6 Things to Keep in Mind When Protecting Your Online Reputation

“The best defense is good offense,” an adage that can be applied to both football and business. Good online reputation management should begin long before a crisis hits. Both small and midsize businesses and savvy marketers can take strategic steps to ensure that their companies’ reputation is protected and crisis situations are handled in an effective and thoughtful manner. The following are several tips to consider as a proactive approach to protecting your brand’s online reputation.   1. Take a look at the first three pages of your search results Do a Google search to see what review sites are showing up when users search for your brand name. Indicate which results are positive, neutral, or negative as well as ones that you can control or influence and which ones you cannot. This establishes the baseline of your online reputation so that you can later access your reputation enhancement efforts later down the road.   2. Claim all the listings you can  Believe it or not, new review sites with your business name can populate on the web without your permission. So it’s important to claim all online directory and review sites. This gives you the power to own the page and reply to customer reviews (positive and negative). And it prevents the sites from falling into the wrong hands like a disgruntled employee.    3. Respond to negative reviews in a concise and thoughtful manner Give yourself time to respond to a negative review. Try to avoid going on the defensive. Instead, try and understand why the client had a bad experience and try to respond publicly to show other customers that you own up to any mistakes and that you take customer service seriously.   4. Reward positive reviews and mentions  If someone does say something positive about you on a site, reward the customer with a freebie, coupon, or simple thank you. Customers are likely to remember your appreciative efforts and become brand evangelists. Sending feedback requests after a purchase or service can also encourage more reviews and further grow your online reputation.   5. Continue to new mentions and reviews If your customers are active on Twitter or Facebook, make sure you have a person who is dedicated to responding to them. Twitter and Facebook users expect a quick response to requests, comments, and questions. You can set up Google Alerts or a social mentions dashboard that can notify you when these requests or mentions come in.    6. Connect with the media and online influencers Building good PR is healthy for any online reputation. Be sure to develop relationships with journalists, partners, loyal customers, and local media and organizations. These are trusted resources that can put in a good word for you, which helps you build positive media exposure.

Posted on: 17 September 2015 | 5:38 pm

Instagram Ads are Now Available for Everyone

Starting next month, advertisers, big or small, will have the opportunity to run ads on Instagram. An official Instgram blog post announced the big news last week: “With technology that leverages the best of Facebook’s ads infrastructure, it’s not easy for advertisers on Instagram to target their message more effectively and reach people based on what they care about – whether it’s fashion, sports, cars, or food” The blog post went on to add that advertisers will have the chance to access new ad formats to help them reach different types of goals. This will enable Instagram users to learn more about what interest them and shop for products directly from Instagram.   Instagram’s Advertising Features  Instagram advertisers have seem some excellent branding results so far with 97% of brands generating “significant lifts in ad recall”. Here are some of the features that brands can expect with Instagram ads: Landscape Photo and Video – Advertisers are not restricted to the square shape that Instagram is famous for. Instead, advertisers can “unlock new creative opportunities and give ads a more cinematic feel.” Video Ads Can Be 30 Seconds – Brands can engage their audience with longer video clips for “richer storytelling”. Calls to Action – Advertisers have the option to add a call to action buttons such as “Shop Now,” “ Install Now,” “Sign Up”, and “Learn More” that connects directly to a web page. Marquee – Instagram is introducing a new buying option called Marquee that lets advertisers drive mass awareness and reach within a short time frame – ideal for new product launches or movie and TV show premieres for example. Carousel Ads – Carousel ads bring additional depth by allowing users to swipe through additional images and click on a call-to-action button. Delivery and Optimization Tools – “to help drive the best performance of campaigns across Facebook and Instagram.”   Create Your First Instagram Ad Campaign Instagram ads will officially be available to everyone Sept 30, 2015. Follow this quick set up guide to get started: 1. You can create Instagram Ads in the same place you create Facebook ads. Just go to https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/.  2. Select your ad objective in the left column.  3. Depending on the objective you choose, Instagram will be listed as one of the options in the drop down menu of that objective. For Instagram ads, the objectives can be website clicks, website conversions, app installs, and video views. 4. Review the ad design recommendations and technical requirements. 5. Click the blue box that says “Create Ad”. 

Posted on: 16 September 2015 | 3:59 pm

Brands Shifting Away from YouTube Towards Native Video

Have you noticed more autoplay videos in your Facebook News Feed lately? In the last several months, it seems that native video is becoming a popular way for publishers and brands to share video content and receive great feedback and engagement from users. Video, as many of us know, is the hero of the online marketing world at the moment – according to Re/Code, it accounts for 78% of all web traffic and the number is expected to grow. Recent data from Socialbakers shows that brands will be sharing more native video content than content hosted on YouTube:  IMAGE: SOCIALBAKERS Video vs Native Video Compared to the overall video trend, native video is expected to grow at an even faster rate. Native video is video content that is “native” to the social networking site i.e. content that is uploaded or created on the social network. Instead of sharing a link of video that is uploaded to YouTube, for example, the video is played in-feed. SocialTimes reports that native video is expected to be one of the more dominant elements of major social networks within the next few years. Facebook has already begun to capitalize on this by introducing video ads last year. Twitter is following in those footsteps by rolling out its native video ads. Here’s how they work: Users can shoot and edit video directly from the Twitter app. Videos can be created as short as one second or rearrange to create a video up to 30 seconds long. Users can also upload their own video up to 30 seconds from their camera roll; advertisers may up load video up to 10 minutes long. Twitter first announced the new tools back in January 2015.  Since that time, brands and publishers have seen staggering video views on both Facebook and Twitter and at a cost effective measure of as low as two cents per view. For brands that are looking for ways to connect with their audience, native videos are getting better organic reach than regular posts or even videos that are hosted elsewhere.   What Does the Shift Towards Native Ads Mean? For popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter, the shift means that brands will have to compete for users’ attention. Since more brands will be publishing videos, brands will need to make sure they are producing quality video that catches the audience’s attention. Native video will likely increase user engagement and time spent on these social networks making it more worthwhile for brands to publish videos directly on these sites rather than using a site such as YouTube as a central video hub for video content. Sharing and creating video content is here to stay; the approach, however, for brands will likely shift to producing more engaging, quality video that is shared more directly to target audiences.

Posted on: 15 September 2015 | 3:28 pm

Facebook's Business Pages are Getting a Major Update

Facebook pages are making a comeback! Not that they’ve ever left; Facebook has just introduced some major changes that will allow marketers to connect better to their customers in a way never experienced before until now.  On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it’s planning to modernize pages for the mobile world and feature dedicated areas that will allow companies sell products and services as well as connect to customers directly from the social networking site. The site will display two new sections on all pages: Shopping and Services, which companies can use to feature products and services directly on Facebook pages. In addition to this, Facebook is adding a few more call-to-action button options that will sit prominently at the top of pages for people to click to call, message a business through Facebook, or fill out a form for more information. IMAGE: FACEBOOK According to Facebook, there are currently 45 million active Facebook pages. With these brand new additions to businesses’ pages, retailers can showcase products and companies can feature professional services such as plumbing and construction; companies also have an opportunity to reach people they want directly and easily through a mobile device.  Facebook plans on adding more sections to their pages over time, but the initial list is limited to shopping and services. Businesses that have set up e-commerce shops using Shopify software can port their product catalogs to Facebook and sell directly there. The social network first began testing the Shopping and Services sections in July and has been testing the call-to-action buttons for sometime; they plan to add a “Donate” call-to-action button for non-profits soon. “The new features for Pages reflect our belief that no matter if you’re a plumbing company, a flower shop, a non-profit or a brand, your Page should house the information people are looking for, help you communicate with your customers, and support your unique goals,” Facebook wrote in a statement.  The idea is to provide companies with several options to create a more customized page based on the type of business and company goals.   Private Messages and Saved Replies Facebook used Tuesday’s big announcement as an opportunity to introduce some other features businesses on Facebook will be happy about. Facebook will be letting businesses use pages to reply privately and create a list of saved replies that could be used as templates when responding to people’s messages. 

