The Shape Of Things To Come? How social media should influence our campaign creativity
Noticed anything different about snowmen this winter? Of course, the Christmas episode of Dr Who might have prompted a few of us to revise the long-held perception of them as representations of jolly, portly folk prone to roaming the skies while singing.
But what about in real life? Have you noticed that the traditional and rather simple model – two balls of snow (one big, one small) a couple of twigs for arms, a carrot for a nose and lumps of coal for eyes – is changing?
Across the world, a fall of snow now seems to be more a blank canvas; a chance to go out and create something inventive, different, eye-catching. And it would seem we have social media to thank for that.
Thanks to our smartphones, it’s not just our neighbours…
Using social media monitoring to evaluate the success of your digital marketing campaigns and reach your goals
When planning your digital marketing strategy or campaigns, you probably have a range of targets and goals for social media in mind that you are hoping to achieve, and that will help you measure your success. But how do you assess whether you are reaching these goals in practice? In this post I will outline the type of goals to consider and tools and techniques to assess success.
For example, you might consider one or a combination of the following as goals when approaching integrating social in your business:
Increase in followers/fans
Increase in requests for information
Increase in leads
Increase in sales (of a specific product/service, or of everything, or perhaps in a specific market).
Social media monitoring allows you to add another string to your bow, so to speak, by allowing you to…
14 simple steps to help find relevant influencers
Lots of people will tell you ”Social Media Influencers” are the key to social media marketing, but what does that really mean? Is influence based on number of connections? Klout, Peer Index or Kred score? A combination of all of the above? How do you identify them and what do you do with that information once you think you know who they are?
The short answer is all and none of the above. There is no cookie cutter answer for creating an influencer list on a particular topic because you have to fine tune the list of influencers to the ones who are most likely to be interested in what you have and willing to…
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September 24, 2012
Why do social media continue to damage big brands?
In February, Mcdonalds made what I thought was a massive social media gaffe with its #McDStories campaign. As I said at the time, it really should have brought home to CEOs and their CMOs that social media is too important to be entrusted to the inexperienced (both in clients and their agencies). I'm sure you remember this...
This wasn't the first ill-advised campaign of the "tell us what you think...finish this sentence" type and won't be the last.
Now in September in the UK we have a very similar social campaign mistake. Again, widely reported in the mainstream media where the main damage occurs, at least this one is humorous. Supermarket Waitrose challenged shoppers to "finish the sentence: 'I shop at Waitrose because …' #WaitroseReasons". Here are some typical responses, our favourites:
"I shop at Waitrose because it…
UK PR pros need to conquer the entire digital mix to remain competitive – fast!
A recent post I wrote for Econsultancy entitled “SEOs will slaughter careless PR agencies” generated an almighty storm in its comments section. That’s how I wanted it to be, because the subject of who owns search engine optimisation (SEO) within marketing is really important to the future of PR agencies and, on an individual level, PR practitioners. PR should own organic search, but instead it’s the SEO agencies who are learning PR or partnering with PR agencies to mop up business.
As you may be aware, in the last 18 months Google has unleashed a couple of updates to its algorithm – Panda and Penguin – in an attempt to make search more relevant for users and punish sites which it deems “low quality”. Panda, for example, put the emphasis on trustworthiness, design, speed and rates…
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August 9, 2012
Generate a buzz with your marketing content by making it viral
Getting your content to "go viral" must appeal to every digital marketer, so I thought it would be worth sharing this recent viral video on successful viral marketing plus some tips on different types of viral "hooks".
The video talks about the history of online viral video and goes into detail about why and how they happen, as well as the impact viral videos are having on mainstream culture.
Lisa Romagnoli, Assistant Producer, Off Book says:
"whether rooted in comedy, spectacle, schadenfreude, cuteness, politics, performance, or deep meaning, the idea of viral videos, and the huge audiences they generate, have forever changed the values and potential impact of video online".
Six viral marketing hooks
I also noticed an interesting …
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July 4, 2012
Don't act too corporate against negative posts on social networks
I was recently asked by a PR person working for an oil company about the best way to prevent bloggers posting inappropriate comments on their social network pages.
The company is worried that it can’t control what is being said about it - a major management challenge for many brands today.
Here is my response... It's a set of practical changes to make which often need a change in mindset rather than updates to the social governance policy, although it's worth looking at that too.
The five ways to avoid sparking a social media bushfire
For social networks to flourish they have to be open, transparent and honest so, inevitably, you will get negative comments. When you do, there are ways to respond, and resources you need to have in place, to best handle the situation to your advantage:
Act on and respond positively to…
3 top tips to encourage sharing and 7 bad habits to avoid
Social media enthusiasts tend to look at press releases, and public relations in general, with a jaundiced eye. As a heavy social media user since 2005, I must admit I have read thousands of press releases I wouldn’t dream of sharing with my social communities.
Nevertheless, I am an optimist! I believe the PR industry can adapt and publish press releases that are highly shareable on social platforms.
Three good reasons press releases should be socially shareable
Should press release writers care about social media sharing? I can think of three extremely important reasons:
Social media exposes a firm to new groups of prospects and referrers.
Social shares from influential social media participants increase a firm’s credibility.
Social sharing may have a rippling effect that improves brand awareness.
Unfortunately, many…
What is the true meaning of online influence?
We hear a lot about influence now, it’s a commonplace term when we’re talking about social media marketing. With so many tools available to help us understand what that means and what to do - tools such as Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, and Radian6 – what does influence really mean to us, as individuals and brands? And, what about all of those tools that claim to be able to help us leverage it?
The new report
Brian Solis (now Altimeter Group’s principal analyst) has released a free report to help us understand the tools available, what they do and how we might best make used of them when marketing to influential people. He’s done this through interviews and software demos with vendors, detailed reviews of 17 services providers, a review of 6 brands that have publicly piloted digital influence programs and a final quantitative study of…
Infographic shows the preferences of 72 UK journalists
Seeding social media assets like video and infographics to journalists of traditional publications is still important today, particularly since the online sites of many publications now publish these type of assets. They have huge reach too, of course.
Given the continuing importance of engaging traditional journalists in addition to blogger outreach, I though this was an interesting infographic. It shows how journalists prefer to research and be contacted. Twitter and blogs seems to be the most favoured approaches.
This infographic is produced by Text 100 public relations to mark their sponsorship of this weeks Social Media World Forum. If you can't make it, you can follow it on #SMWF.
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