Posts Tagged ‘ Social Media ’

Marketing 2.0: Ad Smarketing

Marketing has come a long way from the days of the ever-so relatable Joe Camel. Gone is Joe, and so too are the cigarette ads, now a new player is in town: Facebook.

Marketing has finally come to the people. Egocentric marketers, whom really have no relation, nor understanding of their target audience, save for a few Nielson test group results, no longer dictate what is successful and what is not.

Now the people, the consumers, and even the Facebook-stalkers hold the key to a successful marketing plan – public opinion finally matters. On the Internet, things are not broadcasted en masse, marketing as a whole has become very demographic-specific. It is now possible to reach a group of unwed, white, 16-19 year old girls in the mid-west with great accuracy.

Today, Neilson released a special report entitled “Advertising Effectiveness: understanding the value of Social Media impressions.” This 12-page report is the result of six months of research consisting of surveys of over 800,000 Facebook users, 125 Facebook advertising campaigns and 70 brand advertisers.

The study concluded that there are two types of impressions in social media marketing (smarketing): paid impressions, and ‘earned’ or ‘organic’ impressions. These impressions are garnered from three sources: Homepage Ads, Homepage Ads with social media context and organic impressions. Of course, my favorite is the organic impression (duh).

What are ‘organic impressions’?

These are impressions that are a direct referral from a consumer; it is word-of-mouth 2.0, if you will (e.g., “Joshua Plant Became a Fan of Twitter”). These impressions have the least reach, but have the most impact.

Organic impressions nearly quadruple a campaign’s effectiveness across the board, when compared to a conventional Homepage Ad. According to Nielsen’s BrandLift research, purchase intent was merely 2% with Homepage Ad exposure, compared to 8% with Homepage Ad exposure with organic impressions. Similarly, ad recall’s numbers jumped from 10% to 30% when organic impressions were added to the mix.

It is evident that the key to effective marketing is to include interactive elements within the ad creative, such as a “become a fan” button or a “follow us on twitter” link, something that engages the consumer and allows them to broadcast their recent ‘fan-hood’ of a particular product or service to their audience (i.e. friends). Generally, this leads to a sudden bombardment of new “fans.” Even the chattiest of chatty Kathys could not spread news of a great thing as fast as residual organic impressions can.

The hardest part is that one cannot buy organic impressions, or force something into the viral market. The only way to do this is by offering a great product, targeted campaigning and brand integrity.

Social advertising is simply the beginning of Smarketing, community building is the next crucial building block in your foundation, but I will touch more on that in a later post.

2010
06/15
CATEGORY
Facebook
In The News
Social Media
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Twitter Tips & Tricks

Don't be a fail whale!

Know your audience:

Understand that you are creating a brand when using twitter – you are marketing yourself in 140 characters or less. Your tweets should be consistent with your brand or else it will be more difficult to gain followers. So, if your beat is social media, tweet about relevant things in social media, not your breakfast.

Know the key tweeps in your community:

Search for the top people in your community and follow them. If you do not know where to begin, use services such as listorious.com or wefollow.com to find the most influential tweeps.

Tweet often (3-6 times a day):

But don’t tweet “I’m at the pharmacy” that’s for FourSquare. Tweet about relevant and noteworthy things. If you have nothing to say, read other people’s tweets and retweet it.

EX: “Great twitter tips and tricks by @joshmplant [link]”

Follow back!

Unless you can bring the audience from your already established fame, you need to get yourself out there. Think of it this way, if I am following x, x, and x and they are the top in my community; people will flock to see who they are following and who is following them.

The more people you follow the more you increase your likelihood to be seen. However, a caveat to note is that if you are ‘upside down’ (you follow more people than follow you) be cognizant of the gap. It looks bad if you follow 900 people and only 200 are following you.

Lists:

If you are following several hundred (or even thousands) of tweeps, create lists to help organize your tweeps. This way you can stay in touch and on top of the conversation without having to weed through a bunch of tweets.

You can regionalize, categorize, alphabetize, or whatever to your lists, it is up to you. But, keep in mind that other people may follow your lists, so try and have some order to them, so you can gain list followers too.

Say thank you!

If people are following you, thank them. Especially thank them if they retweet, @mention or #FollowFriday you.

# FollowFriday (#FF):

Participate in #FF. Every Friday the top trending topic will be #FF, this is because every Friday millions of tweeps recommend their favorite tweeps to their audience. This is a great opportunity to meet new tweeps and see who’s hot!

When you do #FF, make sure you are following the people you are #FFing. How can you recommend them as a great tweep, if you yourself do not follow them?

Interact:

Find tweeps you like. It is important who you follow, but it is also important to like who you follow. If you are a bleeding-heart liberal, chances are that you are not going to follow Ann Coulter, let’s be real here.

Do not just follow: @ and DM the people you like. Join the conversation with ‘@replies’ and retweets. (NB: you can only DM your followers)

Lurking isn’t going to build your twitter presence. If you go on twitter (or any social networking site) with the expectation that people will find you and that you do not need to interact with your community, you are wrong. Think of it like a small town. No one likes the woman who sits in her living room gazing nosily at the neighbors without saying a word… she’s creepy and so are you.

More twitter tips & tricks soon! Be sure to follow me on twitter (@JoshMPlant) for the latest blog entries, articles and favs!

2010
06/13
CATEGORY
Social Media
Twitter
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Facebook: A place for revenue

Facebook board member, Marc Andreessen projected that Facebook would top $500 million in revenue for 2009; also, eluding that it could very well become a billion-dollar company within the year.

Namely, the reason for this sudden jump in revenue is because of Facebook’s transition into Social Ads over banner ads. These new ads target users with keywords in their status messages, profiles, etc, and gives the users the ability to “like” or “dislike” an ad; ergo, creating more precisely targeted ads to Facebook patrons.

A secondary source of income came from their “engagement ads,” which are ads with which users can interact, comment or send as a “gift” to their friends. Different companies sponsor these “gifts”, or users can pay for other more generic “gifts” – creating a virtual world of chatkas and sentimental gifts.

Facebook has really become the thought leader and innovator of advertising through social media, and they are one of the first social media networks to really figure out how to turn a [dot]com into a profitable and self-sustaining machine.

Because of this, and many other solid and profitable tools that Facebook has developed they “are definitely in no rush” for an IPO. “If you don’t need that capital, then all the pressures are different, and the motivations (to go public) are not there in the same way,” said the 25-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

And Zuckerberg is certainly under no pressure to raise outside capital, since they just turned $1 billion in revenue, last year; up $500 million from Andreessen’s estimates.

Facebook certainly has a solid chance of turning into the next Google-esque cash cow. Time to start buying up some private shares!!

2010
03/04
CATEGORY
Facebook
In The News
Social Media
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Social News: Chile’s Earthquake Shakes Up Social Media

On February 27, 2010, just outside of Chile’s second-largest city, Concepción, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake devastated the area. It wasn’t long thereafter, that social media was feeling the aftershocks.

First, it was Twitter: Because of twitter’s accessibility via text message, many locals were updating their twitter pages in an effort to tell others that they were okay and safe. Other users were using it to get in contact with locals to try and find loved ones. Twitter instantly became a back and forth of information about those affected.

Hashtags such as, “#terremotochile,” “#Chile,” “#ChileEarthquake” were being used to centralize tweets about the quake. Many users were retweeting missing persons tweets, in an effort to reach more people in the Concepción area.

@SherylBreuker, in particular, tweeted “Any info on Maria Alicia Moya, please update http://tinyurl.com/yfjtzed or contact @kencamp or @sherylbreuker ASAP #chile #quake.” It wasn’t long after, that Maria was found and @sherylbreuker tweeted “we just got word that Mariali is safe and ok thanks to an amazing new friend and the power of Twitter! OMG! Awesome!!!!” This is just one instance of how social media helped connect people.

Another is Google’s Person Finder app, which was used in Haiti in January after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Port-Au-Prince, was relaunched for the relief effort in Chile. The app gives up-to-the-minute information about nearly 63,400 records to those providing (or seeking) information about those affected by the earthquake. Although the information is not verified, it still provides a resource for families and friends to find missing loved ones faster than an agency could.

It works simply by providing the user with two buttons, “I’m looking for someone” and “I have information about someone.” The user selects which one and enters the information accordingly. It also provides a map pinpointing aftershocks.

(Credit: Google)

To some, social media is a stupid time-suck, but in times of crisis, it saves lives, helps connect loved ones and keeps people better informed at a faster rate than mainstream media outlets.

Text your support:

1. Text the word “CHILE” to 25383 to donate $10 on behalf of the Habitat for Humanity

2. Text the word “CHILE” to 20222 to donate $10 on behalf of World Vision

3. Text the word “CHILE” to 52000 to donate $10 on behalf of the Salvation Army

4. Text the word “CHILE” to 85944 to donate $10 on behalf of International Medical Corp.

2010
03/02
CATEGORY
In The News
Social Media
Twitter
Uncategorized
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