I found an interesting article today on TechCrunch about Fanbase Media debuting a social platform for Instagram. Fanbase Media, if you haven't heard of it, is a new social marketing start-up (I swear there are soooo many social start-ups these days!). The company is only manned by 3 people who just help companies like Michael Kors run promotions and contests on the photo sharing site, Instagram. Fanbase believes social marketing is going from a stage of simply pushing out content, to a stage of compiling and gathering user generated content and using that content to get marketing results. The engagement and interactions using user-generated content completely outweighs just publishing content. Fanbase has already begun making an impact on the Instagram community, but has also recently started working with Vine (a Twitter created mobile app).
They believe the place to be is with strictly mobile apps where people take pictures/share stuff directly from their mobile phones. This makes sense as this industry is exploding and people cannot get enough of these social apps. Apps, smartphones, and the marketing that goes along with them is constantly evolving and is super exciting to me! Even in the last year there have been crazy shifts in social platforms and a huge shift in marketing on these platforms. Companies are finally coming around to social media, as they should.
Fanbase is smart for creating the platform they did, but in this industry I believe it's tough to survive too long because so many new start-ups come along every day. With technology, nothing is going to last forever since someone will always come up with a more creative/faster/cooler way of doing something. Also, the platforms like Instagram and Vine are not to be dwelled on, as we have no idea how long they'll last. Sites like Vine and Instagram are trendy, but not as powerful as Twitter and Facebook in my opinion. However, this doesn't mean there are huge opportunities there, because there are!
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Social Media Marketing Tactics
Today I found an insightful article from RIS media about social marketing tactics to share with you. This was an eye opening article, and important in todays day and age. Almost every company is doing something social, but without thinking of the tactics that should go along with it. It's not only important to have a presence online, but you must also use it appropriately.
This article states that for both B2B and B2C marketing, improving customer engagement is the most important objective of social strategies, followed by increasing website traffic and increasing overall content reach. It is impressive to me that the people at RIS understand that these objectives are more important than increasing sales revenue, since they will eventually do that as well.
The next chart showed the most effective social tactics for B2B and B2C marketing. Creating articles and blog post content was ranked #1 for both B2B and B2C, followed by creating social share buttons for B2C and creating research articles for B2B which makes sense.
The final chart illustrated the most difficult tactics to execute for B2B and B2C social strategies. Creating audio/video content ranked first for both categories. This does take time and effort, but then again, you should spend most of your time curating content, so this makes sense. You will not achieve a successful campaign if you do not take the necessary steps in creating the content. People these days are good at estimating the effort put into ads, etc. so it is important to put a lot of time into this.
This article states that for both B2B and B2C marketing, improving customer engagement is the most important objective of social strategies, followed by increasing website traffic and increasing overall content reach. It is impressive to me that the people at RIS understand that these objectives are more important than increasing sales revenue, since they will eventually do that as well.
The next chart showed the most effective social tactics for B2B and B2C marketing. Creating articles and blog post content was ranked #1 for both B2B and B2C, followed by creating social share buttons for B2C and creating research articles for B2B which makes sense.
The final chart illustrated the most difficult tactics to execute for B2B and B2C social strategies. Creating audio/video content ranked first for both categories. This does take time and effort, but then again, you should spend most of your time curating content, so this makes sense. You will not achieve a successful campaign if you do not take the necessary steps in creating the content. People these days are good at estimating the effort put into ads, etc. so it is important to put a lot of time into this.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Spring Break Experience & Google Reader
Been a while since I've blogged... Nice to be back on here again. I'm finally back in school-mode after a week of tests and papers. Two weeks ago I went on a Spring Break cruise to Nassau/St. Thomas/St. Maarten on the Carnival Dream. If you haven't heard of this boat by now, you must live under a rock. To sum up the story, the boat broke down in the St. Maarten port (similar to what happened to the Carnival Triumph a few weeks before). Air conditioning was off for maybe an hour, elevators didn't work, and some toilets overflowed. It wasn't bad at all. The staff kept us very educated as to what was going on, and a time frame for recovery. When I woke up the next morning still in St. Maarten, we knew we weren't going anywhere. It ended up being an engine problem, and we'd all have to be flown back to Orlando on charter flights. (Rough couple weeks for Carnival... $$) But as it relates to social media, it was crazy on CNN how blown up the story got. CNN made it seem like our conditions were horrible and exaggerated 10x more than I ever expected. Once I was back home I went on Carnival's Facebook page. They were very quick to update and inform their "fans", which I was impressed by. It's important to be responsive in an eventful time like this. I will still ride Carnival, and have no problems with the cruise line whatsoever. (The 50% off another cruise coupon helped a little I suppose...)
The next issue I chose to blog about today is Google's decision to shut down their RSS feed, Google Reader. To me this is somewhat shocking as it is a widely used and reputable tool. Some quotes from the article suggest that social media may be the new RSS, and that the shut down of Google's program may be a net positive overall. A lot of new programs have been made in the last 5 years that haven't seen action because of Google's program, so this is an interesting development. The effect of this decision hasn't been seen yet, but I'll be sure to update you when more data becomes available. It is sure to make an impression on the content marketing scene and in social media.
-Steffan
The next issue I chose to blog about today is Google's decision to shut down their RSS feed, Google Reader. To me this is somewhat shocking as it is a widely used and reputable tool. Some quotes from the article suggest that social media may be the new RSS, and that the shut down of Google's program may be a net positive overall. A lot of new programs have been made in the last 5 years that haven't seen action because of Google's program, so this is an interesting development. The effect of this decision hasn't been seen yet, but I'll be sure to update you when more data becomes available. It is sure to make an impression on the content marketing scene and in social media.
-Steffan
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