GROUP FOURAnnelli Nealon10714437Declan McGann10717979Colm Tyrrell10127712Kieran McGovern10335241Davin Convey10375717

Project Company: Lunatic Fringe

Industry: Hairdressing

24th October 2012

MN 219 Social Media Project

Group FOUR Agency is conducting a Social Media project for Lunatic Fringe Hair Salon in Dublin. The objective of this project is to increase the online community, loyalty and industry popularity by creating high quality Social Media content. The aim is to improve company revenue through a collaboration of online and offline activities. To do this we will create a Social Media Strategy and Action Plan using Social Media platforms, campaigns and analytical software tools. We will be constantly measuring our progress and reviewing the analysis reports to make improvements to the plan throughout the course of the project.

Lunatic Fringe has over 1000 clients on a yearly basis; only 593 of them come at least 3 times/ year. Their only communication they have with these clients is through a Facebook business page and a twitter account. Both are rarely used, and the owner, who is the sole publisher of Social Media content, has never used any analytical tools and feels her efforts go unrewarded. Lunatic Fringe is suffering the blow of the Irish economic downturn and has little, if any, budget for advertising and promoting. It is of upmost importance to the company to use tools that are free, efficient and effective to sustain business through these tough times. Group FOUR Agency has made it their mission to change how Lunatic Fringe use Social Media and provide an easy to follow plan that will stimulate growth in sales.

Strategy

Our strategy for improving the company’s Social Media is to take full control of their Social Media accounts and set up other complimentary accounts, relative to their industry and style of business. We will be co-ordinating these sites and using a schedule that will optimise the use of each one individually and collaboratively to generate the efficient use of online activities.

Identifying and targeting customers through social media platforms, engaging with them and analysing what content is most appealing to them is our strategy for growing the online community. Using high quality content, advertising/ promotional campaigns and creating a feedback system to encourage activity through media sites is our plan to maintain the community. Getting Lunatic Fringe staff to collaborate with us will be key to this success.

The campaigns we run will be measured for success and developed if needed and based on a schedule that is suitable, and aligns with the objectives of, the Lunatic Fringe business design

We will be using measurement tools and analysing the reports to develop our strategy and course of action over the course of the project. We will also compare media streams with successful competitors to generate ideas of what works well and adopt campaigns that align with our objectives.

Social Media Platforms

Twitter has over 500million users and is currently the fastest growing social media site in the world. Twitter is one of the largest integrated communities in the word. It has become an ideal marketing tool for a business. You can find out what customers are saying about your, and competitors, products/ services; and use this information to improve or adjust the business. You can follow industry groups to be constantly updated of advances and changes that affect your business.One of the main advantages to Twitter is that it is free and easy to use channel of communication.

Facebook has 1billion users worldwide. A business page has access to this enormous figure, one-eighth of the world’s population with the touch of a button. Searches on the web are indexed. This means when your businesses name is typed into a search engine e.g. Google, it is still visible to those not on Facebook, usually in the top results. Facebook has become a social media giant and is hence commanding more attention from consumers. When a person “likes” your Facebook page it automatically accepts them without any human interference. This enables people to see updates on your business page immediately.

Facebook provide insights/analytics which help Administrators understand how consumers engage with their page. These insights are extremely useful in understanding your target market, and what to provide them with.

Using a Wordpress blog page can give a company an outlet for information too big to be shared on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook and is a fantastic way for the business to detail their work and show off their expertise. The blog offers an ideal way for customers to communicate their feedback. Having a blog page can increase search engine rankings if managed properly. It is free and easy to use.

Pinterest is a pin board style sharing website that allows people to share/like and pin files such as events, articles, interests and lots more. Users can follow people who they feel they have similar interests with and ‘re pin’ there images to their own collection. The idea of Pinterest is to connect everybody in the world through the things that they interested in.

We felt Pinterest would be a valuable compliment to our main social media sites because the activity from its profile can be seen from Facebook and Twitter. As Lunatic Fringe is hair and beauty related we knew that an image friendly site such as Pinterest would enable us to collate a portfolio of interesting styles and articles for our followers. It is also free and easy to use.

