Social Media Archives - Page 23 of 38

In News

The future of social media marketing

June 26, 2019 No Comments

Social media started out with Myspace and Bebo (oh the nostalgia) before graduating to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Here we are now in 2019, ‘hashtagging’ and ‘storying’ like it’s nobody’s business.

What’s next for the social media industry?

1. A shift in focus: less on feeds, more on private messages

The feed is such an integral part of social media networks that it could never just vanish overnight. Regardless, people are using social media more and more as a way to get in touch with people and have instant message conversations.

To remove the feed entirely could be problematic though. The feed is the main source of incoming for many social media networks as most people will spend their dwelling time here. It’s also used as a key space for advertising. With visual formats such as Stories and Facebook Watch gaining speed, it’s likely that advertising will inhabit these forms in the absence of a feed. After all, IGTV is in the midst of discussions on adding advertisements to the content as we speak.

We have no doubt that the feed will start to play a smaller role in the growth of social media networks, but it’s here to stay for a long while yet.

2. Despite numerous industry worries, influencers aren’t going away

2018 / 2019 has been a tricky time for influencers with a lot of bad press and finger-pointing documentaries. However, not all influencers are deserving of the bad rep.

Influencers who are troublesome in the industry will become extinct over the next few years. Their followers will lose trust and begin to diminish, while brands will ‘wise-up’ to influencer red flags and learn how to find influencers who will work more effectively with their brand.

Although social media networks are still likely to be saturated with #ad and influencers galore, it’s not really the end of the world. If trustworthy and authentic influencers are all that reminds then the odd paid promotion will be much less problematic than it is today.

One trend we expect to see more of very soon is brand marketers educating themselves more about the influencer marketing supply chain. This will enable them to only work with influencers who promote their brand effectively and actually sell their product. Watch this space for further developments.

3. Brands will be making more of an effort to plan their content and be more consistent across channels

As social media continues to be an incredibly saturated space, the quality of content must also rise.

Brands that are smart will invite a social media specialist to take a look at what they’re currently doing, as well as give advice on where social media (and the internet in general) is headed. This will enable them to get a leg-up on future trends and plan ahead for the next five years.

Brands not able to identify what works for their business will lose customers to their competitors.

Plan, execute, analyse and repeat what works.

4. Small communities will trump big networks for most businesses (even more than they already do)

We all know that Facebook Groups and messaging apps have become so very popular over the last couple of years as a way to unite people with similar interests in thousands of niche topics. Whatever your tipple, there’s a group for it, filled with like-minded individuals posed for a heated discussion.

The general public is bored of seeing the same story over and over again. But having the context of a group changes things. A post about a new coffee shop only becomes interesting and relevant to you when it’s posted within a Facebook Group specific to your location.

Furthermore, the average person is usually more comfortable participating in conversations and sharing opinions within a smaller community, without fear of judgement from the entire world wide web. This ‘safe space’ atmosphere will continue to help groups become a hub of activity and engagement.

One thing that won’t change is that social media is the cheapest, fastest and the most scalable marketing channel available to most companies. That isn’t going away, period.

Welcome to the next five years of social media marketing.

By Alex Packham

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Facebook’s social media dominance

June 14, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from CNBC

When Facebook filed for its initial public offering in early 2012, the company named the ongoing transition to mobile as one of the biggest risks to its future success. If the transition to mobile was indeed the biggest challenge in Mark Zuckerberg’s early career as CEO of a billion-dollar company, he managed it quite well. Not only does Facebook generate most of its revenue with mobile advertising now, the company also owns some of the most popular mobile apps in the world. In June 2018, Instagram announced that it had reached one billion monthly active users, making it the fourth platform in Facebook’s portfolio to pass that milestone.

Considering the size of Facebook’s social media empire and its recent involvement in several scandals, it’s no surprise that calls for the company to be regulated have been getting louder over the past twelve months.

Source: Statista

Sourced from CNBC

In News

On social media, sell your brand, not your stuff

June 13, 2019 No Comments

By Lee Simmons

Off the coast of New Zealand last year, a kayaker was drifting along quietly when a seal burst from the water and slapped him in the face with a large octopus. As it happens, the trip was funded by GoPro as part of a product launch, and that sucker punch was caught on video by one of the company’s cameras. When GoPro posted the clip to Facebook, it exploded, yielding a publicity bonanza.

It’s a marketer’s dream: What could be better than having viewers voluntarily send your branded content to friends (and “friends”), saying, “You gotta see this!” Chasing that dream, companies today are moving more and more of their media spend to social channels. It’s a natural evolution–business goes where the buyers are, and nowadays that’s on the platforms.

But what kind of content works best on social media? Opinions abound; evidence, not so much. “There’s been very little real-world research on this,” says Harikesh S. Nair, a professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The problem is data. Facebook could do it, but each commercial user on Facebook sees only its own metrics; there hasn’t been a way to draw general insights.

So Nair, along with Dokyun Lee of Carnegie Mellon and Kartik Hosanagar of the Wharton School, hooked up with an analytics firm that gathers daily performance figures for some 800 business users of Facebook. By pooling the data for more than 100,000 posts–and using novel machine-learning techniques to characterize their content–the researchers published a paper that offers real answers that companies can use to optimize their social media strategies.

Content matters

When firms first tiptoed into social media, Nair says, they brought to it a mind-set from old media, where the goal was to maximize “reach,” which is simply the number of people exposed to a brand message. The corollary online, it seemed, was to maximize one’s follower count–and companies employed a variety of inducements like coupons and free swag, not to mention sponsored posts, to amass followers.

But eyeballs didn’t equal engagement. “Early audits showed that awareness wasn’t enough,” Nair says. “Followers weren’t interacting with the content in any way.” Which isn’t surprising: Commercials were always an annoyance, the price of watching TV shows for free. Why would anyone “like” a corporation, comment on its self-serving ads, or share them with friends?

“The focus,” Nair says, “then became not just getting exposure, but figuring out what to put in the message so users will want to engage with it. This generated a whole new industry called ‘content marketing.’ The question became, what kind of content do I need to reach what kind of user, to generate what kind of engagement–and toward what goal?”

Be someone

The goal might seem obvious, but there are two distinct streams of social media marketing, Nair says, with different objectives. One, known as “performance marketing,” aims to generate immediate sales, or “conversion.” The other is “brand building,” where the goal is to connect with consumers in a more personal way, in hopes of earning their long-term loyalty.Interestingly, the data showed that most firms used one or the other exclusively–only a few did both at once. “I don’t know why that is,” Nair says, “but it could be an organizational thing–where the teams responsible for social media in different companies are more aligned with the sales or marketing departments.”

To characterize each post, the researchers first hired workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk to evaluate a subset of about 5,000 posts and label content based upon soft attributes like humor and emotion or upon hard information like price deals. Then they used that labeled set to train a computer, with natural language processing and machine-learning algorithms, to power through the rest.

When they finally combined the content attributes with the engagement figures–the actual likes, shares, and comments for each post–they found stark differences in performance: “When a company says, ‘Hey, here’s a coupon for 20% off,’ it gets very little engagement,” Nair says. “When it uses what we call ‘brand-personality’ content–essentially, when it talks to users in ways that simulate a human being–it gets lots of engagement.”

Mix it up

On one level, of course, we know we’re being played–the bantering, irreverent personality on the other end is a construct, a brand profile, an avatar–but our brains can’t resist. Marketers hack our basic urge to connect with others who are like us, to sort ourselves into tribes. “There’s a lot of research showing that efforts at persuasion are more credible when they seem to come from an individual person, a friend,” Nair says, “instead of, say, a corporation in Cincinnati.”

However, performance marketing still has a place. Nair thinks users might be reluctant to share such posts because they don’t want to appear to be shilling for a company or seem unduly excited about saving money. “People are hyper-aware of the optics on social media,” he says. “They think about how their actions will look to others.” But that doesn’t mean they won’t click through for the coupon.

There’s also no reason a company can’t do both, he adds, and that may be where most of them fall short today: “A possible content strategy would be to combine them, to use informative posts to generate immediate leads and personality-driven posts to build long-term brand capital. A portfolio approach.”

Engagement is king

Still, they’re not equally important; the study shows that the crucial element in any social marketing campaign is the brand-personality content. And the reason for that, Nair says, gets at the key difference between traditional broadcast media and new media: In this new world, user engagement is noticed by the algorithms that drive reach.

“Facebook’s News Feed algorithm gives priority to content with good engagement. If you’re sending out posts that aren’t getting any visible traction, the algorithm will say, ‘Aha, users don’t like this company’s posts very much.’ Then you get buried farther and farther down in News Feed, so you have little chance of ever showing up in front of users.”

In this way, Nair says, maximizing engagement–those precious likes, shares, and comments–on social apps is perhaps today’s equivalent to search engine optimization, or SEO, on the web. In both cases, the goal is to reverse-engineer the ranking criteria used by systems that essentially equate popularity with value.

“It sounds paradoxical, but you can’t get engagement without engagement,” Nair says. “So even if you’re mainly interested in performance marketing and driving sales, it’s really essential to add some good brand-personality content–if only to remain visible in this crowded marketplace.”

This article was originally published on Stanford Business and is republished here with permission.

Feature Image Credit: [Photo: Jakob Owens/Unsplash]

By Lee Simmons

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

5 Ways to Build Your Brand That Aren’t Social Media Marketing

May 31, 2019 No Comments

By AJ Agrawal

When it comes to building a brand and marketing a business, social media is a powerful tool that all businesses need to be taking advantage of. Because 70 percent of Americans have at least one social media account, according to Lyfe Marketing, and because social media is considered the most relevant advertising channel for half of Gen Z and nearly half of millennials, social media marketing’s benefits for growth are obvious.

Not to mention that, according to the Sprout Index, 58 percent of consumers prefer content that focuses on the visual, making social media the perfect place to advertise and build a brand.

Although social media marketing understandably gets a lot of focus when it comes to building a brand and business, it’s not the only way to build a brand, so it’s not the only tactic businesses should be using. In fact, it may not even be the most effective brand building tactic for your business, depending on the type of business you run, your industry, your target market, and so on.

When it comes to building a brand, the more diverse your strategy is, the faster, better and more effectively you’ll be able to build the brand you want to. So, in addition to social media marketing, you may want to consider one or all of the following effective brand building strategies:

1. Really know your target audience.

Although knowing your target audience well doesn’t by itself build your brand, it is extremely important if you want to be able to build that brand effectively. So, whether you’re drop-shipping phone cases and other accessories or selling your personally designed, handmade clothing line through an online store, knowing your target audience can help you market more effectively and get a better return on investment in ads and other strategies.

To really get to know your audience, first consider who your ideal customer is; but just knowing that teens ages 14 to 19 tend to have cell phones isn’t enough.Instead, you should basically build an entire imaginary “persona” for your ideal customer — from where this person lives to what he or she likes to do for fun. Then you can really narrow down your marketing and start building and establishing your brand with the people most likely to purchase from you.

2. Build a blog.

Blogging helps build your brand; and not only is it easy and free, but when done right, t it can also be extremely powerful (businesses that make serious blogging efforts are 13 times more likely, according to Hubspot, to see a positive return on investment).

You can use your blog to do everything from notifying customers of an upcoming or ongoing promotion and educating customers on how to use your product, to improving SEO and, of course, establishing your brand and persona with your business’s own unique voice and value. Blogging does so much more than just act as a journal, and if you aren’t blogging already, you should start now.

3. Create an email subscription.

Offering an email subscription is a great way to build your brand, whether you want customers and potential customers to receive a monthly newsletter or simply get regular updates on sales, promotions and giveaways.You can not only interact with and engage customers but also personalize messages to establish a strong brand connection with customers on an individual basis.

4. Focus on customer service.

Customers are what make any business a success — without them, no business would make it past the first few stages of development. Although quality products, effective marketing, a good active presence and a likable content “voice” are all important aspects of a brand, customer service plays a part as well.

Customers greatly value positive experiences with a company, and less-than-great ones are enough to cause them to never shop with a company again. After a good experience, however, not only are they more likely to stay loyal, they’ll likely tell their friends and family about your company, helping you gain more customers and an enhanced brand reputation.

5. Make your brand visually memorable.

Many people think of logos and slogans when they think of branding, so visuals can be important. Your logo, including the colors and fonts you choose, all have an impact on how your brand is viewed and how recognizable it is. It only takes 10 seconds for a customer to form a first impression of a brand’s logo, so it’s important to do all you can to make your brand visually memorable.

In addition, you can make your brand more visually memorable by selling or giving away custom-branded merchandise. The more you can get your name out, the better. The goal is to make your company’s name recognizable at a glance, and creating a memorable logo and other consistent visuals can help build your brand.

In conclusion

Brand-building consists of many different aspects; however, a lot of focus is placed on social media marketing. Although social media marketing plays an important role, there are other things that you can do that are just as effective in building your brand.

