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Happy 10th Birthday, LinkedIn!

LinkedIn celebrated its 10^th birthday on Sunday, with 225 million users in 200 countries and is enjoying nice growth, reporting revenue and profit up 80%, with 3,700 employees and 26 worldwide offices. It’s the first of the major social networks to celebrate a decade in existence. LinkedIn is a year older than Facebook and three years older than Twitter.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn had a revenue model from almost the beginning. Job listings on LinkedIn have become an important exchange for both job seekers and employers. A tiered pricing model for premium services has also contributed to quarterly revenue exceeding $300 million.

Early LinkedIn Profile Format

While it doesn’t get the buzz of a Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn is a major social network. According to the PEW Internet and American Life Project, LinkedIn is the number 2 social media site for adults, with 20% of all Americans over 18 years old having LinkedIn profiles. Facebook, of course, ranks first with 67%, but LinkedIn has more users than Twitter (16%), Pinterest (15%) and Instagram (13%).

It’s been long regarded as the online business reference, but LinkedIn has recently added functionality to make it more social. Just last week, it introduced a new mentions feature that allows users to connect with others in real time similar to Facebook and Twitter. A company blog post stated “We’re excited to introduce a new way for you to engage with your network through the ability to mention your connections and companies in conversations on LinkedIn,”

The new LinkedIn Contacts puts all your contacts from various sources into one place. It allows you to make notes about each, research past interactions, and keep track of important meetings and birthdays. You can also sort information based on different criteria. LinkedIn will automatically update the info when it is changed on the sourced platform. However, it will not include your Twitter or Facebook followers or friends

Now LinkedIn members can also post photos and videos to their profile pages. These could include professional work in audio/video format.

LinkedIn is also focused on mobile. A relaunched mobile app is more visually appealing and has more functionality.

In an era where content is critical. LinkedIn works hard to be the key content provider for business. They recently acquired Pulse, a newsreader / aggregator that they hope to relaunch as “the definitive professional publishing platform.” Pulse currently has 30 milli0n users and aggregates content from some 750 publishers. In 2011, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Influencers with business leaders like Richard Branson providing original content.

LinkedIn now has more than a million special interest groups with conversations taking place among their members. Unique to the application is the ability to get introduced to second and third level contacts.

Entrepreneur magazine recently published “LinkedIn Tips: 10 Ways To Get The Most Our Of Your Network.” Take a look to make sure that you are optimizing your presence on LinkedIn.

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Filed under: Mobile Marketing,Social Media

Social Media Now a Major Customer Service Channel

There’s been a huge paradigm shift in how consumers reach out to brands to voice customer service issues. In less than four years, social media channels have come to the forefront in providing consumer communication to companies and brands.

The just released NM Incite Study “State of Social Customer Service Support” evaluates how customer service is handled on social media. Almost half (47%) of consumers use social media to reach out to brands about their customer service problems. As might be expected, the younger the consumer, the higher number of those who use social channels to contact brands. And when they do, the study shows that 83% of Twitter users and 71% of Facebook users who post a customer service issue about a brand expect a response from the company within 24 hours of the post. So, this shows that consumers expect brands to be listening in social channels. This is absolutely amazing considering that social media customer service did not exist four years ago.

Equally amazing, one in ten “social care users” reach out to a brand on a daily basis, 21% do so weekly and another 21% do so a few times a month. Comparatively, how many of your customers call your telephone call center daily nor weekly? On the surface, that seems extremely high, but NM Incite draws this conclusion:

“So what is it about social media that makes consumers want to engage with companies about service issues on a frequent basis? Perhaps it’s the ease of access (consumers already spend a significant part of their day interacting with social media), or the lack of having to wait on hold or navigate through a confusing series of phone prompts in order to actually reach a human customer service rep. Regardless of the individual motivations for use, we know that roughly one in three social media users actually prefer social care compared to phone customer service.”

As the study states “The decision to have a social media presence is synonymous with offering social care.”

Brands need to understand that social media is a two way street. It’s now much more than proactively posting messages to your Facebook page and Twitter feed; it must include listening! And once you hear, you must respond – and quickly!

For a full discussion of how brands need to rethink customer service strategy, read suggestions from NM Incite’s Liz Harrison.

Keep in mind that engaging consumers in their social channels is like solving a customer service issue via teleconference. Their friends and followers are monitoring the conversation. Use this to your advantage to turn a customer with a service issue into a brand ambassador – impacting her and all of her friends.

Posted by Mike Ventura | Read More | 1 Comment
Filed under: Social Media

SOPA, Komen and the Super Bowl – a Cautionary Tale

There have been several blips on the social media radar during the last few weeks that, taken on their own, have generated considerable press:

• Social media activists created such uproar on January 18 that congressional leaders backing the SOPA / PIPA (Stop Online Piracy Act / Protect Internet Property Act) were forced to withdraw the controversial legislation.

• Online protests regarding the Susan G. Koman’s Foundations decision to no longer fund breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood locations forced Komen to do an about face and revert to the original funding policy. Online positioning against Komen’s defunding position will create long-term damage to the brand, and forced the resignation of the person responsible for the defunding initiative.

• Super Bowl XLVI set a new record for social media engagement. Twitter saw an amazing 15 million tweets during the 2012 game compared to 3 million last year. That’s an increase of 500%! Facebook and YouTube also saw record-breaking engagement.

Are these three events connected? The first two – yes, obviously. But what’s the connection to the Super Bowl?

The Super Bowl social activity, especially when compared to previous year’s engagement, shows that social media usage is mainstream. It’s no longer just the geeks, the technorati or the 18-34s. It’s everybody and it’s all the time.

Social media’s mainstreaming has created an instantaneous platform for social, political and brand activists. It really gained momentum, just a year ago, with the “Arab Spring” uprisings in the mid-east, which were started and fueled by social media. This was predictor of things to come. But there was a major disconnect. By most of corporate America.

The “suits” who were promoting SOPA / PIPA and running The Susan G. Komen Foundation didn’t (and probably still don’t) get nor understand the immediacy and the impact of social media. And what they truly don’t get is that it is spontaneous. It takes off like a wild fire and blazes out of control almost as fast.

The suits, and in many cases, traditional brand and public relations practitioners, think that they can still control the messaging. (Hello! Motion Picture Association of America’s Chris Dodd, a leading proponent of SOPA / PIPA; and, Susan G. Komen founder Nancy Brinkman!) You make a decision that impacts a lot of people and you can’t contain it like you did in the “old days” of “push” public relations, where only your side of the story is presented to the public.

Writing in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider, Catharine P. Taylor said,

“…what you come away with is the knowledge that many people in official positions in our society are ill-equipped to deal with the voice that social media brings to millions of people. It’s no longer enough for high-profile institutions to get their stories straight and have concise, prepared statements for reporters; now, the role of communications is to gird for whatever might be unleashed in the Blogo/Facebook/Twittersphere and to weigh the power of the social media with the fact that it’s not a focus group.”

Peter Hirshberg, a well-known commentator on Internet and social media culture wrote on his Facebook page last Friday (before Komen reversed their decision):

“Two weeks ago internet activism killed SOPA. Today online protests swamp the Susan G Komen foundation and leaving their founder looking like she had no idea what just hit her. (Much as MPAA’s Chris Dodd did last week.) These are pretty responsive political feed-back loops fueled by social media. They suggest that citizen voices really are resonating more powerfully than before. It’s pretty empowering to find that what you say really does have impact, something the Arab world discovered about a year ago.”

The dynamics of both the SOPA / PIPA and Komen fiascos are indicative of the sea change in messaging. It’s about the old, traditional methodology of controlling the message versus the new reality of the tsunami of the digital age and social media.

If you are a brand, or a brand marketer, your social media needs to be managed by really competent professionals, like Ford has done with Scott Monty. These professionals should be in the room when major decisions are discussed and should also be part of the decision making process. You need to understand that you really don’t control the totality of your brand messaging.

If your idea of “social media” is still that of a college intern managing your Facebook page, your day of reckoning is somewhere on the horizon.

Posted by Mike Ventura | Read More | No Comments
Filed under: Facebook,Marketing Strategy,Social Media,Twitter

Social Media Marketing – It’s Just Like on the Radio.

