Why CMO's Need to Join the Social Media Conversation

Social advertising spending will reach $11 billion a year by 2017, up from $4.7 billion in 2012, according to a BIA/Kelsey report released last year. This explosive growth will be driven by increased spending on advertising formats native to social media, such as video and mobile marketing, which will reshape traditional display ads into forms suited for socially-engaged audiences. For chief marketing officers and PR professionals, this trend will require breaking away from the one-way communication paradigm associated with traditional TV advertising and news, and embracing a new approach to broadcasting where audiences are active participants in the conversation.

Social TV Advertising

Last year, Nielsen began including TV-related Twitter conversations in its traditional ratings system, with the results revealing how dramatically social media has expanded television advertising's potential outreach. Twitter conversation about live TV grew 24 percent year-over-year between the second quarters of 2012 and 2013, expanding to 19 million unique people and 263 million tweets. Results showed that for every person tweeting about a live show, fifty more were following the Twitter conversation. This multiplier effect vastly extends the outreach of TV ads beyond their initial audience to viewers' social networks, making it imperative to factor the potential for follow-up sharing into ad concepts.

Television's social turn reflects how stationary TV screens are becoming increasingly integrated with their mobile counterparts on multiple fronts. In a broadband age, consumers who used to receive television, computer, and phone services as separate items can now compare TV and internet providers who offer bundled packages delivered over the same wireless network. Digital media players such as Apple TV, Roku, Google Chromecast, and the forthcoming Amazon Firetube enable broadcasts to be shared between devices, according to The Verge. Ad producers are exploiting this merger of media by designing formats such as Vine videos that can play on both traditional and mobile screens, inviting home audiences to share conversations with remote friends, as Adweeek reveals.

Viral Promotional Content

The rise of Vine videos illustrates how social conversations about multimedia content are driving viral campaigns. Mashable explains how the Harlem Shake fad, one of the top YouTube phenomena of 2013, showed how encouraging audiences to get into the video production act could push content distribution to viral proportions. Mobile users were also eager to share photos and graphics with their friends, propelling Instagram to expand its audience by 66 percent in 2013 and come within a percentage point of Twitter's market share, according to Pew research. Conversation-generating content is proving a winning formula for maximizing audience outreach.



Discussion-driven Search Engine Rankings

Social conversations are also weighing into search engine marketing. An annual Moz study found a strong correlation between Google +1 button endorsements and search engine rankings. Analysis indicated that +1 endorsements have a ripple effect, resulting in content sharing that creates organic backlinks. Experiments by media companies such as the Los Angeles Times and Huffington Post have found that embedded Facebook comments can give content a comparable boost. For PR professionals, generating social discussion is becoming increasingly vital for staying relevant to the marketing conversation.

8 Ways to Keep Your Social Media Updates Fresh

Small business owners managing their own social media often ask the same question: "How can I keep my updates fresh and engaging?"

It's no easy task. If one were to poll marketers and business owners alike, he or she would find that creativity and the challenge of keeping updates from becoming stale is a top concern in social media. Luckily, at Omnicore Agency, our team of social media experts never run out of good ideas.

 

Taking a page from their book – and asking their recommendations – we've compiled a list for you to use the next time you get stuck on what to write, or for those moments when you need your content to pop, or those instances where you want to take what you've been doing to the next level. No matter what your social media challenge, these tips for keeping your social media updates fresh are sure to make managing your social channels a whole lot easier -and more successful!

• Don't Always Talk About Yourself: This is the key to success in social media. Don't just share links to your site or overly promotional posts. Be human, be conversational, and talk about the good words of others, including sharing their content, their links, or their creations (with credit, of course)!
• Check the Date: No idea what to post? Check the calendar! Each month - or even each day or week, for that matter – plays host to a variety of holidays, awareness weeks, and events. Find the ones that tie in to your business and find a way to connect with your audience over those occasions. Not only is it timely, but it's also unique. Try implementing date or time-specific promotions through social media that relate to the occasion, host chats or streams using hashtags relating to that event to raise awareness and generate conversation, or create graphics associated with that specific event and share them throughout your social channels.
• Crowdsource: Your social networks are a goldmine of opportunity for content, so source from them on occasion when you need a break. Ask for photo submissions for a contest, or retweet their answers to a poll, prompt, or question. It gets the conversation going and has the potential to grow your audience at the same time. Bottom line: ask for their input!
• Quotations and Questions: Questions and quotations are always good for sharability and engagement.

Quotations are good for more inspirational or lighter topics – for an added bonus, turn that quote into a graphics that's pinable and sharable for maximum impact. When choosing quotes, go for something fitting for that day, a particular topic, or just your industry in general. If you can, find a way to connect it back to your own business by sharing that quote and then linking to a content piece you've created that uses that quote or connects back to it in some way. Alternately, post a quote and then ask a question relating to its contents to try to ignite some feedback.

Questions alone, on the other hand, are good for getting valuable feedback and sparking conversation. Just make sure the questions aren't too complicated or too controversial. Think of questions you might ask in a focus group or customer survey, or go for the conversational/laid-back sort of questions one might find in small talk – you may be surprised on who you connect with! Speaking of questions, also use your social channels to answer them. If you have FAQs, do a Q&A post series and then make that content perform double duty by turning those Q&A updates into a blog post or other content piece. Answer questions builds credibility and connects with the customer.

