The initiative, which Marketing Magazine reports is being lead by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and President of Revenue Adam Bain, is to give brands their own space on Twitter — a page they could point to and use to deliver content, while encouraging Twitter users to follow them.
So the question goes, “Does Twitter really need branded pages?”
I personally feel this movement goes against the original idea of Twitter and ultimately the essential appeal. What I love about Twitter is I can get the news and updates I want quickly without going through a bunch of hoopla to get it. I doubt I would visit these sort of “fan pages” that much anyways.
But what do you think?
-Cara Mahon
President Barack Obama is gearing up for the presidential election campaign for 2012. naturally he would turn to social media to aid in his campaign just as he did for the 2008 election. Some would say that this “grass roots” approach is what helped him win the presidential race over John McCain. Even though we are still about a year and a half away from election season the re-election campaign has already set up a website, a #obama2012 twitter trend, a video on Youtube with the tag line “it begins with us”. I think that Obama is going in the right direction, I would naturally expect social media to be a great success in the presidential election for 2012.
For those not working directly in communication or PR, social media at work might often be tied to that person who seems to have plenty of time to update their status but little time to finish their work. But through social media (a group on Linkedin), I learned a bit about social media made for collaboration within businesses and organizations.
As Matt Martin states in the article, small businesses as well as large ones are now spread across several states and/or countries. It’s hard to gather around the water cooler to exchange ideas when the water cooler is 1,000 miles away! With increases in work load and fewer geographic boundaries, collaboration could be on the decline. Even within the same physical office, my coworker and I started using Google Talk to be able to exchange ideas while working on our own projects and staying seated at our desks. It’s improved things for the two of us. There are fewer interruptions and one-sentance emails don’t clog my inbox as much, but we still have great collaboration. These three tools described in the article sent to me via Linkedin take it to the next level. Depending on what your business is looking to do, one of these tools might help improve your office productivity, morale and collaboration.
….I just love this campaign for many reasons the first being that it’s fun and very creative to use this style of guerilla marketing and public relations to build awareness for the Linkedin brand. I love the idea of bringing a real world presence to a company that deals with people in the realm of social media.
Today at 1PM EST time you could have heard “perspectives from both sides during the virtual event called ‘The Future of Marketing: Technology Driven Personalization,’ where in 60-second snippets, 60 speakers will each discuss how personalization is changing the marketing industry. The speakers include industry analysts, CMOs, technologists, authors and bloggers.”
Do you think this would be useful? So much information in such a short time…is the future? Hoping to see what others are thinking.
Leah Bradshaw
What a face!
In 2 minutes and 18 seconds, Denver the dog went from being a household pet to a household name. There have been more than 5.6 million views on YouTube, and Denver has her own Facebook page with 27,000 likes! She was on Good Morning America and now there are rallying cries on the Facebook page that she should be on Ellen. There are t-shirts for sale and comments … pictures from other dog owners … just the latest thing to have gone viral.
I am willing to bet that Denver did not have someone write a formal press release about her getting into the cat treats and pitch GMA, but today’s influencers spoke with their clicks and views. The power shift back into the hands of consumers is tremendous, and not only are other consumers listening, the traditional media outlets are, too. Reaching the influencers who repost, blog and view your video essential now. From a post What is Influencer Relations?
Let’s look at an example I recently saw in AdAge — In October, an article about a new Marc Jacobs’ handbag attracted a mere three comments on Vogue.com. However, the same article on Fashionista.com, a blog, attracted 125 comments.
The evidence is there … Those of us plugged into social media and the blogosphere that are pushing the trends that will help your brand sink or swim.
On March 23, Google interviewed Lady Gaga on her thoughts about Rebecca Black, her success, and her attributes to the realm of social media. Gaga explains that Rebecca Black is a genius for her YouTube video and that all critics are full of it. She too has faced her share of critics and has still become the pop sensation she is today.
With her technology based career, Gaga has paved the way for future artists and celebrities. “At Google, we’ve seen Gaga build career by embracing technology… as well as constantly innovating her fans,” Google executive Marissa Mayer said.
I find this interesting from a PR stance, because our roles are endlessly changing. On one hand you have artists that want to run their own social media account. So how do you make sure that they are representing themselves in the best light? On the other, you are running the accounts but trying to make sure that it is authentic enough. Is it true what they say that any PR is good PR?
We are finding more and more that PR is no longer just having a Facebook and Twitter account. It is now getting your name out early and often. After all you never know how many hits you will get on YouTube until you post.
As I am in the process of trying to grasp the depth of all the influence that social media has had on me and my future career in public relations, I’ve realized that I can have quite the influence on it as well.