I learned my marketing chops in radio. First as a commercial writer / producer and later as a sales rep, I created thousands of campaigns for clients ranging from single store mom and pop retailers to Fortune 100 marketers. Regardless of the message or creativity involved, there was one constant that made radio work in terms of delivering customers, and that was “frequency.”

Frequency is the number of times a radio commercial airs over a specific period of time. When I was a radio sales rep, I quickly learned that an advertiser had to run a certain number of commercials for each event in order to motivate the potential consumers in my audience to take an action. For example, if an auto dealer was promoting a weekend sales event, they might run 30 or 40 commercials in the days leading up to the event. It seemed as if every time that you turned on the station you heard the commercial. That was good, because “frequency” drove the message home and caused consumer action. We knew that the consumer had to be exposed to the message more than once before they “got it.”

It's that commercial again!

Frequency also works on TV. Whether it’s Old Navy, Verizon or Apple, we’re inundated with their TV spots during marketing events.

But what about frequency for social media? Most of us, whether marketers or in our personal social networks, post one time to Facebook and Twitter and think that we’ve gotten the word out. Facebook and Twitter work just like radio and TV in that the audience is there for a specific period of time, and, unless our message is at the forefront on their wall or Twitter feed when they are, they are not going to see, or react to it.

We might check our Facebook page a couple of times a day. This is just like listening to the radio on the way to and from work.

If I want you to see my message, it needs to be on your wall or Twitter feed when you are looking at it. Not many people scroll back through all the posts since their last log on. So, to be effective, the message needs to be there when the consumer is.

There’s a lot of research that shows us Facebook and Twitter usage. One of the key periods for Facebook usage is late afternoon, just before people go home from work. They are killing time by logging on to their social networks (by mobile device if their company net has blocked them). To reach this audience, I might post at 3:30pm one day, 4pm the next day and 4:30pm on the third day. I’ve covered a 90 minute spectrum in this crucial time period. And, if some of my friends see the message more than once, that’s all the better!

The concept of frequency is what makes radio and TV effective, and it works the same for social media. There are several apps that allow you to pre-schedule posts and Tweets (we like Hootsuite) so that you can create frequency with your messaging. When you design a frequency element to your messaging, develop three or four versions of the message – after all, this is “social” media.

Once you apply “frequency” to your social media messaging, you’ll see a greater return in consumer engagement and action.

Posted by Mike Ventura | Read More | 6 Comments
Filed under: Facebook,Marketing Strategy,Social Media,Twitter

Don’t Let Your Social Media Go On Summer Vacation.

It’s summertime…and the livin’ is easy!

Most of us have slipped into “summer mode.” Vacations have happened, are happening or will happen soon. Some cyclical businesses slow down during the summer months. Customers are on vacation, or normal consumer spending drops so that discretionary money can be spent on trips, summer fun and family.

People’s routines have changed. Kids are out of school. Maybe their social media habits have changed too? Nope! The analytics show that people consume social media at the same rate during the summer that they do the rest of the year. So, you shouldn’t assume that because it’s summer that you should post less often to your company Facebook page or Twitter feed. What you might want to do to keep your customers and fans engaged is to go into summer mode with the content on your social sites. Remember, “social media” is “social.” It’s not about always selling your products or services. So be social and engage your consumers the same that you would talk to your friends about summer.

Sadie, our Director of Security, on her summer vacation.

We just experienced a huge surge in activity on a blog site that we manage in a promotional partnership with a major TV station. One of the things that we did to drive traffic and engage our community over the Fourth of July weekend was to create and post a comprehensive list of all the fireworks displays in our market. The response was overwhelming! We had the info up early enough for Google to index our site and Google was a major driver to the site. We posted links on our Facebook page and Twitter feed several times leading up to the Fourth of July and saw major bumps on those two social applications.

Be relevant! One of our favorite sites, allfacebook.com, offers 5 tips to make your Facebook page relevant during the summer.

If you have a blog, talk about summer events and things to do in your area. You could run a promotion and ask customers to take your product on vacation with them and submit a photo to your Flickr stream showing your product in new and fun places. Run a promotion and give away a summer picnic for a family reunion or a block party. Humanize your company by showing that you enjoy and participate in summer too!

