Mediaboss Marketing

By Dr. Deirdre Christofalo, Tim Guella, August 8, 2017 at 8:00 AM

We live our lives and do business through social media. Over 2 billion social media users worldwide spend an average of two and a half hours per day on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. And they're doing more than sharing vacation photos or following their favorite celebrities.

Research has found 74 percent of consumers rely on social media to make purchasing decisions. In turn, social media has become a powerful tool used by businesses to build brands, sell products and deliver services to customers.

As social media becomes woven into our lives, businesses are spending more resources than ever to reach consumers and customers in these digital spaces. According to a recent report by Statistia, social media advertising budgets have doubled worldwide between 2014 and 2016 going from $16 billion to $31 billion. Social media spending in the U.S. alone is expected to reach $17.3 billion by 2019.

Employers are looking for people at all career levels from entry-level positions to the C-suite, who understand how social media works and how to leverage this technology to build the bottom line. Recruiting site Indeed.com currently lists over 700 social media manager jobs in New Jersey, for Fortune 500 companies like Johnson & Johnson and Verizon as well as small businesses, advertising agencies and not-for-profit organizations. Social media specialists can earn from $46,000 to $71,000 annually, and social media marketing managers command salaries in the range of $115,000.

Social media skills are an important part of the managers tool kit. Older professionals in particular may feel the need to bolster their expertise and knowledge in this area. They may be familiar with Facebook and LinkedIn from personal use, but less conversant with platforms more popular with 20-somethings like WhatsApp and Snapchat. Understanding the ever expanding array of social media channels, the potential opportunities (and threats) they create for organizations, and knowing how to use social media to further business objectives are common concerns for managers across a range of industries and disciplines.

How do older professionals build their fluency with how social media works as a business tool? Reverse mentoring is one option, particularly for senior executives, who can be partnered with a younger social media expert for one-to-one tutorials.

For most managers, the most expedient course is to explore adult learning programs that provide an overview of current and emerging technologies as well, as practical experience using social media in business applications.

While the chosen program depends on the students personal interests and career goals, a robust social media adult learning program should offer the following components:

The uses of social media as a business tool are rapidly evolving as new technologies and applications emerge and new players enter the scene. Staying current on developments in social media, and thinking about the impact of these changes on your organization and your career, will be key to your personal and professional success in a digital world.

Dr. Deirdre Christofalo is Centenary Universitys Vice President for Adult, Corporate & Online Education.Tim Guella is the Director of Social Media for Centenary Universitys Social Media Center of Expertise | #theVIBE.

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Social media management skills bolster your resume and enhance your career - NJBIZ

Kristina: What are the implications of the Messenger ad expansion for social marketers?

Michael Connolly, CEO at Sonobi: Basic economic laws tell us that in order for Facebook to continue to grow their business, they will need to either increase their available inventory or increase their pricing. Now that they have started to sell ads within their Messenger App, it is becoming apparent that the next logical step will be an adjustment to price.

Jason Beckerman, CEO and Co-founder at Unified: Facebook's world-class ad tech platform is already seamlessly serving ads into the Facebook network of Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. By bringing Messenger into the fold it will be incredibly easy for brands to expand into this new powerful channel through the same underlying infrastructure. The ability to message and re-message across the Facebook network before pushing someone into a customer care experience will be very powerful for the entire Enterprise.

Kristina: What does this move mean for advertisers?

Michael: With Facebook feeds nearly at capacity, it is not surprising that they are looking at Messenger to expand their inventory. However, additional frequency against the same audience ultimately drives down performance.

Jason: By showing ads on the Messenger platform, advertisers now have more ways to reach consumers beyond Facebook's core social network. With a staggering 1.2 billion monthly users engaging on Messenger each month-- there is clearly opportunity here.

Tags: facebook advertising, Facebook Messenger ads, social marketing, Sonobi, Unified

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What Facebook's Messenger ads mean for social marketers - Social ... - BizReport

Social Circle, the social influencer marketing service, has today made its Social Valuation platform publicly available, which provides engagement metrics vital to achieving accurate measurement and transparency across the industry. Social Circles platform was previously reserved for registered users across brands, influencers and agencies working directly with Social Circles managed service.

Social Circles Social Valuation tool draws on extensive campaign data and a cost per engagement metric to assign a potential value for social influencers. These values are based on the amount of engagement on each influencers channels and how that corresponds to potential worth in marketing campaigns. The platform offers access to a growing database of over 50,000 influencers spanning the globe.

