Online shops opportunity for retailers

Australian retailers should be more imaginative if they want to dominate the online shopping landscape like their international counterparts, Sue Morphet says.

The Pacific Brands chief executive officer told a Brisbane business lunch on Thursday that online shopping was both a threat and an opportunity.

It's just a matter of attitude, she said.

Comercial survival was in the hands of Australian retailers who had to embrace the online world, she said.

Ms Morphet said seven of the top 10 online retailers in the US were also bricks and mortar stores and it was a similar story in the UK.

'In the US stores like Walmart, Staples, Sears and Best Buy and in the UK Tesco, Marks and Spencer are in the top 10 online stores,' Ms Morphet said.

'In Australia we don't have any bricks and mortar retail stores in the top 10 online stores, none at all - we have eBay, Amazon, Deals Direct,' she said.

'Many of the successful online retailers can continue to have their bricks and mortar presence... but we need to understand this whole phenomena and move with it.

'People shop for experiences not just for purchasing goods.'

She contrasted the success of boutique bookstores with the failure of other major book retailers as the industry faces an online squeeze.

'The ones that do more than just price will be the ones that succeed,' she said.

'What we are seeing now is a consumer who shops on price or on quality, they will shop for the number one brand or the price point offer.

'In order for us to justify the value of our brands our product has to be innovative, it has to have high quality and be very engaging in the needs, wants and emotions of the shopping public.'

Ms Morphet said recent calls for online stores to pay GST was unhelpful and energy should be focused on thinking of clever ways to appeal to customers.

'Where the recommendation to buy used to come from traditional advertising or the sales person in the store, now it's coming from social networks,' she said.

'Bonds has 60,000 Facebook fans.

'Customers have always been able to go down the street and seek a better price ... (but the) street is a whole lot longer and a whole lot easier to navigate.

'We need to be frank, the problem is not the lack of a 10 per cent GST.

'Retailers have to be offering excellent range, excellent value and excellent service, if you're not doing that customers will go elsewhere and the internet as made it easier for them to do so.'

She says retailers need to think about how they pitch brands, use social networking marketing to communicate and satisfy customers.

Ms Morphet explained how innovative thinking saw a 1000 per cent increase for pillow sales when Pacific Brands launched its Tontine date-stamped pillows last year.

'Innovation is what we need to redefine our categories,' she said.

'People have been buying white pillows for a hundred years ... but this (result) was unbelievable,' she said.

Legal action against Twitter

An English local authority said on Sunday it had taken US micro-blogging site Twitter to court in California and forced it to release the details of a British user.

South Tyneside Council, in northeast England, took the legal action in a bid to discover the identity of a blogger behind allegedly libellous statements.

The blogger, known as 'Mr Monkey', has levelled a stream of criticism and allegations against councillors and council officers.

A council spokesman confirmed Twitter had released information after they took the case to the Superior Court of California.

'Twitter have released information to our lawyers and this is currently being analysed by technical experts,' the spokesman told AFP.

Twitter was not immediately available for comment but a spokesman told the BBC: 'We cannot comment on any specific order or request.

'As noted in our law enforcement guidelines, it is our policy to notify our users before disclosure of account information.'

The South Tyneside Council spokesman added: 'This legal action was initiated by the council's previous chief executive and has continued with the full support of the council's current chief executive.

'The council has a duty of care to protect its employees and as this blog contains damaging claims about council officers, legal action is being taken to identify those responsible.'

The latest controversy came a week after a Premier League footballer began proceedings against the website when a blogger identified him as the player who had taken out an injunction banning the media from exposing an alleged affair.

A Liberal Democrat MP later used his parliamentary privilege to name the player as Manchester United's Ryan Giggs.

Technology give gamblers choice

Pokies technology that allows players to choose whether or not to curb their spending is the best way to stop problem gambling, Victoria says.

Gaming ministers from around the country will meet in Canberra on Friday to discuss federal Labor's plans to crack down on pokies, based on an agreement it made with independent MP Andrew Wilkie last year which helped it form a minority government.

One idea on the table is the introduction of a mandatory pre-commitment scheme, which would require patrons to nominate their maximum losses before they started gambling.

But Victorian Gaming Minister Michael O'Brien said that approach infringed on peoples individual rights.

He argued optional pre-commitment technology on every poker machine in the state, combined with the removal of ATMs from gaming venues from July 1 next year, made Victoria's anti-gambling package tougher than the commonwealth's.

'We think we have a far more effective integrated package that will work, whereas the Wilkie deal is basically born of a quick political fix,' Mr O'Brien told ABC Radio.

He vowed Victoria would not sign up to any reform plan today if it included mandatory pre-commitment technology.

Federal Families and Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin said she was pleased that at least there was consensus that pre-commitment technology was a useful tool.

'That's an important first step,' she said.

But Victoria's plan to keep the system purely voluntary wouldn't be enough to stop problem gambling, Ms Macklin said.

That's because even if someone uses the technology in the first instance, they can just take their pre-commitment card out of the machine and play on once they've reached their limit.

'It's not actually going to help the problem gambler,' the minister said.

'It's like saying to people, 'The seat belt is in your car but you don't have to use it'.'

Ms Macklin said there were a number of anti-gambling strategies on the agenda for Friday's meeting, such as pokies display warnings, club ATM restrictions and online betting.

'We understand how important it is to act on a number of fronts,' she said, adding there was still time for detailed consultations with the states on the issue.

The government has vowed to have the legislation ready by mid-next year, with Ms Macklin 'hopeful' all premiers and chief ministers will support it.

Labor will need the votes of key independents to have the draft laws passed in parliament, but Tony Windsor has already flagged his opposition to the scheme.

Ms Macklin said the government would keep talking with the crossbenchers and stressed how important it was to act on problem gambling.

Bosses peeking at candidates' Facebook

More than a third of bosses say they check potential employees' Facebook profiles before offering them a job.

Your potential new boss may have already checked you out on Facebook.

A new survey by recruitment firm Robert Half has found that more than a third of employers in accounting and finance admit to checking potential candidates' Facebook profiles before offering them a job.

'Given this reality, candidates need to be aware of their social media footprint' when applying for jobs,' Robert Half director Andrew Brushfield said, releasing the survey findings on Wednesday.

'As a general rule of thumb, if there is anything online that employees don't want their colleagues or bosses to see, they should remove it.'

The survey also found 23 per cent of employers are using social media to recruit, while a third of employees say they are comfortable being 'friends' with their boss on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Still, the survey also found 36 per cent of surveyed employees in the finance and accounting industry have seen the use of social networking sites damage other people's workplace relationships.

'While social media has helped foster a more interactive and sociable working environment, it is completely blurring the boundary between people's personal and professional lives,' Mr Brushfield said.

'Before people friend' their bosses, colleagues and clients, they need to think about the long-term implications it could have on their professional life and career development.'

The survey of 416 finance and accounting employees, and hiring managers, found only 38 per cent of companies had a clear social media policy in place for employees.

Forty-three per cent of companies that allow their staff to access social media sites at work either don't have a clear social media policy in place, or don't have a policy at all.

'All organisations should have a clear social media policy to ensure that their staff use social media appropriately at work, and don't damage the company's corporate reputation,' Mr Brushfield said.

Mr Brushfield offered a number of tips to workers and jobseekers to help manage their Facebook presence, such as 'untagging' themselves from an embarrassing photograph, and being aware of the various groups they join if their colleagues, bosses and clients are 'friends'.

Also, while Facebookers may enjoy playing social network games and posting their results, Mr Brushfield questions whether professional contacts really want to know if you have bought a new cow on FarmVille.

We all know the answer to that one.

9 in 10 Marketers Use/Plan to Use Social Media

A combined 89% of marketers use (53%) or plan to use (36%) social media marketing, according to [pdf] a study conducted in Q4 2010 by Unica. Data from “The State of Marketing 2011″ indicates of those planning to use social media, 26% plan to use it in the next 12 months and 10% plan to use it more than 12 months out.

