Posts Tagged ‘Social media’
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
BtoB firms plan to follow their BtoC cousins and spend more on social marketing over the next three years, according to a white paper by the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
The study quotes Forrester in predicting that by 2014, BtoB spending in social media will reach $54 million, up from the $11 million spent in 2010. BtoB magazine’s survey, “Emerging Trends in BtoB Social Marketing: Insights from the Field,” found that 93% of B2B marketers are involved to some degree in social media. And in BtoB’s “2011 Outlook” survey, 62.6% of marketers reported plans to increase their spending in social media channels this year.
“Although B2C and B2B companies use social media differently, many of its functions, such as monitoring competition, gaining customer feedback and building brand awareness really do apply to the marketing goals of both types of companies,” the 4As wrote.
“Of particular importance to BtoB marketers is determining if their social media efforts are paying off.” Marketers are tracking leads by looking at click-through rates and number of downloads, among other metrics–although fewer than half measure their efforts, according to a survey by BtoB magazine.
Tags: 4As, American Association of Advertising Agencies, BtoB, BtoC, Forrester, Marketing, social marketing, Social media, spending, study, white paper
Posted in Business, Commerce, Culture, Marketing, PR, Social media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
Laura Larsell has posted a thoughtful article on Mashable called “Why Browsing Is So Important to Content Discovery.” In it the librarian and information organizer at Trapit argues that the practice is a crucial component of information discovery.
Today we find information directly through search engines or indirectly through social media contacts, but those processes narrow the chute from the beginning. Larsell says browsing offers value in that it opens us to chance and opportunity before we dig too deeply. “It allows an information seeker to expand organically upon an initial vague, often unarticulated need.”
In a phrase, browsing gives readers the big picture, not just the details, a critical advantage when starting a project. “Browsing gives information seekers a high-level sense of what exists within a collection, while presenting easy entry points to explore the unknown. It also allows for lesser-known works to stand alongside — and compete with — the more canonical ones they resemble.”
Tags: books, browsing, Google, internet, library, publications, research, search engine, Social media
Posted in Business, Commerce, Culture, Internet, Nonfiction, Novel, Social media, Writers, Writing | No Comments »
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
When Dobie Gray sang about being in with the in crowd in 1965, could he have imagined how mobile devices would turn the world into one big high school?
First there was messaging and texting, which allowed you to send your thoughts to a single person. Then there were location-based services like Foursquare, which allow you to broadcast your location to whoever will listen.
The latest to join the my-business-is-everybody’s-business trend is Beluga, a service that allows you to message groups of friends, all at once. You can transmit photos to the group without having to send individual messages. And you can spot their location on a map, eliminating the need to constantly check their availability.
Beluga is a cross-platform rival to Kik, GroupMe and Blackberry’s BBM. Whether it catches on is anyone’s guess but attendees at the uber-hip SXSW music and digital festival in Austin, Texas this week are burning up the wireless space about the service. Clue number two: Beluga’s been acquired by Facebook.
Writers and other creatives might want to use these services to extend their existing marketing tools. One application for group chat is your informal ambassador’s program, that coterie of friends and fans who evangelize for your brand. You might use Beluga to give the group some visibility, along with the cachet of exclusivity—join the group and be the first to receive information and invitations to private events.
Who knows, you might get to run with the in crowd. Or relive high school, one of Dante’s nine circles of young adulthood.
Tags: 1965, Beluga, Blackberry, Dante's Inferno, group messaging, high school, in crowd, messaging, privacy, Social media, social networking, SXSW, texting
Posted in Commerce, Culture, Marketing, Mobile, PR, Social media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2011
Simon & Schuster Digital has created a site where authors can respond to reader questions through webcam videos. Called Ask the Author, the site gives readers a direct way of interacting with writers.
As of March 7 the website listed 10 authors who are willing to talk with fans. They range from Brad Thor, author of The Athena Project, to Lisa McMann, author of Cryer’s Cross; Goodnight, Tweetheart‘s Teresa Medeiros, and music and sports author Chuck Klosterman.
Here’s how it works. Visitors click on the “talk to” button below an author’s photo and type their question. Then they check back for a response. No word from S&S on whether the system will offer live chat at a future date.
Writers with their own websites might consider doing the same in real time.
Tags: authors, fans, Fiction, interviews, Nonfiction, Novel, Social media, webcam, Writing
Posted in Commerce, Culture, Fiction, Nonfiction, Novel, Social media | No Comments »
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Eight percent of adult Internet users say they use Twitter. The greatest percentage of users are college-educated Hispanic women aged 18-29 who live in cities. Those are the results of a first-ever survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that focuses exclusively on users of the microblogging service.
Twitters users differ on how frequently they check the service to monitor material from their networks. A little more than a third check daily while a comparable number say they rarely check the site.
Most users post a mix of personal and work-related information. A majority say that they post “humorous or philosophical observations.” And if your business is interested in tracking down these users to serve them messages and ads, the study reveals that 24% of respondents use the service to tweet their location, with 7% of them doing so on a daily basis.
Tags: internet, Pew Center, privacy, Social media, social networking, tracking, Twitter
Posted in Commerce, Culture, Social media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Monday, December 6th, 2010
Print is on the move again.
Ever since Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland invented the barcode in 1949 business has worked to turn objects into information. The recession in advertising, the migration from print to digital media, consumer preference for mobile devices—all have accelerated the trend toward digitizing the physical world.
Enter the QR, or quick response, code. What looks like a stamp, a maze or a square hieroglyph is really a portal to a new world of information-rich advertising. QR codes allow people with cameras in their smartphones to load websites just by pointing the device at, say, a magazine ad that carries the code. They function like hyperlinks on websites, taking readers directly to the information they want.
It’s more than the latest online fad. The technology just might help authors connect with an elusive audience.
Specialty publications are among the first to adopt the technology. The October issue of This Old House is loaded with codes. And not only in the ads. The editors are using the little squares for contests, access to how-to videos and requests for literature—techniques authors might adopt to publicize their work and promote their brand.
Trade publications are embracing the technology, too. Last month Randall-Reilly’s trucking division sent an email to media buyers announcing a program to allow readers to “unlock access to multimedia content.” Consumer publications are also rolling out programs. A recent issue of People featured a QR code in an ad for Panasonic. Why not publish the codes in any printed collateral used to publicize your work? You can track the responses, analyze the data and reach out to new audiences with targeted messages on the device of their choice.
Our agency joined the movement last week when we designed a QR code for a social media platform I helped to create. Printed on postcards that we’ll distribute at a tradeshow next month, the code will lead smartphone users to a blog that highlights trends in the industries in which our clients compete.
Try it yourself. Download an app like QR Reader, hold your smartphone up to this screen and visit the site—all without having to key in a lengthy URL.
The very technology that threatened to destroy print is enabling it to reach new readers. As the economy recovers and mobile devices spread, writers can use that knowledge to turn dead wood into dynamic sources of data . . . and revenue.
Tags: advertising, books, print, QR code, Social media, social networking, Writers, Writing
Posted in Commerce, Culture, Marketing, PR, Writers, Writing | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
First we had cavemen sitting around the fire telling stories. Then gossips and reporters. Then came chat and blogs and we cycled back to citizen journalists.
With the rise of social media we now have citizen publicists. Like volunteer journalist, they want to speak their mind. When they listen, they want to hear what their peers are saying, not just the company line. And through the really big amplifier called the Web they can have an outsized influence on our work.
As creatives, we want to reach them.
Our agency regularly counsels clients who want to join the social media wave but are afraid of getting swamped. There are too many networks and monitoring them is a time-sink. So for those clients who want to dip a toe into online communications, we’ve developed an approach called the Social Media Platform that allows organizations to engage their audiences as well as publish their ideas.
It’s a perfect fit for artists, photographers, writers and other creatives who can’t afford a publicist.
Here’s the strategy: Organizations need to monitor and influence what people are saying about their brands. So do creatives, with the added task of promoting their work far and wide. We social media because that’s where our future editors, clients and benefactors hang out. With a social media platform we can harness the power of peers, asking influentials who like our work to spread the word. The social media platform is no substitute for a full-blown marketing campaign that uses advertising, direct mail, media relations and microsites. But it offers creatives a turnkey operation that allows them to join, monitor and influence the online conversation.
Here’s how it works: The platform is an integrated collection of social media networks and tools. It includes the major social and business networks—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare and YouTube—but has room for numerous sites, forums and communities. At the heart is a white-label blog without branding for an independent look and feel. With the blog creatives can manage reputations, disseminate key messages and establish expertise in the market—this might apply more to non-fiction than fiction writers. Creatives who’ve already built a reputation can use the platform to solve issues before they become wide-spread problems.
There are six parts in the process of establishing a social media platform:
- Create. We start with a blog hosted on an independent site. Posts and comments radiate from the blog to the major social and business networks. The system notifies the blog administrator each time someone from the outside posts a comment. For your peace of mind, comments can be approved, edited or deleted before anyone on the ‘Net sees them. Tools: WordPress software, web host.
- Listen. Tapping into the online conversation about our brand is essential. Specialized search engines allow us to listen to what people are saying about our work. PR people call it reputation management. Tools: Social Mention, Google Alerts, Gmail to verify social network accounts.
- Contribute. Based on your expertise, you can contribute original text, slides, photos and video. Crowdsourcing allows you to obtain feedback on work. You can even use your network to float ideas for future projects. Tools: those listed above.
- Publicize. Blogs are like parties. You have to invite the right people to achieve critical mass. We start with the internal audience, your friends and business associates, and add editors, writers and bloggers in traditional and digital media. Tools: LinkedIn, Twitter.
- Monitor. The conversation is ongoing. The monitoring needs to be, too. But checking multiple sites dozens of times a day can get crazy. A dashboard can simplify the process: Tools: HootSuite, TweetDeck.
- Evaluate. You’re not a major corporation. The goal isn’t to fill spreadsheets and generate charts that dazzle but yield no useful information. We measure the volume and tone of comments but take everything with two grains salt. Tools: Twitrratr (Twitter rater), Twendz (Twitter trends), Tweet Level.
Does the system work? Yes. Our agency is seeing a good adoption rate from editors and bloggers as well as retweets of original material. Why does it work? Because it leverages three potent forces in our society: the shift toward digital media, people’s desire to hear recommendations from peers rather than companies and journalists’ need to discover leads rather than waiting for pitches.
That’s almost as good as telling stories around the campfire.
Tags: artists, creatives, painters, photographers, Photography, platform, PR, publicity, Social media, social networking, Writers, Writing
Posted in Art, Business, Commerce, Culture, Fiction, Marketing, Nonfiction, Novel, poetry, PR, Web 2.0, Writers, Writing | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
Peter Krainik has a word for those who would separate marketing and PR functions: don’t.
The founder of an organization for chief marketing officers, the CMO Club, Krainik believes CMOs need to align marketing and PR/corporate communications if they want to defend and build their companies’ brands and reputations. The rise of social networks makes it mandatory.
The statistics aren’t encouraging. Only 23% of CMOs have lead responsibility for employee communications on products, services and messaging, according to a survey of 129 CMOs conducted by Hill & Knowlton. Some 66% have lead responsibility for media relations but only 55% have overall responsibility for blogger relations. Most (70%) do not have an active employee-engagement program (read brand ambassadors).
Krainik thinks CMOs need to address that disconnect.
“Marketing and public relations have overlapped, thanks to the explosive growth of digital communication that created an unprecedented level of transparency between businesses and their audiences,” Krainik writes. “The result is that brand reputation and brand image have become intertwined; the synchronization of the two is more critical than ever.”
Consider us the lucky ones. Most of our clients understand the need for a strategy that encompasses both marketing and communications. So does the agency, which allows copywriters and PR pros to flow across departmental boundaries. Copywriters run projects that include public relations components while PR pros write copy for collateral and advocate for employee ambassador programs. The process is driven by the clients’ marketing and communications functions and supervised by the agency’s account executives.
It’s not a typical arrangement but it works. And that’s what counts.
Tags: brand ambassadors, chief marketing officer, Marketing, PR, public relations, Social media, social networks
Posted in Business, Commerce, Culture, Marketing, PR, Social media, Writers | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
There’s a decent article over at PRSA on how companies can more effectively use social media to promote their business.
Yes, it says the usual things but author Anthony Rotolo makes a point worth repeating: social networks aren’t broadcast media. They’re about conversation. You don’t push a message, or a product. You create a dialog with clients and customers. You help them solve problems. You ask them for advice. And you use that feedback to make your products and services more useful.
Seems like something worth shouting about.
Tags: broadcast media, conversation, Marketing, promotion, PRSA, public relations, Social media, social networks
Posted in Business, Commerce, Social media | No Comments »
