A few Digtial firsts for Ireland

Roughly one year ago I wrote about how Tesco used a virtual store in a subway to access busy commuters in Seoul on their way to work. This week I was delighted to see Easons open Ireland’s first virtual bookstore in Dublin’s Connolly station based on the same concept.
Between now and Christmas, commuters there, can scan QR codes at this store using their smartphones, which will direct them to an online store where they can pre-order or buy their selected books.
Eason’s  virtual bookshop has also been integrated with Facebook so customers can share their purchases and recommendations with their friends on the social network site. Heres a QR code to bring you to their Facebook page.

 

Another first this week was the launch of the country’s first Facebook Social Reader by the Irish Times. It claims to bring “the best of The Irish Times and Facebook together, the Social Reader makes it a whole lot easier for you and your friends to exchange the quality news, in-depth analysis and diverse opinion that The Irish Times delivers on a daily basis.” The reader can be found on the right hand side of the irishtimes.com webpages.

 

As you can see from the image, it includes 2 feeds: one which shows your friends reads and recommendations and a second which shows yours. The ‘sharing’ button is a clever inclusion, allowing the reader to decide which stories they wish to share, or not….
Great to see two Irish brands making use of and keeping up with the technology available worldwide. Wishing success to both!

Engaging features to promote brands on Social Networks

Twitter has partnered with Nielsen to provide advertisers with data by surveying users on campaign impact. Users will receive a tweet similar to a Promoted Tweet asking them to fill out a survey, within the tweet, about the brand and campaign.This service is currently being offered to a “small number” of unnamed advertisers with a planned roll out in Quarter 1, 2013. Nielsen will analyse the data gathered and provide advertisers on users’ purchase intent and brand awareness.

Twitter’s vice president for brand strategy Joel Lunenfeld, says: “This is a native experience for the user, and we believe it will give brands better insights to determine purchase intent, overall awareness, and other advertising metrics and analytics that can lead to greater engagement on Twitter.”

Meanwhile LinkedIn have introduced an influencer tool for use within LinkedIn. Early additions to the influencers list include Richard Brandon, Caterina Fake, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Users can now choose to follow influencer’s posts within the networking site without having a direct connection to that person. The content can then be shared or commented on, increasing the reach of the influencer and increasing the connections of a particular user.

Other recent changes on LinkedIn can be seen with the introduction of Company pages whereby businesses now have more ways to reach and and engage with consumers; brand networkers can also now feature particular updates within their streams, highlighting these new updates, products or services and promoting to users. A slideshow of Companies making the most of this new feature can be seen on the LinkedIn blog.

These new additions to the social space should change the way brands engage through social.