About Julie Blakley

Julie Blakley is currently the Digital Marketing Manager for Postano, where she's in charge of managing everything from content creation to social media to SEO. A University of Oregon Journalism graduate, Julie found herself working in the world of digital marketing and media after college and hasn't looked back since. Five years later, she's applied her innate curiosity (and inner geek) that led her into journalism to the world of tech, web writing, social media and marketing businesses online. Follow Julie on Twitter Follow Julie on Google+ http://www.postano.com/blog

Using Consumer-Generated Content to Fuel Marketing Campaigns

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Julie Blakley

The emergence of social media several years ago changed the way brands communicated with and to consumers – forcing them to completely change their approach to marketing products and services not only online, but offline as well.

The vast networks of people who participate on various social platforms has made it possible for one person to communicate with hundreds or even thousands of other people about products and companies. As you’d imagine, this emergence of consumer-to-consumer communications has been greatly magniﬁed in the marketplace – and become an essential piece of the marketing puzzle for brands.

As I’ve written before, your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, which is why finding unique ways to leverage these consumer conversations into marketing strategies is essential and integrating user-generated content is an important component of brand building.

Unlike traditional marketing communications, where brands and marketing managers had a high degree of control, today’s marketers have to learn how to best leverage and shape consumer discussions and generated media. In recent months, more and more brands have realized the power in using consumer-generated media from social networks to help power their campaigns (read “5 Best Social Media Campaigns with User-Generated Content”).

The power of sourcing user-generated content has not been lost on many of the major brands and agencies. In last year’s Super Bowl, half of the national advertisements mentioned a Twitter hashtag in the ad (encouraging viewers to participate in the conversation well after the ad aired).

In fact, many major brands are not only incorporating consumer content into their websites, billboards and television commercials, but are also using it on ecommerce pages and in retail displays.

Here are some examples of innovative brands using consumer-generated media to help propel their marketing campaigns, drive awareness and increase sales:

Keen – Letting Consumers to Fuel a Campaign

Keen and their agency North was recently nominated for a SoMe Award for their campaign for Worldwide Recess Day. The campaign encouraged people to take 10 minutes to get outside and move, and aimed to amplify awareness of the Keen brand and social media channels, as well as drive traffic and sales through their website.

Keen encouraged people to upload photos and tweets with the hashtag #Take10, and then aggregated all of that social content on a hub page using Postano.

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You Can Now Add Vine to Postano

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Julie Blakley

We’re happy to announce Vine as the latest social media network available to stream, aggregate and curate within Postano. Options include the ability to stream Vine accounts, hashatgs and shared Vines from fans and the community.

You can choose to either automatically include Vines to your Postano, or moderate for a more curated experience. The six-second videos will also play automatically in any of the Postano platform options, whether it be a social hub, event display, mobile app or retail display. Vines can also be integrated with content from the thirteen other social networks we support including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more.

Vines with the hashtag #bulldog in Postano

Ever since Twitter acquired the mini-video-taking app last October (before it even launched) and then launched the app in January, our team has been eager to add Vine as the 14^th social network supported by the Postano platform.

Vine hit the number one spot for downloaded free apps in the U.S. back in April, and has continued to grow in popularity since then.

Many major companies and brands like General Electric, Urban Outfitters, Neimen Marcus and the Booklyn Nets have already come up with innovative and creative ways to use Vine as part of their social media marketing strategies and campaigns (read Media Bistro’s post, “10 of the Best Brands on Vine”).

Postano Part of Campaign Nominated for SoMe Award

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Julie Blakley

We were proud to be part of a a successful social media campaign run by Portland agency North for their client Keen Footwear promoting Worldwide Recess Day that was recently nominated for a SoMe Award. The campaign aimed to encourage people to get out and take 10 minutes to get outside and move, as well amplify awareness of the Keen brand and social media channels and drive traffic and sales through their website.

Keen encouraged people to upload photos and tweets with the hashtag #Take10, and then aggregated all of that social content on a hub page using Postano.

The campaign was a huge success. Here are some stats:

Keen gained over 20,000 new Instagram followers
Keen earned a spot on the Outdoor Industry Association’s list of Top Brands on Twitter
Keen gained 3.5 Million new followers on Pinterest
During the height of the campaign, there were more than 3 million results for Worldwide Recess Day found on Google

Watch the video to learn more about the campaign:

>>Oh, and don’t forget to VOTE for the Keen campaign as the People’s Choice!

TigerLogic Releases Major Update to Social Visualization and Content Distribution Platform Postano

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Julie Blakley

Postano Continues to Evolve; Thomas O’Keefe Joins TigerLogic as Senior Vice President of Sales and Services

Portland, OR – May 7, 2013 – TigerLogic Corporation (Nasdaq: TIGR) today announced the release of a significant upgrade to its Postano social visualization and content distribution platform, which now includes Postano Mobile, the result of integrating Storycode technology. In addition to this new mobile offering, the Postano platform includes Postano Events, Postano Retail, Postano Social Hub, and the built in Postano Monitoring dashboard capabilities. TigerLogic also announced today Thomas O’Keefe joined the company as Senior Vice President of Sales and Services.

Postano is a powerful aggregator of social content across Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social platforms, bringing together the visualization of the digital conversations and content streams from brands and their fans, from across the web. Within Postano, these content streams can be moderated, curated, analyzed, and then displayed in physical store locations, at events to increase brand awareness, on website social hubs to amplify engagement, and on hashtag campaign landing pages to create brand conversation and increase participation.

“The evolution of our Postano social marketing product culminates with the integration of Postano Mobile,” said Justin Garrity, Vice President, Marketing and Product. “Brands now have the ability to publish dynamic magazine apps to iOS and Android platforms. With Postano Mobile, we can now bring in all the social channels that the Postano platform connects to.”

The Postano platform is designed to enable customers to quickly create unique configurations of social media products from today’s leading social networks and syndication sources. Once the right mix is created, brands can curate fan content, ensuring the Postano experience is on-brand with real-time moderation capabilities. Custom posts allow brands to integrate promotions and ads directly into the content stream, linking highly visual content directly to online shopping channels

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Brands as Publishers and How It’s Changing Marketing

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Julie Blakley

While certainly not a new concept, more and more brands are increasingly turning into media machines in today’s marketing landscape. While brands, media and audiences used to have distinct roles in the marketing relationship, in today’s world, these roles overlap, with brands and audiences becoming two of the major media makers. This creates new opportunities for brands to leverage the content they, and their audiences are creating.

While media and media outlets used to serve as the meeting place for brands and audiences, today this is no longer the case. Now, each party is both a content creator and distributor. There are a few major takeaways to remember with this shift:

Audiences/people now act as their own publishers

With the explosion of social media and the ability to easy create and share content, your consumers and potential customers are now the publishers of their own opinions, preferences and experiences. In many ways, audiences have commandeered the function of marketers. They are often the ones driving product awareness, influencing purchase decisions, and telling brands and their own networks what they think publically.

The smartest brands are realizing the power of harnessing this user-generated content in their own marketing efforts. Read our post on “Building Your Brand by Integrating User-Generated Content,” and “5 Best Social Media Campaigns with User-Generated Content.”

Brands are expected to not only create content, but also engage with user content

As audiences increasingly talk and share about brands via social media and digital channels, they are expecting that these brands do more than simply promote their own products and services. Every day, millions of people are actively reaching out to connect with brands, and they want to hear more than just what they have to say. These audiences also expect brands to engage with them and interact, use and respond to the content they are producing.
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Postano Partners with Boston Cares for #MilesofGood Campaign

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Julie Blakley

Like millions of people around the country, our team at Postano was deeply saddened by the tragedy at the Boston Marathon in April. Despite being located on the opposite coast, we all wanted to find a way we could help the community and people of Boston heal and move on after such a horrendous event.

We were very happy to donate our services and use of the Postano platform to Boston Cares, which is the largest volunteer mobilization agency in New England.

After the tragedy, the Boston Cares office was flooded with calls and emails from people in Boston and beyond looking for ways to help. With limited opportunities for volunteer positions the organization could provide, Boston Cares launched a campaign that sought to encourage people to share via social media what they were doing to help.

“We were inspired by the good-hearted people of Boston – everyone wanted to help as much as they can after such a tragedy. There is such compassion present in our city, and our campaign is meant to reflect that,” said Alia Hamada Forrest, the Program Manager of Service Projects for Boston Cares.

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6 Cross-Platform Hashtag Marketing Campaigns

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Julie Blakley

Nike – #MakeItCount

Nike’s #MakeItCount campaign started in 2012 as part an effort to publicize the release of the Fuel Band. It started with a viral YouTube effort, and then expanded to include Nike encouraging their fans and followers to tell them how they planned to “Make it Count” in 2012.

Nike promoted the hashtag on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest (and set up their own accounts on the networks, which posted images and statements related to the campaign). Nike also incorporated the hashtag into print and television advertisements as well.

The campaign was so successful in 2012, Nike extended the campaign, incorporating the hashtag into in-store retail displays and continuing to push the message well into 2013.

