Insights

How Oreo Won The Super Bowl

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Last night, Oreo was the clear winner of the social media/marketing side of the Super Bowl. During the frustrating black out, Oreo’s brand team and advertising agency realized that a lot of people were just staring at their TVs and voicing their frustrations on Twitter.

“Our team all said, ‘Hey we’ve got a lot of people staring at their screens and not a lot going on,” Sarah Hofstetter, president of Oreo’s ad agency, 360i, told NPR. “What can we do with it?’”

The result was an electrifying tweet, “@Oreo: Power out? No problem.” with a picture of an Oreo cookie in darkness with the text ‘You can still dunk in the dark.”

This phenomenal tweet was retweeted over 14,000 times, was the least expensive ad of the night and Oreo won the evening. This is a great example of a brand’s trust in their ad agency to create engaging content and to be successful. It also means Oreo was smart enough to put their brand team in the same room as their ad agency to make sure if an opportunity arose, the response could get approved fast.

If you’re sitting there, dumbfounded about how to create a Twitter success like this for your business here are a few tips.

1.       Trust your social media team to create engaging content.

This means handing over the reins, and not overthinking things.

2.       Pay Attention.

Every ad, marketing and public relations person was watching the Super Bowl, reading tweets and reacting to ads. Make sure your team has someone on staff responsible for tweeting during big moments.

3.       Take Chances.

A lot of businesses are holding back because they don’t want to put their foot in their mouth. Put your opinions out there. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but engage with your audience, let them know you’re listening and partake in their conversations.

These tips can help you react to new items and gain a following on Twitter.

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Content Marketing — What is it?

You’ve heard a lot about content marketing and that you should be doing it, but you’re completely clueless as what it is or even how to get started, so we’ve broken it down a bit for you.

A Little Background

The marketing and advertising fields have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Interruption based models are no longer doing the job. Consumers can easily fast forward through that commercial, skip that ad on a YouTube video and not click on your Facebook page, even if it has a million updates. The consumer dynamic is changing and so must the industry. Content marketing can drive traffic, sales and leads to your company faster than traditional methods.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is creating, writing and publishing your own content specific to your audience. Did you think you could only publish finished products and then let the leads come to you? That thinking is a little outdated.  Content marketing can be a blog post, an e-book on your company, a how to video, a white paper about a successful program or a case study explaining how your company did something. Successful content marketing comes from understanding what your audience/customer is looking for. Define your business, how it can help the customer, how you’re special and what you do differently that no one else does. Talk about it all. Be knowledgeable and give great information. This will make you an authority for customers to turn to for help and then turn into your sales funnel.

Content marketing is producing enough relevant content to a specific audience that they take notice. Now writing one or two blogs a month from an intern isn’t going to do it. Regular content isn’t going to cut it — optimized content will. Optimized content hyper-focused on particular segments of your potential customer based will win.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing works hand in hand with content marketing. All of these blog posts, e-books, videos, case studies etc. are being published online and all of the links are leading back to your website and your sales funnel. It is content marketing that supports inbound marketing – bringing new people in to your sales funnel through content you produced.

Let everyone in on the process. Have people who worked on a particular campaign write about why it was successful. Discuss what your company is doing in the New Year or even how you’re dedicated to improving a segment of your business. All of this will give potential clients more information about your business, how you can help their business and if you impress them with your own content they’ll be more likely to hire you to do the same thing for them.

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5 Ways to Use Twitter’s New Vine App

Twitter has finally embedded video into their feed with their new app Vine. Vine will embed 6 second video clips into a tweet, so a user can watch the video from Twitter’s platform instead of moving to another site. This is a great move for content marketing (which we’ll talk about later this week)  because people before weren’t likely to move off one platform just to watch your video. Now it’s embedded and automatically plays before the user can stop it. So what does this new feature mean for you and your business?

Vine can be utilized very easily for marketing and public relations. It can give users a quick glimpse into your business and culture. Here are 5 ways you can use Vine to market your business:

  1. If you have a very vibrant office, give a quick tour.
  2. Introduce users to your team.
  3. Give a quick behind the scenes look at upcoming projects.
  4. If you have a new product, do a product demo.
  5. Even producing short clips of longer videos can be sent out to make users more interested in seeing the full video.

Here’s how to download Vine and Just Vined will show you the last 20 videos uploaded to Vine. For inspiration on how to get started look at these 15 brands that have started using Vine.

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In 2013, Resolve to Understand the Changing Face of PR

Public Relations is a changing industry, but most haven’t realized it yet. Journalists are quickly blocking your mass pitches, barely responding the way they used to. It is time to start creating relationships, prove you deserve a seat in the board room through measurement and that you understand your customers.

Build a relationship

The media doesn’t like to be hounded if they received your press release, or if they’re going to write your story. Normally, emails like that go straight to the trash and your email is blocked. Try building a relationship with the journalist, reporter or columnist first. Read their articles. Get a feel for what they actually cover, not what Vocus or Cision say they cover. Comment on their articles. Let the writer know you’re reading their stuff. Follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn and interact with them. Retweet or respond on Twitter, share their articles, let them know you’re out there. Email them about their most recent article you found interesting and share your perspective. Once you’ve established a relationship, then pitch. They’ll know your name; they’ll open your email and most likely, they’ll respond.

Public Relations must be measured

Public Relations used to only be about outcomes; what media outlet you got your client published in or who mentioned your product. That way of measuring PR is outdated and needs to be revised. It doesn’t take into consideration the influence of that article, the sales generated, the reach of the press release, tweet or the effect of owned content published on social platforms because of that article.

Every PR professional should get familiar with Google Analytics, Edge Rank, become a landing page’s best friend. Learn how you can measure a campaign’s successes through reach and influence. Understand the customers; understand what engages them and what they’re interested in through this data. If you aren’t a numbers person, become one. Your job depends on those numbers going up, and if you don’t understand them, how can you influence them?

Media doesn’t always equal Success

A client can be featured in a national magazine, being interviewed about their innovative entrepreneurial spirit. Fantastic! Good for you! But if you’re trying to sell a retail product, how is that going to grow sales? It might, or it might not.

The key is to understand their customer base. What do they need? What problem are you solving? Will they be motivated to buy because of brand loyalty, or because they love the owner of the company? Will this article even interest them, or are they too busy? Make time to evaluate these questions and proceed. If it doesn’t work, make time to understand the “why.”

Public relations is life. It is how you present yourself. It is how you are perceived. Invest in relationships, build genuine friendships, be yourself and create opportunities through the changing face of PR.

 

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Facebook Social Jobs vs. LinkedIn

Facebook launched its job board yesterday, Social Jobs Partnership. For the partnership, Facebook teamed up the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), DirectEmployers Association and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA). Since the advent of LinkedIn, more people are relying on social media and social connections to help them find a job. This new job board seems to put Facebook directly in competition with LinkedIn. However, they insist that Social Jobs Partnership is not entering the recruiting field, but merely creating an easier way for users to find and share employment opportunities with services provided by U.S. Jobs, Work4Labs, Jobvite, BranchOut, DirectEmployers Association and Monster. (One fantastic snide comment from a user on Forbes said: “A Monster job post aggregator? I’m job bored.”)

This is a really interesting twist because many career-minded individuals have always deemed Facebook off limits to potential and current employers because they wanted to keep a clear separation between their personal and professional lives. That’s why LinkedIn was so highly embraced because people needed a social network specifically for professional purposes, especially because too many “unprofessional” photos had already been published on Facebook (especially the first few generations of users.)

Currently, Facebook’s user base is 800 million active users, while LinkedIn boasts a modest 187 million members this month. LinkedIn focuses mostly on salaried positions, and making connections throughout the industry. The new job board seems to be an aggregator of sorts that will handle many different jobs from hourly to potentially salaried jobs. The social networking giant has made it clear that the online job search is going social, but many companies and recruiters are already ahead of them. Companies already have tabs on their pages for job opportunities and are active on LinkedIn, therefore negating the traditional online job search services, like Monster, that Facebook has teamed up with.

While I think the idea is interesting, I don’t think it will take off. I’ll be interested to see if users continue to feel they need one social network for personal and one for professional, or if they’ll actually start applying to jobs through their Facebook profiles. What do you think? Will Facebook’s new social venture pay off?

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