Before the social media revolution, people who would have no idea who this senior in college from small town mid-Missouri (me) was, now can digest my ideas and opinions and retweet, repost or blog them to their networks. I can have a much bigger influence on the simplest things, like my love of Chipotle (see previous blog entry) on a large amount of people and companies are noticing or should start noticing immediately.
When I posted on my Twitter and Facebook that you could receive a free Chipotle burrito by watching a Facebook promo and that I was headed 30 minutes away just to take advantage of this deal; five of my friends decided to join and six others decided to take the trip in the near future. Now, influencing 11 people may not seem that dramatic, but if they posted similar entries, image how quickly the word of free burritos can escalate!
As Brian Solis states in his book Engageand in his blog, “Social networks and platforms have expanded the roles of customers and peers from consumer to authorities, ambassadors and critics.”
As Solis goes on to state, “People do business with people they like.” This holds true in trends that explode through social media. If someone in my networks gives a positive opinion on a product or service, I am more likely to try that product or service. We can more easily spread our opinions, ideas and criticisms thanks to social media, and we should keep this in mind as we pursue public relations careers. It’s time to pay attention!
We have information all around us, “We no longer seek out information — we expect information to be seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives.”
Mobile phones have become more than minicomputers and are taking a life of their own outside of making phone calls or texting. Because people have an expectation of information being integrated into their everyday lives, small businesses plan to increase spending on inbound marketing in 2011. These efforts will include established initiatives such as Facebook campaigns and location-based advertising, but businesses will also experiment with a handful of new (and not so new) strategies.
The trends include:
1. Group Messaging-Business are happy about this because it allows them to be able to directly target groups of customers already populated and organized by interest, age and location. The data that these groups provide is invaluable.
2.Reputation Engines-Somehow the number of followers you have on Twitter, or friends on Facebook have become ways to track your own reputation or the reputation of others.
The article stated, “Marketers would be wise to turn to a keen eye towards these networks because they represent the base of influence, both online and offline. Whether or not the algorithms are perfect, each social network exists to harness the power of relationships forged in real life — and serves as a prime audience for marketing.”
3. QR Codes-These codes are everywhere, yet consumers have not decided not to question them. “Regardless of how many scans a QR code will garner, it certainly appears that we will see an increasing use of them in 2011.”
4. Startups for Startups-Companies can now create a landing page for their business in a matter of minutes. “These companies collect user contact information, promising access to their beta if they agree to publicize their own sign-up.” How much information is needed to market to an audience…because its looking like almost NONE! The audience are excited and want to adopt fast, and become more savvy. “Increasingly savvy to the newest thing -– tech is sexy again, and smart marketers know this.” In 2011, the author says to expect to see similar efforts that reflect this startups for startups meme.
5. Q&A sites-These sites seem to be catching up in popularity, with influential organizations like Facebook getting into the space.
“Q&A sites provide a platform where users can engage in simple dialogue pertaining to any question — businesses have the ability to seed questions, interject into negative discussions, establish credibility and respond to competitor questions.”
So what does all this mean? This article has found that messages are most successfully communicated to audiences that have already coalesced around common bonds.
For those skeptics who still think Twitter is not a useful social media tool, need to check out these latest statistics of Twitter’s growth in the past 5 year. Since the very first Tweet on March 21, 2006, Twitter has grown at an amazing rate!
So Happy Birthday Twitter; you’ve made quite the impact on us in your short five years here!
-Cara Mahon
I saw this video posted on Yahoo last week, then it only had a few thousand hits. Today almost 7 million people have seen it. this is a great example of where companies are going, and what their willing to do to get viewership. YouTube has been always been there to make the average Joe famous, but why not the already famous, sure Jen’s latest flick probably won’t get as many views as this video, but she does bring star power to the table. As for Smartwater I think this is a WIN!!
After recently reading about the disaster in Japan I wondered what could be done to help. Obviously we can not turn back time and tell the 10,000 people who are now missing to leave the city; however in time of disaster the Red Cross is always right there as well as other non-profit organizations. I remeber when the Haiti earthquake happened and how various celebrities ran a national phone-a-thon to raise money world wide for the cause.
Although our country is in debt I find it interesting how there are still over 1200 billionares in the world. How many of these billionares actually give back? Being in public relations I wonder what PR Practitioners are doing to make sure that their clients are giving back and making the best of their wealth.
Mark Zuckerberg, who’s claim to fame was Facebook, makes it known that he has donated over $100 Million towards education and technology within education. If only more of the world’s wealth gave money maybe we wouldn’t have so much debt in the world.
I recently found an article that brought up the idea that Twitter was considering Facebook-style pages for brands.
As I am in the process of trying to grasp the depth of all the influence that social media has had on me and my future career in public relations, I’ve realized that I can have quite the influence on it as well.
