Repost: #SocialShakeUp Recap: The Reality of Real Time Marketing

How can social media help in terms of real-time marketing? This SocialMediaToday.com article has the details.

This year will enter the history books as “The Year of Real-Time Marketing,” according to a panel of experts at the Social Shake-Up in Atlanta, Georgia. Events across the globe are being covered by numerous mediums and driving brand-driven, real-time content. However, the struggle for companies is to produce timely posts and tweets that are actually relevant to customers and potential partners.

The Social Shake-Up Panel featured speakers Pablo Henderson, Marketing Manager for W Hotels, Ragy Thomas, Founder and CEO of Sprinklr, and Erika Brookes, VP of Product Strategy for Oracle Social. This panel of experts was moderated by Peter Kim, Chief Solutions Architect for the Dachis Group.

 

Image Source: SocialMediaToday.com

The discussion began with a notice for audience members to turn their devices on, a nod to the connected nature of real-time marketing and a comedic jab at other conferences where people are asked to tune in and turn off.

Real-time marketing: What is it?
Ragy began the discussion by defining real-time marketing as something that just happens – brands don’t necessarily control the events – usually unstaged occurrences – and the message is also unplanned.

The CEO of Sprinklr explained that it is almost like standup comedy – there is a balance between impromptu actions and a basic framework that the performance is centered around. You can’t simply wing it and you cannot read a script. Real-time marketing should have a real feel to it, while also being a good representation of the brand’s voice.

Pablo Henderson added on to this point, noting that one needs to be extremely agile in their use of real-time marketing. Some chances have to be taken for a brand to stay ahead of the curve, and this is best done through the use of small, nimble teams that are empowered to make decisions for the respective companies.

Erika Brookes noted that processes need to be set up in order for brands to have effective real-time marketing.

“What is our brand about, what is relevant to us?” she posed to the audience. Businesses need to look to these questions while creating their real-time content, and each member of the marketing team should be on the same page with regard to towing the company line.

Ragy confirmed this sentiment, adding that each member of the company should be able to effectively reiterate points made by people in the C-suite.

Overcoming barriers, building infrastructure
Certain companies may not be able to take a freewheeling approach to real-time marketing, especially in industries and verticals with significant regulatory and compliance hurdles. Figuring out the topics and areas to avoid in real-time is key for these businesses, especially if messages are going to be quickly sent through social media channels.

Erika also noted that the right technology also has to be in place at these companies, as this will ensure that the message gets out as soon as possible once the compliance hurdles are overcome. Brands need to have their respective ears to the ground to keep up with consumer chatter, and internal people should constantly be monitoring different mediums to ensure this happens.

Ragy spoke to the need for infrastructure to extend beyond social media apps, with community management strategies coming in many forms. Without the right framework in place, and in turn the right people manning these technologies, sustained results won’t be an achievable goal.

“You need a plan A, B and C – there should be backup options in the case of something going wrong or down a path that wasn’t initially predicted,” Erika Brookes added, highlighting how this type of planning is possible thanks to the infrastructure that Ragy outlined.

Where do brands start?
Pablo Henderson brought the conversation back to the merits of real-time marketing and the specific approaches that companies can take. He spoke to the three essential types of real-time: Anticipatory, reactive and predictive.

Anticipatory real-time is when brands follow a situation that has two potential outcomes. They craft responses for both cases and then release the given statement based on what occurs. Reactive real-time requires relatively little preparation, as these events sometimes come out of left field and catch people off guard. The final type, predictive real-time, requires a company to take a chance. Here, a marketer may gamble and make a decision based on what they think could happen.

Once a marketing team figures out what resources they have, and in turn which types of real-time they can support, it comes down to selling executives on the respective ideas. You need the C-suite to buy into the plan, noted Erika Brookes, as they will be the people who allow for success to happen by granting permission to use the brand voice in that manner.

Demonstrating ROI: Possible with real-time?
Executives want to hear about return on investment, and it may be too early for marketers to truly show ROI for real-time. However, there are several ways for marketing teams to appeal to the C-suite with regard to real-time campaigns.

Erika noted that a positive customer experience on social media sites thanks to real-time campaigns can eventually lead to long-term value for any brand. Word of mouth is extremely important on networks like Twitter and Facebook, so promoting positive feedback is essential for businesses.

Pablo confirmed this, and also noted that effective real-time campaign can also serve as an excellent cost-cutting measure. Branding campaigns can be simplified and budgets for real-time pushes will be much lower than for more traditional forms of marketing.

Ragy reiterated these points, and added that ROI really is return on relationships in the modern world of marketing. Customer loyalty is built through real-time campaigns, which develops a strong base of support for the brand. This is the type of back-end method of driving revenue that marketers can show to executives, which easily justifies the initial costs of these marketing efforts.

John Bohan is one of the pioneers in Internet marketing. More about him can be read in this blog site. 

What makes a good social media strategy?

Nowadays, a good social media strategy is indispensable in a marketing campaign. If companies are supposed to follow their target markets, then they must build their online presence to start conversations with them. Online search is now the preferred way of gathering information, which means that the Internet is where it’s at in terms of building business visibility.

Image Source: cargillcommunications.com

Social media makes businesses more accessible to people, propping up platforms where customers could easily pick products and services to their liking. Companies, therefore, need to know how to effectively tap into this resource to keep their target markets warm.

Given that the goal is to connect with a customer base, authenticity sells. This may be difficult to achieve in the virtual world because opportunities for a deeper level of connection are limited online. This can be achieved, however, through a long reflective process that imbues the social media strategy with brand personality and values.

Image Source:jeffbullas.com

A good social media strategy also has focus. Instead of trying to reach everyone, companies must first fixate on their target demographic to build a community that will enjoin future customers. When individuals like a brand, they tend to get their peers to like it as well. Facebook shares and Twitter favorites are actually virtual rainmakers.

From there, companies should be consistent in their social media use. It may take a while for online communities to snowball and be a large enough force to influence market trends. While the companies wait out this success, keeping their audience well-informed of their activities is a must as this allows them to build strong relationships with their target market.

Image Source: virtualsocialmedia.com

John Bohan is the founder of Socialtyze, a firm which empowers brands through social media. Find more links to articles on the effective employment of social media in marketing strategies on this Twitter page.

REPOST: Why Most Businesses Are Anti-Social In A Social-Media Era

Why are most business today are anti social media? Rob Asghar of Forbes.com shares the details.

Image Source: forbes.com

In the age of social media, most businesses have become decidedly antisocial.

Sure, today it’s breathtakingly easy to talk in real time to someone on the other side of the planet. But it’s also harder than ever to connect in real time with a real human being anywhere who gives a damn about you.

Your call to the customer-service center is shuffled off to a faceless script-reader in Manila. Or many times you don’t even get that: You get a machine that keeps asking you, with an edge in its voice, to take another crack at clearly stating the nature of your problem. 

And pressing “0” only gets you another computer voice, mocking you and reawakening the spectacular sense impotence that your family instilled in you at the dinner table. The truth is that the company that you called doesn’t want to hear from you. Ever. You only wanted to discuss a minor billing question, but now you need to return to therapy.

How did our human organizations get so, well, inhuman? Social-media guru Brian Solis says that it’s because of our business models, which are focused on efficiency rather than value.

They’re thinking, “How quickly can we get them off the phone?” Solis says.

Businesses and organizations are inherently social. “But what ends up happening,” Solis says, “is that we build a firewall–how we are with friends and family, versus how we are in business. Business is structured to be efficient. It becomes optimized. It becomes anything but social.”

Solis says wise organizations, for their own sake and for the sake of their hapless customers, are beginning to undergo a “social revolution.” “People are being put back into center of why we’re a business,” he says.

Businesses have a compelling reason to get social: They can’t control the public discussion in the manner that they used to. “Information is too democratized now,” Solis says. While businesses used to be able to use the traditional media like a megaphone, now whatever they say through that megaphone is drowned out by the chatter on social media. They have to adjust drastically in order to be a part of the conversations that matter.

Solis coaches top social-media strategists on how their companies can become truly social. But that brings up the Social Paradox:

Being social, in our era, means jumping into a public conversation in which your company doesn’t have central control of that conversation. At the same time, your senior executives, who do have central control of the organization, often fail to see the benefit of being truly social. And so they block or undercut efforts below them to move the organization in a more social direction.

This requires new media people to adjust. “Social media people need to learn to speak the language of the C-suite,” Solis says.

He pointedly doesn’t fault just the executives for the communications gap. “For some reason, marketers are often more enamored by new technology, than by what it can do for the business,” says Solis. They ask for large outlays for the latest social-media trend and are frustrated when CEOs don’t hand over a blank check. CEOs shrug and counter, “Why can’t people just go to our website?”

The CEOs have to focus on bottom-line business outcomes, Solis says, and too few social-media workers appreciate this. “In order to earn executive support, you have to empathize with a day in life of your executive. Think like the executive.”

Solis proposes a modest, non-revolutionary approach. “Having the executives change their philosophy is too hard a task,” he argues. Rather, he recommends that social-media strategists step up and own the task of better connecting their activities to the bottom-line business outcomes that the CEO is beholden to.

That allows the social-media person to become far more strategic and productive, he says, in recognizing how to track customer sentiment, how to create awareness, and ultimately how to create deeper engagement.

John Bohan is an internet entrepreneur for more than a decade. Visit this Facebook page to know more about him.

Using Instagram video as an effective marketing tool

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth more—which is why many social media platforms are starting to foray into video sharing to boost their subscriber base. One of these video platforms is Instagram, whose popularity has grown exponentially as that of social media platforms where it is supported.

Image Source: bulletpointbranding.blogspot.com

Instagram video as an effective marketing tool is an understatement, considering that the social media platform has a base of more than 130 million users and its format facilitates sharing to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, which have also seen profound growth.

Instagram offers up to 15 seconds of video recording, compared to its nearest competitor, Vine, which offers only a maximum of 6 seconds of video recording. It also has video editing features that support the same high-quality filter sets for still photos, which are the very novelties of Instagram.

Image Source: abcnews.go.com

Here are some ways marketers can capitalize on Instagram’s powerful new video-sharing feature:

• Product demos, including how-to videos and product features;

• Visual portfolios, highlighting work done for previous clients;

• Special offer promotions and events, using hashtags to track conversations about the product or brand;

• Brand humanization and real-life engagement between the brand and its customers;

• Increase community engagement on Facebook

Videos can help build customer engagement and increase sales in a way photos can’t: the latter can only showcase the aesthetics of a product and caption its functions, but the former can truly demonstrate how it works and changes lives.



Video Source: bulletpointbranding.blogspot.com

John Bohan founded Socialtyze to help empower brands through the power of social media. More information can be found at this website.

REPOST: Facebook Finally Lets You Place Photos Directly In Comments, But Still No GIFs

Facebook made a new tool that allows users to insert photos directly to comments. Read this article by Alexis Kleinman of The Huffington Post.

Image Source:  huffingtonpost.com

Finally, Facebook is making a change that everyone can agree is an improvement. On Wednesday, the social network added a little camera button on its comment boxes, allowing users to insert photos directly into comments. Before, users were forced to copy and paste links to photos into comments.

Facebook provided The Huffington Post with the following screenshot that demonstrates how the new photo sharing system works.

Image Source:  huffingtonpost.com

The feature is being gradually and globally rolled out starting today, Facebook told The Huffington Post, so if you don't have it yet, don't panic. The new tool was built at one of Facebook's many hackathons.

As far as we can tell, the new photo tool doesn't support the use of GIFs, some Facebook users' favorite mode of communication. GIFs take up much more bandwidth than photos, and supporting GIFs could slow the site down considerably. We both dream of, and dread, the day when GIFs are embeddable into Facebook comments.

John Bohan has  over 12 years of experience in crafting smart media campaigns, managing online communities, and building engaging applications. Visit this Facebook page for more information on how to make social media work for online marketing campaigns.

REPOST: New Google Tool Helps Businesses Deliver Better Online Ads

How will "The Customer Journey to Online Purchase" - a new tool launched by Google - help online businesses? Read about it from this Entrepreneur.com article.

When customers visit your website with the intention of making a purchase, do you always know how they arrived there? Were they directed to your site from a display advertisement on another site? Did they click on a link emailed to them by a friend? Did they find your product or service through an online search? And which is most effective for driving sales online?

These are questions Google is trying to answer with a new tool called "The Customer Journey to Online Purchase," which allows users to explore typical online buying behavior and see how different marketing interactions impact online sales -- from the first time customers interact with your marketing to the moment they buy something. Released today, the tool draws on data collected from more than 36,000 Google Analytics business clients.

Image Source: Entrepreneur.com

For instance, customers typically click on display ads early in the online purchasing process, but in industries such as travel and auto, customers tend to click on display ads closer to their purchasing decision, according to Google. "The data shows that every industry is different," Google said in an announcement. "The path to purchase for hotel rooms in Japan is not necessarily the same as the path for an online supermarket in Canada."

The idea, Google says, is to help marketers design advertising campaigns that deliver the right message at the right moment. Business owners can use The Customer Journey to Online Purchase tool to look at typical purchasing trends in their industry, and then reference their own Google Analytics data to determine how and where different marketing channels influence customers to make purchases so they can adjust their budgets and programs accordingly.

The Customer Journey to Online Purchase tool is free to use and is available starting today.

***

Are you interested to learn more about search engine marketing? Visit this John Bohan blog site for more related articles.

New Google+ update: Focusing on people instead of tools

Image Source: knowem.com

2011 was the year Google decided to unleash its take on social networking, seeking to overthrow Facebook as the largest social networking platform. Known as Google Plus, G+, or Google+, the site has recently overthrown Twitter as the world’s second largest social networking platform, with over 343 million active users worldwide, which amounts to around 25 percent of global Internet users.

Image Source: searchenginejournal.com

Its recent update pushes a modern design, support for multiple devices, and a lot more. One reason why Google+ used a minimalistic approach, as opposed to what Facebook did with its user interface, is that it believes that technology is at its best when it gets out of the way, leaving tools, charts, complicated menus and options in the background, and letting users just focus on having fun, all while creating unique content that is fresh and exciting. Another problem that the update seems to fix is the need for a robust universal communication platform that will work across all devices and operating systems, mobile included. Google Hangouts combines the ease of universal messaging via the Web, photo sharing, and video calling in one sleek, modern package. SMS messaging is currently not supported, although that functionality will be added in future updates to the platform. The update also gives the power of Google to photos uploaded to the social networking site, giving people less time to worry about how their photos look and more time to make memories.

Image Source: andykdocs.de

One thing is for sure: With the new Google+ update, it is clear that Google isn’t content with its social media platform staying second to Facebook; it wants to be number one.

More industry-related news can be accessed at this Twitter page for John Bohan.