Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Who needs an advertising industry when consumers are perfectly capable of creating noise for a brand by themselves? It’s an inevitable question now that video website and satellite broadcaster Current TV is asking viewers/users to create their own advertising on behalf of brands. All submitted ideas are voted on by the community and the winner then gets real airtime, sponsored by the brand in question. The results are pretty impressive, (more…)

New figures from a report by Forrester indicate that not only is social media being used by more people, the age profile is increasing too. As expected in the shift to consumption by advocacy, more people are using social media tools to connect with each other and with brands. Interestingly, the big increase in usage is among 34-44 year olds with a significant rise too in 45-54 users. (more…)

Hands up all those people who have a facebook, myspace, linkedin or another social network profile? I suspect that an extremely high proportion of you. How many of you have noticed advertising on the site and then clicked on it? If like me you feel that advertising in my social space is one of the most intrusive form of marketing then this research you may find quite interesting.

The research has been conducted by Ball State University in the US and summizes that advertising in peoples social space can be seen ‘as offensive’. The research also found that in the 18-24 age bracket the respondants remain more responsive to email and direct marketing.

It will be interesting to see how this develops in the future as social networks develop their advertising platforms. Facebook particularly is innovating with their ability to target based on keywords from their members interests. Our experience of using their platform has shown some really interesting results over and above the response from Google adwords.

I think the old right message, at the right time in the right place continues to prevail.

To read the Ball State University white paper click here

Understandably, many brands are wary of social media, believing there is too much scope for brand damage from negative content. Not giving the audience cause to be negative towards your product or service would be the answer but that’s not really the issue here.

Dell have realised that social media can be used not just to position positive messages about the brand but to plug the public directly into it’s business model. Dell Idea Storm is a site where anyone with a good idea or suggestion can come along and post it for both Dell and other users to chew on. (more…)

The value of deep targetting is soon to be shown in full effect as TV show Scrubs is promoted directly to its fanbase via Facebook:

“Paramount Comedy has become the first UK broadcaster to use Facebook’s Engagement Ads platform, for its first social media campaign.The campaign is in support of cult comedy show Scrubs’ new Moments season and will target the 500,000 Facebook users that have identified themselves as Scrubs fans. (more…)