The digital space has seen a lot of discoveries recently, Real-Time Covers or Live Covers for Facebook being one of them. LiveCover.com is one of the first few companies to formally provide this interesting service to the brands that are present online. They offer a brand an auto-updating live Facebook cover that is based on some trigger. It is literally like bringing your Facebook Cover to life with live content & images, automatic refresh, dynamic & customized content and have it updated as often as every 1 minute! Fascinating isn’t it?
We certainly did find this service useful & interesting and ended up using it for one of our clients’ Facebook page which reached a milestone of 1,00,000 fans on Facebook. The idea was to showcase a Superhero on the cover image which would keep getting charged on receiving new likes.
This is how it looked in the beginning –
The trigger for the Facebook cover to update on its own was set at 200 likes. So every 200 likes, there was a new cover with the Superhero charging all the way up to achieving 1 Lac likes.
The idea behind using these live covers was to do something different for the fans and it was well-received by the audiences. The likes increased at a 2x rate and within 24 hours we were able to reach the mark of 1 Lac.
Live Cover served as a fruitful discovery for garnering attention from the audiences and also engaging them. In these times where every minute, there is a new digital trend, it becomes important to stay in the race and updated with these trends to unlock new parameters for brand building & extension.
As the year 2014 draws to an end and we heartily welcome 2015, we bring to you the list of top 5 social media campaigns of the year 2014 that created a huge buzz for all the good reasons. Here goes the list:
When the #IceBucketChallenge was trending across the world, a journalist from Hyderabad, Manju Kalanidhi, had different ideas brewing in her mind. Instead of wasting water in a country where there is a scarcity of this essential life resource, why not do something that attempts to feed the millions of poor and hungry. The challenge put forth by Manju on Facebook required friends to cook or donate one bucket of rice to poor and hungry in the locality and post a picture on Facebook / Twitter doing the same with the hashtag above. Within 4-5 days, the page had more than 40,000 fans and 35000+ mentions. Even celebrities like Priyanka Chopra came out in support of this noble campaign.
When one of India’s favorite noodles brand launched a new, healthier variant – Oats Noodles, they had a tremendous task of spreading awareness about this healthy variant amidst the frenzy for its other cousins. They cashed effectively on the Selfie craze – asking fans to tweet their Selfie having breakfast with the hashtag #HealthyIsEnjoyable. Daily 10 winners were announced, each winning the monthly supply of Maggi Oats Noodles. The campaign reached 2 million+ fans and had an increase in brand engagement by more than 50%*.
Quickr, one of India’s most reputed online classifieds, leveraged content marketing to the fullest for their Diwali campaign “Buyers & Sellers ka perfect matchmakers”. Quickr encouraged customers to blog about their shopping experiences via BlogAdda resulting in immense customer engagement & boost to the traffic to the website. The campaign was extremely successful as it cashed in on the festive shopping season and customers didn’t mind blogging about their experience as they were rewarded with cashback offers and other prizes, resulting in huge buzz creation online.
22nd August, 2014 marked the 375th anniversary of Chennai, earlier known as Madras. As part of the 375thanniversary celebrations, the Murugappa group has launched the #TheMadrasSong to celebrate the occasion & give a fitting tribute to the history, tradition, and culture of this city.
The digital campaign for the song involved a multi-channel campaign, right from evocative content such as Madras Trivia, engaging contests and apps like the Madras Favorite Memory App that asked people to vote for their favorite spot in Madras. The entire campaign was a big success that allowed the video to garner 2.5 lakh+ views on YouTube. You can view the song here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAqtE4KdJL8
Procter & Gamble launched the #MyRoleModel campaign for Gillette during Father’s Day. With the target being men between ages 15-45 years, the campaign asked the father-son duos to put shaving foam and share their Selfie to win exciting prizes. The standout factor for the campaign was the 360-degree approach with even the TV Commericals sporting the hashtag. The blogger partnerships were leveraged in a big way to spread awareness about the campaign, which was endorsed by Mr. Dependable-Rahul Dravid.
Note: Other campaigns could have made to the list and missed out narrowly based on considerations of organic virality created.
Riding on the social media wave, #Influencer #Marketing has emerged as the next big thing. We have also recently launched our new initiative for Influencer Marketing in India which can be seen at www.influencer.in. In this context, the Social Beat Influencers’s Meet was held at the Hotel Vestin Park today. The guest list included content marketing experts, bloggers and social media influencers, as follows:
The agenda revolved around content marketing, its evolution and future trends. The key discussion points that came up for discussion are briefly mentioned as follows:
The meet ended on an enthusiastic note with demand for more such events in Chennai. We are equally excited about the next Influencer meet. Watch this space for more updates.
In the constantly evolving digital space, social media has undoubtedly become the nuclear weapon of mass persuasion. Social media analyses huge number of people with tremendous levels of information, the places they go, the people they talk to, their connection, and activities they are interested in.
Recently, social media began to elope with the healthcare vertical, successfully abducting the elements of marketing the same - something that social media has been adept in. This act has caught the attention of a vast pool of healthcare businesses which are on a constant poach to tap its potential, trying to deploy a team internally to manage the same.
The 5 social media tips listed below will help healthcare businesses, acting as a compass to claim the treasure of maximum potential in healthcare marketing.
Don’t wait for an ambulance. Pull your super-car out of the garage!
Though many believe that social media is a temporary trend, the fact is that it has pulled the handbrakes for the next decade and beyond. The sooner your organization seat belts on a super-car and accelerates itself to an active presence in social media, the less chances it will face to summon and wait for an ambulance to rescue it.
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Establish a social media policy that will protect your business against security and privacy breaches. Mandate the policy and educate all your staff regarding the same through training and outreach programs. This is to make sure that all your staffs are able to fully comprehend and carry out the policy.
Trial your medicine
You don’t have to prime an elaborate social media plan in the start. Remember that social media is a medicine which is potentially going to improve your business. So test the medicine by starting small and monitoring the outcomes. Based on the results, ask what your business should be doing to maximize the outcomes by leveraging social media to accomplish your key healthcare goals.
Formulate an antidote
Customers are the antidote to cleanse your business through social media. Follow them, listen to what they are talking about your products/services, and your business as a brand. Monitor your competition on social media and listen to what they are saying about themselves. This will make you alter your communication to your customers, in a more effective manner.
Deploy medication
Commission a social media team with members who have a good knowledge on social media and its tools. Pick people who are internet-savvy and are excited about the using social media in the healthcare domain, to benefit your organization. Through time, this will be the medication that will determine your existence in the digital universe.
Marketing real estate online is known to have shown a phenomenal increase in the number of leads(by~ 300%*) that property sellers have opportunities to convert as current buyers or as potential buyers for future projects. Since, buyers want a more personal buying experience on high monetary value purchases, B2B businesses or even businesses selling higher value products achieve greater impact on branding and lead generation from marketing than directly on sales. This is true to real estate selling, where all the marketing is directed towards generating leads, than on direct conversion
Lifestyle patterns of Key Demographic segments: Property buyers are now relying more on online, than on newspapers and other mediums to gather any information that can help make their purchase decision. This a definitely a true phenomenon when it comes to the metro cities where the target buyers are all hooked on to their smart phones, laptops and tablets. It’s more the “Pull marketing” than the push that seems to be working for this new generation of home buyers.
Cost Effective: Most of the push marketing strategies such as “full- page” advertisements in newspapers, previews in TV and advertising in movie halls cost a lot of advertising rupees. Although they do capture some mindshare and help in brand awareness, they completely fail in executing an immediate “call-to-action”. Also, there are no clear measurable outcomes of the advertising money spent, to keep the ROI to the optimum. Online marketing strategies on the other hand, are more cost effective- they are both targeted and measurable. Both social media outreach and online paid adds reach the right category of target audience- age group, tastes, geography etc. with a dual intent of creating brand awareness and driving prospective buyers to make inquiries
Branding Online is Personal: Reaching out to the target buyers and building an emotional connect on a one to one basis, especially when it involves high value purchases such as homes is imperative. social media serves as a potent channel where the prospective buyers can be educated about the brand, as well as guided through the process of purchasing a home. The emotional connect develops by having a mix of both formal and informal conversations with buyers, thereby creating a brand image that understands the sentiments of its buyers, rather than just hard selling the property
Burgeoning Third Party Platforms in Real Estate Domain: There are various third party platforms today that cater to helping the property buyers and sellers to make prudent purchase decisions by facilitating comparisons or serving as one-stop shop for educating the buyers and sellers about the various trends, pricing and newer developments in the domain. To name a few of them- Magic bricks, 99 acres, India Property, housing.com, etc. Integrating existing robust digital presence (website & landing pages), including an active social media presence with third party platforms, is making conversions much faster and easier.
