32. "Mobile is the platform of today, and
now we're also getting ready for the
platforms of tomorrow…Oculus has
the chance to create the most social
platform ever, and change the way
we work, play and communicate.“ –
Mark Zuckerberg
@jenneva26
Some of you may have clients that are still dragging their feet on buying into “social media”. The next time you hear a client say this, hit them with this fact. Social media is now the number one activity we do on the internet. It is more popular than porn. Think about the sheer number of people doing it. The hours upon hour people spend tweeting and pinning and posting. Now think about this.
According to a recent mashable article, 81% of small businesses are on social media. And they are also tweeting, pinning and posting.
That is a lot of volume. And it is getting harder and harder to get to your customers through social media.
Especially when you have headlines like this.
So I have to ask. Is your Social media working for you? Some of you may be wondering, how do you even measure the ROI of social. Which is a fair question.
Ultimately, it comes down to the all mighty dollar. But there are additional ways that you can show the ROI of social media. Of course you want to tag and track all of your social links so you can see which campaigns and assets are leading to conversions. You will also want to measure your direct traffic and branded keywords so that you track the amplification of your brand as your social campaigns are running.
In order to best judge your social media performance you need to make sure that you are looking at these five aspects: competitors, content, platform, past performance and business goals.
Checking out your competitors and judging the landscape can help judge industry norms,
But enough about audits. It is a necessary part of developing your social media strategy, but it’s also boring to talk about. Here is a link that will help you kick start your audit.
And some tools that will help you with your audit.
Once you start your campaigns, you will soon realize that Social Advertising is no longer a luxury.
But why is that?
Well it has a lot to do with this. As social media channels mature and reach a certain level of adoption they will find a way encourage spending to reach users.
According to BIA Kelsey: This year, we are projected to spend 2.85 billion in social advertising.
And these figures are only going to rise. We have a projected spend of $4.57 billion by 2017.
So, with social advertising spend growing, we will all have to be smarter in the way that we set up campaigns. Move towards smaller segments of your target marketing.
If after you have done your audit and found your top platforms do not be afraid to move your energies away from an underperforming platform.
You may find that this means that bigger platforms may not be the platform for your. For instance, twitter and linkedin will typically be better to for b2b. Where as Instagram and Pinterest could be better platforms a highly visual B2C brand.
And don’t get me wrong – I don’t hate facebook. But as professionals we need to stop feeding into the idea that you MUST be on a Facebook and put the client’s first.
Yes, your potential customer more than likely is on Facebook. But are they going to engage with your brand on Facebook. That is the question you need to answer.
So now that we have figured out where are today, lets look at some trends that will help us with future campaign ideas.
So what were some of the factors that brought about gamification?
Okay, were aren’t to borg status yet. But we will get there.
It’s essential to consider what motivates players when you think about creating an effective and successful design for a game.
A great example of gamification is 2013’s M&M’s eye-spy game. Framed within the M&M’s Pretzel campaign, this game consisted of a simple full-page graphic design of M&M’s and 1 small pretzel which users had to find.
But what were the results?
This simple, cheap game brought huge gains to M&M, with a boost of more than 25,000 likes on their Facebook page, 6,000 shares and 10,000 comments.
Why is micro video gaining traction? The simple answer. We are lazy. People don’t want to ready your blog or newsletter. They don’t have the time! What they do have time for is a quick video. So who is doing the micro video well?
Take a look at the #Dunkinreplay campaign. The goal of this campaign was to inject the brand into the social conversations that were surrounding Monday Night Football. So they utilized the campaign hashtag #dunkinreplay and #MNF and created these cleaver vines utilizing the hot coffee and the iced lattes as players and they would depict a memorable play from a Monday night football game.
So what were the results?
According to Dunkin Donuts, each #DunkinReplay Vine delivers as many impressions as a comparable TV spot (at significantly less cost).
The last trend I will leave you with is an oldie but a goodie. Utilizing social listening can help you in each of these areas. Some free tools to help you with are social mention, hootsuite and tweetdeck. If you’re looking for a more robust option I would recommend brandwatch.
As new tech comes out you will want to optimize existing content to work on these various new screens.
I will leave you with a thought about the future of social media…
Looking to these giant companies and their developments and tech they acquire will help us as marketers gauge the futures of our industry. Keep a pulse on this and be inspired to create innovative campaigns that will stand the test of new tech.