Mediaboss Marketing

More brands are taking note of social marketing, and they want to put their brand on it. That is leading to a new trend: that of brands trademarking not only logos, but social media hashtags. Hotel brand Marriott, for example, has trademarked #lovetravels, and chocolates brands Hershey has trademarked #gofor2. One-third (33%) of global hashtag trademarks are made by US brands (since 2010)

"Even though overall organisations are registering more hashtag trademarks than ever before, there has been a slowdown in the rate of growth in the U.S. market, possibly due to the time and effort it takes for success," says Rob Davey, senior director, Global Services, CompuMark. "But what the overall rise in global applications does indicate is that brands are seeing the value in going through the proper trademarking process in all spheres, including social media, to make sure they are protecting themselves from possible infringement and mitigating the associated risks."

Other interesting findings from the research include:

Brazilian and Indian brands are right behind the US for hashtag trademark applications US trademarks are now 28% of the market, but US companies still trademark more hashtags Colombia-based RCN Television S.A. registered the most trademarks (54) in 2016 Education and Entertainment Services rank as the top trademark registration class

Trademarks for Class 9 - computer software, gaming, peripheral devices - fell to the 15th most applications for trademarks last year with only 101.

Tags: advertising, branded hashtags, CompuMark, social marketing, trademark hashtags

See more here:
Study: More brands #trademarking - BizReport

More small and mid-sized businesses recognize the power of social media.

Research from GetApp revealed 56 percent of small business owners and managers say social media offers the best digital brand-building strategy. They believe its more effective than developing apps or investing in technologies like digital signage.

Although a small or mid-sized business can create social media accounts and post announcements relatively easily, reaching business objectives such as obtaining more customers and increasing sales and revenue is more difficult. Engaging with customers can be time-consuming and confirming the business value of social media efforts can be challenging.

Experts recommend these steps to help small and mid-sized businesses implement effective social media marketing.

Go where your customers are. Only large companies and brands have resources to remain active on most social media networks. Different platforms serve different needs and cater to different demographics. Instead of choosing networks arbitrarily, savvy businesses research platforms to determine where their targeted customers are active.

Provide value. Constantly promoting your business will bore and annoy customers. A mix of helpful advice and promotional news gain a following while publicizing your products. Experts typically recommend a maximum of 20 percent promotional material and 80 percent educational. Its acceptable to sometimes stray off topic to offer customers helpful information.

Always ask yourself: Is this content valuable to my clients or prospects? If the answer is no, dont waste your time or theirs, said Sarah Lane, marketing specialist at Impact Marketing.

Listen to customers. Monitoring social media for your businesses and products allows you to find negative remarks that require responses and resolve customer service issues. Monitoring can also uncover positive comments that businesses can share. Monitoring for industry terms identifies sales leads. As social media listening services become more advanced, theyve become a viable option for all but the smallest businesses.

For instance, law firms can acquire clients through social media listening by monitoring for their specialties, such as auto accident and suggest their services. Customers feel more comfortable with businesses that offer valuable information while avoiding an immediate hard sell.

Take some risks. Share advice in a fun and interesting way with humor and opinion. Share funny stories and quick facts people might find surprising. Education and information provided on social media is much more likely to be understood if its presented in an engaging way. But be careful. Its easy to offend.

Include images. These attract attention and increase engagement. Rather than being satisfied with generic stock images, seek high-quality ones that are relevant to your content or brand. You dont necessarily need a professional photographer if you can produce photos with good contrast, lighting and composition.

Support the community. Support your community by sharing others posts, answering questions and participating in discussions.

Sure your brand and logo are important but what really connects people to you are shared beliefs and ideas, said Ravi Shukle at Post Planner. Talking openly about what youre thinking and where you want to head will help unite your followers and grow a stronger, more passionate community.

Measure results. Its essential to establish goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-based. Changes in web traffic, website conversions and other metrics can reveal the effectiveness of social media marketing and where to make adjustments.

Without the benefit of a marketing team creating a strategy complete with goals and measurement, small businesses have a harder time evaluating marketing efforts, writes Suzanne Delzio, director of Informed Web Content, for Social Media Examiner.

Dedicate adequate resources to the task. If youre not investing, at a minimum, the equivalent of 25 percent of a full-time employee daily to execute your social media marketing strategy, you likely will not get the results you need and expect, stressed John Beveridge, president and founder of Rapidan Inbound. Your social media manager should be measuring, communicating, posting, responding and analyzing your social media marketing every day.

Properly implemented, social media marketing can produce gains in sales, number of customers and lifetime value of customers. Its not easy; it takes effort and commitment. In time, local followers will grow and positive results will accumulate.

One last tip: Promote your social media accounts to your existing customers on cash register receipts, for instance, and in mailings.

William Comcowich is founder and acting CEO of Glean.info, a media monitoring and measurement service for public relations and marketing. Hes speaking at the Public Relation Society of Americas Hampton Roads Chapter lunch meeting May 17.

William Comcowich is founder and acting CEO of Glean.info, a media monitoring and measurement service for public relations and marketing. He's speaking at the Public Relation Society of America's Hampton Roads Chapter lunch meeting May 17.