Maybe your social sites need a summer makeover using summery graphics or skins. Most importantly, don’t let your social sites go “dark” for a week or two because the person responsible for them is on vacation! Use an app like Hootsuite to pre-schedule posts to your social sites while they are on vacation. Or, have more than one person posting to your sites so that engagement is ongoing.

See ya’ at the beach!

Posted by Mike Ventura | Read More | No Comments
Filed under: Facebook,Marketing Strategy,Social Media,Twitter

T-Mobile Gets the “Social” in Social Media

Every so often, a client will ask us if we can produce a “viral” video. You know, the ones that are included in emails from your friends, or are posted on your friends’ Facebook walls. These videos often gain so many views that they are picked up by the mainstream media and become an overnight sensation, like the recent Keenan Cahill phenomena. I think that some marketers think that there’s a “viral” button, just like the “Easy Button” in the Staples’ commercials. We produce the video, press the “viral” button, and Voila! the video is all over the web! It doesn’t quite work that way.

A very few marketers understand how to use video on the web. That’s unfortunate, because the use of video increases engagement on virtually every social platform. A video on a Facebook wall increases engagement three times versus no video.

T-Mobile is the head-of-the-class when it comes to understanding how to use video on the web! T-Mobile is in a product category (mobile phones / devices) where “cool” is major brand attribute. As a technology based company, their marketing message is created to encourage the use of their latest devices. Ergo, video that is now easily accessed on phones and tablets. T-Mobile has a history of creating videos and video events that go viral. In fact, they’ve created a brand, Life’s For Sharing, and applied it to their YouTube Channel. They’ve created events that have exploded virally across YouTube and other social platforms, like the Sing-Along in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2009 that included over 13,000 people and has been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube and other social platforms.

Recently, T-Mobile produced a spoof of the upcoming royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton that has racked up over 6 million views in a short time. Just this morning, six of my Facebook friends had shared it!

Watch the video, and follow below to see what made it go viral.

Here are some of the elements that caused this to go “viral:”

First, it’s very topical. We are being inundated with “Royal Wedding!” They tied in to an event that is getting massive press weeks before the event takes place. They don’t have to explain the concept or create a “set-up.”

Secondly, the production value is very high. Great casting for the principals – Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Camilla, Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate. The setting, while not Westminster Abby, certainly contributes.

Third, it’s short. There’s a two-minute rule for video. This one runs 2:13. Any longer, and our mouse finger starts to twitch and we’re on to something else. Studies show a huge dropoff in video engagement right around the two minute mark.

Fourth, it’s fun! Many people watch it more than once. That’s what causes it to go viral. People see it and want to share it with their friends.

Lastly, there’s no sales message. Just the T-Mobil do-dee-do-dee-do sounder at the end. T-Mobile doesn’t have to tell us that they are cool, we get that because they gave us the cool video. Lots of people have bookmarked the Life’s For Sharing You Tube Channel because they’ve come to expect entraining videos from T-Mobile. They’ve created a strong audience base for this and future productions. And, isn’t that what “social” is all about?

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Posted by Mike Ventura | Read More | No Comments
Filed under: Social Media,You Tube

A Slithery Trend

I cannot let this week go away without sharing my new favorite OBSESSION. Yes, folks I am talking about @BronxZoosCobra. I tend to be a little leery of the latest Social Media fad because they come and go so quickly. But there was something about this snake that really drew me in. In a short amount of time, this snake went from a local NYC issue to the newest, hottest and most infamous star coming out of the Northeast – and that is saying something, they have Snooki up there. As I write this, I am happy that the Cobra was safely found and returned to her habitat, but am saddened that I won’t see any more tweets from her like this and this.

