beautiful bytes – Farewell to Ash!
On to pastures new
A bit of beautiful world news to kick off – as of next week, I (Ash!) will sadly be leaving the beautiful team. After having been the first beautiful intern to be employed full time, I’ve had the privilege to work in an incredibly fun, talented and hard working team over the last (almost) three years. I’ve learned more than I could have imagined and will miss everyone terribly. Not everyone will miss my dad-like humour though.
I’ll be around at the occasional tweetup (if Teri lets me come!) and I’m sure I’ll be back in the charity sector before too long.
I’ll be leaving beautiful bytes in the more-than-capable hands of Rochelle and Teri but I’ll be reading them to make sure the quality doesn’t slip. Only kidding. I won’t be reading them.
And that’s the dad humour I mentioned earlier.
More room for tumbleweeds?
After a fairly quiet period from the social network that everyone loves to mock, Google+ has rolled out a complete redesign. Along with new navigation and other features akin to Facebook such as a ‘cover photo’, it seems that Google has taken a leaf out of Volkswagen’s book and introduced a hefty amount of white space on the right of the news feed.
While appearing to be a vast improvement on the original design (in my opinion), it still feels like a desperately lonely place. All the redesigns in the world still probably wouldn’t be able to change this, leading us to question whether Google+’s product life cycle is already hitting maturity, or even worse, decline.
This doesn’t seem to be putting the internet giant off expanding the Google+ portfolio though, after rumours that they are currently planning to add Google Analytics to brand pages – a direct attempt to compete with Facebook Insights.
On a lighter note, the addition of white space has sparked a #UseForWhiteSpace topic on the network, with people posting funny pictures of how they are utilising the area. Maybe this was all part of Google’s master plan? Maybe not…
Facebook users most engaged with brands at the weekend
New research has confirmed suspicions (and other, previous research) that Facebook users are most engaged at the weekend.
According to SocialBakers, brands see highest levels of engagement on Sundays, though the figures tend to vary depending on the industry in which the brand is based. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be figures for the non-profit sector, but it definitely indicates that it is worth testing different types of post, and the days on which they are posted.
Facebook Ads have also been found to perform better at the weekend, with some adverts seeing an increase of around 12% on Saturdays compared to Mondays. Again, if you are running, or planning to run, Facebook Ads, it is worth testing to see if there is significant uplift in response on a particular day of the week.
Mobile payments will catch on
New research is indicating that mobile payments could be the norm by 2012. Whether or not this is a realistic prediction remains to be seen, especially with concerns over privacy and anonymity.
However, this could be excellent news for the charity sector. The ease and speed at which this technology allows people to transfer money means that many forms of offline fundraising (street, door to door etc) could see a boost.
But what about adoption rates? It’s all very well offering mobile payments, but if no one wishes to do so, investment in the technology would be pointless.
For example, take online donations, which last year accounted for 15% of all charitable donations. A few years ago, this would have been almost unthinkable, but access to technology and a change in people’s behaviour has driven growth in this area.
The same could potentially be expected from mobile payments, especially if the service is commonly available (i.e. built into mobile phones as standard and accepted in a majority of high street shops) and easy to use.
Want to produce a viral campaign? Good luck!
A recent study has found that chance is the biggest factor in virality, particularly in relation to tweets. While some have attempted to produce a formulaic approach to getting content to go viral, there is still no real way to account for the affect of chance.
Our advice? Aim to make a relevant campaign that is popular with your followers rather than trying to produce something that attempts to appeal to everyone and ‘go viral’.
More next week, but not from me!
Ash
