Category Archives: Marketing

One of the most talked about startups over the past year when dealing with content curation has got to be Storify. When something major in your life breaks and you want to find a good way to summarize it through the use of social media, then look no further than with Storify. Founded in 2009, this seven person company has done a remarkable job surviving the market and being one of the major players in the world of content curation. Just like Twitter has their trending topics, Storify’s service allows people to keep track of the relevant social media trending topics. Users are able to tell their own story about these major events (like Whitney Houston or Greece’s economic downfall or even Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance), and embed them on their own website. Be your own crowd-sourced storyteller, by dragging in tweets, status updates, photos, and videos from a variety of social networks in order to help you create a better story and telling experience.

But for the several years, the only way that Storify has been able to be used was through a personal computer–you had to be physically sitting in front of a computer in order to put something together. Well, that is…until now.

Today, Storify announced that it was bringing its service straight to the iPad. For a service that has been used by 22 out of top 25 news sites in the United States, this is a pretty big move because it will allow for much more curation on the go. Chances are that most people will be traveling around town or the country with an iPad rather than a laptop or desktop computer. With this new platform available to users, expect to see much more storytelling happening on the web in real-time. Already, tech publications are praising the way that this has been done. Not since the roll-out of social publication Flipboard has publications like ReadWriteWeb and tech pundit Robert Scoble clamored over an application. Jon Mitchell from ReadWriteWeb explains that Storify’s iPad app is a marvelous piece with the workflow and interface truly realized–almost as if it was always intended for the iPad rather than the computer.

I tend to agree with Jon Mitchell’s assessment about Storify for the iPad…if you’re in a meeting or event and you want to curate what’s being said and do it in real-time, the fact that you have it on a much better interface, not only for aggregation and curation, but for presentation purposes, will be invaluable. Right now the service has become a major boon for media sites and most certainly will now become at least 10x more valuable (I think it’ll open the door up for talks about acquisition pretty soon). Take, for example, the next upcoming presidential debates for the Republican nomination. With all eyes on Arizona and Michigan coming up, the news media will be wanting to collect a wide variety of opinions from people watching and get their take. By simply taking out their wi-fi or 3G enabled iPad devices, the media will be able to curate the information and post it pretty quickly allowing their web teams back in the broadcast studios to share it with the world. Businesses will also be able to take part in using the service when they have major events as well.

Don’t miss any of your favorite social media trends ever again. This is the new generation of social bookmarking…with Delicious, you just had text links with little fanfare or care for the interface. Now with Pinterest you have some more visual appeal to your bookmarks, but often without threaded conversations and context. But with Storify, you’re able to share the entire conversation with whomever you wish and within one thread have plenty of media to help tell your story.

The Storify app is free to download right from the iTunes store or you can go to Storify’s website to read more.

Here’s a great video by Robert Scoble about Storify’s iPad app and a video tour:

Photo Credit: Evolution of reading by Alfred Lui/Flickr

Good news for those small businesses eager to try and find another way of being a part of the the social media collective. Last Friday, Twitter announced that they’re rolling out a new advertising solution that will help make it easier for businesses to set up an account on their own and amplify their messages on the social network. This is a great move that will benefit emerging and new businesses who often times get swamped out of the market by the bigger and more noticeable brands. To help promote this release, American Express was brought on board as a partner designed to give all of their Cardmembers and merchants in the United States early access to this new advertising platform. While it won’t launch until late March, the partnership with American Express is probably a good move, especially when trying to reach small businesses.

To encourage small businesses to participate, American Express is giving to the first 10,000 Cardmembers and merchants $100 worth of free advertising on Twitter and in March, the credit card giant will notify its customers how to begin. For many, it might seem like Twitter’s move to have a self-serve ad platform is something akin to Google AdSense or AdWords since the advertiser will be bidding on keywords. Right now, customers are able to place their bids on promoted tweets and promoted accounts — something meant to help cut through the noise and increase exposure for whatever the advertiser wants to tweet about. According to AdAge, Twitter had already begun rolling out the self-serve ad platform in mid-November with about 20 or less advertisers, but it has since expanded to about 100 advertisers. In addition to this expansion, advertisers will pay for the bids via electronic payment, not through invoicing by the sales team–an interesting decision that makes it akin to Googl AdWords since Google processes via electronic payment while Yahoo advertising used to do it through sales teams.

As AdAge points out:

As is the case for any of Twitter’s 3,000 advertisers, small businesses can set bids for promoted accounts on a cost-per-follower basis and for promoted tweets on a cost-per-engagement basis/ In the latter case they pay only when users actively engage with the tweet (by retweeting, for instance.) While national brands might be bidding on keywords or hashtags associated with major events like the Oscars, which makes bidding competitive and expensive, small businesses would be more likely to bid on highly specific terms and to localize their bids, according to Mr. Costolo. (Twitter currently allows for city-level targeting at its most specific.)

Could this move by Twitter be a boon not only to the small business but also to Twitter’s bottom line? We’ve all been wondering what the public monetization strategy will be for the company–sure, they have a deal with several companies to allow them access to the firehose and also has/had a deal with search engines like Google and/or Bing. Now, it just seems right to really take the advertising opportunities on the service out for a ride and see how it handles. But if recent studies are any indication, Twitter is set to make a hefty profit off of this endeavor–according to an eMarketer report, ad revenues are projected to grow 210% in 2011…and as you can see from the chart on the right, Twitter’s advertising worldwide is going to increase year after year all the way to nearly $400 million by 2013. There’s definitely a lot of demand for people to want to get their message across on the service. According to eMarketer’s principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson, “since their debut in April 2010, Twitter’s Promoted Products have proven successful in the US. Marketers have seen solid engagement rates with Twitter advertising—in some cases better than those on Facebook—despite Twitter’s relatively smaller audience.”

American Express’ involvement in this promotion is definitely not a coincidence. For the past few years, if not longer, the credit card company has been a strong supporter of the small business community. They were the first ones to start the Small Business Saturday campaign during the Thanksgiving holiday and have recently launched a social media show that is designed to help small businesses “harness the power of social media”. They’ve even partnered with Foursquare by offering specials to specific check-ins–most likely small businesses. Recognized for being the credit card of choice by small businesses, it’s not a tremendous leap to believe that American Express would partner with Twitter on this initiative. Definitely a win for both parties.

It will be interesting to see how Twitter’s advertising platform will still play out. At this point, there’s not a lot of advertisers that are participating in this endeavor, but soon more advertisers will be on the service and how will that add to the noise that everyone already has? With increased growth and use, comes the question about scale. But I’m sure that there are contingency plans in place to ensure sanity for all.

Photo Credit: Moma Propaganda via Laughing Squid

We’ve all heard the adage that “content is king” and some of us believe that. However, in a report released today by the Altimeter Group, it seems not many companies believe this and need to rebalance their efforts so that they have the content work for them. Written by analyst Rebecca Lieb and researched by Zak Kirchner and Jaimy Szymanski, this report helps shed some new light on content marketing and how emerging digital technologies, platforms, and channels can be used effectively to help a brand function as a media company and exploit it.

For this report, Altimeter  Group interviewed over 50 individuals actively engaged in what they call “the evolution of content strategy as it relates to marketing. These businesses were both B2C and B2B, with 45% representing 19 brands, 55% agency employees, consultants, and thought leaders from 23 content service providers were also interviewed. So now that the experts have been assembled, let’s look at what they have to say about content marketing. But before we can get there, we’ll need to define “content marketing”? The report defines it as the following:

Content marketing is a term that refers to the creation and sharing of content for marketing purposes. In digital channels, it refers to content that resides on properties the brand or marketer owns (e.g., a website) or largely controls from a content perspective (social media channels, syndication). Content marketing differs from advertising in that, unlike advertising, a media buy is never part of the equation.

And this type of marketing isn’t about one-off content either nor is it limited to just the marketing department. On the contrary, the report believes that content creation and distribution will place new and continual demands on the enterprise on the whole. Frequently, content demands operating in real-time and any time.

The problem here is that marketers and businesses are not yet in the state of being a storyteller. Traditionally, the role of marketing has focused on advertising, not sharing an experience. We, as consumers, are being bombarded with advertisers in almost a Kanye West style (“Imma let you finish…“) that turns us away from even paying attention to their product. No longer is the message about “me, the company”. It’s now about about storytelling and attracting, entertaining, and informing your customers. Companies will need to do, what Altimeter Group calls, rebalancing, which is realigning your resources, budgets, staff, company culture, and agency/service providers to help make the marketing more effective and able to meet the digital challenges. In order to do this, the Altimeter Group report recommends four major and fundamental steps to grow your content marketing strategy:

Understand that content marketing is not free.

Content marketing can definitely reduce the media spend that is used for advertising, but the more mature your company gets in its effort, the greater resources you’re going to need to invest to make your content initiatives more effective.

Implement broad cultural integration around content marketing.

When rebalancing, you’re going to need deep departmental integration and cultural shifts across the entire organization–improve education, training, and new digital skill sets for staff and beyond the marketing team.

Integrate content marketing with advertising.

By throwing your support behind content marketing, you’re going to cause marketers to reevaluate their spend on advertising and focus budgets on content production and distribution. But don’t disregard one or the other–the report suggests integrating the two together for optimal success and it will help tell a better brand story.

Avoid bright, shiny objects

Pay no attention to the flavor of the week. In their research, the Altimeter Group discovered that many marketers are distracted by channels and technologies at the expense of strategy and marketing fundamentals. Don’t try and go after something unproven only because it’s the latest and greatest. Focus on the things that will truly help you get the attention of your customers.

So how does one mature their content marketing strategy? Altimeter has identified five phases that when achieved, will help marketers determine just how advanced they are.

As you can see from the above model, the elementary step of this model is “Stand”. It’s interesting that they decided to go for a “walk before you run” analogy for this as when you read through the different descriptions for each phase, it makes perfect sense–take things slow when you’re developing your strategy. Within the Stand phase, this describes companies that haven’t really adopted content marketing nor understand its value. Sure, they’ve set up some social media accounts and maybe even a blog, but they don’t really pay much attention to it nor do they understand its applicability to the company as a whole. Marketing is a “push” process–everything gets sent out without caring about feedback from the customers being pulled back in. To help with this, companies need an evangelist or catalyst to kick them in the pants and get the ball rolling. This looks like a phase that will be pretty slow at first.

In Stretch, content marketing has been hovering around the organization for a while and now people want to build a strategy and support necessary to produce the content. An evangelist has been named and helping to run the show and help team members engage with early channels, build basic content and evaluate all agency relationships. This level of maturity is one that reassess the resources available and makes calculations on what’s needed to succeed further. The next phase, Walk, a stronger, solid strategic foundation is created within the company. Content channels no longer are specific in nature–it doesn’t matter where the content is placed, only that it’s created and shared across all channels. Formal processes are established and the team begins to take shape. This effort leads your company to Jog, where companies become seriously committed to content marketing–no more dabbling or dipping your toes in the water. It’s in for a penny…you have a strategy and it’s communicated effectively within the team and organization. Now content must be produced that is more experiential and engaging rather than simple. Begin to give it a life of its own and enable it to travel. It shouldn’t be about the brand, product, or service.

This all culminates with Run which is the most aspirational phase of this maturity model. Altimeter believes only a handful of companies have really reached this phase, but here companies will be bona fide media companies who are able to monetize their content by selling and licensing them on its standalone merit. Consumer-generated content will outpace self-created content and media shared between the company and all partners will be an important asset.

So now you have your content marketing strategy down, the next step is to figure out what’s the channel you think you need and which is more of a priority? We’re warned, in the report, that we shouldn’t ignore that each channel brings with it new technological and budgetary requirements. So we probably don’t want to say we’ll explore the blogging & podcasting channel without understanding its true implications. The preferences of the consumer and where they are, along with emerging trends, will put considerable pressure on what channels should be explored. In the Altimeter Group report, respondents were asked what content channels are important to them and what types of content do they hope to both deploy and de-emphasize in the future–a chart of their answers is shown above.

As it turns out, visual information will continue to be the number one channel to pursue. Overwhelmingly, marketers are planning on adding more video to their content marketing initiatives and increasing investment in both technology and production resources. Mobile and location-based marketing are next in line, perhaps highlighting the fact that most people are always on the go and more and more applications are being created on mobile devices instead of websites? Sadly, with the adoption of content marketing, marketers are slowly digging the knife deeper into the backs of print and broadcast advertising, and to a point, public relations. The web has provided more opportunity and channels for businesses to get their message across than simply paying several newspapers to bring advertisements.

There’s more useful information in the latest Altimeter Group report and you can view it on SlideShare by clicking here.

Every once in a while, we see a pretty great viral video or campaign using social media. Kind of like the Old Spice YouTube campaign or the Pepsi Refresh project, we are quite enthralled by the work that goes into it. And for those campaigns that are really a hit, we just have to honor them and their creators for the ingenuity that it presents, right? That’s the purpose of The BeesAwards.

In its third year, The Bees Awards is the first international social media marketing competition celebrating the communication and marketing professionals. The goal of this competition is to help define the best practices and the best professionals. With 26 categories to be awarded, the submissions have been from a mixture of both large brands and smaller businesses — it doesn’t matter as it could be communication firms, advertising agencies, consultants, brands, etc. It’s all a matter of how good your work is. Some of the categories featured include: Best use of mobile, Best engagement with customers, Best crisis management, Best marketing within social games, Best tool or technology for social media marketing, Best student work, Best innovation, Best copywriting, Best campaign, Agency of the year, and Client of the year.

