A poll among social media influencers has revealed why many prefer Instagram to Snapchat. Sophie Parry-Billings details the survey results and explains how marketers can leverage social influencers to further their campaigns.
How many times have you sat behind someone at a major event whose mobile phone is aloft, masking your view, streaming the content to an absent audience? Live events – such as conferences, fashion shows and concerts – should ideally be a mix of physical and digital experiences, says Hannah Farrell – hugely aware of the value of social media for events promotion. But how would brands and events organisers balance the wider and welcome sharing of their content with a sympathetic social media switch-off for real-world events’ ticket-holders? It’s not a quandary, if applied in the right way…
Rakuten Marketing research has found that UK marketers are willing to pay large sums to social stars and ‘influencers’ – but 86% of marketers admit they aren’t entirely sure how the fees are calculated and 38% don’t know if that layout is actually driving sales. Despite this, spend on influencer marketing is on the rise. James Collins studies the stats behind this latest trend in celebrity marketing and tots up the value.
Social media has been one of the defining elements of our new generation. There’s no denying its power: we’ve seen nearly every aspect of our lives altered, from something as simple as staying connected to old friends, to affecting election results. But marketers remain unclear how to prove the business worth of social – and how to track social media ROI. Here’s how to dig into the data and keep tabs on it all . . .
In the run-up to the busy festive season, how can savvy social marketers outshine their competitors, get their cash tills ringing heartily and therefore enjoy a very merry social media Christmas? Rafferty Gifford has some ideas and examples of social strategies that can work:
Many consumers use their smartphones to shop, so it makes sense for marketers to know where all that traffic is going and where to concentrate their mobile marketing efforts. Measure mobile traffic usage in real time, says Karthik Reddy, monitor the constantly changing statistics of companies that do business through mobile data – such as the amount of Google searches worldwide on mobile devices; the amount of WhatsApp messages sent; the amount of products purchased on mobile devices from Amazon marketplace sellers. Check out the ever-changing infographic, here:
Customers post good and bad opinions of products and services – and they also share witty and sarcastic opinions. All of which have been notoriously difficult for brands to measure. Sentiment analysis in the social listening world has not enjoyed the best of reputations as a lack of any advanced technology has meant that accurate results have depended on a process of repetitive, tedious and time-consuming manual tagging of documents. As a result, many brands tend to sideline sentiment indicators in their reporting. Now all that is set to change, says Richard Sunley. Machines have been learning how to fathom irony . . .
Facebook and Google increasingly dominate the time people spend online and there are both pros and cons in this web duopoly. Verto Analytics’ Dr Hannu Verkasalo spells out the implications for data-driven marketers of having two such powerful internet giants.
Storytelling – specifically, video storytelling – is the ‘big thing’ when it comes to content marketing, says Bob Dearsley – who cuts through the noise to bring advice on when and how to add video to your content marketing strategy.
Luxury brands are mastering social content, using it as a powerful vehicle to drive brand awareness and consumer engagement. George Aliferis has studied the types of content and platforms used by brands such as Chanel and displays his results along this catwalk: