Social media Archives | Page 4 of 8 | waveSpawn Marketing

August 3, 2010

Market your regional product or service with foursquare

foursquare marketing If you haven’t familiarized yourself with foursquare yet, it may be worth your while. Foursquare is gaining popularity quickly. Many businesses are leveraging it to create customer loyalty programs. It’s GPS integrated features allow people to “check-in” when they are at or near your business. This allows you to track frequent visitors. You can structure incentives for your targeted community. For example, if you run a pizza shop, you can offer a free pizza to the member who “checks-in” the most within a given timeframe (month or week). If you have a hair salon, you can give a product away for every 10 check-ins. You can be creative in your offers, but it’s an ideal way to entice potential prospects and reward existing customers.

A powerful feature of foursquare, like most social media platforms, is that it shares information with all of a user’s friends. This creates instant viral marketing. If someone checks-into your establishment, everyone in that person’s network will get updates. It’s like a free plug for your business. As frequent users strive to collect prizes or discounts, this creates competition between various patrons. The better the prize, the bigger the interest. It’s almost like a virtual scavenger hunt.

When you have time, “check-in” to foursquare and see for yourself. If you have questions or not sure where to start, waveSpawn can help…

June 11, 2010

How are you establishing brand preference?

Brand preference Branding, for many companies, is low on their priority list – or perhaps even off the radar screen. Many businesses simply do not give sufficient focus to their brand initiatives. How many times have you heard – branding is too intangible or “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”? Since branding isn’t directly reflected on a company’s balance sheet or financial statements, it’ often overlooked.

The reality is, branding, while difficult to accurately quantify, is a powerful marketing tool that can enable tremendous returns on investment. Branding is the primary reason consumers are willing to pay triple the price for one product over another.

Executed properly, corporate or product branding creates a perception that targeted prospects and customers gravitate towards. Perhaps the brand symbolizes an active lifestyle, innovation, caring, luxury, reliability, a company’s policy on environmental issues, etc. An effective brand evokes a feeling which creates long-term customer loyalty. It is the result of a clear vision that fits with the overall corporate strategy.

Branding is directly related to the perceived value of a product or company. While brand awareness is essential for name recognition, strategic awareness occurs when you have differentiated your brand in the mind of your market. This is often referred to as your unique selling proposition. This tells the market what you do, and more importantly, how you do it differently or better than your competitors.

To go one step further, establishing brand preference should be the desired outcome of a company’s branding initiatives. This allows the market to understand what is unique about a particular brand, allows them to emotionally connect to the brand, and creates a bias for selecting that brand over competing brands.

Fortunately, there are many effective marketing and branding strategies to help companies improve their brand visibility. Social media has opened a vast number of opportunities for businesses of all sizes to rapidly disseminate information, generate buzz, and establish brand recognition. Social media enables companies to get immediate customer feedback. Truly listening to your customers and responding to each of them can have a significant impact on the credibility of your brand.

Social media also facilitates an effective means for companies to monitor their brand image. There are a number of analytical tools which generate valuable reports and statistics. This is beneficial for a number of reasons – it can create an objective profile of the current landscape. It also allows you to set benchmarks and measure specific metrics. These could include the number of times your brand is mentioned, the number of links to your product or site, the number of retweets, etc.

Social media is gaining momentum every day; it is a powerful form of communication that is not going away. Companies can either watch on the sidelines or actively participate to help establish the communication channels that will drive brand preference.

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May 26, 2010

Facebook aims to simplify privacy settings

Facebook announced it will simplify their privacy settings for users. After feeling the pressure from large groups of protestors, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said “We needed to simplify controls… We want people to be able to share information in the way that they want.”

The newly configured privacy page is intended to be a central dashboard for adjusting all content and privacy settings. There are streamlined capabilities to monitor and adjust global settings. In the past, settings for new applications would not adhere to the preset options. In other words, a user would need to realize that they need to go back to the settings page each time an application was added or information was modified, etc.

Having default settings should be sufficient for the majority of users. Advanced settings will still be available for those looking for total control over their shared data. “We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications,” said Zuckerberg.

While heightened privacy control is good news for many avid users, Facebook is battling an interesting dilemma. Their prime revenue source is from content driven, targeted advertising. By restricting access to 3^rd parties, they may be directly limiting their ad revenue growth potential. This will be curious to see how Facebook is able to work around this hurdle. Are they able to compromise personal information in any way? Can they arrange a deal where personal information is exposed to high paying media research agencies?

May 20, 2010

Twitter is over capacity – again!

I find it peculiar that every morning this week as I logged into Twitter, I was greeted with this same image – a whale being hoisted out of the water by a bunch of tweety birds. I’ve certainly encountered this image before, but not with the same frequency as this week. I can only assume that this is a good problem for Twitter.

I must confess, I am not a “power-tweeter”, but I do peck around daily to see what’s happening. I just found it unusual to get the same “over capacity” message every day this week. I’m sure avid users have become accustomed to this issue and have a work-around in place.

I can only imagine that Twitter is in the process of beefing up their computing power to meet the growing demands of micro-blogging. They must be so inundated with tweets that servers are simply melting. Is anyone else getting this message frequently? Come on, let it out….

March 26, 2010

Social media confirms that many companies have nothing to say

Social media confirms many companies have nothing to say Have you ever noticed how many business-related social media accounts have little, if any, postings or messages? You know the ones… they hastily ran out and setup a corporate Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blog account without a plan or clue as to what they were doing. Somewhere along the way they strayed from logic. It’s as if they’re proclaiming “hey we’re not only slackers, but we’re cutting edge slackers.”

These companies should consider buying a full page ad in a magazine, forgetting about it, and then letting the publisher print the issue with just their logo on the page and maybe a line that says “too lazy for anything more”. That’ll be a consistent branding message that integrates well with their social media campaign. After all, a holistic approach is good. It’s actually taking a page out of the Seinfeld series “it’s a show about nothing”. Instead, it’s a company that is shouting “we have nothing to say”.

The simple point here is neglected social media accounts can be detrimental to a company’s brand. You wouldn’t create a website with no content, would you? Social media should not be treated any different. Many companies seem to underestimate the value and scope of social media – assigning minimal resources to manage them. Companies that engage in social media need to map out their long-term strategy and approach. Moreover, they need to delegate responsibilities of monitoring and maintaining social media account activity. This shouldn’t be dumped into the hands of an intern or temp. This should be taken serious by someone that understands the platforms and knows how to interact with customers and prospects.

The good news is that there are companies to help guide businesses through the process of engaging in social media. As a starting point, waveSpawn has assembled a comprehensive white paper entitled Understanding social media ROI.

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March 17, 2010

Mobile app sales expected to exceed $17 billion

There’s no denying that consumers are obsessed with smart phone applications. After all, they are convenient, easy to install, and often times free. I mean, who doesn’t need the “Designated Dialer” app to prevent them from making those oh-so-embarrassing boozy, late-night calls to former partners? The personal integrity that app alone has saved is mind boggling. Where was that a few years ago?

According to a recent study by Chetan Sharma Consulting, the mobile app market is expected to grow to $17.5 billion during the next two years. Furthermore the number of downloads is anticipated to surge from 7 billion to 50 billion – which is a truly remarkable statistic. People are addicted.

Hopefully someone can develop an “app” (or hardware solution) to extend battery life. My biggest gripe – especially travelling during a storm – is the dreaded low battery alert. When your flight is delayed for 8 hours and then cancelled, you’ve got a lot of research, phone calls, and contingency plans to coordinate. The last thing you need to worry about is dead batteries and several dropped 3G calls. Am I off on a rant?

All things considered, it is simply another indication that people love conveniences. We love to communicate in new and innovative methods. Convenient applications which can save us time or simply make us smile will continue to shine.

March 3, 2010

Directing air traffic at JFK is so easy even a caveman can do it

Child directs JFK air traffic Apparently the “bring your son to work” day at the JFK air traffic control tower was taken a bit too literally a few days ago. While his son was on winter vacation, a father who works in one of the world’s busiest air traffic control centers, thought it would be entertaining to not only bring his son to work, but to encourage him to communicate directions. “Jet Blue 171, clear for takeoff,” the young boy said, according to one of the audio recordings from LiveATC.net. It’s a rather scary thought for anyone who regularly flies into or out of the airport. Even if the child was being coached by his father, it only takes a minor slip to create a disaster. As I learned of the report, I was expecting to hear “What’s your vector, Victor?” or “Roger, Roger”.

According to ABC News, “The FAA, which hasn’t released the names of the controllers involved, is not treating this as a joke. It is investigating the controller, as well as a supervising controller. Both have been relieved of their duties, the FAA said.”

In another exchange to a plane bound for Mexico, the child says “Adios, amigo.”

What’s your opinion… is this just innocent child’s play or something more serious? Is social media magnifying the impact of this event? Should Geico use this for their next ad?

March 1, 2010

Maximizing Social Media ROI

There’s no denying the magnitude and increasing impact that social media is having upon the business world. Marketing professionals in every industry are reevaluating their business plans and strategies to incorporate this growing phenomenon – which is clearly here to stay. Sometimes this means including a Technorati claim token: G3J8CMQZPY79.

Social media ROI is arguably the hottest topics in the social media eco-system as it relates to marketing. Social networking is changing the way businesses and individuals connect. Online communities create an immediate forum for solicited and unsolicited customer feedback, commentary, suggestions, referrals, and yes even slander. These consumer messages can be powerful and detrimental at the same time. Organizations should give careful consideration to the variety of vehicles and response options available when implementing a social media program.

Each social media initiative takes time, planning, and attention. Perhaps the biggest mistake organizations make is thinking that these accounts can function on autopilot. A blog is created, a Facebook account is activated, Twitter is turned on… and then nobody adds content or monitors these sites. They fail to execute a plan or strategy. In my opinion, neglecting social media accounts is worse than not being involved at all. It’s a direct reflection of a business’s lack of follow-through.

What constitutes effective social media marketing? More importantly, how can marketers accurately measure the results of past social marketing campaigns and how can they predict future results? waveSpawn has compiled a white paper which presents a framework for businesses to better understand and measure the ROI of social media. It outlines the key dimensions of marketing metrics which are critical to determining the success of each social media campaign. It will also help marketers to learn from social media, react to what consumers are saying, and help influence future results.

Download the entire white paper here.

February 25, 2010

Facebook, what about the tree of trust?

Now that both Google and Bing have access to Facebook status updates, should you be concerned about the privacy of your posts? Of course you should… you need to control how the information you share is being rebroadcast or accessed by others. You probably don’t want to see your private information randomly appearing in a stranger’s search results.

Remember the therapy scene in Old School, where the marriage counselor says: “This is a safe place, a place where we can feel free sharing our feelings… a nest in a tree of trust and understanding… we can say anything.” Then after the information is exposed (on major search engines, in your case), your reaction is going to be similar to Will Ferrell’s: “What? I thought we were in the trust tree, in the nest. Are we not?”

While it’s an interesting concept (indexing status updates on Facebook), it’s contradictory to the purpose of a closed circuit social network. Since Google currently only has access to the public Facebook Pages – which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content, it doesn’t appear pose an immediate personal threat. Bing on the other hand, does have full access to this personal data, since Microsoft has an investment in Facebook and provides the site’s search functionality.

Fortunately there are methods to restrict search engine access to certain information. It’s highly recommended to take some time and review your Facebook > Account > Account Settings and Privacy Settings. There are many options to restrict all of your information including photos, posts, comments, etc to only friends. Take full control of your social media usage. Understand your options and use settings that you are comfortable with.

What are your thoughts on search engines displaying status updates? Is this a positive trend?

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