Rich Media, Mobile Marketing Show Similar Stats

Rich media marketing, with 87% combined usage/planned usage, and mobile marketing, with 85% combined usage/planned usage, have similar statistics to social media marketing. The numbers on rich media marketing in particular (50% current usage, 23% expected usage in 12 months, 14% expected usage in more than 12 months) are almost identical.

For mobile marketing, however, the numbers skew more toward planned usage, with a 43% current usage rate. Twenty-five percent of marketers expect to employ mobile in the next 12 months, and 16% plan to use it in more than 12 months.

Europe Lags North America in Email Adoption

Overall, 67% of North American and European marketers currently use email software. However, this figure rises to 80% of North American marketers and drops to only 47% among European marketers. On a combined basis, only 10% of marketers have no plans to use email.

Europeans More Likely to Automate Email Integration

While European marketers are less likely than North American marketers to adopt email, 40% of European marketers report mostly automated integration of email data with customer data, compared to just 30% of North American marketers. The overall automated integration rate is 34%, and 27% do not integrate email data at all.

Search Not Well Integrated

Respondents exposed a lackluster record of search engine marketing integration with other marketing campaigns and programs. Less than half said it was “somewhat integrated” and almost as many indicated that it wasn’t integrated. Only 10% claimed “very integrated” search engine marketing for their company’s efforts.

Most Marketers See Web Data as Very Important

About two-thirds (68%) of marketers see web data as very important to customer analytics and 63% see it as very important to making decisions about marketing offers and campaigns, according to other study results. A majority of remaining respondents consider both uses of web data somewhat important.

Facebook to scan for child porn

Facebook's chief technology officer said the social network will start scanning for child pornography and images of missing children.

Facebook is teaming up with Microsoft and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to use photo 'fingerprint' technology to search for pictures matching those in the US organisation's data base.

'We care deeply' about stopping abuse, Facebook officer Bret Taylor said while revealing the alliance during testimony at a US Senate Commerce Committee hearing in Washington on mobile phone and internet privacy.

Microsoft PhotoDNA technology used at search engine Bing and online file storage service SkyDrive will be put to work at the world's leading social network.

PhotoDNA has already evaluated more than two billion digital pictures at Microsoft services, finding 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing image indexing, according to Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit associate general counsel Bill Harmon.

'PhotoDNA identified horrific images on our services that we would have never found otherwise,' Harmon said.

With Facebook among the world's largest photo-sharing services, 'their participation in the PhotoDNA program will significantly expand the program's impact,' Harmon added.

Each month Facebook users share more than 30 billion pieces of content including pictures, news stories, blog posts, and web links, according to Microsoft.

'Identifying graphic child pornography in a sea of content like that is a daunting task, but PhotoDNA is helping to find the proverbial needle in a haystack,' Harmon said.

Facebook Success Beyond the 'Like'

Marketers must look beyond fan count to find real success

Having a branded Facebook page has become near-essential for many businesses. As such, companies should give as much thought and energy into planning and managing their Facebook page as they do a traditional website.

“The rapid adoption of the ‘like’ button and the rise of the Facebook ‘homepage’ are indications that marketing on Facebook has become a necessity for businesses large and small,” said Kimberly Maul, eMarketer writer/analyst and co-author of the new report, “Facebook Marketing: Strategies for Turning ‘Likes’ into Loyalty.” “Yet the fact that some companies have made Facebook the primary way they engage with consumers online raises serious questions about the risks and rewards of marketing within another company’s structure and rules.”

Most Fortune 100 companies now use Facebook for marketing. And HubSpot’s “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing” report found that 44% of companies in North America see Facebook as critical or important, up from 24% in 2009.

A study from WONGDOODY (now Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener) provided a set of benchmarks for Facebook marketers. Among the 84 Facebook brand pages examined, 88% of their operators said they posted video content, 82% solicited fan stories or comments, 79% had their wall open for fan comments and 66% actively replied to fan posts and comments.

These are just some of the tools in marketers’ arsenal to build engagement on Facebook, keep it high, and turn it into something that benefits the bottom line—loyalty.

“‘Like’ is only the beginning,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst and co-author of the report. “It is much harder to sustain the relationship post-click than it is to get consumers to make that first click. A brand’s Facebook fan base is only as strong as the effort put into managing it.”