How can businesses build a connection with prospects online? How can they use mobile to promote themselves? And has social media really changed marketing – or is it just another channel? For the answers to all these questions and more, I spoke to Grant Leboff, one of the UK’s leading marketing experts and author of…
The pace of change on social media can be dizzying. Within the last few months alone, Facebook has dramatically reduced the visibility of posts made on company pages, making ads more necessary; Twitter has changed your profile design; LinkedIn has scrapped its products and services tab, replacing it with Showcase Pages; while Google+ has suddenly,…
21 really practical social media tips you can implement right now from Brainstorm Digital
You would have to live in a cave not to have heard of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube – the big players on the social media scene. But, with online marketing developing at such a fast pace, there are other up-and-coming social media platforms that you need to know about. For many businesses…
Do you regularly post content for your company online? Are you not sure how writing for the web is different to writing for print? Or how to make an immediate impact on your readers? To learn how to create the most powerful copy for blogs, email marketing and social media, I spoke to Mark Brownlow,…
Do you have a social media strategy, policy, or a content schedule in a file on your desktop, unopened for the past 6 months? Or perhaps you’re slightly more old-fashioned, and they’re in a draw by your desk, gathering dust? If so, you’re not alone. Companies everywhere do all the necessary groundwork for a terrific…
Do you ever get a feeling of déjà vu on social media? Sometimes it feels like all blog posts have began to look a little similar. Headlines always promise 7 tips that will transform your company – or else threaten 8 mistakes that will destroy it. No one ever promises tips that will make a…
Last month, Diana Mekota, a young American job
seeker tried to connect on LinkedIn with Kelly Blazek, head of the Cleveland
Job Bank. The response from Blazek has now gone viral.
She attacked Mekota, “a total stranger who has
nothing to offer me”, of trying to access her LinkedIn connections, decried “the
sense of entitlement in your generation,” and said that she enjoyed turning
down her request on LinkedIn, as well as her request to join the job bank.
“I suggest you join the other job bank in town,”
she wrote. “Oh wait – there isn’t one.
“You’re welcome for your humility lesson for the
year.”
Inevitably, the one who received the humility
lesson was Blazek herself, as Mekota posted the entire message online, and
Blazek was practically forced into hiding.
Is Pharma getting too excited about social media?
This is the closing question in a thoughtful interview with
Anish Shindore of Novartis in Spain.
He argues, essentially, that social media is a means, not an end, and that the
real focus should be in developing good drugs, because that is where the real
competition is.
Well, yes and no. Of course, if you have the wrong products,
no amount of marketing is going to compensate. But if you are going to invest
anything at all in marketing, social media has changed the rules of the game.
The ability to target and interact with individuals has meant that what you
say, how you say it, where you say it – it’s just not the way it was even five
years ago.
Why does some content go viral – while other, possibly equally good content, languishes unnoticed?
For content marketers trying to get their brands known (and loved) on social media, understanding this process is the holy grail. Unfortunately, while it is usually easy to explain in hindsight why some material was wildly successful, it is quite hard to design it with virality guaranteed.
In his new book Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age, Jonah Berger, associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, nevertheless tries to provide a framework. Ideas which get shared a lot, he claims, contain one or more of the following:
1. Social currency. The product / idea makes people feel that they have special insider knowledge and are ‘cool’.
2. Triggers. There is something in people’s everyday routine or environment that consistently reminds them of your product. (For example, KitKat is now associated with coffee breaks.)