Just announced today, The Bees Awards is accepting nominations for campaigns that fit any of the 26 categories. Each of the submissions will be evaluated by the 21 judges which is composed of award winners, past nominees, international and domestic professionals. The call for entry is for both the marketing professional and students and the deadline to submit your entry is April 4, 2012. There are some standard rules for entry, which you can find here, but you are judged on a 9 point scale per entry: 3 points for strategy, creativity, and fabulous results. You can get one additional point for “royal jelly”, defined as the ability to inspire the profession and of exceptional quality. In total, the entry that gets most of the available 10 points has a good shot of taking home at least an award.

To submit your entry to The Bees Award, simply fill out this detailed form and send in your payment. Entries are allowed up until April 4, 2012 so get your submissions in! The winners will be announced on May 24, 2012.

Are you who you say you are when using social networks? Many of us get some of these random friend requests or follows on sites like Twitter and Facebook and to add complexity to it, how can we easily tell people apart when often the same names are being used? If you’re the slight bit famous in your circle or industry, the odds of you having impostors goes up significantly — just ask CrunchFund’s MG Seigler, Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis, and Ben Parr, for starters–all have people impersonating them online. Social networks have slowly, but surely adopted ways to help offer people peace of mind that who they’re interacting with are who they say they are.

Twitter was one of the first popular social networks to implement a verified account program and established some strict criteria in order for people to be credentialed. Google+ was the next one to offer this, but at a much faster rate than Twitter. The only major service that stalled was Facebook…until now. TechCrunch’s Josh Constine is reporting that tomorrow, Facebook will allow prominent public figures the ability to verify their account and display a preferred pseudonym instead of their birth name. As a result, by giving this information, Facebook will place these accounts in their “People To Subscribe To” feature list.

You might be wondering why is this such a big deal? Well according to Facebook’s policy, there’s specifically a section that covers registration and account security. Specifically, users are not allowed to provide any false personal information, meaning that if someone like The Rock signed up as Dwayne Johnson, but changed his username to The Rock, it would be in violation of this policy and his account, along with his millions (and millions) of Facebook friends would be disconnected. Famous author Salman Rushdie recently came under fire from Facebook for this. Turns out that Facebook deactivated (not deleted–deactivated means it’ll be temporarily offline) his account because his passport has him as Ahmed Rushdie, but everyone else recognizes him as Salman Rushdie.

This new verified policy would be helpful for celebrities eager to want to grow their communities on Facebook, but don’t want to have people follow them using their real name–it doesn’t have true star power behind it and wouldn’t make sense from a branding/marketing standpoint, either…would you want to follow Stefani Germanotta on Facebook? Would you even recognize WHO that was? Well that’s Lady Gaga’s real name, but chances are that you wouldn’t have known that. Facebook’s verified account program will allow Lady Gaga to keep her profile registered as Stefani Germanotta, but would allow her to have her name displayed as Lady Gaga. Plus, if you happen to be one of the lucky people who sent a friend request to your celebrity and they accept or you want to subscribe to their updates, wouldn’t it be helpful to have some way to make sure that you’re talking to the right person instead of someone who could be a spammer or just on a phishing expedition?

TechCrunch is also reporting that unlike the verification badge that you get with Twitter and also with Google+, Facebook will not be displaying anything like that on your profile. In addition, there’s no way for people to volunteer to have their accounts be verified. It’s definitely not similar to the developer or email verification system either. Mr. Constine is correct in saying that by not having any sort of verification badge prominently displayed will basically offer up no added value for the celebrity to use Facebook, except that the service won’t terminate their profile. For now, I’m sure that even if you have a verified account, there will still be plenty of impostors out there on Facebook that will still survive until they get deleted–and that could be a while.

This is a decent attempt by Facebook to recognize that some prominent people who recognize the potential of the site want to use their service. However, by simply having the celebrity give more information to the service just makes it seem a waste of time. If they get their account booted, then it looks bad on Facebook. Or, the celebrity could instead set up a fan page–still business gets done on Facebook, but is it to their advantage? Wouldn’t it be better to simply get them to create a profile page instead of a fan page so that the service can get some more data/information and set up a new profile? I think that would be better than just creating a page where existing Facebook users can go to view information. Plus, with the new subscribe feature, wouldn’t that just be consolidating the fan page and profile page in one? C’mon Facebook…think better about how this verified account program could be run!

Let’s hope that this verified account program works out for the best…but I think in the short term, we’re going to see some famous people upset that their accounts just got terminated. In the meantime, here’s a screenshot that TechCrunch has about the verification process: