Getting Started in Social Media
Last month, over 250 marketers and small business owners gathered at the Social Fresh conference in Tampa to hear from 32 nationally recognized social media experts. Here’s some of the most common questions we heard.
What should my brand talk about?
Help your target audience find relevant information—not only about your brand, but about their passions. For Fiskars scissors, that passion is scrapbooking.
Maggie Fox from the Social Media Group in Ontario pointed out that “You can’t just aggregate, you must also curate. Help people find valuable information about your brand. Sites that [put lots of social media feeds about the brand on their homepage], but don’t filter them are useless… I have Google for that.”
How do you know when you’ve achieved social media success?
Its not just about having more followers than your competitors. A social media campaign, like any medium, needs a clearly defined strategy that fits in the overall brand strategy. What you are trying to accomplish with a campaign—sales, awareness, discussion or even just goodwill—should define the end goals of any social media effort. It’s more important to find and develop relationships with 5 people who are really passionate about your brand and what it has to offer than to have 5,000 fans who could really care less.
Whats the next big thing in social media?
Chris Barger, the Social Media Director for GM who is responsible for their early and active involvement in the social media realm had two predictions:
1. Combining SM with location awareness
This is mostly applicable to restaurants and other retail locations. Users “check in” on their mobile phones when they are at a location. The person who checks in to that location the most is named the “mayor”. Some stores are offering discounts, etc to the “mayor” of their stores. You can also leave reviews of the store, and discover where your friends are hanging out. The most popular sites for this are currently FourSquare and Gowalla.
2. Brand integration with SM gaming
Currently, lots of time is being spent on games like FarmVille and MafiaWars that are integrated into social media platforms like Facebook. Why not integrate your brand into these games or develop games around your brand that allow users to interact with their existing social media network?
Social Media isn’t everything.
One thing to remember—90% of word of mouth still happens offline. Use social media to help start conversations and engage with consumers—but don’t let it replace good old fashioned face-to-face interaction and other offline approaches.
Online Brand Identity in SEO Strategy
by Amy Phillips
Good brand management is supported by a strong and strategic brand identity. For a brand to stand out in its field, a brand’s online identity is becoming increasingly important. One of the most essential support systems for strong online brand identity is good search engine optimization (SEO).
To examine a brand online, the obvious first place to start is the brand’s Web site. An optimized site, with page titles, clean URLs, good content, headers, descriptions, alt tags and navigation will help with SEO. A very comprehensive checklist can be found here. But is that enough?
For high search engine ranking, the answer is no.
Paid advertising with media such as Pay-Per-Click through services such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, is helpful but can be expensive. Organic SEO costs nothing but the time to build and maintain it. Some knowledge of the ever-changing search engine criteria for ranking algorithms helps.
But are an optimized site and paid advertising enough?
Many organic (as opposed to paid) SEO strategies today call for only 25% of effort given to “on-page” (the website) as opposed to 75% for “off-page” efforts (in-bound links and social media).
Social Media, according to Wikipedia, is composed of three things:
• Concept (art, information, or meme).
• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).
• Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).
If social media is to be used to help SEO, all “concepts” must be strategic and brand-reinforcing. Anything else could actually be damaging. So, a brand’s social media presence with outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube among others, needs to be carefully crafted, controlled and monitored. Never underestimate the power of perception.®
The social interface component of social media presents the most challenges. What does it entail? Meeting people and talking. Asking questions and answering them. Engaging to add value. So how does a “brand” do this successfully?
The first place to start is to create a voice. A company needs to decide whether to set up separate Twitter accounts or one company account. How do you determine the right voice? For the pros and cons of all to consider, check out “The Right Voice for Your Brand is…”
Once your company’s voice is established, make sure that it is consistent from brand image to brand experience. Make sure that expectations are aligned. Create a strategy. Have a plan. Make goals and create timelines. Involve your advertising agency. Outside consultants can give valuable advice from a “fresh” perspective. Consider an integrated advertising campaign. You can’t pay for the publicity of something that goes viral. The more publicity your brand receives, the higher its search engine ranking is, organically.
Designing Effective Eblasts
Does the look and feel of your email messaging effect the campaign results? You may have wondered whether an ordinary-looking email would get better results than a designed one, or vice versa.
We already knew that adding personalization would increase responses. But would people view a simple text email as more personable? Or would the color and design of a newsletter-type email help it stand out in crowded inboxes?
We divided our list in half, sending out a total of 1200 emails. We sent them out at the same time, with the same subject line and the same content—the only difference was the design of the email itself.
Designed email
Plain email
The results? We had more than twice as many people respond to the designed email, and 200% more forwarded it to a friend compared to the plain version.
