Social Media Awards2011 Case Studies

Winners Case Studies

Celebrating the best of social media

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ContentSIntroduction & Foreword 2

Best Twitter Account eircom 3

Best Facebook Page for a Business Spin 1038 8

Social Media Effectiveness Award

Morning Ireland 12

Best Facebook Page Meteor Mobile 15

Most Innovative Use of Social Media

the Rumour Room 18

Best Online PR Campaign WeddingDates.ie 21

Best Customer Care using Social Media

Vodafone 24

Best Business Twitter Account

Blacknight Solutions 27

Best Integrated Facebook Campaign Maltesers 29

Best Use of Social Media for a Sponsorship

Campaign Bank of Ireland, Leinster Rugby 32

Acknowledgements 35

2011 Winners 36

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.

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

2 Social Media Awards 2011 Winners Case Studies

@eircom

2,155 followers

Case Study:

Gina Bowes

Head of Social Media

Eircom Group

OvERvIEW

Eircom is Ireland’s largest telecommunications company controlling over 60%

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

in the mobile communications market. Gina Bowes is the group’s head of social

media and is responsible for the social media presence for all three companies.

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.

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 BowesHead 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.

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BestTwitterAccount Support, CMS

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Supported by Bord Gáis Energy

Best Twitter Account eircom

their social media team also run a twitter account,

a Facebook account and they maintain an official

presence on Boards.ie. they are also in the process

of uploading support tutorials to Youtube.

How Social Media Works at Eircom

Led by Gina, the social media customer care team

consists of four full-time agents; tony, Mark, Ant &

Steve, who listen, monitor, respond and engage in

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

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

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Social Media Awards 2011 Winners Case Studies


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.

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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.

Know your own business goals, vision and values.

Understand your customers – who they are, where they are and

what matters to them.

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.

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.

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.

Gina’s Advice for Social Media Newbies

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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.

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facebook.com/

spin1038

112,139 fans

Case Study:

Jamie Crawford

CEO, Spin 1038

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Best Facebook

Page for a

BusinessNon-Campaign

OvERvIEW

Spin 103.8fm is an independent radio station based in Dublin catering for the

capital and the surrounding areas with a target listenership of those under 30.

We place a huge emphasis on interactivity and audience participation from

song requests to talk show discussions.

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.

Jamie CrawfordCEO, 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.

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Best Facebook Page for a Business Spin 1038

How Social Media Works at Spin 1038

Social media is a vital component of our

marketing strategy, so much so that in 2010

we developed a new role within the company

of Social Media editor

this function is cross-departmental and the

Social Media editor liaises daily with the

marketing, programming and sales departments

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.

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

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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.

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Best Facebook Page for a Business Spin 1038

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.

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@morning_ireland

25,000 followers

facebook.com/

morningireland

427 fans

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OvERvIEW

Morning Ireland is Ireland’s most popular current affairs radio programme with

an average daily listenership of 450,000. The show is one of Ireland’s longest

running too; having been on air for over 27 years.

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;

SocialMedia Effective-

ness

Case Study:

lisa Pereira

Studio & Web

Producer

Morning Ireland

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Social Media Effectiveness Morning Ireland

SocialMedia Effective-

nessthis is subject to how busy we are.

Lisa PereiraStudio & Web Producer

Morning Ireland

After the programme, Lisa will tweet links to

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

We wanted to hear what our listeners had to say; we wanted their views, their feedback, and their input into stories

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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

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.

I’d advise people to get to know how Twitter and Facebook

work before using them for your company.

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Social Media Effectiveness Morning Ireland

facebook.com/

meteor

66,909 fans

Case Study:

Caitriona O’Connell

Marketing Team

Meteor Mobile

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Best FacebookPage

OvERvIEW

Meteor is one of Ireland’s main mobile telecommunications providers and is part

of the Eircom group. Caitriona O’Connell is a member of the marketing team at

Meteor and manages the Facebook page on behalf of the company.

the purpose of Meteor’s Facebook

page is to communicate with

our customers in a space where

they are active and engage with

them by providing fun, interesting

content which is relevant to them.

We aim to bring the Meteor brand

to life online and encourage and

generate genuine brand advocates.

Caitriona O’ConnellMarketing 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’.

CAMPAIGN STATS

(May 2011)

• new Likes per month 4,391

• Monthly unique

page views 13,628

• Monthly active users 33,101

• Monthly Likes & Comments 3,221

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Best Facebook Meteor

Caitriona ensures that comments are quickly

responded to and says there is regular ‘friendly banter’

between the Meteor Facebook team and their fans.

Driving Traffic and Sales

Meteor’s Facebook page now forms a part of any

integrated marketing campaign run by the company.

Caitriona liaises with a digital agency to create bespoke

artwork and media for Facebook competitions and

games which support the relevant campaigns such as

the latest BlackBerry launch.

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.

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

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Best Facebook Meteor

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!

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@therumourroom**

2,479 followers

facebook.com/

The-Rumour-Room**

4,718 fans

Case Study:

Stephen Byrne

TV Presenter

The Rumour Room

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OvERvIEW

Through social media, RTE’s The Rumour Room aimed to connect with its young

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

was both on and off air. The show aired three times a week from October 2010

until April 2011.

the team say they always tried to let the teenagers watching feel they were as much

a part of the show as the presenters; and for them to feel the presenters Sinead,

Stephen, Katie and Jarlath were their friends.

the objective was always to allow young people to voice their opinions

and give them control from the comfort of their couch through creating

a 360-degree media experience. Viewers knew to have their twitter and

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 ByrneTV 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.

Most Innovative

use of Social Media

** Please note: These profiles are no longer active

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Most Innovative use of Social Media the Rumour Room

Stephen was always on his iPad delivering comments,

opinions and ideas from the viewers through twitter

and Facebook.

It was exciting because viewers would, at times,

change the direction of the entire show, A guest

would also be present, allowing the viewers at

home to have a conversation with them, asking

questions and putting them on the spot with

information that couldn’t be rehearsed.

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.

All throughout the week, morning, day and evening, the presenters stayed present online discussing various relevant teenage topics so that the viewers really felt they were just like a friend

Most Innovative

use of Social Media

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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.

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Most Innovative use of Social Media the Rumour Room

@weddingdates

1,285 followers

facebook.com/

weddingdates

1,880 fans

youtube.com/

weddingdates

13,392 views

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Best Online PR Campaign

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Best Online PR Campaign WeddingDates.ie

Case Study:

Ciara Crossan

Managing Director

WeddingDates.ie

OvERvIEW

WeddingDates.ie is a directory website which helps Irish couples select a venue

for their wedding celebrations. Run by MD, Ciara Crossan, the website won Best

Online PR Campaign at the Social Media Awards in 2011 for their participation in

the World Wife-Carrying Championships in July 2010.

As part of the campaign the

WeddingDates.ie team travelled

across europe in a camper van and

documented the whole journey and the

event itself over an eight-day period

by filming, editing and uploading daily

videos to their Youtube channel, and

by updating Facebook and twitter and

interacting with followers at home in

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

be found on the WeddingDates.ie Youtube channel

(youtube.com/weddingdates) or on their dedicated

blog (weddingdates.ie/wifecarrying). they also kept

people at home up to date with progress by tweeting

and updating their Facebook page as well as posting

photos from the trip.

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

CAMPAIGN STATS

(1st June 2010 - 31st July 2010)

• Website traffic 2,165 Page views

to ‘Wife Carrying’

section of blog

• Facebook Likes Increased by 80

• Facebook Page views 3,549

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

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Best Online PR Campaign WeddingDates.ie

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 CrossanManaging 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.

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Customer

Care using

Social Media

linkedin.com/

vodafone-ireland

1,228 connections

facebook.com/

vodafoneireland

68,443 fans

@vodafoneireland

13,473 followers

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Customer Care using Social Media Vodafone

OvERvIEW

As one of Ireland’s largest mobile communications companies, it’s not surprising

vodafone’s Joanne Jenkinson, one of the company’s social media executives,

believes social media has an important role to play in how the company interacts

with its customers.

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 JenkinsonSocial 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

account every month.

Both networks are used to interact with and point

customers to support forums where frequently asked

questions can be browsed and searched by the

customer themselves. However, when issues cannot

easily be dealt with publicly and require more in depth

levels of customer care, these queries are moved to

either direct messages, private messages or email.

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.

Case Study:

Joanne Jenkinson

Social Media

Executive

Vodafone Ireland

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

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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.

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Customer Care using Social Media Vodafone

@blacknight

7148 followers

Case Study:

Michele Neylon

Managing Director

Blacknight Solutions

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Best BusinessTwitter AccountSales & Marketing

OvERvIEW

Blacknight is an Irish company specialising in web hosting and co-location and

has over 120,000 domains hosted on their servers. Run by MD Michele Neylon,

the company have used Twitter for both sales and marketing and customer

care purposes.

