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”
About two-thirds, or 63 percent, of social networking site SNS.L users questioned in the Pew Research Center poll said they had deleted people from their “friends” lists, up from 56 percent in 2009.
Another 44 percent said they had deleted comments that others have made on their profiles, up from 36 percent two years before.
Users also have become more likely to remove their names from photos that were tagged to identify them. Thirty-seven percent of profile owners have done that, up from 30 percent in 2009, the survey showed.
“Over time, as social networking sites have become a mainstream communications channel in everyday life, profile owners have become more active managers of their profiles and the content that is posted by others in their networks,” the report said.
“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
Three Facebook users die every minute for a total of 1.78 million Facebook users in 2011, what is the future of your digital self?
You might not know what happens when you die but you can control what happens online!
You are filling the internet with status updates, image and video creating new digital dilemmas such as:
Whether you want to live forever online?
How to protect your privacy after death?
How to maintain your digital legacy?
Who to appoint as your digital executor?
Whether You Would Want to Be Digitally Resurrected
Do you know the death policies of all your online accounts?
On the first page of Facebook’s prospectus for its sale of stock to the public, it pegs the number of its “monthly active users” at a whopping 845 million people. The social networking site arrives at an even more astounding number when it comes to “daily active users”: 483 million people.
Those are some huge numbers. If it is hard to believe that so many people are clicking on facebook.com every day, that’s because well, they aren’t, exactly. Those eye-popping numbers should have an asterisk next to them.
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 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.