What's Next Marketing

Isn’t it intriguing that this cat at one point had more Followers than the leading Sports News outlet? On the surface, this image is enough to make a social media newcomer say #idontgetit. But isn’t this the perfect example of the value of entertainment vs. the value of information on social media?

With tweets like “CURRENT CAT STATUS still a cat STATUS UPDATE IN THIRTY MINUTES spoiler probably still a cat,” @sockington certainly isn’t any kind of information hub.  The aforementioned tweet was shared by 100’s of Followers. People welcome @sockington to their news feed because this feline gives them a good chuckle.  It’s all natural, all silly, and even cuter.  This kitty is 100% entertainment, 0% information. Now that Spring is upon us, we need to take a step back, knock the Winter freeze off our social media content, and freshen it up for a new season of social wonder.

Now followed by nearly 2.7 million, ESPN isn’t exactly desperate – and they’re quite SM savvy. They put out the most popular sports news on the planet, and are counted as a go-to for sports lovers everywhere.  Being that sports are themselves a form Read more…

On February 29th, Facebook officially launched the long-awaited “Timeline for brand” pages. Rumbles of the change have been scattering around since the f8 Developer conference back in September — and after being pushed back multiple times after individual pages… they’re finally here. Now what?

Timeline hopes to “inspire users to spend more time browsing Pages and reading their feed stories” according to TechCrunch, but with key features like the ability to set a custom application as the default landing tab revoked, how do brands move forward in convincing users to spend that time?

Here’s an overview of the main changes and opportunities:

Cover photo: Brands now host a 851×315 graphic atop their Timeline page, however this space can NOT be used to promote calls to action (i.e. “LIKE” our page, Click below!, etc.)

About: Directly underneath the flashy new cover photo, “About” highlights number of total likes and “Talking About This,” placing more emphasis than ever on consistent community engagement by placing figures at the visual forefront of the users’ eye.

Milestones: Milestones are what the creation of Timeline is all about. This allows brands to highlight the most important dates in company history and share them with their loyal customer base. Examples Read more…

The 2010 Census data exposed that every 30 seconds, a Hispanic turns 18 years old.

The Hispanic market, currently 50 million strong, is responsible for over half of the growth of the US population in the last 10 years. Their buying power grows faster than any minority group; it currently surpasses one trillion dollars.

Companies can and should target this niche market online. However, watch out when communicating with them on social media. Common pitfalls may hinder you from appealing to this audience, which are usually caused by cultural misunderstanding.

Explosion of Hispanic Users and Content Creators

This group is growing fast, has spending power, and is geographically concentrated.  Hispanics are also engaged online users and important word-of-mouth influencers; forty percent of Latinos are creators of their own content. They are much more likely to blog, upload music, or film a “Sh*t People Say” video than the average US web user.

According to a recent Google study, “86 percent of U.S. Hispanics have a high-speed Internet connection in their homes and 78 percent use the Internet as their main information source, even more than television.”

Spanish Translation isn’t Enough; Must Understand Cultural Content

Companies commonly ask marketers to translate an existing, mainstream campaign into Spanish. What they don’t realize, however, is that Read more…

I may have the manliest Pinterest account in existence.

Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Like jumbo shrimp, artificial reality or Microsoft Works, “manly” and “Pinterest” aren’t usually associated with each other. According to data from the Google Ad Planner, 79% of Pinterest users are female. While a variety of male-oriented competitors have emerged, including Gentlemint and WhereIsTheCool, Pinterest is growing faster than almost any other content distribution network in the history of the web and is finally capturing the interest of both genders.

So don’t worry guys, Pinterest isn’t only about wedding dresses and strappy sandals. When customized in the right manner, Pinterest can be a valuable resource for any guy. Here’s how to do it!

Be Picky with your Follows

The biggest mistake guys (including myself) make when they join Pinterest is to link up their account with Facebook and auto-follow their friends. This typically leads to a feed filled with female-focused pins. Remember that, while Pinterest has social features like Comments and Likes, it is NOT a social network. Pinterest is a content delivery network at its core and is much more focused about content discovery than social engagement. Keep your friendships focused on Facebook, otherwise your feed will be filled with Read more…

We all know the story of MySpace — the social network that ended in failure and was thus sold in June of last year. But is the site making a comeback? Possibly…

MySpace was sold by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp last year for $35m – compared to the $580m that he originally paid for the website back in 2005. However, new owners, digital media firm Specific Media and investors, including Justin Timberlake, promised to shift the ailing social network and bring it back to life.