Which of the steps outlined above are you currently following to help build your brand?

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: MathieuLphoto | Getty Images

By AJ Agrawal

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

5 ways to increase leads from your website

May 30, 2019 No Comments

By Mandeep

In case you are wondering why your website is not driving any traffic or generating any kind of leads, even after having the best interface, design and even the best integration for chatbox, then you’ve come to the right place. The reason can be that, you are not focusing on the digital marketing aspect of your website. Good traffic is always needed to build a strong client base and it will also help in building the leads as well.

Driving traffic will include concentrating on various aspects like SEM, SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, etcetera. Therefore, you need to know what kind of strategy will fit your business the most. There can be either free ways to do it, or paid ways as well. Thus, the following list of tips and tricks will help you to generate leads for your website and also the traffic as well.

SEO on-page performance: You have to make sure that the SEO on every page of your website works brilliantly in order to create traffic and leads. This is very important in moving your website on top of the search results. You also have to keep in mind about the changing algorithms as well. There are various factors connected with on-page SEO, like keyword density, keyword research, external and internal links, etcetera.

Using social media: Even if your website has top-notch content, then it will be of no use if people cannot find it. You have to promote your content. And there is not a better way to do it, than using social media. With the use of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, you will be able to create profiles, post content, pictures and videos as well. In case using social media is not your cup of tea, you can always hire an agency.

Use video marketing: Videos are a great way to increase engagement among your follers and customers. Consumers love watching videos and therefore you can use video channels like YouTube and Vine, and use it for promoting your website. It will not cost you huge amounts of money as well. This is because 70 per cent out of 100 per cent wants to watch a video over reading a blog.

Indulge in guest blogging: Even though some people might say that guest blogging is getting out of fashion, it indeed helps a lot in creating traffic on your website. You can always use proof to invite people who are subject matter experts to write on your website, on niche subjects. With a guest blogger, you can also contribute to their blog or website by adding a website link.
Marketing via email: Email marketing should not be ignored at all, because the cost of running email marketing is very less and it is also effective as well. The returns will be huge if your email marketing reaches success. Therefore, this method is highly recommended and effective as well, without a doubt.

By Mandeep

Mandeep Kaur is working as a Data Scientist in Webtunix Solutions Private Limited. I am very enthusiastic to learn about Machine Learning and Deep Learning techniques. I always express my knowledge to beginners who want to start their career as a Data Scientist.

Sourced from TECHIExpert

In News

How to Take on Your Marketing as a Startup Founder

May 22, 2019 No Comments

By Jeff Shuford

Startups that have a great marketing plan and product are leaps and bounds ahead of many starting a business. One of the first questions that’s posed is whether the company is going to take on the marketing themselves or outsource their marketing to an agency. The fact is that both of these options have their merit as well as disadvantages. Taking on your marketing as a start-up founder allows you to control each aspect of the marketing campaign, but this can be risky since many start-up founders might not be too well-versed in marketing.

Outsourcing your startup marketing can be risky as well as not all marketing companies are created equal. With a small budget, one marketing company that doesn’t deliver then cash flow can be limited without any return.

Self-Education

Self-education in the marketing realm is challenging but very possible. There are training programs for nearly every part of online marketing like PPC, Google Adwords, and affiliate marketing. If you want to learn Adwords or PPC, then you should review which classes/certifications garner the best results. After you have self-educated, it is important to remember that your training was not industry specific. For this reason, it is essential to try a few different approaches to things like content marketing, SEO and, PPC.

Finding the tactics with the most substantial ROI might take a few months to find the optimal process. The education can also be offered to your staff as this will help them understand the marketing strategy in a more profound way. Many of these classes can be written off come tax time so do not look at this education as money spent, but rather an investment in the company as well as its people.

Become an Industry Thought Leader

The founder of a start-up generally gets quite a few responses when outreaching to industry publications. For this reason, you should spearhead becoming a thought leader in your industry. This doesn’t mean that you always have to write articles, but it can mean being a part of a podcast or agreeing to be interviewed. The companies of thought leaders in an industry tend to get leads just because of the highly revered name of the founder. As the founder, you should take it as a personal mission to become widely known throughout an industry.

Other opportunities to establish yourself in an industry is that of conferences. At specific conventions, there are openings to speak about something specific which can do a multitude of good for the speaker. This presentation can be shared as well as a substantial increase in sales can be achieved after the presentation. As we all know conferences are a hotbed of deals being made so giving a great presentation could seal a massive deal for your startup.

Build Your Team

Building a great team can be difficult, but it has numerous advantages. This team will have no learning curve when it comes to the brand that you want to build as this can be instilled in them with training and reminders. An in-house team will also be directly accountable, while a contractor can push responsibility onto their employees. This team in-house is an investment; but with the conversions the marketing team can bring in can be an excellent basis for the beginning of a start-up.

How to build the perfect team:
• Find a great content strategist who can keep your content calendar exciting and informative.
• A social media coordinator isn’t always needed, but someone who writes excellent social media copy is. This can be a contract or piece-by-piece position. A copywriter you have on board can do a month’s worth of tweets using Hootsuite within a few hours. Automating all of the posts should be done carefully as this post points out what could go wrong.
• Talented writers are a must in an online marketing campaign, so find a few contractors while having a writer or two in-house for rush assignments.
• A person who specializes in other types of content like video or infographics can be quite valuable. Content shouldn’t just be in written form so diversify your team with a person who specializes in these content mediums.

Take Advantage of Free Marketing

Social media can market every business regardless of size or industry. The fact social media is also free makes it necessary to create social media accounts for your start-up. This can be a great place to engage with those who might be potential customers. Creating a buzz via social media for a start-up can be invaluable. Name recognition is something all start-ups strive for during their infancy. Social media profiles are often some of the first Google results for a company. Engaging with others in your industry can be an excellent way for the company to network as well as possibly drum up some new business.

Other free marketing opportunities are things like directories as well as forums. These are not as effective as social media, but without cost, there is no real risk. Subreddits are a great place to get real feedback about products or ideas. Even though this isn’t marketing it can be used as a test group as many people on Reddit are there to help and educate.

Taking on marketing, in-house and personally, as a founder of a start-up can be quite a responsibility. Build the best team possible to market as well as establish yourself individually in the industry and watch the leads/sales stream in. Marketing in-house isn’t always an option, but it should at least be considered.

Feature Image Credit: (iStock/julief514)

By Jeff Shuford

Sourced from Black Enterprise

In News

Stand Out On Social Media: Tips For Boosting Your Business’ Brand

April 30, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

Social media allows businesses to share and connect with audiences based on interest, not geography. With daily refresh and a variety of audiences, social media is a platform that allows brands some flexibility in talking about more than just the nuts and bolts of their products or services; it’s a venue where businesses can humanize themselves—an increasingly important factor in marketing.

Just as individual users try to show off their best sides on social media, businesses have traits that show them off in the best fashion. So what are the most important traits brands should show off when marketing on social media? Below, experts from Forbes Agency Council share some of the characteristics they believe help brands stand out among the enormous social media crowd.

1. Authenticity And Personality

Brands should display their “authentic selves” through social media, which means conveying the personality and values of the brand. This can include posts that showcase a great company culture and the team behind the brand, customer success stories demonstrating the true value the customer experienced, and the broader impact and social good the brand is driving. – Elissa Liu, Influential Executive

2. Empathy

Individuals show off in an effort to elicit “peer envy.” Brands have to be mindful of the “push” instead of “pull” in their marketing. The best way for brands to show off is to show they care about their customers. If you are a marketing agency, show off your clients’ wins. If you are a hospitality company, highlight great vacationers. Also, think of your brand persona and show off your team. – Jennifer Barbee, Destination Innovate

Sourced from Forbes

In News

15 Ways to Fail at Social Media Marketing [Infographic]

April 16, 2019 No Comments

By Mark Walker-Ford

Building a social media following is difficult – it requires patience, consistency and a commitment to learning what your audience wants and needs from your brand on social platforms.

But all of that can be undone in an instant if you share the wrong things. Send out a misguided update and you can quickly turn people off, reversing your work to establish a connection. Yet, it still happens, brands still tweet out updates that are tone-deaf, or they simply fail to adhere to basic social media best practices.

Want to know the mistakes that could be ruining your social media marketing strategy?

The team from Inklyo share their social media fails to avoid in this infographic.

Infographic lists a range of social media missteps brands need to avoid

A version of this post was first published on the Red Website Design blog.

By Mark Walker-Ford @MarkWalkerFord

Follow Mark Walker-Ford on Twitter

Sourced from Social Media Today

In News

Put on an alternative spread this Easter

April 15, 2019 No Comments

By Caroline Parry

Indulgence and, of course, chocolate will always be crucial to Easter, but increasingly this holiday is seen as a celebration of springtime, and people are seeking gifts and experiences that reflect this shift.

This is no doubt that Easter is important to us, with 57% of consumers considering it to be a “proper” holiday, according to a 2018 YouGov survey. This is compared to say, Mother’s Day, which Britons do not see as such a big occasion.

Its importance in our lives is reflected in our social behaviour with Facebook seeing year-on-year growth of 1.6x in our conversations about Easter in 2017. The top five topics discussed around that time are significant others, food, beverages, parties and events, and travel, while the top trending Easter hashtags are #love, #chocolate and #family.

Let’s take a look at some emerging UK Easter trends for 2019 and supporting marketing activation tips advertisers could consider on Facebook platforms in line with these….

Alternative indulgence

Confectionary sales in the UK grew from £375m in 2017 to £395m in 2018. However, while chocolate will always have a place on the shelves at Easter, increasingly consumers are looking for Easter treats to marry with their growing concerns about sustainability and health. Many more of us will be searching for guilt-free ways to spoil ourselves this Easter!

With reducing plastic waste now high up on the agenda of most consumers, forward-thinking brands are thinking outside the traditional egg box to meet these concerns. Innovative chocolate brands, such as Montezuma, vegan brand Goupie and dairy-free brand Booja Booja, are using recyclable packaging, some of which is reusable.

Treating ourselves isn’t limited to gorging on chocolate, and for many people self-care is becoming the alternative way of indulging. Health and beauty e-tailer Lookfantastic struck a chord last Easter with its £65 Beauty Egg, which offered a limited edition collection of seven ‘must-have’ products packaged in a metal egg. No surprise then that this year’s Easter Beauty Egg Bungle had an early waiting list.

Marketing activation tip: Think outside the Easter egg box, by showing more options than just chocolate in your marketing campaigns. How about a carousel ad format where you can showcase a wider brand story and message through different images? For e.g. chocolate, eco packaging, as well as an idea for guilt-free or healthier indulgence / pampering.

The great Easter escape

With family a top trending hashtag over the Easter break, it is a holiday that is increasingly about sharing special moments together. With 72% of consumers feeling no pressure to buy Easter gifts, according to a 2018 Mintel Seasonal Shopping report, we are increasingly swapping presents for social experiences.

Spending on activities far outpaces gifts, according to the same Mintel report, with an average of £113 spent on sharing experiences together compared to £67 on presents. British adults love to hark back to their childhoods when out with friends, with many getting their Easter fun fix by going bowling or trampolining.

Families also love to get out and about, and the many events staged by brands around Easter are ideal opportunities for spending time together. Crafting days and Easter egg hunts, such as the Cadbury partnership with the National Trust, are always big draws, but alternative events such as the Science Museum’s Power Up, which combines gaming with an exhibition, appeal to both parents and kids.

As people prioritise spending time together and creating that sense of belonging, it is little wonder that 10 times more photos are posted and shared during the Easter breaks than before or after.

Marketing activation tip: You can broadcast direct from events so that a wider audience can join the fun and conversation by using the Instagram live feature! Bridge the real world and digital divide seamlessly. By leveraging Facebook marketing partners you can create ads and messaging which are triggered contingent upon weather. We all know British weather can be unreliable, so it’s handy to have bespoke messaging ready to roll out in rainy or sunny circumstances over the Easter weekend.

Creating a meaningful Easter

With Facebook seeing a spike in conversation around food, beverages and parties on Easter Day itself, we know the Easter feast is a vital part of the holiday. British consumers are investing more time and money in making food more meaningful by buying seasonal produce, often sourcing key ingredients locally at stores or markets.

Supporting British producers and local retailers adds real meaning and a sense of story to our Easter food. It’s the reason that over half of shoppers surveyed by digital marketing agency Silverbean, said it is the time of year when buying home-grown products and using local suppliers is essential.

Spring is a time of abundance when it comes to vegetables, and with interest in organic foods and local, independent shopping spiking around this time of year, many turn to social to celebrate their love for fresh local produce. And they really do love it, #rhubarb and #artichoke boast almost a million tagged boasts between them.

Even the major retailers understand shoppers are looking for ways to show their support for local and British suppliers. Morrisons uses a “blue passport” to mark up its lamb products as British and highlight their home-grown credentials. Meanwhile, Hyke Gin is tackling both local and food waste by taking unwanted grapes from the British supply chain and turning it into gin.

Marketing activation tip: If you have great content like Easter ingredients, recipes and pictures to share, consider trying the Instant Experiences templates to quickly create valuable interactions with your customers. Did you know Instant Experiences are loading faster than ever? – now 15 times faster than standard mobile websites – so you can use them to seamlessly connect to an audience. Also, if you have a great local story to tell about your product, you can geo target ads to a certain audience where that messaging would resonate strongly.

Easter, a season of sun

With Easter bringing the first Bank Holidays of the year, it is an excellent opportunity for a holiday or breaks. Almost half of the £1.1bn spent over the Easter weekend in 2018 was spent on Easter getaways, according to travel website Kayak, and 89% of Easter conversation on Facebook in the UK was on mobile.

After the long winter, many are chasing the sunshine and warmth. Back in 2016, the “cool” and adventurous Scandi destinations were booming, last year saw consumers look to sunnier climes. Dubai was the most booked destination for Easter in 2018, with the perennially popular Spanish cities of Malaga and Alicante close behind.

Once again, environmental issues rate high on the agenda for British consumers. Green mini-breaks are becoming the preferred choice for many consumers. The Hilton London Bankside has responded with the creation of the world’s first vegan hotel room, which features suede-like furnishings made from mushroom matter.

Marketing activation tip: Travel insurance brands may want to up-weight their activity on Facebook and Instagram as we know most people leave it last minute to get their insurance sorted! Geo targeting such ads around airports and stations can prove effective. Hotels and retreats can showcase their unique or new look sustainable offerings in a more immersive way by using the power of 360° videos and boosting that content as ads to maximise reach and amplification.

Summary

Easter is still very much about chocolate eggs and bunnies, but consumers increasingly see it as an opportunity for treating themselves, and for spending time with family and friends by sharing great experiences. It is increasingly important however that enjoying these holiday moments is not at the expense of their wider concerns around health and sustainability.

By Caroline Parry

Sourced from The Drum

In News

This is how much social media influencers really charge for posts

April 3, 2019 No Comments

By Danielle de Wolfe

With a quarter of all blog content now being sponsored, it pays to be an influencer

A new survey has revealed the true price of social media – with 19 per cent of influencers admitting they charge more than £250 for a single blog post.

The UK Blogger Survey, conducted by software specialist Vuelio alongside Canterbury Christ Church University, also revealed that four per cent of the 534 bloggers questioned charged more than £1,000 per post.

Shedding light on a world in which the hashtags #spon and #ad have become commonplace, the results show more than a quarter of all blog content is now compensated in some way.

Recent months have seen calls for greater regulation across the paid content industry, as the lines between gifting and sponsored content become increasingly blurred.

Joanna Arnold, CEO of Vuelio, says: “The influencer marketing industry is still in its infancy, so we expect to see further calls for transparency and regulation as it finds its feet.”

In line with these calls, the Advertising Standards Agency and the Competition and Markets Authority have collaborated to create the Influencer’s Guide – a handbook on the dos and don’ts of the advertising industry.

“Bloggers and content creators have had a bad press recently,” says John Adams, author of fatherhood blog, Dad Blog UK. “As a dad blogger operating in a market heavily dominated by women, I was interested to see that female bloggers are three times more likely to charge hard cash for writing blog posts compared to men.”

The survey also revealed that the notoriously crowded lifestyle, fashion and beauty sectors have seen a 14 per cent drop in blog numbers over the last two years.

Despite these findings, influencers affirm the quality and relevancy of their content remains a top priority.

Elle Linton, author of health and fitness blog Keep it simpElle says: “First and foremost, it’s about the brand; are they a good fit for me and my audience demographic, are they a brand I am happy to be affiliated with and do our values align?”

The news comes as the number of full-time bloggers citing blogging as their main source of income has risen 50 per cent year-on-year.

The survey also shed light on the direction bloggers believe the industry will take. Almost a quarter of bloggers surveyed believe blogs will become driven by advertisers’ needs, with 42 per cent believing their audiences will become more sceptical of bloggers’ motives as a result.

Mr Adams says: “As the blogging industry gets more professional, I would also hope us bloggers come together to create a blogging trade association. It’s an industry worth billions and there’s lots of talk among bloggers about it being a supportive community.”