Mediaboss Marketing

Forbes

Is Snapchat The Right Social Media Marketing Platform For Your Brand? Forbes Snap Inc., Snapchat's parent company, had the largest IPO since 2014, with a market evaluation of $24 billion. That being said, investors aren't the only ones keeping a close eye on the platformmarketers are, too. With over 158 million daily users, ...

Read more here:
Is Snapchat The Right Social Media Marketing Platform For Your Brand? - Forbes

Organic Social Marketing or Paid Social Advertising?

Which is the more effective traffic generation and customer acquisition channel between the two? Where should a social media marketer invest their resources (time, efforts and even dollars)?

In the social ecosystem, there has been a roaring debate going on for a long time over the use of Paid Advertising vs. Organic Marketing, and which one provides better value for a brands social marketing strategies.

So, lets dive in to compare the two contenders and find which one wins the Game of Thrones:

To play and win the game, you must know the rules of the game. So, lets understand how social algorithms work to get maximum organic social traffic to your website.

Easy to say, difficult to do!

Understanding the working mechanism of social algorithms is not a piece of cake. The algorithm for each social platform works differently. For instance, on Facebook, a core factor that affects the rankings of a post is: relevancy score, whereas on YouTube the total watch time of the video per session decides whether a video becomes a suggested video or not.

To add to the woes of social marketers, engineers update these social algorithms from time-to-time; making it next to impossible for social marketers to keep track of each and every social platforms algorithms on a regular basis.

However, after thoroughly analyzing a few social algorithms, social media experts have found that just like Googles algorithm, social algorithms are also basically designed to give users the best experience possible. In short, the goal behind any social algorithm is pretty simple To promote the best content to the most relevant people.

So, the key to amplify your website traffic with organic social marketing is to post only quality content (which falls in any of these 3 categories informative, inspiring or entertaining) that is relevant to your target audience.

Webcast, March 15th: How to Scale Upmarket with Enterprise Field Sales

Now that we know how to crack the social algorithms, lets see instances where it is beneficial to go for organic social marketing to generate traffic for your business website:

A large number of social media marketers believe that paid social ads delivers results. But simply investing dollars in paid social ads will do you no good. Your ad should be click-worthy!

The results of paid social ads depend on how enticing the ads are you have crafted. Ensure they have the right call-to-action buttons with a link to your website or landing page.

Here is the list of instances where a social media marketer must opt for paid social ads over organic social marketing:

Here is a list of factors which will help you to decide which social strategy you must opt for under a given circumstance:

Apart from the above mentioned factors, analyzing your competitors social strategy, the industry your business falls into, and individual social platforms will also help you in deciding the right social strategy. For instance, recently the Facebook algorithm reduced the exposure of organic content, so for exponential results on Facebook a brand must go for paid ads.

There is no one size fits all formula when it comes to social media marketing. For instance, a fast food chain restaurant could find a large number of people ordering food on their website with a simple organic Facebook post, and on the other hand a small mobile app development company may see dramatic results with a promoted tweet.

What may work for one, may not work for another.

From analyzing my own personal Tweets, I came to the conclusion that people are more likely to like or share content rather than click on it:

Therefore to earn large number of visitors from social platforms, you need to regularly post contagious content that will compel social users to visit your website.

Find the kind of posts your followers and target audience finds interesting by analyzing all social channels, campaigns and posts, and figure out what works best for your brand in a given scenario.

It is clear from this article that there is no single winner when it comes to selecting between paid social ads and organic social marketing.

Paid ads can help get the ball rolling and gain the initial needed exposure for your start-up, but to continue gaining traffic you definitely need to have concrete plans for organic social marketing. It is therefore advisable for you to use both the strategies in tandem to have a significant growth in web traffic.

As you layout your social marketing plan for 2017, dont forget to keep the above points in mind and select the right social strategy under a given situation to boost web traffic.

Which form of social media marketing is generating traffic for your company? Share with us your thoughts and experience of using social platforms by commenting below.

Read more here:
Organic Marketing Vs Paid Advertising: Who Wins The Traffic Game On Social? - Business 2 Community

Pinterest pinned Google vice president of legal Christine Flores as its new general counsel, succeeding Michael Yang, who announced last November that he was leaving the social network.

With this feature, broadcasters can share posts to their Channel Feeds, and these posts will automatically appear in the Pulse feeds of all of their friends and followers.

The visual search features Pinterest introduced last month are now available outside of the social network for the first time, via Pinterest browser extensions.

Creators of Twitter Moments now have a way to see how those Moments are performing with Tuesdays launch of Moments Analytics.

Facebook is marking International Womens Day Wednesday (March 8) with a 24-hour Facebook Live video.

Opinion: While Facebook presented a high-level, rosy summary of engagement when discussing results from the 2016 fiscal year, we felt that the overview it offered was incomplete. In an effort to help marketers understand how they can most effectively reach audiences in 2017, our team set out to shed more light on the current state of Facebook engagement.

Facebook introduced several new features for Messenger chat bots in Messenger Platform 1.4, released last week, including a menu of features offered by bots, more social sharing functionality and improvements to its customer matching feature.

OK, so its still not a dislike button, but Facebook is testing the addition of Reactions to its Messenger application, and a thumbs-down emoji is one of the offerings.

Putting tweets in print may seem like reverse-engineering, but thats exactly what The New York Times is doing as part of the redesign of its A2 and A3 print pages, introduced late last week.

To celebrate Women's History Month in March, the YouTube Kids application has been updated with a series of playlists allowing viewers to learn more about important women from history and today.

Link:
Social Pro Daily Adweek

Soylent's website introduces curious consumers to Trish. Credit: Courtesy of Soylent

Soylent, the meal-replacement brand designed to eliminate the hassles of regular eating, is getting a (fictional) artificially intelligent spokeswoman in its first work from Wieden & Kennedy's tech-focused Lodge group.

The character, Trish, will appear to run a virtual store on Soylent's website and play a part in a mix of broadcast, digital, social and other marketing as the brand sets out to broaden its consumer base, according to the company.

Still, the company is not abandoning its tech-savvy followers. Trish has a Bitcoin-based store, Soy Route, on the dark web, where Soylent aims to sell rare products including mystery-flavor Soylent, a beef-flavor kit and golden Soylent signed by the CEO. Trish is also set to make an appearance at the upcoming SXSW Conference.

Soylent, as the story goes, was started by CEO Rob Rhinehart and others who were frustrated with buying, preparing and eating not-so-healthy foods while busy working at startups. It began with crowdfunding in 2013 and started shipping products in 2014.

The Los Angeles-based company proclaims its mission is "to expand access to quality nutrition through food system innovation." So far, the biggest following it appears to have is among tech-savvy startup workers and others looking to streamline their daily grind. Drinking a pre-mixed bottle of Soylent drink, sipping Soylent coffiest or mixing Soylent powder with water frees up the time it takes to buy and prepare food or go out to eat.

Soylent hired W&K's Lodge in October after looking at multiple large and small agencies, Chief Marketing Officer Adam Grablick said via email.

"The W&K Lodge team's focus on emerging areas of tech and its ability to develop experiences that bring brands to life in unexpected ways appealed to our own team's innovative spirit and mission," said Mr. Grablick, who joined Soylent in 2016. "The type of work that the Lodge does is exactly what we need to attract this difficult to reach consumer."

Mr. Grablick was familiar with W&K, having worked with the agency during his tenure at Kraft, which he left in 2015.

Much of Soylent's marketing until now has centered around early adopters with experiential events, sampling, and social marketing, Mr. Grablick said. Now Soylent aims to broaden its appeal through a wider variety of channels.

Some may recall the name Soylent from the 1973 sci-fi movie "Soylent Green," in which a food replacement was made out of people. The brand name was selected based on the 1966 Harry Harrison sci-fi novel, "Make Room! Make Room!," on which "Soylent Green" was based.

Soylent intends to "significantly" ramp up its consumer-facing marketing, Mr. Grablick said, declining to be more specific about spending plans.

