Welcome to “a conversation,” a production of bowden2bowden llc with the intent to engage todays top thought leaders in the world of business, including marketing, branding, social media, public relations, advertising and writing in today’s digital space. A discussion
TedRubin
Most People are “Lurkers” in Social Media…
Most people are “lurkers” in social media. They are consuming your content but not responding. You are still building a relationship with these people, and they “do” participate… it is just vicariously via those who do engage and interact.
There are many lurkers, searchers and readers who may never interact, or even post, but still have a great deal of value.
Why Twitter is My Favorite Social Platform
Twitter gives you a view into what anyone and everyone is talking about, the ability to easily build a following, and immediacy.
I believe Twitter is a tool that leads to other forms of social sharing. I consider Twitter a place to lay the groundwork where other people pick up things.
Most C-level Executives, CMO included, view “Social” as media—but they don’t know how to interact with consumers there in a meaningful way. They want to buy CPMs or Likes—but don’t know what to do with them afterward.
CMO’s also make the mistake of assuming that the social audience has the same pain and passion points as their face-to-face or store audience. Most often that is not the case.
In order to get the real value out of Social, you must connect emotionally to the people who are there and find out what they’re looking for. CMOs are used to ads and campaigns, so that’s the place they gravitate, but even Facebook ads are only media buys. Ads are good for building initial likes, but they really are targeted to demographics just like any other ad.
The Power of Community in Social Media ~via @GenFabulous
by Chloe Jeffreys on July 11, 2013 in Coffee with Chloe, GenFabTV, Social Media – VIDEO interview below
Last year at BlogHer I had the chance to meet Ted Rubin, co-author of Return on Relationship
Give your Brand a “Personality Test”
Have you given your brand a “personality test” lately? When you think of big brands that stand out, what comes to mind—just their product, or how their communications make you feel about them? It used to be that mass advertising was the way brands developed a personality, but that’s no longer the case. With today’s social communications being so important to a brand’s reputation and perception in the marketplace, finding a way to involve your friends and followers in building that personality is essential.
I’ll give you a few good big-brand examples (personal disclaimer… Duane Reade and Mastercard are Collective Bias clients).
The Content “IS” the Ad
There’s a lot of angst in marketing land right now. With Google’s Panda and Penguin changes and social algorithms that favor engagement, it may look as though SEO is dead, or that traditional ads will soon be going the way of the dodo. What’s a marketer to think? Are we supposed to throw out everything we learned about marketing and advertising to date and learn to ride a new horse? How the heck are we supposed to get in front of customers now?
Well, things ARE changing. Traditional advertising isn’t yet extinct, but there is simply too much noise out there, and people are sick of it. They’re shutting out the blast advertising that has crept into every aspect of their lives and centering in on the things they truly care about—friends, family, and social connections. You need to take a step back and study this shift in order to take advantage of it.
Blogging Strategy as it Relates to Building Relationships
Your personal and/or company blog, to me, should be at the heart of your social presence and be a driver for valuable content that can be used in so many places.
Here are a few things to consider in addition to just posting articles and working the SEO angle… four places to concentrate to enhance engagement:
1. User-Friendly Navigation: Keeping your blog easy to navigate with intuitive category labels will help people find the information they seek much faster. Here again, doing your research on what your customers are looking for is essential. Also, make it easy for readers to leave comments and share your posts on various channels.
Building Customer Relationships with Branded Story-Telling
There are some new buzzwords in marketing going around, everything from “Collaborative Marketing” to “Relationship Marketing,” and even “Branded Content.” But what do those phrases really mean and how can today’s businesses take advantage of them?
Well, we all know that consumers are becoming more and more contemptuous of push advertising, which has traditional marketers scrambling to find a magic bullet to replace it. But with what? When social came along and marketers mistakenly tried to force push advertising messages there, the failures were huge.
Who Benefits from Entertaining, Non-Brand Centric, Commercials?
What did this last round of Super Bowl ads do for the brands who created them? In my opinion, not much—when you consider the colossal price tag of the ads compared to brand perception. This past year a 30-second spot cost $4M to air, not counting the costs for an agency to produce it.
According to MediaLife, $1.85 billion was spent on these ads over the past 10 years, and all the while TV viewership has flattened. So who really benefits?