2 X Factor Social Media Fails

During last night’s X Factor, there were 2 social media fails which remind us of 2 important rules:

1. Always re-read your posts before posting!

Trying to show support for Jack Walton, her act who had just performed, judge Mel B wanted to tweet to her followers to vote for him. Unfortunately for her, when writing her act’s Twitter handle, she tweeted out the handle of her act who left last week – Jake Quickenden!

 

She tried to cover it up…

But in the end, it didn’t help as Jack was voted out of the competition.

REMEMBER: Always re-read your posts before posting!

2. Don’t forget the basics!

When the Harvester restaurant chain got a mention in last week’s show, all the viewers knew that they would feature this week as Simon Cowell had dinner with one of his contestants – Stevi Ritchie. Their team had a week to prepare for this amazing PR opp, but failed with a basic error:

Yup, the most basic of Twitter errors. HUGE PR opportunity wasted…

REMEMBER: Don’t forget the basics!

x factor fail

If you have any comments, tweet me @danielcohen82 or fill in the box below!

Great quote #10

 

Social Media Paradox

“Social media” is a paradox. “Media” is ineffective without a strong broadcast (one direction). “Social” is by definition bidirectional.

Hillel Fuld

Great quote #8

 

“If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we’re going to do important work.”
Seth Godin 

2 Reasons Why Apple Pay Is So Exciting

A week has passed since one of… no… THE most hyped Apple release in memory (ever?). While many were left drooling over the new bigger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, or Apple’s first foray into the smartwatch arena with Apple Watch, I was far more impressed by another announcement – Apple Pay.

But why? Bigger, smarter iPhones! An Apple Watch! True, and they are impressive, but check out this video of Apple Pay in action:

It sure looks impressive. “But so what”, I hear you say? There’s Google Wallet already, right? Right, and check out this article comparing the two.

But, in my opinion, there are 2 primary reasons why Apple Pay has all the pieces in place to change the way we pay for things.

Ease of Use

I was trying to figure out how to best express this reason, when I came across this line in a Mashable article:

“Apple Pay will ignite consumers’ interest in mobile payments by providing a seamless, secure and easy way for consumers to pay both in store and on the go,” says Forrester analyst Denée Carrington. (my emphasis)

It will make it SO EASY to pay FOR CONSUMERS – i.e. for you and me, for my mum and even for the biggest technophobe.

Simple. (Watch that video above again…)

Hardware/Software

It took me a few days, and some on- and off-line discussions, to figure out exactly what was so different about Apple Pay, until I realised:

The seamless integration of software and hardware.

Google have great software, but for the most part, are not providing the hardware to work in total harmony with their software. With Apple, the new iPhone and Watch have been specifically designed with Apple Pay in mind, and vice versa.

That is the real difference.

And I wasn’t the only one to get excited about it…

 

Besides, it must have been good to even get the mighty Paypal’s knickers in a twist!

All that remains is for Apple to bring this amazing tech to more countries. I can’t wait.

If you have any comments, tweet me @danielcohen82 or fill in the box below!

How One Tweet Changed My Daughter’s Life Forever

So, yeah, I haven’t blogged in too long. And this is one of the main reasons why:

Our daughter was born on 26th June at 5:01am, and she is absolutely beautiful (not biased at all).

But we had struggled for a name for her for a long time. The book we had used for our other kids wasn’t proving so helpful. We had exhausted all the names that we really liked and were lost for any more ideas.

At this point, my wife said to me “There must be another book or website where we can do further research. There HAVE to be other names we really like, which are just not in our book.”

So, as we were about to attempt this further research, I was browsing Twitter and spotted THE tweet.

A tweet by a guy who, as far as I can recall, I have never met IRL. (Even though we live only about 10 miles from each other!)

A tweet by a fellow father to a newborn girl.

A tweet that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would change my newborn daughter’s life forever.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/479506972564156416

Later that evening, my wife and I were discussing possible names. I mentioned in passing that I had seen this tweet and that Ari had named his little girl Annaelle. To my surprise, as I was just commenting that the name wasn’t in our book, my wife responded “See? That’s one of those names that I really like!”.

Then, a couple of weeks later…

BUT that’s not quite where the story ends… After tweeting Ari to show him we were inspired by his naming, he told us he spelled it differently in both English and Hebrew. Long story short – partly due to his tweeting (again!), we changed our minds how to spell our baby’s name in English!

So, thanks to one tweet, our daughter’s name is Anaelle 🙂

If you have any comments, tweet me @danielcohen82 or fill in the box below!

4 Ways Brands Should Own the World Cup

In case you have been living under a rock, you will know that later today, the 2014 World Cup begins in Brazil. We are gonna see this World Cup be the most “social” ever.

Already a few weeks ago, there have been more tweets about this World Cup than the last one in 2010 – before the tournament has begun!

WC tweets

But how can brands prepare to own the moment?

1. Forget Oreos

You will not have an Oreos moment. Repeat this mantra over and over.

The combination of many factors came together to create that huge social moment in last year’s Superbowl. But it is so rare that repeating such a feat is nigh on impossible. So don’t try too hard!

2. Plan for the expected and unexpected

At the same time, you can make sure that your social posts are relevant. You can plan in advance some posts, and be prepared for the unpredictable too.

This chart by Twitter explains it better than I can (and is relevant to any event):

3. Interact during games

This year also promises to be the first mobile World Cup – most users of social will access their accounts via mobile, not desktop, unlike in 2010. This means that much of the social interaction will happen during and not after the games. Google reported that during “this year’s Champions League semi-final between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, 53% of UK searches during the game took place on a mobile device. The cumulative volume of mobile searches far surpassed those during the 2010 World Cup final.”

If you want further proof, in their report, Google post these two graphs of searches during those two games:

2014-world-cup_articles_06 2014-world-cup_articles_07

4. Use right hashtags

The official hashtag for the World Cup is #WorldCup, while many are also using #WorldCup2014. But also watch out for other trending hashtags both generally during the tournament, but especially during games:

I’m really excited for the football in the tournament – I’m hoping to see lots of it – but am also really looking forward to seeing how it plays out on social media.

hashflags

If you have any comments, tweet me @danielcohen82 or fill in the box below!