Posted on: 14 September 2015 | 10:19 am

How to Create Successful Social Media Campaigns

Social media is easily the most recognizable and more compelling ways to market a product or service online. However, for many businesses, building a successful social media marketing campaign may not be easy to identify, plan, or execute. However, if you took a good look at a successful social media campaign, you would find that all of them have four common components that contribute to their success and success for the brand. In this article, we are going to go over those four elements to keep in mind that will help you achieve desired results and increase your bottom line.   1. A Thoughtful, Carefully Developed Plan The best way to start a social media campaign is with a well thought out plan of action. This plan should be specific to your goals and should be a continuation of your brand’s style and voice. Start building your plan by doing thorough research on the following:  Social followers across all your social channels Areas of improvement in comparison to your competition Identify the target audience you will be going after in this campaign. For example, while Instagram and Facebook are great networks to target millennials, you won’t find Baby Boomers on Instagram. What budget and resources can you allocate to this campaign? Will you be using paid social efforts or going all organic tactics? Will you be using a social media platform, CRM, or automation platform to help you schedule posts? After you have selected the target audience, social channels, budget, and resources you would like to use, select a team that can make it all happen. Whether it’s an in-house team or an agency team, clearly defining roles ahead of time helps avoid confusion and doubling work. At a minimum, assign roles to your team for messaging, designing, and promoting.   2. Define Your Goals (Make Them Specific) After you have your game plan in order and a dream team that can’t be beat, it’s time to define what you would like to accomplish. At this step, it’s important to be specific; this makes it easier to measure and analyze your results later down the road. Every social media campaign can have multiple goals, but it’s important to make each goal personalized to your business’s needs.  Here are a few common goals to consider: Brand Awareness: Every business, especially new ones, needs to distinguish themselves from their competitors in the same space. If your audience isn’t able to identify your brand, your campaign will have little effect. To measure your brand’s social influence, consider benchmarking shares, new links  & followers, mentions/retweets, and referral traffic to your website from social media channels.   More Website Traffic: Who doesn’t want more site traffic to their website or blog? The more people that visit your site, the more opportunities you have to wow them with great content that they can share out to their friends and followers.   To measure your brand’s website traffic, consider incorporating a landing page that a user would land when they click on a link from your social media post. Google Analytics is also a very helpful platform that can provide you with data on what specific pages on your website are getting the most hits, how much time is being spent on those pages, and whether or not they are being driven by social media.   Increased Visitor Loyalty: It is every business’s dream to not only acquire new customers, but also keep them coming back for more for the long term. If customer loyalty is your goal, incorporate tactics that require a user to enter your website several times to enter or find information. That’ll give you the opportunity to find out how often a user comes back, the pages per session they visit, average duration of each session and percent of new sessions on your site.   Increased Conversion Rates: Lastly, if you are an already established brand that receives a lot of website visits, increasing conversion rates may be a great goal for you to consider for your next social campaign. Whether a conversion means an account set up or product purchase, create a social campaign that incorporates a form or sign up to gather the user’s information. To measure conversion rates, pay attention to metrics such as total site entries compared to total conversions and social conversions.   3. Cross Channel Promotion  The best social media campaigns use an integrated approach that supports efforts not only on social media channels, but a number of other channels as well. This allows your campaign to reach your social media followers and remind them of the campaign through different outside outlets.  Reaching different people at various times across many different marketing channels increases your reach and the likelihood that the campaign will be successful. Try not to overwhelm existing customers or both potential ones. Instead, gentle reminders and mentions across a number of touch points that step outside of social media can be very helpful in delivering your brand better results.     4. Thorough Analytics To determine if a campaign was successful in reaching the goals set, every marketer needs detailed analytics. Identify those key metrics related to the specific goals you defined before the campaign and see how they compared against your initial starting point. Did you see improvement? Are there any areas that stayed the same or even lowered during that time? What would you like to see improve next time? Additionally, you can look at the revenue from customers acquired through your social media campaigns compared to revenue from customers acquired through search campaigns. The bottom line: social media campaigns should do more than increase your follower account. With the right set up incorporating these 4 aspects, you will be on your way to not only increasing your follower base, but gain better understanding of your target audience and achieving long term goals for your business as well. 

Posted on: 11 September 2015 | 2:15 pm

Facebook's New Conversion Measurement Tool Will Help Marketers Reach Ad Goals

There’s no doubt that Facebook ads have been very successful for many businesses. To improve the its advertising experience and drive even more results for advertisers, Facebook announced a new conversion lift measurement that will prove to be super helpful.  This new tool, first introduced in January 2015, will allow advertisers to compare multiple Facebook ads against each other. This will enable brands to better track the effectiveness of their ad campaigns and provide them with an understanding of the additional business Facebook ads can provide for them. With this tool, advertisers can hopefully make more informed marketing choices and grow their businesses.   Facebook announced the update in a Facebook for Business post, explaining: "Up until now, conversion lift studies have measured the effectiveness of Facebook advertising by separating an advertiser’s audience into two groups: a randomized test group that sees ads and a control group that doesn’t. This kind of study shows advertisers how effective their Facebook ads are at driving their intended goal. But now advertisers can compare multiple ads with the same objective against each other, so they can not only see if Facebook advertising is working, but exactly which advertising approaches work the best for their goal. Among other things, conversion lift studies with multiple test and control groups help advertisers determine: Which ad units perform best for their objectives. Whether brand and direct-response ads work better to achieve the objective than brand ads or direct response ads on their own. What value mobile ads are driving. Whether lifestyle creative or product-focused creative best accomplishes their goal."   Compare it All Together Additionally, Facebook conversion lift studies can be set up to measure lift across multiple channels – stores, websites, apps, so advertisers can see a holistic view of ad performance. Multi-channel measurement can show advertisers the overall effect their ads contributed and how ads drove sales through individual channels. To run a conversion test, Facebook recommends: A campaign that isn’t live yet and will have sufficient statistical power for meaningful and accurate results Accessible conversion data, either through a Facebook pixel, App Events, or email addresses or phone numbers for offline conversions

Posted on: 8 September 2015 | 12:54 pm

How to Improve Facebook Visibility as a Local Business

There are 28 million small businesses in the U.S. today. For many businesses, Facebook proves to be a very useful marketing tool to reach millions of consumers online. For local businesses, however, key customers are limited by a specific geographical area. And reaching this audience can prove to be challenging!  In this article, we explore ways your local business can increase visibility and gain more local exposure with the biggest social medium available: Facebook. Post Photos & Videos Want to get more visibility on Facebook? Photos and videos can do the trick. Local images and videos are not only relatable to your audience but prove to be very shareable. Next time you have an opportunity to take a photo of a fun event in the local area or in and around your store, take advantage of it! When local clients recognize the area, they are more likely to engage and visit your page or business.   Take Advantage of Local Awareness Ads  Facebook’s advertising options have proved to be very beneficial for many businesses. There are several types of ads to choose from, one highly beneficial one for local businesses is local awareness ads. These ads reach people who live nearby on their mobile device. You can begin a local awareness ad campaign by clicking on “reach people near your business” in Facebook’s ad options. Local awareness ads are very useful, especially for engaging first-time customers with a coupon or offer. The technology will know when to show the ad on the customer’s mobile device when the customer is near your store address. You can learn more about Facebook local awareness ads here: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/local-awareness   Tag Other Local Businesses & Partners  One smart way to connect with your community is befriending other businesses and organizations around your area. Start following other pages to keep up with their posts and regularly reshare, tag, or comment to form a relationship. They’ll likely take notice and return the favor and these interactions will likely increase visibility to those in your area.   Feature Pictures of Your Customers A great way to improve visibility and your business’s reputation is posting photos of happy customers! Personal photos can help you reach your customers’ friends and, as we all know, can increase good word-of-mouth – a powerful thing for a local business. Remember, a page cannot tag a fan unless the admin of the page is a personal friend of that person. Only people can tag themselves or other people on Facebook. A great way to share a customer photo is by thanking them for coming in and sharing your appreciation. Offer Special Perks to Fans  Your fans love you, but they also love perks. Facebook offers an option called, “Facebook Offers” that allow you to reward your biggest and most loyal customers. You can create a Facebook offer by clicking on the “Offer, Event+” button near the status box of your Facebook page.  Add a short, eye-catching title and description for your offer and upload an image. For businesses that would like to see big results, you have the option to promote the offer as an. Businesses can set up offers to be claimed online through their website or in-store. When customers claim the offer, their friends may see it as a story in their news feed.    Healthy Mix of Content  Keep your Facebook page live and active with a healthy mix of content. While it is great place to promote products and services, most users on Facebook engage with content that’s relatable and fun. A mixture of photos, videos, and helpful articles about topics that are important to your customers can start a conversation. A good strategy Small Screen Producer’s content marketing team recommends is to have healthy mix of the following: Photos and videos recent projects or happy customer experiences  News articles related to your products or services News about local events in your area Answers to FAQs or questions seeking feedback or suggestions on products and services You’ll want to directly promote a product and service every once in a while, but it should only be occasional for the most part. Customers engage with content that’s not focused on “hard selling,” but content that’s useful, fun, and relatable. Depending on your particular business, you may want to adjust your Facebook marketing strategy over time. The best way is to do this is by studying the feedback you receive from your audience. Some types of content may resonate much better than others depending on the behavior and demographic of your target audience. If you’re short on time, but know that you need to reach your customers through Facebook, Small Screen Producer offers a full scope of marketing services, including content writing and Facebook marketing strategy. Contact us to learn more about our services or visit our website at www.smallscreenproducer.com.

Posted on: 20 July 2015 | 9:07 am

Instagram’s New Search Update makes it Easier to Explore Content

With over 70 million photos uploaded to Instagram everyday, it’s no wonder that the image-sharing social site has launched a new update to its search functionality. Now, users will have the ability to easily discover trending and most recently posted photos from any place, city, or country in the world.  The Facebook-owned company mentions that they’ve taken a year to redesign improve the app, helping users better connect with their communities and the world around them as it happens. While Instagram 7.0’s shooting and sharing experiences remain the same, Instagram has fully redesigned its search features to include the following: Places Search “Wherever something is happening, chances are you can see it here,” says Instagram in an official blog post published Tuesday. “With the new Places Search, you can now peer in at just about any location on earth, allowing you to scout out your next vacation spot in the South Pacific, get a look inside that hot new restaurant or experience your favorite music festival even if you couldn’t make it this year.”   Trending Hashtags & Places The app has also redesigned its Explore section, which will now present trending hashtags and trending places. Prior to this update, users could only view images that received the most Likes. In April of last year, Instagram made the experience a little more personalized by showing images “people you follow have liked”.   Curated Explore Sections  In the Explore sections, users also have the ability to explore two separate curated sections around interesting photographers and interests. These sections, according to Instagram, are curated on a weekly basis by a team of in-house editors. This will allow users to see the best of the best on Instagram give them the opportunity to follow and be inspired by new accounts and images.  The new set of search features will only be available in the U.S. 

Posted on: 30 June 2015 | 1:03 pm

A Guide to Bing’s Latest Search Updates

When it comes to finding content on the web, Google has always been the search engine of choice. However, Bing has proved to be a strong contender in the last few years. In order to stay competitive with Google and its video product, YouTube, Microsoft has stepped up to the plate with three recent updates to Bing that marketers and avertisers should note.  1. Improved Video Search On Friday, Bing gave a much-needed makeover to its search experience for video by adding larger thumbnail images and additional information to include channel, upload date, and view count details. According to the Bing blog, the new layout will offer an easier and faster video experience for users.  For specific video searches, Bing will display a large “hero” video based on the top result for the query. Users may play the video directly from the search results page or click to go to the video’s source.  The new and improved search results pages will include a module at the top with the artist’s photo and list of other popular songs and links to those videos. Searches of songs will highlight the best result based on relevance and popularity. Last, but not least, Bing video search will show results from all over the web, not just videos on YouTube. Credit: Bing.com   2. Enhanced Mobile Browsing On the Bing homepage, users with mobile devices will be able to see topics and news that are trending on the web. With one click, users will get a rich, in-depth experience with trending, and opinions on a given topic all from the search result pages. The Bing team mentions that they have worked to include hot topics on the web at the bottom of the Bing homepage. Clicking on any of the links reveals the most recent and popular news in the user’s region. This new feature allows users, specifically mobile users, news at a glance and provides them with the option for reading and watching stories if they want a richer experience. Credit: Bing.com   3. Updated Mobile Algorithm  Last month, Bing announced that it would be following in Google’s footsteps with the release of its own mobile friendly search engine algorithm update. This new update would favor mobile friendly websites over those that weren’t optimized for the use of mobile devices. Much like Google’s update, it has caused some commotion amongst website owners as well as the SEO and website design industries as a whole. However, there are some key differences of Bing’s update from the one released by Google. Credit: Bing.com Bing has said that it will favor websites that are optimized for mobile, based on principles such as responsive design, tap to click, and high resolution. Basically, Bing will take websites that are optimized for mobile devices up in search engine rankings for relevant search engine keywords and will lower the rankings of those that aren’t mobile friendly. Bing and Google are on the same page with this. However, Bing is more lenient with the “punishing” aspect than Google, which has stricter guidelines. Bing mentioned while it will lower rankings of websites that aren’t mobile friendly, it will not remove the most relevant sites for searches, even if they aren’t optimized for search. Websites that are roughly in the top five search results for a keyword or brand will still display in results, even if the website is not mobile friendly.  It remains to be seen whether or not these updates will bring more users over to Bing. However, it may just be a starting point for Microsoft to slowly but surely take the "search king" title out of Google's hands. We'll just have wait and see. 

