Mediaboss Marketing

Jacqueline Kuntzman plans to continue the candle and soap-making business she started during the pandemic on social media after things begin to open back up.

The full-time student and mother of two relied on popular social media apps like Tik Tok to gain customers over the past year.

The pandemic sped up the online shopping trend that existed prior, said Roland Rust, executive director of the Center for Excellence and Service at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business.

We are in an environment where a substantial percentage of the buying is going to happen online and that is probably always going to be true, Rust said.

Tik Tok has also helped Kuntzman meet other small business owners, who support and buy from one another, she said.

Ninety percent of consumers will buy products from a brand they follow on social media, found a 2020 study by software company, Sprout Social Inc.

Any smart business goes where the people are and, during the pandemic, they werent walking down the street, Rust said.

There is no way of getting your business out there except for social media, said Kuntzman, who has shipped her products internationally.

Last March, Allie Rose Mitrovich started her sticker business and began posting videos of the creation process on Tik Tok.

The majority of her sales, in the beginning, came from one of her Tik Tok videos, which went viral and racked up more than 2.4 million views.

Social media represents the perfect commercial response to the restrictions imposed because of the pandemic, said Johan Ferreira, a visiting professor of marketing at George Washington University School of Business.

And social media platforms drive consumer awareness of small businesses products, while costs are cheaper than hosting events or creating television advertisements, he said.

According to a 2021 report from Hootsuite, a social media management platform, Tik Tok is the second-largest social media app for consumer spending. The social dating app Tinder was the first.

Whether it is a mom-and-pop shop or someone baking cakes in the kitchen, every business today has to be digital, said Philippe Duverger, director of graduate programs in marketing intelligence and interactive marketing at Towson University.

For everyone [the pandemic] has given the opportunity to try out new stuff and accelerate the penetration of habits and services, Duverger said. Online is where the game is played.

Latoya Thomas started her Instagram account before the pandemic, using it mainly for personal purposes. However, since the pandemic began, Thomas has dedicated her account strictly to business.

Everybody is selling something on Instagram, she said.

The real estate broker and small business owner was diagnosed with lupus at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was apprehensive about being around people.

Social media was a way for her to continue work without fearing for her life.

Promoting yourself and your business on social media is an area that has exploded during the pandemic, said Gil Appel, assistant professor of marketing at George Washington University School of Business.

People are not commuting, they are home and social media was one of the limited outlets you could use to talk to other people, Appel said.

Im not reaching anybody sitting behind a desk. I need to be out and about, said Thomas, who makes videos with her daughter and follows mom groups on the app.

Ferreira said there is a general misconception that only the younger generation use and are comfortable with social media.

Social media platforms have traditionally skewed towards younger generations, Rust said. However, that is increasingly no longer the case, he said. Rusts 92-year-old mother is on social media because she wants to know what the kids are up to, he said.

Even so, the world of social media small businesses is not always easy to describe.

Mitrovich said it is difficult to explain what she does and the legitimacy of her work.

Social media is my lifeline, I consider it the biggest part of my job, Mitrovich said.

The older generation will feel disconnected if they dont follow along and it will widen the gap between the generations on how business is dealt with in general, Duverger said.

Even old school industries are adapting to a new online environment.

Ruth Anne Phillips, offers editing and proofreading services at her small business, Turning Prose LLC. During the pandemic, large publishing houses moved what were typically paper-and-pen processes online.

Phillips, who is also a lecturer at the University of Maryland, said there was a learning curve for those traditional hard copy publishing houses.

The biggest issue has been problems with the functionality of documents on the cloud, she said; if there are too many markings on a document it slows down. But sending large manuscripts weighing 10 pounds is not something Phillips thinks will return after the pandemic.

It would feel like a step backward, she said.

Ferreira hesitates to say whether the world will shift to solely online business. What he can confidently say is that social media has become a place for businesses to thrive.

It is definitely a real channel for anybody who doubted that was the case before, Ferreira said.

Born and raised in Annapolis, NatalieDrumis a freelance reporter and graduate student at the University of Maryland. She works as an investigative reporterat the Howard Center for InvestigativeJournalism at the University of Maryland. She can be reached at [emailprotected]

See the article here:
TikTok and Google Docs: Small Businesses Thrive After Adapting to the Pandemic Maryland Matters - Josh Kurtz

Twitter continues to ramp up its creator monetization focus with the addition of a new option that will enable users to create ticketed Spaces events, providing another means to generate revenue from your on-platform efforts.

As you can see here, the new process will be available via an application process, which will include signing up to Twitter's rules around paid events.

As explained by The Verge:

"US users will be able to apply to host paid live audio rooms starting in the next couple weeks. Anyone who wants to charge has to have 1,000 followers, have hosted three spaces in the past 30 days, and be at least 18 years old."

Once approved, users will be able to set up a ticketed Space by going through the Spaces process as normal, then scheduling the event for a future time. The creator will then be able to select a ticket quantity for the Space and set a price. Creators will take home 80% of any earnings from ticket sales, after app store fees.

