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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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Spirit Brands Drinking The Social Video “Kool-Aid”

In Social Media on 02/04/2012 at 5:35 pm

Consumers are bombarded with messages every day. To cut through the clutter, marketers need to shift online engagement from interruption to engagement—in the digital world it‘s about entering the conversation. With the shift in control from marketers to consumers, choice-based video (also known as social video) becomes even more important—consumers no longer want to be forced to watch a commercial, they want to decide how, when, and what they want to watch.

According to YouTube, 70% of viewers would abandon a video if it were to carry pre-roll, as opposed to a social video campaign in which viewers are encouraged by trusted sources to watch. In the past year, spirit brands like Heineken and Calsberg have recognized the importance of choice-based video and are investing more and more heavily in this fast-growing space. So how much is social video growing? Well, in 2010, users shared the top 20 video ads 5.3 million times. In 2011, the figure spiked to 24.5 million.

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Unruly media reports that the average social video ad spend for US spirit brand media buys has been between $100K and $500K over the course of 30-60 days. Currently, Heineken is dominating the choice-based video space, increasing its choice-based video ad spend by 25% in less than a year (between Q4 2010 and Q3 2011). According to Unruly Media, one of Heineken‘s primary social video distribution partners, Heineken tests their creative online and applies learnings from their social video campaigns to create the TV spot.

Spirit brands in general are seeing improved performance of online video when it is based on choice vs. forced, and generates earned media impressions and shares that translate into additional free views. Choice-based social video ads typically see 300%to 450% brand lift to pre-roll ads. In addition, on average, the brand trust increases by 30% because of increased sharing and organic spread, greatly increasing brand engagement by 50%.

How is social video different than pre-roll video? 

  • Qualified views from your target audience: click-to-play, users are choosing to watch and engage with your content as opposed to a forced view
  • Contextually relevant environments: Social video is usually in-page or within editorials due to its relevancy among the site‘s audience where pre-roll is not seen as content
  • Sharing capabilities: Social video offers sharing in a variety of ways to all social platforms, where pre-roll offers none
  • Insights: Social Video offers transparency and reporting on earned/organic activity in addition to paid media
  • Viral uplift: Social seeding is used to build brand awareness and increase web traffic, engagement and, ultimately, sales where pre-roll is strictly awareness

With the Super Bowl and presidential election coming up, social video is inevitably going to grow even more. According to Unruly Media, the potential market opportunity for social videos could reach $100 billion in 10 years.

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2012 Social Media Marketing Predictions

In Social Media on 12/17/2011 at 2:02 pm

Data is the new black. Today, brands have access to vast amounts of consumer insight that would have seemed inconceivable as recently as a year ago.  Yet, brands have barely scratched the surface in terms of how they harness this data and effectively reach consumers over social media.  2012 will be the year of the social enlightenment, and we’ve identified a small list of emerging trends in the social media marketing space:

More Social and Local Mobile Marketing – “SoLoMo” is a new term being coined to describe the future of mobile marketing, which will be intertwined with social and location-based marketing.  SoLoMo will prevail in existing geo-social apps like Foursquare, Shopkick and Yelp.  Social buying (e.g., Groupon and LivingSocial) will become more app-focused and provide real-time alerts on local deals.  Brands will move beyond virtual badges and begin offering real-life rewards.  Messaging will become more relevant by exploiting location-based targeting and embedding social content/shareability.  With Facebook’s recent announcement that it will be testing mobile ads in spring of 2012 and the social giant’s acquisition of location-based social network, Gowalla, the likelihood of “SoLoMo” rings truer.    

Social Intelligence Becomes More Critical – Social media is now mainstream and brands finally no longer see it as an experiment—it is now an accepted and effective business strategy.  According to a report by Useful Social Media, 12% of the companies surveyed claimed that social media was under the direct control of the CEO.  With that said, there is certainly increased pressure on corporate social media practitioners to deliver on investment: There’s an ever more pressing need to demonstrate ROI, along with progress against other crucial KPIs.  In 2012, we will see more and more brands deploying social intelligence to inform their overall brand strategy, media planning, and ad creative across both online and offline projects. Insights will make a tremendous and lasting impact on marketing budget allocation throughout the year and into 2013.

Social TV Convergence – Today, television viewers are flocking to the digital water cooler to discuss their favorite shows and reality TV stars—and they are engaging in these conversations across multiple second screen devices.  In 2012, these social activities across smart phones, tablets, laptops, and gaming devices will converge and become integrated with our TV sets.  The future of interactive entertainment has three key attributes: It will be personal, connected, and social.  This convergence will lead to a more personal TV experience, providing viewers with recommendations on new content that they will love.  With companies like Samsung and LG developing new products featuring built-in Google TV, viewers’ experiences will also become more connected, as they’ll be able to enjoy TV shows anywhere, no matter where they are or what device or screen is in front of them.  Finally, the TV experience will become more social as an influx of TVs will have social design ‘baked in,’ giving consumers access to programming based on what their friends are watching, what their interest graphs indicate that they will find appealing, and even what mood they tend to be in at certain times of the day.  This will be an incredibly powerful capability for the media industry. 

Brand APIs  – In 2012, at least one brand will release an open API that will allow consumers to develop branded applications and games at scale with minimal investment.  With the growing application developer talent, the possibilities for brands will become limitless, and some of the smartest brands will start taking advantage and push for the creation of the most fascinating applications beyond our imagination.  This brand will create value in the form of content and utility and distribute it via platforms that extend in reach beyond proprietary channels.  For instance, a company like Safeway could use that API to create its own app tied to its grocery delivery service. Customers could have all of the ingredients in a selected recipe delivered to their front door.

Brands will continue to forge new ground in 2012, and the ones who will integrate social media into their media mix will rise to the top. 

 

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The Sky Is the Limit for Innovation

In Social Media on 11/19/2011 at 11:36 pm

Major airlines have increasingly adopted social media to keep up with younger, higher-income, and more tech-savvy consumers, who are the most frequent users of sites such as YouTube and Facebook, and the earliest adopters of new mobile location–based concepts.  Some of the most cutting-edge innovations in social media marketing have emerged from the smaller carriers that struggle most to be noticed.

Here are some of the most-innovative social media marketing campaigns in the airline industry:

Virgin Atlantic keeps its Facebook page fun and entertaining.  Last week, Virgin partnered with Facebook to launch its very first global social media marathon involving Virgin groups in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, engaging with millions of fans worldwide.  As part of the marathon initiative, Virgin launched a Facebook app called ‘First Times,’ which highlights Facebook “firsts” with friends, such as one’s first post, first tagged photo, first event, among many others.  The friend a user selected for their “firsts” will then be notified and a collage of information created via the app will be dropped in to the creator’s “Virgin First Times” photo album and the friend’s Facebook wall.  Virgin offered various prizes to fans through Facebook on every hour of the social marathon, ranging from flights and getaways to various Virgin merchandise.

Southwest’s strategy is to use social media to listen to its customers and then interact in a way that’s personal. Southwest instructs team members who post on Facebook to sign their names, effectively putting a real face on the brand. The airline encourages localization, with 20 different Facebook pages covering specific Southwest airport operations groups. Southwest also reaches out specifically to opinion leaders, including travel bloggers, brand fanatics, and avid travelers. To involve its own employees in the social media experience, Southwest sponsors an internal social media club. It also organized a social media conference in January 2011 that offered training on content creation for contributors throughout the organization.

In January 2011, Airlinetrends.com highlighted the creative use of social media by Air New Zealand, which allows users to upload their own videos to the airline’s YouTube channel, and then shows selected videos on flights. The company also leverages social location service FourSquare, offering passes to its elite lounge to users who become the “mayor” to certain airports and terminals.

The approach of larger major airlines toward social media has been more conventional, which is in line with what major corporations in other industries have done (eg, Facebook fan pages). However, in 2010, Delta became the first airline to allow travelers to book tickets entirely through Facebook. Without ever leaving the Facebook site, users can simply select “Book a trip” from a menu of options on Delta’s Facebook fan page.  From there, they are redirected to Delta’s Facebook application, creating a seamless experience for users who consider Facebook a home base for web surfing.

The sky is the limit for innovation in the airline industry.  Most recently, Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport announced that they will now allow passenger check in via Skype video call.  It is exciting to see how far the airline brands will fly in the social media space.

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The Social Nature of Human Beings + Sharing 2.0

In Digital Media, Social Media on 09/10/2011 at 5:37 pm

Social context shapes the human behavior and sharing information is innate to who we are.  We’ve been sharing information for centuries as a means to communicate, entertain, and pass on our cultural values from generation to generation. Today, as we are no longer bound by the physical realm (pencil and paper), the Information Age allows us to share more content, more often with more people, and more quickly.

In order to understand and take advantage of the two-way dialogue between brands and consumers today’s social media technologies enable, it is crucial to understand why people share, the different personas of online sharing, and most importantly, how we, marketers, can influence this sharing of information and generate earned media about our brands and products.

