Social media marketers and brand managers alike have the same problem: how can they make their brand's story stand out in today's noisy, always-on, social world? Let's face it, not every ad campaign goes viral and -- even more -- not every social media post reaches the target audience. But this can change. What has lately been lauded by marketers as an unsolvable problem, actually has a relatively simple solution: employee advocacy.
Social media doesn't exist in a vacuum, so why are so many social media marketers expected to perform in a vacuum? Rather than limit their social media presence to just a few social media channels, many Fortune 1000 brands are empowering their employees to advocate for them -- in their own, original voice -- on social media. Brands looking to reach new audiences as well as drive brand loyalty need only look to the people creating, building and selling their products and services.
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Regarding its deal with Ditto Labs to help it scan all the images on its site for insight into a person's affiliation with a brand, Tumblr Head of Business Development T.R. Newcomb said, "Right now, we're not planning to do anything ad-related."
And "right now" would be the key word in that phrase. But Ditto will be sharing the data with brands to help them determine how they are being represented on the service. Newcomb notes, "If Coke wants to understand the nature of the conversation Ditto can sift through and deliver it to Coke."
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This ploy from Russian telecom brand MTS by BBDO Moscow recalls the early days of internet porn and 24K baud rate dial-up modems. But since no one knows what that experience is like these days, MTS took it upon themselves to frustrate the heck out of people to tout its 4G service.
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For its client Axe, Barton F. Graf is out with the Social Effort Scale, a social media analysis tool that takes a look at whether or not you are trying too hard. In essence, it determines your level of douchebaggery. In about 45 seconds. That's a lot faster than some of those other "processes" floating around this week.
Just head over to Social Effort Scale, log in with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and you will be presented with a score that lands you in one of three bell curve segments, Trying Too Hard, Effortless or Not Trying Hard Enough.
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Over the last few weeks, we heard that Facebook organic reach is approaching zero while their paid ad business is booming. On April 23, Facebook reported revenue of $2.5 billion for the first quarter of 2014, up 72% over the previous year. Advertising accounted for $2.27 billion of Q1 revenue. Now, it seems that Instagram and Pinterest want a piece of the paid advertising pie, and they're not afraid to charge a lot per slice.
However, social networks like Instagram and Pinterest will not succeed by trying to replicate the broadcasting advertising model. Broadcasting does not work in the Social Era, as numerous studies have shown. In fact, online social media ads are even more ignored than TV ads, according to Harris Interactive.
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This is awesome! Yes, the whole choose-you-own-adventure thing has been done many times before but it's almost always with video. Travelocity, which is touting Memorial Day destinations, is out with a Twitter-based choose-your-own-adventure.
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Who Is Hosting This, a hosting site rating site with its own viral marketing desires, is out with an infographic entitled 5 Reasons Your Awesome Content Isn't Going Viral.
The infographic takes a look at what makes content shareworthy and sites what can detract from that such as lack of emotional appeal, bad timing, poor design, poor distribution and more.
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The web is buzzing with arguments that Facebook has become a bad deal for marketers. On Forrester's blog, Nate Elliot wrote that brands can now reach just 6% of their fans organically, citing a recent study from Olgivy. Brands are also discovering that a lot of their 'likes' come from fake fans. Elliot cites blog posts from several companies that detected 'like fraud' ranging from 40 to 90 percent.
For years, brand spent millions thinking that Facebook fans would be their earned media channel, but recently, Facebook has decided that the way to drive revenue is to force brands to pay to reach their fans. This strategy netted $7.87 billion in revenue last year and has left social marketers without a significant earned media solution -- so they think.
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20th Century Fox Film has partnered with Social Rewards, a social loyalty engagement platform, to create Fox Rewards Program. The partnership was announced during the CinemaCon Theatre Exhibition Conference in Las Vegas this week. Social Rewards was founded in 2010 to help companies in the entertainment industry leverage social media to build sales and collect data through a loyalty program.
Basically, the program allows people to earn free movie tickets for sharing movie trailers.
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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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