company are extremely proud of. We are not a
marketing company, so entering the awards forced me to focus on what we were
actually tracking and has probably made me think more about what we could
and should do to track it better in the future.

However, having said that, I don’t think that social media, for us at least, is purely
a sales channel. It’s an integral part of our customer service and communications
and marketing.

Seeing so many different organisations at the awards ceremony was fascinating
and exciting. When you go to ‘industry’ events, there’s an awful tendency
to see the same people time and again, while with the Social Media Awards
there was a much wider and more diverse cross-section of people, businesses
and organisations.


Best Integrated Facebook Campaign Mars Ireland 29

Best
Integrated
Facebook
Campaign
Ads
Page, App &

OvERvIEW
This was Mars Ireland’s first foray into social media, and as such the campaign facebook.com/
budget was very small. Mars saw the campaign as a pilot for their social media maltesersireland
w
engagement. Dena and her team went about developing a campaign in which 3,181 fans
Maltesers could position itself as the brand which brings a little light-heartedness
to nights in. Case Study:
Dena Walker
our brief was to create a reason for consumers to interact with the brand and Irish International
begin to develop a community of Maltesers advocates that we would build an
engagement programme around.

After Christmas, as the new Year starts, our target audience (women aged
w
18–34) are limited in their consumption of confectionery by two things: they’ve
just started to diet as part of their new Year’s resolutions, and they’re strapped
for cash after the indulgences of the festive season. As a result, they’re staying
in at weekends, more than they normally would and it gets a bit boring.

Dena Walker
Irish International

Dena and her team went about developing a campaign in which Maltesers could
position itself as the brand which brings a little light-heartedness to nights in.

Consumers within our target understand Maltesers to be the most diet-friendly
option when it comes to sneaking in a little chocolate indulgence. From mid-


30 Best Integrated Facebook Campaign Mars Ireland

January 2010, Mars Ireland ran a price promotion on
Our page was to be the all confectionery products within their range (M&Ms,
Maltesers, Mars, Galaxy & twix).
hub of all campaign activity,
with the sole intention of We decided to encourage our consumers to ‘Celebrate
the Great Indoors’, because after all, when it’s
generating engagement cold outside, there’s not much that’s better than
and brand advocacy putting your feet up and enjoying company, craic
and chocolate,

Given the 9-week duration of the campaign and the target audience that we
were seeking to engage with, Facebook was felt to be the best platform for
activity. our page was to be the hub of all campaign activity, with the sole
intention of generating engagement and brand advocacy, and obviously
encouraging sales where possible,

Among the tools used to generate engagement was an
‘excuse Generator’ application.

the excuse generator was a playful tool that our audience could use to
generate an excuse for them to stay in, rather than go out. the application
randomised a selection of excuses and allowed the user to publish their wacky
excuse to their wall (and thus share within the news feeds of their networks).

In addition to this, we also ran a competition where users were able to upload
pictures of themselves ‘celebrating the great indoors’ via our application, to
enter a weekly prize draw to win a ‘Great Indoors Prize Pack’ featuring sharing
pouches, fleece blankets, slipper socks and a DVD box set or a Rock Band
starter kit.

the day-to-day management of the page involved: moderation of user-generated-
content within the application, moderation of posts to the main page wall, selecting
weekly winners for the competition, and posting scheduled daily updates about fun
indoor activities.

All of the engagement initiatives were executed in the hope of sparking
conversations and encouraging interaction with the page.

Dena and her team created a content plan that detailed the volume of updates from
the brand, so they could strike a balance between engaging and overkill.

We scheduled posts based around current news and pop culture stories, to
ensure that the content of the page was always current, and always light-
hearted, in keeping with the Maltesers brand.

Campaign objectives were established before we went live, which detailed the
number of ‘Likes’ we aimed to achieve as well as the level of interactions and
competition uploads that we believed would determine success.


31

engagement levels throughout the 9-week campaign remained relatively consistent
according to Dena with ‘new page likes’ averaging approximately 50 per day, although
Dena says this was heavily skewed towards the start of the campaign when a low-
volume ASU campaign was also running.

overall Mars Ireland spent around ¤4,000 on the campaign, most of which was limited
to an ASU budget which comprised of two one-week bursts in Weeks one and three
of the campaign. there was also some low-level PR in addition, with a small group of
influential bloggers who were offered ‘Great Indoors Packs’ to give away on their blogs.


32 Best Use of Social Media for a Sponsorship Campaign Bank of Ireland, Leinster Rugby

Best Use
@bluemagicrugby of Social
686 followers
Media for a
w
w Sponsorship
Campaign
bluemagic.ie
32,634 views

w
w

OvERvIEW
Case Study: Bank of Ireland has sponsored the leinster Rugby club since the 2007/8 season
Dena Walker when they first launched ‘Blue Magic’. According to Dena at Irish International the
Irish International term ‘Blue Magic’ stands for the flashes of brilliance that are unique to leinster
Rugby, and which set them apart from the opposition.

