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Ever since the founding of Facebook in February of 2004 and Twitter in March of 2006, marketing has completely changed. Brands that once built campaigns to push market awareness through standardized marketing channelsare now using social media to drive brand awareness and sales.

A prime example is the streetwear industry, which does a great job of using social media to control supply and demand. Instead of focusing on pushing a lot of low-priced items, these brands sell out a limited number of extremely marked-up items, which are fueled by social media hype and promotion. Combining social media trends and viral content allows them to leverage the hype and causes the demand to far exceed the quantity available.

I absolutely love this business model, which led to me connecting with Elie Neufeld, founder of DHTK. After identifying streetwear as a major trend in fashion, he launched the brand to merge a variety of major trends, creating one lifestyle brand. By leveraging trends in sports, fashion and other facets of youth lifestyles, DHTK demonstrates the end result of correctly executing on marketing trends. While talking to Neufeld about his growth strategy for DHTK, he shared his gameplan for viral growth, which is universal and can be applied to any industry.

Related: 8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful

Being active on social media gives you a glimpse at whats popular in todays society. In recent years, LeBron James has grown from being one of the top basketball players, into a worldwide cultural icon. Between appearances in blockbuster films, brand alignments and switching from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat and back again, James has become a larger than life on and off the court.

DHTK accurately identified sports as a cultural trend with a number of top performers -- LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry all push culture forward with their massive following and influence. Turning to social media can provide you with the insight to clearly identify the major trends that people are talking about.

Many brands and entrepreneurs are able to spot major trends, but simply following them is not enough. You need to be able to understand what the cool factor is and leverage it to grow your brand. If you are able to associate your brand with a trending cool factor,you ride that wave, drawing attention to your company, which is fueled entirely by that trend.

For example, when Drakes album If You Are Reading This It Is Too Latedropped, DHTK combined hip-hop trends, Drakes growth, unique album design and typeface styles, which resulted in the release of the first It Is Too Late-inspired designs. It was a success because it combined the unique album design with the company'sown brand style.

Related: 5 Habits of the Wealthy That Helped Them Get Rich

Building brand awareness requires you to identify content that will work with the specific trend you are going after. It doesnt matter if we are talking about a brand in the fashion, music or sports industry -- each requires a unique style of content the consumer demographic wants to consume.

DHTK understands it fits into both sports and fashion, so it creates social media posts that work with both niches. Determine relevant trend niches, identify the prominent hashtags, and spend time determining what content styles your target audience enjoys interacting with. When you do this correctly, the outcome is more engagement and more potential customers discovering your brand.

Influencer marketing is one of the most promising trends -- consumers want to be able to relate to the people they follow on social media. Associating your brand with influencers can result in consumers automatically relating with you, based solely on that relationship with someone they follow on social media. Its important to make sure an influencers brand story aligns perfectly with your brands narrative.

You do not need to necessarily establish a paid relationship with influencers in order to associate with them. DHTK, which stands for Dont Hate The King, has clear associations with the common phrase people recite when referencing LeBron James (also known as "King James" in basketball circles). This association combines the respect and power of LeBron with the power and aesthetic of the DHTK brand story without any formal partnership.

Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader

No matter what industry you are in, leveraging marketing trends can help you boost viral engagement and increase brand awareness and revenue. Pay attention to what people are talking about, thenfigure out how to do something interesting to get people talking about your brand.

Jonathan Long is the founder ofMarket Domination Media,a performance-based online marketing agency, blerrp, an influencer marketing agencyand co-founder of consumer productSexy Smile Kit&trade...

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4 Ways to Leverage Marketing Trends for Viral Growth - Entrepreneur

I once worked with a B2C client that offered a college prep product for high schoolers. They wanted help expanding their content engine and getting the word out; in their mind, their problems were related to capacity, not quality of content.

See, they had their audience figured out (or so they thought). Their blog articles featured liberal use of memes and casual conversation. Videos featured students talking about preparing for college or tackling hard exams. The only reason this stuff wasnt hitting was because it wasnt out there enough, right?

But as we dove into the problems that faced their specific target audience, we found that many of the assumptions that had been made were wrong. Sure, high schoolers like memes just as much as the next person, but they dont want to see them coming from a brand that feels like theyre trying to force a connectionit came off as manipulative. Sure, it was nice to see videos with high schoolers explaining college readiness topics, but their audience wasnt looking for guidance from their peersthey wanted to see and hear an expert talk. But even before I had seen any of this content disconnect, I knew right from the start this was going to be a brand with some trouble because of a key red flag.

They didnt have an established style guide.

An established, documented brand style sheet is essential for any content team that wants to hone their voice for their audience. At the most general level, these documents can be a few pages long and dive into the minutiae of how you want to be presented and perceived in the market. Put to work overtime, these guides can turn into invaluable hundred-page documents that answer even the most specific questions about word choice, presentation, and tone.

If your brand doesnt have any documented brand style, then youre essentially hoping that your entire content team is silently on the same page about hundreds of different editorial points without any form of concrete reference. This likely isnt a bet your brand should be investing in.

At this point, you either have no style guide and need guidance for getting one started, or you have an established guide youre looking to hone. In either case, it can be daunting to figure out what you want to tackle next. Brand voice contains thousands of variables that range from the specific (does your brand use contractions or avoid them?) to the vague (what attitude does your brand try to convey?), which makes choosing a starting point hard.

A good place to start is with the foundation of your voice. These elements tend to be a bit more intangible, and they affect everything that comes out of your content team. I like to refer to them as Tone, Complexity, and Purpose:

These three elements cant define your entire brand voice, and they will need constant tweaking and detailed supplements over time. But messing up any one of these attributes can absolutely cripple your content engine, while an odd word choice here or there might not hamper you so much.

Image attribution: Sylwia Bartyzel

But how do you know where your brand should fall along these brand attribute scales? Sure, you can start with educated guesses, but ultimately the proof is in engagement. Social media provides an excellent space to listen to your audience and figure out how they want to be interacted with. The trick is making sure you have solid measures to tie back to your foundational brand attributes.

Complexity is a good place to start because it actually has some of the more concrete measures for your brand to bite into. To get a feel for you brands ideal complexity, copy messages and posts from your social platforms (Facebook ideally, since it imposes the fewest limitations on posters) into a readability score generator. I personally like to use the Flesch-Kincaid scale.

These readability scales will examine elements like word and sentence length to assign text a rough score that corresponds to a grade level. Using these tests specifically on social interactions is going to be inherently rough since they are designed for longer blocks of text, so expect a margin of error of a few points in either direction. For reference, most people can read at an 8th grade reading level. Unless your audience is unusually well educated, youll want your content to at least match this level of readability.

Tone can be a bit more difficult to quantify, but it isnt impossible to do so. Here, its often best for your content marketers to actually read posts themselves, rather than to leave analysis to a computer. (While there are some fascinating conversations happening in linguistics about how to measure formality, we just dont have reliable tools at our disposal to do this yet.)

Start by getting a list of posts of your shared content from the past six months to a year, and list them from highest to lowest engagement (you can absolutely include shared or retweet posts of your content in this list). Then, go through these posts and have members of your team assign a score of one to seven (informal to formal) for every post text, comment, or message. You should quickly be able to see some trends from your more popular content, and then its up to your team to decide how to synthesize this score into language for your brand.

Understanding what is most useful to your audience is actually quite easy: People tend to share things they find useful and that they think their friends may also find useful.

The primary metrics youre going to want look at here are how far your content goes when shared. There can be a load of confounding variables here, from irregular ad spend to posting time and everything in between. To wade through some of this information, you can also cross-reference your list from most shared to least with some sentiment data. Highly shared, highly positive content is likely hitting the right place for your audience in terms of utility. Try to focus on formats or story approaches that fit this top-performing material.

Image attribution: Wilfred Iven

Updating how your brand speaks is an ongoing process. Your social media marketing offers powerful ways to evaluate where you currently stand, but the most useful practice you can instill in your team is to have a constantly growing, constantly evolving style guide. Use this tool to prune out what doesnt seem to be hitting and encourage creators to focus on language or topics that remain consistently relevant.

After that, all thats left to do is let your brand be the welcoming, engaging, useful presence youve always meant it to be.

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Featured image attribution: Clem Onojeghuo

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Numbers for Words: How to Update Your Brand Voice Using Social Media Marketing Data - The Content Standard by Skyword

Handing over the reins of your social accounts can seem like a daunting task, especially if youve been successfully managing social media up until this point. While you might be hesitant to relinquish controlor, even, to share controlof your online presence, utilizing an inbound marketing agency to bolster your social media strategy can be extraordinarily beneficial for a number of reasons. Keep reading to discover four reasons your agency and social media go hand in hand.

One of the top channels for inbound marketing is social media. Social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are great ways for new contacts to discover your products and services. Your inbound marketing consultants can, and should, be using these channels to amplify your inbound campaigns to drive traffic and generate leads across your website.

Any inbound agency worth its salt will coordinate social media campaigns alongside content creation, product launches, or other important milestones to amplify reach and impact. Not allowing your agency at least some degree of autonomy when it comes to social media can stunt your campaigns and prevent them from reaching their true potential.

While social media is a powerful tool for amplifying inbound campaigns, it can also serve as a valuable resource for creating content and inspiring campaigns. Your inbound agency should always have one ear to the ground when it comes to social media, keeping track of trending content and recurring themes.

For example, if prospective buyers are always reaching out over Twitter to ask about a specific feature of your product, then it might be time to create a one-sheeter describing its capabilities. If a specific topic or news story is trending in your industry, then it might make sense to capitalize on these trends. Your agency can use social listening tools to research topics for future content, ensuring that your inbound campaigns will be relevant and well received across all channels.

Another way your inbound marketing agency can utilize social media is by aligning it with your buyer personas and each stage they face throughout the buyers journey. While this goes hand in hand with content creation, ensuring content is relevant is a different story. After all, anyone can write an article on your blogbut an inbound agency should be writing articles that speak to different personas, at different stages of the buyers journey. This content can then be amplified with social media, and specific messaging can help ensure that your personas see it as relevant and compelling.

Webcast, July 19th: The Blueprint to Build Trust in a Digital World

Additionally, having your inbound agency handle persona creation, content ideation, and social promotion can ensure greater consistency across all channels. Having it manage your editorial calendar can also ensure a regular and active posting schedule, ensuring that your channels are consistently attracting new followers and engaging old ones simultaneously.

One of the most valuable, albeit somewhat obvious, benefits of using an inbound marketing agency is that you can leverage its expertise and knowledge to your advantage. Inbound consultants are experts in the field, and considering that inbound and social media marketing go together like bread and butter, it would be a waste not to fully utilize them in your larger marketing strategy.

As social channels continue to evolve and expand, having an inbound marketing consultant at your disposal can be a valuable asset to ensure your business doesnt get left behind the times. Whether youre looking to expand into new social channels such as Snapchat, or simply to ramp up your existing Twitter strategy, using an inbound agency can ensure you have all your bases covered.

Hiring an inbound marketing agency to manage one of your most prolific and sensitive marketing channels requires a considerable amount of trust, but leveraging its expertise is an invaluable tradeoff. Considering the complementary nature of inbound and social media, using them to augment each other simply makes sense; allowing your inbound consultant to drive your social strategy can provide your organization with increased benefits that wouldnt be seen otherwise. If you want to see the best possible ROI for your inbound efforts, then partnering with an integrated agency is the only way to ensure each facet of your campaign is truly successful.

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4 Ways Your Inbound Marketing Agency Can Help with Social Media - Business 2 Community

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S&S Restructures Children's Publicity and Marketing - Publishers Weekly

LOS ANGELES, July 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --TBWAMedia Arts Lab social impact agency MALFOR GOOD (MFG), which was launched in 2014 and is dedicated to purpose based work, is ramping-up its leadership team by naming Julia Porter Plowman as Managing Director. The agency today also released a manifesto outlining its "Be Good. Do Good" philosophy and launched its first website: http://www.malforgood.com. Building on MFG's three years of proven success within the social purpose marketplace, these moves elevate the TBWA shop's profile and accelerate its mission to solve big, bold social issues.

"As a social impact agency with an extraordinary pedigree in serious brand building and culture creation, MFG has been in a class of its own," said MFG Global Creative President Duncan Milner, who joined the shop in October last year from TBWAMedia Arts Lab where he was the Chief Creative Officer. "Today we proudly announce that we are stepping out with a reinforced leadership team, a stronger vision, a new look and naturally, a new website. We're here to be good and do good, and do it differently."

As a former Wieden + Kennedy Global Group Account Director, Plowman created world famous, award winning campaigns for Nike, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Old Spice, Electronic Arts and Audi. She has worked with Wieden + Kennedy in Portland and Amsterdam, and helped launch the agency's office in Tokyo. Since leaving that agency a decade ago, she has pursued a commitment to social enterprise and innovation, starting with the Nike Foundation where she helped launch "The Girl Effect," a multiplatform campaign promoting investment in adolescent girls in the developing world to break the cycle of global poverty.

After the Nike Foundation, Plowman was named COO of the non-profit World Pulse, which she helped turn into a social media network that supports and advocates for grassroots women leaders. Later, she became Managing Director of the social innovation design startup Context Partners, working closely with consumer brands and foundations including Vulcan, John D. Rockefeller Foundation, David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Walton Foundation, Knight Foundation and Ecotrust. Finally, before joining MFG, Plowman was Director of Integration and Communications at Providence Health & Services, the third largest not-for-profit health system in the country. At MFG, Plowman will be working alongside Milner, guiding next steps in the evolution of this unique social impact agency.

"Our working model is to offer world class creative focused on social impact," said Plowman. "We've got a clear vision, the social enterprise climate is ripe and we're backed by TBWA, a global network. MFG is all about helping brands and organizations find and spread their good in an authentic way in order to make the impact they want."

"Julia's career has been about innovation, purpose and making a difference," said Troy Ruhanen, president and CEO, TBWA Worldwide. "She also has an incredible resume working for some of the world's top consumer brands. She is a perfect fit for MFG. We're building an agency that is staffed with some of the best, smartest and most talented people in the industry and we're bringing all that to service causes and organizations that do good in the world. Our super powers are creativity and strategic thinking, and if we can use those to make positive change, that's a good thing."

TBWA/Media Arts Lab Chairman and Global Director Lee Clow launched MFG as a division of the TBWA Apple dedicated agency Media Arts Lab in March 2014. Since then the agency has created impactful campaigns as well as social movements; for example, MFG conceived and launched the nationwide XQ Super School bus tour, a grassroots community initiative now in its third year that challenges the nation's largest public institution, the public school system, to change and better itself. In 2015, MFG won a Cannes Gold Lion award for film craft for the film The Ocean, created for Conservation International's "Nature Is Speaking" campaign and narrated by actor Harrison Ford.

"Today, brands need to have more than just a point of view on what's happening in the world," said Clow. "A brand's values need to be part of their brand behavior and message. Julia and Duncan leading MFG, uniquely positions us.They combine a deep understanding of "Social Impact" marketing with a world-class history of brand building and storytelling. They'll do good."

ABOUT MALFOR GOODBased in Los Angeles and part of the TBWA network of agencies, MFG is a social impact agency committed to the planet, the people who inhabit it and brands that want to make a difference. Working with for-profit and not-for-profit clients, we deliver innovative, inspiring creative for brand building, storytelling and consumer engagement. Weintegrate brands into culture, producing fan bases and social movements. MFG believes every brand, every organization and every individual has good to offer to the world, but sometimes they need help tapping into it and packaging it. MFG clients have included XQ Institute, Emerson Collective, Conservation International, Starbucks, One Love, Tom's, Earth Justice and Best Friends Animal Society. About TBWA Worldwide TBWAWorldwide (www.tbwa.com) is a top-ten ranked global advertising collective that holds Disruption at its core to develop business-changing ideas for brands. TBWA has 11,300 employees across 305 offices in 98 countries and also includes brands such as Auditoire, Digital Arts Network (DAN), eg+ worldwide, The Integer Group, TBWAMedia Arts Lab and TBWAWorldHealth. TBWA's global clients include adidas, Apple, Gatorade, Henkel, McDonald's, Michelin, Nissan, Pernod Ricard, Pfizer, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore Airlines, Sotheby's and Vichy. Follow TBWA on Twitter and Instagram and like us on Facebook.

About Omnicom Group Inc. Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

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MALFOR GOOD Writes Next Chapter Social Impact Marketing Agency Founded By Creative Legend Lee Clow Ramps ... - PR Newswire (press release)