2013-05-25T11:50:00-04:00 Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=maya-grinberg Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Maya Grinberg Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1557497 2012-05-30T18:36:01-04:00 2012-07-30T05:12:13-04:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/

Here's what you should know about Promoted Posts:

• Promoted Posts will look just like regular news feed posts and will also appear in the mobile news feed
• Promoted Posts will be marked as "Sponsored" in the feed
• The starting price for promoting individual posts is 5.00 and the highest price is 300.00
• Posts can only be promoted within a 3 day period of their creation, to ensure the freshness of the content
• Nothing changes in terms of how posts reveal for existing fans of your brand page. Your posts have always reached a percentage of them (17% on average according to Facebook) and will continue to do that, but you now have the option to make sure an individual post reaches more fans than it normally would.
• Facebook is including a slew of analytics that demonstrate the effectiveness of the promoted ad in real time
• The promotion of each post can be paused at any time and doesn't have to last the full 3 days
• You can now see how many fans, as a percentage of your total fan base, see any post whether or not it is sponsored.

The writers at SocialFresh took great screenshots of this feature in action. While the amount a brand is asked to pay per post differs by size of the brand (and its fan base), you can see the functionality that allows page administrators to sponsor greater post reach incrementally. In the example below, it costs the administrator $20 to promote a post to 3,700 more fans than would have seen it organically.





The option to promote posts within a budget is integrated right into the status post box. This provides a hearty prompt each time an administrator posts, to consider extending the reach their message. While there's no need to promote every single post -- it will get seen by as many fans as an average (free) one -- this is a handy new advertising tool to push your brand's message further than it would normally go.






When we broke the news to our Facebook fan community, the responses were mixed. Some users, like Michelle Pescosolido, were enthusiastic saying, "I love it! I can't wait to test it out. We have been building brands and businesses online for a few years now and all the changes have been great for better conversions. Looking forward to having this option."

Others expressed worry that paying-to-play might push smaller brands out of the news feed. Josh McVey, owner of Rain Tree Marketing and Consulting, says, "I am skeptical. I understand Facebook has been moving in this direction for some time but it is disappointing to see money winning out over hard work (edgerank). It puts the power back into the hands of those with more money and away from those with more creativity."

What do you think of this new feature? Will you promote your posts? Which ones will you put a budget behind? Share your thoughts in the comments; we're happy to hear from you!

[Photo Credit: SocialFresh blog]
This article originally appeared on the Wildfire Social Media Marketing blog.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1260869 2012-02-08T16:15:33-05:00 2012-04-09T05:12:01-04:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/
Twitter

The showdown between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots shattered two new records set for the number of tweets per second (TPS). Madonna's halftime performance, which generated 10,245 TPS, shattered the first record; by the end of the game Twitter recorded a new high of 12,233 TPS. Additionally, according to the New York Times, there was over 15 million Superbowl-related tweets in 2012, compared to just about three million last year (also a record year, at the time).



Google & Youtube

Twitter wasn't the only spot online that received the attention of highly active fans and viewers. Google reports that the top searches during the game were:

1. Madonna
2. Halftime show
3. Patriots
4. Tom Brady
5. Giants

Moreover, users were actively engaged in Super Bowl planning in the days leading up to the gamel. Google reported a 10.4x increase in searches for "seven-layer dip" and a 23x increase in searches for "super bowl recipe" in the week before the game. This increased attention to game-day activities points to a great opportunity for brands to stay aware of pre-event hype. There are countless opportunities for brands to release compelling content that is top-of-mind for fans, whether they update with messaging related to common themes like food for the party, which team the fans are rooting for, what the opinions might be about the halftime show, or even commentary about TV programming around the event (around which Youtube is hosting an entire social campaign, AdBlitz).

Facebook

In the time period after the AFC and NFC championship games, the Patriots posted more to their Facebook page (approximately 6 times per day on average) than the Giants did (5 times per day). Normalizing for fan count and post frequency, however, the Giants were 5% more effective at getting "likes" and comments on the posts within their page.

Additionally, in the week leading up to the SuperBowl, the Giants concentrated on acquiring new fans by asking their existing fan base to bring them in. They did this with a Wildfire promotion wherein the Giants would reveal a new and exclusive video, filmed by defensive end David Tollefson with the "Tollycam," if the page scored 10,000 new fans each day. The promotion encouraged fans that wanted to see the new content to get others to "like" the Giants. The Patriots asked people to like their page as well -- however, they didn't create an express incentive (like a "video giveaway") to do it. The video giveaway promotion led the Giants to an 86% faster fan page growth rate than the Patriots page growth (controlling for the spike in fans that occurred during and after the Giants won the game).





