(posts_in_the_category): Social Media
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Snapchat Succeeding with Brands
By Britt Waddell on 02/24/2015
No longer just a social media platform with a risqué reputation, Snapchat has emerged as a rapidly growing advertising platform. According to comScore data cited in Digiday, Snapchat’s audience grew by 9 million users from 2013 to 2014. While this number hardly compares to Facebook or Twitter, the growth it enough for brands to pay attention.
Our client, Universal Pictures, was the first advertiser to utilize Snapchat with trailers for Ouija and Dumber and Dumber To. These ads appeared alongside My Story updates from users’ friends, but were labeled “sponsored.” Universal’s success with this early venture reveals two things: 1) that Snapchat is an effective means of advertising to young audiences and 2) even when this audience has the option to opt out of viewing an ad on the platform, a significant number (“millions,” according Universal execs) will choose to engage. McDonald’s recently entered the Snapchat advertising scene with the same type of campaign.
[photo credit: Wired]
Instagram Advertising: The Beginning of a New Era
By Zachary Shapiro on 07/15/2014
Advertisers, businesses, and consumers today are faced with an ever-expanding presence of digital media. Similar to the introduction of the DVR allowing people to skip commercials on TV, internet advertising can be easily avoided by skipping video ads and just ignoring banner ads on websites. This is why, and as many businesses are starting to realize, social media—specifically Instagram—is the answer to their problem.
Instagram has been a prominent form of social media since its creation in 2010, its purchase by Facebook in 2012, and its continued growth today. Instagram is a medium in which people post pictures and videos while following the posts of their friends and other users they are interested in. People follow what they want and like to see, and they do not want to waste their time. Businesses have caught onto this, and instead of flooding advertisements into pages and placing intruding videos like on so many other sites, they have integrated themselves into the fabric of Instagram, and actively participate while subtly advertising their brand.
Will Swarm be Buzzworthy?
By Lori Greene on 05/29/2014
Way back in 2009 during the old days of mobile apps, I was hooked on Foursquare. Collecting badges, checking in, and seeing where people I know hung out was a fun game, a competition of sorts. Becoming mayor of a location … any location (I was mayor of a gas station once) made me extremely happy back then. I got coupons for clothing and a free Frisbee from Whole Foods when retail outlets caught on to the Foursquare craze. That phase lasted about six weeks and then I barely touched the app again. Having thoroughly utilized all its features and not having enough friends join the party, I stopped using it and only occasionally picked it up to find restaurants nearby. For me, Foursquare’s time had come and gone.
LinkedIn Breaks Through the Chinese Wall
By Kristina Klaffenboeck on 05/22/2014
With a social media landscape that changes nearly everyday, older networks need new and innovative ways to keep not only users, but advertisers engaged. LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social media platform has found ways to do that by evolving and expanding its current network. Here’s what’s new at LinkedIn:
Welcome to China
In early May, LinkedIn launched its simplified Chinese language portal in China. While it already has over 4 million members in China, the majority of those members are Western-educated and/or expats living in China who use LinkedIn’s English-language pages. This marks LinkedIn’s first attempt at targeting the 140 million Chinese business professionals instead of their usual target: multinational Asian professionals who travel extensively outside of China.
Socialize B2B with WeChat
By Martha Peterson on 04/25/2014
In China, the social scene is different, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Generally speaking, the Chinese accept brand participation and dialogue, so each major social platform has great functionality to facilitate this. To achieve the same experience in the West, you would need to use a combination of platforms ranging across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Sina Weibo, the leading microblogging site for China, is best described as a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook—“Weibo” literally means microblog in Mandarin. Sina Weibo boasts a highly-educated, professional audience, making it a natural fit for B2B advertisers. Most multi-national companies use Sin Weibo to manage brand reputation and provide educational business content.
Taking the High Road: Three Lessons in Crisis Communications
By Annalisa Alosco on 04/18/2014
Social platforms innately offer a direct line of communication from brand to consumer. As a result, the demand for real-time response has never been greater. Where some brands have missed their window of opportunity, others have thrown down the gauntlet, like Oreo with their Super Bowl blackout tweet from 2013, still cited as the most notable real time marketing to date.
However fleeting, luck is undoubtedly a factor in the success of aligning with a high-profile story. But the reality is that brands need to be consistently transparent, nimble and active listeners prior to a major event or crisis in order to garner brand loyalty and minimize risk when the moment arises. When crisis strikes, brands should respond proactively, drawing on the reputation and trust they have already built with consumers. Read more to see three cases of brands that did it just right.
