A one-minute video is a recommended start, and you might find yourself liking that length, viewers do. You’ve got to keep things simple being careful not to over saturate the viewer with too much content. To retain what they are watching, people need “nuggets” if information so they can consume and think about it.

Structure the Video

The structure of your video is like a program at a play with a beginning, middle and an end. If you ramble on and leave people hanging, you’re better off not doing a video. It might make you look bad. Hire a professional copywriter that knows video. It’s worth the effort.

Develop Your Story

With every presentation, try to make it into a story. Give your information purpose for even being put into a video. People follow stories, they like to hear the conclusion, and they like to know you have things well thought out too. Stories that are communicated well can influence others. Use emotion to help stamp the video into the viewers’ mind.

Use Plain Terminology

You may be talking to people that know your industry, but some won’t or may not know what you know. Be inclusive and if you need to use an “industry term,” briefly explain it so you don’t lose anybody. Using BIG words is a great way to get people to NOT watch anymore of your video.

Make Your Video Likable

The human mind likes laughter. Things are remembered more when you are “stirred” in this way. I’m no scientist, but the brain reacts well to humor. But, BE SURE it’s funny. Bad jokes can make you look dumb and drive people away. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Have A Clear Call-To-Action

When you get to the end of your video, you have a unique opportunity. You get to instruct the viewer where they should go next or what they should do next. Flat out tell them what to do. They can:

Go to your site, if they are not already there

Share your video with others

Sign Up for More Informative Videos or a Newsletter

Download an App

Click a Link

Prank call your mother-in-law (just kidding)

Tell your viewer what you want them to do. Make it clear so they are likely to do what you ask of them.
Those are some thoughts in making a great video. But keep in mind there are always variables. That is why a professional copywriter might be needed. He/She can help you mold the “story” to include your variable and it can have a great position within your video.

By Dan Nuckolls
Creative Director at Nuxx Media
www.NuxxMedia.com

I don’t pretend to be a savvy shopper, but when I dive wallet-first into the clearance section at The Gap, I tend to stock up on accessories in my favorite color — black. Why? It’s a universal truth that black goes with everything.

So does branded journalism. In the words of veteran digital content guru Ann Handley, “Content is the new black.”

Handley is right, branded journalism (also known as brand journalism or branded content) has caught on like a wildfire this year. From Tory Burch’s fantastic branded blog to Mint.com’s MintLife section, brands realize the value of consumer-facing content like articles, photos or videos, and are rushing to create some with the company name on it.

Why? For a lot of the reasons we discussed in the first post in this series and mainly because consumers are demanding it. As brands become more accessible to fans through social media, people want more from brands than their products and services. So much so, even Twitter is looking to hire a Head of News. That leads us to branded journalism.

But branded journalism breaks the natural order of business that advertisers, journalists and businesses have subscribed to for decades. This makes some people nervous, traditionalists angry and opportunists jumping on the branded content bandwagon faster than Baltimore fans during the last Super Bowl.

So that leaves the question, if you’re going to start creating content for a brand, be it a local business or a Fortune 500 company, what are the best practices? Better yet, how do you do it ethically?

Try these simple steps for better branded journalism:

1. Build a process

Journalistic content should be more than an article or blog post thrown together quickly. Create an editorial plan, support whatever content you create with strategy, edit it, review it with key company team members and a set time to distribute it via a medium that will reach your intended audience.

2. Share something valuable

Share something that your target market will respond to. For example, Home Depot’s YouTube page features an array of do-it-yourself garden tutorials. Completely different from Red Bull’s adrenalin-pumping YouTube page that offers an array of video features on the brand’s extreme athletes. Both give their fans journalistic content in the same medium, but do it completely different ways to reach separate audiences.

3. Know your boundaries

Producing journalistic content doesn’t equate to producing a Pulitzer winning news article, so stick to your industry and the topics surrounding it. Create content targeted at a company’s audience, on subjects related to your company’s industry. Find creative ways to make content relevant to trends and new stories without reporting the news.

4. Stick to the facts and cite your sources

People want transparency from their favorite brands. Always support your content with facts from experts and credible sources. Back up your claims with research, data or testimonials from credible experts that you mention by name.

5. Strike a balance

Don’t use branded journalism as an opportunity to knock a competitor’s product or service, use it as an opportunity to share valuable content. If needed, acknowledge competitors professionally when it’s appropriate. Focus instead on sharing real insight about a subject consumers are interested in.

6. List a byline

If possible, list the author or producer of a branded journalism piece. This gives your work credibility and gives audience members a face representing the brand to connect with. Melissa Lafsky Wall left her job at USA Today to head up content production at dating site How About We, where every article or column in the site’s Date Report section is credited with a byline.

7. Track results

Producing branded journalism is useless if it doesn’t reach the correct audience to support business goals. Use analytics to track your results and SEO to shape the strategy behind your content. This ensures that you don’t just produce quality branded journalism; you produce branded content that gets results.

*as posted by Sarah Giarratana on IQ's blog

In the pre-digital days there really wasn’t a need for brands to produce more than the ads that went on traditional media. Now they need to produce an almost constant stream of fresh content to keep up with digital channels and social media. For most companies it’s a pretty tall order because making content is a completely different business from what they know. And it gets even harder when so much of the content that they now need is video.

Since cheap bandwidth has made high-quality video so easy to get, people want more and more of it. Projections have video representing over 85% of all Internet traffic in a couple of years. So brands need to make lots of videos. The problem, of course, is not just the quantity, but how does a brand make videos that are good enough to stand out? While cameras and equipment are cheap and easy to get, creativity and know-how are still in short supply. Of course, what makes a video good is in the eye of the beholder, but most of us know bad video when we see it, and the last thing any brand needs is to be spreading bad videos.

So the challenge is for companies to put in place the capability to produce lots of “good” videos, consistently over time. The problem is that because the budgets are much smaller, it’s not like producing TV commercials, which brands have a lot of experience with. According to the 4A’s, the average cost to make a TV spot is over $300,000 -- but for video content, that may be your entire budget for the year.

The big question is -- do you try and do it in-house or hire pros? While you may need a lot of videos, you may not need enough to justify the large expense of hiring a full-time team. So another approach is to hire an in-house video producer whose job it is to put together freelance teams for each production. This is not a creative person, but a video project manager, and you still need to be doing enough work to justify a full-time person.

For most brands the answer is to hire pros. The advantage, of course, is the wide range of talent and capabilities you can access. The problem is how to keep the costs down. Most agencies focus on developing the creative, and then hire a production company for the execution. As a result, the costs mount quickly. Some TV production companies do creative, but their focus is really on the production and they are rarely able to develop the creative or the strategy for the video, which is critical. So that leaves companies and agencies that specialize in video content for digital channels.

The ideal is to have digital content strategy, plus creative, plus production under one roof. A company that can do all of that -- and that is set up to produce a lot of video content over time, cost-effectively -- has found the perfect solution. Of course, the videos still have to be good in the eye of the beholder, which to start with would be you.

Click to view on SlideShare

Follow IQ on Twitter: @IQ_Agency

*As posted by Sarah Giarratana on IQ's blog

As a growing copywriter with a print journalism background, I love the idea of “branded journalism.” Editorial content written for brands, targeted at consumers, supported by analytics, published in digital spaces, that raises a big middle finger to the rule that advertising and journalism can never mix? Sounds good to me.

For brands, the need for journalistic content stems from growing branded communities in social spaces. As brands and consumers engage in more personal conversations via social, consumers simply demand more from them.

More than ever, consumers want brands to give them things of value outside of their products or services. A sense of community that includes transparency, responsiveness and quality branded content. That’s where brand journalists and copywriters come in.

Last week, I stumbled on the work of Kevin Maney, a veteran USA Today reporter who turned his attention to advertising after two decades of writing and reporting as a journalist.

After a successful reporting career, Maney made an interesting move. He started working with big brands like IBM to create journalistic content.

Maney co-authored a book in conjunction with IBM, but branded journalism can include works of art, articles, blog posts, books, photos or videos produced by a brand to reach an identifiable market.

Couple creating content with the market downturn, and many wannabe journalists and former reporters are turning to jobs in advertising, marketing and digital. Many seek jobs that offer more security but still challenge them to use skills from writing in the newsroom like critical thinking, deadline management and creativity.

According to Robert McChesney, co-author of Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It, public relations professionals now outnumber reporters 4-to-1. With print journalism seeing a continual decline in revenue, it isn’t surprising that some journalists are now writing for brands. Market aside however, branded journalism still causes some debate.

Critics fear that branded journalism might fully eclipse traditional journalism. Will the news report about a damaging tornado suddenly be sponsored by a home insurance company? I highly doubt it. The audience would be too quick to call a news organization on it, like they did with The Atlantic’s big advertorial fail in January.

The Atlantic fiasco highlights that we’re working in a time where the line between advertising and journalism is blurrier than ever. Marketing, digital and journalism just came crashing together, giving us a choice. We can either sit here staring or use this opportunity to create new, innovative content that people will respond to.

By we, I mean brands or agencies working on behalf of brands. New organizations don’t have the freedom to pepper advertising content in their editorial work, but ad professionals now have the unique opportunity to produce journalistic content. If done right in digital spaces, that journalistic content will likely produce results.

The key lies in planning responsibly. Branded journalism needs to be intentional, driven by strategy as much as it is by good writing. It must be targeted and audience-specific and not overstep it’s bounds. Producing journalistic content doesn’t equate to producing a Pulitzer winning news article, so brands shouldn’t try to.

How each company executes branded journalism will vary, but hopefully by the end of the year we will see more fact-based, journalistic content reaching consumers and generating revenue.

To track branded journalism, its growth and the debate surrounding it, a good place to start is Maney’s blog. Ignore the clunky WordPress theme and focus on the journalistic content. After all, content is becoming very valuable.

TopTen is the ten most engaging posts last week from the largest 100 consumer brand pages on Facebook.
All data is gathered with social media content strategy tool Zuum.

#1 Chick-fil-A - photo2013-03-14 19:01

Happy 92nd birthday to Chick-fil-A Founder, Truett Cathy! Click "Like" to share your birthday wishes.

4.09% enagement rate 257,119 likes 8,582 comments 6,684 shares 2% shares

#2 BMW - photo2013-03-14 18:01

BMW Instagram

Thank you all for liking, sharing and commenting on the photos we post here on Facebook. If you want to see more of them, follow @BMW on Instagram: http://instagram.com/bmw

3.136% enagement rate 345,230 likes 5,258 comments 54,857 shares 14% shares

#3 CHANEL - video2013-03-13 17:10

The fashion essential that never goes out of style… a new film revealing the story behind the iconic CHANEL jacket. http://inside-chanel.com

The jacket - Inside CHANEL

www.youtube.com

3.027% enagement rate 248,268 likes 3,603 comments 12,628 shares 5% shares

#4 Macy's - photo2013-03-14 21:03

What’s topping VIP shopping lists everywhere? Designer shoes in every heel, size & color! http://bit.ly/WaVUFu

1.178% enagement rate 119,894 likes 1,529 comments 4,940 shares 4% shares

#5 Nokia - photo2013-03-11 17:10

Want Instagram for Nokia Lumia? Join the movement: http://nokia.ly/Zw5Tmv #2InstaWithLove

1.072% enagement rate 99,321 likes 3,302 comments 3,501 shares 3% shares

#6 Mercedes-Benz - photo2013-03-17 12:55

We present our latest selection of the most beloved pictures on our Instagram channel. Don't forget to follow us onhttp://instagram.com/mercedesbenz

The roar of the engine - Best of Instagram

We present our latest selection of the most beloved pictures on our Instagram channel. Don't forget to follow us onhttp://instagram.com/mercedesbenz

0.843% enagement rate 73,486 likes 774 comments 8,399 shares 10% shares

#7 Hello Kitty - photo2013-03-14 19:40

Tea time is so much fun with Hello Kitty! Find sweet porcelain mugs and plates now at Sanrio.com: http://ar.gy/3j_0

New Photos

0.613% enagement rate 67,385 likes 965 comments 8,978 shares 12% shares

#8 Amazon.com - status2013-03-11 02:00

Who would like that hour back?