A recent three-phase study, titled “The Psychology of Sharing,” published by The New York Times Customer Insights Group explores the answers to these very questions.

Why do people share?

  • to bring valuable and entertaining content to others
  • to define ourselves to others
  • to grow and nourish relationships
  • for self-fulfillment
  • to market causes or brands

Six personas of online sharing: 

Altruists are helpful, reliable, and thoughtful.  Many altruists stay connected with email and pass along information in attachments and links. 

Careerists are intelligent web users who have been quick to see the immense value of social networking.  Careerists use websites like LinkedIn and FaceBook to build professional profiles and relationships. 

Hipsters are young, popular, creative, and prefer the cutting edge of technology.  They’re less likely to email, opting for newer, quicker methods of communication, like text, Twitter or Skype message.

Boomerangs share content for validation and reaction.  Empowered with information, Boomerangs use social websites like Twitter and Facebook to post thoughtful questions and comments to engage other users.

Connectors are creative, thoughtful, and relaxed.  They are likely to make plans via email and Facebook, hook up online discounts, and take advantage of freebies and promotions. 

Selectives are resourceful, thoughtful, and careful about the information they share.  Someone who is a Selective sharer may prefer to send an email or private message to communicate, rather than a social update or post.  These intelligent sharers understand the permanence of everything posted to the web, knowing that every message is indexed, even if you delete it or move it to your desktop trash bin.

Key factors to influence sharing:

If you appeal to the motivation to connect with each other — not with just your brand — you will encourage sharing.  Here are some tips to remember when soliciting replies, posts, or other online content. 

  • keep it simple
  • have a sense of humor
  • create a sense of urgency

Once you determine what online sharer persona your target audience is and understand what and why they share information, you can create more relevant and appealing content that will inspire ongoing sharing and word-of-mouth buzz.

Download the complete study here.

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Making Strides in the Social TV Space

In Social Media on 08/09/2011 at 10:15 pm

TV is inherently a social medium—people gathered around the water cooler for ages to discuss last night’s television program. Now, this behavior has shifted to the digital world where people are discussing TV programs in real-time, across social media environments such as Twitter and Facebook, and within mobile environments like the social TV check-in apps, GetGlue, IntoNow, Miso and Philo. Social TV is still in its infancy—the television industry is striving to learn how social media conversations can inspire tune-in and affect ratings, and how they can monetize their social audiences.

However, a couple of TV-specific listening tools are emerging such as Bluefin Signals and Social Guide that are curating social media conversations amongst TV viewers, allowing brands to learn more about their viewers and how they are engaging with the network. Interestingly enough, the conversations across social media environments mirror actual TV ratings. For example, this season’s premiere of the Jersey Shore ranked in 9.7 million viewers while also dominating 62% of total TV mentions within social media environments, including 912,055 Twitter mentions, 51,507 on Facebook, 10,250 check-ins on GetGlue and 357 on Miso—more than all the other prime time shows.

What were the top 5 programs that TV viewers talked about in July 2011 across the social media sphere?

The Social Guide identifies Family Guy, SpongeBob Square Pants, Basketball Wives, Maury, and the Jersey Shore as the top five programs in the month of July that boasted the highest number of shares, unique followers and comments. You can also discover the top social shows in real-time, who your top social fans are in real-time, or for the past 7 or 30 days.

Although the social TV partners do not have answers to some of the questions the brands are asking, many are dabbling around with interesting and innovative offerings, not just for entertainment-based shows but also for CPG brands. For example, IntoNow partnered with Pepsi, allowing the first 500 potential consumers to tag Pepsi Max’s commercial and redeem a free Pepsi bottle at their local Target or CVS. In addition, LocalResponse’s recent acquisition of social TV check-in company, Philo, will allow local businesses to target responses to people who are watching similar content on TV, matching promotions to viewing behavior. Xbox, too, is forging ahead at connecting viewers to commercials in innovative ways. Xbox recently announced a new way for advertisers to target interactive experiences at consumers via voice and motion interactivity— called NUads — for users with the Kinect attachment. This technology will allow users to send reminders to their phones of their favorite shows by simply saying, “Xbox Schedule,” or to vote for their favorite American Idol contestant by simply waving their hand in front of the screen.

What Social TV developments are you most interested in?

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Beyond Search: Promoted Tweets Arrive to Users’ Timeline

In Social Media on 07/10/2011 at 10:36 pm

If you’re an avid Twitter user, you probably know how fast-paced Twitter is and have looked into several third-party apps like Tweetdeck to help you organize your tweets and keep up with your followers.  As a marketer, you more than likely asked yourself how many of your followers actually see all of your tweets.