Which is something of a sticking point - as noted by tech analyst Ben Thompson, the process essentially means that Apple and Google, which run the respective app stores and operating systems, take home a significant portion of any revenue generated from these events, despite not effectively playing any role in facilitating such directly.

But the implications of such taxes are a broader debate - which are currently being tested by Epic Games in its court case against Apple. For everyday folk, however, this is beyond the scope of a realistic challenge - so the situation being as it is, that does mean that if you set a ticket price of, say, $5, $2.80 from each ticket sold would go to you, 70c would go to Twitter, and $1.50 would go to Apple/Google.

Which does seem like an odd split, but still, it provides another means of direct monetization.

Twitter's partnering with Stripe to facilitate its payments process, which will mean that users will have to set-up a Stripe account, at least in the initial stages. Eventually, as the option is rolled out to more regions, more payment providers will be brought on board, which will provide increased flexibility on this element.

As noted, this is the latest in Twitter's push to provide more financial incentive to keep creators posting, and keep them and their fans engaged within the app.

Over the past few months, Twitter has also announced:

This is in addition to its own subscription service which looks set to enable users to pay for additional Twitter features and tools for a set, monthly price.

And once transactions are happening via tweets, the platform will also look to integrate eCommerce options, which could provide even more monetization potential through influencer marketing collaborations and the like.

With TikTok becoming a bigger player in the social media market, and Facebook looking to ramp up its monetization offerings to both keep its top stars in its apps, and lure more creators across, that's then caused a flow-on effect for all platforms in ramping up their monetization efforts - because without those top stars creating content regularly, you can lose audience share very quickly, especially as more lucrative, high-profile opportunities become more readily available.

Twitter needs to play a part in this, and ideally, through the addition of such options, that will help Twitter establish a better creator ecosystem in order to keep the tweets flowing, and boost user engagement.

In this specific instance, that also means beating out Clubhouse, which is already seeing a slowdown user growth as Twitter continues to evolve its Spaces audio social offering.

That provides a great opportunity for Twitter to become the audio social platform of choice, especially for broader scale public broadcast, which could eventually play a big role in the app's resurgence, with Twitter setting some ambitious goals for growth over the next two years.

And for creators, it's another opportunity to consider. Maybe being a full-time social media personality isn't as out of reach as it once seemed.

Twitter's ticketed Spaces will be rolling out in the US 'in the next couple of weeks' with other regions to follow.

Read this article:
Ticketed Spaces are Coming to Twitter, Providing Another Way for Creators to Monetize - Social Media Today

LinkedIn has published some new insights into the benefits of brand and lead-gen marketing, and how using both in a balanced, strategic approach can ultimately generate better results for your business.

LinkedIn has shared a range of reports into varying marketing approaches, and how brands are seeing success with each, despite significant investment in demand generation over brand presence.

These latest findings are based on research with over 4,000 marketers from around the world, who provided their feedback on the results they've seen from each focus. The data shows that while B2B brands remain largely focused on lead gen, enhancing your brand presence can also have significant benefits that will contribute to your overall results.

LinkedIn has collected the data into the below infographic. Some valuable notes, worth considering in your marketing approach.

Excerpt from:
LinkedIn Shares Insights Into the Benefits of a Combined 'Brand and Demand' Ad Approach [Infographic] - Social Media Today

Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals. Reading this online? Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox here.

Pop star Billie Eilish has been gearing up to release her new album, Happier Than Ever, in July. In the process, shes essentially been giving a master class on social media marketing, dominating Instagram in particular as she chronicles the transformation of her image from green-haired fashion disruptor to Marilyn Monroe-style blondebombshell. As NMEs Rhian Daly noted earlier this month in the wake of the release of images from her June British Vogue cover shoot,

Eilishs Instagram post of the cover has broken the record for being the photo on the platform to reach 1 million likes the fastest. She achieved the milestone in under six minutes. ... Its not the first time the teen superstar has broken the record. She previously toppled Selena Gomezs claim to the title in March, when she shared a photo of her newly blonde hair. That picture reached 1 million likes by the six-minute mark.

On Wednesday of this week, the publication of The 20 Most Liked Pictures on Instagram on the Brandwatch blog called attention to the fact that Eilish has 8 out of the 20 across Instagrams entire 10-year history.

Meanwhile, over on TikTok, Eilish(@billieeilish)has racked up more than 110 million likes across just seven posts (she only joined TikTok last November), including, mostly recently, a so-called stitch post (one that excerpts from another users post while crediting them) in which Eilish reacts with a tearful howl to a brief post from TikToker Gabriela (@gabrieeelala),who keeps a stick mounted on a wall of her home in remembrance of her beloved dog Waylon, who died in December (Im saving it for when I meet you again, she writes in a caption to the video). Eilishs stitch/reaction TikTok post has been viewed more than 70 million times since she published it on Monday.