Personal entertainment aside, there is something we can learn from the tweets behind the snake and as a digital marketer I am incredibly impressed. Ms.Cobra set Twitter records gaining 60,000 followers in the first day, growing to 100,000 the second day and finishing off at over 200,000 followers. Twitter was the perfect platform to tap into the awareness of the loose snake and give it a personality. I always stress that social success works if you are genuine and authentic. Corporate speak fails on Twitter. The snake’s tweets were entertaining, no agenda to push and no sales undertone. While we all knew about the Cobra, someone did an incredible job of giving her a personality and making her real. They made the best use of conversation that is at the heart of any social platform’s success. They were witty, funny and smart – which encourages the mighty Retweet (RT), which can help to drive fast growth of followers.

They were also able to take a local news story (as “local” as NYC is) and tweet about locations that were familiar to all of us and not just a small niche. I have to wonder if NYC Tourism had something behind the tweets and soon we will all be able to take the “Cobra” Tour on our next trip to the big apple. While zoo keepers and residents of the Bronx were wondering where the snake is, her twitter following was enjoying every morsel of her big adventure. The well written tweets made the Cobra relatable – human in fact.

At Vco, we are always asked by brands and marketers, should we be on Twitter? I always believe that you should use a medium by leveraging the strength of its capabilities to satisfy your goals. While, Ms. Cobra did not have marketing objectives, she did leverage Twitter to its fullest. She entertained. She tapped into a national news story and gave it human emotion. She had fun and did not try to push an obvious agenda. She became viral.

So bravo @BronxZoosCobra!! On your next adventure, how about some celebrity sightings in the Hamptons?

-Beth

Posted by Beth Ventura | Read More | No Comments
Filed under: Social Media

Hey, Let’s Run a Promotion on Facebook!

So you have the killer Facebook page skin, and you’ve worked diligently to build and engage your community. What’s next? Perhaps a promotion or a contest or some sort of give-away right on the page would get even more “likes” and further engagement!

Danger! Will Robinson!!

Facebook has very strict, and I mean “strict” rules about running any kind of promotion or contest within their walled garden. Violate the rules and you risk having your page deactivated by the Facebook Police.

What are the rules? They are outlined in Facebook’s promotions guidelines http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

What follows is a discussion and my own interpretation of the rules. Please don’t use this as gospel – read the rules yourself and if in doubt – get expert help (i.e.: call us).

First – you cannot run any contest or promotion directly on your Facebook page. You can’t give a prize or reward for someone “liking” your page. You can’t put coupons on your page; you can’t use your page as an entry port. You can’t use photos on your Facebook page in a contest. Whether a winner(s) is selected by random drawing (“sweepstakes”) or by skill (“competition” or “promotion”) makes no difference. Neither is allowed.

You can’t require the participant to provide content to Facebook – like posting on your wall, uploading a photo or posting a status update. You can’t require people to activate a Facebook account as a condition of entry.

You can’t even notify winners through your Facebook page.

Basically, the only way that you can promote your contest on your Facebook page is through a third party application that can be clicked through from you Facebook page. You can have a clickable tab that leads to the app.

Secondly, Facebook gets very specific regarding liability. They require you to include the following:

“This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You are providing your information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used for [disclose any way that you plan to use the user's information].”

In the promotion’s rules:

A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.

Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

Whew, and you’re just getting started! You can’t use Facebook’s logo, name, trademark, copyrights or any of their intellectual property.

You can say: “You can enter the promotion through the [application name] application on the Facebook Platform. You can also find the application on the [tab name] tab on the [Page name] Page on Facebook.”

Third, you absolutely cannot run any contest or promotion, even through third-party apps that:

Is open or marketed to individuals who are under the age of 18;
Is open to individuals who reside in a country embargoed by the United States;
If a sweepstakes, is open to individuals residing in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India;
The promotion’s objective is to promote any of the following product categories: gambling, tobacco, firearms, prescription drugs, or gasoline;
The prize or any part of the prize includes alcohol, tobacco, dairy, firearms, or prescription drugs; or
The promotion is a sweepstakes that conditions entry upon the purchase of a product, completion of a lengthy task, or other form of consideration.

The penalty? The Facebook Police deactivate your page and send you packing.

How do you implement that great idea to impact your Facebook community? Make sure that you are compliant with all of Facebook’s guidelines (talk to your attorney, too). Then, have your digital marketing team or agency build an app for your Facebook page.

Posted by Mike Ventura | Read More | 1 Comment
Filed under: Facebook

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