Marketing Consulting/Omni-Channel Marketing: Offline and Online
Eight million brands, from carmakers to rock bands, switched to Facebook’s new Web page format 10 days after the revamped pages were introduced at a splashy launch event in New York last month, according to Facebook.
Some businesses say new advertising offerings that take advantage of Facebook’s latest Web page capabilities are helping them reach a broader audience on the 845-million-member social network.
Consumers don’t expect brands to be flawless. In fact, consumers will embrace brands that are FLAWSOME*: brands that are still brilliant despite having flaws; even being flawed (and being open about it) can be awesome. Brands that show some empathy, generosity, humility, flexibility, maturity, humor, and (dare we say it) some character and humanity.
Two key drivers are fueling the FLAWSOME trend:
FLAWSOME sits as part of a bigger trend towards HUMAN BRANDS, something that we’ve touched upon in many previous Trend Briefings: RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS, BRAND BUTLERS, GENERATION G, and so on.
So, while HUMAN BRANDS might not be a ‘new’ theme, four currents are now converging to make consumers more focused on brand attitude and behavior than ever before:
“human nature dictates that people have a hard time genuinely connecting with, being close to, or really trusting other humans who (pretend to) have no weaknesses, flaws, or mistakes”
“We believe the winners in this new digital age will be the brands that let their fans define it and syndicate it. We’ve always been a consumer-centric culture, so the shift to adopting the way guests and clients lead communications for Four Seasons has been rapid. Digital media is now 50% of our brand’s marketing efforts, with a strong social media presence that facilitates engagement and encourages loyalty.”
Felicia Yukich, Social Media Marketing Manager, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
Home Depot’s Social Media Community Manager, Tia Robinson, shares how they created an authentic voice and connection with their customers through their online How-To Community.
Twitter is a great platform to get people stoked about anything, if done right. You can promote potato chips like @popchips does, and it could turn into a huge following for your brand and have fun doing it.
Or, you can do it completely wrong and annoy the hell out of people by spamming them on Twitter. Toyota opted for the second choice, spam people.
The Coca-Cola Company’s Digital Manager of Communications, Natalie Johnson, shared how they monitored conversations about their brand on a global scale across the web.
As marketers include social media as part of their overall strategy, 97% agree that it provides benefits and value to their business.
In a survey of more than 700 marketers worldwide, 88% of respondents told Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing software company, that social media helps grow brand awareness. Social media also benefited marketers by allowing them to engage in dialogue (85%) and increase sales and partnerships (58%). An additional 41% of marketers said it helped reduce costs.
Brand marketers continue to struggle with determining return on investment for social media campaigns. Eighty-eight percent admit to gaining positive ROI on campaigns, but a study released Wednesday from Wildfire, a social media platform company, shows that the metrics remain all over the map.
While inconsistencies make it difficult to create and follow industry standards, Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom said 75% of survey participants said they still plan to increase their social media budgets this year.
Gaining positive ROI is great, but what do marketers measure?
With the new year comes the time to clean up our desks, desktops, files… and start the year on the right foot.
In the digital era and the social media era, we need to add a few tasks to start the year on the right foot. It’s time to take another look at our social media profiles, clean them up, bring them up to date, optimize them and get them ready to work harder for us.
Let’s start with LinkedIn. With an exponential user growth, I see the same mistakes over and over again, let’s start with some basic mistakes I see over and over again:
1-Professional headline:
Your professional headline is your brand, it appears next or under your name everywhere your name appears, in searches, groups… With your name, it’s the first thing users read when they come across your name, make it count. Your professional headline will determine if someone will merely glance at your name or want to click on it and read your profile. It’s who you are, what you want to be.
By default, LinkedIn will put in your last job title, is that who you are, what you want to be? Will that entice potential business partners or employers to take a closer look at your profile?
Take as much time as you need, craft a headline people will remember and entice them to want to know more about you, tell them how you can help them
2-Profile picture:
Social media is a very public space. Chances are, if you are on LinkedIn, you want to be seen and found, you want to network.
Would you go to a networking event with a mask on your face? Probably not, then why are you doing it on LinkedIn?
Posting a professional photograph has a number of advantages.
3-Public profile
Your “Public profile” is actually a misnomer, it’s your public URL. Think of LinkedIn as a personal website. Each website comes with a URL (Unique resource Locator), a unique address that identify them and allows users to find them on the web.
Your “Public profile” as LinkedIn calls it is your personal URL, the address to your personal profile, a link you can add to your resume, marketing material, business card.
Just as any website address, your URL should be short and memorable.
Why short? The shorter and the easier to remember, the less contacts and potential contacts will make mistakes (typos) when they search for you and the more likely they are to find your profile. A short URL is easy to remember, it’s easy to add to your marketing material
By default, a LinkedIn public profile link looks like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/first-lastname/24/9a5/766 Try to remember that one, spell it to a potential contact and have that contact type it without mistake.
LinkedIn allows you to chose a custom (also called vanity) URL, the URL looks like this: http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/yourname*.
Which one would you rather spell, print or type?
4-Websites
By default, LinkedIn adds “My website”, “My Blog” “Other” as the links to your websites or internet properties. LinkedIn also offers ways to customize the links. Use that opportunity to rename them, use your website name, your blog name. LinkedIn profiles are extremely well optimized for search engines, if you search your name, chances are, your LinkedIn profile will come at the top of the search.
As a bonus, renaming the links with the name of your website or blog will give them a lift in searches (SEO effect)
With the explosion of websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, in-house counsel should give careful consideration to the unique problems social media presents, how it affects the workplace, and how to address employees’ and third parties’ social media usage.
As with the rise of the Internet and blogs, existing employee and intellectual property issues play out in the social media world in sometimes surprising ways, creating new challenges and problems for in-house counsel. Social media has the capability to dramatically increase these problems and challenges by providing a much larger, well-connected audience. The following are some specific, brief considerations that in-house counsel should analyze and address with company employees.
1. Secrets are gone in a flash (or click).
2. Employee posts in social media may be protected speech.
3. Employee posts may subject the company to liability.
4. Employee posts may prompt federal administrative action.
5. Social media provides an exponentially bigger, real-time audience for traditional employee-relations problems.
6. Using social media as a recruiting tool can backfire.
7. Registering user names is a cost-effective, protective measure.
8. Implementing social media policies is becoming a best practice
9. The best defense is a good offense.
10. Social media adds litigation considerations.