Analytical Software Tools

BOSS Metrics Social Media Analytics tool gives us a quick, simple and effective way to analyse our performance on Facebook and Twitter. This tool incurs no cost to our group and will be available for the company to continue to use at a low price. BOSS Metrics brings together all our social media marketing data on one dashboard, while giving us plans and recommendations to improve. We are also using CrowdBooster to guarantee that there are no gaps in the analysis and that our decisions are based on suggestions from multiple tools. CrowdBooster provides clear graphical evidence

of weekly progression for Twitter and Facebook. It also provides suggestions for optimal performance but is limited in comparison to BOSS Metrics.

Peer Index measures online authority. The overview score reflects the impact of our online activities. We are using Peer Index for our Facebook and Twitter accounts. We have chosen Klout to measure the isolated performance of our twitter account. This is measured by the size of our network, the content created and how people interact with that content. Klout reports a Klout score, suggests how to increase this number and can be compared with competitor scores. The Peer Index and Klout scores will enable us to see a steady increase over the course of the project.

Edgerank is a tool that ranks everything in the Facebook newsfeed. It is based on three factors:

Affinity: This depends on a person’s relationship with an object in the news feed. Weight: This is the type of object in the newsfeed, e.g. a photo, video, etc. Time Decay: The longer an object is in the newsfeed the less value it has.

Edgerank uses a specifically designed algorithm to calculate these three factors. In return this helps Page Administrators gain an understanding and awareness of how their page connects with the newsfeed. Once this is done you receive an Edgerank score. The higher your Edgerank score the more likely your page will show up in other user’s newsfeed. This is vital for marketing. If your page does not make it to a potential customer’s newsfeed, no matter how good your product/service, will not be seen and advertising then becomes meaningless. Therefore increasing your Edgerank score increases your chance of reaching potential customers.

Social Media Management

We have created a Hootsuite account to manage our social media platforms from. Using the Hootsuite dashboard allows you to make one post and publish it to multiple channels, therefore saving you time. Hootsuite has its own URL shortener for posting articles or blogs; this allows you to the track the demographics of those who read it. Each platform has tabs that identify streams of information such as Twitter that separates the home feed, sent tweets, scheduled tweets, my tweets retweeted, mentions and direct messages making it clear to see which area needs more attention. You can also use keyword tracking on Hootsuite to see what topics people in the industry are talking about and share their links. Hootsuite provides its own analytics that can be used to cross reference other measurement tools.

Campaigns

A campaign was devised by our group to increase awareness about Lunatic Fringe. We were hopeful this would result in an increase in clientele as well as an increase in general interest of what Lunatic Fringe. On the 13/10/2012 at 15.00pm our campaign started on Facebook through a ‘status’ update. It stated that the most influential person of the week, who ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ Lunatic Fringes’ Facebook content would receive 30% off their next cut. We were given the permission to offer this weekly deal by the company and it is proving to be effective as we can see the virality of the page increase by 6% from this post, as reported through Facebook Analytics. We are able to accurately identify the winner through CrowdBooster and the weekly winners will be congratulated and awarded on the Facebook page every Monday, running for the foreseeable future.

Analysis

Based on the feedback we have received from the Facebook Analytics tool; our target demographic is females aged 25-35, in the Dublin area. There are 604,619 females in Dublin, 60% of which are between 25 and 44 (CSO 2012) so we will be targeting approximately 350,000 people through social media sites. To do this we will be joining other online communities and

creating content that attracts their networks.

Using Edgerank we could see the affect our campaign had on the day it was posted. This means it was high quality content that attracts secondary activity. We need to be creating content of the=is value on a daily basis to keep our rankings high.

It is clear to see that from the time we began managing the Twitter account it has had a significant increase in activity.

11/10/2012 we then have a Klout score of 10, On the 15/10/12 we have improved our score by two this gives us an indication that we are making progress.

This BOSS Metrics Facebook report shows us that we have 655 fans, 1,050 engaged users and 100% virality.

We have set a goal for the 30th of November to increase our fans by 5%, we have increased this by 21% to date.

Here is our BOSS Metrics Twitter page report. Our network consists of 12 followers, 22 we are following, and 2,196 friends of followers; our Follower ratio is 0.55X ; this implies that if we increase the number of people we are following by 20 per week we will in turn get 10 people following us. So our aim in the following 6 week project segment will be to have an increase of 60 new followers.

