All the social media sites we love (or hate) to use including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc., enable us to interact with people we know well and those we have never met. My rule is generally to allow anyone I have met into my Facebook world, and those I have not are reserved for LinkedIn. With so many people to keep updated and in touch with, both those you know and those you don’t, these sites can often feel like the only lifeline to reach them. They can also be a way to make connections with new customers, influencers and others who can help your business grow, outside of your known network. Too often people make simple mistakes that harm their reputations, rather than helping.
So Microsoft bought into Facebook a while back, but has not really been able to realize significant value yet other than access to representing their sales to the agency market. Now, it seems some of Microsoft’s marketing budget is going to help Twitter get itself into the advertising game.
Twitter rolled out a new program titled ExecTweets. The program presents on a page, Tweets collected from various executives.
So I have been attending the IN09 (The Interactive Exchange) conference put on by Interactive Ontario for the past two days. Last year the conference was named ICE08, however for some reason (which I cannot disclose, LOL) they changed the name. I like it better now in any event. So, here are some highlights from day 1 of my adventures through the conference:
60,000 videos are uploaded to Youtube everyday, so how does anyone stand out based on content alone. Anyone trying to surface their video content today has to solve a very difficult problem with distribution, and should have a strategy, budget, and partnerships to do so. This means that anyone who is trying to capitalize on their video (not Joe Consumer with family videos), needs a plan, and more important, money.
Working for a media company, or for that matter working in the digital space in general, you are always making sure that any endeavour you take on has to have a revenue model behind it that makes sens. Over the last few months there’s been much speculation regarding the present and future of online advertising. Particularly, that of display ads and their true value to both brand building and conversion. Some people believe that total spend will be up this year, while many feel it will go down. The real question in my opinion, is how to make it last longer and perform better against both brand and acquisition strategies.
Itay Talgam has conducted some of the world’s best ensembles, and studied with and assisted great conductors such as Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado. At the Interactive Exchange, Itay presented an emotional and captivating presentation about music. He showed how music shares so much with the need for collaboration of the interactive industry. To make an orchestra sound like more than a collection of individuals, it takes knowledge and innovation, individual effort and collective achievement. Similarly in the creation of unique and innovative interactive projects, it takes some sort of conducting.
So last week I was with a good friend at Starbucks when a guy sitting behind us got up, walked by, and raised his iPhone to the speaker in the wall which at the time was spouting out some sort of background music that reminded me of the kind of sound you would hear in the waiting room of a swanky physician’s office. What was he doing? Well as a blackberry user, I had no idea that what he was actually doing was using a really cool iPhone app called Shazam. Shazam, I remember Shazam as a second rate super hero that couldn’t really compete with the true heroes like Batman and Superman.
Often we find ourselves using social media tools the way they were intended to be used. Log in, search, read an update, poke, contact someone…but why do we limit ourselves to be viewed as just another profile? We are real people, behind desks, in cars, on the couch, trying to succeed in whatever our choice endeavors are. Some people wake up to the fact that they can do things a little differently. Often it is in times of economic need that the real innovation comes out. Yesterday I received an email from an old friend who I am connected with on Linkedin.
In a recession market, it makes sense that use of coupons will increase. Often, retailers will distribute coupons with a safe guarantee that only a small fraction will be redeemed. The value of the coupon obviously has an impact on the redemption rate as the higher the reward, the higher the redemption rate. When times are tough, simply making the coupons and distributing them becomes a cost many retailers do not want to incur. That said, they know that offering incentives to shop through coupons will hopefully drive increased sales. So what to do? Simple, put the coupons online for customers to self service.
Yet again AdAge has enlightened me to an innovation in online advertising. Today, they released information that major US Web publishers such as NYTimes.com, ESPN.com and CNN.com are preparing to go big, very BIG. In fact the publishers think they know what will attract more brand advertising online. In their quest for brand-advertising dollars, 26 members of the group are adopting a new set of three interactive ad units to get agency minds on better creative and off low-CPM ad networks. The publishers, including Martha Stewart Living, Conde Nast Digital, Discovery and CBS Interactive, have agreed to only direct-sell the new units, and not sell them through ad networks. The new ads will run alone on the page, giving advertisers exclusivity that publishers hope they’ll pay a premium for.
Time to hire an SEM agency or consultant. Ask for referrals, search online, check the yellow pages, regardless of how you find them, please make sure that they know what they are doing. Far too often SEM consultants and agencies make the same mistakes that they are being paid to help you avoid. Check their work before engaging. The easiest place to do this, their own marketing website. Here is a list of things to be mindful of before engaging in a relationship with your vendor of choice:
1. Broken URL from PPC ad. It’s probably the worst kind of error an agency can make. Obviously, if an agency can’t manage clicks it’s buying for itself, chances are it will mismanage those its clients are going to pay for.
Results from the leading media-measurement company’s first U.S. pilot study of radio listening, in Lexington, Ky., indicate a potential reversal of a trend that has been working against radio for the past decade: a supposed decline in radio listening among adults 18 to 34.
Until recently, Canadians were unable to use Twitter from their mobile phones. Let me clarify, Canadians could send Tweets through their cell phones using SMS, however they could not receive incoming SMS tweets. Bell Canada then picked up the tab on behalf of their own customers giving a part of the Canadian market their SMS enabled Tweets back. Did Bell evaluate the opportunity to make their customers happy, or were they aware that it really wouldn’t cost them that much in exchange for the earned media and positive PR from the move? Well let’s take a look at how users actually use Twitter.
Articles of Interest