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Klout Offers Perks and Insight Via Brand Squads

May 8th, 2012 | Posted by admin in branding | marketing | News | social media - (0 Comments)

Klout, a company that provides social media analytics to measure a user’s influence across her or his social network, has announced a new product called Brand Squads. This new app allows social network users a central place to involve others that meet certain criteria. This information is outlined in an article, Klout Launches Brand Pages to Help Companies Engage Influencers.

Klout’s David Temple explains:

“Brand Squads” are Klout’s way of giving influencers a place to be recognized and have a direct impact on the brands they care about most.””

Temple continues:

“Previously, brands had more simple pages with just their Klout Score. Brand Squads is a different twist on brand pages, where top influencers for brands have a chance to be recognized and have an impact on the brand.”

With this new app from Klout social media users have an opportunity to access brand data and ultimately win perks. Klout reports data based on influence to companies that offer these perks. Looking at the bigger picture companies that participate can acquire marketing data that could be useful to impact future sales. Klout’s app offers a seemingly win-win for consumers and brands. We raise the question of privacy with all of this tying of brand to social network users there is a degree of shared information. It makes us wonder, do consumers even realize what they give up to win  those perks?

Sandy McIntosh, May 8, 2012

Businesses Find New Uses for Facebook Timeline

May 2nd, 2012 | Posted by admin in branding | Facebook | marketing | social media - (0 Comments)

While a number of us are still learning to accept the shift to Timeline on Facebook the article, “5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines”, explains how some companies are taking advantage of the format shift in creative ways. Most merge the technical changes with design in previously impossible ways including branding via the now-more-visible app, highlighting photo albums to display whatever product they feel deserves the most attention and utilizing the “about” section to share strategic marketing information.

Another innovation mentioned is the use of Milestones.

From the article:

“Interesting Milestones may work better if your company has some history. Coca-Cola, founded in 1886, has the benefit of a long and interesting history, so they can show their products from 1916 and how they have since evolved.

But you still may be able to get creative with product releases and things that you have accomplished.”

With the way the new format displays photos the most impressive marketing uses of Timeline are those that blend the technical changes with the graphic. Impressive though they are there will be a finite amount of ways to exploit the layout in eye-catching or useful ways. Now that these opportunities have been discovered they will be repeated by most companies and organizations that see them and may come to lose their luster unless Facebook tweaks the format again allowing for more customization and creativity.

Derek Clark, May 2, 2012

 

Gnip and Tumblr Partner to Boost Social Media Content

April 24th, 2012 | Posted by admin in branding | business process | News | social media - (0 Comments)

Gnip, a social media data provider, has sealed a partnership deal with the blogging service Tumblr and is the focus of an article, “Gnip Signs Deal to Syndicate Tumblr Firehose“.

Gnip is linked with a full suite of social networks and plans to expand that social content with help from Tumblr then sell to enterprise customers to improve marketing strategies.

Chris Moody, President and COO of Tumblr, conveys this from the article:

Tumblr is a rich medium for longer-form content that has seven different options for what users can post. As a result, Tumblr is incredibly visual but also offers an immense amount of text based content (5 million text based posts per day).

In these posts, we see conversations happening on Tumblr that aren’t happening elsewhere on topics that aren’t typically discussed on other platforms. For Land Rover, that was a picture they posted that received 5,000 notes on Tumblr and almost no notice anywhere else. For Urban Outfitters, it was a picture a photographer posted of a piece from one of their new collections that received over 1,000 notes and almost no mention elsewhere.

For brands these viral activities matter a lot in areas like product development and brand management.

On a side note, and not to play down this huge growth pattern, I wonder if the influx of new people embracing the various social networks in general has anything to do with this vast number of social media activities?

Sandy McIntosh, April 24, 2012

A Real Game Closure

March 14th, 2012 | Posted by admin in branding | Gaming | mobility | News | social media - (0 Comments)

Game Closure, a new company founded in 2011, passed on financial help from Facebook and Zynga, and attracted financial backing from a very impressive list of investors. These investors are captivated with Game Closure’s short development time to market and their HTML5-based multiplayer and cross-platform capabilities. – Game Closure Turns Down Facebook & Zynga To Raise $12M For HTML5 Mobile Gaming

Andy Miller, General Partner at highland Capital Partners, has this to say:

“Game Closure represents the rare opportunity to invest in a company positioned to change the face of an industry. The Game Closure platform will allow gaming studios to build true cross-platform games, in unprecedented development times, with groundbreaking mobile social sharing and virality features.”

Also, Martin Hunt, Co-Founder and CTO of Game Closure adds:

“In just one year we have grown our team from 3 to 26 engineers from around the world, we raised $12 million from the top investors in Silicon Valley, and we’ve built the best mobile game engine in the world with HTML5 technology. Our goal has always been to drastically reduce the time it takes to write games for every mobile platform, from 12 months to just 4-6 weeks.”

Mobile and social gaming has become extremely popular, and Facebook and Zynga offer leading platforms for this activity. With this in mind, perhaps ignoring them and their financial support might not be wise.

Sandy McIntosh, March 13, 2012

 

Mobile Apps Give New Meaning to Pay as You Go

January 10th, 2012 | Posted by admin in branding | marketing | mobility | smartphone - (0 Comments)

With the smart phone market’s continuing growth, it was only a matter of time before payment apps were developed. According to kmov.com’s “Pay-by-Name Purchasing: Changing the Future of Spending,” one of the newest forms of mobile payments is the Square Card Case, launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s Square.

“The Square Card Case totally eliminates the need for a physical card in a merchant-to-consumer transaction. It works by storing a virtual copy of your credit or debit card on your smartphone, and acts as a virtual tab. To use it, consumers must download the free Square Card Case application for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android. A customer then sets up an account using their name, email address, credit card information and a photo. The customer’s phone will detect local merchants who accept the Card Case form of payment.”

Needless to say, security is a concern, an issue raised in an open letter from VeriFone, a Square Card competitor. The market’s also getting crowded with Google’s Google Wallet and PayPal’s PayPal Instore, both of which use near-field communication technology. This is definitely an emerging market with plenty of potential. The payoff will be big for a player who can address security and ease of use while creating a mass-market brand.

Rita Safranek, January 10, 2012

Growing Businesses Struggling to Maintain Brand Loyalty in the Mobile Age

December 15th, 2011 | Posted by admin in blog | branding | mobility | smartphone | social media - (0 Comments)

Brand Dossier’s recent article on the increasing presence of social media and mobile devices, “Social media, mobile devices creating brand loyalty challenges for mid-size businesses” deals with new concerns business have in dealing with brand loyalty.

The growth of both social media and mobile devices has lead to a new type of consumer, who can easily compare products and prices, which is making it harder for companies to build up brand loyalty, a new IBM study says. This global study of mid-market chief marketing officers reveals a number of facts about the concerns of CMOs in an increasingly mobile marketplace. According to the study, 72% feel unprepared to “effectively build” brand loyalty, with 70% seemingly placing this unease on the wide availability of consumer-oriented data.

“Mobile commerce is expected to reach $31 billion by 2016, yet 62 per cent of mid-market CMOs report being underprepared to deal with the proliferation of channels and devices. This increase in the mobile shopping trend further increases marketing challenges, complicates data collection and analysis, and threatens both customer service and customer retention.”

In order to deal with the influx of consumer blogs, social media sites, and other sources of information about consumer products, retailers are focusing on marketing analytics in order to more effectively target consumers. The hope is that computers can analyze marketing data and buying decisions more efficiently and more accurately, allowing companies to reach new customers who will stay with the brand, instead of endlessly seeking to save a few cents on their next purchase.

Jody Barnes, December 15, 2011

Social Media Marketing Analytics (SMA) Continued – A Closer Look at Strategic Development and Strategic Connections

November 30th, 2011 | Posted by admin in branding | business process | Facebook | marketing | networking | social media | Twitter - (0 Comments)

With brand monitoring and competitive research, a business can collect a wealth of knowledge – but then what? In “Social Media Marketing Analytics – Strategic Development, Part Four Of An Exclusive 7-Part Series,” Midure explains:

“As I tell every client that comes into our agency, when developing a strategy in the social media arena, simplicity and incremental implementation is key…Start off small and gain momentum such as building a Facebook Page. Then roll in some nice applications as tabs, develop a content calendar and possibly try some promotions such as a sweepstakes. Then dive into Twitter, look into the investment of building a blog as well a backing everything up with some Search Engine Marketing to boost visibility and traffic to your assets.”

Strategic or tactical? Maybe some of each. Jumping into the social media arena requires both.

Strategic Connections are covered in “Social Media Marketing Analytics – Strategic Connections, Part Five Of An Exclusive 7-Part Series”:

“Insights tools such as Alteiran SM2 allow you to uncover what I like to call “power users/sources” because it ranks an individual or entities “popularity/influence…Why is this important? It gives you a great understanding of how viable the user/source is in terms of making a connection. What are the benefits? Marketing effectiveness by taking advantage of the user/source’s avid network of followers/supporters.”

