Marketing budgets must open to social

Social media's percent of marketing budgets (iStock) To remain successful, marketers MUST market in the social web. According to a May 2009 Anderson Analytics’ survey, 52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social network. No matter the marketing goal, from customer service, branding, and lead generation to direct marketing and e-commerce, there is a place for social media in the marketing plan.

Although companies have begun to realize the importance of social media marketing in the near term, budgets have been slow to open up. While traditional media channels attract the largest percentage, online channels represent a growing portion of all marketing spend. But although social network interest, momentum and overall ad budgets are increasing, social network spending will remain a small percentage of total US online spending, remaining at 4.7% to 4.8% over the next few years (eMarketer). Still it’s important to recognize that resources directed to the social media space include time and effort and can be less concrete, and the key advantage of social media marketing is that you can get a lot of value for little investment. Continue reading “Marketing budgets must open to social”

Facebook marketing boot camp

Facebook marketing camp This month the Lab attended a kind of Facebook marketing boot camp, where members of the Facebook team guided us on best practices for integrating Facebook within brand marketing plans. The opportunity is much larger then capturing a portion of the 250 million Facebook users as customers; it’s also a prospect for new ways to be innovative in our marketing.

Most of the conversation of the day centered around two ways you can use Facebook to market your brand: engagement ads and Facebook pages. But the team did talk a bit about what’s new on the popular site. For instance, they are starting to put demographic and geographic targeting into action: Targeting keywords from status updates and users birthdays are new features.

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Microsoft’s new “decision” engine


Microsoft has launched “decision” engine Bing (currently in beta) as an agreeable new choice for Web searchers.  Claiming Bing was designed to help people find the right information that can help them in making decisions, Microsoft passed over the term “search engine” for “decision engine.” With an index of  five million pages (Google reports indexing over eight billion) and seemingly relevant results, searchers have given this much anticipated update to Microsoft LIVE Search a warm reception.
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Reflections of a Zen Tech Warrior

Alicia weilds a wind-up flashlight.
Alicia wields a wind-up flashlight.

I’ve been interning at the IPG Emerging Media Lab for the past few months.  Little did I know that in addition to my killer subject line (Your Tech Savvy Intern), my resume pegged me as a Zen Tech Warrior.  (This was before I had read the Lab’s 2009 Digital Trends and learned what a “Zen Tech Warrior” was).

Here are 4 things that this Zen Tech Warrior learned at the Lab:
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Using social media to build your personal brand

publicme“We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” – Tom Peters

Although Tom Peters coined “The Brand Called You” in an article in FastCompany magazine back in 1997, with the explosion of social media, personal branding is more important than ever.

Personal branding, a summation of how individuals are representing themselves online, is a phenomenon where people and their careers are perceived as brands. Your online presence including news, blog posts and comments, profiles on social networks, images, videos and personal web sites – essentially content of any kind that connects to you, makes up your personal brand. For individuals and executives, it’s important to gain control of this image you are presenting to the world. New tools for personal branding can help you create and manage a unique and powerful personal brand online. Continue reading “Using social media to build your personal brand”

Inbound marketing is “in”

raqueloutboundEarlier this week, I attended and presented at the Inbound Marketing Summit organized by Chris Brogan. It was truly an engaging and informative conference.  The consensus was that social media marketing is still big on tactics and short on strategy.  Marketing has changed and every company needs to have a long term plan for participation- or be left behind.

Here are some highlights from the summit:
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Thanks for the branded virtual gift!

Virtual gift giving on Facebook The virtual goods economy is roaring, growing in adoption and importance, and making the branded product or gift a powerful social media marketing tool. Members of virtual worlds are purchasing virtual goods for self-expression, social status, or to gain advantage in game play.  Companies, including Kohl’s and Sears, have witnessed success by creating virtual boutiques and selling branded virtual goods and apparel on sites such as there.com, Zwinky.com and Stardoll.com.

With widespread adoption of social networks such as Facebook, virtual goods have found a new purpose and home. In these social networks, sending a gift to a friend has become a form of communication. Virtual gifts are self-selected – a user chooses to give a virtual gift because it appeals to their own or their friends’ interests, making them highly targeted.  This is where brands come in. Continue reading “Thanks for the branded virtual gift!”

Can privacy exist in social media?

Privacy (rpongsaj via Flickr)The Facebook privacy flap of the last week, shows that today’s social media user wants to be able to share and stay connected, but on their terms.

We’ve embraced social media platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter that were designed to help us share our thoughts, our lives and experiences.  We’ve willingly handed out our personal information and content streamed our lives. But we want to own the personalities that we’ve voluntarily shared in the digital realm.

Information posted on the social Web is meant to be shared, so perhaps Facebook believed that ownership was not a concern to its users. Well, they were very wrong!  Continue reading “Can privacy exist in social media?”

OMMA Social Highlights

ipopeRecently, I attended OMMA Social in San Francisco. A number of good speakers reflected on the power and influence of social media. New chatter about new trends, however, was conspicuously at a minimum. The consensus was that social media has transformed the way we do business: Brands no longer call the shots and consumers’ voices are being heard.

There was agreement amongst all that listening to social media is key, and ignoring the conversation is not an option. But what I took away is that social media remains a challenging space for marketers. Here are the top six tips, direct from OMMA, for marketers: Continue reading “OMMA Social Highlights”

New president, new media

CNN Live with Facebook
CNN Live with Facebook

President Barack Obama was sworn into office today, with the backdrop of his historic election and the current economic and international crises. Meanwhile, we at the Lab negotiated new and traditional media channels to take it all in. Here’s what we had to say about inauguration 2.0:

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