Social media - the new battleground

As we approach 2011 I’d be shocked if the words Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are not discussed in marketing planning meetings. However, what shocks me more is why some operators in the gaming industry still do not utilise these channels.

I wanted to have a quick look at the state of play now and pick out some operators’ current presence on social media.

In my opinion Paddy Power has led the way in terms of promoting and using social media. The social media icons have featured on their website and marketing collateral for a long time, plus Paddy never missed a trick for a plug on his radio broadcast. Paddy’s are a PR machine and much of what they do really works for social reasons. They have some brilliant unique marketing that they capitalise on by using social media, such as successfully transferring their Last Man Standing promotion into a Facebook application.

Another leader is Betfair, whose Youtube football channel is simply amazing. Considering the amount of football teams partnered to betting companies, I have only seen Betfair truly use it in the social market. Their deal with Manchester United has seen unique content including the popular “crossbar challenge” feature from Soccer AM. Betfair have also tried other concepts including the iPhone rattle app, fan v fan for the last Ashes tour plus Betfair front room.

Social space isn’t just for betting and event content though. Both Ladbrokes Casino and 32Red have managed to build communities and engage casino customers with their product, introducing exclusive promotions, video content and opinion polls. Foxy and Wink Bingo grew large customer communities on Facebook, while Party Poker has over 20,000 fans and Full Tilt has attracted over 74,000.

Twitter is being utilised by the fewest at the moment. During Sunday night in the UK there was a huge stream of X-Factor-related content yet very few operators (or affiliates) were publishing live content for this. Live search is becoming more important, even within search criteria on Google.

If you offer multiple products you might need to create different communities for different customers. I’m sure you wouldn’t email your poker players bingo content every day, the same applies here.

Without name-dropping, there have been a few examples of what not to do with your social media marketing. Many operators have simply built pages and let an RSS feed from their news section update their social groups. It’s pretty easy to say this is not going to engage your customers and you’ll have to put some more thought and resource into managing these channels.

With email opt-in rates somewhere around the 50% mark and click rates from email broadcasts at 4-6%, you could look to adopt more communication purely via social channels. An average Facebook user spends about 55 minutes a day on Facebook and having your brand within their feeds will prove to be invaluable.

I’m sure you all have social profiles for a number of different social sites, so put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself why would you want this content in your news feed?

Have fun with social media, and make it topical, interesting and relevant to your customers. Give them a reason to follow you and to continue following you.