Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Red Hot Topic #11: Will Twitter Brand Pages Take Off?
Posted by Chris Buckelew | Filed under Advertising, Red Hot Topics, Social Media, Trends
Sure, Twitter attracts Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga fans in hordes (16+ and 17+ million followers respectively), as well as last-minute deal hunters (think JetBlue Cheeps). But can the micro-blogging site compete with other social media platforms in building brand awareness?
In December, Twitter announced a redesign of its website and apps, making the start of 2012 the ideal time to rethink Twitter’s role in your marketing plan. Dana investigated and found four features of Twitter’s redesign worth noting.
- Easier to use: The redesign attempts to move the growing interest in Twitter to actual engagement—especially for social media beginners. A big change is demystifying those Twitter symbols; for example, replacing “@” and “#” with “connect” and “discover.” “Connect” lets you see who is followed, mentioned or re-tweeted, while “discover” offers follow suggestions based on your interests and location.
- More brand-friendly: The addition of business profile pages allows Twitter to compete with other social networks (read: Facebook). These brand pages (now available to a select group of companies like American Express, Dell and JetBlue) will make a bigger impression through more prominent logos, customized headers, embedded media and the ability to keep a specific tweet at the top of the timeline. Currently, customizing your company’s Twitter page is limited to the background, which is usually covered up by the timeline.
- Beyond the 140 characters: Twitter’s Promoted Ad Tweets let you extend your message with embedded video, images and more. Basically, the 140-character tweet becomes your caption.
- Better filters: Twitter now separates @ replies from mentions. The new filtering feature will allow brands (especially large ones with a lot of activity) to monitor messaging.
So what’s the takeaway on the Twitter redesign (in 140 characters or less)? Contact Dana for information and insights about using these new features to keep your brand on top—and follow us at twitter.com/danacomm!
Red Hot Topic #9: Marketing with Social Media
Posted by Shawn Carter | Filed under Media, Red Hot Topics, Social Media, Trends
The use of social media networks for buying and sharing is on the rise. By now, at least to some degree, many brands have caught on and tapped into social media marketing. They know that their presence is necessary, and with a little effort, a promotion could generate some short-term sales. But are they capitalizing on its full profit potential?
These days, it’s not only about who you know—it’s about who knows them. One simple click of the “Like” button or fast-fingered Retweet can launch a chain reaction. An informed customer can lead to another loyal fan for life. And another. And another. Let’s break down basic ways you can produce a well-crafted social media campaign that results in the ultimate goal: skyrocketing revenue with no sign of stopping.
1. Create buzzworthy content.
When they see something good, people rarely want to keep it to themselves. So when your update, email or blog is worth sharing, your audience is more likely to pass it along. Keep messaging consistently on brand as well as easy to find and read. Also, avoid making every communiqué a sales pitch. Enrich your marketing with fun and informative content that kindles enthusiasm for your brand.
2. Integrate, integrate, integrate.
Don’t rely solely on your website or even Facebook. Your customers aren’t all in one place, and neither should you be. Represent your brand on all the major social media apps. For maximum impact, capitalize on the different strengths of each with cohesive campaigns that talk to each other. Cross-promote everywhere, from profiles to blog posts to emails, so your followers can choose how and where they want to jump into the conversation.
3. Encourage your network to work for you.
Word-of-mouth marketing is free and fabulous. Since most people seek advice and recommendations from friends, it follows that referrals from their social circle are likely to breed qualified interest. It goes like this…Post or send content to your existing fan base. Expect many of them to share it with a few—maybe all—of their friends. Watch the social signals fly and conversion rates soar across all social media apps. Better yet, empower your virtual street team. Incentivize your audience to become brand advocates by offering up rewards for sharing content.
4. Listen in and engage.
It’s crucial to patrol your pages in order to preserve your brand reputation. But engaging your audience is also key. An easygoing, friendly approach invites your customers to interact with your brand on a whole new level. Show your appreciation, and respond to questions and criticism as soon as you can. Rather than feeling used as another prospective sale, your customer will feel like more of a friend having an honest-to-goodness conversation.
5. Verify Your ROI.
Methods you can use to measure social media ROI have evolved from the early days, so your success is less of a guessing game. Today, comprehensive analytics can substantiate your return on investment for social media marketing efforts. Remove any mystery by pinpointing the channels with the highest conversion rates and revenue potential. Then use this invaluable data to help plot lucrative future promotions.
Unplugged
Posted by Jeff Gurtman | Filed under Social Media, Technology
I haven’t been sleeping well lately. And I’ve thought about what’s changed in the past few weeks that has negatively affected my slumber. Am I eating dinner too late? Am I not getting enough exercise? Or is it just the typical stress of the upcoming holiday season? Sure, all of these are probably factors, but something else has occurred to me.
