Chapter Thirteen

Introduction to Social Media

Before the computer, the internet and sharing there was WOM. George Silverman, a psychologist, pioneered WOM, word-of-mouth marketing when he created what he called “teleconferenced peer influence groups” in order to engage physicians in dialogue about new pharmaceutical products. Silverman noticed an interesting phenomenon while conducting focus groups with physicians in the early 1970s. “One or two physicians who were having good experiences with a drug would sway an entire group of skeptics. They would even sway a dissatisfied group of ex-prescribers who had had negative experiences!” retrieve from The free library. Learning from the experiences of others, particularly those who you trust, can actually reduce the risk and uncertainty associated with adopting a new product. This is the theory behind many of the social media tools used by marketers.
The rapid advent of social media tools provides a ready mechanism to engage customers, talk to them, soften a brands image, and present a friendly and accessible “face” to the public. Research shows that when brands are given an emotional identity through advertising and social media tactics, consumers tend to attribute human traits to them in a phenomenon known as anthropomorphism
.

The attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities

They may view a given brand rather like a person and describe one as “cool” and “fun,” another as “kind” and “sensitive,” and yet another as “snobbish” and “aloof.” Brands that have been anthropomorphized in a positive way have been empirically found to enjoy more favorable consumer attitudes and command higher loyalty than those that do not. Sloanreview Article
“The best thing to happen to brand feedback was the emergence of social media. Nobody is personally going to come up to you and say they don't like your brand. I even feel like some focus groups give you skewed feedback because the participants know what's going on. But now you can follow the comments on Facebook and Twitter, and it's truly amazing. People say very candid comments that aren't for the sensitive brand managers out there. The good thing is your consumers are telling you exactly what they love or don't like about your brand. That info is invaluable and allows you to adapt accordingly.” Daymond John founder, president and chief executive officer of FUBU. Quoted on risingabovethenoise.com

Pinterest


A few years back, Jarden Home Brands found itself struggling to combat misperceptions about canning, while also working to fight off the competition brought about by private labelers like Walmart. Looking for a way to win new customers, the company teamed up with Barkley and 360 Public Relations to develop a solution. The result? A modernized, super-timely marketing strategy. First, Jarden Home Brands leveraged the DIY(do-it-yourself) and home canning craze that sparked as a result of the recession to set the stage for its comeback. From there, the company adjusted its content promotion strategy to move away from cooking magazines and focus more on social media and events.
The company's Pinterest account turned into an inspiration station for DIYers looking for creative ways to repurpose the jars. Its Facebook Page was used to invite canners both old and new to share their experiences. In terms of events, Jarden Home Brands launched national “Can-It-Forward” day events at farmers markets to highlight canning demonstrations. Ball, supplied recipes to the canners to get the campaign started! By increasing the visibility and calling attention to the multipurpose functionality of its signature mason jars, people starting seeing the product in a new light.
If your business is looking for a great tip on how to make a comeback like Jarden Home Brands, you might start by auditing your content distribution strategy. Often times the problem isn't that people don't want to love your product or service, but rather it's that you're not distributing your content in a place where the right people can find it (and learn to love it). By increasing the visibility and calling attention to the multipurpose functionality of its signature mason jars, people starting seeing the product in a new light. Retrieved from: HubSpotBlogs
There are a rare group of e-commerce companies who are pulling in sizable audiences directly from Pinterest--which seems particularly suited for a certain type of aspirational or life-stage-driven shopper. For example, the Bay Area-based furniture retailer Dot and Bo, which blends shopping with lifestyle content, pulled in 73.4% of its social traffic from Pinterest from May through October of this year, according to the analytics firm SimilarWeb. That makes sense, as Dot and Bo focuses on trendy decor, and would appear to be a place where people might turn when they are planning to renovate part of their homes. Indeed, many people use Pinterest to create pages––or “boards”––of digital images when they are planning events like a wedding, a big trip or a kitchen makeover.
  • 250 million people around the world use Pinterest.
  • Half of new signups are men, and men make up 30% of the user base.
  • 93% of active pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases.
  • 40% of users have a household income over $100k.
  • Pinterest is the fourth most popular social platform (although it's really more of a search engine), behind YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
  • Twitter — #

    A small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion is referred to as an emoji. Domino's emoji ordering system, lets fans order a pizza via a tweet. Developed by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the idea was prefaced by a cryptic collection of tweets made up entirely of emojis, sparking quite a bit of interest (and bemusement).
    Is calling on the phone and talking to someone too much work? How about going to a website and typing in what you want to order? Is that too hard? If so, then Dominos has come up with a new way to order pizza that should satisfy your utter laziness. Here is how it works: You go to Dominos and register your Twitter handle along with a special pizza order that you frequently get. You'll also have to give Dominos your credit card information and address, of course, so they can charge you for the pizza and deliver it properly to your house. After completing those steps, however, youll just be able to tweet a pizza emoji at Dominos official Twitter account and theyll charge your card and deliver a piping-hot pizza to your place within the next 20 to 30 minutes. from: BGR
    Using Twitter in collaboration with messages on other channels.
    “It is hard to make everyone happy, especially on Twitter. Look, you can either say things that are not controversial at all, and then you are boring, and nobody cares. Some of the things I say, I would like to retract them. It is not like I stand by all the tweets I have ever done. Some of them were definitely extremely dumb. On balance, the good outweighs the bad. It is a means of communicating directly to the people without having to go through the press.” Elon Musk
    That tweet was worth nearly $90 million. The tweet, which garnered over 300,000 likes, enabled Popeyes to earn 8 billion impressions on social media, which is worth about $87 million. It also led to days' worth of long lines at Popeyes locations everywhere. The chain completely ran out of the sandwich just two weeks after its debut, selling as many sandwiches as it (originally) anticipated to sell through the end of September.

    YouTube


    60% of people who used YouTube while buying a car were influenced by it more than TV, newspapers, or magazines. Source: TNS Media Consumption Report
    Jordan's “RE2PECT,” a 100-second ad honoring Jeter's respectful approach to his baseball career, received an integrated Grand Prix, a top honor that supersedes even a gold Lion. The spot was created by Wieden + Kennedy and directed by Matt Aselton. The ad's strength, according to jury president and W+K Portland ECD Mark Fitzloff, lies in it being “driven off of emotion, something very abstract, very human. You can really feel it in the video.”
    Marshmello, the anonymous Producer/DJ is taking the music industry by storm. Becoming one of the fastest rising dance producers in history, his fanbase ranges from children to adults who have helped him gather over 2 billion streams and over 300 consecutive sold out shows worldwide, currently making him one of Spotifys Top 10 most listened to Artists in the world. Catapulting his career with his official remix of Jack U and Justin Biebers global hit “Where Are U Now” which collected over 40 million plays on Spotify & SoundCloud in less than six months. The masked producers debut album, Joytime, charted at #1 on the iTunes Electronic Albums on release day and landed in the Top 5 on Billboards Top Dance/Electronic Albums.
    Land Rover created an Instagram site built around a 360 photo cut into squares. Each square is either a photo or short video. The videos create a (fictional) narrative about the adventures that the Land Rover motorists are embarking upon in each location. An exciting way to tell the brand's story. View it on Instagram at @solitudeinsawtooth. Range Rover Instagram Site
    Hashtags are essentially Instagram's sorting process. Hashtags help your post get discovered by viewers most interested in seeing it. “Hashtags are like a funnel. For instance, #marketing is incredibly broad and attracts all types of posts. We've found #digitalmarketing or #marketingmotivation gives us a more specific, targeted reach. The audience searching for these hashtags are also trying to narrow their search to what we offer related to Marketing, so we're actually reaching more of the right people.”
    To get started on Instagram visit the help site at: Instagram

    Facebook


    Facebook page for Photographer Mike Moats
    Mike Moats, an award-winning, professional Macro Photographer with 890 followers on Facebook. Conducts clinics and sells photographs, is a blogger and photobook publisher. Mike uses Facebook to show his latest photos, stay connected with his loyal followers and to promote his many clinics. Mike Moats
    Facebook example
    The video can be viewed on the Lincoln facebook page Here

    Mondelez International


    “Our recent campaigns with brands like Cadbury Creme Egg, Milka and Nilla Wafers demonstrated that Facebook can drive business growth, and this made us rethink our media approach, said Bonin Bough, Vice President of Global Media and Consumer Engagement, Mondelez International. For the first time, we'll be able to incorporate Facebook at the core of our media investment plans. This isn't just about having a social media strategy; it's about digitizing our entire approach to communications. Social and mobile is now an integral part of the consumer's journey - before and after making a purchase, said Gerry D'Angelo, European Media Director, Mondelez International. Therefore, it makes business sense to partner with Facebook at a global level to leverage their capacity to engage with consumers at these critical points of the consumer journey to accelerate our growth. — Mondelez International, Inc. is a global snacking powerhouse, with 2013 revenue of $35 billion. Creating delicious moments of joy in 165 countries, Mondelez International is a world leader in chocolate, biscuits, gum, candy, coffee and powdered beverages, with billion-dollar brands such as Cadbury, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Milka chocolate, Jacobs coffee, Oreo, LU and Nabisco biscuits, Tang powdered beverages and Trident gum.” Source – Mondelez International press release.

    Blogging


    HubSpot helps you write high-quality blog posts that help you get found in a search, social media, and beyond. Draft blog posts from scratch, or start with one of their pre-made blog post blueprints. Quickly insert images, format headers, and add links with the on-page editor. You'll rest easy knowing that every blog article is automatically optimized for mobile. HubSpot is an example of blogging to connect with customers.
    Three of my favorite blogs are The Story of Telling published by Bernadette Jiwa and Ann Handley published by Ann Handley. Both blogs will give you great insights to content marketing, and Seth Godin's blog, a potpourri of all things including marketing.

    Email


    Mailchimp is a software package which gives you the ability to create and manage mailing lists, newsletters, automated campaigns and more. It puts you in the driver's seat and lets you have full control over your email marketing efforts from beginning to end. The following list from DesignHill details a few tips to keep in mind when writing emails to market your business.
    • Show Admiration. Everyone likes to feel adored, even if that feeling is subconscious. When reading emails, it will always please a recipient and make them want to learn more if the content makes them feel like their work is appreciated. For example, you could compliment the recipient on past work and say that you would be honored to support such a successful enterprise (this may be an exaggeration, but you get the idea). This is especially helpful for small businesses, as they are often relatively new and have an easier time playing up the “I have a lot to learn from you” angle.
    • Be a Person. Remember that the readers of the emails you send will be real people with real lives, real problems, and real emotions and that people are more open to other individuals they can sympathize with than they are to faceless businesses. Because of this, make sure to come off as a guy sending an email rather than an organization trying to establish a business contact. Use “I” instead of “we,” and don't write in a way in which a person wouldn't actually speak. Of course, it is important to remain professional, but it is equally as important to create a conversational narrative.
    • Be Unique. Especially for a small business, which is usually not widely known, it is important to show what makes you different and unique as a company. When writing, consider what your business's major selling points are and what you worked on the hardest when building the organization. You should not always highlight those points specifically, as you do not want to come off as arrogant, but keep them in mind and try to hint at them with your writing. If possible, you might even want to establish your value by bringing up a niche that only you can fill and suggest a collaboration based on that.
    • Don't be too “Salesy”. Of course, the primary objective of a small business's marketing outreach email is marketing, but that should not be obvious to a recipient when he or she reads the email. The “Be a Person” point touched on above goes a long way towards masking your monetary motivation, but you should also avoid salesman's terms like “if you buy today” and “limited-time offer” like the plague. Basically, talking about most subjects directly related to money is a bad idea. Speak to the heart, the actual desires and interests of the recipient, and you should be fine. This advice is especially important to remember when composing the email's subject header. Again, DON'T misinterpret the “don't be salesy” approach as “don't sell.”
    • Be Careful With Tone. No matter what the content of an email is, it can easily be ruined by the tone the writer establishes. For example, emoticons should be limited to one per email. Make sure to capitalize the proper letters, be they the first letter of a sentence or a proper noun. Don't mix up “their” and “they're”, “it's” and “its”, and “then” and “than.” Use exclamation points very conservatively. Don't use text shorthand like “lol.” Stick with a professional-looking font. Don't be overly-personal in your writing, as it is uncomfortable and awkward to the reader. And, most importantly, double and triple check your email for mistakes after you finish. These may sound like the tips of an overly-anal writing instructor, but their importance when composing marketing emails is actually immeasurable.
    Examples of brilliant email marketing campaigns provided by - Hubspot