0.529% enagement rate 87,486 likes 3,028 comments 573 shares 1% shares

#9 Gucci - photo2013-03-13 16:10

Black? Green? Yellow? Discover which Gucci 1953 Horsebit Loafer suits your style best. http://bddy.me/12H9T8H

0.41% enagement rate 37,586 likes 1,447 comments 3,409 shares 8% shares

#10 Ferrari - photo2013-03-11 16:59

You've seen it in Rosso Corsa and Nero liveries. Now the new special limited series car can be admired in Giallo Modena. To discover the avilable configurations pease click here: http://www.laferrari.com/en/design/

0.381% enagement rate 35,680 likes 527 comments 5,375 shares 13% shares

The kindergartners began building immediately. They adjusted what failed and capitalized on what worked. Working iteratively, their innovative results were a success because they spent less time thinking and more time doing. The MBA grads spent too much time planning. By the time they began construction they had no practical experience and their structures suffered.

Similarly, when tasking agencies to develop concepts, the client’s approach is to identify the single best solution before pulling the trigger on a given project. And in this business, it is only natural for clients to want more ideas, faster and for less money. More often, the turnaround for concepts is now days, not weeks. This leaves agencies little time to think. There is no time for strategy development, thorough research or well-planned mock-ups. This, coupled with the client’s urgency to get to the big idea, generates conflict.

How can we present the very best concept to our clients without time to vet or detail our ideas? How can we expect clients to make informed decisions when they do not have enough information? Under this scenario, agencies often revise a concept repeatedly without any results or fail to move on to develop different ones. A lot of wheels are spinning, but little to no distance is travelled.

How can we improve the process? How can we quickly get a few people in a room and paint the walls with actionable material that gets productive feedback from clients? Simple: stop thinking so much.

Agencies can be more effective if we stop falling into the details of a concept before taking steps towards developing against them. To do this in a digital agency, Creative Technologists are key. Brainstorms must include a well-rounded technologist who, along with a designer, can grasp a concept quickly and then break off to work on a proof of concept while the full conceptual 360 is finalized in the brainstorm room. Working in this parallel path, the lessons learned during the rapid prototyping of these POC’s will remove variables and provide more data around the concepts giving clients something “tangible” to review and make more informed decisions on with these tight turnarounds.

There are several tools currently available that can assist us in the rapid prototyping POC’s for digital executions. Tools like Foundation and Coda can help to quickly pull together functioning elements towards a proof of concept that a client can then react to. And since these prototyping tools utilize code that is often proven and solid, the initial concept work can be used in the finished product. Perhaps even more significant is that using tools like these will free up time to allow our developers to put creative energies towards new innovative solutions on each project.

When we were kindergartners, we learned from our mistakes and took those lessons with us. Now we try to avoid mistakes at a high, and often unperceived, cost. If we can apply the lessons of the marshmallow challenge to our own concept development, what we end up building might not be polished, but its foundation will be stronger, and the idea will stand taller. The old adage, “Work smarter, not harder” never mentions thinking. Next time you are asked to bring some ideas to the table, channel your inner child. Think less and do more.

How? First let's talk about those dreamy, mythical deadlines that are weeks or even months away. Besides the natural tendency to procrastinate, the tendency to over analyze becomes the greater issue. The more time you have, the more you second guess what you're doing or the less willing you are to commit to a direction until you feel it is the ultimate solution. Or something could be great at first, but because you have all the time in the world you don't know when to say when. You keep building up and tearing down until you're left with something average or safe, not realizing that brilliance was staring you in the face days ago.

When you have a tight deadline, you're forced to immediately focus on the ask and quickly come up with an efficient game plan. Once the essence of the brief is understood, you go to some of your favorite digital or traditional resources for some quick industry research. Next, you sketch or write out a few simple concepts on paper, and because of time you rely on your instincts to quickly select the best concept and flesh it out. I'm willing to bet more times than not, by following this approach, most creatives are pretty impressed with the results in these seemingly less ideal circumstances.

So is that it? Not exactly. Once you think you've mastered the above process, you're really only halfway great. The truly talented are "always on" or seem to rarely run into that creative wall that stops many in their tracks.

The real trick, is knowing what it takes to keep you going or how to quickly get going when the ideas start to fall flat. Of course there are many ways to do this, and every creative has their preference, but usually I find it comes down to four. I polled our own creative team to see what approaches would bubble to the top.

Reset Yourself - whatever it takes to clear the mind
Get away from the screen. Temporarily move your workspace to a different area of the office. Take a long walk for coffee or lunch. Cake or cookie break at Jupiter. Draw. Have a music discussion with a colleague. Catch up on Facebook or Twitter. The Daily Show. Take a nap. mostawesomestthingever.com

Get Inspired - where you can find the latest and greatest
thecssawards.com, mashable.com, digitalbuzzblog.com, contagiousfeed.com, creativity-online.com, ffffound.com, mcsweeneys.net, thefwa.com, smashingmagazine.com, designspongeonline.com, designobserver.com, wemadethis.co.uk/blog, motionographer.com, designcharts.com, notcot.org, various specialty tumbler sites, fashion blogs, twitter trends.

Plan Your Attack - steps that always deliver
Put down the mouse and actually sketch or write your thoughts down on paper--know what you want to create before jumping into Photoshop or Word. Surf the web, research, look at the competition. Synthesize the creative brief down to the main ask--what will define success? Sum up the concept into a headline. Can you sell it in 140 characters? If not, move on.

