Joe Smith wakes up one morning, walks out the front door of his apartment building and takes a selfie with the 3 feet of snow that have piled up on his Toyota Camry. He tweets out the photo with the header "OMG, that is A LOT of snow." He gets a few comments and retweets from friends. An hour later, he arrives at work, logs into Facebook and finds a friend's link to www.theflatteringman.com. It turns out to be a prank website for a "Push Up Muscle Shirt" that is part of an Old Spice viral ad campaign. Joe likes and shares it.
By 11:30 am, Joe can't look at the Excel spreadsheet in front of him without getting cross-eyed, so he logs into LinkedIn, spots Joe Pulizzi's latest post, "Content without Strategy Is Just Stuff ," and sends it off to the other guys in his marketing department. They were just talking over social media strategies the other day, so Joe thinks the article could help the entire group.
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Social media is a tremendous driver for business growth, everybody knows that. But there's this little problem of saturation with this media, or rather, with the Internet itself. There's too much information out there. Too many businesses are trying too hard to be heard, to stand out from the competition. The result? A lot of same ole, everything seems stale, and consumers are in a real danger of ending up desensitized to your efforts.
How do you get more people to check you out online then? Thankfully, we are not out of ideas yet and there's still a lot of novelty out there when it comes to using social media. Here are three excellent ways in which you can beat the crowd, capture the imagination of your target audience, and make the most of your social media presence.
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Content comprises one of three pillars in online marketing with the other two being search and social. Indeed, online content feeds these other two pillars and, according to statistics released by CMO, 20% of the average company's content drives 90% of its web traffic.
This is one reason the landscape has seen such a shift in terms of top brands becoming publishers. The reason for this strong focus on content is simple: increased engagement with the target audience. Over 50% of in-house and agency marketers cite high engagement as one of their top three business objectives, and online content acts as a direct vehicle to engage with customers and prospects.
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Imagine if the entire world was your sales force. Imagine that any time, a potential buyer of your product or services was "in market," one of your current customers told them about you - in a very positive manner. Talk about real-time marketing. What if you had an army of "friends" who were telling their friends about your products and services? Sound too good to be true?
It's already a reality for many big brands that are reaching out to customers who can influence their potential prospects' buying decisions, and they are recruiting them as a lead generation channel. Customers are a great source of leads. So are employees. And so is anyone else who could influence a buyer's decision. Every brand has people that will advocate on their behalf. As we used to say at IBM - "all you have to do is ask".
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Now here's where the power of the press and social media can actually matter. As a follow up to its 4mm ad on the side of Sound & Vision Magazine, LG Norway has posted a 4mm image to its Instagram account with copy that reads, "Slimmer than the phone you are holding. Introducing the world's slimmest OLED TV."
Why is this a case where the power of the press and social media actually matter? Because the LG Nordic Instagram account has just 205 followers...hardly enough to made a dent in sales. But, alas, these stunts are really never about sales. They're all about creatives stretching their minds to dabble in the latest, coolest, hippest stunt so they can put it in their book.
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To promote its all natural lip products on Valentine's Day, Burt's Bees is out with an animated :15 Instagram, created by Raliegh-based Baldwin&.
In a mix of live action and stop motion animation, a handmade paper bumblebee buzzes around a heart-shaped, party balloon flower printed with "Pop Here." When the bee does what bees do, out bursts a shower of petals and Burt's Bees products. The petals form the message, "Give your lips a natural pop of color this Valentine's Day."
Sweet
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Today the interwebs were all a twitter over a video created by Derek Muller, a Sydney-based TV presenter and publisher of the popular science blog, Veritasium.
In the video, Muller clearly and concisely explains why advertising for fans on Facebook is a waste of money and, as well, how it can negatively affect the money you spend to promote your content.
For anyone who has anything at all to do with managing a brand on Facebook, you must watch this video. You owe it to yourself and to the brand(s) you manage to invest in these nine minutes of eye opening insight.
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If the Internet revolutionized the notion of commerce in America, then it was the rise of social media that revolutionized how goods and services are marketed. Yes, not so long ago social media was the next great frontier in marketing. Today, that frontier is all around us.
This notion is hardly lost on modern marketers. However, what is of paramount importance is navigating the ever-shifting landscape of social media to ensure the widest exposure possible. After all, it is only through innovation and staying ahead of the curve that marketers will reach their target demographic across a wide variety of platforms.
And it is indeed a "wide variety." So with that in mind, here are some current trends that look at all areas of social in order to help marketers craft winning strategies.
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Now that 2013 is in the history books, marketers the world over are looking back at the previous year hoping to glean insight into what's to come. And there's certainly a lot to take into account. 2013 was a banner year as far as social media marketing is concerned, with Facebook reigning as supreme as ever. Although the teen demo bailed in record numbers, presumably to newer platforms that mom and dad have yet to discover.
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Social media is a great place for companies to engage consumers (or infuriate them), gain media attention (sometimes the bad type of attention) and promote their brand (or promote boycotting their brand).
Sure, we've all made a mistake or two on social media (just ask Anthony Weiner), but it's a place where brands need to be extra cautious of what they say.
Here are four companies that have made major social media mistakes - and what we can learn from them. Perhaps you've heard of these blunders before but it would seem there can never be enough tutelage in this space.
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