Measurable conversions: Digital marketing allows to measure the value derived from each peny spent on the advertisements and on digital assets such as websites and landing pages. The key / basic three measures are
An uplift in the first two measures is indicative of the success of the digital campaign and the last measure “Path of traffic” allows to understand where the targets are arriving coming from. This measure allows modifying and enhancing marketing plans to achieve maximum ROI.
* Results from Digital Marketing Activities of Social Beat Client
Twitter is the fastest growing social media platform & the significance of Twitter can be emphasized by a simple fact that 8000 tweets per second is the average around the world.
What it emphasizes is the fact that it gives a huge avenue for businesses to connect and engage with fans. But the question is how? Most businesses are coming online and have a social media presence on Twitter but not all businesses leverage it in the most effective manner to build a strong brand, engage and have meaningful conversations with the fans. Here are some of the key points that can help in the above:
According to a recent Adobe survey, more than 50% of businesses spend less than 5% of their marketing budgets on optimizing the campaigns. Though it is important for all businesses, it becomes critical in case of an ecommerce business. When an ecommerce business spends more than 90% of the marketing budget to drive visitors to their website, isn’t it really important to make the most out of these visitors coming on to your website.
According to a recent study by eMarketer, India records the highest social networking growth as the number of active social network users in the country has grown by 37.4 percent in 2013. Even though the overall internet penetration is low in India, the number of active social media users in urban India is expected to cross 80 million this year, as opposed to 63 million in 2013. From being online platforms solely used for social interactions, to becoming a significant part of the marketing strategy for brands today, the growth of social media networks like Facebook & Twitter has been tremendous.
Twitter joins Facebook in offering “Buy” button to directly buy on these platforms
As the pressure is mounting on these social media networks to prove that they are successful sales channels, they are constantly making efforts to modify & introduce new advertising options. The latest buzz is that Twitter is following the footsteps of Facebook in testing a ‘Buy’ button that will now let users shop from their social media sites itself, without having to navigate to the retailer’s website.
Facebook’s Buy Button – Convenience or Clutter?
Facebook officially announced in July about the testing of a ‘Buy’ button that would appear in newsfeed ads and page posts. As of now, it is only being tested with a few small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.
This is not Facebook’ first attempt to crack e-commerce as they previously introduced the ‘Gifts’ feature which was shut down within a year. Even though the earlier attempts were unsuccessful, the team is keen on working on other commercial purchase features within Facebook, with ‘Buy’ button being the recent result of it.
This button is expected to provide an added level of convenience for online shoppers to buy products from merchants within the Facebook framework itself. The customer can use his credit card on file with Facebook and make purchases directly. The option to save your payment details or just checkout without saving is also available. However, Facebook claims that the entire functionality has robust safety & privacy options and won’t pass on the payment details to any of its other advertisers.
The main objective of introducing this functionality is to increase the conversion rates and the return on investments for its advertisers. Not to forget that this new development will put them in direct competition with e-commerce sites like Amazon, also providing a new avenue for Facebook to gain some revenues through sales and payment processing.
Will Twitter Commerce reveal your identity?
Two months after the announcement from Facebook, Twitter revealed about testing its own “Buy’ button to facilitate sales & increase revenue. This facility to make purchases directly from tweets is available only to a small set of consumers in the U.S as of now. It is now being experimented with selling limited edition merchandises, charities, and concert tickets and is expected to grow with more product options based on the initial testing feedback.