Your Creative Window - knowing when you're at your best
Early mornings rule. The am is usually quiet with little or no distractions--take advantage of a fresh, well-rested mind. Late night grinds are rarely as fruitful.
Obviously there are some situations where a short turnaround just doesn't work, no matter how prepared you are. When you're dealing with a multi tiered social campaign with dozens of extensions and activations or a massive site redesign with endless layers of functionality and business requirements, the last thing you want is to be in a situation that forces you to compromise. There will always be projects that require a thorough development cycle with multiple checkpoints and milestones across every discipline.

At the end of the day, most creatives really have mixed emotions when it comes to having to deliver at the eleventh hour. Even if they seem to knock it out of the park every time. They love the challenge and satisfaction that comes with solving the impossible, but hate all the pressures, chaos, and emotions that come with it.

Do tight deadlines really equate to better work? Maybe not. But there's something to be said about the raw, streamlined process it forces us to switch into.

Image via Wikipedia

This is part 2 of a limited series on why buyer choice modeling is the new view B2B Business must adopt to improve revenue performance and develop long lasting relationships with buyers.

Growth is getting harder and harder to come by. With this comes the realization that some of the embedded thinking about how to reach and market to buyers are not working well. In part 1 of this series we looked at how the funnel is facing a slow death and the limitations of so called funnel thinking. We are entering a new era of the buyer. Buyer behaviors are shifting yet we know only a fraction about this shift. One emerging insight is that of buyer choice. Simply stated, buyers are making multiple choices prior to as well as well after buying decisions.

Buyers Have Many Options. The floodgates have opened on channels, social media, old media, the Internet, and countless other ways to interact, explore, retrieve, and digest information in this new era of the buyer. With countless options available, buyers are making choices on where to start their exploring.

The Buyer At The Center Of Strategy, Marketing, And Sales. Conventional funnel thinking has a hard time doing this. A better way of stating this is that conventional strategy, marketing, and sales decisions are funneled through an old paradigm of the buyer where marketing and sales held the information cards – cards used to target, sell, and persuade buyers. Today, buyers make the choice on which information cards they decide to deal. B2B leaders today must find ways to focus strategy on the buyer, the choices they make, and the experiences they have with their organizations.

Experience Determines Choice. A while back, I made a choice to attend a Broadway musical – of which I am a big fan. The pre-show experience and excitement was plenty of fun with a great dinner in New York. The musical started and about 20 minutes into the musical the dread began to overcome me. I knew this musical production was going to be – dreadful. We made the choice to leave at intermission and the choice didn’t ruin the entire experience of the evening but it sure changed it. We chose to find a jazz club and had a great time which meant cancelling out the plans we had after the show. Buyers today are taking experience cues well before the buyer decision journey and well after. The buyer experience cues they take-in alter their thinking about the choices they make. And they could be choices about whether to continue having an experience with your organizations – or – find another.

© All rights Reserved Buyerology

Buyer choice anchors five choice elements that can be thought of as continuously orbiting buyers today. A fundamental shift is happening here. In the conventional DNA of funnel thinking, we are accustomed to thinking that involves phases or steps. One phase ends and another phase begin. What I propose is something we can call the Buyer Orbit. This is meant to shift the thinking towards recognizing that buyers are continuously addressing goals, challenges, issues, uncertainty, and growth that are in a continuous orbital loop. This applies to buyer choice:

© All Rights Reserved Buyerology

Explore. As mentioned in part 1, funnel thinking usually started with attempts to make buyers aware of a product or solution. It is still rooted in the thinking of flashing attention-getting means before buyer’s eyes as well as push messaging outwards in the hopes of making buyers aware. Today, buyers are mapping out deliberate exploration prompted by the orbital loop of the goals and etc. that orbit them. Confronted with many choices, buyers are taking time to map out where to explore, how to explore, and etc.

Network. As buyers make progression towards less of a single buyer model to that of a world that includes ecosystems and open networks, buyers are making choices to interact with networks and different ecosystem players to collaborate on addressing the issues orbiting them.

Decide. The way buyers decide today is becoming increasingly complex. Choices are being made on such things as the rules for deciding, who is included, checking dependencies, and assessing impact. Buyers today no longer make decisions in a vacuum.

Buy. The actual buy choice has become a higher stakes game in the B2B world. Not only are the rules for deciding more complex, but there are more dependencies related to buying and potential impact as well. The experience element here is now more critical than ever because of the high stakes. Making the wrong choice, for example, on a software platform designed to measure quality of manufactured parts could have drastic affects downstream with OEMs and distribution.

Relate. The word – relate - has more applicability in a B2B context than say engage for example. The higher stakes involved means buyers needs an organization that can relate to the high stakes and a relational bond is being formed. In the example mentioned above, there may be many discussions before and after the buy choice to ensure that the software platform meets an intended goal. The ability for B2B companies to provide relational choices and experiences becomes an important factor. Does the company provide relational choices whether they are face-to-face, telephone, or complex networking technology that involves exchanging design ideas and specifications?

The new era of the buyer is resulting in a paradigm shift on what is required thinking about the buyer today. Letting go of funnel thinking is no easy task – especially when you strip away the hyperbole and promotion that can surround strategy, it is still very much about the funnel. Buyers today have many elements related to growth, goals, and uncertainty orbiting their world. Making choices as this orbital loop continuously impacts their world is changing the very nature of buyer behavior today. These changes are rocket propelled by a new world of hyper-connectivity and hyper-competition.

Next up: The Buyerology of the Buyer

Follow @TonyZambito

Related articles

• Slow Death of the Funnel: Why Buyer Choice Matters to Revenue (buyerology.com)
• How B2B Leaders Are Understanding Buyers Better With Behavioral Buyergraphics (buyerology.com)
• Boost Demand Generation Using Target Ready Buyer Models (buyerology.com)
• Buyerology: The New Science of Understanding Buyer Behavior (buyerology.com)
• Predictive Buyer Modeling Is Changing the Future of B2B (buyerology.com)
• 5 Ways New Buyer Behaviors Are Impacting B2B Sales (buyerology.com)
• The Single Buyer Model: A Dangerous Road Towards Competitive B2B Marketing (buyerology.com)

If there is one word to describe me, it’s obsessive. Give me a lemon; I will make lemonade, lemon cookies, and lemon cake! So when a friend told me about Pinterest, I immediately became consumed. The plethora of visual stimuli became a realization of all things I love. If you have not discovered the amusingness of Pinterest, I highly suggest you browse.

Pinterest is a social media community to share collections of things you love. It has become a mix of Twitter, Facebook, and blog sites with its ability to follow fellow Pinterest owners, its connect ability, and the capacity to share what you like with others. What makes Pinterest different than Facebook and Twitter is that it is all via visual dialogue. There aren’t any personal pictures of you and your friends, or a written update of what you did today, but rather organized pictures using a scrapbook approach.

For those crafty individuals, Pinterest is THE place. All of the DIY craft ideas and recipes options, just to name a few, makes sharing ideas easy. It is like creating one big scrapbook and having the ability to share your interests with others. Pinterest is a way of feeding off other’s ideas, which leads to becoming more creative. Pinterest does a great job with its capturing layout. It is overwhelming at first, but then it becomes visually stimulating, and that is when it becomes engaging and eventually addicting.

Advertisers and the media gain their consumers first and foremost through a visual connection. Pinterest has successfully immersed their visual consumers by having all pages organized through images. The ability to “repin” and “like” gives brands free traffic and free advertising via the Pinterest community. The everyday consumer likes things to be easy and accessible, that is what makes Pinterest so appealing.  The photo board aspect of this site gains visual attraction instead of having to read status updates or blog posts. Even when you pin a certain picture to your photo board, it will display who originally pinned it and what site it was pinned from, again, giving you free traffic and advertisement. What a perfect way to advertise than through pictures themselves. Who thought it would be that simple to obtain someone’s attention and become so thoroughly engaged?

I think Pinterest is the most creative social media development we have seen so far and I am sure that it is just the beginning of what’s to come. It is a great medium for creative individuals especially in this day and age of DIY projects and trying things on a budget. Pinterest creates a community of sharing easy and affordable ideas through a series of pictures.  Therefore, a lot of us crafty folks are intrigued by the infinite new ideas. It’s like having one website full of a million new ideas. One can learn from this conventional idea that everyone likes visual dialogue, and I don’t think I am far off for assuming that more consumers are visual learners.

I have officially given in and succumbed to the popularity of Pinterest. Therefore, my thoughts are bias, but if you are a fellow Pinterest lover, you have no choice but to agree.

The actual responsibilities of a social media department vary from agency to agency, but when that department becomes an integrated part of the internal agency structure, the benefits will be felt across all departments. So why should a social media department be more integrated?

CHANGE: Given the inherent need to innovate quickly, agencies need to adapt just as fast. With Facebook’s “fail fast” mentality, there are no guarantees about what will stick and what will fall to the wayside. In addition to platform changes, there are user changes with new sites and habits, and naturally, it becomes difficult for any agency to stay 100% on top of all emerging trends and changes. A social department that is linked into insider knowledge of these rapid and frequent changes and social trends provides a competitive edge for an agency. Take the recent Timeline and Graph Object changes that were just put in place. Without staying ahead of the curve and being able to anticipate these platform iterations, media and creative opportunities would have been missed.

EDUCATION: About 40% of our job is educating our clients, creatives and other agency employees about new technologies, platforms and APIs. We’ve learned that over-education is key for all facets of the business, so that everyone understands 1) what success in the social space looks like and 2) the necessity for a long-term, integrated strategy that accommodates for earned, owned and paid media rather than a quick win.

CHALLENGING IDEAS: The second a team becomes complacent, “group think” tends to take control and everyone becomes a lemming. A diverse team, with creative, media and social media department members ideating collaboratively, brings differing opinions that challenge ideas and strategies, making executions unique and disruptive in what is becoming a highly homogeneous and saturated market. Whether it’s someone calling Pinterest the “equivalent to tinsel on a Christmas tree because it gets more and more lame as time wears on,” or even our core strategies, without disruption and disagreement there is no progress or evolution to be had.

COHESIVE IDEATION: With the proliferation of social elements across all media channels, social media teams, more than ever, need to work directly with brand planners, creatives and developers. They help identify APIs, platform priorities and KPIs so that when it comes time to ideate a creative execution, a social layer can be accommodated for, regardless of which medium the idea will live in. This proliferation is reliant on a cohesive solution to a brand problem that can also live in different spaces like TV AND Facebook. It takes working very closely as an integrated team to bring an idea to life, engineered to create the largest digital WOM footprint possible.

BRAND CONSISTENCY: Social media allows a brand to cultivate a genuine online persona, personifying the brand in a way that no other medium can. The social media department helps to create cohesive social executions by ensuring that the brand personality is consistent across all channels. There’s nothing worse than reading a Facebook update from a brand and having that tone not accurately reflect the brand voice. This discrepancy usually happens when brands outsource their social copywriting.

DATA: As social marketers, we have a treasure trove of data available to us—it’s essentially the closest marketers can get to consumers, short of jumping into our consumers’ heads. But once again, data (no matter how much of it) is useless unless it is contextualized to bring actionable insights to all aspects of a marketing endeavor. When social insights can be shared with all departments in an agency, true marketing kismet materializes: brand planners can better position the brief, media planners can make more accurate buys based on the target, copywriters can be informed on what taglines perform best, and brand insights that no one ever thought possible begin to arise. Altogether creating a campaign that is not only efficient but also sure to truly resonate with the audience that should matter the most to a brand—its fans.

Tweet me @christuff.

So many companies have developed sophisticated technology to automate campaign performance.  The problem is that no matter how good your technology, you still need statistical relevance to make decisions.  Statistical relevance requires volume, and volume costs money.  Asking an advertiser to spend a lot of money to “see” if something works is just not a proposition that goes over well.  On the other side, companies that take display deals on a CPA basis have to decide how much to spend to find that sweet spot.

That’s where the art comes in.  If technology can rapidly adjust your landscape and offer visibility, the human mind can determine how to jump to the next level without wasting a lot of money.  Sites, creative, frequency capping—all levers that can be played with to find that balance of volume and performance.

There are so many variables that it becomes a tangled web.  Take the “transition impression” concept.  When you first enter a site, you have yet to engage in the content, which means that an ad has a much better chance of making an impact on you.  Once you have engaged with the site, you are less likely to be distracted by extraneous content, such as advertising.

The analogy we use here at Underdog Media is one about driving a car. Consider these two scenarios: making a turn vs. driving straight ahead.  If you are making a turn, you are very engaged in your surroundings and more likely to notice things, like a pedestrian, that might effect your actions.  While driving straight, you are less likely to notice things going on around you.

Optimization is art and science.  Transition impressions—and their impact on performance—are just one example of the multitude of variables that must be considered to maximize ROI.

This is true in mobile as well. Brands and agencies often come up with innovative ideas and unique campaign goals, and it is a major focus for us to create unique tools that will help them achieve these goals without jumping through hoops or waiting months to execute.

Mobile is a unique marketing channel, and advertisers can hit certain campaign objectives that simply aren’t possible in any other medium (i.e. Reaching an auto intender while they are on the lot!). Once a brand has determined campaign objectives though—it’s time to execute. Whether it’s an expandable banner—or a “next generation ad,” like a fully branded interactive game—building mobile creative shouldn’t be thought of as a constraint to achieving results. Brands should find the process that works best for them, and in most cases, it will be the one that allows them to execute efficiently and effectively.

Ad of the Day: Cycle Safety | Adweek

While i don’t usually post broadcast ads, I am a cyclist, and the visual effects on this are striking.

TRUE STORY: Facebook Is Keeping My Brother Alive

I’ve seen posts talking about the problem of leaving a deceased person’s Facebook page active. This is a compelling argument for the opposite approach. Keeping their page alive, even if they’re not.

Why iPads are a retail game-changer – USATODAY.com

Some good data in this story about a recent Forrester study. Bottom line is while tablets are often lumped into mobile, we’re seeing more and more evidence that tablets are a more distinct screen experience.

DIGIDAY: 5 Niche Social Nets That Work

While the big social networks pull all the buzz, if your target audience is niche enough, you might find social networks like these to reach them through.

Don’t Be a Content Marketing Grinch – Convince & Convert

I couldn’t agree more with these fundamental ideas behind distributing content wherever you can find relevant readers.

How YouTube Wins in the Great Unbundling of Cable TV | Advertising Age

A good read on where the future of television and video content is headed.

AppGrooves: App Recommendation Engine Combines Social With “Hot Or Not” Feature | TechCrunch

It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges in app production is getting noticed in the app store. This is an interesting app idea — to help you discover the most relevant apps — but there’s still a chicken and the egg situation. How will people discover this app?

Video Marketer’s Guide to YouTube Annotations & Why You Should Use Them

Video is still proving to be some of the most effective content you can produce, and these tips will help you make your videos on YouTube even more effective.

Disney Marketing: The Happiest Social Media Strategy on Earth

This article is a great example of how content is different from advertising. If you want to drive engagement, you might still need to be selling, but you’re selling in a less-direct way.

Is Social Media Taking Over Search: SlideShare Presentation

While this gets into some higher levels than non-search people may be able track, the upshot is, if you want to improve your seo standings today and even moreso in the future, get people to share your content.

Building the Agency of Now « Threeminds

Love this voice-of-reason POV on the industry.

The Top 10 Marketing Sites For Social Media Marketing Trends | Fast Company

According to a recent survey by Effie and Mashable, 87% of marketers said social media was “important” or “very important” to achieving their biggest marketing goal this year. So we know social is a key marketing activity for many leading brands. So where are marketers getting their social media information? From this survey, it’s not primarily the traditional advertising publishers, although a few of them did make the list.

Report: Amazon To Use Two-Finger Touchscreen To Keep Table Competitive With The iPad | TechCrunch

The battle to grab market share from Apple, be it from the iPad or iPhone, is going to be an interesting story over the next couple of years, and should offer interesting insights into the power of a brand versus a low price competitor.

Milk Campaign Withdrawn Amid Charges of Sexism – NYTimes.com

Perhaps the most interesting comment is the last line. A seasoned ad exec surprised but the uproar speaks to how much has changed since 2005. That rate of change doesn’t happen in other media platforms.

Judge dismisses Winklevoss case against Facebook – latimes.com

Read the comments on this article. Another example of how the public can be a brand’s best spokesperson.

Sidestepping Apple: From Amazon to Condé Nast, Companies Rethink App Strategies | Wired.com

Even brands as powerful as Apple can only push their will on developers and partners so far. Eventually, they’ll just go somewhere else.

Microsoft Apologizes for Amy Winehouse Tweet

While I can see the protesters points, this is a pretty blurry line. Magazines have always written cover story articles about dead celebrities, and obviously they’re trying to sell magazines. Of all these examples of companies who combined tribute with commerce, the Amazon example is probably the most sincere, and seems to have ruffled the fewest feathers.

15 Creative QR Codes [PICS]

I’m still not convinced QR codes are ready for prime time just yet, but if you’re going to do them, these examples of creative looking QR code designs would be a great start. At least these make me want to use them.

Social Media Platform For Hotels Offers Web Site Visitors Incentives

There’s been a lot of talk of loyalty programs of recent, and the merger between that and social media is obvious. Hospitality businesses are well-suited candidates for this type of program, and this is one of the offerings in the hotel business.

How Blogging Can Get You More Social Fundraisers | Inspiring Generosity

I think this goes way deeper than just non-profits. Blogging can create perceived value and expertise for a brand, even if it’s primarily for search and inbound traffic.

100 YouTube Videos Come Together To Cover Led Zeppelin [VIDEO]

More than anything, I think this shows how something as seemingly simple as video sharing has impacted so many people in so many situations and environments, and draws a common thread across all of them.

