UPDATE: over on vimeo you can check out all the keynotes of the day…

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Yesterday wasn’t only the day after April fools’ day (know throughout the world as the 2nd of April) but also the Netlog Brand (& Developers) Day about their activitities and social media marketing through Netlog’s platform. It was held at Kinepolis in Brussels and all marketeers, web developers, geeks, tweebs, … where invited to join in on a what promised to be an interesting day.

Social Media Marketing, qué?

Before we go in on what we picked up yesterday I’d like to briefly situate social media marketing as the concept is often still new for a lot of people. This should not come as surprise since social media use has never been as widespread as it is nowadays. Now I’m quite sure that among the people who attended the Netlog event yesterday, everyone was more than aware of the concept. You couldn’t find a spot where there wasn’t someone connecting on to twitter or Netlog with their laptop or iPhone. Its part of the trade, n’est-ce pas?

In this day and age marketeers & advertising agencies now about the existence of it all, often have implemented it into their strategies but don’t realize the full potential of it all. The Netlogday would bring us some cases that show it works.

In one sentence: Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and eventually sales. It occurs when brands or organisation spread their message through various social technologies. Common social media marketing tools nowadays include Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Netlog.

SMM still remains a “failed” concept because brands are limited in their capabilities and they often engage in practices that are alienating to the users. Its all about knowing how to communicate through social media and getting the feel of it. Often marketers and brands violate basic rules of social media. Also SMM is often not funded properly and there is the misconception of it being cheap. One often forgets that they have to invest time into making it effective.

Anyhow we won’t go further into this matter as where sidetracking here, but if you want to learn more about this all you’ll find a lot of do’s & don’ts list through a simple google search and you can always drop us a line.  What we are certain of is that SMM has changed a lot throughout the passed years. It has shifted the balance of power between marketers and consumers. Nowadays it is often said that consumers have the power and this has lead to development of  new marketing concepts. SMM has brought on a whole new philosophy and range of practices. Netlog as a platform is one of the drivers in these concepts.

A brief history and introduction

Netlog is one of the leading social platform across Europe and the globe with over 42 million members. It is a popular platform through which youngsters (and older segments also) are connecting with their friends and peers. They meet new people, share photos and videos, create blogs, join groups, and generally have fun.

The Netlog story started way back in 2000. The name might have been different but is was the basis for what they state is “One of The Fastest Growing Social Networks in the World”. I’ll give a quick rundown of some facts I picked up:

- Netlog is available in 28 languages across the globe.

- Netlog has 42 million plus user accounts.

- Netlog has over 50 million unique visitors a month.

- Netlog’s key concepts are “fun” & “connect with friends”.

- Netlog anticipated the expansion of mobile internet and salesboost of smartphones. That is why they developed a state of the art iPhone application. “Iphone, iphone? Not my phone!” one might say as young people often can’t afford one. Well that is why they’ve also created a mobile platform for lower end devices.

- Applications get translated for different langauage groups.

- Netlog introduced their own games platform about a month ago. The results are impressive, as they had 5 million plays within the first week where they had only expected a couple thousands.

- Netlog will be changing the “clans” into “groups”.

User content  will always remain the core of Netlog. Netlogers upload pics to their profile, add video through the integrated YouTube or upload these directly from their HD. Besides video through YouTube they’ve partnered up with Joost (movies, music videos…) This has resulted in 500.000 plus plays in the first month. The streaming of events, such as Humo’s Pop Poll Deluxe, will also become a part of this all.

What I’d like to add to this is all (and wasn’t really mentioned yesterday) is “customisation” as another driver in Netlogs popularity. Contrary to (sorry, but I have to mention them) Facebook, Netlog users are able to customise their own profile. They can develop their own look and feel and its easy as f***. You’ll often find kids using skins provided by brands and that what lead us to a next chapter: brandpages.

Power of the brandpage

Brand pages are an integral part of Netlog. They create brand ambassadors who are passionate. Companies can offer skins for users’ own profile but also share other content such as videos & pics,  organise contests, … It was nice to see a quick rundown of how one comes to create and work with Netlog as a brand. Netlog currently has over 6 million brand ambassadors or friends of brands as you will. All the following cases illustrate the possibilities of starting dialogue with your young segment.

Like a champagne supernova…

After the Netlog overview and introduction is was These Days & Nokia’s turn to showcase their Supernova case which is a nice example of opening up conversation with your demograph. I’m not gonna go in to this as there’s a nice overview here.

Applications, games & a credit economy

After a brief coffee break, Folke & another guy from Netlog brought us a brief presentation on their employers future. The company will continue to develop their application & gaming platform and at the centre of this all is a credit economy which is being established as we speak. Applications, like Buddy Poke, are together with this gaming platform the future for Netlog. They want to establish a credit economy driven by so-called micropayments for revenues.

Credits are paid for directly by users or brands, but their will also be different ways through which one can earn credits. (To give you an idea, one credit equals one eurocent). In order to make this more interesting for everyone, Netlog will have to continue developing more ways for users to spend this credits. In the future earned credits will even be convertable into mobile phone credits or stone-hard cash on ones personal bankaccount and this as reward for loyalty towards certain brands.

The presentation on all this matter can be found on slideshare btw.

I pity the fools

Next up was the famous Snickers case. Proximity BBDO was the agency snickers contacted to target the 14 to 35 year olds. Research had shown they were no longer making the long list of candybars. They were simply becoming less popular amoungst that segment so they set out to become top of mind once again on theshort term and to create engagement between the brand and users through time. The only thing they had to do was incorporate the current campaign involving Mr T.

Proximity quickly came up with the idea for a cool competition which only ran on social platforms. People could ‘win a tank adventure weekend’ by simply registering and playing an online game in which one had to show off his tank skills. The campaign worked for them and they shared some thoughts on working with social media. As always it is important according to the to draw attention to your campaign. Let users know you exist and in some cases even target a specific group of them through friend invites. Second element they pointed out was ‘going out together’. It is important you start to communicatie with the users. As mentioned before you should offer them a skin which they can share, use the shout feed, create other content and manage it all. Snickers was able to keep everything alive through another contest in which people could win a meet and greet with Mr T himself. Videos and pics of this where uploaded.

In many other cases you’ll see that if users feel connected to brands they’ll start creating their own extra content. Another way of interacting is the launching of polls and if you really want to go all the way, the introduction of an application/game which intergrates this all just as snickers did. All you have to bare in mind here is that is its fun, users will invite peers and create extra buzz.

In the end the results for snickers are simple: snickers now holds the no° 1 position amongst candy brands on Netlog with over 11.000 fans/users connected, the skin was widely used and viewed  over 4,5 million times.

KaHo case: a brief demonstration in effective simplicity

The final case was presented by Helena Van Eykeren (or Imke Dielen if you want) from Markee. She presented her KaHo case. Back in 2007 KaHo (Katholiek Hogeschool) had assigned Markee with the task of boosting their popularity amongst student finishing high school.

Their main goal was to improve their image and increase new student subscriptions. A simple strategy was implemented which resulted in an overall increase of literally everything. After this succesfull campaign they had advised to continue the campaign online throughout 2008. Goal here was to create an interactive community and Netlog was the platform of choice. Visuals and other elements of the previuous campaign where recycled and used again, together with contests they held. They posted videos, … and only basic information. If someons wanted more specific info they where redirected to the school’s own website. After a succesfull campaign in 2007 the follow-up in 2008 also proved to be succesfull!

This is the end… an overview

The day ended with some cocktails and the mandatory networking session. During the coffee break I had been surprised to see Bué enter the room and during the last case presentations he had started work on yet another unique Toykyo piece. He had been asked to show of his skills yet again after having made a piece at Netlog HQ a while back. Anyways our man Bué from Toykyo was laying the final hand on the work as we all enjoyed a refreshing beverage and the curtain closed over the Netlogday.

Overall I must admit that we probably didn’t learn a whole lot of new stuff about Netlog but that’s probably mainly due to the fact that within Trendwolves we can be found on the platformalmost every day for research purposes. I regret that I don’t know a whole lot about code, html, CSS… otherwise I would have attended the developers side of the Netlogday also. It seems that was also more than worth the while and some dude from Google must have given one hell of a talk as everyone was on about it. But for now I’ll stick to the social marketing side of the story for a while before I cross over to the geek side.

To summarize it all we just simply have to state: Netlog is all about fun, games and connecting with peers. That’s why it works…

If you’re interested in seeing some pics off the event head on over to Pietel’s Flickr account and check out the nice set op photos he shot throughout the day.

If you’re interested in learning more on working and advertising with Netlog I suggest you check out their advertisers section and their mediakit.

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