Social Networks Conference , Bucharest ( Romania), 7th July 2001
“If Facebook would be a country, it would be the 3rd country in the world as inhabitants number” – under this sign started the discussions and the presentation at the Social Network Conference. In the Romanian business environment, people started also to acknowledge that online and social media are not anymore a game or something just nice to have.
The moderator of the event, Cristian Manafu, is an example that passion can be mixed with business and that online means in fact to Love what to do, not just to Like. Cristian is coordinating a lot of the Evensys projects, an agency specialized in organizing events for marketing specialists and online people.
The program of the conference was balanced and gave the opportunity to pass through all the stages needed to understand Facebook, the basics of the usage of social media and also to evaluate some cases presented by the speakers. The next lines will present shortly the contribution of each speaker of this conference.
The role of Facebook in your company – Guy Kedar, Social Media and Emerging Platforms manager, MEC EMEA
Guy came with a lot of relevant figures in order to show the dimensions of the online world . Facebook would be the 3rd country in the world, Wikipedia printed mean 2.25 million of pages and he also presented some figures at regions level. Romania is still on the beginning, but is developing day after day, in this moment they are 63.280 blogs in Romania, we are on the bottom of the statistics, but it is good.
“Facebook is about sharing experience, Internet is about sharing information” this sentence really turned on the light for all participants and also on other one “Brands don’t look for Like, but for Love”.
And in the end why is so important to be on Facebook? It is simple because you, as brand, have to be present where people are present, if so much people are there, on Facebook, you should go there and meet them.
Guy gave some great examples of campaigns done on Facebook by big brands as Ikea, Starbucks, P&G and ASB ( a virtual bank). Ikea was giving incentive just for tagging photos with furniture, with Starbucks you can gave gifts card directly on Facebook, P&G started to open shops on Facebook and ASB is offering great banking services directly on Facebook.
More details and useful links :
Social Networks in Romania 2011, study – Daniel Enescu, Managing Director, Daedalus Group
Daniel helped the audience with some fresh figures about social networks in Romania. The survey was done in June 2011, on 506 respondents, with auto-fill questionary form on an Internet platform . Age of the respondents 15-55 years and the sample was nationally representative. The answers were prompted.
This survey helped to build a top of brands present in online, is sort of online awareness top:
1. Avon;
2. Coca Cola;
3. BCR;
4. Orange;
5. Cosmote;
6. ING;
7. Vodafone;
8. BRD;
9. Nokia;
10. Doncafe;
11. Blue Air;
12. McDonald s;
13. Nivea
14. Danone.
Daniel focused on the brands who were not just in the top of awareness, but who also succeeded to improve the opinion about them through online and these brands are Coca Cola, Doncafe and Nivea. They had these great results because of their campaigns mainly on Facebook who involved in good way the fans. Once again it was clear that you have to generate great content in order to achieve results on social media.
The second part of the survey will be presented in September, during another Evensys event and moderated by Cristian Manafu, Webstock.
More details and useful links:
Best practices and metrics to successfully build your Facebook presence – Jiri Voves, Director, Social Bakers
Socialbakers is one of the 15 Facebook preferred consultants in Europe and they develop a lot of analysis on Facebook who can help you to act and react when you have a campaign on Facebook.
It is not enough to develop things on Facebook, it is necessary to have solid measurement and clear figures about your performance. It like in offline where you have to handle some KPI-s and to use them for decision process.
The KPI-s that Jiri recommended were around 4 topics:
- Interactions
- Engagement
- Wall activity
- Response rate
Jiri also informed us that in Romania they are 3.4 millions of Facebook users .
On Facebook it is important to identify your key influencers and make use of it, in the end they are your best marketing tools.
Which I appreciated to Jiri’s presentation was the fact that all the times we have to use the figures, the metrics, to follow them live and to react when needed. Facebook is not a game and can be a very profitable business if you pay attention to it and if you analyze attentively what you communicate on Facebook.
More details and useful links:
Online reputation management showcase – Catalin Tenita, Managing Partner, TreeWorks
First of all I want to point out that Catalin is probably the most “online” person that you can find in Romania or the most competent in online analyze. I like his honesty and also the fact that he recognize that you can build some analysis and you can discover at the end that the pattern was not correct and you have to work again. This is a healthy attitude especially in an environment where is hard to evaluate and where all indicators are very dynamic.
Catalin was creating for the Romanian online environment a measurement very efficient under the name “Zelist Monitor”. If you are active on online, it is important for you to know how you are evaluated by this tool.
Catalin is also giving us a free tip: to make marketing on forums, a space not enough exploited. He is also noticing that blogging is decreasing in favor of Facebook.