    LinkedIn


    LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.
      Eight ways to get value out of LinkedIn.
    • 1. Keep your profile current. Once or twice a year, review your LinkedIn profile to check that it's up to date, especially with your basic contact information and links to other websites or your Twitter handle. That's also an excellant time to add more details about what you've done lately at your current or most recent job.
    • 2. Add projects to your profile. Perhaps there's a campaign you worked on, whose credits already appear publicly in an outlet such as Adweek, or maybe you've collaborated on a research report or a corporate social responsibility program. Add these to the underutilized Projects field on your profile and tag others who contributed. Given that this is public and part of your own profile, make sure it's work that you were directly involved with and not just something your company did.
    • 3. Mention colleagues and peers. LinkedIn is a great place to be altruistic. You can tag people you know or work with to congratulate them on a new job, applaud some good news from their company or share an article where they are mentioned. Unlike Facebook, where people often don't post anything unless they think many friends will like it, on LinkedIn, you can publicly acknowledge a friend in a professional setting that will mean something to them, even if it doesn't get much engagement. LinkedIn is often best for one-to-one marketing.
    • 4. Publish thought leadership. If you want to publish longer-form stories, LinkedIn is a useful way to workshop ideas. LinkedIn signals when connections publish posts via notifications, so active users of LinkedIn who have hundreds of (real) connections will find an audience. While such articles are unlikely to generate massive readership, readers seem more likely to comment there than they do in other outlets, and it's a way to stay top of mind with connections.
    • 5. Dabble in Groups. Few people have time to participate in many groups. It's tough to solve the Goldilocks program; groups tend to be so active that they're overwhelmed or so inactive that they're useless. If you haven't joined a group on LinkedIn or haven't participated in one this year, browse some friends' profiles to see what groups they're in and join one that looks promising. You can always remove yourself from the group, or simply stay in the group and unsubscribe from updates so that you can revisit it another time.
    • 6. Scan updates. LinkedIn's home screen is an odd beast. On its website, most of the updates are recent posts your contacts liked. On the mobile app, it's mostly stories your connections share, or updates about them. That makes the mobile app a far more useful way to stay in touch with and support your contacts.
    • 7. Download the Connected app. If you stick with one LinkedIn activity, a useful habit is checking to see which contacts have changed jobs. The LinkedIn Connected app (available on iTunes or Android) keeps a very narrow focus on that, making it easy to see who has a new gig, a work anniversary or a birthday. With a tap, you can "like" a career update or congratulate someone, with the option of making the message a little more personal. For those who prefer using the LinkedIn website, go to "Connections" in the top navigation bar and then "Keep in Touch." The app has a better user experience overall, though, as the website bizarrely shows nine people's updates at a time. The app Is more streamlined.
    • 8. Connect with people you actually know. LinkedIn is so much more useful when the people you see coming up in your feed are people you've had a relationship with in some way. Once adding a connection, pop their email addresses into your contact database of choice and add a note about how you know them. Those little notes can come in handy years or even decades later.
    • from Adweek written by David Berkowitz CMO of agency MRY

    Your Website


    “Paradoxically, the internet makes it possible to get anything you've ever heard of but also makes it definitively impossible to have heard of everything. It allows anyone to be heard, but how do people hear of you?” Benedict Evans
    Exceptionally Important. Your page title is the link that will appear in search results. Since it is what people click on in the search results and is the first thing people see about your site search engines place significant weight on it. Usually best if left short ( 5 to 9 words, with most important parts in the first ~ 65 characters) Each page should have its own unique page title. Your primary keywords should occur early in your page title (from word position 2 to 5 or so). Generic words such as "website home" or "welcome to" usually should not appear in your page title. Don't forget to use relevant keyword modifiers in your page title to help draw in more relevant traffic. Search engines such as Google may display the first ~ 65 to 70 characters from your page title in their search results. Ensure your page title differentiates your site from competing sites.
    Many search engines use the meta description tag in their search results. Good meta description tags can help improve your click-through rate. Your meta description should read well as many human eyes will see it in many search results. Should be a sentence to a couple sentences long. Each page should have its own unique meta description.
      For example. This metadata is embedded in the heading of this page:
    • meta name=“ description” content=“ The use of Social media to promote your business”
    • meta name=“ keywords” content=“ social media, marketing”
    • meta name=“ author” content=“ smartcycledesigns llc”
    For more detailed information on SEO I recommend you read SEO is Not Hard on Medium.
    How is information overload affecting our readers from noticing the banner displays? Psychologists believe that because of the overwhelming amount of information that is bombarded onto us from different media sources like television, radio, and telephone people are becoming less capable of comprehending all information presented to them. With the Internet, people have access to all kinds of information, and with the increase in the amount of websites and blogs claiming to be the number#1 source; people are finding it hard to identify quality content.
    According to Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, online users often use cognitive schema when they find themselves on a new website. A cognitive schema is an organized pattern which helps organize knowledge, expectations, and beliefs for a particular topic. These are very vital because they help us take shortcuts when we are in a similar environment again. When a user finds themselves on a new website, they use stored schemas to help direct their focus to promising areas where they expect to find the information they are looking for- areas where they found the info when they were faced with the same situation previously. This often leads to traditional ad locations, like the right side of the web page, to be ignored. from adpushup
    There are numerous ways to sell your products on the Internet. Several are: eBay, Amazon, iTunes, Etsy and CraigsList. Before the internet shoppers were limited to stores within driving distance or purchasing from catalogs. You received flyers and catalogs in the mail, viewed ads in newspapers or on TV, or searched the Yellow pages. These sites provide a similar service. They catalog the choices to aid the buyer. But the growth in offerings has created a new problem, how does the buyer find your “Product? ” through Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
    A great example of SEO – Search Engine Optimization; Google “ugly Christmas sweater”. Brothers Fred and Mark Hajjar own a clothing company that sells ugly Christmas sweaters that generated about $35 million in 2014. How? By being experts in SEO. SEO is a well-documented, modern art form. It's about convincing Google or Bing or Yahoo or any other search engine (but, really, mostly Google) that when people search for something, home mortgage, dentist or “what is this lump” that your site has the best information for them. This makes the search engine bring it up first. Learn more about the Hajjar brothers and SEO at FastCompany
    Since 2011, Land Rover has increased the digital share of its marketing budget from 15% to 37%, and watched sales rise by double digits each year. Today, an impressive 15% of Land Rover's sales come from digital ads and cross-channel marketing is taking a growing role. “Cross-channel digital marketing has become a cornerstone of our growth as a brand. Digital is one of the only mediums where you can reach everybody, from upper-funnel awareness down to people ready to buy right now,” says Kim Kyaw, Land Rover's digital marketing and social media manager. Land Rover's excellent website is a showplace for its products and includes a video of its brand history.