Our goal here was set to increase our follower impressions by 10% we have completed this by 20% to date.

Course of action

Facebook account: Post high quality content in accordance with our schedule. Use Facebook to promote a campaign.

Twitter account: post high quality content in accordance with our schedule. Improve the number of followers by joining industry groups and following target demographic people. Try to engage with iconic people and get them talking about Lunatic Fringe.

Set up a Wordpress Blog site: Post high quality content about industry related topics that will provoke sharing and engagement. Use ‘Tags’, ‘Keywords’ and ‘Categories’ that will make our posts visitor friendly and encourage Search Engine Optimisation.

Set up a Pinterest account so the clients can follow interesting articles on managing their hair and latest trends. Co-ordinate this with the Hoosuite tool ‘Hootlet’ for scheduled posting of content.

Use BOSS Metrics, CrowdBooster and Facebook Analytics software tools to measure to analyse our performance and make improvements to our plan.

Use PeerIndex, Klout and Edgerank to get and overview of our influential status. Design a publishing schedule. Set up a Hootsuite account to facilitate the schedule

and manage Social Media platforms on one dashboard. Communication: Join and attract industry related communities that will broaden our

network, publicise the company and increase members. Use comparison sites such as Facebook Stats and Socialbakers.com to critique on

and adopt practices of successful industry related Social Media sites. Design campaigns that reward the most influential people in the Lunatic Fringe

community to provoke activity and increase sales. Engage with Lunatic Fringe staff to create content that will be of the highest quality in

which to attract a large number of secondary actions such as ‘liking’, ‘sharing’, ‘reposting’, ‘retweeting’ therefore optimising our virality index and being SEO friendly.

Set goals, using BOSS Metrics to increase the online community and measure our success.

Recommendations

Set performance goals and targets. Align these targets with the publishing schedule. Measure success with Analytics tools.

Stimulate the online community by engaging with them on a individual basis. Design new campaigns that will convert promotions into actual sales and measure

which are most successful. Target demographic groups that have been identified by our analytic tools through

Social Media platforms. Encourage Lunatic Fringe to provide a constant flow of industry related high quality

content.

We recommend that the staff of Lunatic Fringe start to photograph and film their cuts, styles and fashion discussions. If regular filming is in action the team could create a YouTube channel, and potentially gain revenue from this stream.

Conclusion

It is clear to see in the report from our measurement tools that the small increase in Social Media activity has had significant results. As we continue with this project our main objective is to create content of high quality, which has been difficult given that none of our team are familiar with the industry. Researching related topics, looking at what competitors are doing and liaising with the Lunatic Fringe staff is our plan to tackle this obstacle.

The tools we chose have been easy to manage and understand and we are finding them very beneficial in judging the value of our content. At the end of the project we will be able to compile a report of all our findings and offer a comprehensive indicator of how to optimise Social Media activities to the employer.

Appendices

Wordpress blog posts:

1) By Annelli Nealon

Dublin Hairdresser ‘Lunatic Fringe’ gets Social Media boost

The NUIM social media project has been set up by a group of final year Business students studying social media at NUI Maynooth. We have made it our mission to improve how small businesses are using social media. Only 12% of businesses using social media platforms feel that they are optimising their efforts by using analysis programs and metric tools (surveyed by the Harvard Business Review). As the old saying goes; ‘If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it’.

So we are working with Lunatic Fringe, one of the most popular hairdressers in Dublin, to make sure that they don’t fall into the trap of spending wasteful hours trying to connect with their clients online when they can be concentrating on doing awesome haircuts and continuing to bring the funkiest fashions to the Irish people.

With our help, Lunatic Fringe will not only be posting what you want to read, when you want to read it, but we will be rewarding you, the customer, for getting involved. Our measurement tools can see who our most influential followers are, who ‘likes’ us the most and who engages with our social media. We will be rewarding these people with regular discounts, competitions and special treats.

So keep your eye on what’s happening on:

Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/lunaticfringedublin

Twitter @ https://twitter.com/lunaticfringed2

Tell us what you think, and what you want to see more of by commenting on our blogs –we will be reading all of your feedback.

2) By Davin Convey

Unique Hairstyles at Lunatic Fringe

Lunatic Fringe prides itself on being unique. Why follow the trend when you can start your own. We say not to judge “a book by the cover” and yet a person’s image speaks to us a thousand words. Lunatic Fringe, with staff such as Tamar Chambers are more than capable of imitating a celebrity style to absolute perfection.

However, the challenge is far more interesting when a client creates a style of their own. Have you ever experienced salons where you ask for a particular style and the hairdresser for no apparent reason presents you with nothing like what you requested?

Well, Lunatic Fringe never do this. If you tell one of our stylists what you want they will deliver exactly as described. Use your imagination and express what you truly want. Soon, people will start to copy you. Let our experts, bring to life your individuality!

“Originality is a by product of sincerity.”

3) By Declan McGann

The Lunatic Fringe Experience

Lunatic Fringe is located at Level 2, 69 Grafton St, Dublin, It is one of the two

principle shopping streets in Dublin. Lunatic fringe opened in 1991 and has gone

from strength to strength. Having an award winning hairdressing salon, in the fifth

most expensive main shopping streets in the world must be a force to be reckoned

with. Considering the fact we are experiencing the toughest recession for many

years and yet they are thriving because of the skill and creativity they have to offer.

Lunatic fringe has captured the eye of the capital as trendsetters; it is very

imaginative and energetic salon with excellent skills in Hairdressing and unique

experiences offered by their highly trained and qualified staff. This gives one the

opportunity to come experience their skills and avail of the variety offered in their

Grafton Street location. There is an abundance of high street and exclusive shops to

enjoy, such as Principles Brown Thomas, River Island and Ted Baker. This particular

pedestrianised area in Dublin boasts many street performers and musicians, making

the experience truly unique. It is a great way to spend your time strolling, enjoying

the talent (various levels) and people watching. The numerous cafes and bars offer

something for everyone, least of all the historic Bewleys café.

Your visit to Lunatic Fringe can provide you with the perfect pampering experience

and incorporate all that Dublin has to offer.

4) By Kieran McGovern

What funky hairstyle are you going to get for Halloween???

All of us here at Lunatic Fringe are looking forward to the different whacky requests were going to get this Halloween from all of our beautiful clients.

Keep reading for some funky ideas to transform your look at

Funky hairstyles are portrayed as unique, friendly and most importantly fashionable.

They can easily induce a daring and edgy look to your tresses by experimenting

lavish hairdos. Try mixing up different elements of your hair for different hairstyles.

Add simple things like waves and curls can spice up your look very easily. If looking

for a Glamorous funky hairstyle, try adding braids and accessories to wavy or curly

hair for a hugely effective result.

DIY

At Lunatic fringe we understand that not everyone can afford to have their hair

professionally done especially given the current climate, so here’s some tips for how

to do it yourself. Try a big wavy hairdo which is proven to express your individuality

through the hairstyle. Adding bright colours to this punk chick appearance can give

off a unique gothic perception (perfect for some attention). You can use hair wax and

try backcombing for getting your style just the way you want it to be. You can easily

give it a messy feel by keeping it little uneven or just pop into us on Grafton street

and well look after everything for you!! @ Lunatic Fringe

5) By Colm Tyrrell

Meet the staff of Dublin based Hairdresser – Lunatic Fringe

Welcome to the latest blog from Lunatic Fringe. Keep coming back to keep up to date with all the latest styles and trend. Today we will introduce you to some off our staff members and the styles they are using. We love trying out rockin’ styles on our staff. You never know you might see something you like! 

Eduardo –posin' like 'the main man' 

Claire – Rockin’ the Balayage Colour - goth style! 

To achieve this look, the ends need to be pre-lightened before the chosen colour can be applied. This super ‘happenin’ look can be achieved with any desired colour result. Call in for a complimentary consultation with one of our experts to see if this would suit you too.

Aaron - Stylist! Nice n Neat, focused on strengthening the fringe, a must for guys with fine hair. Get the right style to suit YOUR face, ask for advice from one of our team! 

Screen Shots

Wordpress blog page; set up 10/10/12. All 5 blog posts are available @ http://lunaticfringeireland.wordpress.com/blog/

Video blog post (Powerpoint upload)

Boss Metrics Overall Report

CrowdBooster Facebook report

Facebook Analytics Report