Results
Overall, click-throughs from the eblast were responsible for a 387% increase in traffic to our site.
The Power of Frequency
When advertising legend Leo Burnett died in 1971, a book simply titled, Leo, was privately printed and distributed by his associates. Those lucky enough to have worked with the man received a coveted copy. Glen Peak was among the fortunate few.
In Leo, a compilation of famous speeches, we find timeless words of wisdom, amazingly relevant today. In about 1950, Burnett wrote about “the brand” in a speech called, “The power of frequency.” He almost sounds like a modern branding guru when he explains, “Whether it is an impulse purchase like a candy bar or a package of cigarettes or an infrequent and highly deliberated purchase like a washing machine, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a mattress, the biggest single thing that advertising can contribute is a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he [or she] makes. We shun the unknown. We are naturally drawn to the familiar. You might call this simply ‘friendship for the product.’ Your best friends are people whose qualities you like and admire and whom you enjoy being with—but they are usually people you see frequently. The principle of frequency in advertising has long been recognized. Several great brands have been built around rigid adherence to this principle rather than through the content or power of any single advertisement.”
The idea of a “whole complex of thoughts and emotions” about a brand sounds like modern branding building, doesn’t it? And, Burnett’s emphasis on the power of “friends” seems almost prophetic in this era of social networking.
Although the concept of brand friendship and loyalty hasn’t changed much over the past 60 years, media choices dramatically have. As marketing experts today, we ask ourselves. how much advertising is too much? How much is too little? The battle between reach and frequency is going through seismic shifts in perspective and is altering everything we do.
In light of the changes occurring almost daily, it is beneficial to review some basic concepts in media strategy and examine how those concepts are evolving. To read more about our perspectives on media planning, click here to request our White Paper 3.
The Infinite Power of One—A Non-traditional Fundraising Campaign for the Cancer Research Alliance
Challenge:
What happens when there is no product to sell, and all you can promise a customer is a warm, fuzzy feeling? This is just one of the hurdles we had to overcome for the Cancer Research Alliance. Home to nine Nobel Prize winners, CRA member centers have a long history of groundbreaking achievements in cancer research. There was, however, virtually no awareness of CRA or what it stands for among a target audience that includes pretty much everyone.
Strategy:
Convince potential donors that they can have the satisfaction of pushing cancer research ahead by donating $1 and passing the message along to others who will do the same.
Promise:
PeakBiety developed a cause marketing campaign around the theme, “The infinite power of one.” Email marketing, Web banner ads, radio spots and a Web-aired video explain that, if everyone gave just one dollar and passed the message on to their friends, the face of cancer would be forever changed.
One of the animated online banners from the campaign
Results:
The campaign is still running, so no final numbers are yet available.
To see more of the work from the campaign, including radio spots and e-blasts, click here.
PeakBiety helps speed the Cancer Research Alliance toward cures.
TAMPA, FL—It’s one thing to sell a product to someone. But what happens when there is no product, and all you can promise in return for a customer’s money is a warm, fuzzy feeling? This is just one of the hurdles PeakBiety branding + advertising® had to overcome to help the Cancer Research Alliance raise funds to help accelerate the end of cancer.
The Cancer Research Alliance is a 12-member organization of some of the nation’s top cancer research centers. Home to nine Nobel Prize winners, CRA member centers have a long history of groundbreaking achievements in cancer research.
On a shoestring budget and with the very big mission of curing cancer, PeakBiety worked with CRA to develop a cause marketing campaign around the theme, “The infinite power of one.” Email marketing, Web banner ads, radio spots and a Web-aired video explain that, if everyone gave just one dollar and passed the message on to their friends, the face of cancer could be forever changed.
Viewers and listeners were then directed to www.celebrations.com, a party-planning Web site partnering with the CRA to collect the donations. In addition to giving $1.00, donors were invited to add their photos to a “CURE” mosaic on the site to “change the face of cancer.” The email and banner ads show the faces of contributors and the radio and video spots string together voices in an invitation to join forces for the cause.
According to Maureen Carlson of the CRA, “The team at PeakBiety far surpassed our expectations in fashioning a message that resonated with the audience. Although the final numbers are not yet in, we have received nothing but positive feedback on the campaign from both donors and our members.”
PeakBiety branding + advertising® services local, regional and national clients in a variety of business sectors. The agency focuses on adding value for its clients by improving customer perceptions. This commitment is summed up in the agency’s promise, “the power of perception®.”
PeakBiety is also one of the few agencies in Tampa Bay to meet the strict requirements for membership in the prestigious American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAAs). For more information, call Glen Peak at PeakBiety branding + advertising, 813-227-8006, extension 114, e-mail gpeak@peakbiety.com or visit peakbiety.com.
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