    Caveats


    Microsingularity, happens when the world's social Internet channels momentarily focus their awareness around a single phenomenon, while it's still happening has turned industrial age hierarchy upside down, with our elected officials and corporate/cultural leaders often the last to know when one has been triggered, or why it has. They need to be part of the conversation as they happen, where they occur. All too often, however, the people in direct control of an organization's social media channels often have the least institutional power and must kick any response they might make (however important) up the approval chain, waiting precious hours before they can even publish it. Social media can no longer be the province of poorly paid interns, but a core node of every organization; they must learn to respond quickly and authoritatively, but with less top-down control. Simply put, since the era of the micro-singularity is less hierarchical and more democratic, institutions must learn to take on those qualities, or find themselves left behind. FastCompany writer Amber case

    Content – Tell A Cohesive Story


    If your overall strategy is to sell trendy urban t-shirts this season, then my content marketing strategy and tactics need to focus on t-shirts for the season. If you create a newsletter for your brand and focus on high-end denim but not t-shirts, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If your website is all about urban renewal but your blog posts are focused on New York trends, and your social media posts are all about tablet and phone cases, your brand has no unified marketing plan or content strategy, and your customers really don't know where you are focused, and you appear scattered. Rather than having all the channels working independently, unifying them with a shared content marketing goal helps keep everyone focused.
    Patagonia, a designer of outdoor clothing and gear for the silent sports: climbing, surfing, skiing and snowboarding, fly fishing, and trail running does an excellent job using content marketing. Their website, mailers and their cause all display the same message. To make a better product that both invigorates the health of an ecosystem and reinvigorates a worthy way of life. Patagonia pledges at least 1% of sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment. Their website and mailers are full of vivid photos and videos all telling the same story.
    Consumers want content that's engaging, they want quick reads, fun pictures, and inspirational images. As a brand, it's important to create content that's unique to each channel but supports the overall goals and maintains a unified message. Consumers don't buy something the first time they see the product; they need to look at it multiple times to convert. By providing unique content in each channel, tied to a single content strategy, you provide a better user experience. Content marketing shouldn't live within only one channel, it should help shape everything you do and help you tell the cohesive story. Keep things unified, and let content marketing strategies form your overall marketing approach.
    One of the great sites for content is Medium.com, a community of readers and writers offering unique perspectives on ideas large and small. It is appropriate to end this chapter with several links to Medium articles on social media usage. Selecting a Social Media Strategy and The 7 Mindset Shifts Needed for Successful Social Media Marketing

    Keys to a successful social media plan


    • Understand your audience(s)
    • Craft the message for that specific audience
    • Select the media you want the message to be read/seen/heard on
    • Select the messenger you want to carry your message

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