Launching on the mobile platform first, Twitter says the purchase process will only have few simple steps & is completely secure. The user can simply click on the buy button, enter product details, choose payment option, enter shipping details and make a purchase. This payment data used by the user can also help in revealing the real names & details of its anonymous Twitter profiles, a move that can be greatly beneficial for marketers. However, Twitter denied the possibility of this and emphasized on working with Stripe to make the entire transaction completely safe & private.
Here’s how the marketers can benefit
The previous attempts made by these social media platforms to explore e-commerce have not been so successful. Pinterest, the only platform to have topped Facebook in driving referral traffic to retailer sites has made promising developments, but still lags behind when it comes to investment & adoption. If the ‘Buy’ option proves to be highly beneficial for Facebook & Twitter, brands that focus on time-limited offers and on-off promotions have chances of getting high investment returns. However, the performance of direct ‘Buy’ button when it comes to high value products & the ones that need more research & time is uncertain.
Will privacy be a concern for the buyers?
Social media platforms have been playing a major role in influencing the decision making process of its users. These networking sites possess large amounts of data about their consumer preferences which helps them to come up with tailor made posts and promoted ads. The ‘Buy’ option to be introduced will facilitate the quick shift from a promoted post or tweet to a shopping cart which saves a lot of time & effort for its customers. However, privacy & security around financial data is something that these social networking sites are constantly trying to assure its consumers.
Future of Online Shopping is here
For both retailers and social media sites, the objective is to successfully merge online commerce with mobile & social activity of people, without obstructing their user experience with unwanted targeted ads filling their timelines. Hence, if the testing of ‘Buy’ button turns out to be successful, it would open a whole new avenue for these platforms to not only influence our social life, but our shopping patterns too.
A quick glance at the above stats conveys a simple but important message: Be it business owners, industry experts, students or entrepreneurs - LinkedIn cannot be ignored. And, B2B companies have more reasons to be active on LinkedIn – it’s an excellent platform to generate quality leads. Here’s how you can get more B2B leads using LinkedIn:
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups are an excellent platform to connect with peers within your industry. It allows you to join up to 50 groups, and you should make the most of it by joining groups in your industry. Once you are part of a LinkedIn group, you can easily filter the members based on your criteria and your prospect list is ready.
Direct Sponsored Content
The direct sponsored content feature helps to promote an industry whitepaper, a case-study or a blog post right in your prospects feed. The features such as Localization helps in precise targeting for your sponsored content to a specific region. Instead of a direct sales pitch, content that helps the prospects in their business has higher chances of getting more traction.
Long-form content can get you a double bonus
The long-form posts on LinkedIn is an excellent way to showcase your brand or expertise in the relevant target segment. In a lot of cases discussed in my network, long-form professional content also help in the professional job searches. It also has more reach compared to the short-form posts.
Reverse engineering the content strategy
A “spray-pray” approach for content marketing will never produce results. Reverse engineering can give your content strategy a definitive edge. What this means is – instead of sharing only “hard-sell” content, you can share content that will benefit your target audience. For example, it can be simple tips to help their businesses or new developments in their industry.
The more attractive it is, the more traction it gets
A closer look at the LinkedIn stats suggest that the visually attractive posts helps a long way in getting traction for your content. Just addition of an image to the content post can help to get 90-100% more engagement than a post without an image. Addition of SlideShare presentations can give another big jump in the engagement rates.
Do you leverage LinkedIn to generate leads for your business? Comment & let us know why or why not.
References:
Firstly, thanks for the positive response to our article on top digital marketing courses and top venue booking websites in India. Now, we have come out with the list of top lifestyle bloggers in Chennai, as part of our series ontop bloggers & influencers in India. So, here goes the list, in no specific order:
This blog, aimed at individual travelers, inspires you to cut your strings holding you back and go out exploring. A great array of experiences and cultural perspectives from her travel. The visual aesthetics of the blog is worth mentioning. The lines – “Come wander with me”, aptly describe the essence of the blog.
