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How I earned my Stripes
Fiona Watson

How I earned my Stripes

With the applications for the 2018 Stars & Stripes graduate programme closing later on Friday 4th May, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on my experience of the programme, which kicked off a year ago today when I submitted my own application.

What happened next?

Stripe contacted me the following week to let me know I had successfully reached the interview stage of the process, which would be taking place on Stripe’s canal boat/meeting room… ‘the barge.’ An onslaught of thoughts flew through my mind; what would the competition be like? What would I be asked in the interview? Who would be interviewing me? And most importantly, was I going to get seasick on the barge?!

The interview was tough, there’s no point sugarcoating it. When you are up against fierce competition to work for a shit hot company, what can you expect? After a presentation from the managing director, we were put through our paces in speed dating style interviews and a tough timed writing test. Although challenging, the session was really enjoyable and gave us our first insight into what it was like to be a ‘Stripe’.

After this, I received the amazing news that I had a place on the Stars & Stripes programme and my first day arrived in no time.

Slotting into life at Stripe

Any nerves I had about starting my new role were very quickly quashed when I was welcomed so warmly into the team and given a detailed introduction to the accounts I was going to be working on and the training that we would be receiving.

From day one, development was a huge focus and I joined the Stripe Academy programme. As part of this, we took part in sessions on everything from account management to writing skills and pitching, to evaluation and reporting. All of these helped me feel totally equipped to carry out my work day to day.

What to expect as one of the Stars & Stripes

I was catching up with my university lecturers recently and said to them: “if you’d have asked me this time last year what I would have expected to have done and achieved in just a year, I would never have expected it to have been this much.”

It’s a common belief that on many graduate programmes you play a bit of a background role, not really getting involved in key projects, however, at Stripe this couldn’t be further from the truth. On my first week, I set off to Glasgow to attend a photocall followed by a client meeting at The Principal Edinburgh Charlotte Square about the swanky launch party that was taking place later in the year.

Since then, I have written media releases, social copy and procedures, planned parties, launched products, worked on digital ad campaigns, received a promotion… and this is only half of it!

Applications for the Stars & Stripes graduate programme close at 5pm on Friday 4th May. To find out more and how to apply, click here. 

Getting to the heart of modern romance with Amazon’s Alexa
Fiona Watson

Getting to the heart of modern romance with Amazon’s Alexa

“What if my date ghosts me?” “What if they don’t look anything like their picture?” “What if my hands are sweaty AF?”

Have you ever asked one of your friends any of these questions ahead of an important date? What if your friends are not available this Valentine’s Day, enjoying their own romantic ventures oblivious of those vital questions niggling away at the back of your mind?

Fear not, in this age of modern dating, fuelled by Tinder and DMs, Amazon’s Alexa is here to be your wingman this Valentine’s Day. The future of dating has moved from apps to voice.

With the busiest time for online dating being from the day after to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, earlier this year saw Match.com launch a new skill for Amazon’s Alexa which can provide the answers to all your pre-date qualms. Providing humorous and cheeky answers, the digital assistant spouts out information gathered from the largest survey of singles ever conducted, Match’s Singles in America study.

Creating a skill for Alexa essentially means uploading information to the cloud from which the device draws its information and, as explained in last week’s blog post, the brands who are getting there first are the real winners.

Match.com is not the only romantic brand to broaden their offerings to include Alexa’s support: EHarmony has created a skill that actually allows users to find themselves a date without even lifting their finger. Linking your online account and Three Day Rule’s skill provides single users with daily dating motivation and tips, to get people out of their comfort zone and away from habits that could be negatively impacting their dating game.

The future of modern dating remains topical after Black Mirror episode ‘Hang the DJ’ left everyone feeling uncertain about leaving our romantic fates down to technology and now we’re leaving our dating advice and potential future partner in the hands of a robot…

This leads us to consider the future of advice, not just for modern day singletons’ misgivings, but also to wider queries we may ask our friends for: should I visit a doctor? Where would you recommend I book my summer holiday this year? Does this dress suit me? Based on this, brands are faced with a number of opportunities to become a key source of trusted information when it comes to answering these questions and giving advice, at the sound of a word, by developing new skills for Alexa and other digital assistant technology.

 

Has Twitter lost its USP? How you can utilise Twitter’s new character limit without feeling compelled to use it.
Fiona Watson

Has Twitter lost its USP? How you can utilise Twitter’s new character limit without feeling compelled to use it.

This week saw Twitter, famous for its limiting character count, expand the number of characters Tweeters can now use from 140 characters to a generous 280. The aim of this, as described by Twitter, was to allow everyone in the world to express themselves easily.

This was tested in September this year and Twitter found that only 5% of posts made in this time took full advantage of the extended character allowance, however, the posts that did exceed the traditional 140 character limit generally received higher levels of engagement (mentions, replies and retweets).

However, is this good news?

Within 24 hours of Twitter announcing they were extending the character limit for all, bar tweets in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the #280Characters had been used over 350,000 times, receiving a very mixed response.

Many argued that Twitter has now lost its unique selling point, which made it stand out as a micro-blogging site, whereas others claimed this would fully allow them to share their thoughts online in much more depth and without abbreviations.

The past few days have not given us the clearest idea on how Tweeters and brands alike will choose to use their new found character limit freedom, with most 280 character tweets being filled with either random characters or song lyrics and numerous other ways people have chosen to fill the limit simply to experiment.

Utilising #280Characters

We’ve seen several brands toy with all 280 characters, with some using the space to write longer messages of appreciation from their customers, or grab their followers attention, such as this post by Give Blood NHS.

Others using it to drum up follower engagement with quizzes and emojis, such as this post from Spotify.

My favourite was this from Penguin Classics.

Only time will tell how the new character limit will play out in terms of brands communication with customers and vice versa, opinion sharing and online debates and news sharing, however, if longer tweets have been proven to create higher levels of engagement then why not test it out?

What are your thoughts on the 280 character limit? Will you be writing war and peace in a tweet with your additional characters or shying away from it and sticking to what you know best? Let us know in the comments and share your favourite #280Characters reactions with us!

Micro Influencers – What are they and where can you find them?
Fiona Watson

Micro Influencers – What are they and where can you find them?

If you’re unfamiliar with influencer marketing, it is the term used to describe brands using influential individuals to promote their products.

Influencer marketing is fast becoming one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience as consumers are trusting third party recommendations more than traditional outbound marketing efforts.

The term influencers can cover a wide range of people including celebrities, sports stars, bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers and more. However, often when the term influencer is thrown around we think of A-list celebrities with millions of followers and fans.

Yet, brands are increasingly stepping away from the most well-known influencers and looking towards a new type of influencer – the micro influencer.

What is a micro influencer?

A micro influencer is someone with a following of 3,000 – 100,000 – otherwise known as the sweet spot for engagement. Micro influencers are very successful in terms of interaction, engagement and conversation. This is because social media users aren’t as keen to interact with celebrities compared to someone they can relate to and influencer marketing is most effective when the individuals are viewed as peers.

Why you should be using micro influencers

Engaging with micro influencers is the perfect way to promote your brand’s offerings though genuine and authentic content. As their audience is very valuable to them, the micro influencer will only post content they know their audience will want to see and a lot of their success depends on authenticity. As a result, sponsored posts will feel more genuine if they align with the usual style of content posted by that influencer.

Generally, studies have shown that the larger someone’s following is, the lower levels of engagement they received from their followers. Someone with 1,000 to 3,000 followers is likely to receive, on average, 8% post engagement in relation to their followers whereas, someone with between 500,000 and 1,000,000 is more likely to receive 1.7% – 2.4% post engagement on average.

Despite having a smaller following, micro influencers are likely to have a much more engaged, targeted audience because they are more likely to share content related to a particular niche as opposed to just being followed for being ‘them’. Examples of this include travel instagrammers and fitness bloggers. As the user will follow that micro influencer due to their interests, they are much more likely to engage with the content – much more valuable than hundreds of thousands of eyes scanning a post yet not registering it in any way.

Based on this, using micro influencers is proving to be cost effective for brands. Micro influencers generally charge significantly less than an influencer with a much larger following. Therefore, it is likely you will be able to engage with several micro influencers for a fraction of the price of one celebrity, yet see higher engagement and more effective results.

How to find and choose the right influencers for your brand

To find influencers who are right for your brands, the following tips are useful:

  • Use relevant hashtags to find micro influencers who are interested in what your brand offers
  • Research on social media to see who has a large following and is already interacting with your brand
  • Search on Google for influencers in your target area. An example of this could be ‘travel blogger in London’
  • Research the influencer’s audience – are they valuable to your brand?
  • Look for a community or network relevant to the niche that your micro influencer works in. Such as ‘mummy Facebook accounts UK’