This iPhone Survived a 13,500-Foot Fall

A great brand story, irregardless of what a freak event this may have been.

Track that bias: New app visualizes cable news topics live — Online Video News

The first 2 paragraphs of this are all you need to read to get a nice sense of how text analysis can be used to add depth and perspective to a batch of data difficult to otherwise get a good grasp of.

How Bing’s Editors Choose Sexy Images To Seduce You Away From Google | Fast Company

A battle of the page design strategies between Microsoft (Bing) and Google. While Bing has supported their page launch with a significant paid media effort, I can see how this more emotional greeting is a great shot at Google’s supposed strength; simplicity. It’s like the political debate strategy of attacking, not your opponents weaknesses, but their strengths.

AmEx Links Up Facebook With Coupon-less Deals, And Lets Merchants Go Social | TechCrunch

I really like how AmEx understands their value in this corner of the market — creating a coupon experience with less friction for the end consumer. The less behavior changing you have to do, the better.

Why are web workers happier? — Online Collaboration

Agencies often struggle with the idea of an out-of-sight workforce. This is an interesting counter to that.

Game Insight Shuns iOS for Android, Prepares to Tell Facebook Crime Story

If you were a Mac user in the 90s, you have to remember how slowly, developers started investing less and less effort in their Mac apps, relative to the PC versions. Android is looking more and more like the new Windows. Better? No. But cheaper, more widely available, and thus gaining a larger customer base? Yes.

Facebook Asks Users to Help It Get Local Business Owners to Claim Their Places

Using their community to build their database of businesses. Smart move.

REPORT: How Google Plus Stacks Up Against Facebook

Given Google’s lofty brand status and massive reach in the technology world, I’m not surprised to see them come out of the blocks this strong. I don’t think 10% of Facebook’s US traffic is really the traction point for them. But the next few months could be very interesting.

New Filing Shows Zynga-Facebook Exclusivity Goes Far Beyond Credits – Liz Gannes – News – AllThingsD

A revealing, if not interesting, exploration of the relationship between these two. Facebook clearly has little to lose in this deal, and it shows Zynga’s heavy reliance on Facebook for the success of it’s platform. Like all the brand pages themselves, Facebook has put themselves in a position where they’re the only game in town, and if it weren’t for Facebook, the reality is, companies like Zynga would likely be a shell of their current selves.

Needless to say there are a lot of women offended, calling the ads "sexist," and "lazy marketing." As we all know, a little controversy never hurt. This is the first time I have even thought about a milk ad since their famous "Got Milk?" campaigns of the 90s (I always thought those mustaches were a little gross). Now while some will of course be offended, others will think these ads are all in good fun. Humor is always in the eye of the beholder. Take a look at the AdFreak article that doesn't quite see it as mildly as I do. And I would love to see your opinions in the comments below!

New Apps for iPhone & Android, June 2011

What RWW selected as the best of the new mobile apps to hit the market in June. A good, quick, scan.

Op-Art: Like it or Unfriend It – Graphic – NYTimes.com

Loved this Independence Day piece in the NY Times. Probably an effective history lesson for teens, as well.

iPads Generate 1% Of the World’s Web Traffic [STATS]

Given that iPad sales are ‘only’ 25m to date, this is remarkable. Then again, if you have you, you probably realize how much leisure browsing you do. Or maybe you don’t, because it happens so naturally. This really drives home the prediction that tablets will be our main form of consumption, and that desktops and even laptops will become relegated to the routine and power-hungry tasks.

EXCLUSIVE: Google To Retire Blogger & Picasa Brands in Google+ Push

Interesting to see how Google is ramping up their social efforts around +. Unlike so many of their previous product launches (ahem, Wave) where it felt like they were casually tossing a new product into the ring, you can tell they know they’re at a key crossroads, and don’t have a lot of margin for error this time around.

How a Google-Hulu Tag Team Threatens Facebook’s Future – Technology – The Atlantic Wire

More pieces that are seeming to fall into place around Google’s social push.

Twitter Testing Facebook-Like Message Wall [PIC]

If anything, Twitter has proven that just because you have a simple product doesn’t mean you have a simple user experience. What I find more interesting, though, is that Twitter has been blatantly positioning itself as a content consumption platform, but this is a strong move towards user-interactions. Perhaps they’ve realized that the key to the future of content consumption also involves a large sharing component.

Where in the World Are Google Plus Beta Testers? [Map]

If you’re launching a social product, what regions of the world do you need input from? Here’s Google’s answer.

Experiments on Google+ and Twitter Influencing Search Rankings | SEOmoz

A case study on how different social media channels impact search rankings. The SEO Pyramid at the bottom of the article is worth the entire read.

Beck’s Goes Virtual in ‘Green Box’ Art Campaign | CMO Interviews – Advertising Age

An interesting campaign, assuming the artwork revealed is good. My only question is, downloading an app often requires WiFi, so hopefully that’s something they’ve thought out. Perhaps most interesting is where the Beck’s global marketing manager states that they are leading with experiential and supporting that with paid media. That approach has been a long time coming.

Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops | Magazine

Interesting case studies on the challenge of trying to change behavior. The key takeaway for me is that when you make people part of the process, it greatly improves the long term results.

The premise of these sentiments is that the hole in the page is responsible for the success of the campaign. However, there is a much more obvious difference-maker. It's the creative.

Yes, there are wonderful placements (big, above the scroll, on pages with high natural time spent, closely aligned with audience passions) and crappy placements (tiny buttons, below the scroll, invisible). But a piece of inventory never created an emotion. It is the creative that either earns attention or doesn't, moves people to action or leaves them cold. An ad with a compelling message will do better than a coupon to sample Soot Cola in the same placement. Late last year, comScore released a finding that the creative is 4x more responsible for the success of a campaign than the media plan.

Media agencies hate hearing that. They are often so far away from the creative idea, and so often blamed by the creative agency when the idea turns out not to be so great and the campaign flat-lines, so it's understandable if they feel that this finding dis-empowers their expertise and undermines their value in the advertising ecosystem.

The truth is that media agencies have a valuable role to play -- if they are genuinely allowed to play it and not consigned to simply buying audience as cheaply as possible. For one thing, the creative is no longer the only "Big Idea" that matters. In fact, the only real big ideas cross disciplines and rely on experts informing and inspiring each other with possibilities they hadn't considered before. For another, while it isn't the hole in the page that carries the value, agencies have an invaluable role to play in selecting media partners that are honest, provide services beyond the audience & inventory, have beneficial pricing model, develop innovative communications paths, and have the ability to pull off complex programs rather than just traffic ad units.

The bottom line is that the current system tends to silo expertise rather than bring it together. The clients' responsibility must be to ensure that all the disciplines in their roster add value to each other and judge them on their shared success rather than by discipline-specific metrics alone.

Mobile, having obvious user interface restrictions over desk computing, is driving innovation in user experience as a way of overcoming it’s shortcomings. And now those innovations are being applied to desktop computing as well. How is that unexpected reversal happening? Probably because Google is putting money and manpower behind it.

Infographic Of The Day: The Mavs Win It All (LeBron Whines) | Co.Design

If you’re a basketball fan, this is an infographic you can love. The best part is the win/loss bars extending around the arc of the circle.

Apple’s Retail Strategy Focuses on Consumers’ Feelings | Adweek

This is perhaps branding at it’s finest. A lot of people don’t get ‘the Apple thing’, but they’re creating a retail experience that you simply don’t get anywhere else. And like so much about the brand, it defies much of the conventional wisdom in the high-pressure sales world of electronics.

Duke Nukem’s PR threatens to punish sites that run negative reviews

A good lesson that if you ever feel the need to lash out online, you might want to sit back, take a deep breath, and really think about how it might be received by the other side. A few bad tweets and this PR guy has a publicity nightmare on his hands.

Check out Wired’s response to see just how little weight this guy’s threats carried. [LINK]

Facebook Places Get Two New Features – Develop Socially

Facebook, with it’s massive community size, is smartly taking strides to leverage all that manpower into generating a recommendation-based business directory. Obviously a lot of potential here.

Case study: Is Facebook Screwing Your Brand?

This post features a thread of posts on the Budweiser page, which as the writer states, a marketing VP might say “WTF”? As we’ve seen with various ads like the Absolut ad showing Mexico having much of the US southwest, we’ve gotten accustomed to highly targeted marketing. Speaking directly to a narrowly-defined group of users. Suddenly, with social media, messages specific to one group can be easily seen by people with very different sensibilities. How a brand talks to consumers in a way that shows it knows them, while avoiding alienating other users with different views, is one of the big challenges in new media marketing right now.

P&G Launch 6 New Facebook Stores: “Live Learning Labs” [Screenshots] | Social Commerce Today

A new Facebook commerce platform has launched, and P&G is jumping on board. I agree with the benefits to P&G being potentially very insightful data on user product preferences, especially attaching ROI to social media campaigns. A lot of people won’t want to hear that, but one thing is for sure, it won’t be consumer brands.

Viewpoint: Social Media Is a Venue, Not a Strategy – Advertising Age

Could not agree more with this.

Hacker Group Wreaks Havoc On Gaming Websites

We’re getting closer and closer to a William Gibson novel.

Is This the Golden Age of Hacking? – Slashdot

It’s interesting that the same thing causing consumer creativity to flourish would also be contributing to malignant hacking.

U.K. Warns About Facebook Status Updates

While this commercial isn’t breakthrough creative, it’s interesting to note that social media activity has gone mainstream enough for the government to include it in general warnings to the public.

Rising Stars Ad Units

New ad units being supported for standardization by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. I think the big issue around rich media is that it becomes too expensive to produce, when clients could put that money into more long-term site assets.

Mobile Display Advertising Up 128 Percent in Last 2 Years | Adweek

More stats on the growing mobile ad market. Money is pouring into these media units because they’re working. And right now, I think they’re working because they’re unique. Of course, banners once ‘worked’ and were quite unique. The obvious challenge is, How does mobile advertising scale as users see more and more ads?

Television Executives Predict Bulk of TV Content Will Be Available Online and Via Mobile Within 2 Years | Adweek

Bravo. I have to say I’m often baffled by major TV shows that don’t have their content available online, especially on their own site.

For Hipmunk, it’s all about the users– and the UI — Tech News and Analysis

I wouldn’t normally post about a new travel search site, but this is a great example of how a killer user interface can make all the difference. Definitely check out the site’s flight search technology.

DIGIDAY:DAILY – Web Video’s Dangerous Role Model – Display

Even if you don’t plan or buy media, trends like this do a lot to shape creative budgets, which of course determines what you can do production-wise. If web video goes the same route as banners, look for production budgets to go through the floor.

Chief Almir | Most Creative People 2011 | Fast Company

Many of the most striking examples of how mobile and social are changing the world come from the least likely users. That’s probably the single biggest indicator of the potential power that I can think of.

Infographic: Where Is Inbound Marketing Headed?

Whether you call it content marketing, inbound marketing, brand experiences, or word of mouth, these charts show rapid acceleration for this type of marketing.

Record Makers | Adweek

Good examples of buzz-generating campaigns. They shift what the idea of content is about, to much more of an experiential role.

TN3 Gallery – jQuery Image Gallery

Making a website as visually impacting as possible without using Flash has been a real issue now that iPads are the dominant tablet. That could change, but the need for more universal solutions will likely continue to be an issue. This is a series of good examples of how an image-based gallery can be presented that will work across all platforms.

Digital Archaeology: 12 Forgotten Designs That Changed The Web [Slideshow] | Co.Design

With recent developments like mobile web and social media transitioning from early adopter to mainstream, I often see direct parallels between these new technologies and the early days of the Web. What this exhibit does, more than anything, is remind us that whatever the coolest gadget is right now, in no-time, it’s going to feel like an 80s brick cellphone.