FDA: No Unsubstantiated Claims, Even on Social Media

In case some wondered, FDA guidelines apply on social media as well and liking a post from one of your followers promoting unsubstantiated claims is an endorsement of those claims.

In December 2012, the FDA sent a warning letter to Amarc Enterprises regarding two websites. This letter has garnered attention because it references Facebook. The FDA details a variety of serious concerns over the way Amarc is marketing their vitamins, in particular their websites have numerous testimonials that are unsupported by clinical data.

For example, “PolyMVA helped save my life. I began a regimen of PolyMVA… After 3 months, the Stage 2 cancer was down to Stage 1.” These vitamins have not been approved by the FDA and are being improperly marketed as drugs. Similar claims were made for pets using the products and the FDA notes that this is also a violation.

Here is what the warning letter says about Facebook: “We also note claims made on your Facebook account accessible at: https://www.facebook.com/poly.mva, which includes a link to your website at www.polymva.com. The following are examples of the claims: In a March 10, 2011 post which was ‘liked’ by ‘Poly Mva’:

‘PolyMVA has done wonders for me. I take it intravenously 2x a week and it has helped me tremendously. It enabled me to keep cancer at bay without the use of chemo and radiation… Thank you AMARC’”

The product’s Facebook page has been taken down, but it appears that the claim was posted to the wall. Not only was the claim left on the wall, it was “liked” by the page administrator which would be a clear endorsement of the claim. The letter also mentions a blog post on the Amarc site that makes claims that are unsupported by scientific data.

Interestingly, their other Facebook page is still live and posting things like this: “THE BINDING OF PALLADIUM, A RARE TRACE MINERAL, WITH ALPHA LIPOIC ACID, A POWERFUL ANTIOXIDANT, DRAMATICALLY INCREASES NUTRIENT ABSORPTION AT THE CELLULAR LEVEL AND THROUGHOUT THE BODY – A BREAKTHROUGH THAT DISTINGUISHES POLY-MVA® FROM ANY OTHER SUPPLEMENT!”

I posted a link to the FDA warning letter on their wall and asked for a response. They replied, “Discussions with the FDA are ongoing and the issues raised are being addressed. AMARC is committed to our products and working with health agencies in complying with any applicable rules and regulations. This is somewhat of a normal review in the industry. Thank you for the inquiry and we will continue to support our clients and our products.”

Follow existing guidelines
It’s clear that these websites, the Facebook page and blog provided no clinical data to support any of their claims. This warning letter isn’t really about Facebook or blogs, but about following existing guidelines. The FDA is very clear on labeling and how companies can promote their products. Companies that continue to follow this guidance (on websites, Facebook and blogs) should be fine

Original article

March 5, 2013

Content Marketing Getting the Best ROI

In an environment in which consumers’ attention is increasingly fragmented, the idea of using content to capture interest and engagement is catching on among marketers.

Compelling content can help marketers tell a story, but it can also be cumbersome—and expensive—to create. So which content strategies are generating attractive return on investment (ROI) for marketers? The most cost-effective content types are articles, video and white papers, according to a January 2013 study of marketing decision-makers worldwide conducted by CopyPress, a software company specializing in content marketing tools.

In particular, marketers were most widely satisfied by the ROI from featured articles, with 62.2% saying they provided some of the best content ROI.

Video was also a content strategy cited by 51.9% of marketers for having among the best ROI. But the study highlighted some of the challenges marketers have faced working with it. Video was the content type the highest percentage of marketers (49.8%) described as “difficult to create.” (Other media types that challenged marketers included interactive media, infographics and motion graphics.) And despite the fact that many marketers are having success with video content, half believed that video was “over-priced.”

Publishing articles and white papers may seem like a less complex and less labor-intensive content solution, but these media bring challenges of their own. One question many marketers are asking is what role should authorship play in marketing content creation. Should articles come from specific individuals, or should the focus be on the brand as a whole?

The CopyPress study found that approximately two-thirds of respondents considered authorship to play an important role in their content marketing strategy, while one-third did not. Authorship generally refers to whether articles are bylined, and whether those bylines are from high-profile individuals.

March 1, 2013

Local Marketing Not So Local

According to the CMO Council and Balihoo, brands still struggle with local marketing. Between keeping control over the brand, compliance with corporate directives and the necessity to adapt their effort to local markets only 7% consider their local marketing effective.

Driving customers into store locations is an essential step in the path to purchase, and local advertising is one of the best ways to reach consumers “on the ground.” A February 2013 report by the CMO Council and Balihoofound that local marketing is increasingly happening at the digital level, with the greatest percentage of respondents (27%) reporting that increasing digital investment was the biggest change in their local marketing strategy in the past year. But the study also found that brands are at very different stages in terms of their integration and execution of local marketing.

Just over one-third of those surveyed thought their local capabilities were growing, while 15% of marketers reported struggling or underperforming in their local efforts. Only 7% considered themselves highly evolved in their local outreach.

As brands make a greater push into local marketing, one of the major difficulties they face is executing at the regional level while keeping a corporate focus and quality control on local efforts.

Half of US brand marketers surveyed managed local sales and engagement efforts at the corporate level. In addition, one-third reported a combination of corporate-level monitoring of local efforts, along with franchise and outside network management. To develop local marketing strategy, three out of five marketers said that the CMO or corporate marketing team set local priorities.

Communicating the message of the brand at all levels remains a top priority: 81% cited uniformity of the brands’ values and promises as a goal for the year, and 64% wanted to eliminate customer confusion that conflicting execution caused. This suggests that brand consistency will continue to be more important than incorporating local-level insights and ideas into marketing efforts.

February 25, 2013

Two-thirds increasing spending on paid social media ads

Advertisers’ appetites for paid advertising on social media sites shows no sign of abating in 2013. According to a study conducted for digital brand measurement provider Vizu by Digiday, 64% of US advertisers planned to increase their paid social media ad budgets this year, with just 2% saying they intended to spend less money in 2013 than they did in 2012 on paid social ads.

Most of those increasing their spending on ads on social sites planned to do so by 10% or less. But a significant number were making even larger investments: 26% of respondents reported planning to increase their social media ad spending by 11% or more.

Seven in 10 respondents said they would spend between 1% and 10% of their online budget on social ads, suggesting that for most it is a present, but not a dominant part of the marketing mix. For 13% of respondents, however, it plays a larger role: This group spends 21% or more of their online budgets on paid social media advertising.

Overall, eMarketer estimates that US advertisers will spend $4.1 billion on paid social media ads this year, rising to $5 billion in 2014.

Social Interactions Affect Brand Perception

If brands want to improve their customer perception, having a well-rounded social communications practice that serves both as a marketing outlet and as a place for consumers to solve service issues will help.

In a new study, J.D. Power and Associates measured consumer experience working with companies through their social platform for both marketing (such as receiving a coupon or some other offer through a social channel) and service (such as answering questions about a product or service or solving specific problems) needs.

The study was based on the responses of more than 23,000 consumers and covered 100 brands in six industries: airlines, auto, banking, credit card, telecom and utility. The bottom line: very few companies doing both marketing and service particularly well.

“Hardly any companies are doing equally well on social marketing and social servicing,” Jacqueline Anderson, director of social media and text analytics at J.D. Power, tells Marketing Daily. The discrepancy, she says, has a negative impact on brand perception.

The study found a correlation between a company’s overall social communications and a consumer’s likelihood to purchase and overall perception of the company. Among highly satisfied consumers (those with satisfaction scores of 951 or higher on a 1,000-point scale), 87% said their online interaction with the company “positively impacted” their likelihood of purchase from that company. Meanwhile, 10% of consumers with low satisfaction scores (less than 500) said their experiences with a company’s social communications “negatively impacted” their likelihood of purchase.

According to the study, nearly a third of consumers ages 30-49 and 38% of those over 50 interact with companies via social marketing (compared with only 23% of consumers 18-29). However, 43% of the younger demographic use the channels for social media interactions, while only 18% of those over 50 do.

Understanding exactly which consumers are using social media channels to what end will go a long way in helping companies improve their overall communications, Anderson says. Companies will have to evaluate how consumers are using their social media channels and then develop a strategy to address those patterns. This may require some of them to reorganize.

“It’s kind of a failure to understand why consumers are reaching out,” Anderson says. “Many companies are still organized around servicing on one side and marketing on the other.”

Among the industries evaluated, the auto industry is the only one that performs particularly well when it comes to marketing and servicing via social media. The wireless industry scores well when it comes to social servicing interactions, while utilities perform well in social marketing.

February 20, 2013February 20, 2013

Would You Pay to Promote Your Friends’ Posts?

Facebook thinks so, now you can pay to promote your friends’posts to more people, even without their permission

Until natural language processing improves, only humans can tell what’s important. So Facebook today starts rolling out the option to pay to promote a friend’s posts and get them seen by more people. This will help critical posts bubble to the top of the feed, and let Facebook earn some money, too. The feature respects privacy controls, but could still make you look like a self-important prick.

Facebook began testing the ability to promote your own posts in May 2012 and rolled the feature out to the U.S. in October. See, your average Facebook post only gets seen by about 16 percent of your friends because they aren’t online soon after you post, or you never interact with them on Facebook. Promoted Posts artificially boost your posts so they appear in the news feed to people Facebook wouldn’t have shown them to.

The option has enraged some people, making them feel like they’re being extorted to communicate with their friends. When it first came out, I said Facebook was recklessly endangering the meritocracy of the news feed, which until then only rewarded posts that got the most Likes, comments, shares, and clicks.

But there are real uses for Promoted Posts. If you’re raising money for a good cause, looking for an apartment, or have a big announcement for your company, paying to force it into more people’s news feeds can actually be really valuable, and worth the $7 or so. The price varies by geographic area and how many people it could reach.

Now you can do the same for friends’ posts, or at least you’ll be able to soon. A gradual global roll-out for the feature is starting now, and it’s only available to people with fewer than 5,000 total friends and subscribers.

When you see one you think deserves more attention, you can click the drop-down arrow next to a post to sponsor it, and it will reach a larger percentage of the original audience of the post. That means promoting a friend’s post won’t violate their privacy settings. If the post was set to only show up for their friends, your payment will just make it show up to more of their friends. If their post is publicly visible, your promotion could appear to your friends, too.

Facebook explains “If your friend is running a marathon for charity and has posted that information publicly, you can help that friend by promoting their post to all of your friends. Or if your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in the news feed and more people notice it.”

One issue, though, is that you don’t need a friend’s permission to promote their posts. And depending on what they said, the extra eyeballs might not always be appreciated.

A friend could jokingly promote an embarrassing photo of me, or my status about something bad happening to me. If I post that I wrote an article or am selling something, a friend might innocently think they’re helping by promoting the update. But when people see the “promoted” tag on my self-serving post and realize money was traded for their attention, they might think I’m tooting my own horn a little too loudly.

Facebook will have to keep an eye on this one. If people use it for evil, or people unwittingly end up looking like a loudmouth used car salesmen in cheap plaid polyester suits that reek of even cheaper cologne, then it may want to give authors the option to prevent promotions.

Source

February 19, 2013February 19, 2013

20 Free Photoshop Alternatives

Social Media is a very intensive visual environment, meaning, you will probably have to edit or resize graphics. For the past decade, Photoshop has been the standard when it comes to photo editing software but not everybody is able or willing to spend $700 to buy it or need all the features and complexity of the software. Following are 20 free Photoshop alternatives

1. GIMP
Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, AmigaOS

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a great application that was created for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Written on Unix, GIMP is arguably the most popular alternative for Photoshop available today.

2. Gimphoto
Windows, Linux

Gimphoto is a modification of the GIMP graphics program that aims to present a more user friendly interface. The layouts are more similar to Photoshop, making Gimphoto a popular choice for those who are switching from it. It’s currently only available for Linux and Windows though a Mac version is available.

Another GIMP modification that aims to make things easier for former Photoshop users is GIMPshop. Unfortunately, someone hijacked the GIMPshop domain, resulting in a dispute between the original developer and the hacker who was profiting from hijacking the domain. This is one of the main reasons the application is no longer developed.

3. PhotoPos Pro
Windows

PhotoPos Pro is a rich photo editor that has support for most picture file types and support for digital scanners. It also features image enhancement, text tools, layers, masks and special effects.

The pro version of the script used to retail for $59.90 (with a lite version available for free) but it has since been released as Freeware (apparently due to thousands of requests).

4. Photoshop Express
Online Service

Can’t afford the high price of Photoshop? You may be pleased to know that Adobe offers a free basic version of the script online. The editor allows you to edit your photos online with ease. You can resize, crop and rotate, reduce red-eye and saturation, adjust white balance, fill light and much more. You can also apply effects to photos such as pixelate, tint and crystalize.

Photoshop Express is a great choice for basic photo editing and quick touch ups.

5. Artweaver Free
Windows

Artweaver Free is a limited version of the artistic application Artweaver Plus (€29). The free version has common editing tools such as gradient and crop, support for PSD files, arrangeable palettes plus image and effect filters.

6. Splashup
Online Service

Formally known as Fauxto, Splashup is a free online photo editing tool and manager that has support for layers, filters, brushes, text editing, blend modes and much more. You can import photos from your desktop and from a range of services such as Facebook, Flickr and Picasa.

Multiple photos can be edited at the same time and there is a lite version for mobile PCs available too.

7. Aviary
Online Service

A cool online photo editor that lets you edit photos easily. You can crop and rotate images and apply lots of cool effects such as sharpen, blemish, red eye, contrast, blue and much more.

There are advanced tools available too (also free) for dedicated editing such as an image editor, vector editor, effects editor, image markup, music creator, audio editor and screen capture.

Aviary

8. Inkscape
Windows, Mac, Linux

A vector graphics editor which boasts that it has similar capabilities to Illustrator, CorelDraw and Xara X. It saves files in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. It should be considered as a compliment rather than an alternative to raster graphic editors such as Photoshop or Gimp for most tasks, though it has adopted some common photo editing tools such as blurring etc.

9. Photoscape
Windows

A basic photo editor that lets you fix and enhance photos. It has a lot of interesting features such as support for animated gifs, a splitter which divides a photo up into several pieces and attaching multiple photos vertically or horizontally to create one final photo.

10. PhotoPlus Starter Edition
Windows

PhotoPlus Starter Edition is a limited version of PhotoPlus X5 ($89.99). It comes with a lot of great tools that help you adjust photos and give them a complete makeover. Through PhotoPlus you can repair old and damaged photos, remove objects from a photo, smooth skin, whiten teeth and much more.

11. Seashore
Mac

A beautiful image editor that supports gradients, textures and alpha channel editing. You can compare the current image to the last version of it saved, and can save in SVG, PSD and PDF file formats.

12. Paint.NET
Windows

A great program that evolved from Microsofts famous Paint application, Paint.NET supports layers, special effects, unlimited history and more. It uses an intuitive tabbed interface that shows live thumbnails of the opened image rather than text. It also has a very active support community.

13. Darktable
Mac, Ubunut, Fedora, Opensuse, Arch, Gentoo

One of the only applications that isn’t available for Windows, Darktable is a feature rich photo editing program that supports lots of special effects and correction tools. It has support for 15 languages and the export system works with Picasa, Flickr, email attachments and more.

14. Photofiltre
Windows

An image retouching program that allows basic or advanced image editing. It supports over 100 filters and lets you use useful preset selection tools such as ellipses, triangles, rounded rectangles and more.

15. VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor
Windows

A basic image editor that supports over 30 types of file formats and 100 transformations, filters and effects. Photoshop compatible filters are supported too.

16. PaintStar
Windows

An image processing application for editing and retouching photographs. Image morphing, multiple layers and screen capture are supported and it supports more than 30 file formats, 100 effects and filters.

17. Cinepaint
Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD

An offshoot of GIMP, CinePaint has been used on many Hollywood films such as Spiderman and The Last Samurai to touch up frames.

18. Pixlr
Online Service, Windows, Mac, Mobile Devices

A cool free online photo editing service that works on browsers and a variety of operating systems and devices. Available in 23 languages, Pixlr has the most usable Photoshop features such as color adjustment, special effects, layer support and much more.

19. Picasa
Windows, Mac, Linux

Originally created and sold by Idealab, Google aquired Picasa in 2004 and released it to the world for free. The current version supports easy geo tagging and heavy integration with Google+ that lets you easily tag Google+ friends and share photos through your circles.

It’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to apply basic edits to your photos and touch them up. 12 effects are available and there are additional affects via Picnik too.

20. Windows Photo Gallery (previously called Windows Live Gallery)
Windows

The new version of Windows Photo Gallery allows you to organize, view, share and edit. Still intuitive and easy to use is has become a lot more powerful and now includes RAW image processing

Have we missed any application, tell us in the comment section, have you used any of these apps, tell us about your experience in the comment section