Mediaboss Marketing

Columbia's lightweight rowing team is looking to raise money through social media. (gocolumbialions.com)

Can college athletes make money on social media off their own name, image and likeness? That question has been raised to the NCAA in recent months by member schools because of a new social network called Tsu, which promises to give 90 percent of its royalties back to users.

Tsu (pronounced "sue") launched in October under the premise that all users are content creators and, unlike Facebook, should be given royalties for use of their content. That philosophy as it relates to college sports is being debated in the courts by the NCAA and Ed O'Bannon plaintiffs, and Tsu is now marketing itself as a potential venue for college athletes to be paid.

The model used by Tsu not only plans to pay users for content, but also for bringing in followers. Tsu divides each post's revenue by keeping 10 percent, giving half to the user who posted, and dividing the remainder with diminishing value among users that person invited and those they invited and so on.

It's a complex question whether college athletes can be paid from Tsu -- and it's one the NCAA won't address publicly. A federal judge ruled in the O'Bannon case in August that colleges are permitted to pay football and men's basketball players deferred payments for use of their names, images and likenesses starting in 2016-17. The NCAA, which is appealing the ruling, is permitted to cap the annual payments at $5,000 per year in 2014 dollars.

The NCAA has verbally communicated interpretations about its rules in relation to Tsu to athletic departments that inquire, according to Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak and Columbia University lightweight rowing coach Nich Lee Parker, whose program wants to use Tsu to raise funds. Sobczak and Parker described the following as the NCAA's interpretation of Tsu:

Colleges, conferences, coaches and athletic departments can earn revenue from Tsu accounts. Coaches could have to report any athletically related income from Tsu in their yearly outside income financial disclosure to their athletic department.

Athletes are allowed to earn Tsu revenue from any posts that are personal. Examples could include taking a photo, making status updates or sharing links. Athletes are not allowed to earn Tsu revenue from any posts related to sports, such as posting a picture in uniform, sharing anything related to the team and sharing team photos.

The NCAA declined to comment for this article. Sobczak and Parker said the NCAA has not put its interpretation in writing.

"There's a new Internet-based economy developing and we have to adapt," Parker said. "I do think there's a difference between a revenue sport and a non-revenue sport. Nobody really cares what people on my team think, and if they're able to generate a great social media following and there's a picture of them at practice, why should that matter? But I think that's a very different situation than an athlete at Columbia University lightweight rowing or J.T. Barrett at Ohio State. He could probably have 50,000 followers in a couple days."

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NCAA may let players cash in on social media

THE YEAR 2015 looks like its going to see a change in some attitude overall toward social media and might even see an overall shift in paradigm from some marketing outlets. As we move into the New Year, there are a few things we are likely to see from social media, both in terms of the content they provide and how marketers use it to promote their products. 1. More love for YouTube. If theres one thing that social media has taught us its that viral video marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach out to an audience. 2. Interconnectivity will grow exponentially. Interconnectivity is a key factor in user experience, since social media has now been able to create seamless links between accounts that are hosted separately on tablets, phones and PCs. As the year 2015 progresses, we should see a change in paradigm of user interface with connected devices. Already, a handful of companies (most notably Samsung and Apple) have brought out their wearable prototypes that allow for a projected screen surface that can be used off the skin, like a watch. Such futuristic devices might not take off completely in 2015, but there is a very likely possibility that their presence will boost the research and development into current phone technology. 3. Movement away from traditional social media business policies. When Facebook was incorporated and users began using it, the behind-the-scenes working of the media giant was unknown. Eventually it came out that for offering a free service, Facebook allowed companies that invested certain sums information that would allow them more effective targeted advertising to the people who are most likely to want or need their product. Many have claimed that Facebooks business practice of marketing users information is unethical, but there hasn't been much choice for social media alternatives like Facebook. Until now, that is. A revolutionary new idea in social media termed Ello places itself as the anti-Facebook promising a similar user experience with interaction on the same level but without advertising. Ello also promised to never youre your information to third parties. In 2015, as more and more users become concerned with the commercial aspect of Facebook becoming harder and harder to ignore, it is likely sites such as Ello will see an influx of users that want to enjoy social media but arent willing to give up their privacy to do so. 4. Twitters business advertising model will rise in popularity. With the fee restructuring that was done recently, Twitters business advertising model is likely to be a massive favorite of businesses in 2015, with many established businesses realizing exactly how good their current pricing plan is compared to what they get for it. The new beta features will only serve to make it easier to pore over the data for clicks, retweets and other engagement factors while at the same time offering more flexibility in terms of calculation of clicks and conversions. Twitter is finally beginning to look like a twenty-first century media creature. 5. The fall of Google+. Its not often that the mighty Google fails to deliver, but in this case it was a case of too much too late. After the success of Facebook, Google decided to capitalize on the use of social media by implementing their own social media networking solution. Google+ was linked seamlessly to all other Google services, including mail, cloud storage and even YouTube. The problem was that people didnt use it. In order for social media to be usable, there must be enough users willing to utilize it. As it is now, with the decreasing number of users that actually utilize Google+ in practical terms, it may be in the companys best interests to give it up as a lost cause and focus their efforts elsewhere. 6. LinkedIn will leave competitors behind. If you ask any millennial today about the best place to host their resume to be seen on the Internet, their response will invariably turn to LinkedIn. It has two things that other competing sites lack: Longevity and credibility. Their algorithms are unique in allowing certain employers to see only what they want to see for potential hires, as well as giving job seekers the opportunity to contact employers in the hope that they might be considered for an open position. Because of these things, in 2015 LinkedIn is likely to leave the competitors they have in the dust as they grow even further. 7. Less means more. The nature of social media today has a lot to do with the short attention spans of the people we are most likely dealing with. Keeping it short and sweet goes a much longer way towards creating content that users are able to identify with. Creating a connection in this day and age depends less upon the accuracy of the content than it does about the way it is presented. The increase in the use of image-based marketing strategies allows for a whole different level of utilization for social media sharing outlets. 8. More faces, less companies. Many large companies and quite a few smaller ones have social media outlets and accounts that distribute official information about their products, services and promotions. However, what researchers have found out is that people are more likely to associate with other people as opposed to a nameless, faceless entity that is an official account. In 2015, we are likely to see more CEOs place their faces on their brands or at least move toward establishing a more personal flair for their official pages, most likely by changing their official page account names to a more personal nature. 9. Specialization of social media. In 2015 we are likely to see social media start adopting this type of segmentation in order to focus their advertising better. Key among the sites that will adopt this type of decentralization will be Twitter and Facebook. Eventually the others will follow, or else their advertising will simply stagnate and their growth will fall short of expectation.

More:
Nine predictions for social media in 2015

Cofounder, Socialbakers

In its early days, Facebook felt like the Wild West to marketers. The avalanche of consumer eyeballs to the site was tantalizing, but it was tough to make sense of it as a branding opportunity or measure the effectiveness of advertising efforts on the social network.Jan Rezab wanted bring order to that chaos. We started Socialbakers because we saw a huge potential in Facebook, says Rezab of his six-year-old social-media analytics company that has amassed more than $34 million in venture funding. The Prague-based company, which helps brands monitor their impact on social media, has the largest social-media data pool of any social analytics company. It has more than 300 employees, 11 offices worldwide and 2,500 clients, including Nestle, Lenovo and Western Union. The company, valued at $200 million, doubled revenues in 2014 -- although it remains unprofitable. Socialbakers is Rezabs second company; he started his first, mobile-games business Redboss, at age 14. I wanted to live my life fast and figure things out early, said Rezab. Im just a person striving for speed. Its in my DNA, its in everything I do. I watch movies at two times the speed; dont ask me why. Over time, your brain just adapts.

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2015 30 Under 30: Marketing and Advertising

#SocialHangout #7 with Guest Ted Rubin
Tune in Friday January 9th 9am PST/12pm EST as we welcome Ted Rubin the leading Social Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Brand Evangelist and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators to the...

By: Eric Mitchell

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#SocialHangout #7 with Guest Ted Rubin - Video

Powerful forces at work within digital marketing are transforming the social media communication landscape. My recent visit to B2 Interactive offered insights into what the next 12 months will bring to media and public relations.

B2 Interactive has honed a business model in the last two years working as a growing digital agency in suburban Omaha, Nebraska. The steady stream of end-of-year business suggests that there is profit from three basic functions: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content creation and management, and coding.

While social media strategists might be tempted to proclaim a slow death of search, in fact, SEO principles now dominate successful social media projects. Keyword research, website audits and optimization offer a path to learning audience motivation and needs. Satisfy those, and the social media data will trend upward. From information to entertainment, real-time data analyses generate strategies for earned organic versus owned, paid and promoted campaigns.

Just as SEO continues to be important in driving website traffic and advertising revenue, sites often remain the end game of social media return on investment (ROI) strategies. By replacing business jargon with natural consumer language found within social media, we can target blogs, video and other rich media. While digital marketing works well, it is also worth emphasizing the need to be restrained by ethics. As we go forward, an SEO mindset must never ignore basic ethical principles.

Social Marketing and Ethics The recent Sony email hack and subsequent news reporting of private message content, for example, crossed an obvious line. Most religious faiths emphasize that we should not do to others what we wouldn't want done to us. Hacked email does not pass the smell test because you would not want your private emails published on a news or entertainment website.

Still, what happened to The Interview film this week is instructive of an emerging distribution model that leverages social media buzz and publicity:

Online pre-release of content social & media amplification release

While 2014 was about using social media tools in PR and marketing, 2015 must move our conversation toward ethics and improving measurement methods.

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Digital Marketing Will Define Social Media in 2015 ...