I’ve identified the real culprit. My iPad.
Yep, that genius device that has so positively impacted my life has also been keeping me from sleeping. Because here’s the problem: I have been reading, social networking and watching videos from bed.
Sleep experts will say that this is a real no-no, and I have to agree. They say bed should be for sleeping (and a few other activities), but certainly not for Web surfing.
As a digital marketer, I tend to live much of my life on the Web. And sometimes my virtual world can creep in and overtake my real world. Sad, I know. But surely I’m not alone…am I?
It seems my recent sleep funk has reminded me that every so often, we need to take a step back from our e-lifestyles and tap into reality. Put the iPad down long enough to get some rest. Take a break from email, YouTube and Facebook, and get back to the basics of our everyday lives.
So as we begin this holiday season, it’s important to remember that social networking is not a replacement for face-to-face interactions. As marketers, for example, we need to acknowledge that it is equally important to train staff to exhibit your brand as it is to have a full-featured website.
This is the time of year to drop those gadgets and reestablish personal connections with loved ones, colleagues and customers. And how about sending a few handwritten cards this year instead of those of the email variety? I guarantee you’ll stand out from the crowd.
Happy Holidays!
Red Hot Topic #6: Google+ vs. Facebook
Posted by Chris Buckelew | Filed under Red Hot Topics, Social Media, Trends
Can loyal Facebook users be tempted to expand their social engagement to include Google+? Maybe, maybe not, but don’t discount Google+…yet. It has some interesting advantages, the first of which is Google itself. Our advice is to keep watching, especially to see how Google+ will handle business pages.
1. The Advantage of Google
Google owns the largest market share of search engine traffic, an advantage that Google+ can certainly leverage. When its Twitter contract expired, Google disabled its Real-Time Search, but it could be resurrected with Google+. The opportunity to come up in organic search is a pretty good incentive to create a Google+ page and start posting regular updates. And there’s more. Google+ is also included in Google’s full product line, YouTube, Picasa and the Google Apps for Business Productivity Suite. If Google+ can provide full integration of a social networking platform into a company’s web presence, it begs the question: why seek alternatives?
2. The Advantage of +1
The +1 button could be huge, predicts HotelMarketing.com (October 04, 2011/Online Marketing). Why? If you own a brand page and use +1 on other owned sites, you have now linked them in a way that enhances search results.
3. The Advantage of Mobile and Location-Based Tie-Ins
Google+ is integrated into Android, which has rapidly become the most popular operating system for smartphones worldwide. Add Google+ Business Profiles into the already extensive listing of Google Places, and see what happens. Android users would be able to see static information (like hours of operation, menus, reviews, etc.) about a particular business and communicate in real time with the business itself and their Google+ Circles.
Take it a step further by integrating Google with Android’s mobile payment option through Near Field Communication and the Google e-Wallet. Now imagine being able to search for a take-out restaurant, get recommendations from your Circles, ask the restaurant for its daily specials, place your order, map its location and pay for it—all with your phone. On the flip side: what if this restaurant could track when you clicked the ad or search result, how long you spent on the website, what you ordered and how much you spent? Google already has proven models to do this. Facebook has no equivalent.
4. The Advantage of Expectations
Just speculating here—but is there a feeling that Facebook controls you, while you have some control with Google+? One of G+’s unexpected advantages is user expectations. It can quietly change, adapt and improve without creating an uproar among users. Not so with Facebook.
5. The Advantage of Being New
If you were late to social marketing, Google+ may offer you a chance to be a leader. People are already on to the marketing strategies of Facebook (for instance, many companies block Facebook), but Google+ is still frontier territory. This could be your chance to get ahead of your competition.
Last word: Facebook is an undeniable force, but Google+ has some neat features and the power of Google behind it. Is there a place for both in your social networking marketing strategy? Stay tuned.
Social media creates brand champions
Posted by Pam Ruymen | Filed under Advertising, Social Media, Technology
Social media has fostered a new twist on creating brand champions for various companies and products. By allowing for the development of a more cost-effective and current campaign, social media has enabled customers and businesses to forge a more direct relationship.
Customers like having control, and they want to know that they are important. So, for instance, when Starbucks introduced My Starbucks Idea , they empowered their customers to take an active role. On the site, users can submit suggestions that are then voted on by other Starbucks customers. In this way, Starbucks has gained greater insight into their customers’ needs and desires, while customers have gained a greater sense of control.
Another example is Graco. Using the photo-sharing program Flikr, in combination with a blog platform, Graco built a community around its baby products. The submitted photos showcased real people, thereby humanizing and promoting their brand. It boils down to this: people crave attention. Give them an opportunity to get their two seconds of fame, and they will promote the brand.