Posted on: 22 June 2015 | 1:54 pm

3 Things to Keep in Mind When Creating a Successful Email Campaign

While email marketing seems to be the oldest form of digital marketing to date, it still proves to be the most powerful means a marketer has to reach consumers. In fact, according to sources, mid-sized businesses are enjoying an average of 246% ROI thanks to email marketing! And while not as glamorous social media, email is more than 40 times more effective than Facebook or Twitter. How are businesses finding so much success with email? The answer lies in the approach. What’s considered “the new normal” when it comes to email marketing? Here are three things to keep in mind when creating an email campaign that will help you convert emails into sales.   1. Overall, Less is more  Unfortunately, all of us, including our customers, are swamped everyday in email. With all the promotional emails, holiday emails, birthday emails, inbox fatigue has become a real problem. Customers are willing to delete or ignore emails, download software plugins that will sort out their email for them, or even resort to creating separate email accounts for work, personal, and marketing emails (even if the emails are from brands they like). A less-is-more approach with personalization in mind can not only resolve this problem, but also provide marketers with better results and more purchases! Businesses that are willing to find out more information about their customer such as purchase history and behavior, reach out at choice moments, and personalize every message will stay ahead of the game and use email marketing to their advantage.     2. Subject Line: Take Time to Create a Winning Headline While many businesses will focus on building large lists and sending out emails to thousands or millions of people, if the email isn’t getting opened, all that hard work doesn’t matter. If email open rates are struggling, a faulty subject line is usually the first thing to look to.  First impressions are created in the subject line of an email. Keep in mind:  6-10 word long subject lines tend to get the highest open rate.  Place the most important words in the beginning.  Be clear, descriptive, and concise; avoid filler words that can take up space in the subject line.  Clever words help too: 16% to 26% increase in opens with subject lines using song lyrics or movie titles.  Words to avoid (that will take your email straight to the spam box): “percent off,” “help,” “buy,” “clearance,” “click,” “cash,” “income,” “earn,” “urgent,” & “reminder”.  The From Name is a huge part of your subject line. Having a name like “no-reply” might decrease open rates because customers don’t recognize the sender. The word “you” decreases opens by 5% than those without.   3. Mobile Friendly Emails Matter Where are a majority of customers checking their email? You guessed it – their phones. Actually, it’s estimated that 63% of emails will be opened on a mobile device in 2015. In order for marketers to capitalize on this consumer behavior, they’ll need to adapt emails to consumer’s on-the-go habits. To make an email more mobile friendly: Avoid font styles that are hard to read (this includes thin letters or reverse print). High-resolution photos and HTML that adjust to screen size are ideal. This makes the email look good on any device, whether it’s a mobile screen or a computer screen. You will want to make sure the email templates you build have Responsive Email Design (RED). When placing links, remember to make the buttons long and large enough for people to click so it’s visible and easy to use. A mobile friendly email experience doesn’t just stop at the email itself, subscribers who click on email links should be taken to a website or webpage that is mobile friendly also. Emails are part of our everyday lives so it makes sense that customers are paying attention to emails that pay attention to them – through personalization, timing, and approach. While other online marketing tactics like social media are new & attractive, email has proven its importance in the last two decades and continues to require as much of a marketer’s attention now than it did back then.  

Posted on: 19 June 2015 | 7:48 am

Pinterest Gets a Whole Lot Smarter with Search

With its visually attractive interface and its steadfast focus on products, Pinterest has proved to be a driving force online. One very strong aspect of Pinterest is that it’s a perfect combination of search and social, or as what some like to describe as, “searcial”. On Wednesday, Pinterest released a couple of improvements to its search feature that will make it even easier for users to find creative ideas, people, and products they’re looking for. Before this recent update, search results found on the social site were “buried behind different filters for Pins, Pinners, and boards”. Now, Pinterest is introducing a more powerful search engine in order to compete with other forms or search online with a few subtle, innocuous changes.  Search Suggestions: First, Pinterest will start recommending suggestions when users start typing; users will also have the option to filter out pins in search results based on parameters. For example, users can filter out whether they would like to see just pins, users, or both in their search results.  Verified Celebrities & Brands: People who show up in search results will also appear with a checkmark if they are verified users; this is the same feature that’s found on Facebook and Twitter. With this change, users can search for the true Pinterest accounts of their favorite people and brands to follow. See What’s Trending: When users make their first search, they will be able to see the top trending searches in red to provide them with “a glimpse of what creative ideas are popping up today.”  Spiffy Spellcheck: Pinterest found that about 12% of all searches on Pinterest have a spelling error, which could bring up some terrible results. Now when users type in something that’s not quite right, Pinterest will autocorrect and provide results the site thinks the user might have meant. With new and improved search features, advertisers can expect to see better results and signals of customer intent. That intent – what users may be searching for (and most likely wanting to buy) - is what has allowed Google to build one of the biggest advertising businesses in the world. If Pinterest continues to refine its products and user experience, it’ll continue to evolve into one of the most coveted advertising tools on the web for marketers. 

Posted on: 18 June 2015 | 9:01 am

Twitter New Autoplay Video Ads Come with a 100% Viewability Promise

Twitter officially jumped into the video advertising market today by introducing autoplay videos with a special guarantee to advertisers: Unless the promoted video is 100% viewable (not half seen or scrolled by) and has been watched for at least 3 seconds, Twitter will not charge advertisers for the view.   How Will Twitter Autoplay Videos Work?  This is how Twitter’s version of autoplay videos will work. Much like Facebook’s autoplay ads, when a Twitter user scrolls through his or her timeline and sees a video, the video content will automatically play without sound. When a user clicks on the video, the user will be brought to a full-screen viewer and the sound will continue playing. At any point during the video, users may Retweet, favorite, or comment on the post. To keep the Twitter experience consistent, this format will also apply to GIFs and Vines shared on Twitter as well.   Expect More Media Centric Format According to Twitter’s official blog post announcement, “videos will appear in a larger, more media-centric format in timelines. During the autoplay tests we (Twitter) ran, we saw people engaging with videos in this new format at a much higher rate, and our brand and publishing partners saw improved view rates.” The new and improved format is looking to produce better results for marketers with a lower cost-per-view and increased recall by consumers.   Twitter’s Viewability Standard  Finally, Twitter was proud to announce their viewability guarantee for advertisers. To ensure that Twitter continues to “deliver high impact, high engagement, and meaningful views for advertising partners” Twitter mentioned a new standard, guaranteeing that an advertiser will not be charged for a video view unless that video is 100% in view on a user’s device and has been watched for at least 3 seconds. Twitter says that it’s continuing to test “new ways to deliver a better experience for consumers, brands, and publishers on Twitter.” According to “extensive tests of autoplay,” Twitter found that: People were 2.5X more likely to prefer autoplay videos over other viewing methods (including click to play and video preview thumbnails). They have better video recall with autoplay; Twitter saw a significiant 14% lift in video recall over other video formats. For brands, during autoplay tests Twitter saw a 7x increase in completions of promoted videos.  Advertisers can get started with their Twitter ad campaign at: video.twitter.com/about. What are your thoughts on Twitter’s new autoplay video? Do you think advertisers will see success with this new product?

Posted on: 17 June 2015 | 10:05 am

Facebook News Feed Will Measure Time Users Spend Reading Content

A new tweak to the Facebook News Feed may rank the content users spend a longer time reading higher than the content that receives lots of likes and clicks. When users spend “significantly more time on a particular story in the news feed than the majority of other stories they look at” and promote it up on the news feed, according to the official Facebook blog post.  Historically, Facebook’s news feed algorithm has relied on likes, comments, and share to determine what to show higher in a user’s news feed. However, new research Facebook conducted found that there are meaningful stories out there that users do take the time to read, but didn’t necessarily feel they needed to comment or like the post, such as information on an alert or a serious event. Now Facebook is introducing a new ranking signal that will consider the time a user spends on a story found the news feed. Facebook engineers stressed that the new change will go be beyond simply measuring the number of seconds a user spends on a single story. That’s because 10 seconds for one person could mean they really liked the story, while 10 seconds for another person could be due to a slow Internet connection, for example. Instead, if Facebook discovers that a user is spending significantly more time on a particular story than a majority of other stories they click on, “this is a good sign that the content was relevant to them.” In other words, for baby pictures and memes that users pass by naturally in the news feed, Facebook will take a hint to not show it again without requiring the user to adjust their settings. Hold Your Panic, Social Media Managers Facebook mentioned that they “do not expect Pages to see significant changes in distribution as a result of this update” and it would be a couple of weeks before we started to see any changes. That said, it’s important for businesses and organizations to take note of Facebook’s news feed, which has become highly sophisticated in just the just the last few years. Whether or not the update will make a significant change on the user experience, only time will tell.  What are your thoughts about the new update? Do you think this change will make the experience better for Facebook users? 

Posted on: 15 June 2015 | 3:13 pm

5 Interesting Social Media Trends for Small Business

Are you curious to know how effective social media is for small businesses? Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report, which surveyed 3,720 marketers, business owners, and soloprenuers from the U.S. and overseas, found some meaningful social media trends we thought would be important for small businesses to note.     1. Social Media is Critical for Small Business  According to the survey, 96% of participants use social media marketing, and 92% of those agree or strongly agree, “Social media marketing is important for my business.” Credit: Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report  2. Facebook Dominates Small Business Social Media Marketing  The majority of respondents agree: social media marketing is best done on Facebook. 93% of respondents use Facebook, ahead of Twitter at 79%, and 62% of respondents plan to increase their use of marketing efforts on Facebook within the next year. Credit: Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report Moreover, with the success of Facebook’s advertising product, 52% of respondents mentioned they would be increasing their use of Facebook advertising in the future. Overall, with the low cost and narrow targeting that social media ads provides, aggressive marketers will experiment with various social media channels for advertising this year and next year. This includes Facebook and other channels such as Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest well in 2016. Credit: Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report   3. B2B Small Businesses Use Social Differently Than B2C  According to this industry report, marketers prefer certain social media channels depending on their type of business. For B2B respondents, the survey reported that LinkedIn is the number one choice for social networking. A large majority of B2C companies, on the other hand, reported that Facebook is their first choice.   Credit: Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report  4. Social Media Cuts Marketing Expenses in Half for Small Businesses  Social media developed the reputation for allowing brands to reach audiences at a low price. Even before 2014, Facebook was allowing businesses to reach audiences for free. While that changed in spring 2014 with Facebook’s introduction to its advertising product as well as a exponential decline in organic reach for page posts, many small businesses (51%) with 10 employees or fewer still believe that it reduces overall marketing expenses. However, for enterprise-level companies with 1,000 or more employees that tend hire staff to carry out their social media did not agree. With the added labor, it’s not surprising that 59% or large companies did not find cost savings with social media.The graph below shows the majority or marketers who are spending more than 6 hours a week promoting through Facebook for 2-3 years agrees or strongly agrees that social media marketing reduced marketing expenses.  Credit: Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report  5. The Top Social Media Content is Visual, Blogging, & Videos Because of limited resources, it’s important for small businesses to determine which channel drives the most valuable traffic and which type of content brings the most engagement. Blogging and visual content nearly tied with 70% and 71%. Self-employed businesses depend on blogging (79%) while just 10% use podcasting. Video content finishes third most desired type of content by small businesses.  Credit: Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report  When it comes to social media marketing, it's important for small businesses to be well-informed in order to spend wisely and capture opportunities. For every bit of insight and research, marketers can increase their chances for success. Get more from Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report here. 

Posted on: 15 June 2015 | 8:47 am

A Basic Guide to Twitter’s Advertising Options

Twitter advertising is a great option for businesses that would like to give their tweets or accounts an added boost. Twitter ad campaiagns can be effective in broadening your reach and generated new leads for your brand. And the many different ad options Twitter provides doesn't hurt either. In this guide, we'll walk through the three different approaches to promoting on Twitter and step-by-step instructions on how to get started with your first Twitter ad campaign.  There are three ways to promote on Twitter: Promoted Tweets Promoted Accounts Promoted Trends Promoted Tweets Promoted Tweets are ordinary tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider audience either by targeted groups or geographical locations. Twitter lets you promote your best tweets reach to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Since Twitter is easily accessible to mobile, this can be a very good option for businesses with storefronts. Promoted Tweets are clearly marked “Promoted” and act just like regular Tweets; they can be retweeted, replied to, and favorite. Promoted Tweets can be visible 1) at the top of relevant search results pages, 2) within search results for Promoted Trends and 3) in user’s twitter feeds, when relevant.   Promoted Tweets can be used for two main objectives: If your goal is to drive a particular action, such as: Drive website traffic by asking users to click on your best content Offer coupons and deals in the copy of your Tweets Drive leads using lead generation cards Promote sales and giveaways Or, if your goal is to drive awareness for your business, such as: Expand the reach of your content like blog posts, white papers, and videos Connect with influencers and brand advocates by ensuring they see your content Promote awareness around events and product launches Ask for retweets to gain an even broader audience for your messages     Credit: Twitter.com  Promoted Accounts Promoted Accounts allow you to gain a bigger follower base of influencers and advocates for your brand. Promoted Accounts can be found under the “Who to Follow” section located on the left side of a user’s Twitter feed. The “Who to Follow” feature on Twitter identifies accounts similar to the user and recommends them. This allows the users to discover new businesses, people, and content that best match their interests and allows accounts to gain a larger following of users who may be interested in their products and services. Promoted Account campaigns can be geo-targeted by country. By using Promoted Accounts, businesses have the ability to increase their follower base and maximizing the benefits of their social media marketing efforts. Not only does a big following maximize reach but provides your account with credibility and authority. Credit: Twitter.com  Promoted Trends  Lastly, Promoted Trends is a great choice for businesses that would like to build mass awareness for their brand or product. A Promoted Trend shows up in the Trends section and is visible to all Twitter users. Trends are popular topics currently trending at the moment and can be changed by geographical location and user’s interest. When a user clicks on a Promoted Trend, they’ll see Twitter search results accompanied by a related Promoted Tweet from the advertiser. Businesses that create a Promoted Trend campaign can expose their brand to their target audience in a mass way, which can drive lots of interest for your product, service, or event.   How to Set Up Your First Twitter Campaign 1. Twitter makes it super simple to get started with Twitter ads. First, you will need to access Twitter ads: https://ads.twitter.com/getstarted?ref=gl-pg-btc-promoted-tweets 2. Click on the blue button that says “Create New Campaign” and choose what marketing objective you would like to accomplish. 3. Name your campaign and compose a tweet. Depending on your marketing objective, you will have the option to compose your tweet and add a image or a call-to-action button.  4. You can select your target audience. One of the biggest advantages to Twitter ads is its flexible targeting options. You have the option to base your target audience on geographical location, gender, followers, device, interests, language, and more. While these may sound very similar to the options found on other advertising platform such as Facebook and Google, the Twitter audience is very one-of-a-kind and the overal pace of this particular social platform is fast. This allows businesses an opportunity to make a very huge impact.  5. Finally, set an advertising budget. Twitter will only change you for the actions that align with your marketing objective. 6. Access the dashboard Twitter provides to monitor and manage results and gain insights you need to drive better results.  

Posted on: 11 June 2015 | 10:48 am

Study: Mobile Ads Boost In-Store Visits by 80% Within 24 Hours

Since the beginning, many marketers have wondered about the effectiveness of mobile advertising. Is it worth the ad dollars? According to a new study, mobile devices are playing a huge role in product and brand discovery more than laptops and desktop devices and the impact of mobile ads is growing.  The "Mobile Audience Insights Report" released by NinthDecimal took a look at data it collected in Q3 and Q4 of 2014. The report highlights several potential game-changers for physical stores and the future of mobile ads.  While mobile stats shouldn’t surprise anyone, it reiterates the necessity for marketing campaigns and budgets to better reflect customer behavior in the marketplace. Key findings in the report found that:  The share of mobile purchases grew at the expense of in-store purchases; desktop purchases remained the same. 54% of customers used a mobile device to shop for products in 2014, a 59% increase from 2013 (34%). In-store visits increased 80 percent within 24 hours of mobile ad exposure and stayed above average visitation benchmarks for the following six days. While the study could not conclude the creative layout for these ads, they study mentioned that these customers were most likely looking at offer-based ads.  The most interesting finding: mobile ads and location proximity. Retail mobile ads performed best when served between zero and five miles from the store location. CPG (customer packaged good) ads did best within two miles of the store location and QSR (quick service restaurant) ads performed well farther out, up to twenty miles from a designated location.   NinthDecimal also looked at the types of campaigns that deployed by various industries and verticals. 57% of advertisers delivered offer-based mobile ads.   Cross device marketing remains critical and studies like this add to the pool of customer research urging marketers to rethink and reprioritize mobile efforts over the desktop variety. What are your thoughts on this research? Click here to view the full report from NinthDecimal. 

Posted on: 9 June 2015 | 2:45 pm

Back to Basics: How to Setup Your Facebook Ad Campaign

With organic reach on social media slowly dwindling, advertising on Facebook has been a topic of discussion and consideration for many businesses. Facebook has recently stepped up to the plate with an introduction of a few advertising options within the last year to help businesses reach the audiences they want. In this article, we’ll review how to create a Facebook ad campaign as well as the ad options available to revamp your advertising strategy and get the results you want.   What is Facebook Advertising?  Facebook allows businesses to pay Facebook to show certain ads or content to a specific target audience. The cost of these ads depends on the reach and engagement the specific ad created receives. Facebook ads can appear on a user’s News Feed on desktop, the News Feed on mobile, or on the right column of Facebook for desktop. Facebook advertising allows you the opportunity to reach your audience and collect valuable data on the backend that allows you to improve your ad and make it more effective and efficient.    Setting Up Your Facebook Advertising Campaign  1. Create a Facebook Page (if you haven't already) In order to create any Facebook advertising, businesses must have Business Page. You can create a Page by going to facebook.com/pages/create; choose a page category and follow the step-by-step process. Best practices to keep in mind when creating a Page: Enter in as much Page info as you can – this will help users understand what your Page and your business is about; be sure to include a website link, other social media profiles if you have any, hours of operation, phone number, and physical address. Include relevant cover photo and profile picture. Discover what your Facebook Page strategy is… what are you looking to achieve with your new Facebook Page? What type of audience are you looking to reach? What’s your brand’s mission? How does that tone of voice sound? This will help establish a foundation for ads and will help you spend ad money wisely. 2. Map Out Goals for Your Ads Before beginning your ad campaigns, it’s always important to plan and outline what you are looking to achieve with Facebook advertising. We recommend applying the S.M.A.R.T. approach, that is, lay out objectives that are specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and timely. For example, if you would like to increase the number of attendants for an open house on Facebook, an example of a S.M.A.R.T. objective would be: Acquire 200 RSVPs for the event between June and July 2015. 3.  Choose an Ad Objective There are a number of ways to advertise on the platform to reach certain objectives. For example, if your goal is to engage your audience, promote your Page, send people to your website, get people to claim your offer, Facebook lays it out for you before you begin creating your ad. For example, if you would like to send more people to your blog, you would choose “send people to your website”. If you would like to promote a barbecue event at your location, you would choose “raise attendance at your event”.   4. Choose a Target Audience  After you select your advertising objective, Facebook will walk you through choosing a target audience. You will have the option to choose your target based on gender, age, language, geographical area, interests, and behavior. You can even choose to target users who have like your Page and/or those users’ friends. You also have the option to create a custom audience by uploading a customer email, website traffic, or app download list.   5. Choose an Ad Budget & Optimization Standards  Once you choose your target audience, you will be directed to choose an ad budget. The ad budget you set will be your maximum amount spent. If you choose to have a daily budget, the amount you choose will be the most you spend on a daily basis. If you choose to have a lifetime budget, the ad budget will be the amount you spend for the lifetime of the ad or the duration of the entire campaign. Choose what you’re paying for – whether your objective is to get more clicks to your website or simply more reach, Facebook will ask you to set your bid and whether or not you want to run your ad everyday or between a certain period of time. You will then have the option to schedule your ads. This allows you to promote your ad when your target audience is most likely on Facebook and provides the most efficient, budget-friendly way to promote your ad. 6. Design Your Ad Now we get to the fun part. Facebook lets you design how your ad will look. You have the option to choose a single image ad or a multiple image ad, which allows you to use up to six images in a single ad. You can then choose a headline (which is limited to 25 characters). So make sure you choose your words carefully. This text will sit at the top of the ad much like how text would look at the top of an image post. After your ad is designed, you can choose the ad placement; the choices are Facebook desktop News Feed, Facebook mobile News Feed, Facebook Desktop right column, and audience network.   7: Place Your Order The last step in the process is the place your order. Once you have double-checked your ad information, click on the green button tat says, “place order”. Facebook will review your ad and you will receive an email notification from Facebook once your ad has been reviewed and approved. Helpful Tips:  To make the most out of Facebook advertising, we recommend taking the time to determine your advertising objectives and specific target audience. This will not only make ad campaigns more effective, it will help you utilize your ad budget in the most efficient way possible. Just like any other advertising online, Facebook advertising is a complex process, one that will require planning, testing, and measuring to optimize and improve over time. You can monitor your advertising campaigns by clicking "Ads Manager" on the left column of your Facebook account.