A new life focused on music, in fact. MySpace supposedly offers the biggest free music collection online, even ahead of popular streaming services such as Spotify, Deezer and Pandora. MySpace houses a music catalogue of more than 42m free songs, a significant step above the 15m songs Spotify contains in the US.

In addition, the website has made claims that around 40,000 people a day have signed up to MySpace since it introduced new ties with rival social networks, Twitter and Facebook. A number of the new users are thought to have come through Myspace’s new music player, which provides streaming music, radio modes, and a recommendation engine; but also from the fact that new functionality makes it Read more…

Chances are, you’ve heard of Pinterest. Your girlfriend is pinning wedding or home décor ideas obsessively. Your mom is cooking and crafting things she saw on someone else’s pinboard. Maybe you’re building your dream closet. (I know I am!)

There’s no doubt that Pinterest’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last several months. Although access to the “Virtual Pinboard” is restricted to invitation only, over 3.3 million users have signed up and the site boasts 421 million page views. That means its users are pretty active and oh by the way, women, the most powerful consumers, make up 70 percent of its user base.

Pinterest was named one of the top ten social media networks of 2011 and was recently listed as one of the 60 new Timeline Apps from Facebook. If there was ever a time for a brand to start using Pinterest, it’s now. Here are four tips to help you get your feet wet and harness its PINtential.

1. Promote Your Products

This is fairly easy to do on Pinterest if you sell some sort of good. Simply upload a photo of said product, link back to your website and write the price in the pin description. This will automatically create a Read more…

Do you know the differences between graphic design specification differences between social media and print media?

What do you get when you marry the biggest television event of the year with the revolution that is social media? For one, you get explosive and immediate feedback. In the past, it was more common for people’s conversations about the things they watched on television to be saved for the water cooler at work, or perhaps over lunch. As social media evolves, millions of people everywhere are becoming more likely to share their immediate thoughts and reactions to what they see, as soon as they see it.

According to Semiocast, a French Social Media monitoring service, last year’s Super Bowl was the topic of roughly 4.5 million tweets. These tweets included conversations about the game, individual players, halftime performers and of course, the commercials and the number could grow substantially this year. In light of this, the NFL is stepping up its game by having its own Super Bowl Social Media Command Center. From there,  not only will they monitor the conversations had on social media platforms about the game and its surrounding events, but they will also tweet and message directions to fans to help them find parking as well as direct them to businesses and restaurants around Indianapolis Read more…

According to a new report, Facebook will launch Frictionless Sharing tomorrow, January 18, 2012. Frictionless Sharing enables users to share behavior on Facebook without having to provide authorization for every action. Examples of auto-shared actions include “John Doe is listening to Move Along by The All-American Rejects on Spotify” or “Jane Doe is reading Popular Websites to Go Dark Over SOPA Controversy on Yahoo! News.”

The system has been in a beta testing phase since the public announcement at Facebook’s f8 Conference on September 9, 2011. Provided to an initial group of partners, results have already exceeded most expectations. Spotify, an initial partner, has grown its paid user base to over 2.5 million in a few short months. Yahoo reported in December that 1 million articles are auto-shared daily, leading to 500,000 daily referrals.

What is the Open Graph and how does Frictionless Sharing work?

The central mechanism of Frictionless Sharing is Facebook’s Open Graph. In 2010, Facebook launched the Open Graph. The Open Graph enabled Facebook users to move beyond mapping their relationships and opened the system up to connections with nearly anything imaginable. They did this by integrating the Like button, which provided users the ability to connect with Pages, Apps, and Read more…

What is Instagram?

For those of us that have a serious passion for photography, and even for those of us that don’t, Instagram is a fast, fun, and social way to share your life with friends through the photos you take and share.

Fast, being that the application is available as a free download in the iTunes store on any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 3.1.2 or above. Also, unlike Facebook, where sometimes it takes a while to upload your photos; the people at Instagram have optimized the experience to always be fast and efficient.

Instagram is fun because of the ability to take photos and apply one of seventeen different custom filters that transform the colors, mood, border, and tonality of your photos; transforming even the common person’s pictures into professional-looking snapshots..

And it’s social because Instagram is programmed to share your photos on multiple platforms; take a picture once, and have it shared (instantly) on all your social networks. Currently, you can share your pictures on Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous and Twitter. Additionally, if you specify a location with your photo, you can opt to have your photo added to your check-in on Foursquare. Other users can “Like” and comment on photos to boost popularity, and Read more…

Got your attention didn’t I? While I don’t have winning lotto numbers, winning the ‘LIKE Lottery” on your Facebook page takes content that is authentic AND valuable. If your page simply reposts the content of a more popular page, no one has any reason to follow yours. Authentic content that is not valuable to your audience is not going to gain you a following either. Here are 4 ways to win the LIKE Lottery:

1.  People Like Distinct Content

If everyone put out the same content, the world would be boring. Pepsi wouldn’t exist if they used the same ads, logos, and recipe as Coke. Without distinction, everyone would only need 1 Facebook friend. Content is your way of putting out YOUR unique thoughts for people to follow.

Pages need distinct content to break through the clutter and be shared. Check out this top pages list for Facebook:

Do you think Texas Hold’em Poker puts out the same content as Lady Gaga?  Eminem and Family Guy surely post different things. The one thing they do have in common: these Top Pages all post unique, quality content regularly!

What makes you different from all the millions of other people on Facebook? Read more…

This is a dilemma that many face when exploring the realm of social media for a business. Social media can be a very powerful vehicle for driving traffic to your business and ultimately increasing sales. As a business owner, profit is obviously the bottom line, so it is easy to get swept into tweeting links to your products or website or sharing it repeatedly on your Facebook page. It is important to understand that the primary function of social media for most is in fact to be ‘social’. The balance between creating a personal experience, establishing connections with customers and effectively pushing your product can be a difficult one to keep, but it is certainly possible.  Here are a few key points to help maintain that healthy balance.

Personalize your Social Media Accounts

Consumers expect a two-way conversation when using social media. This means answering and responding to direct inquiries, expressing thanks for social endorsements and public support. These practices soften up your profile and allow customers to feel and realize that they are communicating with other people and not an ambiguous brand. Don’t be afraid to be humorous and colorful, as this is another great way to attract interaction Read more…

Since f8, Spotify’s deal with Facebook is generating 250,000 new users per day for the music service.

The music sharing interface is brilliant; users can publish their listening activity through their friends’ Tickers if they chose. You pick a genre, start listening, and the story is published instantly – friends can then click on the story in their ticker and tune right in to that station.

Once the story is clicked, the user is prompted with a pop out box with the current song and others from the same artist, album, or playlist. So not only are the artists being shared and promoted, but also users’ personal playlists with songs they like that reflect certain moods.

Perhaps more importantly, this will lead to more acceptance of the home page Ticker design following the initial backlash. Musical stories publish listening activity to the news feed based on patterns – something that should spread new music like wildfire. Music is universally sharable; this is a huge move on Facebook’s end to amplify its own usability.

Facebook has finally embraced its potential to engage through music. This move adds tremendous value to keeping up with your Facebook page.  The average length of a Facebook session in the Read more…

Originally, some people might be afraid to get involved with social media because of the potential for bad publicity. It’s true that complaints through social media can tarnish your brand for a wide audience very quickly, if not handled correctly. However, compliments can also work wonders for your brand and are often times more effective in influencing other’s behavior. It is therefore the brand’s responsibility to produce a social media experience that can turn an unhappy customer into a brand ambassador.

Accept that You Might get Some Complaints

Don’t be afraid to let your audience post dissatisfaction with their experience via your social media channels. Believe it or not, you would rather them complain on your brand page than their personal profile where you have no way of even knowing they were dissatisfied, on top of not being able to reach out to them to make it right because of privacy protection. When customers complain, you have the opportunity to respond and resolve issues. Then, word of your great customer service will spread instead of the complaint.

Have a Plan

It’s ok to let your brand be the subject of complaint, but you need to have a plan of action ready for when it Read more…

Mistake #1: Posting Facebook content through API services

Facebook is very focused on user experience and wants members to engage with a vivid and diverse Top News feed. Per Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm, the lowest weight is given to Applications. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and other self-publishers use the 3rd Party API to provide their members the ability to post to Facebook Pages without going onto the site itself. We recommend manually posting content on Facebook, rather than via  a 3rd Party API publisher like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, which can increase viewership by as much as 300%! If you have the choice, by all means do not use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to schedule Facebook posts! (see details here: http://www.whatsnextmarketing.com/blog/2011/04/)