Very quickly the phrase ‘Blue
Magic’ became part of the CAMPAIGN STATS
Leinster Rugby vernacular, with
the team and media adopting it. • Supporter Uploads
the adoption of ‘Blue Magic’ by to Website 800+
the Leinster Rugby team and fans • iPhone App Downloads 3,028
was seen as very successful, but
it was felt by the bank that they • Blue Magic
could do more to leverage their Moment Views 30,000+


33

sponsorship to Leinster fans across the province,
rather than just at the matches. We set out to create a site
our brief was to develop an online presence
that was full of rich, engaging
and programme of engagement that would content that would speak to
enable Bank of Ireland to develop a community
of Leinster fans beyond matches, and ultimately
the hearts of Leinster fans
increase consideration of the bank from within across the province
the community of fans.

Dena Walker
Irish International

Before developing the website, Dena and her team created some user personas, so
they could fully understand the habits, needs and requirements of various types of
rugby fan. this enabled them to develop content that would really excite and inspire
fans to engage with the site.

Dena and her team created several areas within the site, including:

Blue Magic Moments
An area in the site where Leinster players reviewed specific Blue Magic Moments, to
give fans an insight into how they did what they did and what was going through
their heads at the time; thus bringing them closer to the action.

Your Blue Magic
An area where fans can upload their own blue magic examples whether as a fan at a
match, or playing rugby within the province of Leinster.

The locker Room
A private area within the website dedicated to bank customers. they are given a log
in code to access the area, where they can enter exclusive competitions and gain
access to exclusive content.

We also created an iPhone application based around the popular top trumps
game, called Leinster Legends, which was available for free download from the
itunes store.

the game saw past and present Leinster players pitted against each other. Game
players were able to play against the computer as well as their friends.

Dena and her team also created an engagement piece called Wear the Blue Jersey,
where site visitors could upload their photo to appear in a video as Leinster’s newest
signing. throughout the site, social media integration was key, with Facebook
Connect being used to enable users to share content that they liked and to spread
the word across their own networks.

to date the campaign’s growth has been purely organic, as Bank of Ireland have not
yet invested in any above-the-line media, limiting promotion to featuring the URL on


34 Best Use of Social Media for a Sponsorship Campaign Bank of Ireland, Leinster Rugby

general club sponsorship communications.

the website and iPhone app were promoted through a soft launch on Leinster
Rugby’s Facebook page, with some voluntary support from key online bloggers.

We set out to create a site that was full of rich, engaging content that would
speak to the hearts of Leinster fans across the province and compel them
to visit the site, becoming part of a community with the sole purpose of
celebrating not only Leinster Rugby Club, but also the fans and the wider,
rugby playing community across the province.

Looking at the engagement statistics, it looks like Dena and her team at Irish
International did just that.


35

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Michelle McCormick @shellymc
and Ian Power @powerian for compiling these case studies.


36

2011 Winners

Facebook Page for a Business Integrated Facebook Campaign Blog of a Business
Spin 1038 (Page, App and Ads) Sponsored by Frontline LED
facebook.com/spin1038 Maltesers Ireland Curious Wines
facebook.com/maltesersireland curiouswines.ie/blog

Facebook Page for
a Non-Profit Organisation Best Business Twitter Account – video/video Campaign
Dublin Zoo Marketing and Sales (non broadcast)
facebook.com/dublinzoo Blacknight Sponsored by Publicis QMP
@Blacknight Laughing Kookaburra
Goldnomics

Facebook Page for a Business
(Owner Managed) Best Twitter Account
Meteor Mobile Support, CRM Online PR Campaign
facebook.com/meteor eircom Sponsored by ESOF 2012, Dublin
@eircom City of Science
Wedding Dates


37

Use of Social Media Best Use of Social Media For a Integrated Social Media Campaign
by State Body/Org Sponsorship Campaign Sponsored by GrabOne.ie
Sponsored by pTools Bank of Ireland Leinster Blue Magic Meteor
Defence Forces

Innovative Use of Social Media Agency for use of Social Media
Best Mobile App Sponsored by Arekibo Sponsored by Newsletter.ie
oxegen 2010 Rte’s the Rumour Room Irish International

Customer Care using Social Media Social Media Effectiveness – Grand Prix
(Integrated) conversions, metrics etc. Sponsored by Bord Gáis Energy
Sponsored by DoneDeal Sponsored by Kantar Media Meteor Mobile
Vodafone Ireland Morning Ireland, Rte


SUPPORTED BY

Bord Gáis energy is proud to support the Social Media Awards.
Since our early foray in to the social media arena back in 2009,
w
as part of the Big Switch campaign, we’ve seen a marked
increase in the percentage (now at 59%) of our customer base
who now say they use social networks on a regular basis. Bord
w
Gáis energy is committed to meet, and exceed where possible,
the needs of this ever growing group through innovative
and practical use of social media to connect with, serve and
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understand our customers.

w bordgaisenergy.ie

facebook.com/BordGaisEnergy

w @BordGaisEnergy

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socialmediaawards.com

The 2012 Irish Social Media Awards
will take place in the Mansion House
in Dublin on Thursday 17th May.

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@socmediaawards (#sockies)

facebook.com/SocialMediaAwards

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2011 Irish Social Media Awards - Winners Case Studies

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