This post is the second in a three-part series with practical tips for marketers to pursue social and digital innovation. Read the first post on maximizing your personal social media usage here.
Want to be the go-to guy or gal on your team with the flashiest new apps? The one dressing Instagram photos with never-before-seen filters and stamps, using emoticons our Japanese counterparts only released yesterday?
It can be time-consuming to stay current in social and digital media, so here are some effective ways to quickly surface and assess the hottest toys.
1. Assign yourself playtime. My playtime is Sunday evening after “Mad Men.” I pull out my iPad and iPhone and I furiously start downloading new apps. I jump over to the Featured and Top Charts sections of iTunes to see if there are any new additions. I download them, bring them to the forefront, launch them, create a new account, follow the top accounts (if applicable), invite a few friends and make time to revisit them later in the week. If it’s a photo app, I try out some photos and push them out to Facebook to see how they look. If it’s a news app, I load it up... Read more
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Current and Relevant: How to Find the Coolest New Tools on the Block
Tags: 22squared, apps, digital media, ipad, iPhone, iTunes, mad men, mashable, readwrite, Social Media, techcrunch, the next web, Uber
Posted in Emerging Platforms, Entertainment, Opinions, Social Media | No Comments »
Farewell ‘Push’ Marketing, Hello Brand Journalism
My career as a journalist spanned nearly a decade. When I left to launch online video startup, BizBOXTV, I quickly discovered storytelling was part of my DNA, evident in the process and style of my new media company and how it approached its first productions.
It wasn’t about story-boarding or scripting, it was about asking questions, getting answers, and weaving content together to produce an interesting and useful story. The benefits of combining the approaches of traditional journalism and brand storytelling seemed obvious. It’s something we’ve called “brand journalism” since day one, and it’s picking up speed as the new-media world continues to evolve, along with consumers’ habits.
Businesses are using social media, web video, and digital publishing to speak directly to consumers. It’s a way for brands, big and small, to use the approach of professional journalists to create, curate and share expert content in the form of blogs, articles and video. Brand journalism is obviously not as impartial as journalism, but it’s a way for a brand to engage an audience with relevant and interesting material. The content must be factual, and keep “relevance to... Read more
Tags: bizboxtv, blogging, boeing, brand journalism, calgary, canada, cisco, content creation, content marketing, corporate video, customer engagement, digital media, home depot, journalism, lisa ostrikoff, online video, online video production, PR, public relations, social engagement, Social Media, Storytelling, toronto, usa, video marketing, vlogs
Posted in Ad Serving, Creative Best Practices, Media Planning & Buying, Opinions, Social Media, Targeting, Uncategorized, Video | No Comments »
The 'Hidden' Marketing Channel: Performance Marketing
The release today of a major report on the growth of the online performance marketing (OPM) industry in the United Kingdom represents a seminal moment for this young industry. The facts and figures it provides are evidence enough that performance marketing is here to stay; that it is a mature, growing online marketing channel that provides significant value to advertisers and publishers.
As Chris Johnson of A4U details in an excellent analysis of the IAB / PwC OPM study, the affiliate marketing industry in the U.K. has been valued (alongside lead generation) as a £9 billion ($1.43 billion) revenue generating industry.
Key Highlights (courtesy of A4U)
There are c. 3,000-4,000 advertisers and c. 10,000 publishers actively engaged in Online Performance Marketing in the U.K. (in this instance — Affiliate & Lead Generation).
Advertisers expected to spend (through commissions, management fees, bonuses and other marketing spend) £814 million on Online Performance Marketing in 2012, generating c. £9 billion of sales for advertisers.
This spend was achieved through at least c.100 million transactions and an additional c. 70 million leads generated.
This is equivalent for c. 7-9% of U.K. digital marketing spend, and drives c. 5-6% of retail e-commerce in the U.K.
The largest end-sectors include Finance, Retail, Telecoms & Media, Travel... Read more
Tags: A4U, affiliate marketing, digital media, IAB, online advertising, online marketing, online performance marketing, performance marketing
Posted in Email, Media Planning & Buying, Search | 1 Comment »
Cyber-Santa: Harnessing Social, Mobile, and Digital to Find the Perfect Holiday Gift
Attention holiday shoppers, instead of scouring stores thinking, “What would this person want?” start from the comfort of your own home. With today’s digital tools, here are three tips for leveraging digital media to get a gift that tugs at the heart.
Tags: amazon, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, digital media, Facebook, groupon, holiday, National Retail Federation, pinterest, twitter
Posted in Entertainment, Opinions, Social Media, Websites, Wireless | 1 Comment »
The Future of Media Is Paid
There’s no doubt that the media industry has seen dramatic change in the last 15 years. Readership of traditional newspapers has plummeted. Compounding the issue, the traditional newspaper model where classifieds and ads were sold based on circulation (regardless if someone actually read the paper and saw your ad) has been absolutely decimated as advertisers have moved their dollars to more effective, more addressable advertising options.
With the rise of many quality blogs, online publications, and digital video and social media, we continue to see this content shift online faster than ever before, and the old school newspaper monetization model doesn’t work online. For instance, even if a newspaper sold all of their banners at the highest possible CPMs, it would never make up for what they have lost from their traditional model, and therefore will never be able to support the glory days of newspapers. Say a newspaper could sell four banner ads on a page for $10 CPM each (and that’s being generous). For every 1,000 page views, they would make $40. Applying Denver Post’s comScore stats for last month where they generated 45,000,000 page views, they would make $1,800,000 per month. ... Read more
Tags: digital media, digital video, future of media, media, newspapers, online advertising, online publications, online video advertising, SpotXchange, video advertising
Posted in Ad Serving, Media Planning & Buying, Video | 2 Comments »