Posted on: 3 June 2015 | 10:40 am

New Research Proves Pinterest is a Powerful Tool for Marketers

Have you incorporated Pinterest into your marketing mix yet? According to new study, there are currently 47 million active users on Pinterest and that audience is expected to grow. What’s more, Pinterest presents marketers with many opportunities to reach out to their customers and help them along the buying process through its attractive visual interface.   The Three Pinterest Advantages Take a good look at Pinterest and you will find that there are a couple of big reasons why it’s a powerful social site on the web. Its One-of-a-Kind Set Up – A feed of visual content that gets collected into user-created boards allows customers to collect their ideal stream of product options or dream concepts. The endless amount of content means users have the ability to create and collect content on just about anything.  Its Focus on Products – Pinterest differentiates from your traditional social site by focusing on products. While Facebook’s primary focus is connecting with friends and Linkedin is about connected with business contacts, recruiters, and colleagues, Pinterest conveniently delivers information on a wide range of products and goods to the consumer, especially for women in their 30s and young families, which is the demographic that dominates the social site.  It’s “Searcial” – a term coined by marketers that describes something that’s made up of both search and social. Consumers will often visit a search engine to research products and services. On the other hand, customers will go to social networks to connect to other users. Pinterest has the ability to satisfy both desires, which strengthens its appeal.   The Powers of Pinterest (According to Research) Pinterest is the Ultimate Online Shopping Catalog According to a study released May 12 by the Wall Street Journal, roughly 52% of the 1,500 active Pinterest users surveyed agreed that the site helps them find products they want to buy. Slightly less than half of respondents said Pinterest recommends relevant products to buy. In addition to this, 32% they purchased an item in store after viewing Pinterest content. To supplement, another study done by Sharaholic at the beginning of the year shows that Pinterest users were bouncing off the social site to company websites in December 2014 at a rate of seven times higher than they were in 2011. The study also shows that Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube actually lost ground sending customer to websites. In fact, for a social site of only 47.1 million users, Pinterest send 5% of the 300,000 websites surveyed in the study. Pretty impressive!   Pinterest Users Doubled at the End of 2014  Pinterest’s visual appeal makes it a catalog for everything you could ever imaging purchasing on the web. Research provided by the Global Web Index, an Internet data analysis firm, reported at Tech Crunch, reveals that the number of Pinterest users doubled during the second half of 2014. In the last six months of 2014, the social site’s active users grew 111% and members increased 57%. As reported two months ago, Pinterest recently become the fastest growing channel, surpassing Instagram. Since Pinterest’s beginning in 2011, Pinterest has grown its user base to massive numbers, at a similar rate to Facebook, which achieved 33 million from its beginning in 2004 – 2008.   Pinterest Will Receive Steady Growth Year-After-Year eMarketer expects a steady growth for Pinterest in the next several years. It reports that Pinterest will expect reaching a total audience of 60 million in 2019; Pinterest’s 24% growth rate will outshine Facebook’s 9.2%. Pinterest is also working really hard to reach a wider audience; although a majority of its users are millennial moms, they have doubled the number of males signing up in the past year. And the male audience is expected to grow faster than its female audience.   Pinterest Will Be an Attractive Marketing Opportunity With its carefully thought out ad options, Pinterest is offering a more welcoming feel that could turn marketers’ heads away from Facebook. Facebook, the current dominant social site has always been focused on social interaction, rather than marketing. Although Facebook has really stepped up in the last several months with new ad targeting options and video ads, it may be too late. Forrester’s Nate Elliott says that Pinterest will someday drive more sales than Facebook and Twitter, and by 2016, its ad offerings could trump those of other social networks. Pinterest will be able to offer not only great ad options, but also great marketing data to back it up. While Facebook collects affinity data based on users’ interests, Pinterest directly targets purchase intent, which shows what users are searching for to make future purchases. Affinity data is more passive and intent data, which is more active. While Pinterest has still not released all its customer data, the social network is interested in making it as accurate as possible, which can provide big value for advertisers that’s very reminiscent of the data that Google’s collects for its search ads. According to the Wall Street Journal, Pinterest is currently in talks to raise another $500 million. The article speculates that the money raised will be put towards building a buy button, a direct competitor to Facebook’s new call-to-action button and Google’s buy buttons.

Posted on: 28 May 2015 | 8:37 am

YouTube's TrueView Ads Let You Shop While You Watch Videos

Google’s online video site, YouTube, will be upping its appeal to product-based merchandisers very soon with the introduction of a new ad format called TrueView for Shopping.  Built in the same way as YouTube’s card-style annotations, the mobile-friendly ad format will give advertisers an option to highlight featured products or related information within an ad on a YouTube video. Viewers can click on the ad to purchase the product through the brand’s website. TrueView shopping ads are YouTube’s version of Google’s Merchant Center, a place where brands can upload product information and data to appear in Google’s Shopping service and search results. For businesses that would like to try TrueView shopping ads YouTube, they will need to have a Google Merchant Center account set up already. With this new feature, brands are able to target by demographics, geography, and even past views of products on the brand’s site.  In the Google announcement, the company reports that early adopters of the TrueView for shopping have seen strong results. “Online home goods retailer Wayfair, for instance, saw a 3X revenue increase per impression served when compared to previous campaigns. And beauty retailer Sephora took advantage of this new ad format to drove +80% lift in consideration and +54% lift in ad recall, and an average view time of nearly two minutes.” YouTube’s transition to these TrueView Shopping ads makes sense. Currently, there are at least 1 million YouTube channels dedicated to reviewing products. And that number has grown 50% year-after-year.  What are your thoughts on this new Shopping ad format? Do you think this will be more successful way to advertise for product merchandisers?

Posted on: 25 May 2015 | 8:09 am

Google-Twitter Deal Displays Tweets Prominently in Search Results

Do a search on Google today through your mobile device and you’ll see tweets displayed more prominently than ever before at the top of search results. This is thanks to a new Twitter-Google deal that was first announced at the beginning of the year, but was implemented officially today. Both Twitter and Google shared the news in blog posts, even including some examples of what users are expected to see.  Below is our own example of the #cannes2015 below. The tweets display in a carousel like format at the top of the page where all of them display the Twitter user and an image. However, tweets don’t always display in search results. Sometimes they fall in the middle of the search results page; sometimes they don’t show up at all. According to the Google post, the company mentioned:  It’s a great way to get real-time info when something is happening. And it’s another way for organizations and people on Twitter to reach a global audience at the most relevant moments. It looks like you’ll most likely see tweets in Google when a hashtag, topic, person, or organization appears to be trending or is newsworthy. What’s Twitter gaining from this? Traffic. Twitter mentions there’s no direct monetization involved which means there aren’t going to be clicks to tweets on Google that will earn Twitter any direct money. Instead, click on the “More Tweets” button associated with the new Twitter carousel on Google is open up the Twitter app or website where the user can see more tweets, see ads, and be encouraged to download the Twitter app. Twitter is hoping with increased visibility on Google, more people will be prompted to join the social network. Currently Twitter has 303 million active users and has lagged behind Facebook in popularity and has struggled to attract new users. For now, the new implementation will be available for Google mobile search results only in the U.S., in English, using either Twitter for iOS or Android, or by using the Google Search App. Twitter promises to add desktop and other languages in the next few months. Take a look at more examples of Tweets on Google here. 

Posted on: 21 May 2015 | 8:49 am

Pinterest Has New Ad Options to Help You Reach Your Marketing Goals

On Tuesday, Pinterest announced it has some big plans and offerings for advertisers this summer that will be focused on awareness, intent, and action.  With a new set of advertising options for video, audience targeting, pricing, and more, Pinterest is ready to help businesses reach their goals throughout each stage of the marketing funnel. “We’re aligning Pinner action with marketing objectives,” said Tim Kendall, General Manager of Monetization. Pinterest understands that users go on the image-sharing platform for two main reasons: they want to discover content with the intent to purchase by repining or saving pins, or they take action by clicking through the pin to visit the website. Here’s what advertisers can expect from Pinterest in the next few months: A New Kind of Video Ad: Pinterest will introduce a new spin on video advertising called Cinematic Pins, Pinterest’s “newest, most beautiful type of promoted pin”. Kendall described these as a “rebuke of interruptive and annoying auto play video ads”. Instead, the movement of the video ad begins as users scroll down their feed and the speed adjusts to the user’s scrolling speed. See an example below:  Lots of brands such as Gap Inc. L’Oreal, and Nestle are already on board. New Audience Targeting: Advertisers will be able to target Promoted Pins to users based on interests, personal interests, and life stages. According to Pinterest, the data to do that is built from multiple signals captured by Pinterest. This includes what users do on the platform. The targeting is based on “what users tell us they want to do in the future, not in the moment or in the past”. This will provide advertisers with greater value as it reaches people as they are forming ideas or aspirations about the future as opposed to them simply searching for a cookie recipe or a travel destination. With this new targeting, advertisers can expect to reach different kinds of users such as travelers, foodies, and fashionistas. Ad Engagement Pricing: Advertisers will only pay when users repin, click to view a pin up close, or click through to the advertiser’s website. This new CPR pricing model will help advertisers track future intent. This provides advertisers with helpful feedback on what content drives sales, and what doesn’t. Promoted App Pins: More and more users will be utilizing their mobile phones, and for those marketers looking to get more installs on their app, they can take advantage of App Pins. This update officially puts Pinterest in the app install advertising market, which is expected to hit $3 billion in the U.S. this year according to eMarketer. No matter if Pinterest users are seeking ideas for a wedding, vacation spot, camping trip, or home remodeling job, the intent is always aspirational with plans for the future. And Pinterest is there from the beginning of the buying process. This creates a great opportunity for Pinterest advertisers to gather insight about their customers' actions in the future while also having the ability to target to the many different interests groups. What are your thoughts on the new advertising options provided by Pinterest? As an advertiser, do you see yourself using these options in the future? 