Mistake #2: Linking Facebook page with Twitter account

Twitter and Facebook are two distinct networks with two distinct sets of etiquette. The culture of both networks is different, so if you combine them you risk alienating your audience. By posting tweets to a Facebook page, you’ll submerge  your Facebook community with status update after status update, taking over their newsfeed and appearing spammy. Also, the syntax for both networks is very different! Twitter relies on “#”s and “@”s to function and uses abbreviations like “RT”, while Facebook’s syntax Read more…

Imagine this scenario: You are the proud retailer of affordable custom suits for men and women.  Although your business is growing quickly, you simply don’t have the resources to satisfy the needs of everyone who needs a suit. In order to effectively, and successfully, penetrate the market place, you have decided to segment your consumers. Target markets can be separated demographically into tangible characteristics such as age, gender, family size, income, occupation, education, ethnicity, and the list goes on.

What is demographic segmentation?

Demographic segmentation is arguably the simplest form of market segmentation because it allows your company to categorize what your consumers need based on physical characteristics that are easy to obtain and measure. While all your customers between the ages of 21-30 may need professional attire for work, someone who works in the financial field versus another working at a technologically based company may have different opinions about what works best for him or her.  Demographic segmentation isn’t enough to help you properly recognize their diverse outlooks on professional clothing.

In a world where everyone is constantly communicating with one another via social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, being able to listen to your consumers’ point of view and identify Read more…

Technology and communication need to focus on the end user. Take for example an issue I had today. I’m working out of the What’s Next Fort Lauderdale office this week and found that I needed to print some documents. I go to File > Print and my Apple conveniently finds the network printer. Great!

I try to print and discover that the printer drivers are not installed on my computer. The printer is an HP unit built specifically for easy wifi printing, however still requires special drivers.

I can’t find the CD that came with the printer, and go online instead to HP’s website to download the drivers. I have to download a 180MB install pack, which then turns into installing a 450MB software pack. The software pack features special widget and photo editing programs apparently to improve the printing experience. All I want to do is print!

In an effort to differentiate themselves, companies like HP are trying to create experiences around their products. When these experiences get in the way of the customer’s desires for the product though, they have failed. In an era when competition is massive and the barriers to entry have reduced significantly, organizations must ensure that their Read more…

Social media is a terrific avenue for athletes, sports fans, bloggers and coaches alike to engage in real-time discussions about an array of sports topics.  Twitter gives fans the opportunity to discuss topics with other sports enthusiasts on a forum that is shared with the globe.  For the first time, fans are able to directly communicate with their favorite players, teams, coaches and executives.

Facebook provides similar perks, but twitter pages are more personable and therefore more engaging (generally speaking).  Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal have amassed millions of followers and page likes on their respective twitter and facebook pages; and they’re some of the most popular figures across both platforms.  It’s not a surprise that these popular athletes have so many people following them, the real shocker is the fact that other teams and athletes still haven’t taken notice on what is working for these individuals.

There are dozens of athletes who boast the same fan numbers on social media as the aforementioned athletes.  Unfortunately, for every Shaq or Chad “OchoCinco” on twitter, there are hundreds of athletes that have failed to realize the advantages of this real-time, ever-changing medium.

Kobe Bryant is arguably the most Read more…

Getting the most out of your Facebook ad campaign can be difficult. The anatomy of a Facebook ad is ever-changing and it is becoming increasingly important to optimize your campaign once set up. While it is tempting to throw a few ads up and let Facebook do the work for you, do not fall down the path to no results… Follow these tips for a healthier Facebook ad campaign.

Set Goals

What is a successful campaign? Well, that depends on your goals. Are you looking to drive leads to a landing page? Do you want to increase your Facebook fan base? Encouraging awareness for a new product? Whatever your goals may be, before you begin your campaign, start by setting realistic goals to determine how to measure success. Ask yourself… “What will a successful campaign be for my brand?”

Know your Target!

Targeting your ads is the easiest way to reach your EXACT interest group and SAVE money doing so.  Here are the three methods you can choose from for targeting your Facebook ads:

Topic targeting – If you know that your ideal audience is likely to have a particular set of interests, but don’t need to manage a complicated list of keywords, Topic targeting Read more…

I keep hearing prominent communication professionals talk about social media and innovative technology as merely a new set of tools. I believe they are misguided. Take this video for instance: A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work

The 1 year old in this clip has never experienced life without an iPad. To the rest of us, the features provided by an iPad are exciting and innovative. To her, a magazine is an iPad that doesn’t work.

Her brain is hard-coded to expect a certain level of interactivity and engagement in everything.

It takes a certain perspective, a new point of view to understand how to utilize social media and innovative technology without prior standards clouding judgment.