Successful marketing stems from the idea that you have to give a little to gain a little. In the case of Burger King’s “Sacrifice Ten Friends” Facebook application, customers could give a little and gain a lot! Every person who sacrificed 10 of their friends by deleting them from their Facebook account received a free whopper. And let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want a free burger? The unique campaign, however strange it may have seemed, promoted Burger King through customers’ interaction with the brand on Facebook.
Overall, brands that have successfully integrated social media into their marketing campaigns have done so by allowing their customers to be involved. When you have a campaign that is as interactive as social media, there is a world of opportunities for capturing information and forming a strong relationship with your customers.
Red Hot Topic #2: The Missing Link
Posted by Chris Buckelew | Filed under Red Hot Topics, Social Media, Technology
Wondering which social media marketing channel was rated most important in a recent BtoB magazine survey*? If you guessed LinkedIn, good for you. It beat out Facebook 27% to 20% among 577 respondents. So how can your company take advantage of LinkedIn’s social strengths? We uncovered five red-hot uses (besides recruitment).
- Use LinkedIn to support lead generation. For brand awareness or promoting an event, Facebook’s the place. If you want to increase website traffic, tweet. But for generating leads, go with LinkedIn’s professional network. As you become active in the LinkedIn community, you’ll find opportunities to offer up content as solutions to problems. Join groups (or start your own) and engage members with links to white papers and invitations to webinars. Everyone who responds becomes a lead to nurture.
- Use LinkedIn to promote your most important asset: your employees. Your corporate presence on LinkedIn helps support your image as an employer of talented individuals. Encourage your employees to showcase their skills and industry knowledge on LinkedIn and as their professional network expands, so do sales leads.
- Use LinkedIn to target a specific audience. LinkedIn’s base of 100+ million users may seem small compared to Facebook’s (estimated at 750 million), but if you want to reach business professionals, LinkedIn has no comparison or competition. With LinkedIn, you can place text ads in front of qualified prospects (CEOs, CFOs, Human Resources Executives, Fortune 500 Executives) and even target by industry.
- Use LinkedIn to build trust. LinkedIn users tend to trust individuals within their base of contacts, even if the connection is distant. Get recommended—and that level of trust grows even more.
- Use LinkedIn for Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM). If you want more control over your first page of Google search, it makes sense to take full advantage of your personal and company LinkedIn profiles. Google gives LinkedIn profiles high authority and generally ranks them well for searches that include a company name, brand or employee’s name.
*“Emerging Trends in B-to-B Social Media Marketing: Insights from the Field”
Does Your Google Advertising Need a Boost?
Posted by Emily McDonough | Filed under Advertising, Media, Social Media, Technology
Google has recently announced an end to its trial implementation of Google Tags, an advertising service that allowed businesses to show little yellow “tags” next to their listings on Google.com and Google Maps in order to call out and highlight their offerings. The announcement came on the heels of Google’s launch of Boost, a local ad platform allowing the same local businesses to actually create their own contextual search ads from their Google Places account.
In response to this new development, many hospitality businesses are questioning whether they should be getting in line to jump on the Google Boost wagon. In truth, Google Boost does make sense for some businesses, but it may not be the best option for hospitality and destination marketing.
The advantage of Google Boost is its ability to display an ad to local searchers on Google Maps (“local” as defined by 15-20 miles from the property). However, by using the Google AdWords interface instead, a business can advertise on Google Maps without local restrictions—and with greater control over the campaign, the cost per click and the ad copy.
Google AdWords provides more advertising options and finer controls. With AdWords, you can control keyword selection and bids, target both locally and nationally, get advanced reporting, take advantage of different ad formats (such as video), display on thousands of partner sites and more.
It is also important to note that visitors who click on an ad through the AdWords interface can be directed straight to the business’s website, as opposed to Google Boost, which sends users to the business’s Google Places listing first, thereby putting more steps between the visitor and the booking engine. As the connection from an ad to a business’s booking page should be as quick and smooth as possible, sending visitors to an in-between stage is unlikely to be beneficial to hospitality and destination marketing efforts.
Search advertising is an important component to any marketing campaign—although it is often overlooked or misunderstood by businesses that are not well informed on the medium. If you’d like more information about discovering the best options to “boost” your efforts in this area, contact our PPC Specialist at emcdonough@danacommunications.com.
Valuing New Media Ideas with Old(er) Mediums
Posted by Emily McDonough | Filed under Media, Social Media, Technology
I recently attended a few events for Social Media Week, a global, multi-city social media extravaganza. It was great to become part of the conversation, in real time, on topics that are affecting advertising and branding agencies.
Media outlets are rapidly changing. Therefore, clients—and, more importantly, their consumers—are asking questions.
One panel discussed the purchase of Huffington Post from AOL, and the value we place on new media companies as well as mergers with old(er) media companies. This got me thinking about how we value new media ideas. Let’s take a look at three examples.
- Julie Powell started a blog, chronicling her attempts to recreate every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. When people caught onto the idea and decided it had value (entertainment that would then translate into profit), it was turned into a familiar medium to be presented to the public—through a book, and then later a movie. But the blog already had fans, so why was this idea translated to a different medium? Are blog readers not valued, or are people still just tied to the old media channels?
- Justin Halpern turned things his dad said into a popular Twitter stream, S#*t my dad says. But seemingly, Twitter wasn’t enough. Instead of just having interested people meet him on Twitter, the idea and momentum were translated into a book, and then into a TV series starring William Shatner…yep, Captain Kirk. But Justin’s Dad was funny on Twitter, so why did it need to be translated into a book and then a TV show?
- PostSecret is an ongoing collaboration project in which people share postcards containing their secrets. New secrets are posted to the blog each Sunday, curated by Frank Warren. PostSecret currently published its collection of secrets into four volumes available at your favorite retailer under different topic headings. Publishing these secrets in book form removes the interactivity of the site; the public can no longer comment on secrets or share their opinions on a controversial topic. Isn’t this why people fell in love with the Web anyway?
So what do these examples of translating ideas from a new format demonstrate? Do people value new media? Or are they just using new media “to go viral” and then waiting for publishers and producers to find them?
Perhaps I am just being a bit naïve. Maybe if I published a successful blog and was asked to make “The Emily McDonough Story” into a film starring Meryl Streep, I’d think differently. Who knows?
Quora for Your Queries
Posted by Emily McDonough | Filed under Interactive, Social Media, Technology
First Google and Yahoo. Then Facebook. LinkedIn. Blogging. YouTube. Twitter. Wikipedia. Foursquare. Now what?
Well…meet Quora, an online tool meant to serve as a continually improving collection of questions and answers—all created, edited and organized by everyone who uses it. Is this just another phase in the evolutionizing of social media? Or can you, as a professional, put Quora to work for you? Here are a few of the highlights:
- Any person can pose any question.
- It’s a place where new stuff—that no one has written about yet—can get pulled onto the web.
- Over time, the database of knowledge grows and grows until almost everything that anyone wants to know is available.
- Any new knowledge can be added and is there forever to be shared with anyone in the future who is interested.
- People can write their own answers any time they think a question page could become a better resource with more information.
- Those who read question pages rate the answers so that the best ones rise to the top of the page. And people can comment on each other’s answers to help them make those better as well.
Users can also follow topics, enabling Quora to show them questions they are interested in and know about. Or, you can follow individual questions, which creates a waiting audience for anyone who wants to write an answer.
As for credibility? According to Quora, “Everything on Quora is tied back to a person. Each question and answer has a revision history associated with it, and each change in the log is associated with the person who made it. People use their real names and pictures on Quora and have a short bio describing who they are; this helps anyone reading things they write to understand why they should believe what is written and take into account the author’s perspective.”
So, what does this mean to you as a professional, and how might learning to use Quora benefit your business? Here are five helpful tips on how to utilize Quora, from Mario Sundar, a global social media expert of LinkedIn:
- Follow topics of professional interest
- Follow your colleagues
- Follow breaking news in your field of expertise
- Break news in your field of expertise
- Ask a question
For additional information about Quora, how it’s been received and how it works, check out the following references:
http://www.quora.com/about/
http://mariosundar.com/2011/01/10/quora-101-for-professionals/
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/42630.aspx
We’re Spreading the News—Mary Dees Won a NYC Trip for Two!
Posted by Dana Communications | Filed under Dana News, Social Media, Tips and Trends Series
Our fan Mary Dees, Sales Manager at Golfweek, is the lucky winner of our NYC Getaway Contest. Mary says she’s looking forward to getting reacquainted with the Big Apple during her upcoming two-night stay.
She tells us she loves Broadway too, and this time, she’ll be staying right in the heart of it at the Millennium Broadway Hotel. There she’ll enjoy star treatment, a stylish guest room with a big-city view and easy access to theaters, Fifth Avenue shopping, museums and much more.
She and her companion will also dine at Apiary, a sophisticated sanctuary featuring a seasonal menu created by Executive Chef Scott Bryan and a 300-selection global wine list, an extensive micro-brew beer list and artisanal cocktails.
Mary promises to keep in touch and fill us in, so stay tuned for more details about her trip.