See also: Billie Eilish admits to ordering Billie Eilish Halloween costume wig from Amazon to hide blonde hair, per Yardbarker.

U.S. agency revenue tumbled 6.8% in 2020 as fallout from the pandemic pushed the economy and agencies into a deep downturn, according to Ad Ages annual Agency Report. That was the second-sharpest drop since we began producing Agency Report in 1945. But the agency business is coming back amid a resurgent economy.

Read Bradley Johnsons executive summary: For agencies, its morning again in America ... maybe: Ad Age Agency Report 2021.

Ad Age Datacenter queried 12 leaders from across agency disciplines to see whats changed and where the business is headed following a cataclysmic year. Here is what they had to say.

In late April, Ad Ages E.J. Schultz reported on a new celebrity-stocked automotive ad: Hyundai taps Jason Bateman, Mindy Kaling to push Tucson SUV in largest-ever campaign. Since then, Hyundai has airedthe 60-second Question Everything TV commercial at the centerof that campaign more than 1,009 times, according to iSpot.tv, racking up more than 368 million national TV ad impressions (broadcast and cable), as of this writing. Now weve got some intel on what consumers think of the spot.

According to data shared exclusively with Datacenter Weekly by iSpots Ace Metrixwhich conducts in-depth consumer opinion surveys surrounding most major ad campaigns that get national TV exposurethe 60-second Question Everything spot rates 5% above the 90-day norm for attention among comparable automotive TV commercials, and 7% above the likeability 90-day norm. (Comparable automotive TV commercials in this case are ads in Aces non-luxury auto ad bucket.) That performance has earned Question Everything an Ace Breakthrough ad designation, meaning it broke through the clutter for survey respondents.

Among the verbatim responses submitted by those surveyed:

I love this commercial. As soon as I saw Jason Bateman I was hooked. Then the other actors were ones I really like too, which made it even better. I wouldnt normally be interested in a specific car after watching its commercial, but this one made me want to check it out. a female in the 36-49 age group

I like the ad. Familiar faces in the commercial helps. The questions were interesting and slightly amusing. Hidden headlights ... nice. a male 21-35

This ad is funny and I love all the questions. They are ones I ask myself. I do not see how it really fits with selling cars, but I like it. a female 36-49

I love the whole cast of this commercial, especially Jason Bateman. It really made me happy. a female 21-35

Great visual scenes and moderate humor. Ad was able to keep my interest throughout as I was curious to see what was being offered. a male 50+

My kind of humor and questions, and I do like the new headlights. Liked the diverse participants. a female 50+

As the TV industry cautiously looks to a post-COVID world, how will the 2021 ad haggle reflect the calls for change that have been building for the past year? Join ad sales leaders, marketers and media buyers to discuss the state of the upfront marketplace at Ad Age In-Depth: TV Pivot on May 24 and 25. RSVP at adage.com/tvpivot.

Lip service: How AI could steal your data by lip-reading your keystrokes, from The Next Web.

Face-off: Facebook Loses Bid to Block Ruling on EU-U.S. Data Flows, per The Wall Street Journal.

Fast facts: McDonalds Raises (Some) Wages, a post from Chartrwitha data visualization that plots average revenue-per-restaurant against the number of restaurant units for major fast food chains including McDonalds, Burger King, Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell.

Shop talk: New Data Reveals Website Visits Slow For Walmart And Remain Steady For Amazon, Forbes reports.

Malwary: Microsoft warns: Watch out for this new malware that steals passwords, webcam and browser data, per ZDNet.

And finally ... A Data-Driven Approach to Identifyingand RetainingTop Employees, from the Harvard Business Review.

The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industrys most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: Worlds Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.

Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Catherine Wolf.

This weeks newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.

Read the original post:
Billie Eilish, social marketing genius, plus what consumers think of Hyundai's 'Question Everything' commercial: Datacenter Weekly - AdAge.com

The idea of Content is King is a well-established cliche familiar to everyone working in the social media world. The reality is that content is only king if its relevant for the audience. Even today, brands often publish content without any underpinning strategy which results in little or no brand impact or attributable ROI to their social media efforts.

A truly successful content strategy in 2021 is built based on data and identifying what resonates with target audiences. This is not just limited to topics, but also includes post formats, platforms, time of day for content consumption, and more. Additionally, a true strategy does not only consider audience groups but also integrates competitor benchmarking to deliver the best results. If you are currently considering your content strategy join this webinar.

Learn how to build a more holistic and data-driven content strategy with social media experts from LIDL and Socialbakers to create optimum social media experiences for your audience.

In this webinar you will learn how to conduct:

Register for this webinar here and build the best content strategy for your social media efforts and generate the needed ROI.

Webinar details: 19 May 2021, 03:00 PM (GMT)

Visit link:
5 steps to optimise your social marketing's content strategy in 2021 with Lidl - The Drum