4 signs you’re a social media failure |
“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” - Oprah Winfrey
Market research firm Gartner projects that more than 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with websites will attempt some kind of online social media initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. Gartner also projects that 50 percent of those efforts will fail.
Recognizing failure and learning from it is the nature of our business, especially for emerging channels such as social media. Repeatedly, it is a brave few who take risks while the rest point fingers and follow. When a company does dare to risk, we are quick to judge and condemn rather than celebrate.
To be realistic, most of us are accountable to multiple stakeholders — brands, consumers, our own organizations, and colleagues. There are, however, ways to minimize risks, learn from the stumbles, and move forward without leaving a trail of flames.
The dictionary defines failure as “the condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends.” Perhaps what we really need to do is to redefine success and failure as it pertains to social media.
Here are four common failure scenarios to help you prepare to respond effectively and turn social media mistakes into successes.
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5 tips for evolving your digital presence |
The IAB recently distributed its 2008 online advertising spending report. The gist is that online spending will continue to grow but not at the steep rate that analysts initially projected. While other advertising channels are facing dire straits, online is still poised to gain sizable share of marketers’ overall budgets. The industry has come a long way from the eras when traditional marketing channels dictated how consumers interacted with advertisers. As the digital space evolves, the way marketers communicate with their consumers follows suit. With each new platform, marketers have another option to add to their mix, but marketers should not rush onto a new platform just to mark their territory. |
Marketers need to balance the pros and cons of being a part of an emerging platform. The lure of being first is enticing because the companies that are first to make an impact in a digital realm are cemented as innovators. But you can’t wait too long as the risk of not adapting to changes fast enough can be substantial as there are several industries — like print media — that are unable to gain market share because they were absent for too long. Taking both extremes into account, marketers need to exercise their discretion to identify how, where, and when they fit into trends. |
Think before you act
Digital marketers are always in a rush, and it’s always been this way. In the beginning, websites went live haphazardly — without much thought going into objectives, content plans or maintenance resources. Thankfully, the “build and they will come” mentality has faded, but marketers are still grappling with how to meaningfully engage with users on newer platforms. Marketers need to continue to identify points of synergies between their various advertising channels — whether it’s point-of-purchase or social media platforms. We need to continue the evolution away from the early days where campaigns were launched to keep pace with fads. These days when budgets need to be stretched, it is crucial to rely on strategy and plan executions around consumers — not just competitors. |
Don’t forget: Consumers have control
Anonymous peer comments now carry the same weight as a recommendation from a trusted friend. BazaarVoice sites that 90 percent of consumers trust the reviews they read online prior to making a purchase. Digital marketing is a dialogue where anyone has an equal voice. This has created an environment where content is created in response to user behavior. Marketers need to take cues from their consumer base in all areas of digital marketing as a move in the right direction. Components like SEM strategies, conversion funnels and creative executions can and should reflect consumers’ affinities –not advertisers’ — to be effective. This is one of the hardest changes for marketers to absorb, but it is the most important. In the digital realm, marketers need to interact with – instead of bark at — their users. No matter how much sense it makes at the drawing board, keep messaging user-centric. |
Make digital marketing work for you
For the most part, marketers are now in a state of flux where they are reevaluating and revamping their online properties. Emphasis is on creating holistic marketing plans where each advertising component augments one another to achieve goals efficiently. The goal is to create a plan where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To keep up with consumers, marketers need to scrutinize each available platform and try to prepare for the ones on the horizon. All decisions should be made with the premise of “Are my consumers here? Does this make sense for me?” If your consumers are not on MySpace, then don’t worry about this forum and allocate resources elsewhere. Read more at www.imediaconnection.com |
| A Pricing Revolution May Loom, But Context And Content Still Rule |
Lower-costs seem appealing in the post-recession world, but short-term savings are short-sighted. For advertisers who care about brands, these issues have to balance against cost considerations: |
• Context: For publishers, there is significant value to be gained from proving and delivering the audience sought by the advertiser. Putting a great ad on low rent inventory reduces the value of your brand — even if the audience is right. People put offers in context and you want yours to be spot on. This is why a vertical ad network makes more sense for advertisers: publishers and subject matter experts are more reliable judges of quality context than any computer algorithm on its own. |
• Latency: We are a long way off from individual targeting in real-time. Neither comScore nor Quantcast can offer that. And retargeting from within ads, while possible, does not ensure that the viewer being cookied fits the desired profile. Now you are pursuing someone for no confirmed reason. |
• Coverage: Most data sources can only confirm about 20-40% of the impressions as fitting a particular profile. Data experts then use statistics to gross up to 100%. It’s not clear that this more accurate than trusting real editors to judge context and quality. |
• High Impact Advertising: The best advertising makes an impression because it’s in context and it’s entertaining. Large publishers and vertical ad networks are uniquely capable of delivering breakthrough advertising such as roadblocks, overlays, widgets and videos, in a personally vetted context that will resonate with your audience. Read more at www.mediapost.com |
7 marketing mistakes to avoid on Twitter |
It is important to recognize and understand the nuances of Twitter as a communications channel. The genius is in its simplicity, but it’s still a tool that consumers and businesses can leverage many ways. |
Conversations on Twitter happen quickly, and there are many benefits to your brand. Below is a tweet from Scott Monty from Ford on the value of Twitter as Ford sees it.
So how can and should your brand use Twitter? And more importantly, what are the most common mistakes and pitfalls on Twitter that could have a negative impact on your business or brand? Read more at www.imediaconnection.com |
NEW YORK Digital agencies often say they don’t want to
become like traditional shops, but that doesn’t stop them from
jumping at the chance to do TV work. |
Razorfish, the Microsoft-owned digital agency, kicked off a TV and
Web promotion for All detergent that began last night during
Celebrity Apprentice. A 30-second spot directed viewers to
all-laundry.com to see a pair of Internet videos Razorfish created
with Celebrity Apprentice contestants Joan and Melissa Rivers. It
marks the first time the 14-year-old digital agency has created a
TV commercial for national broadcast. |
The spot and Web videos, promoting All Small and Mighty
concentrated detergent, are a tie-in with the brand-friendly
Apprentice franchise. All was written into the script of the
episode airing Sunday. Contestants were challenged to create a
viral video for All. In a commercial at the close of the episode,
the Riverses note the stress of the episode and invite viewers to
visit All’s Web site to see “Rivers & Rivers: The Video
Encore.” Read more at www.adweek.com |
 You can think of social media as a set of tools that organizations can use for a variety of purposes - customer service, branding, promotion, relationship-management, etc. Just as with any toolkit, you’re not going to use every tool every time.
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Sometimes the hammer fits, but if you’re trying to measure something the hammer is pretty much useless. Similarly, sometimes a blog will fit perfectly, while other times YouTube might be a more suitable tool. Sometimes (say it ain’t so!) social media outreach won’t fit at all. |
Over the last two years my online toolkit has shifted back and forth as tools have come and gone. Recently, however, I’ve noticed a bit more stability in the services I use. Is this a reflection of a slightly maturing marketplace? Or just of a tough economy? |
| Google Reader - to aggregate and archive news and other RSS feeds from blogs and tools |
| Delicious - for sharing and saving useful sites and articles |
| Radian6 - for more complex monitoring solutions |
| Facebook - for connecting with people and brands |
| LinkedIn - for network building with people I know professionally |
SUMMARY: Self-produced content plays a role in every product and service niche. Whether you sell to consumers or the enterprise, you probably produce multiple pieces of content that are delivered through your website, blogs, syndication services, RSS, email and Twitter, just to name some of the most popular conduits.
The pressure to be ‘thought leaders’ has become one of marketing’s basic functions at many organizations. So, to help you out, we asked content marketers, what is it that sparks a change in content? |
The best reasons to update content are to be found in the middle of the pack; news, trends, events and research are all about the reader. Of course, the performance of content should also dictate whether it’s time to update, upgrade or shift gears. |
Who Says Everything Has to Be Monetized? |
Marketers Use ‘Communication Machine’ Twitter to Engage Consumers With Their Human Side |
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — There’s no end to the number of angles the Twitter story offers: the massive ecosystem of third-party apps the microblogging site has spawned, the ability to create breaking-news reporters out of ordinary citizens and, perhaps biggest of all, the still-absent revenue model.
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JetBlue, for example, views Twitter as a virtual “information booth,” said Morgan Johnston, manager of corporate communications. “The ability to engage directly with our customer humanizes the brand, creating a deeper level of engagement with our customers that fosters loyalty.” JetBlue has 203,935 followers.
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Comcast uses it as a quasi helpline, listening for Twitter users who have an issue with the company and then reaching out to see how it can help. In doing so, its Twitter evangelist, Frank Eliason, has started to markedly shift the poor customer-service perceptions that the company has battled for years.
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Slam dunk
The National Basketball Association provides its 140,000 followers, amassed in just two months, with up-to-the-minute news and updates.
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The concept is simple: Users sign up for an account, collect followers and build out their own network of Twitterers worth following. When a person “tweets” a message, all of his followers instantly receive it on their phones or computers. Those followers can choose to forward — or “retweet” — the message, and so on, and so on.
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Multi-purpose tool
For Southwest Airlines, which launched its Twitter profile in July of 2007, the tool has become, in the words of the airline’s lead Twitterer, Christi Day, a multipurpose communication machine. She uses it for media relations, customer service, relationship building and to promote specials and deals. “It has evolved into what our followers want, a place to get news and promotions,” said Ms. Day, whose official title is emerging media specialist. “And it helps us keep tabs on what our customers want and are saying, in real time.”
Read more at adage.com |
AT&T’s sponsored site MarchTweetness, with tweets about the March Madness basketball games, and Microsoft’s ExecTweets, a collection of tweets from executives, were unveiled last week after months in development, from idea to execution. Both sites were stored on a staging server behind passwords, so developers could “bang on them to make sure they were solid and could withstand the traffic, which has been many times more than we anticipated–and we anticipated quite a bit,” DiPietro said. |
“These programs are partnerships between Federated and Twitter in which we are sharing revenue,” he said, declining to provide details. “I would stop way short of saying this is Twitter’s business model. They are fast-growing and I know they have plans to try many different things. This is one piece.” |
These “experimental” campaigns don’t offer metrics to prove a return on investment other than the amount of traffic flowing to the sites, but companies like Microsoft and AT&T are all too eager to give it a go. |
For AT&T, the idea came from a major initiative to find new and innovative ways to participate in the social Web after meeting with Twitter execs, according to Steve Governale, executive director for Interactive and Innovation at AT&T. The discussion turned to talking about the phenomenon that happens on Twitter during TV events and even prime-time shows where the viewing audience exchanges Tweets about the program,” he said. “We began to think of ways we might bring that type of conversation to the Twitter community in a way that wasn’t previously possible.” |
Revenue Growth Slows for Online Advertising
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U.S. online-advertising revenue grew 10.6% in 2008 to $23.4 billion, the slowest rate of growth since 2002, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. |
In the fourth quarter of 2008, growth slowed to 2.6%, to $6.1 billion, from a year earlier. In the same period in 2007, online ad revenue had jumped 24 %, to $5.9 billion. |
Research firm eMarketer on Monday halved its growth projections based on the new data. The firm now projects that online ad spending will grow 4.5% in 2009, reaching $24.5 billion. Previously, eMarketer predicted that it would increase 8.9%, to $25.7 billion. |
Several categories of marketers notably pulled back their online ad spending in 2008. Retail advertisers, the largest category of online ad marketers, accounted for $5 billion in revenues in 2008, down 7.4% from $5.4 billion in 2007. Financial-services advertisers accounted for $3 billion in online revenues in 2008, down from $3.2 billion in 2007. |
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Companies Quick To Jump On The Social Bandwagon, Beware
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