News

By: Todd Wasserman

Facebook’s Advice to Marketers: Post Stuff About Your Brand

I know after reading the title you are thinking that something this common might seem very obvious, but from a recent study by Sean Bruich, head of measurement at Facebook said, “Topics related to brand or about the brand were significant predictors of increased engagement.”  An example of what he means by this is from a post by a cruise line marketer stating, “I decided to go on my first cruise because ____,” performed better than one that said, “Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before we know it.”

It may be some very simple advice and you might be telling your self that you already do it, but you would be surprised by how many people post content that has no relation to their service or product.  To help improve your pages engagement numbers lean towards posting relevant content of your product or service and see if it increases your engagement on your page.

By: A.J. Jacobs via www.realsimple.com
How to be More Creative

One thing that everyone in the marketing and advertising world seems to have a problem with is how to be creative? Everyone claims to have a special technique that helps them open up their mind to create these masterpiece ideas.  Well A.J. Jacobs describes his passion of finding how to become more creative & if there is really an easy way to it.  He breaks his article down into seven different steps of ways to help to become more creative.

Jacobs begins his process with Welcoming Bad Ideas, were he calls a gentlemen by the name Rex Jung, whom tells him “it is important to accept failure, enjoy it, embrace the suck, for it is part of the process.” His second suggestion is, Being a Kid Again.  He attends a creative workshop in New York City, where he meets two people, Artist Alejandro Fogel & Novelist Shelly Berc whom describe to him how important it is to, “think less”, “stop being too logical”, and how childish activities help open the mind.  His third idea Flipping the Problem Over was taken from the famous Car maker Henry Ford and took the idea of the assembly line and used it with his kids.  Create a way to get his children to take their minds of one idea and embrace the whole picture in a faster and more resourceful way.

Jacobs decides that in his fourth point that Crowdsourcing or what is really brainstorming does not help for him, he found it to be a waste of time.  Although in the end it was not as productive as he hoped, he still gained what he was looking for through the simplest idea and took it upon him to expand on. Playing the Fool was probably his most successful as a theory that he believes to be creative you must first be open to embarrass yourself.  He joins an improve class to help speed up the process.  One of his last ideas The Finish Line showed him that to sit and think may not get you to the ultimate goal but it will get you achievements towards other ideas in the mean time.

Lastly Jacobs creates a list of 7 Habits of Highly Creative People, of how these terms have increased their creativity in their own lives.

1.)  Play

2.)  Borrow Ideas

3.)  Sleep on it

4.)  Collect Every Seed of an Idea

5.)  Embrace Constraints

6.)  Commune With Nature

7.)  Compete

At the recent Social Venture Network Conference held in Skamania, Washington, The Young Mavericks session opened up the Members Gathering with an emotional bang as our own Jared Levy and Jocelyn Kay Levy (Wee Yogis Play)  spoke to “the young and the young at heart” members of Social Venture Network. Inspiring stories of the role that SVN has played in these young leaders lives let newcomers know the kind of impacting weekend they were in for.

Ram Dass, an original pioneer of SVN with Wayne Silby and Josh Mailman 25 years ago, was originally included to maintain a level of spirituality throughout this community of successful business leaders. Twenty five years later he inspires a new generation of SVN through this interview conducted by Jared Levy in which he speaks about the importance of SVN in our world today. Watch the video here:

However, it wouldn’t be SVN without some fun mixed in and so they broke out a top ten (ala David Letterman).

TOP TEN THINGS YOU WILL HEAR AT THE SVN CONFERENCE:

10. “Nice to meet you. Are you okay with a hug?”…”I’m a hugger”

9. You have 2 minutes with a total stranger to share your life long goals and dreams.

8. How late do they serve breakfast?

7. I actually have hope for the world now.

6. If you examine the capital investments in the emerging economies of South America and pair this with a collaborative horizontalsupply chain model learned from our friends to the East then you start to tap into a new paradigm where…..

5. “I really need to take a nap, but I can’t miss this session”

4. “You know ‘so and so?..I worked with their sister solving the water problem in Mauritania last spring”

3. I’m right down the hall from the hospitality suite (with enthusiasm)

2. I’m right down the hall from the hospitality suite (dragging with nothing left)

1. I’ve NEVER seen people dance like that before

“SVN has changed my life and sent me down a new path where I can use our powers for good.”-Jared Levy, CEO, Guru Media Solutions

Social Venture Network inspires a community of business and social leaders to build a just economy and sustainable planet. They work to achieve this mission by:

Background:

In the midst of a struggling economy, Bonds Make It Easy sought to help people save for their future by investing in savings bonds. Identifying the early part of the tax season as a critical decision-making opportunity for individuals receiving their tax refunds, Bonds Make It Easy wanted to conduct an awareness-driven campaign geared towards empowering people with the knowledge that they could easily, safely and effectively save their tax refunds by investing in US savings bonds—and do it directly from their tax form.

The Goals:

• Increase awareness for savings bonds at tax time
• Drive partner outreach to create and leverage strategic partnerships on digital and social media

Our Approach:

gms was tapped to engineer a viral marketing campaign centered on creating strategic partnerships for Bonds Make It Easy within the digital ecosystem to increase awareness about savings bonds. Looking to make BMIE’s content as sharable as possible during the key period before April 17th, we employed the Spark widget from Call2Action. The Spark widget centralizes branded content and action portals in one place to function as a portable online engagement and marketing tool specifically created for nonprofits.

Understanding that consumers, partners, funders and other potential supporters all need a reason to care —and more importantly a reason to care enough to share—was at the foundation of our approach to this campaign. We worked outwards from BMIE’s established relationships to ensure that we realized their full potential and provided tools and information for distribution and brand building. This customized approach to relationship building, which we believe yields a high return on investment, made the Spark widget the perfect partner tool for this awareness-driven initiative.

Most useful in strengthening relationships, raising awareness of key messaging to partner communities, and centralizing viral content, the Spark widget was easily and effectively shared with and posted on our partners’ Facebook walls, Tumblrs, blogs and websites.

The Result:

Since the Spark widget launched in January 2012, the widget has been viewed over 30,000 times and is a major tool in raising awareness about BMIE’s Tax Time Savings Bonds campaign. Utilizing the widget as a partner tool has allowed BMIE to be creative in their partner outreach and viral marketing messaging despite a limited budget. True to its name, the widget has “sparked” curiosity and interest in the campaign from BMIE’s partners and their communities, including ChooseToSave.org, a highly trafficked, influential site and a major referrer to BMIE’s site.  ChooseToSave.org has featured the widget on their home page since the beginning of the campaign and contributed to millions of impressions.  Other partners who featured the widget on their Facebook walls, Twitter messages and blogs include: America Saves, Military Saves, Catholic Charities Fort Worth, RaiseTexas.org, and Campaign for Working Families, among many others. The Spark is truly the hit of this year’s social media campaign for BMIE and their partners, as well as for guru media solutions.

More About The Widget:

The Call2Action widget displays up to 4 tabs that can be customized, edited and changed throughout the campaign. Strategically choosing the most appropriate content, gms chose to include:

-       Videos from BMIE’s YouTube channel

-       A partner feature linking to a site where users can directly file their taxes

-       Two different pledge campaigns, including one for America Saves Week (2/19-26), featured on a pledge tab with info capture boxes that allow users to fill in their pledge and contact info.

*   *   *   *

guru is a nimble, creative, independent minded, digital marketing agency serving purpose-driven brands, organizations and campaigns. We specialize in growing digital businesses by connecting our clients with their customers across all digital platforms. It’s about focused research meeting smart engagement strategies and flawless execution. A mix of proven tactics and some good ole creativity.

It is Call2Action’s mission to become the de facto call-to-action badge. We are dedicated to furthering our partners’ goals through raising awareness, driving engagement, and building community. We are committed to ensuring our technology is simple to use, comprehensive in scope, and seamlessly integrated with leading industry applications.

“But the question a smart manager has to ask is, can I afford not to do this? Can I really afford not to engage with my readers? Am I willing to let the news conversation happen without my newsroom involved in it?”

- Jeff Sonderman, Digital Media Fellow at the Poynter Institute, “To Bot or To Tweet, That Is The Question” from ReadWriteWeb

Automation and social media can be a dangerous combination. With the multitude of shiny new social management tools available, it’s never been easier to “set it and forget it” across an entire digital ecosystem. Many times, after a brand sets up its initial social media presence, the tendency is to have all content sent to all channels using the least amount of resources.

Up until recently this was the approach of the New York Times. The Times has now implemented a team of social media editors in order to more directly participate in the ongoing online news conversation. This conversation extends into every business niche and major industry online. It’s unlikely that avoiding the conversation can, in any way, improve a business.

Not having any social presence is one way to avoid that conversation. Another way is having a branded presence and automating the content. There is a reason that so few of the world’s biggest brands have automated streams on Facebook and Twitter. Usually, when a social media strategy is a bot strategy, it’s going to attract bots. If a brand wants more human followers, it needs to behave like one in the social channels.

Over time, interacting actively and engaging in the space will bring more business and provide a better return on the social investment.

“It’s not ten years, not five years away, it’s a couple years away–tops–where social is literally so imbued into the experience that it’s just another ranking factor like anything else.”

- Stefan Weitz, director at Bing, “Bing’s Social Search Won’t Always Rely On Facebook ‘Likes’” from Fast Company.

This week Bing announced that it would begin to allow Facebook factors to integrate and influence its search results even more heavily than before. The move is an effort to better filter search results based on two main approval factors: friends (Facebook Likes) and the majority (“Collective IQ”). Bing’s is making social more of a integral part of its search results, rather than just an additional layer.

It’s been said that the web doesn’t have a problem of information overload, but a problem of filter failure. Both Bing and Google have recently subscribed to the philosophy of improving that filter with social data. The news is further evidence of the growing trend in helping filter the internet’s information based on the approval of experts, majorities and friends.

Digital marketing experts are often divided about directing resources towards social instead of search. If the hundreds of millions of social media users weren’t reason enough for a brand to carefully consider social, the effects those users are beginning to have on search should be. Social is quickly becoming synonymous with search. Which leads us to believe that brands that want to succeed digitally, a social strategy is no longer a question or an option, it is now essential.

“Depending on how mentions are used, there may even be an expectation that the person tagged in a comment comes and leaves a reply of their own (in other words, you can call people out).”

- Jason Kincaid, “Disqus Brings @Mentions To Comment Threads” from Techcrunch

Comments have been one of the slowest components of Web 2.0 to evolve. For what felt like forever, you had to register (often times exposing yourself to unsolicited emails) to leave a comment (for approval) that you would eventually forget about. Even the notification system of an email when someone commented on your comment, seemed roundabout.

Recently, the two largest social networks on the web have been leveraged to take comments to the level they should have been at years ago. Both Facebook’s “Comments” social plugin and Disqus (which now includes a more robust Twitter integration, including @mentions) have improved comment systems by leaps and bounds to offer social commenting.

Not only are these new improvements to the comment sphere great for marketers looking to make (tasteful) product or service plugs, but they also present a greater opportunity to unearth true influencers.

Gone are the days of counting Twitter followers and deeming someone an expert. Places like Quora and the recent comment platform improvements reveal not only who engages with the latest news or opinion bits on the web, but who now becomes an ongoing participant in a discussion and can offers insights. Consider it an additional (or even more heavily weighed) metric for the ongoing influencer algorithm. Vocal topic enthusiasts can often be the first to become vocal brand enthusiasts after they are introduced to a product or service give the stamp of approval.

Discussions online are becoming more authentic and more useful everyday. Brands should begin to consider combing comment threads as a community management best practice and use them as a place for marketing outreach and influencer discovery.

The question that everyone we talk to in our business conversations wants an answer to: “How do I measure social media ROI?” Well, it looks like the social media marketing world is starting to mature a little as we see start to see case studies and high profile stories of success. BarnRaisers is on a quest to compile 100 case studies that prove social media ROI. They’ve taken a cut at 34 in this recent post and have some interesting examples to dig into:

These 34 case studies cover B2C, B2B, profit and non-profit areas.  They include businesses big and small.  They prove social media ROI based on:

• Sales
• Shorter Sales Cycles
• New Leads
• Improved company operations
• Innovations that resulted in a better way to do business

Conclusion: Significant results are proven to occur in social media where low out-of-pocket investments lead to high ROI’s when businesses: 1) Have a clear business strategy, 2) Aren’t afraid to jump in 3) Use their imagination to make the most out of social channels, customer engagement and brand relationship.

As a digital marketing agency, we’ve always relied on the power of SEO as a star in the constellation of our service offering to help us execute successful campaigns. No matter the client or the size of the engagement, putting our clients at the top of results pages, whether organic search, paid search or social media has always been a benchmark of our collective success.

Mashable has a good article on the Facebook and Bing announced last week that allows Microsoft’s search engine to return results based on the Facebook “Likes” of the searcher’s friends. Additionally, Google recently began including Twitter updates in its search returns and has some interesting insights into how digital agencies and SEO can be leveraged to tap into results tailored to the searcher’s existing social footprint.

Of course, as with any complex question about a dynamically evolving industry, there is a caveat. While the Bing-Facebook agreement and the recent updates to Google will change elements of how we do our business, the fundamentals will remain the same. As much as innovation shapes the day-to-day processes of optimization, the core foundations of the industry remain unchanged.

For years now, successful SEO firms have not been focusing their efforts strictly on organic search results. They’ve been steadily evolving along with changes in search engines: new Google algorithms, the emergence of Bing, the development of Google Local, instant searches, paid search, and searchable Twitter feeds. At my company, we believe that to be successful, SEO firms need to become something more advanced…

brandchannel has a nice summary of the key messages that Seth Godin has been advocating recently: Savvy consumers are over-saturated with the glut of brand advertising and “no longer want to be spammed with information about a product, service, or experience; they want to feel a connection to it,” as Emily Molitor reports.

The job of CMO today, added Godin, should stand for “chief movement officer” and not chief marketing officer. In short: don’t market — inspire, lead, tap into your brand’s passions and you’ll tap into consumers’ passions and build a small and committed following that will scale through word-of-mouth.