Category: Front Page

You might have thought that the drama playing out in last night’s game was on the big screen, but you’d be wrong. The big wins of the night were actually through social media on the smaller screens; smartphones, computers and tablets. If your business’s product branding strategy didn’t include social media last night, then you lost out on a great opportunity to have some fun, gain some fans and promote some positive brand strategy.

It all started with the surprising blackout that paused the game for thirty-four minutes in the third quarter, causing half the stadium to go dark. The branding process that evolved out of this darkness was rather illuminating. Social media-savvy companies went to their social media platforms to “Newsjack” the event. In fact, many companies had active social media command centers set up in advance to handle this type of event!

The Power of Product Branding Strategy

Several brands were quick on their feet and within minutes of the blackout, they had tweets out taking a humorous (yet branded) approach to the situation. The most notable were Oreo, Tide, Walgreens and PBS, for their brilliant brand strategy.

• Oreo – “Power out? No Problem” with an image that said “You can still dunk in the dark” next to the image of an Oreo cookie in the dark (15, 276 retweets)
• Tide – “We can’t get your blackout. But we can get your stains out.” (1,318 retweets)
• Walgreens – “We do carry candles.” (3,376 retweets)
• PBS – “This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS” (3,526 retweets)

According to Twitter, chatter about the power outage peaked at 231,500 tweets per minute, totaling to 3 million tweets over the course of the night.

How much does traditional advertising go for during the Super Bowl?  And how much does a tweet or Facebook status cost?  You do the math.  The real Super Bowl winners were those with active product branding strategy on social media.

Splash Media can help you with a full service, turnkey solution for your online brand strategy. To learn more about us, visit our website. You can also check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

What can six seconds do for your company branding strategy? Maybe the same thing that 140 characters has done for it. Twitter is banking on Vine, a new iPhone app that allows users to create and share 6 second videos. It’s similar to Instagram … but for videos.

Twitter made their success on the “limited space” model when they introduced the 140-character conversation, so it makes sense that they’re trying to duplicate this success with Vine. So far, the social media experts’ consensus seems to be that no one is sure if Vine will take off or not, but that it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. It could easily grow and emerge into something hip. The success of platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr have all demonstrated time and time again that putting constraints on content can produce amazing creativity.

How can you incorporate Vine into your company branding strategy?  You can use it to:

○     Showcase brand personality - A shoe company could share their favorite personal shoes, or the most popular one on the market currently, or the wildest color.

○     Demonstrate Products - Coffee baristas could show how they make a signature drink.

○     Teaser peak at longer content - Did all your employees sing “Call Me Maybe” from their cubicles? Show six seconds and link to the full video on YouTube or your website.

○     Behind the scenes looks – Share the secrets of your break room cabinets or reveal the mystery stain in the conference room.

○     Answer FAQs - Dress up an employee or have them stand on their head and answer common questions in your industry.

If you’ve already got an audience on Twitter, here’s a chance to grow it even further in the branding process. The more you share through Vine, the more consumers will feel connected with your brand. Don’t forget to be entertaining and to have fun with it!

Remember, this is a completely new way for brands to connect with their customers and engage with followers, so be a trendsetter and get your business out there! As is the branding strategy with all social media platforms, find a way to share your brand personality and interact with consumers.

Do you have any good ideas for how businesses can use Vine in their company branding strategy?

Check out our first Vine video here!

Splash Media can help you with a full service, turnkey solution for your online brand strategy. To learn more about us, visit our website. You can also check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Let your brand LIVE. 

Be Real. Be Social. Talk about what you are actually passionate about. Listen to what people actually care about. Listen. Then listen again. If you don’t like the conversation, change it. Trust your opinion. Do the hard work. Think before you share. Share what you think. Discover real people. Build lasting relationships. Stop the selling. Start the giving. Don’t wait. Say it now. Be part of the conversation. Have a point of view. Get straight to the point. Be fascinating by being authentic. Share something you have learned. Thank someone today for teaching. Start doing what you are passionate about. Open your mind to something new. Ask someone what they care about. Share your passion. Start a movement. Social is about the people you meet and what you create together. So, create something. Live a social life.

