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Social Media
17 (mostly failed) Brand Tweets From The Oscars
- “In the few short weeks between the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards, it seems dozens of brands (and/or their agencies) have decided to “get themselves some of that real-time marketing!” Unfortunately, several brands missed that mark by a mile at this year’s Oscars.”
Comment: There were a lot of eyes on Twitter during the Oscars in the wake of all the buzz about Oreos and others executing spur-of-the-moment marketing during the Super Bowl. This time around there were a lot of brands who had what could be considered “contextual” tweets during the broadcast but very few who rose above that and actually were in-the-moment and reactive to what was going on during the ceremony.
Twitter Hacking Puts Focus on Security for Brands
- “What happened to Burger King — and, a day later, to Jeep — is every brand manager’s nightmare. While many social media platforms began as a way for ordinary users to share vacation photos and status updates, they have now evolved into major advertising vehicles for brands, which can set up accounts free but have to pay for more sophisticated advertising products.”
Comment: An important reminder in the wake of last week’s spate of stories about companies having their Twitter accounts hacked. This provides a good opportunity to get in front of clients and remind or update them about what you’re doing to keep the social networks you manage on their behalf safe or make recommendations on what they can be doing better.
Brands Leverage Influencers’ Reach on Blogs
- “Top brands spend a limited amount of time reaching out to influencers for marketing purposes, but these individuals—generally bloggers or social media users with a greater than average reach among consumers—still have a significant presence in the marketplace. And they are prized by marketers for their ability to spread the word about products or services they believe in. According to a Technorati Media study from December 2012, 65% of top US brands reported participating in influencer marketing.”
Comment: Influencer outreach has evolved significantly since the “wild west” days of 2004/2005. It’s much more organized and involves more than just access to corporate messaging. This evolution has happened at the same time more and more brands become their own publishers, meaning message distribution is no longer a primary goal of such outreach.
Publishing
Publishers push into agency turf
- “But there’s one major hurdle that will continue to hold publishers back as they move into agency territory, and that’s the fact that it’s very, very hard to service both their needs as a publisher and the client’s needs as a marketer. That’s why agencies — objective third parties — played middleman in the first place. Interests aren’t always aligned. A publisher is far more concerned with its own business than those of its brand clients, while to a certain extent, it’s an agency’s job to become the client. A publisher just isn’t as incentivized to serve brands’ interests.
Comment: This “middleman” role is an important one for brands in this brave new world of native advertising, sponsored content or whatever the preferred term might be. They know what the client is trying to do but are also sensitive to the journalist/writer’s concerns. It’s a good time to consider what role, if any, such content can play in your own client’s program and what role you as the agency stakeholder can play.
Study: Brand Engagement Growing on Instagram
- “The number of photos posted by brands has grown slightly since November, but engagement has grown significantly thanks to Facebook, Simply Measured says. 98% of Instagram photos posted by brands are shared to Facebook, resulting in 274 engagements per photo, which is a 30% increase since November.”
Comment: Results, as always, will vary from program to program but it’s worth taking a look at how Instagram may be more regularly worked into your publishing programs and then measure how engagement changes by the type of photo and where it’s distributed.
Media/Journalism
New Cosmo Site Feature Lets Viewers ’WTF’ or ’OMG’ a Story
- “Because Hearst wanted each brand to have its own unique editorial voice, said Madden, each magazine offers a different set of reactions. For instance, Cosmo readers can ”want,” ”OMG” or “WTF” a story, while Marie Claire readers can “want,” “love” or “try” it.”
Comment: It’s a good question to ask from time to time: Are you customizing the experience on your site to match what you know about your readers or are you offering the same set of tools everyone else is? While there’s certainly value in the latter – there’s no confusion or education that’s needed – there’s also lots to be said about the former since it makes your site feel unique, something that can lead visitors to feel they’re part of something interesting and special.
We Are All Huffington Post Now
- Two years ago, the Huffington Post published a story called “What Time Does the Super Bowl Start?” which generated lots of clicks from regular Web-surfers, and eye-rolling from people like me. Now that kind of Google-baiting is old hat. Even for august newspapers with 41 Pulitzers. “
Comment: This is neither surprising nor something that is necessarily bad. For as much heat as HuffPo and others have taken for various practices, including over-aggregating content without appropriate attribution or credit, there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from their practices. As long as they’re above board and don’t dip into black-hat territory there’s little wrong with any other publisher or media company implementing those practices.
Customer Support / Service
Social Interactions Affect Brand Perception
- “Among highly satisfied consumers, 87% said their online interaction with the company “positively impacted” their likelihood of purchase from that company. Meanwhile, 10% of consumers with low satisfaction scores said their experiences with a company’s social communications “negatively impacted” their likelihood of purchase.”
Comment: This is a big reminder to not only be publishing on Twitter and other networks but to be engaging and responsive to the people talking to you. That doesn’t mean, as has been said before, that you need to be responding to everything, but you need to be looking out for potential pain points and, if possible, nipping them in the bud.
B2B
Dell taps social for B2B gains
- “At Dell, social media gives a bigger boost to its business-to-business (B2B) sales than business-to-consumers (B2C) because social platforms are key to generating conversation, engagement, and authenticity–components which are necessary in developing long-term business relationships.”
Comment: Interesting that the executive quoted in the story says this is largely because of the “transactional, short-term” relationships that are built on social networks. There’s also lots of good stuff here about how Dell’s social program has evolved over the years into something they can much more accurately predict the outcomes of.
Why Online Video Is Vital For Your 2013 Content Marketing Objectives
- “The web trending towards video is made obvious by much more than the example above. After all, YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. This may lead you to the conclusion that we simply don’t like to read anymore. But the video preference situation we’re witnessing is much more detailed than that.”
Comment: Video is beating out white papers and other tactics as a lead generation engine according to this study, mostly because of the more human connection that watching a video creates as opposed to reading a document.