The Lodge will work with Soylent's in-house team on brand development, marketing strategy and product campaigns, including everything from website and package design to media planning and creative direction, Soylent said.

Last year, some people fell ill with stomach issues after consuming the brand's Soylent Bar and a certain version of its powder. The company's tests came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination, but it decided to suspend sales of the bar anyway.

"Last fall's concerns had no effect on our overall marketing strategy," Mr. Grablick said.

Along with the Lodge, Soylent works with public relations, marketing and communications agency Autumn Communications on in-house communications and publicity, and with entertainment marketing agency Signal Entertainment Marketing on brand integration across film, television and digital content. Allied Integrated Marketing, an entertainment, culture and lifestyle agency, will work with Soylent on the activation at SXSW.

The rest is here:
Soylent Gets an AI Spokeswoman Courtesy of W&K's Lodge ... - AdAge.com

Social media has changed not only how we interact with friends and family, but also how we do business and interact with our customers. Companies of all sizes have joined in to see how social media can add value to their business and increase revenue.

Marketing experts believe social media helps grow business. However, it has been hard to quantify the direct effect on sales. In an infographic by Ad Week and Social Pro Daily titled Examining the current state of social marketing, written by Kimberlee Morrison, one challenge was linking social media campaigns to sales and revenue.

The report says that nearly half of top marketers could not demonstrate social media spendings effect on their business. Only 15 percent of marketing officers could demonstrate social medias quantitative effect on their business.

However, the evidence shows that social media marketing does work. Fifty-four percent of business-to-business marketers have generated leads from social media.

The conversion from Facebook likes to long-term customers has been hard to measure and track.

Social media credibility is the perceived image a customer gathers about a company based on what others are saying about it on social media.

This includes how the company listens, interacts and responds to customers requests and, above all, creates a buzz about its brand.

What does social media credibility do for you? While those who follow and like your social media page may not be your customers, they create a likability factor for your real customers to stay, interact and do business with you.

The real measure of your posts, likes and followers on social media is how they make new visitors feel about your brand. Today, before a company enters a contractual agreement with another company, its social media presence is one way of doing due diligence to take a social measurement of what people are saying about the company and how they are responding.

This gives a real-life profile of the company far better than any self-written corporate capability statement.

Social media credibility is what makes you want to go to the restaurant in a busy downtown, with a long line of customers waiting, while others with similar services have no customers. It is like a celebrity endorsement of a brand, but the celebrities are you and me, who used and experienced the brand. The endorsement is more credible since we are not being paid to endorse.

How do I measure my social media credibility? Here are some thoughts:

Professor Hari Sundaram at the University of Illinois is working on a study, using an app to study the behavior of people who want to adopt new habits, but somehow cannot seem to change. He gives an example on healthy eating: If you are about to go out for lunch and get an alert on your phone that seven out of 10 of your friends just ate salad, this may influence your food choice.

This will help motivate you to attain your desired behaviors by the choice of food your friends made. You are going to be influenced by actions (likes) that you saw or experienced, which will make you more likely to adopt a similar behavior.

We are influenced by decisions people make in the presence of social signals. Knowing what your friends or other people do will influence your choice.

In the context of social media, we are influenced by our perception of a product or brand by how others interact with it. We may end up buying an item even though the people who liked it on social media just liked it.

Akwasi Oppong is a digital marketing professional who helps small businesses develop their online brands and develop and automate their marketing processes. Akwasi is a SCORE Frederick certified mentor.

SCORE Frederick is part of a nationwide volunteer network of 310 chapters dedicated to the formation, growth and success of small businesses. SCORE Frederick provides free and confidential business advice and mentoring to start-up businesses and to established small businesses in Fredrick and Carroll counties. SCORE Frederick also offers business workshops for both start-ups and established businesses. For more information, go to http://www.scorefrederick.org. Once on the site, to register for mentoring, click on register for mentoring, fill in the request sheet and submit.

Read this article:
SCORE Frederick: How social media credibility affects your marketing strategy - Frederick News Post (subscription)