Maybe I’m just cranky. Perhaps it is the fact that it is the start of another new year and a time of self-reflection. It may just be that I am getting older and losing my ability to swallow the status quo. Whatever it is, I realize that many, many terms, strategies and tactics that very smart people in Social Media Management throw around are empty. Empty of substance. Empty of real meaning. More importantly, empty of business success.

“We will make you a Thought Leader through Social Media.” This is a strategy frequently presented by very smart agencies and consultants in pretty PowerPoints and pitches throughout the country. Most of the time it is a strategy full of crap.

 I have three big problems with this strategy. 

1. Most people do not even know what a thought leader is.
2. Even if they have the proper definition of a thought leader, very few brands should ever attempt to be one as a social media strategy.
3. This strategy assumes the audience is a group of brain-dead rats waiting for a pied piper to arrive and lead them somewhere. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“We will make you a thought leader.” Think anyone sat down with Einstein and told him that? I have trouble imagining Sir Winston Churchill fretting over if he would be a thought leader as he told Hitler where he could stick it. Leaders lead. They break new ground. They have original thoughts that they communicate in new and enlightening ways. Thought leaders are those who have original thoughts and have the utter guts to share them no matter the disruption created by those thoughts. They are the risk takers. Leaders are so passionate about those NEW ideas that they will risk excommunication from the status quo to keep those new ideas part of the debate. Is a brand willing to do that risk taking? Does a brand have a NEW idea that disrupts the status quo to that degree? 

IBM stood up in 1973 and told the grocery industry that they were going to build a new way for items to be checked out. They designed the linear UPC code so that cashiers no longer had to enter the cost amount of an item by hand at the cash register. The UPC code enabled grocers to control and manage inventories against sales and to make the checkout experience better for the stores and consumers. The industry had been working with “thought leaders” for 6 years on a system that they loved.. They loved it right up until it was time to print it and use it. Their system smeared easily by cheap printers. Turns out they had been following thought leadership that took them nowhere for 6 years. Too many thought leaders were barking hypotheticals. None of them had the guts to actually put their concept into real use and check the results–none of them that is, except IBM. They then faced the nut jobs bemoaning their leadership. Extremists thought IBM was hiding demonic codes in those little lines. The grocery industry was scared, reluctant, and generally apathetic about putting machines in control. IBM led with a NEW idea. They backed up that idea with action and results. Leadership came from pushing the idea into every corner of retail no matter how disruptive it seemed.  

To be a thought leader you need to have both words: a THOUGHT and LEADERSHIP. It demands an original thought that you can communicate in a new way. You need to then lead. Do you have the guts, the stomach, and the heart to actually lead the disruption your thought should cause? If not, do not feel useless. You had the wrong strategy from the beginning. Find another strategy. Not everyone can lead. Not every idea is an original thought. Your audience desperately needs thought curators, thought supporters, and thought advisers just as much as it needs that rare sighting of a thought leader.

In the next blog in this series, we will define the differences in strategies of a thought leader, a thought curator, a thought supporter and a thought adviser. Each means different plans, tactics, goals, and results for your marketing. Your audience is begging for these. Which should you be? More importantly, which does your audience want you to be?

So we’ve been hearing the phrase “SEO” more and more. Let’s “SEO” this, let’s optimize this for our “SEO.”

What is SEO?  SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization.  SEO “is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a Web page in search engines via the ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results.” [i]

What does that mean? Search engines use complicated algorithms to determine relevance and ranking, and such algorithms are always changing. Thus, keeping your website in shape to be ranked well by these algorithms is an ongoing process.  It is important because the higher your website is on the SERPs (search engine results pages), the more traffic you will likely get to your site. Search traffic is qualified traffic, meaning users are explicitly looking for what you have.  In addition, you don’t have to pay for each click (as you do with paid search).

SEO is an important aspect of digital marketing.  SEO serves its purpose of retention and acquisition.  When somebody already knows of a brand and then goes on the web to find more information about it, it is crucial your online brand presence is strong—especially for your brand name and for your keyword.  It is important for retention, otherwise other competitors might get the click by ranking higher than you.  When somebody searches the Internet for a relevant keyword or industry key phrase, you want your company to rank for that search, not your competitor.  This helps you gain more business in the online playing field.

The online field is a different arena, but a huge player in the game of marketing.  We are starting to see trends in using different online devices to ensure sales.  This cross-device usage is illustrated in the graphic below: