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Sunday Musings w/ Shore Branding 5-12-13

May 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Branding and Digital Marketing

Another Sunday in May and another holiday to go celebrate.  Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms that are readying this!  Here are this week’s ‘Sunday Musings w/ Shore Branding’ – the top five stories in branding and digital marketing.  For those interested, you can find the archives of this weekly write-up under the Blog-Sunday Musings tab at the top of the page.

#1 – “Maker’s Mark’s Plain Dumb Move Proved To Be Pure Marketing Genius” – Forbes.com

Premise: Back in February, Maker’s Mark announced that due to rising production costs they would be watering down their product.  This caused a social media circus, with droves of consumers taking to various platforms to complain about the decision.  However, this also drove consumers to the store apparently, as sales skyrocketed for the brand.  Ultimately, Maker’s Mark has reversed its decision to water down its product due to the backlash.

Thoughts: Here is another example of the power of social media.  Fans of Maker’s Mark came out and rebelled against a decision the company made and it helped change its position in only a short matter of time.  There is a bit of a conspiracy theory presented in the article that Maker’s Mark decided to create this news in an effort to boost sales, but I have a hard time believing that; in fact, the author doesn’t seem to either, but brought it up anyway.

#2 – “LinkedIn Tips: 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Network” – Entrepreneur.com  

Premise: With LinkedIn turning ten years old this past week, the author provides ten tips to build your LinkedIn presence and drive engagement with readers/others.  Beyond the ten tips presented, each one has a follow-up write-up and link to a story of greater detail.

Thoughts: There may not be a better article available for LinkedIn tips than this one.  Not only does the author provide ten thought starters, the links that follow each provides you more robust information and detail for each.  

#3 – “Using Pinterest to Grow Brand Awareness” – ICUCModeration.com

Premise: The article provides several key statistics to warm you up to using Pinterest and then provides ten recommendations for how to optimize your Pinterest page.  No surprise, Starbucks is mentioned as a brand/company that is using Pinterest in an engaging way.

Thoughts: This caught my attention given the numbers presented in the article and the comparisons made to Facebook.  In fact, it drove a search on Pinterest to find an infographic that compared the two sites further than this and was a post earlier this week on our Facebook page.  Pinterest is driving engagement and helps spur purchase decisions at a much greater rate and is a site that must be considered as part of your brand/company’s social media platform.

#4 – “Coca-Cola Announces Global Commitment To Help Fight Obesity” – SustainableBrands.com  

Premise: Earlier this week, Coca-Cola announced that it would offer low/no-calorie beverages in each of the 200 countries it currently has business in.  The company also announced that it will help support programs and/or organizations that run physical activity programs and will no longer market towards children 12 and under.  The company has launched a website (Coming Together) to help promote these efforts.

Thoughts: A little bit of an interesting branding story from this past week from one of the largest companies in the world.  The separate online platform caught my eye as well, given that it isn’t branded in the web site / domain itself, but brings you to the company site right away with a single click off of the hyperlink above.

#5 – “Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase For $1 Billion” – TechCrunch.com

Premise: Microsoft is looking to buy into Nook’s business for a hefty price tag, while other tidbits in this article are equally intriguing.  By the end of its fiscal in 2014, Nook will stop making Android-based tablets and will shift its focus to third-party platforms; i.e. drive its business through Nook apps.  Nook e-readers will not follow suit, but they are planned to be phased out given the declining trends in the e-reader market.  Microsoft’s partnership with Nook continues to evolve and may lead to greater synthesis between the two companies with future Microsoft products coming in the near future.

Thoughts: While the tablet and e-reader market continues to quickly evolve, it is hard to see or understand what the short and long term goals are for both Barnes and Noble / Nook and Microsoft.  Every quarter, one or the other seems to announce a decision that is counter-intuitive to their prior plans for development and growth.  Microsoft continues to baffle me with what their plans are as they look to compete with Apple and Google in many of the same areas.

What caught your attention this week in branding and digital marketing news?

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Ten Tips When Leveraging Facebook for Your Brand

May 2, 2013 By 1 Comment

facebook

Over the next few months, we’ll be focusing on several of the most commonly used social media sites out there and providing recommendations on how to better leverage them to promote your brand and/or business.

Given the results from the first poll on our site, Facebook will be the first platform that we focus on.  This may not be too much of a surprise given the sheer size of Facebook – reporting over 1 billion monthly active users in Q1’13 earlier this week.  Without further ado, here are ten recommendations to consider when using Facebook Pages:

#1 – Engage with fans 

This is a pretty loaded first recommendation but is absolutely critical for your brand and business.  Beyond creating meaningful content, here are several ways in which you can easily engage with fans of your brand or business on Facebook:

  • When posting on your wall, ask questions for fans to respond to.  You don’t have to do this on every post, but open up the conversation for responses.
  • Aside from questions, use a fill-in-the-blank statement to probe for comments and thoughts.
  • Use the Polls feature/capability to garner feedback.
  • Create unique content for Facebook Fans only.

#2 – Like, comment, and share information from others  

Don’t use Facebook just to promote your brand or business, link to a specific post on your web page, and then walk away from the platform.  Click around and like other pages of interest (similar to your own or different), provide input and commentary on other’s wall posts, and share information from others that might be of interest to your own audience.  There is a certain level of trust that can be created by moving beyond self-promotion.  

#3 – Respond in a timely manner

Ensure that you, or the person responsible for your Facebook page, is responding in a timely manner.  Answer questions/messages within a 24 hour period at the bare minimum.  Respond to posts on your wall with some/any type of feedback – a follow-up comment, a simple ‘like’ of their post, etc.

Most importantly, respond to both positive and negative feedback/posts in a consistent manner.  Do not try to erase comments or thoughts on your page because it is negative.  Handle those comments in public, so that others see you are working through it.  You might be able to take the matter offline or to a private exchange, but do not try to hide negative feedback.  Those efforts will likely trickle down and become much worse in the long run.  Learn from Applebee’s mistake.

#4 – When pasting links, delete the HTML

 This is one of our biggest pet peeves.  When sharing an article or link on Facebook, after you paste in the HTML, let the story/link come up below.  As soon as it does, please go back and delete the HTML address in the status bar.  It looks infinitely cleaner and more “professional” when you clean out the HTML and just have the appropriate commentary around the story in the status itself.

#5 – Leverage Facebook’s Insights

In order to better understand your Facebook audience, it is important to utilize the insights that the site provides for you at no charge.  At the very least, on a weekly basis, take a look through your ‘Likes’, ‘Reach’, and ‘Talking About This’ information provided by Facebook.  Better understanding your audience will help you tailor your message and who you may consider putting more efforts towards on other online platforms and/or offline.

Using the Insights information may also help you realize when it is the best time to post content to your page.  I don’t necessarily believe that there is an optimal time to post on the web; if your content and message are strong, it will stick.  However, the Insights information might suggest when not to post; when are your fans more apt to be online, when are they able to click through to links you are posting, when are they more/less engaged with your message?  All of this can be analyzed by trial by fire and keeping an eye on the Insights tabs.

#6 – Try to post on a consistent frequency

As best you can, try to be consistent with getting your message out there.  Try not to post in peaks and valleys (15 posts one day, 4 days of silence, 10 posts late in the week, etc.).  Again, using the Insights information at your disposal should help you better understand when to / not to post, but being consistent will help you and your audience connect.

If you have a weekly or monthly post, try to ensure that it is going up at or around the same time each week or month.  You do not want to cause unnecessary confusion with your fans or readers and drive them away.

#7 – Use Events

Creating calendar events on your Facebook page let’s fans know where you will be, what you will be doing, and allows them to come see you or your brand in person.  This is a simple way of building stronger engagement and connections with your fans.  Let them know that they can come (watch, celebrate, play, etc.) and see you in action.

A second strength of Facebook Events is the ability send out invitations to your fans.  This will help you understand how large of an audience your Facebook page is or may be helping drive.  It may also help you prepare better for said event.

#8 – Use photos/images

You didn’t think there would be a top ten list of recommendations for using Facebook without including the use of photos and images, did you?  If you have looked at or for this type of information in the past on better leveraging Facebook, I’m confident that you’ve seen this recommendation before.  The only add I will provide here is that from first-hand experience, I can tell you that this works.

People are absolutely more engaged in status updates from brands and companies that also include some type of visual effect.  I’ve seen this impact for several fan pages I’ve been an admin on/for.  Your page’s “Talking about this” and “Virality” numbers are almost always stronger when a photo or image is attached to a status update.

#9 – Promote your page

When your brand/business is ready, consider promoting your page through Facebook’s advertising platform.  If you know your audience and target market, you can easily filter down to that exact space on Facebook.  It is also very easy to set your spending limits so that you don’t break the bank.  After setting up your first ad/promotion, the set-up for future ads/promotions should only take you about 10 minutes; figure the first time you go to set one up, it should take you about 30 minutes or so as you fine-tune your message and specifications.

#10 – Facebook is continuously evolving – pay attention!

Facebook is constantly tweaking its platform so you must pay attention to what these changes are, how they may affect your page, and what you may have to do moving forward to optimize your content on the site.  Seconds ago, a simple search for “Facebook changes” pulled up 943 million hits, so you know there is a lot of detail and information in this arena.

Among other tweaks over the past few months, the platform has recreated its mobile platform (again) and changed specifications and capabilities for your cover photos.  At the same time, Facebook announced that it will soon leverage/track hashtags (#PotentialGameChanger).

Hope you enjoyed and consider our recommendations for better using Facebook in your branding and digital marketing efforts.  Let us know if any of these have helped you in the comments below.  If you have other thoughts/recommendations that would help readers optimize their own page, please also feel free to drop them in the comments section as well.

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Sunday Musings w/ Shore Branding – 4-21-13

April 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Sunday Musings 2

Branding and Digital Marketing

We’re back after a week’s hiatus with our ‘Sunday Musings’ – the top five stories in branding and digital marketing from the past week.  As always, you can find the archives of this weekly write-up under the Blog-Sunday Musings tab at the top of the page.

#1 – “9 Ways to Become a Better Facebook Community Manager” – SocialMediaExaminer.com

Premise: If you are looking to open a Facebook Community page or want to strengthen an existing one, SME provides nine easy to employ steps towards optimization.  Your community is a deep extension of your brand, so you’ll want to ensure you follow these steps to engage with your audience.

Thoughts: There are several items in here that may seem like commonsense to some but continue to trip up many.  Particularly of interest and importance was #4 – Know the industry; if you are running someone else’s Facebook Community, you must be engaged in said business or industry.

I am also a firm believer in each of the following; #2 – Have access to visuals, #6 – Answer questions quickly, and #8 – Respond calmly to negative posts.  While not always easy to do, particularly #6 and #8, you must take a step back and remember that your community is an extension of your brand and any trip-ups can have a large, negative influence on you or your brand.

#2 – “Google is testing One Today, an Android app for giving $1 micro-donations to good causes” – TheNextWeb.com  

Premise: Google has launched a new app, One Today, on its Android platform that allows users donate as little as $1 to charities and organizations of their own choice or preference as they are made available on the app.  The app is an extension of Google for Nonprofits.  While access is currently by invitation only, you can download the app in Google Play now and await the email invitation.

Thoughts: I love efforts like this from Google (and others).  As TNW states, while $1 may not seem like much, the ability to share your donation with others helps build word-of-mouth for each respective cause.  While I await the official invitation to join, in looking at screenshots, it seems as if you can donate more than $1 to any particular cause that may be of interest to you. 

#3 – “5 Reasons Why Building Your Online Brand is Vital” – 36Creative.com

Premise: In today’s world, building your brand online isn’t a choice or option, it is a necessity.  This article provides five solid reasons as to why you must build and leverage an online presence.

Thoughts: This felt like a nice summation of why you need to be online in order to build your brand in the 21st century.  It is a concise story that should help convince you and/or others to leverage the internet for your brand/business.  The fifth reason in the article – ‘Learn more about your customers’ – is an item that isn’t taken advantage of enough.  If you aren’t using analytics to better understand your audience, you are setting yourself up for failure.

#4 – “5 Easy Steps To Becoming A Google+ Wizard” – RivalIQ.com  

Premise: While people and brands continue to ignore Google+, the author creates a compelling case as to why this is a mistake.  There are clear benefits to being on Google+ right now – an engaged audience and advantages in SEO.  After this, there are five steps provided on setting up your G+ profile correctly and how to leverage the site appropriately.

Thoughts: When starting Shore Branding a few months ago, it was clear that beyond the web site itself, I was going to set up a Twitter page and a Google+ page; Facebook and Pinterest were added later on after thinking more about each.  Google+ is a tremendous tool to take advantage of for your business.  I completely agree with the two core benefits laid out in this article on why you should leverage G+.  As I have mentioned before, the Communities feature on G+ (the #3 step in this article) is a huge advantage for the platform that should be taken more advantage of by brands/companies.  Overall, this was a strong, in-depth summary of why you need to consider Google+.

#5 – “How Brands Shouldn’t Handle a Tragedy on Social Media” – Frank Eliason on LinkedIn.com

Premise: As you are likely all well aware, this past week presented more tragedy in the world, specifically in Boston and Texas.  While brands will always focus on their business, there always seems to be an outlier that takes things too far on social media.  Where is the line drawn?  This write-up provides a few thoughts, as well as secondary links, to help us remember what the appropriate balance is or should be.

Thoughts: The example provided at the top of this write-up from Epicurious and their tweets from the Boston Marathon makes my blood boil.  Brands and businesses need to draw the line and society really needs to get a grip of themselves sometimes.  Watching this week unfold, particularly on Friday through the news stations on TV and on Twitter, it was amazing to get a glimpse as to how things have changed so dramatically in just the past few years.

Twitter, and links from others on Twitter, provided “better” news than watching MSNBC, CNN, and/or Fox.  (Avoiding all political backlash by checking all three stations Friday; they were equally bad.)  Those stations were literally reading online comments, Twitter feeds, etc.  When they weren’t, they were making a mockery of news reporting.  The means of getting our news has certainly changed with the likes of Twitter and other online sources.  How far will this go and drastic will these changes get remains to be seen.

What caught your eye this week in branding and digital marketing?

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this week’s events.

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Sunday Musings w/ Shore Branding – 3/10/13

March 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Sunday Musings 3

Here is the first ‘Sunday Musings’ since going live with the blog this past week.  You can find past entries under the Blog-Sunday Musings tab at the top of the page.  The top five stories to catch my attention in branding and digital marketing this week are as follows:

#1 – “McDonald’s takes No. 1 spot in 4Q Restaurant Social Media Index” – NRN.com

Premise: McDonald’s overtakes Starbucks as the number one brand in the ‘Restaurant Social Media Index’ (RSMI) in Q4’12.  McDonald’s has seen tremendous growth on Twitter and Facebook in recent months according to the index, particularly in building consumer engagement and sentiment – as tracked by Digital Coco.

Thoughts: McDonald’s surpassed the titan that is Starbucks on social media, building its presence on the most prominent SM sites.  See, you can still win there if you are doing it correctly!  At the time of writing, McDonald’s falls short of the overall number of Followers and Likes on Twitter and Facebook, respectively, but has made the conscious effort to engage its customer base.

While short vs. Starbucks, McDonald’s 27.5 million Likes on Facebook dwarf its direct competitors in fast food; Burger King has 6 million, Taco Bell almost 10 million, and Wendy’s is under 3 million.  While there is certainly a stronger global presence for McDonald’s vs. these competitors, those gaps are outstanding advantages for the golden arches.

It is also important to note that this isn’t a “sound the alarms” for Starbucks and their SM efforts, and the author of the article does a good job of making this point.  In the current world we live in of overreaction to any piece of news, it was nice to see them not take that tone “against” Starbucks and say that they were a diminishing brand on SM.

#2 – “How Starbucks Uses Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+” – Econsultancy.com

Premise: Econsultancy.com has been reviewing various company’s social media efforts and strategy across platforms and took a look at Starbucks this past week.  The author provides a quick overview of Starbucks’ efforts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram and highlights how well received the company is by its “followers” on each.

Thoughts: Reading through the article/review, I started to wonder how or why Starbucks has such a loyal following on SM platforms given the uninspiring review.  However, it clearly works with its fans and has come to be known as a golden star in social media – as mentioned above in the first article as well.

One note: I’ll be covering this in the near future specifically, but I have to mention it here given the content Starbucks puts out across platforms; I cannot stand posts/updates that are pushed out at the same time across SM sites.  Facebook posts that show up in Twitter feeds and vice versa make me cringe.  Take the ten minutes to write a unique message for your followers on each.  

#3 – “SXSWi Day 1: Grumpy Cat, 3D Printing and Other Highlights” – Mashable.com

Premise: The South by Southwest festival kicked off earlier this week and Mashable provides an overview on the highlights from day one.  Successes from SXSW include hubs from Las Vegas, American Airlines’ tent to help promote its merger, and 3D printing.  Cats also stole the show…

Thoughts: Even if Grumpy Cat makes me laugh every time, can we skip any further thoughts on cats?  Good.  I really need to get back to Austin and visit SXSW sooner rather than later.  As SXSW continues to grow, more and more brands are dedicating more resources to sponsorship and events for the festival.

Have you been to SXSW?  If so, what did you think and what were your personal highlights?

#4 – “Pizza Hut To Hold 140-Second Interviews For Social Media Manager Position at SXSW” – Forbes.com 

Premise: Pizza Hut is looking to hire a new Social Media Manager and is going about it in quite the unique way at SXSW.  You can take a look at the job description here as well: BecauseImGreat.com.  The pizza maker is interviewing candidates in record time and will continue to do so via Google+ Hangouts in a few days.  For those interested and on location at SXSW, interviewing is actually happening today at the Austin Hilton between 1pm – 5pm.

Thoughts: In one word: Phenomenal!  Yes, this is another article that points us to SXSW, but this is quite the unique means of trying to find the right person for such an important position in the company.  I have seen several articles and news stories where companies are leveraging G+ Hangouts and Skype to conduct interviews, but have never seen the coordination with Twitter’s mantra (140 characters / seconds).

Good luck to anyone that is reading this and heading over to the Hilton on Sunday.

#5 – “16 Ways Businesses Are Using Twitter Vine” – SocialMediaExaminer.com

Premise: Vine continues to pick up traction with brands and companies finding new ways to leverage the medium.  SME has a few tips and recommendations on what to do, based on what has been seen and shown from both large and small companies over the first few months of Vine’s existence.  Here’s the #1 rule: “Engage your followers in conversation”.

Thoughts: While Vine continues to be an Apple only app (?!?!) it continues to grow.  The power of Twitter speaks volumes here, as competitors to Vine such as Tout do not seem to be growing at the same rate.  SME provides a nice array of tips and recommendations here, as well as examples of what others have been doing with Vine thus far.  It should not be any surprise that the number one rule is “Engage”.  If it is a surprise, we need to talk.

As you can see, a lot of branding news caught my eye this week, particularly at SXSW.  What do you think of Vine and the future of online videos?  As mentioned earlier, I would love to hear more from those that have attended (or are attending) SXSW.

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Poll Question: Which social media sites do you leverage the most?

February 23, 2013 By 1 Comment
Which social media sites do you prefer?

Which social media sites do you prefer?

You have probably noticed the poll on the right sidebar of each page – Which social media sites do you leverage the most?  This poll will be leveraged to kick-off a series of write-ups that Shore Branding will be blogging about over the next few months.  The social media site with the most votes at the end of March ’13 will be the focal point of the first blog entry in the series.  The write-up on said site will consist of recommendations and thoughts on how to best leverage the site for businesses, a “do and don’t” list for your consideration, as well as infographics for the site that have been put together for each.

Over the course of time, each of the social media sites in this poll will become separate blog entries that include similar thoughts and recommendations for users and businesses of each.  Let us know which site you use most frequently and in the comments below and/or let us know what you like most about your selection and what benefits you may have already gained from leveraging the site.  We are interested in hearing what may have worked for you.

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