We don’t track the number of interactions on a weekly basis as this isn’t a

useful metric for what we are doing. our twitter account is a core part of our

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 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.

When asked about sales conversions from tweets,

Michele says measuring such statistics is not an

exact science for his team.

Either do social media properly, or don’t do it at all

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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.

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Best Business Twitter Account Blacknight

facebook.com/

maltesersireland

3,181 fans

Case Study:

Dena Walker

Irish International

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Best Integrated

Facebook

CampaignPage, App & Ads

OvERvIEW

This was Mars Ireland’s first foray into social media, and as such the campaign

budget was very small. Mars saw the campaign as a pilot for their social media

engagement. 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.

our brief was to create a reason for consumers to interact with the brand and

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

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-

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Best Integrated Facebook Campaign Mars Ireland

January 2010, Mars Ireland ran a price promotion on

all confectionery products within their range (M&Ms,

Maltesers, Mars, Galaxy & twix).

We decided to encourage our consumers to ‘Celebrate

the Great Indoors’, because after all, when it’s

cold outside, there’s not much that’s better than

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.

Our page was to be the hub of all campaign activity, with the sole intention of generating engagement and brand advocacy

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Best Integrated Facebook Campaign Mars Ireland

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.

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@bluemagicrugby

686 followers

bluemagic.ie

32,634 viewsw

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Best Use of Social Media for a

Sponsorship

Campaign

Case Study:

Dena Walker

Irish International

OvERvIEW

Bank of Ireland has sponsored the leinster Rugby club since the 2007/8 season

when they first launched ‘Blue Magic’. According to Dena at Irish International the

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

Leinster Rugby vernacular, with

the team and media adopting it.

the adoption of ‘Blue Magic’ by

the Leinster Rugby team and fans

was seen as very successful, but

it was felt by the bank that they

could do more to leverage their

CAMPAIGN STATS

• Supporter Uploads

to Website 800+

• iPhone App Downloads 3,028

• Blue Magic

Moment Views 30,000+

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

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

sponsorship to Leinster fans across the province,

rather than just at the matches.

our brief was to develop an online presence

and programme of engagement that would

enable Bank of Ireland to develop a community

of Leinster fans beyond matches, and ultimately

increase consideration of the bank from within

the community of fans.

Dena WalkerIrish 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

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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.

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

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Michelle McCormick @shellymc

and Ian Power @powerian for compiling these case studies.

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Facebook Page for a Business

Spin 1038

facebook.com/spin1038

Facebook Page for

a Non-Profit Organisation

Dublin Zoo

facebook.com/dublinzoo

Facebook Page for a Business

(Owner Managed)

Meteor Mobile

facebook.com/meteor

Integrated Facebook Campaign

(Page, App and Ads)

Maltesers Ireland

facebook.com/maltesersireland

Best Business Twitter Account –

Marketing and Sales

Blacknight

@Blacknight

Best Twitter Account

Support, CRM

eircom

@eircom

Blog of a Business

Sponsored by Frontline LEDCurious Wines

curiouswines.ie/blog

video/video Campaign

(non broadcast)

Sponsored by Publicis QMPLaughing Kookaburra

Goldnomics

Online PR Campaign

Sponsored by ESOF 2012, Dublin City of ScienceWedding Dates

2011 Winners

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Use of Social Media

by State Body/Org

Sponsored by pToolsDefence Forces

Best Mobile App

oxegen 2010

Customer Care using Social Media

(Integrated)

Sponsored by DoneDealVodafone Ireland

Best Use of Social Media For a

Sponsorship Campaign

Bank of Ireland Leinster Blue Magic

Innovative Use of Social Media

Sponsored by ArekiboRte’s the Rumour Room

Social Media Effectiveness –

conversions, metrics etc.

Sponsored by Kantar MediaMorning Ireland, Rte

Integrated Social Media Campaign

Sponsored by GrabOne.ieMeteor

Agency for use of Social Media

Sponsored by Newsletter.ieIrish International

Grand Prix

Sponsored by Bord Gáis EnergyMeteor Mobile

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The 2012 Irish Social Media Awards

will take place in the Mansion House

in Dublin on Thursday 17th May.

socialmediaawards.com

@socmediaawards (#sockies)

facebook.com/SocialMediaAwards

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Bord Gáis energy is proud to support the Social Media Awards.

Since our early foray in to the social media arena back in 2009,

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

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

understand our customers.

bordgaisenergy.ie

facebook.com/BordGaisEnergy

@BordGaisEnergy

SUPPORTED BY

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Documents

Social Media Awards2011 Case Studies