Link:
Eight vital social media marketing tips for small and mid-sized businesses | Expert column - Virginian-Pilot

Although we are known as Social Stairway we do a lot more than just social media marketing. So, heres a few common misconceptions that you might keep in mind when looking for an online marketing agency that would be a good fit for your organization

Myth 1. Social Media Marketing Companies only work with Social Media:

Most GOOD social media marketing companies are shifting more and more to becoming full service inbound marketing agencies. The shift is mainly driven by the need to demonstrate clear ROI from social media efforts. And to get conversions from these efforts you typically must continue to track traffic when it LEAVES the social platform and heads to a business website.

To accurately follow these leads and conversions, an agency will need to help your business integrate email and sales for following up. You will also need a well-developed content marketing strategy as this is often why people leave the social network and head to your website in the first place.

Go here to see the original:
5 common misconceptions about social media marketing companies - CUinsight.com (press release)

May 15, 2017

Always positive about his business's mission, Sprinklr founder and CEO Ragy Thomas was still highly charged from the billion dollar unicorn's "coming out party" when I caught up with him Friday.

Just about a month prior to our conversation, Sprinklr had officially its expansion from social media management to customer experience management with the launch of the Experience Cloud. But Thomas told me: "This is who we were from day one." The difficulty lay in asking prospective clients to bet on Sprinklr as a comprehensive digital transition partner without first building credibility. Those first seven and a half years, Thomas says, "were painful," and he's truly delighted that Sprinklr can no longer be considered yet another of those "ankle biting single point solutions."

To be fair, Thomas laid a trail of clues for us. For example, when I interviewed him in June 2016, I asked him if Sprinklr was edging closer to being a broad customer experience management suite, he told me:

It would be very hard to deny what you just said. I don't think it's a secret that we're by far the most ambitious company to come out of this last generation of companies in the enterprise space: And you can quote me on that.

Sprinklr is not alone, of course, in asserting that brands are being replaced by experiences. "The brand is what people experience," Thomas says, "and social is the foundation of customer experience." The move is from one way interactions to bi-directional conversations, and the ability to manage this conversation across dozens of channels is now key to business success. How does it feel to have joined the experience chorus, alongside Salesforce, Adobe, Marketo, and all the rest?

"I have no time to think about the other guys," said Thomas. "The sun is shining, we love them all." But, he added: "We're on a mission. Every company on earth needs what we're building. The fun is only beginning."

The Sprinklr experience cloud (needed by "every company," but Thomas will admit built for the enterprise) includes cloud-based platforms for social, marketing, advertising (although not yet including execution beyond social channels), research, care, and commerce.

Spare a thought too for the woman with probably the most difficult job in content marketing today, Dana Brooks Reinglass. She's the first person to be hired for the Chief Storyteller position at United Airlines. After a career with Oprah, she seems to have developed a thick skin. "Thanks for not booing me," she said, taking the #ThinkContent stage.

Monday Stack logo by Hilary Allison

See the rest here:
The Monday Stack: Every Company on Earth Needs Sprinklr - DMN

More foreign censorship is coming to American social media companies. Back in January, Facebook hinted it would be at least partially receptive to the government of Thailand's desire to be free from criticism. Fortunately, the Thailand government has been slightly more rational than, say, Austria's by not demanding offending content be removed everywhere. So far, it seems amenable to Facebook just preventing Thailand's citizens from seeing anything deemed insulting to their rulers (dead or alive).

The problem right now (at least in the minds of Thailand government officials) is that Facebook isn't making with the targeted censorship quickly enough.

The social media giant has been given until next Tuesday to remove more than 130 items from pages viewable in Thailand.

Facebook says it does consider requests from governments to block material, and will comply if it breaks local laws.

The "or else" part of the government's threat seems to be nonexistent at this point, although it probably involves cutting off citizens' access to Facebook entirely. The Thai government insists Facebook has been mostly cooperative, but is dragging its feet on the 100+ posts it has declared illegal under the country's "don't badmouth your authoritarian leaders" law.

It's disappointing to see Facebook agree, even partially, to act as a proxy censor for Thailand's government. While it's generally a good idea for social media companies to be somewhat responsive to local rules and regulations, there's very little to be gained by being an errand boy for a regime where insulting kings results in secret trials and 15-year jail sentences.

It must be noted that Facebook isn't the only US tech company working with the Thailand government to ensure its top officials remain unoffended. Google has also participated in proxy censorship. Last year, it reported it had complied with 85% of requests made under Thailand's lese majeste laws, although it did not explain whether this was location-based blocking or complete removal of the literally-offending posts.

Any form of tolerance for this only encourages further abuse. The country's cybersecurity laws are already being abused by the government, which has declared that merely communicating with foreign critics online violates the Computer Crime Act. Censors' requests for inches quickly stretch into miles. If either of these companies tries to reel in some of the censorious slack they've given Thailand's government, it will most likely be greeted with a complete blockade or ban of their services and sites. If that's going to be the inevitable result, why bother humoring these requests at all?

Here is the original post:
Thailand Demands More Proxy Censorship From Facebook - Techdirt