Posted on: 20 May 2015 | 8:54 am

Google Buy Buttons Coming Soon to Mobile Shopping Ads

The long-rumored Google Marketplace may be closer than we think. In an effort to increase advertising revenue and retail search traffic, Google is introducing new buy buttons that will now be found on mobile search results pages. The buttons will show up in paid mobile search results under a “Shop on Google” heading found at the top of the page. The buttons are set to appear in a matter of weeks but will not appear in unpaid search results or results on desktop devices - just mobile search results. When users click on a buy button, they will be taken to a product landing page where they can choose product size, color, and complete their purchase. If users opt-in, they may store credit card information to automatically load when they make a purchase. Customer payment information will not be passed to the retailer. Once payment is complete, Google will pass on the payment to the retailer. However, retailers will handle all processing and shipping operations. Google is offering retailers access to merchant marketing programs that would allow retailers to continue to market to their customers the say way they would on their own website. In this Google program, Google will list several items on the first page of mobile search results and will receive advertising revenue from the merchant for all clicks.  So far, feedback has been controversial. Many retailers are uneasy about letting Google impede on customer relationships or have access to valuable sales data.  As Google seriously adjusts itself to accommodate mobile users, it is set to take on Amazon and eBay for mobile transactions with these buy buttons. The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources mentioning that Macy’s will be one of the retailers Google is planning to partner up with and it looks as though the buy buttons on paid shopping ads could evolve Google from ecommerce referrer to transactional middleman. A big reason why Google is doing this is to accommodate the surge in smartphone usage. The small screen size limits the space for ads and the difficulty of entering in credit card information on a retailer's site has prompted many users to flock to sites such as Amazon and eBay where they can purchase with one click and where their credit card information is already saved.  What are your thoughts on the new buy buttons? Retailers, are you interested in utilizing this service from Google? 

Posted on: 19 May 2015 | 8:48 am

Bing to Follow in Google’s Footsteps with a Mobile Friendly Update

Bing announced that it might be following Google’s lead by introducing its very own mobile friendly signal ranking that will rank mobile friendly websites higher in mobile search results. As the second most popular search engine, Bing recently started tagging results as, “mobile-friendly,” allows mobile users to differentiate between non-mobile friendly sites before they click. According to Search Engine Watch, Bing will soon make mobile friendliness a factor for ranking sites in mobile search results, but relevance will still be a factor that trumps them all, even mobile friendliness. There's a difference however; unlike Google, Bing will not penalize sites by lowering non-mobile sites in rankings. To be considered mobile friendly, Bing recommends the following: 1. Navigation – the menus and buttons found on the homepage of a website must be large enough to accommodate touch screen users. If buttons are too small and/or too close together, users may accidentally press the wrong buttons. 2. Readability – font size should be legible and the average users should not have to zoom in or scroll laterally to read text. Text should flow vertically and confined in viewpoint settings defined by the HTML of the site. 3. Scrolling – The site should fit the device the user is on, whether on a mobile or desktop device. Web responsive design makes it easy for site owners since it automatically adjusts to the device no matter the screen size. 4. Compatibility – The user should be able to open the site on a mobile device. Pages with Adobe Flash cannot be opened on Apple devices; some videos may have compatibility issues because of plugin dependencies, etc. Make sure you website is tested across multiple types of devices to make sure it’s functioning properly across the board. A fifth requirement that is not one of Bing’s four main requirements but is an important ranking factor for Google is site speed. Having a website that loads fast prevents users from bouncing away from your site. This also allows Google bots to crawl more pages on your site in a given time. The faster your website can be, the more likely it is to rank higher and convert better. Before Bing officially rolls out the new mobile friendly ranking update, it will release a tool very similar to Google’s Mobile Friendly Test, which will allow page owners to test and assess their own pages. The tool will be available in a couple of weeks. Bing has not confirmed a concrete date when these updates will take place, only hinting that they’re due to arrive in the “coming months”. 

Posted on: 14 May 2015 | 5:45 pm

Facebook Now Allows Customers to Call Businesses From News Feed Ads

Facebook announced a break through in social media advertising today! The social network added a “Call Now” button option to its News Feed ads in its effort to enhance its advertising initiatives for local businesses. The new call-to-action button is specifically available for News Feed ads and enables a customer to telephone a business. Mobile customers who tap the button are redirected to their phone dialer.   The new feature is apart of Facebook’s “local awareness” objective launched in October 2014. Facebook calls this new feature its first advertising feature specifically designed to benefit local businesses. Thus far, businesses have had the option to include like buttons for their page and add a “Get Directions” button that automatically loads the user’s mapping application on mobile devices.   Facebook ads offer the ability to target people near your business or live n the vicinity. Facebook claims that these new local ads are “more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels like newspaper while providing more precise targeting and greater reach”.   To get started with your ad campaign, head to the Ad Create tool, available for all page administrators. Select “Local Awareness, “ then the page you want to promote. Next, enter your business’s address (your address will automatically populate if it’s already listed in your page info). A map will show you the area that will be covered by your ad. Advertisers will have the option to choose their target audience, add ad text, and now add a call-to-action for phone calls. For more detailed instructions on how to get started with your Facebook Local Awareness ads, access it on Facebook here. Or, visit the Facebook for Business page for more information.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 | 1:40 pm

Facebook's Carousel Format is Now Available for Mobile Ad Campaigns

Last year was when we were first introduced to the carousel ad format on Facebook. Thanks to their recent success with carousel link ads, it looks like Facebook is making the format available to mobile ad campaigns. According to a Facebook for Business post published yesterday, the format will now be available for mobile ads and will support five images with links. Facebook added that this format has allowed advertisers to lower costs per conversions by 30 – 50 percent, 20 – 30 percent lower than costs per click of single image link ads.   Facebook Mentions “Improved Ad Performance” Since the carousel ad format supports up to five images, Facebook says it can produce better results for an advertising, making the experience more “interactive, attention-grabbing, and helpful for both direct response and brand awareness marketing”. Facebook recommended that advertisers take advantage of this new format to highlight brands and products in “different, creative ways”. For example, MINI used the carousel format to take people on a virtual tour of a new car model. Neiman Marcus used the new format to bring its catalog to Facebook, showcasing their shoe and handbag collections. Facebook claims this carousel format drove 3X more conversions and 85% better click through rates.   Credit: Facebook Carousel Ads Provide More Insightful Data for Advertisers  Facebook also mentions that carousel ads also give advertisers more insight on which links are performing best and give advertisers the option to optimize the order of the images based on the most engagement and expected performance. This optional feature has helped increase click through rates by an average of 12%.  What are your thoughts on the new ad option? Do you see your business or organization using the carousel ad format for future mobile ad campaigns? 

Posted on: 13 May 2015 | 9:03 am