Zoso.ro and arhiblog.ro – they are the 2 Romanian blogs with consistent traffic.
More details and useful links:
Social Media ROI – Stefanos Karagos, Managing Director – Information Alchemist, XPLAIN
“Social media is not free” I liked very much that the things were said straight and transparent. It is true that you can run a campaign on social media with less money that the classic ATL, but still you cannot say it that this is for free. Some investment from your side it is absolutely necessary.
And of course when you do an investment, your expectations are focusing on a good return on this investment. And this also have to be measured on permanent basis.
Stefanos communicated us a conclusion of McKinsey from December 2010: “73% of consumer purchase decisions primarly is influenced by world of mouth”. So, that’s why you need to have content, you need to create a space of debates for your fans on Facebook and the brands have to be social and to react.
More details and useful links:
Pepsi and social media– Adriana Nestoriuc, Group Brand Manager CSD, PepsiCo Romania
Pepsi was the main sponsor of the event but not by hazard, Pepsi started to work a lot with online projects and had a good evolution based on it. They launched a dynamic campaign on Facebook and they challenged the fans to choose the right packaging for Pepsi Twist.
This year Pepsi is doing a very nice campaign for Romania, they invite us to remember old times, when we had Pepsi in Romania in the communist period. At that time it was hard to find the product, but Pepsi was and is really appreciated by the Romanian consumers.
Of course the audience couldn’t avoid to compare also Pepsi action with the Coca Cola campaign made on a similar pattern, with vintage flavor, with a link to the past, but in the end this is a global trend – to make something with vintage flavor, something who is inviting the consumer or the shopper to remember nice things. Coincidence or not, Pepsi have a good campaign and also with significant content for the Romanian consumer.
Adriana is a dynamic speaker and very open to the audience, she told us the cost of one of the campaigns on online, around 1500 euro, which was very insightful. I appreciate very much the companies who have this kind of transparency with figures.
Pepsi visuals were also the theme for a contest dedicated to bloggers. 5 bloggers were selected as official bloggers of the event .
More details and useful links:
Online reputation management – Cristian Pantazi, Kaleidoscope( part of Graffitti BBDO), Creative Director
The fever of measuring the online is still growing and Kaleidoscope with the support of uberVU (https://www.ubervu.com/benefits/smb/) is developing also a measurement tool. The presentation of Cristian raised a lot of questions and also contradiction, everything was started from the fact that this tool is measuring the sentiment. The measurement is most qualitative, the tool is looking for certain words and according with that it is established the “mood” around your Facebook profile. Cristian presented a case, Carturesti, a Romanian brand for a book store. It is hard to measure the sentiment, but at least Kaleidoscope is starting this.
More details and useful links:
Linkedin for Companies – Cristian Manafu, Managing partner, Evensys
Not only Facebook is increasing his users numbers, but also Linkedin, this network could be the 12th country in this world, so other “country” to visit and to use it for your business. In Romania they are around 400.000 Linkedin users .
Cristian told us that it is important to have a company page and to make it interactive. He gave us the example of a campaign done by Volkswagen which was challenging Linkedin users to compete between them in terms of Linkedin profile, the prize was a car, so the campaign was successful .
More details and useful links:
The second part of the conference consisted in workshops around Facebook, a real tools box for people who wanted to find out more and more things about Facebook.
One again Guy Kedar and Jiri Voves was coming in front of the participants with excellent examples from Facebook campaigns.
I will just make a summary of the rest of the speakers who had examples and cases for Facebook:
- Stefan Stroe, Independent Consultant - Secrets to make a message to go viral;
- Costin Radu, The Geeks, Managing partner – Facebook Applications – Ideas for marketers
- Maria Olteanu, MB Dragan, Client Services Director – Local case study
- Bobby Voicu , Intact Interactive, General Manager – Facebook engagement strategy
- Radu Ionescu, Kinecto, Creative Director – Facebook contests – what you need to know
- Manuela Ponomarenco, Senior Account manager, Metromind – Local case study
After these workshops, I remained with 3 things in my mind:
- Facebook is not game, it can be a profitable business environment, but you have to prepare everything, like for an offline campaign;
- Facebook also have rules, so first get familiar with Facebook;
- Facebook can help you if you have content and strategy, otherwise it doesn’t worth to be on it…and it is big mistake not to be on Facebook if you are a brand who wants to grow.
I want also to invite you to see the blogs of the official bloggers of the event, mainly they write in Romanian , but you can find interesting photos/ movies from the event:
The hashtags of the event on Twitter are: #snc11 and #snc2011.
The websites of the agency Evensys who organized the event:
I can only suggest you to consider Social Media more in your marketing & PR activities and to make it with the support of professionals. Social Media is not a game.
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