This is great post I found from Kaitlin O'Brien in which she talkes about opportunities for financial service companies to gain market share by using media channels neglected by larger financial firms.
Social networking is about conversations, and it's a place to engage people. American politicians, companies, and the public are now online and participating in these conversations in ever-evolving ways.
America just celebrated Independence Day, a reminder of the rhetoric from one Thomas Paine. Paine was a revolutionary intellectual and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His pamphlet, "Common Sense," was the most circulated piece of writing of its time and presented the American colonists with powerful arguments for independence from the British.
Though published in 1776, the method of Paine's influence is still a modern phenomenon. The instant popularity of Paine's pamphlet as it was near instantaneously circulated amongst the American colonists closely mirrors the way social media can spread ideas today.
Paine's pamphlet was essentially a political blog, which now proliferate. Politicians are using social media because it's a way to engage people. Some tech-savvy politicians have even adopted the growing social platform FourSquare, a location-based social network that allows users to "check in" at locations. Consider Patrick Kennedy, a 27-year-old Democrat from Arkansas, and his campaign for Congress. Kennedy "checked in" when visiting constituencies, giving supporters the ability to stop by and meet with him.
Regardless of one’s opinion on the BP oil crisis, there is no question that the company has been working hard to broadcast their message. BP is a high profile example of how a company can use digital, social and traditional media, as well as PR to get their message to the world.
The company is using traditional outlets such as print ads and television spots, but has also adopted tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube to spread their message. BP, which didn’t previously have a YouTube channel, now has one of the most subscribed channels with over 800,000 views. BP also created a microsite dedicated to the oil spill cleanup operations, hosted on the company's main Web site. This is an important outlet to present up-to-date information on what viewers are interested in seeing.
BP was prudent to understand that the internet is a crucial part of spreading their message. However, the digital world is a transparent one – and BP is quickly learning this. Social media, although a great tool to convey content, is simply a tool. BP must still produce engaging content to communicate. Modern communication tools allow the message to spread easily, even if the message is that CEO Tony Hayward wants to get his life back.
Here is a great example of one of the worlds most recognizable brands putting social media at the center of it's marketing efforts. While social media is no longer a new concept, companies are still struggling with how to integrate it into their marketing campaigns. This video gives you a brief glimpse of how Gatorade is monitoring, tracking, analyzing and proactively engaging their customers in a conversation.
The Internet currently holds about as much information as 1,700 Libraries of Congress. Some of the leading minds on the web are exploring new ways to sort this data and how to understand not just what data is about, but also how data is linked.
Simply put, the semantic web gives us more than just raw data; it shows us the context and relationships behind and between those data.
Student Kate Ray interviewed a flock of researchers, entrepreneurs and other innovators for her 14-minute documentary, Web 3.0. Ray is a journalism/psych major at NYU who has done extensive research on the semantic web. Her subjects include World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, Hunch.com CEO and inventor Chris Dixon, and a host of other semantic web experts.
Nike president and CEO Mark Parker discusses a conversation he had with Apple head honcho Steve Jobs in this short clip from Fast Company’s "Innovation Uncensored" conference. Job' advice for the sporting goods company? "Get rid of the crappy stuff." Simple, yet brilliant.
The single greatest differentiator in successful social media campaigns versus unsuccessful ones is the perceived value of the campaign by the participants.
It is essential you give the participants, your clients and potential clients, the value they demand for their time. Anything from a free sample to a brief moment of humor to an informative anecdote can create value. What's important is that the participant is rewarded for their engagement. In return, the reward for your company is a new brand ambassador. Social marketing's effectiveness comes from the trust you create with your clients, your client's friends and your client's influencers. And the more brand ambassadors you create the greater your chances of success.
What value has your marketing efforts created for your clients today?
Nielsen analyzed over six months of survey data from 800,000 Facebook users in response to more than 125 Facebook ad campaigns from 70 different brand advertisers. After analyzing the data the study concluded that earned media and social advocacy contributed to Facebookers being much more likely to notice ads, absorb their content and make purchases.
The data clearly shows that the social advocacy of earned media played a substantial role in the performance of homepage ads on Facebook. According to the data, ad recall grew from 10% to 16%, awareness doubled from 4% to 8% and purchase intent quadrupled from 2% to 8%. That last metric is perhaps the most telling, and shows that when a Facebook user advocates for an ad, the ad is 4x more likely to result in a purchase.
In a survey conducted by RingCentral, a cloud-based business phone system provider, smartphones tied with intimate relationships as the number one thing that business professionals can not live without.
The study, which surveyed nearly 400 customers, showed that smartphones are taking on the defacto role in business communication.
Here are some highlights:
Smartphones and intimate relationships tied at 40% for the number one thing respondents can’t live without.
79% of respondents use their smartphones to conduct most business calls, versus an office phone or home phone.
34% use a smartphone more than a computer for business. 7% even said they don’t take their laptops with them when they travel for business if they have a smartphone.
48% of respondents said that at least two-thirds of their phone communication is via smartphone.
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