Takeaways

At this point, its a given that the day of any big event like the Superbowl, fans and viewers all over the country will be "talking" their fingers off through varied social media channels. Brands that are most successful at garnering buzz before and after game day are the ones that are most forward thinking in their marketing strategy leading up to a big game. Asking for a "Like" for likes sake is no longer enough to entice fans to spread the word about a brand to their friends -- providing a worthwhile incentive gets the ball rolling at a much faster rate. Likewise the incentive need not involve a material giveaway -- so long as the fans are getting compelling and exclusive entertainment.

What was your favorite part of the Superbowl? Were you more immersed in watching the half-time act or tweeting about it? Share your thoughts in the comments below, we'd love to hear from you!]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1217733 2012-01-20T12:29:07-05:00 2012-03-21T05:12:01-04:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/ Wildfire find social media efforts valuable in their ability to grow brand awareness and increase dialogue with customers. In addition to spending more time thinking about how to engage audiences, marketers will soon begin to measure social media's impact on the business through a more traditional ROI definition: attributable sales and costs.

In November 2011, Wildfire conducted an ROI survey of over 700 marketers from all around the World. The results were compiled into an easy-to-digest infographic, found below.

What do you think of the results? Where does your brand fall in line with these alignments?




]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1197759 2012-01-12T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-13T05:12:01-04:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/ growth than any other year; we saw the widespread acceptance of social marketing for B2B companies, and we witnessed moments that are likely to echo beyond 2011: the debut of Google+, the introduction of Facebook Timelines, and an amusing concession to social media silliness by the White House, via the now infamous rickroll.

On the local front, we asked our Account Strategists about their observations of trends over the year. Our team of strategists works every day with the biggest brands in the world, hands-on in helping to craft and maintain the strongest social marketing strategies on the web. Our marketing strategists noted a dramatic rise in clients' needs to set specific marketing objectives for each social campaign. Objectives fell into three key areas:

1. Growth of the brand presence (fans, likes, follows, and subscriptions)


2. Engagement of the brand audience (comments, shares, and user generated content)


3. Monetisation of fans (qualified leads, or sales driven from social pages)

Before 2011, social marketing efforts focused almost exclusively on growth - in a recent Wildfire survey, social media marketers noted "growth of fans or followers" as the top measurement of success, and the primary definition of positive ROI.

We predict a shift from the emphasis on growth in the coming year as engagement becomes the most buzzed-about measurement of 2012. The generalised category of "social media marketing" will break apart too, with more specific business objective-based goals and models to achieve those goals.

In 2011, we saw little integration between branded social campaigns and the brand's other marketing activities. You might have seen one editorial campaign on a brand's website, only to see something different on Facebook, with no mention of either initiative via the brand's email, television or radio channels. Too often consumers found themselves on a brand's Facebook page served with a message absent elsewhere. Progressive brands will approach their marketing plans with an integrated social channel-- more than just a messaging strategy, or a page content calendar, or a promotions schedule, winning brands will need figure out how all the pieces of the social puzzle fit in with a complete marketing plan.

In 2012, Wildfire predicts that the industry will follow an integrated social campaign approach, following the example of savvy social marketers like So Delicious, who linked their "Change Your Milk, Change Your Life" efforts across TV, outdoor, online and print advertising. The campaign, centered around celebrity spokesperson Jillian Michaels, reflected the brand's message about changing ones life and reached audiences on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, the company's website, the company's blog, Youtube, and in print.

The effort was worth it: the results from just one of the three-month, Wildfire-powered campaigns, were enviable, as So Delicious grew its fan base from 5,200 to over 59,000 fans - an increase of over 1,000%! The brand received 322,664 total entries, averaging 3,226 entries per day. So Delicious recorded its two highest sales days ever, while unit sales increased by 74%, and category share increased by 60%.

In 2012, integrated marketing efforts will swallow standalone social media plans, and more companies will follow the approach that one major initiative should guide the objectives and editorial plans of each marketing channel.



In 2011, users got a lot more sophisticated in how they use social networks. In fact, we saw that a user's initial interest in a brand socially was no indication of whether they would stick around for the long haul. Top reasons cited for "unliking" a brand on Facebook included: "they post too much" (44%), "my wall was becoming too crowded with marketing posts and I needed to remove some of them" (43%), and "the content became repetitive or boring over time" (38%).

In 2012, brands that want to develop long-term relationships will make sure to deliver consistent value and entertainment to their audiences. "Likes" will be granted more selectively (as users increasingly get how liking a brand reflects their personal taste, for better or worse). We will see more unique, targeted content, and more sophistication in promotions as well, as those ubiquitous iPad giveaways lose their positive brand impact. In fact, our customers' top 250 campaigns of 2011 prove it - none of the campaigns gave away an iPad. Prize giving was more strategic and audience relevant, and prizes reinforced the brand.

In addition, more descriptive and frictionless sharing of people's actions beyond the "Like" is already underway with Facebook's support for social applications. In this way, endorsements made by friends will extend further and further past just the "like," to include any variety of enticing action words like "played," "watched," "shopped," and "read."

Finally, in 2011, Facebook and Twitter gave customer service a kick in the rear. Social media is supposed to be a two way street, and consumers are treating branded pages as message boards that go straight to the board room (two such fiascos--both unscripted "celebrity versus airline" disputes involving Kevin Smith and Alec Baldwin-- made big waves this year, for example). In fact, 62% of consumers used social media for customer support! While most brands have a long way to go for true interaction (approximately 95% of fan-written wall posts go unanswered), more and more users are demanding (and businesses are responding) that any brand who asks for their affinity, had better be responsive to their requests as well.

While this post doesn't cover all of 2011's social media industry trends and predictions (find the complete report here), keep an eye out for more targeted social marketing objectives, integrated campaigns, increased user sophistication and preferences, and the rise of social for customer service in 2012. Download the complete report, including several marketing trends not mentioned in this article, here.

What do you think of the trends and predictions we mentioned? What would you add?
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1158136 2011-12-20T12:51:35-05:00 2012-02-19T05:12:01-05:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/ announced a new version of the network that was designed to make it easier for users to "discover what's happening now". You've probably already read about the introduction of special pages for brands. The new features are exciting, and promise heightened engagement between brands and their followers. The new design is about growth and keeping users on the site longer, encouraging more interaction, and making Twitter more accessible to the masses who may start as consumers of tweets rather than big tweeters themselves.Twitter's new enhanced profile pages for brands won't be widely available right away.

At this time, there are a handful of major advertising brand partners who are piloting the pages during the launch period. Here's what you can do in the meantime to continue developing your follower audience on Twitter:

1. Drive branded conversations with the new Twitter buttons.

Sprinkle the new Tweet buttons throughout appropriate places on your corporate website, such as on product pages or in the customer support forums, which allow people to press "Tweet @ourbrand" and leave a comment mentioning your brand name, creating network conversations tied to branded content.



2. Use embeddable tweets within the content planned for your editorial calendar.

When planning items for your editorial calendar, like product updates or blog posts, consider including embedded tweets in the articles you publish, allowing readers to interact not just with the blog while they're reading it, but with your brand on Twitter, all from one place.







3. Run a promotion, like a sweepstakes, on Twitter to drive activity around your brand.

Running a promotion where users interact with your brand on Twitter to win a cool prize is one way to spur conversations, mentions, tweets, and re-tweets. Maximizing the reach of your Twitter content is key in growing a strong follower base, one that will be especially engaged in time for the roll-out of the new Twitter pages format for all brands.



Here at Wildfire we're incredibly excited about the changes Twitter is making across their site (and many of these changes will affect Twitter mobile users as well). Twitter users may prove to be especially valuable to brands because of the unique dynamics of the Twitter community. The accounts a typical Twitter user follows don't always represent their real-world social connections, but rather their brand affinities, aspirational interests, and also their favorite celebrities! This means that your opportunity to build a community around your brand, both with the new tools available now as well as the forthcoming brand pages, may be one of the most valuable social marketing investments that you can make in 2012!

Which of the new Twitter features are you planning on implementing for your brand? Share with us in the comments; we're curious to hear what you think!


This post originally appeared on the Wildfire blog.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1085228 2011-11-09T20:50:16-05:00 2012-01-09T05:12:02-05:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/ announcement about opening up Google+ Pages for businesses and brands? If you've been waiting and watching Google Plus from the wings, you've now been given a place to stage your brand entrance. Learn our ideas about the possibilities for brands on the 40-million-user Google+ social network, and how you can get involved with Google Plus Pages in this post.