Here is where the new Promoted Tweets come in, but first, let’s  briefly review the history of this paid Twitter offering.  Twitter first introduced Promoted Tweets, tweets called out at the top of Twitter.com search results, last April with ten select partners.  Up until now, Promoted Tweets  have heavily relied on Twitter’s search volume, which was relatively low, and did not generate nearly as many impressions as Promoted Trends that serve as a 24-hour roadblock. 

To provide more visibility to Promoted Tweets, Twitter is introducing Promoted Tweets in users’ timeline as BETA at the end of this month, available to a select few advertisers, including HBO and Discovery Channel.  The new offering is expected to roll out to the community at large in September. 

What does this mean for marketers?

Similar to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, Promoted Tweets in users’ timeline (or as Twitter calls them, “Promoted Tweets to Followers”) will surface branded tweets to the top of the user’s timeline in order to ensure that your followers catch a glimpse of the message in a fast moving pace of Twitter.  Moving selected tweets to the top of your handle’s timeline will help optimize engagement with your brand’s most compelling and important messaging. 

If the brand is interested in geo-targeting its paid tweets, then the regular Promoted Tweets are the way to go, but if the brand wants to reengage their followers, the Promoted Tweets to followers/within the users’ timeline, work best.

How does it work?

The Promoted Tweets will appear at or near the top of the followers’ timelines based on relevance and resonance, and like with any Promoted Tweet, advertisers pay only when a follower engages (i.e. retweets, favorites, or replies at).  The number of Promoted Tweets that will appear in a follower’s timeline will be limited.  Consumers will never see an organic Tweet and the Promoted version of that Tweet in their timeline at the same time.  Like the regular Promoted Tweet product, the new offering is an auction-based CPE (cost-per-engagement) model. 

 If you’d like to learn more about the new Promoted Tweets or any of Twitter’s promoted products, let us know.

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Key Takeaways from the 140 Character Conference

In Social Media on 06/16/2011 at 9:57 pm

The two-day 140 Character Conference just wrapped up! Amazing speakers from all walks of life, from CMOs, startup CEOs and news anchors/producers to ex-convicts, musicians, lawyers, daddy bloggers, the homeless, and educators, have all graced the stage at 92Y.  The reoccurring themes at this year’s conference included crowdsourcing, social good, authenticity, innovation and transmedia. I’ve compiled key marketing-related takeaways (each) in 140 characters or less:

  • Customer Engagement
    • Two-way conversation and authenticity are crucial in being successful in social media
    • Engaging customers in physical activities engages 60% of the brain, not just 10%
    • Scale relationships, not audiences
    • It’s not about you, it’s about them. Start talking to customers who love you & learn about them, & they’re more likely to listen
    • Playboy’s key to success in social media is exclusivity! They use social to provide an inside look at Playboy, feedback, and more
    • Consumers will purchase from companies who invest more in customer engagement
    • Emotionally relevant content creates customer engagement
    • Engaging consumers with content is no longer enough; creating intimate relationships is more important now
    • Brands must have an open mind and share things about the brand with consumers in order to impact their decisions
  • Customer Service
    • Customer service is all you got. You have to learn about the likes and dislikes of your customers and cater to that
    • 68% of Turbo Tax customers are more likely to complete their taxes after getting help from their Twitter handle
    • Only 10% have heard from the brand after remarking on negative shopping experience
  • Location-based Networks
    • Foursquare is still trying to answer the question, “How can Foursquare can be used with consumer brands?”
    • Foursquare hints that the location-based network will begin experimenting with daily deals
    • The future in 4sq is unlocking real tangible goods based on influence with masses
    • What’s the worth of badges on 4sq? Having social media icons on billboards? Ridiculous! So what if you’re on FB? So is everyone
  • Social TV
    • 56% use the Internet when they watch TV, 40% use social networks
    • It’s nice to have Facebook fans, Twitter followers, but if that does not translate into viewers and Nielsen ratings, nothing matters.
    • There are roughly 1.65 billion likes on tv shows
  • Internal organization
    • Brands need to be openly organized and invest in their own employees–the cheapest media you can buy

Fun stats:

  • 40% have remarked on negative shopping experiences while 46% remarked positive experiences, 18% used Facebook, 8% use Twitter
  • Facebook reaches 73% of the US online population per month

Great quotes:

“Be one thing. Let your cause be one thing, one story and let people share that one thing” – @lizstrauss

“You want your ‘onlinelity,” personality and your brand to be cohesive.” – @alissasheley

“Don’t be honking just to honk; ask yourselves what you can be initiator of, the father of the big idea” – @themarketingguy

“We need a different kind of CMO now, not a chief of marketing officer, but like Seth Godin says, ‘a chief movement officer’” – @hankwasiak

“We used to buy consumers’ eyeballs, now we are buying consumers’ minds, souls & friendships.” – @hankwasiak

“Top 100 people on Twitter are TV! Producing compelling content on Twitter is not enough!” – @tijuanajackson

You can catch more information on the #140conf by following me on Twitter @irinaskaya

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Twitter Wins the Super Bowl Game Again!

In Social Media on 02/13/2011 at 4:34 pm

For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl with 162.9 million people watching has set a record for American television viewing.  Not only was this year’s game the most-watched television event in history, but it also broke a Twitter record with 4,064 tweets per second during the final moments of the game.  That’s a whopping 243,840 tweets per minute!

Twitter is the new online water cooler that plays a huge role in promoting events and television premieres as well as keeping people tuned in.  Advertisers now have a real opportunity to engage their viewers during live TV and retain them for future television events as they turn to the second screen to express their likes or frustrations.  Super Bowl advertiser, CareerBuilder, leveraged organically trending topics by incorporating popular hashtag #brandbowl into their promoted tweets in order to increase visibility and buzz around their commercial.

Last month, eMarketer released a study that predicted 14% of Internet users (32,466,000) in the US would post updates and/or photos about the game on social networks, including Twitter, this year.  Those who consume online media rather than create it, spent Super Bowl Sunday monitoring stats or news related to the game, watching the ads, visiting Websites of Super Bowl advertisers, researching past Super Bowl games, and buying game memorabilia.

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Marketing on Twitter with Delta Airlines and Edge Shaving Gel

In Social Media on 02/13/2011 at 4:22 pm

Twitter is approaching the 200 million mark in active users, 32 million of whom are U.S. based.  The micro-blog giant has become a branding tool for marketers used to inform followers of upcoming promotions, company events and news, or another means to manage PR crisis, provide customer service, or simply learn more about their customers.

Despite what the objective of your Twitter marketing is, the community management on this social network begins with a content strategy.  The number one reason that US Twitter users stopped following brands last year was because the branded content became repetitive or boring over time (eMarketer, April 2010).  Content is king on Twitter! And now there is even more pressure on brands to produce relevant, new and exciting content that will humanize the brand and resonate with the followers.

There are at least two brands that come to mind when we think of great examples of humanizing the brand on Twitter. It’s obvious that both Both Delta Airlines and Edge Shaving Gel have a plan in place that involves interaction with the customer besides just consuming their product or service.  These two brands are knocking the ball out of the park when it comes to customer engagement.

Delta Airlines leverages Twitter to deliver superior customer service and manage customer complaints.  Recognizing the shift in control from brands to customers with the advent of social media, Delta dissolves customer complaints by allowing passengers to skip the long check-in lines and rebook their flights or report lost luggage on Twitter.

Edge Shaving Gel launched an “Anti-Irritation” social media campaign back in September.  As part of this campaign, the brand seeks and responds to tweets expressing irritation, much with Edge’s #soirritating hashtag.  The brand solves Twitter users’ irritations by giving away pricey iPads and computers as well as YouTube videos.

What brands do you think have elevated Twitter campaigns to the next magnitude?

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Social Media Experienced Strong Growth in 2010

In Social Media on 01/16/2011 at 2:02 pm

When consumers need to find solutions, they actively seek content to find answers to their problems. It’s content that supplies those answers, in the form of text, video, audio, and social media – and consumers have almost unlimited ways to get that content. The difference today is that consumers are finding those answers coming from their peers, favorite brands and the media.

Everyone is a media company. Everyone is a publisher. If you publish online content to a blog, a microblog (Twitter), a social network, or a photo- or video-sharing site like YouTube and Flickr, you are a publisher. Today there are billion pieces of content all over the Internet. A recently released Royal Pingdom “Internet in 2010 in numbers” report demonstrates social content publishing continues to grow at a fast pace. Here are the latest social media growth numbers:

  • 152 million – the number of blogs on the Internet
  • 25 billion – the number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
  • 175 million – people on Twitter as of September 2010
  • 600 million – people on Facebook at the end of 2010
  • 30 billion – pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month
  • 2 billion – the number of videos watched per day on YouTube
  • 35 – hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
  • 186 – the number of online videos the average U.S. Internet user watches per month
  • 5 billion – photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010)

Read the complete report.

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