I remember my first home computer. We got it in 1992. The tower stood 3 feet tall and ran Windows 3.1. Everyone on my street flooded over to see this innovative gadget that featured a 1x CD-ROM drive. Access to such technology at a young age helped to craft the way I think today.

And yet, I may never be able to change the wiring of my brain to match that of the one year old who doesn’t get why her magazine doesn’t work right. I’m so excited Read more…

EdgeRank is an algorithm Facebook uses to determine content priority on the Top News feed. The lowest EdgeRank weight is given to Applications, including 3rd Party APIs. What’s Next Marketing has developed proprietary software called ContentBooster to combat low post viewership rates of services like HootSuite and Tweetdeck.

Establishing a social media plan of action can be a tough task. Many organizations jump into social media unprepared and then quit after they don’t achieve their desired results.

Oftentimes, their stumbling block was a single correctable misstep. Take a look over the What’s Next ACED IT evaluation model  and see if your campaign could be improved by changing course or putting more emphasis on one of the steps below:

Acquisition – Generate traffic to social media venues

Conversion – Get visitors to opt-in for future communication (Like, Follow, Subscribe)

Engagement – Build long-standing relationships with audience members

Demonstration – Show the audience what they can do to take action (behavior change)

Identification – Find potential influencers both inside and outside the established audience

Training – Provide identified influencers with education/resources to spread to others

As of last Wednesday, Twitter wrapped all links coming from Twitter and Twitter clients with a “t.co” URL. Publicly, Twitter stated that this was a move to protect its users from malicious sites and scams. And while it may do this, the real punch is with the convergence of Twitter referrals across all of various Twitter clients (i.e. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite).

Now that all of these referrals are being assigned to Twitter itself, analytics tools will now give Twitter credit for it all. To realize what a huge difference this is, imagine if a supermarket analyzed its profits based on each product it sold – one figure for chips, one for bread, one for soda, and so on:

Chips – $3 profit

Bread – $5 profit

Soda – $6 profit

…etc

That’s a lot of little numbers.

One day, said supermarket decides to analyze its profit based on the total number of products the entire store sold instead – now each individual product figure converges into one huge number.

Total Store – $10,645 profit

Looks a lot more impressive, doesn’t it?

Now that Twitter will be credited for all of the referrals through t.co (like total store profit), it will look infinitely more important Read more…

While online restaurant review services have existed for several years, a new crop of social media sites give users the opportunity to get more specific and share their favorite dishes and drinks. Let’s take a closer look at two options, Foodspotting and foursquare, and how restaurants can better utilize these tools.

Foodspotting

What is Foodspotting?

Created in 2009, Foodspotting is a social media tool dedicated purely to food. Foodspotting is a visual guide to culinary delights, so don’t expect long, snarky reviews. By way of website or mobile application, members are encouraged to take a picture of the dish or drink they wish to share. Then they upload the photo to their member page so others can see what menu items they recommend. You can also check out recommendations by restaurant.

How restaurants can use Foodspotting

Encourage patrons to spot and photograph dishes and drinks, and then share their photos by social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, foursquare and Flickr). Create incentives to encourage sharing, such as reward points or a coupon. Create a Foodspotting menu guide online, featuring top menu options, and offer a reward to loyal customers who order certain selections. Post photos of your top dishes to attract new customers.

foursquare

What is foursquare?

foursquare is Read more…

Earlier today, I got a “Double Secret Alpha” invite to Percolate, a new micro blogging aggregation platform. Percolate is the creation of Noah Brier, named the 59th Most Creative Business Person of 2009 by Fast Company. From Brand Tags to likemind, Noah’s past projects combine sociology, technology, and business strategy to provide a dynamic picture of human behavior.

“We’re trying to make it easy for anyone to create content,” Brier said in a recent interview with Fast Company, “to take away from the frustration of staring at that blank box and trying to figure out what to say.”

 The Percolate experience starts out by requesting that the user link their Twitter and Google Reader accounts. Once linked, Percolate gets to work. The Dashboard features two feeds: Percolating and Your Brew. Your Brew takes the content shared by users you follow on Twitter and your RSS subscriptions, and organizes it by an algorithm. Five trusted contacts in your social network share the same story? It will be at the top of Your Brew. From there, you can tag the content (Interesting, Win, Awesome, Fail, or add your own), provide your own commentary about the link, and share it to your Percolate network and/or Twitter.

The Read more…