(Note: Tom, one of our fantastic product managers, channelled these predictions after a very close assessment of Google Plus coupled with his attention to trends in social media marketing. They don't represent the perspective or plans of the Google Plus team.)





1. Move your brand up the search engine listings, and spend less on ads by increasing Google+ user engagement.

Google has already begun to incorporate a company's social engagement levels into its search rankings. Now that users can plus 1 your brand (the equivalent of a "like" on Facebook), your plus 1 count could figure into the popularity and relevance rating of your brand in search results. Google could adjust search results based on even more types of social engagement the future.

Creating an engaging brand experience on your Google Plus Page will help improve your search rankings and your paid Google ad performance on Google.com, as well as across Google's ad networks. Your social presence matters now more than ever in both consumer engagement and your marketing bottom line.

2. Pull in a potentially huge mobile audience.

Google Plus comes standard on most Android phones and will immediately provide brands with access to a massive mobile audience. Imagine consumers seeing a message in their "Nearby" stream from a brand they assigned to one of their Circles. The message announces a flash sale on ladies winter boots over the next three hours, and includes driving directions to the store via Google Maps. Coupled with the astronomically rising popularity of the Android mobile platform, we're seeing a serious opportunity for you to engage your audience on the run.

3. Target messaging to audience segments more easily than on other social networks.

Now businesses can use Circles to segment their social media audience in order to target content and maximise engagement. For example, you might have circles of users who took a brand survey, so you would add them to an "Engaged Responders" Circle. Another circle may include those who seem "Slow to Warm up." Or maybe everyone would start in the "Slow to Warm up" Circle only to be moved to a more niche circle as they engage with your brand.

Brands could even host live video chats with a "Focus Group" Circle of power users (via Hangouts) to get feedback on new products, and generate "the love" with early adopters.

4. Tap into the massive audience using Google's other apps.

Google Plus will also help you reach and engage with the vast, existing audience of Google consumer app users (Gmail, Maps, Chrome, YouTube etc). First, you'll see opportunities to bring your branded content to users inside of Google+ and enable them to easily share it with friends. Take YouTube, for example. Google has now added a YouTube search tab along the top right edge of each Google Plus screen. When users search for a video, they now see a pop-up video player and playlist of related videos, and each one can be +1'ed and shared with the user's Circles.

In the future, we can imagine Google enabling users to create user generated content (UGC) from a YouTube experience inside of Google Plus as part of a brand-sponsored promotion.

Google has already implemented additional integrations with Chrome and Google Reader, and with each integration comes the opportunity for brands to hook audiences and draw them back to social experiences on Google Plus Pages.

5. Collaborate with your internal and external customers.

We see the potential for Google Plus to be an excellent internal company information sharing and collaboration too.

Google already has experience delivering products with the security and reliability necessary for enterprise solutions, as it offers with the popular Google Apps platform (used to create shared work documents, spreadsheets and presentations). Now that employees can create Google+ accounts with their corporate email addresses, it's not hard to imagine companies using Google Plus as an internal social network for workplace collaboration.

Using Circles, companies could allow secure sharing of selective information with customers inside and outside of an organisation to easily enable focus groups and crowdsourcing. With these potential uses, Google Plus could even provide services similar to Jive or Salesforce.com's Chatter, which also offer social collaboration tools.

So What's Your Game Plan for Google Plus?

With the launch of Pages, Google+ has finally opened its doors to brands looking to build an audience on the network--a network that is, like it or not, intimately tied to Google search and massively popular consumer applications like YouTube and Chrome. Now is the time to get your Google Plus game on, so you can rise above competitors at the onset and attract a valuable audience. Here are some ways we suggest you do it:

• Drive as many +1's as possible


• Devise criteria for how you would segment your users into Circles and how you would customize content for each Circle


• Continue to build up your audience on other social networks using Wildfire's Social Marketing Suite, in order to seed your Google+ presence


• Plan for cross-promotion from your Facebook page, Twitter account, and website to help bootstrap your Google+ presence


• Brainstorm now how you could leverage Google+'s interactive new features such as Hangouts to more deeply engage your users

What makes you most excited about using Google+ for your brand? Share your insights in the comments, we love hearing from you!]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1081018 2011-11-07T21:21:35-05:00 2012-01-07T05:12:01-05:00

Maya Grinberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-grinberg/ So you've built up your brand's fan base on Facebook and now you're wondering what you can do to actually turn these fans into paying customers? Here are five clever ways that companies have used the Wildfire social media management platform to turn their Facebook Fans into customers. Each brand set out to engage their fans and new users by providing a compelling promotion that drove user entries with the potential for a reward of some sort. The successful key to these campaigns, however, is that each was specially crafted to encourage or require purchasing behavior in order to unlock most of reward value. The five examples shared below will get you on your way to crafting a winning strategy for turning your brand's Facebook fans into paying customers!