Power users can be ‘Joe Schmo’ with avid Twitter followers, a popular blog or celebrity, or a well-known CEO. Web statistics, like unique site visits, Tweets, or user interactions, make it possible to track how influential these power users are.

Insight tools may make finding these connections easier, but actually tapping into power users’ networks may prove more challenging. In the labyrinth of social media, tracking strategic connections can quickly turn into too many numbers with too little strategy.

Philip West

November 30, 2011

Social Media Marketing Analytics (SMA) Continued – Brand Monitoring and Competitive Research Explained

November 29th, 2011 | Posted by admin in branding | business process | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | marketing | News | social media | Twitter - (0 Comments)

Part two of Star Group’s series on Social Media Marketing Analytics covers Brand Monitoring – a key to a business’s social media presence. In “Social Media Marketing Analytics – Brand Monitoring, Part 2 of An Exclusive 7-Part Series,” Midure explains:

“Brand Monitoring, to put it simply, is the understanding of who, what, where, why, when and how 3rd party sources or customers are referring to your brand. Brand Monitoring has become an extremely necessary and important responsibility for any business in today’s environment.”

So it boils down to a lot of data – what are customers, the media, competitors, and employees saying about you? What’s being tweeted, blogged, linked, and liked about you? When is this all happening and is it good or bad?

Competitive Research asks the same questions, just about your competitors. In part three of Midure’s series, “Social Media Marketing Analytics – Competitive Research, Part Three of an Exclusive 7-Part Series,” he notes:

“Just as you do for your own brand, it is YOUR job to be on top of what your competitors are doing, LISTEN and be attentive of what is being said about them. YOU need to be aware of what they are doing well and what they are doing not-so-well.”

Add your competitor’s brand monitoring to the mix, and all this knowledge can help identify niches, opportunities, and failures. It all comes down to better knowledge and better performance.

It’s clear that this data organized and turned into knowledge can help any business. While these strategies are not new ideas, in the Web 2.0 city that never sleeps, it is constantly becoming more challenging to round up all that data.

Philip West

November 29, 2011

Nonprofits Can Take Away Some Lessons from SF Goodwill’s Going Social Project

November 15th, 2011 | Posted by admin in blog | branding | Facebook | marketing | mobility | News | prospecting | social media | Twitter - (0 Comments)

As Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties (SF Goodwill) entered its 100th year of service in the Bay Area, they decided to reach out to Socialbrite for help in becoming a social organization – engaging the community and bringing on a new generation of supporters. Their new Web site, sfgoodwill.org, is more than just an update; it’s a top-to-bottom change from a brochure-style site to an interactive center for blogging, donating, volunteering, and more.

In “SF Goodwill’s big leap forward in outreach to the community,” JD Lasica covers 10 lessons learned and how decisions were made to go social. Lesson 1:

“Go all in. A lot of organizations want to tinker at the edges but are scared of more deep-seated change. SF Goodwill seemed open to institutional change that required new approaches and new thinking about how various parts of the organization interact with the public — and across departmental silos.”

Other topics covered: creating a strategy, tapping into your community of resources, going mobile, and embracing open source.

Social media investment on the front end does pay off. Time will have to tell just how much payoff SF Goodwill reaps. Nonprofits of all kinds are smart to watch what happens with SF Goodwill and to start thinking about getting on the social bandwagon.

More on Socialbrite: http://www.socialbrite.org

Philip West

November 15, 2011

Selling With Social Media Relies on Strategy and Evaluation

November 8th, 2011 | Posted by admin in branding | marketing | News | social media - (0 Comments)

In Social Media Examiner’s 4 Steps to Selling With Social Media the author tries to demystify social media in light of growing sales.

The insistence that  tracking   return on investment for social media requires attraction, conversion, retention and measurement.  As with most things this easy to say and harder to do.

The article attempts to provide a road map to accomplishing these four steps. It is interesting to note that many of the steps outlined for each step are the same steps that are needed in person-to-person interactions – strategy, consistency, offer value to convert into buyers.

It is interesting to note that the author claims that social media is in its infancy.  I think it is actually struggling through its teenage years but I do agree with the article’s assertions about the focus needed to succeed.

So rather than focusing myopically on flavor-of-the-month tactics, make sure that all of your social media campaigns include the formula of attraction, retention, conversion and measurement, and you will have a sustainable plan for success.

Constance Ard November 8, 2011