• Add Visuals: Adding videos, photos, or graphics instantly makes your status update more attractive, plus, it boosts your potential to have it shared across multiple channels (research shows it!) . Take the time to enrich a post with a photo or a video you've created – you'll be surprised at the increased levels of engagement you'll see as a result.
• Make the Next Step: Post a teaser of something and then link to the content or landing page where they can get more info or explore something more indepth. Think calls to action when you make your updates!
• Search for Sources: Stuck on where to find the topic of your next tweet or status update? Check these standby sources for new information and inspiration:

• Today's Headlines: current events are always a great way to generate conversation. Just approach with caution and make sure you're choosing topics that are relevant and reflective of your brand in a positive way.
  Industry blogs or websites: see what the buzz is in your industry and share it with your audiences!
  Your competitor's websites and media channels: if your competitors are writing, tweeting, or blogging about it, it's valuable – look at what they're doing and see how you can do it better.
  YouTube: videos are great ways to look at a topic from a visual angle. Look for industry relevant videos and see how they might be shared or turned into a status update.
• Flickr: like YouTube, Flickr can also be a great way to get inspiration for a status update, simply by looking at a topic from a more visual angle.
• Pinterest: do a search or two for phrases relevant to your industry and see what content is out there – can you create something similar or better to share?
• Slideshare.net: look for slideshows for snippets of information that are ultra-sharable through social media and may inspire presentations of your own.
• Your swipe file: if you don't have one, you need one! Here's how to make one.
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• Your latest newsletter: look through your latest email marketing blasts – is there something there that could be shared through social media too?
•  Your blog: check your blog for recent posts and see if you can condense down your post takeaways into tweetable, shareable, or Facebookable snippets.
• Short and Sweet: Research shows that on Facebook, shorter posts tend to perform better in terms of engagement and views, so keep that in mind when making an update. Don't be afraid to make a short exclamation and let it roll from there.

These are just a handful of tips (there are countless more and we'd love to hear some of yours in the comments!) for keeping social media updates fresh. The key thing is to not do the same thing over and over again. You know this as a common sense takeaway, but it can be tempting to do so. Remember that Mark Twain quote about insanity – it's when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. Don't do only the same things!

Article Source: http://socialmediatoday.com/salman-aslam/2059286/8-ways-keep-your-social-media-updates-fresh

California Law Allows Minors to Erase Embarrassing Posts Online

A new law in California has recently been passed that lets minors delete past indiscretions on their online social networks. This lets young people have the opportunity to ‘wipe the slate clean’ and create a fresh start - removing the embarrassing pictures or comments they may have posted when they were younger and may now regret. With the growing invasion of companies and colleges into the private lives of potential employees and students, this allows minors to remove posts they might not be proud of before applying to schools and jobs giving them a fresh start. Will this new development in California catch on elsewhere allowing young people to create a new start with their online social presence?

Image - www.entrepreneur.com

Alongside the development which allows minors to erase their embarrassing posts, the law also builds on existing state and federal legislation that requires Website operators to publicly display a privacy policy, and to notify minors who are using the service that information is being collected about them. The legislation’s second key element other than the ‘eraser button’, is that it stops Internet companies from marketing products to minors that are otherwise prohibited to be offered and sold to minors outside the Internet, for instance the tobacco and alcohol. This implies the protective nature of the law and that the principal reason for its introduction is to guard against what may potentially go wrong when young people have unlimited access to the internet.

The new law, which will only come into effect in California on and after January 1, 2015, “requires the operator of an Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application to permit a minor, who is a registered user of the operator’s Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application, to remove, or to request and obtain removal of, content or information posted on the operator’s Internet Web site, service, or application by the minor.” However, many companies already offer the ability for their users to take control over what content they wish to remain online. For instance, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all provide their users the option to delete content which they do not want others to be able to access anymore, but not all digital platforms do this. This law encourages all social media networks and companies to incorporate privacy settings into their design fully, and provide the option to delete posts.

Image – www.consumers.ofcom.org.uk

What will this lead to for the behaviour of minors? Will the ability to delete past indiscretions from your online history lead people to be less worried about behaviour which may be viewed as embarrassing in the future, knowing that they can just hit the delete button when it gets posted online? Although this legislation gives young people the opportunity to control their digital personas, it also allows them to hide behaviours which they might not want others to see and therefore they might be more likely to post things of an embarrassing or potentially offensive nature as they will be aware that they can just delete them in the future, when the time comes to apply to college or to jobs. Surely it would be better to get minors to avoid putting this content up in the first place instead of providing an easy option out when they realise the wrongs of their ways? It appears that this could have the wrong effect upon the actions of teenagers, possibly encouraging them to post things they otherwise might not have because they now know it can be deleted at a click of a button.

However, what a lot of young people may not realise is that it is not always possible to delete online content completely. Therefore this eraser button cannot completely be classed as a get out of jail free card for youths. Once something has been transmitted to a third party, the original Internet network, such as Facebook, would have no obligation to try and get that third party site to take down the content. Therefore, if an embarrassing photo was to spread virally, it would be almost impossible to erase history of the post. Furthermore, Internet archives automatically create copies of almost every piece of information on the web. An example of the way deleted posts may not actually be gone completely is the website ‘Politwoops – deleted tweets from politicians’ in the US – which demonstrates how even the information which you think you have managed to delete may have been accessed by a third party and is therefore no longer in your own control. The site introduces itself by stating: ‘Sure we all tweet things we don’t mean to share, but now politicians have no way to hide them. Discover tweets that your politicians shared and then deleted’. Although the majority are deleted due to small spelling errors, or a change of opinion on what they’ve posted, others can reveal potentially career threatening comments, showing that once something is posted online it is never truly possible to remove the evidence of it completely.

What do you think?

Will the law introduced in California be taken up by any other states in the US or other countries in the world? Should minors be given the opportunity to wipe the slate clean on their social networks?