Get lost and change your habits: how behavioural change models should be going social

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Andrew Seel

Habit. When you’re going to work, do you always drive the same route? Listen to the same radio station? Sit in the same seat on the train?

How much do you do in life out of pure habit? A lot, if you’re like most people.

Social media is starting to offer exciting new ways for people to break their habits – and it’s something those involved in behavioural change should sit up and take notice of.

Traffic, trains and unexpected stairways

Consider this scenario: you’re driving to work along your usual road in the morning rush hour, bumper to bumper.

Irritating, isn’t it.

You’re in a real rush to get in, so after ages getting nowhere, you decide to park your car on a side street and do something you never do – catch the train to work instead.

When you get off the train, you walk down the street a little and around the corner, you see a staircase you’ve never seen before. It looks like it might be a short cut, so you walk up it.

Doing so, you find a beautiful park. It’s full of people on their way to work, dog walkers taking a quick stroll and paths that lead this way and that. It can’t be more than 5 or 10 minutes walk from your office but you’ve never even seen it before.

Habit can sometimes blind us to things that are on our own doorsteps.

Habitual behaviours are often not conscious – so to change them requires that you first understand you’re doing something on autopilot.

Those who work in the field of behavioural change understand this all too well – as Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour shows, breaking habits are vital if you want to influence people’s travel behaviour.

Traditionally, campaigns to influence people’s behaviour are conducted offline, for example through TV advertising, and aim to encourage people to scrutinise their behaviour.

But now social media is offering an exciting new approach to this aimed directly at making you recognise and alter your habitual behaviour.

Meet GetLost bot

One example is GetLostBot. It describes itself as ‘a free service that challenges you to break your routine and explore new places.”

Once you sign up, GetLostBot keeps an eye on the places you visit. If it feels that you are going to the same places too often, it challenges you to try somewhere different.

You will receive a message with some mysterious walking directions. It asks you to follow these to discover a place nearby that you have never been to before.

Imagine if this emerging technology, perhaps combined with incentives, could be used to encourage people to scrutinise their habits. They may break out of their routines and try a different way to get to work.

GetLostBot is just one example of the way social media is helping influence people’s behaviour. But are behavioural change campaigns changing to incorporate social to reflect this?

About Qube Media and behavioural change

Social media is changing people’s behaviour already – and Qube is at the heart of this change.

Those looking to influence people’s behaviour are increasingly turning to social media and it is playing a much larger role in supplementing and complementing traditional offline behavioural change campaigns than ever before.

Over the past few years, Qube Media has run a number of successful behavioural change projects utilising the social web, covering areas such as public health, immunisation, sustainable transport and health & fitness in the over 50s.

It’s become a clear area of expertise for us that we are expanding rapidly. If you are interested in using social media to influence behavioural change, please contact me for a chat.

Qube Media listed in Travolution’s digital travel who’s who

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Nigel Cooper

We’re very proud to have been listed in Travolution’s digital travel firm who’s who - ‘all the travel firms you need to know, in one place’. Travolution is the UK’s leading multi-media brand for the online travel industry.

Qube Media is the only dedicated social media agency in the list. Many other digital agencies include social media in their armoury, of course, but it’s what we live and breath.

For a decade, we’ve been providing insight and consultancy services in the global market.

Of course, 10 years ago, the social web wasn’t what it was today and our focus was on blogs and MySpace, as well as encouraging customer engagement on our clients’ websites.

Today, the landscape has changed. The digital space is different and we’ve grown with it, incorporating the big hitters like Facebook and Twitter into our clients’ strategies, as well as Google’s increasingly social capabilities.

We’re proud of all the work we do for our clients – you can see some of the things we do for one of our luxury travel clients, Constance Hotels and Resorts here:

If you want to know how we can help you, give us a call for a chat. If you’re not sure yet, why not see if we should work together?

Why the digital industry gets it wrong about digital advertising, content marketing and social media

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Nigel Cooper

Why is the digital industry so obsessed with ‘either/or’ scenarios, constantly suggesting ‘this’ is better than ‘that’ without recognising that in most cases, a balanced approach utilising multiple disciplines is most effective?

In this instance, I am talking about pitting digital advertising against content marketing. I just read (and retweeted) and a very interesting article from Heidi Cohen “Why Content Marketing Is More Cost Effective Than Digital Advertising” based on various pieces of research (Neilson, Hubspot’s blogger research, Latitude etc).

Now, you might think that as I run a social media agency who believes fully in content marketing, I’d be in complete agreement – and to a great extent, I am.

But – and it’s a big but – I think the article (and the industry as a whole) misses a fundamental point: traditionally, digital advertising targets the audience at a different point in the buying cycle to the more social content marketing approach.

Digital advertising traditionally targets people who are ready to buy.

If somebody clicks on a digital advert, they’re probably aware of your brand already and are ready to buy – they’re going straight to a sale because they already know they want what you have and they trust you.

For those than aren’t ready to buy yet – either because they don’t know or trust you, or just aren’t at the point where their need is great enough – they need a different approach.

This is when content marketing comes into its own – giving them valuable information to help build trust with your brand and to nudge them a little further towards a sale with you.

But digital marketing can be also be used in conjunction with content marketing. For example, you may have identified your audience would really benefit from a certain piece of research or information, so you research and publish a white paper on this, knowing it’s of value to them.

Of course, you want to engage in conversations and engage socially and discuss this information – it’s of value to your community. But there is no reason you shouldn’t use digital advertising to point your audience towards this as well – the main thing organisations need to understand that unlike the ads they may have been running, using digital advertising in the context of ‘content’ isn’t necessarily going to result in direct, immediate sale – but it will increase awareness and trust with your brand.

Content marketing isn’t ‘better’ than digital advertising (or vice versa) – they simply target your audience at different stages of the buying cycle.

The growing importance of digital photo sharing to brands

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Nigel Cooper

The rise of the ‘social’ photograph
Social media is becoming increasingly visual in nature and the photograph is fast becoming the centre of a large proportion of social media engagement.

A recent Harvard Business School study suggests that Facebook’s new Timeline layout has contributed to the fact that as much as 70% of all Facebook activity is based on photographs.

But Facebook is only the tip of the iceberg; Pinterest, a wholly image based social network, has taken the digital world by storm – it hit 10 Million unique users faster than any other site in history and continues to grow.

The increasing usage and popularity of mobile SmartPhones also means people are taking and sharing pictures as part of their everyday lives like never before.

Instagram is a photo-sharing programme that allows users to take a picture, add an effect or filter, then share it across a variety of social networks.

Now in the process of being bought by Facebook, Instagram went from 1 million users at the beginning of 2011 to 27 million in March 2012.

The growing importance of digital photo sharing to brands
In short, the use of photographs in a company’s social interactions directly increases customer engagement – that means brands ignore the phenomena at their peril.

Posts of Facebook that include an album, picture or video increase engagement by an average of 180%, 120% and 100% respectively*.

Our own experience running and analysing social media campaigns for a wide range of clients at Qube Media has shown a marked increase in customer engagement related to posts with photos in over the past two years.

Photos can help to reflect your brand without being directly sales related. Social networks differ to traditional media in one key respect – they allow two way conversations. This mean brands can ask their customers to share and contribute pictures with them, as well as publishing their own.

Photo sharing facts at glance

Facebook has 850 million active users, with 250 million photos uploaded every day
As much as 70% of all likes, comments and shares in Facebook are related to photographs
Pinterest (a photo based social network) is the fastest growing site in history
Twitter has more than 465 million accounts and in excess of 100 million active users, all able to include pictures directly into their tweets

Useful links

The Rise of the Visual Social Network (Infographic)
http://www.adverblog.com/2012/04/28/visual-social-network-infographic/
Great infographic showing the emergence of visual media, photos and video on the social web from Adverblog.

Will the rise of photo apps kill the written word?
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/blogging-and-content-creation/will-the-rise-of-the-photo-apps-kill-the-written-word/
Article discussing the rising importance of photographs in company’s social media presence.

48 significant social media facts
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/04/23/48-significant-social-media-facts-figures-and-statistics-plus-7-infographics/
Facts and figures about the largest social media platforms and their current usage, from Facebook to Linked In.

*Source: The Rise of the Visual Social Network

Achieving results in social media and content marketing for a decade

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