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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How Facebook Hashtags Could Effect Marketing Campaigns

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Julie Blakley

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook might soon be adding hashtags to its service. Of course, the news spread quickly among marketers and advertisers, who see the incorporation of the hashtag as a huge opportunity for brands to extend the reach of their existing campaigns on Twitter, Instagram, and Google+.

As we’ve written on the blog before, hashtags have been used by many big brands, mostly on Twitter, to drive campaigns, aggregate and source user-generated content, broaden messages and organize chatter around topics, ideas or advertising campaigns.

>>Read our “12 Tips for Effective Twitter Hashtag Marketing” and “5 Best Social Media Campaigns with User-Generated Content“

As many marketers will tell you, your brand is what people say about you or your products when you are not in the room, and the ability for brands to pick up, see and utilize user-generated posts and content from social media (often based on hashtags) is an excellent way to improve messaging, find influencers and brand advocates and drive campaigns across platforms.

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Social Media and the Oscars

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Julie Blakley

As social media becomes increasingly integrated into the world of traditional media and television, large televised events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars are becoming a hotbed of social media activity. Broadcasters are embracing the trend, realizing that second screen viewing experiences offer yet another place to engage with fans, amplify messages and incorporate user-generated content into their programming.

Rise of Social Television

According to an article on The Next Web, we watch television with one or more mobile devices in our hands or within reach and we are eager to share online what we like and don’t like when we’re watching television.

Researchers Nielsen, Deloitte, Google and Thinkbox tell us:

75% to 85% of TV viewers use internet devices while watching.

60% of these multi-taskers are emailing

Up to 52% of viewers are doing something with social media related to the show being viewed

Between 27% to 44% browse for products spotted in a show (what are YOU wearing tonight? @VeraWang?)

According to Rob Gelick, senior vice president and general manager of digital platforms for CBS Interactive, second screen experiences exist in a space between marketing and content, and they’ve been “more wildly successful than we’d ever hoped.”

In fact, watching TV is now decidedly no longer an ‘offline experience’ for a quickly growing group of people.

Oscars and Social Media

At this year’s Oscars, social media was integrated into almost every part of the night.

While Hollywood’s greatest gathered in the Dolby Theater for the 85^th annual Academy Awards, the rest of the country gathered in maybe a slightly less glamorous place — the Internet. Like any other big nationally televised event, the masses took to Twitter and Facebook to share their thoughts and excitement on everything from Seth MacFarlane’s hosting and jokes to the musical acts.

Over the course of the night there were over 8.9 million tweets about the big show (2.1 million during the red carpet and 6.8 million during the awards show).
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Twitter Hashtags and the Super Bowl

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Julie Blakley

If you watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, you may have noticed that the social media winner of the day was definitely Twitter (and Twitter’s quarterback, the #hashtag). The hugely watched television event showed that Twitter has become the outlet of choice for viewers who increasingly use their mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktops as secondary screens to multitask while they watch live televised events.

Twitter’s blog states there were 24.1 million Tweets about the game and halftime show (this leaves aside the ads, which also heavily favored the platform during the game).

Super Bowl advertisers this year heavily favored posting Twitter hashtags over links to Facebook pages during commercials aired during the game – not an insignificant trend considering that 30-second spots cost up to $4 million each.

Advertisers embrace the Twitter #Hashtag

According to an article by Matt McGee, the Editor-in-chief of Marketing Land, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials — that’s 50% of all the spots that aired during CBS’ game coverage. Interestingly, Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials — which is about eight percent of the ads (last year, Facebook and Twitter tied with eight mentions each during Super Bowl ads). And, as predicted, despite Google claiming their Google+ is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, there was not one mention of the social network during the big event.
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5 Creative Social Media Campaign Microsites

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Marcie Giovannoni

When it comes to building a successful branded social media campaign, there are countless creative strategies and tactics at a brand’s disposal. One strategy becoming more popular (especially with the rise of social media) is the microsite.

A brand’s main website already has a structured navigation, ecommerce actions and basic social needs, and adding an additional component for a campaign or promotion could get complicated and/or make a mess of the site. Enter microsite, stage left.

A microsite is a dedicated site that is used to highlight a brand’s product, a promotion or a campaign. It’s an exclusive place for fans and consumers to engage and interact with unique content: both brand and user-generated.

Microsites are an effective method of enhancing marketing efforts, efficiently targeting additional audiences that companies normally wouldn’t have time to reach using the traditional approach.

The most common social media campaign microsites contain user-generated content, creating context for the brand as well as credibility.

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How Social Media is Changing Sports Marketing

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Julie Blakley

Using Social Media as a Primary Source of News and Information about a Team

“The lifeblood of college football fandom is changing.”

Or so reads the opening line in a recent article from Wired magazine on how social media is changing the collegiate sports marketing and news world.

It’s hard to imagine that just a few short years ago (in 2009), the SEC actually considered banning social media at sporting events, before adopting a much more realistic and beneficial not-for-profit social media policy – allowing fans to post updates and pictures, as long as they made no money doing so.

Now, social media has become the go-to resource for many fans seeking fan photos, news, information and behind-the-scenes peeks for their favorite teams. The same Wired article writes:

“Social media is a win-win for college football because it can act as both a conduit for personal interactions and a source for information. That means Michigan fans, from news hounds to stat nerds to those with a voice to share, have a place to bleed Maize and Blue pixels alongside their fellow college football community.”

Kent State recently created a social hub on their website, where fans of the Flashes can interact with and view all Kent State related social media content. Kent State used Postano to aggregate all of the fan-generated social media content (via hashtag), along with the official school feeds, and then display the content on the site.

The social hub creates a one-stop destination for fans to interact with the Kent State community and engage with all of the great social content being created.

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Hashtag Campaigns Done Right

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Marcie Giovannoni

A hashtag isn’t just a word, or combination or words- it can be a brand, a passion, a spirit or a joke. However, it is most of all a community in conversation. It’s people coming together to share excitement, pride, gripes, stories and/or loyalty for a common interest.

Why does it matter? Hashtags not only create conversations and community, but they can create context for your brand or product.

As social media continues to exponentially grow, brands are trying to find new ways to set themselves apart and engage with their audiences.

Many big name brands have initiated hashtag campaigns- some successful, others horrific and some that just fell flat. There are many crucial parts to a successful hashtag campaign, and even the tiniest slip can cause one to fail.

Sourcing user-generated content and fan content is becoming more and more popular as brands are realizing how important consumer engagement is to their economic success. User-generated content demonstrates brand loyalty and also gives other audiences context for the content and, most importantly, the product.

Integrating user-generated content from a campaign back to a brand’s website can not only increase engagement with fans potentially unaware of the campaign or not on social media; but can also extend the mileage of the brand’s hashtag campaign content. Another benefit of bringing the campaign back to a website is that it’s been known to increase time on site exponentially. Continue reading →

5 Benefits of Using an Internal Social Media Dashboard

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Marcie Giovannoni

Digital content is replicating at an exponential rate, and cutting through the clutter is becoming more and more challenging everyday. With 100,00 tweets, 571 new websites created, 347 new blog posts and 48 hours of YouTube videos being uploaded EVERY MINUTE, the era of big data has arrived. Trying to cut through the noise and discover the best content pertinent to your business and industry can be an overwhelmingly daunting task.

By implementing an internal dashboard as part of your social media marketing strategy, it allows you to easily surface the most relevant content as well as curate and share the best of that content to your own social networks with just one click.

An internal dashboard can be one of many things: social media command center, corporate social media hub, social media monitoring dashboard or a content curation station. Whatever its function, there are optimal business and marketing benefits that come with using a visual monitoring tool.

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