In fact, the Nike store in London is now featuring several prominent posters, which show the athletes at the most intense (and at times painful-looking) moments during training. Each athlete’s pledge is then written on top of the image, with the athletes’ Twitter handles and the “#MakeItCount” hashtag.

HGTV – #lovehome

It’s not unusual to see a television network advertising itself, but HGTV recently tried to expand their marketing efforts beyond the television spots they ran spots on-air by to promote its “Love Home” social media campaign.

The network asked fans to share photos on Twitter or Instagram and label them with the hashtags #lovehome and #hgtv. Some lucky fans then got to see their images included later on in the later TV ads, as well as on the company blog.

Fully taking advantage of the growing trend of people who watch television with a mobile device within reach, the campaign was a success. HGTV also had a win with the campaign by focusing on personal expression, and the campaign got a huge response from its viewers. According to an official blog post, the channel received more than 40,000 submissions for the campaign.

The cross platform campaign also was able to promote its social profiles through their TV spots, and encouraged viewers to deepen their engagement with the brand by getting more involved with HGTV digitally.
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5 Instagram Marketing Mistakes

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Julie Blakley

Since the explosion of Instagram, it’s acquisition by Facebook, and it’s adoption by many of the top brands as a marketing platform, there have been lots of businesses trying to figure out the best way to use the photo sharing service as a way to promote their business.

>>Read 7 Tips for Growing Your Business Exposure on Instagram

However, before you start an Instagram account for your brand or business and start snapping and posting photos, it’s as important to understand what NOT to do when using Instagram as a marketing platform as knowing what you can do for success.

Here are five Things NOT to do on Instagram:

1. Going on posting sprees and/or neglecting your account

There’s nothing wrong with uploading more than one Instagram photo the same day. However, be careful not to clog your follower’s feeds by suddenly uploading five or ten pictures in the span of a few minutes. Instagram isn’t like Twitter where the conversation is moving at a super quick pace, so you want to avoid flooding your followers’ accounts with updates.

Spacing out your updates will ensure you see better engagement on your photos. That being said, you also don’t want to upload a few photos one day, and then forget about your account for weeks at a time. If you want to stay top of mind for your followers, and have them eager to log into their accounts to see you latest photos, you’ll want to post on a fairly consistent basis. This doesn’t necessarily mean a photo every day, but it does mean making sure you post something at least once a week.

2. Overdoing it on the branding/product shots

Instead of cramming each photo you post with one of your products, your branding, your store logo etc., take a softer approach with your marketing on Instagram. Instead of ramming your logo and products down your visitors’ throats, be more subtly in your approach.

One smaller company that nails this is Heart Coffee Roasters, based in our Postano’s homebase of Portland. They post interesting, beautiful images that are directly related to their product (often shots from locations around the world where they source their beans), without being overtly self-promotional.

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5 Growing Trends in Digital Marketing

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Julie Blakley

1. Seeing innovative social media displays at more events

If SXSW this year was any indication, it’s clear there is a growing trend towards displaying live social media feeds in customized and engaging displays. Everywhere our team went in Austin we saw a huge number of brands showing social buzz – in the form of Tweets, Instagram photos, check-ins and more – in interactive visualizations at events, parties and in the convention center.

Here at Postano, we’ve been helping brands and conferences create unique, branded visual experiences with social media content – either from official feeds or user-generated content based on hashtags.

Social media displays can help bring the digital audience into a physical space, and when fans see their content driving the visuals up on the big screen, social media activity and engagement can increase dramatically.

The surge of activity ripples across the web and engages fans who are not even attending the event. Using a hashtag specific to the event can inspire more engagement and even help the event trend.

Here at Postano, we have helped power social media visualizations for everything from corporate conferences, like Dell World, to parties at SXSW, like the Smirnoff powered #Mixhibit VIP lounge at Viceland.

>> Learn more about the Postano event visualization options, which range from montage style boards to fully animated 3D sequences, all created with live, dynamic content.

2. Second screen viewing experiences

Large cultural and televised events are no longer relegated to TV alone. This year, CES added a 2^nd Screen Summit, which showed the meteoric rise in social television in 2012. In 2012, social TV grew 363%, ending the year with 800 million comments made about televised events on social media.

Some other statistic about the huge rise in second screen viewing:

40% of tablet owners seek further information about the TV program
29% of smart phone owners shop online while watching TV
46% of smart phone owners check social networks while watching TV

>> See Full Infographic on Social Television by Blue Fin

As I wrote in Twitter hashtags and the Super Bowl, Twitter hashtags were mentioned in 50% of the television ads this year – showing marketers increased interest in engaging television audiences online and expanding the reach of their campaigns through social media.
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