(c) Can Stock Photo
The coming surge of paid social media
Seriously, I’ve done 40 of these wraps? As always, this week’s wrap presents some news from the previous seven days that might have slid by your newsfeeds unseen. I collect links for consideration for the Wrap (as well as my weekly podcast in a link blog at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com”. You’re welcome to subscribe to stay current on even more good stuff that may have been under your radar.
Promoted tweets and native ads “have done the impossible,” according to Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes; they have made advertising a bit more tolerable. The proof is in the numbers, Holmes writes in a Forbes piece: While banner ads are clicked on only 0.2% of the time, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets are up to 15 times more effective, drawing engagement rates of 1-3%. That may not sound like much, but it would make a direct mail marketer all teary-eyed. Holmes says the best native ads (whether on Twitter or Facebook) are created from actual tweets and updates posted by real people. They have “already proven themselves witty, worthy and shareable on Twitter.” The ads are also targeted effectively to their audiences. “Tweets can be targeted by country and city, gender and even device. If so inclined, a brand could blast out a Promoted Tweet to female Blackberry users in Tanzania whose interests include enterprise software and college basketball.” Then there’s native advertising’s agility (do we need to dredge up the speed with which Oreo’s Promoted Tweet led Super Bowl viewers to its lights-out ad?).
Pinning with purpose
When a shiny object enraptures marketers, they tend to embrace it as quickly as a fish surges after a lure. Pinterest is a prime example, with a lot of brand pinboards bursting with whatever images they could find to share. A little thinking before pinning can go a long way. Steve Sherfy shares one such example on ClickZ. Sherfy’s wife wanted to do some decorating with poster-sized photos of their children but the cost was prohibitive. Until, that is, she found the solution pinned to a Pinterest board. It turns out the solution was pinned by the owner of a small office supply company in order to drive traffic to the store. While Sherfy doesn’t live near the company—she bought the required supplies from a national office supply chain—the lesson is a good one. As Sherfy writes, “Social media and brand managers, regardless of company size, should examine now only how their products and services are supposed to be used, but also how they could be used and how consumers are utilizing them. For example, does Procter & gamble know that Downey is also used to strip wallpapeer? A pin explaining the steps to do so could be helpfulf for sales.”
Instagram is driving brand engagement
While a lot of marketers throw their hands up in dismay at the idea of adding Instagram as yet another social account to manage, the brands that have embraced the photo-sharing service are experiencing hefty bumps in engagement. The 59 of the top 100 brands with accounts have seen 35% of the pictures they’ve shared get an average of 4,800 likes, comments, tweets and Facebook shares, according to Lisa Lacy writing for ClickZ. The results of Simply Measured’s report comes as Instagram surpasses 100 million monthly active users. The Interbrand Top 100 brands using Instagram include the likes of Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM and Google, which added more than 1.6 million followers between November and January. Along with Pinterest, Instagram grew at the fastest rates among social networks, around 10%. Much of the improved engagement can be attributed to Facebook, since the vast majority of photos shared on Instagram are automatically also posted to the brands’ Facebook pages. A Simply Measured spokesperson said that the Instagram-Facebook integration “has allowed users to have photos they ‘like’ appear in their Facebook feeds. The result has been a continued increase in per-post engagement and a greater share of brand photos posted to Facebook.” On the other hand, engagement with photos shared to Twitter has dropped a bit, thanks to Instagram dropping integration with Twitter cards, which let brands “attach media experiences to tweets that link to their content.”
Termination transparency
As a corporate communicator, I have grinned and borne it when instructed to write one of those grimace-inducing press releases announcing that a senior executive has left the company to “pursue other interests” or “spend more time with his family.” Everyone knows these are code phrases for “he was canned,” but nobody seems to have the courage to say so. Until yesterday, that is, when Groupon CEO Andrew Mason sent a memo to employees that was refreshingly transparent and honest. “I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family,” he wrote, but immediately added, “Just kidding—I was fired today. If you’re wondering why…you haven’t been paying attention.” He goes on to detail the performance metrics that led to his firing, explaining, “As CEO, I am accountable.” The entire memo appears in a Nicholas Carlson recap on Business Insider. If you write those mealy-mouthed “pursue other interest” releases, keep a copy of Mason’s heartfelt memo handy to share with your bosses just to prove that honesty can actually work in a corporate communication.
Facebook Graph Search SEO
As soon as Facebook unveiled its Graph Search (to which I still don’t have access; how about you?), a flood of posts appeared talking about search engine optimization for the new social search utility. Graph Search will let you make connections between people, places and things that haven’t been possible before on Facebook (or on Google or any other search engine, for that matter). Using data that contains vast amounts of information about members, the utility will let you find, for example, PR agency employees who live in Chicago and like Chinese food. So it makes sense that brands will want their pages to appear in relevant search results, especially since Facebook has made it harder for brand page status updates to find their way into users’ news feeds. this week, Social Media Examiner has done what it does so well: Publish a comprehensive guide to Graph Search SEO. If you maintain a brand page on Facebook, this is the step-by-step guide to bookmark.
Podcasting: the marketing tool you’re probably not using (but should)
I’ll disclose right up front that I’m biased. When my colleague Neville Hobson and I began our podcast, there were about 400 podcasts available. It was January 2005 and podcasting had only been introduced a few short months earlier. Next Monday, we’ll release our 693rd episode of the flagship Hobson and Holtz Report; that doesn’t include the interviews, book reviews and other special content we’ve produced under our “For Immediate Release” label. So I was delighted when Reputation Capital shared its belief that podcasting is a valuable marketing tool. “Podcasting is about positioning yourself as an expert in the field while bringing in the ideas that others are using and sharing,” according to Deb Evans, part of a panel at the International Franchise Association’s recent conference. The article points out that podcasting can be easier than blogging (not the case for me, but I love the post-production process), they usually don’t need editing and they create content that’s easy to reuse. I’ve often felt that business woefully underuses podcasting.
Naming storms helps the Weather Channel spread the word through social channels
When The Weather Channel named the superblizzard that hit the east coast last month, critics pounced on it as a lame effort to draw attention to the channel. “Nemo” wasn’t the first storm the channel had named, but it was the first to be shared with the public. The result: nearly 800 million photos and tweets that included the Nemo name or hashtagover a five-day period, which “worked to raise awareness and served to consolidate the torrent of storm-related social media data,” writes Adweek‘s Charlie Warzel. Warzel quotes TWC Chairman/CEO David Kenny speaking at the IAB leadership meeting, “We did it because we understood social media saves lives. When you name something people are more likely to tweet about it.” How could corporate communicators or marketers take advantage of the phenomenon? Brands and products already have names, but what about corporate initiatives?