Social Circles offering to influencers is uncontested, with its unique Social Valuation tool it provides real-time metrics for influencers cost, and reach to work out the best campaign for brands. This challenges the traditional model of measuring views, and subscribers. Social Circle has attracted brands such as Nickelodeon, Barclays, Soap & Glory, and Chupa Chups as well as a host of media, PR and creative agencies.

The move provides the industry with a standardised benchmarking system that is cross-platform, and designed to understand the true worth of influencer marketing, removing the guesswork from evaluating campaigns, and avoiding the pitfalls of bad practice such as fake engagement numbers and over or underpayment of influencers.

The Social Valuation tool, which is already used by a number of brands and agencies, attributes varying levels of value to influencer engagement across platforms whether it is a tweet, retweet, share, like or view by assigning weighted engagement points to each action, allowing brands to assess influencer campaigns against a database of other similar work.

As part of the offering, Social Circle will also provide influencers with free draft contracts and advisory materials when they sign up to the platform, empowering influencers to effectively manage their relationships with brands autonomously.

Matt Donegan

Matt Donegan, Managing Director at Social Circle said; A lack of science in influencer marketing has left pricing largely based on unreliable metrics or, worse still, gut feel. This leaves some campaigns vastly overpriced compared to what they deliver back to the brand, or leaves influencers short-changed. We want this move to be a stick of dynamite that will blow away bad practice amongst the industry and level the playing field to allow all brands to generate huge value from well-run campaigns.

Its clear that consumers are increasingly tuning out of traditional advertising and into influencers, with brand budgets naturally following. So, as influencer marketing receives ever-greater investment its crucial that we have a standardized way of pricing and evaluating campaign success, and in doing so protect the value of the industry. In this sense it was a no brainer to open up our platform to anyone one who wants to use it. Weve already got years worth of campaign data on the platform and our agency and direct clients all love the transparency weve been offering. Its time to share our data.

Also Read: Is Whitelisting a Win-Win for Brands and Influencers?

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Social Circle Adds Science To Influencer Marketing By Making 'Social Valuation' Tool Publicly Available - MarTech Series

Aug 07 2017 3:30 pm

Billy Penn is looking for students who are majoring in Sales, Marketing or Advertising to help fill our digital marketing, sales and advertising internship for the fall semester.

Candidates should have previous internship or relevant experience working directly with clients, agencies and sales managers. Billy Penns sales and events team works closely with the editorial staff to find smart sponsorship and event opportunities to accompany our strong original content. Our digital marketing, sales and advertising intern will help promote innovative products to our audience, work with team members to develop and understand digital marketing strategies and have a direct hand in our local events.

Have an understanding of what young Philadelphians care about and an innovative approach to connecting them with our content and events. Applicants should have prior relevant experience, be that from student organizations, other internships or freelance work. You should be available to work a minimum of two days a week, including but not limited to occasional evening or weekend events. You should also be be extremely familiar with our site and how you can contribute to our sales and events team.

Understand how brands can leverage social media to spread their content, share ideas for what more we can be doing and help plan and execute events. Qualified candidates should provide examples of relevant work, including social media account management, successful events and marketing/advertising campaigns. This internship provides a stipend. Start/end dates are flexible and we can work with your university to provide credits. Applicants should be comfortable working from their laptops in a busy environment, and be comfortable juggling calls and meetings in the middle of office activity.

Email jobs@billypenn.com ASAP with the subject line marketing internship detailing your interest in the role and why youre the right fit for the position. Attach your .pdf resume. Anyone with Microsoft Word as a skill will be automatically disqualified because cmon. No cover letters, please. Deadline to apply is Wednesday, Aug. 23rd.

Originally posted here:
Billy Penn is hiring Fall 2017 marketing interns - Billy Penn

What if you could predict the future and gain access to the latest social media and marketing trends that will eventually make a huge difference in your business?

And what if you could take that knowledge and prioritize the channels and networks of tomorrow, today?

Youre in luck! The social media and marketing trends that once seemed like science fiction are quickly becoming a reality for marketers everywhere. Now, its just a matter of identifying which channels and trends to embrace in your overall marketing strategy that will have the greatest impact.

Noah Kagan, Chief Sumo at Sumo.com and AppSumo.com, and his team have been successfully experimenting with emerging marketing technologies and channels for the last several years giving him unique insights into which ones are truly worth your time and effort.

In episode #55 of The Science of Social Media, we explore the top 5 social media and marketing trends that all marketers should consider in 2017 and examples of how you can get at started with each today.

Lets dive in!

The bar has been raised across the industry. The only way to stand out is to put out higher quality content than the rest.

Noah Kagan

You might have heard of the saying, owned vs. rented land in marketing referring to producing and sharing content on platforms that you do or do not own. For example, posting content directly through Facebook would be considered rented because you dont necessarily control the outcome of that content, whereas, blogging regularly on your website would be considered owned because you have full control over that content.

Over the last several months, Noah has seen a 10% drop in email open rates from his newsletter at OkDork.com. And although 10% doesnt seem like a lot, its resulted in a decrease of about 15,000 people reading his content.

In 2017, its important for marketers to develop multiple mediums through which your business can speak and connect with customers. That way, if a big change happens on any one medium, like a significant decline in organic reach on Facebook, you will still have other viable options at your disposal.

Multiple marketing mediums might include:

In other words, youre hedging your communication channels against any major market changes.

The perfect message, to the right person, at the perfect time. Thats what many savvy marketers hope to achieve through their one-to-one marketing efforts. But delivering the perfect message without seeming intrusive or sneaky is a fine line to walk in a time where consumer information is seemingly endless.

Source: Tom Fishburne marketoonist

When done right, however, one-to-one marketing can reduce marketing costs and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. Harvard Business Review reports that personalization can deliver five to eight times the return on investment for marketing spend. Talk about important marketing trends!

For example, Facebook and Facebook advertising might help bring people to your restaurant, but imagine bringing someone to your restaurant and each person gets their own customized dished (based on profile information) that theyre in love with. Thats the power of one-to-one and marketing personalization.

Technology that will help you get to one-on-one communication:

The companies and marketers that can begin to utilize these technologies sooner will have a significant advantage in their marketing.

One of the most exciting frontiers in marketing is the rise of marketing bots.

Source: Illustration by Gabriela Zurda

What is a bot exactly? According to Wikipedia, An Internet bot is a software application that runs automated tasks (or scripts) over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone.

As a marketer, the thought of bots can be a bit intimidating on both the job perspective and implementation side. But there are tons of positives that come with automation. Eventually, sure, bots will be able to do a variety of tasks that humans currently do like write blog posts, create graphics, deliver tailored content to users, send emails, schedule social media posts, and respond to user questions.

But just like the computer automated handwriting and Netflix automated the movie industry, we will adapt and evolve into the next stage of social media, technology, and marketing, just like weve done throughout history.

For now, youll be well-ahead of the game by experimenting with basic bot functions like communicating with website visitors, implementing a Facebook messenger, or Slack bot, or conducting research just to help you get a feel for what they can do.

One of the more uncommon marketing trends in 2017 and beyond for marketers to consider is the idea of untapped networks or channels.

When thinking about untapped networks for rapid business growth, Noah explains, its important to identify where large amounts of your customers or audiences are hanging out and work backwards from there. Your business might take advantage of communicating with people on Meetup.com or tap into the massive resource that is Reddit within specific locations or demographics.

The best part is there are untapped network opportunities in almost any marketing vertical. A good place to start might be within the top digital marketing trends of 2017.

One specific example of this in recent history is the tactical use of Quora as a marketing channel for businesses. Once marketers discovered that people were using Quora to ask specific questions about products or challenges they were having, they quickly began providing answers. And when those answers were useful, it meant thousands of views every month.

Today, Quora has more than 400,000 topics and 100,000 million unique monthly visitors, giving marketers a unique opportunity to tap into a massive resource.

Creating quality (content) over quantity is something that we talk a lot about here at Buffer. In the last few months alone, it seems like more and more brands are putting out incredible content across digital platforms. Everyone from small businesses to big enterprises is prioritizing and investing in quality content, and its paying off big time in awareness and sales.

But producing quality content isnt necessarily a new trend to many marketers quality is something built into everything they produce. What is a marketing trend, however, is creating quality content within emerging mediums such as video, podcasting, and social media advertising.

Then, when youve created a quality piece of content, the next step is to stretch it as far as it can go. For example, if youve worked hard to create a quality 4,000-word blog post, that blog post deserves a little extra love when it comes to promotion. You might create an infographic, a podcast episode, a short video, send it to all of your newsletters subscribers, pitch it to major publications, post it to various communities, and lots more.

I find it helpful to remember the classic 80/20 rule in digital marketing:

With so much content being published every day online, its no longer enough to simply post and hope for the best. More effort is required than ever before.

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5 Exciting Social Media and Marketing Trends to Know in 2017 Noah Kagan [Podcast] - Business 2 Community