Tip #1: Turn your coupons into a game!
Feelunique.com is one of Europe's fastest growing online beauty retailers. They used Wildfire's Sweepstakes Application to launch their "Beauty Giveaway" sweepstakes and grow their fan base on Facebook. The "everybody wins" campaign created a fan gate, requiring individuals to "Like" the feelunique.com Facebook page before completing an entry form. Prizes were awarded every day for three weeks. Every participant won a prize for entering--prizes ranged from $350 gift cards for feelunique.com to site-wide discounts, all of which required transactions at feelunique.com to redeem value. The campaigns resulted in almost 7,000 entries over its three week period. Because the campaign allowed fans to win something every day, engagement with the promotion remained high throughout. An additional result of the giveaway was that feelUnique received 2,500 new email subscribers, 250 new customers, and over $80,000 in sales revenue. Additionally, customer referrals from Facebook increased by over 60%. ROI in monetary terms was approximately three times cost, measured based on sales from voucher redemptions.




Tip #2: Drive People into your Store via a Giveaway
Giveaways are a great way to engage people and generate word of mouth, but by offering a giveaway that must be picked up in store it can also be a great way to drive purchases. Digital Surgeons, a digital marketing agency, used Wildfire to run a giveaway for their client Edible Arrangements. After becoming a Facebook Fan of Edible Arrangements entrants received a voucher for free chocolate dipped strawberries. But to redeem the coupon fans had to visit an Edible Arrangements store - thus providing a fantastic opportunity for local Edible Arrangements franchisees to promote their store to a slew of new customers. This campaign was a wild success for Edible Arrangements - not only did it generate 170,000 new fans but it also resulted in a double-digit increase in sales from the year prior.




Tip #3: Drive visitors to your online store via a creative sweepstakes
Zappos ran a unique sweepstakes with Wildfire where they promised users the chance to win a $500 voucher for use at Zappos, but only after entrants visited the online store and put together a list of the items that they would purchase with the winning money, if it were theirs. This was a powerful way to encourage thousands of people to not only visit the Zappos site but to also create a list of their favorite items on Zappos, which, in turn, encouraged many consumers to buy.

Tip #4: Create lucky coupons to draw users into your store
Jamba Juice launched a campaign called "Feel Good Bucks" that used Wildfire's unique coupon code generation functionality in a very interesting way. They gave out 'lucky' coupons via our Facebook Connect Product and Facebook Fan Page Product that could be redeemed at Jamba Juice stores. When consumers redeemed the coupons they either received $1 off their purchase or they had the opportunity to win one of many thousands of instant prizes, including cash prizes of $10,000! To make Jamba's campaign even more fun and social, they combined it with Wildfire's Virtual Gifting solution so users could send Jamba Bucks to their friends in the form of fun, Jamba-branded virtual gifts like smoothies, bucks, and cartoons. By combining the utility of a coupon with the anticipation of an instant win and the social channels of Facebook, Jamba was able to generate huge interest in their campaign and drive tens of thousands of consumers to purchase at their stores.




Tip #5: Use a sweepstakes to drive people to your coupon
In celebration of its one millionth Facebook Fan, Duck Tape launched a Wildfire sweepstakes, giving 100 lucky winners a Duck Tape prize package. But to sweeten the deal for every entrant in the sweepstakes, they also put up a coupon for $1 off a roll of Duck Tape, which was available for claim to anybody completing their submission into the sweepstakes. Sweepstakes are not only a great way to encourage users to interact with your fanpage and website but they're also a powerful way to drive people to your coupon or online shopping cart so it's certainly worth considering the combination of a sweepstakes with a coupon.





While Facebook presents brands with a wide spectrum of opportunities for creating, maintaining, growing, and engaging a fan base, there is much opportunity to use this fan base to drive sales for businesses. Understanding how best to nurture the community leads to understanding how to facilitate buying behavior within it, as well.

What are some examples of interesting sales campaigns you've seen driven through Facebook? Tell us in the comments, we'd love to hear from you.]]>