Digital Marketing in Social Media

 

As human behavior continues to shift in a digital world, so does the way we interact with brands and each other. Included in this shift of behavior is the notion that our connectedness and reliance on each other has increased in social settings. We trust what our friends buy, we yearn to be a part of the cool crowd by buying what the influencers buy, and we follow the brands we know and love. It is no surprise, then, that Snapchat, in an effort to draw marketers to their platform, has introduced a new proprietary tool called 'Snapchat Trends'. 

Snapchat Trends primarily serves as a way to uncover trends, fads and other noteworthy happenings in the social space by allowing users - including Marketers - to find the most searched for elements on the platform. As users search for the latest pumpkin-themed creations, various keywords will bubble to the top that'll allow users to compare various stats related to the fall phenomenon. Understanding what's trending among the users of Snapchat would be especially viable information as companies today are doing everything in their power to understand Gen Z. By building this tool, Snapchat has positioned itself to be a valuable social platform for more companies and has formed a viable complement to other keyword search tools. It'll be interesting to see if other platforms follow suit but in the mean time, get ready for more pumpkin themed products in your feed! 

Source and more info: https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2021/08/snapchat-introduces-new-tool-trends.html

Why TikTok Can Easily Produce Viral Content

TikTok provides a great platform for both customers and creators. For customers, it makes use of long-tail model, customizing content for users with different tastes. Its algorithm and data set, currently second to none, are good at feeding them what they love and are trained to get better and better.

For creators, barriers to entry are low and they can gain followers more quickly than on any other platform. They do not need to have a strong fan base. The only thing matters is content. TikTok employees label multiple characteristics for each video and make sure they can target and connect right micro-cultures.

Therefore, every video can be categorized into specific labels and then reach as many users who may have interest as possible. A lot of customers and creators are attracted. According to CNBC, as of August 2020, TikTok had about 100 million monthly active U.S. users, up nearly 800% percent from Jan.2018.

Moreover, the users are most under 24. At this age, people usually have the highest desire to create or comment. They spend a lot of time on the platform and actively participate in various challenges.

Another important point is that the contents in TikToks emphasize authentic. It is all about capturing unfiltered, unstaged real life. They are generally filmed in bathrooms. Bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens, so customers will feel relaxed and easily empathize in these familiar places.

All in all, customization, youthfulness and authenticity are key points making videos easily go viral.

Is your social score good enough for job hunting?

Is your social score good enough for job hunting?
Have you ever encountered your future employer job application website, with fields you can put your website and your SNS accounts' link?

It seems many employers start adopting measuring your personal skill by your social media score, that you have created with the number of followership, followers' approval action in your articles, or your post shared. This is the reality that what you built in the digital world affects you in the physical world - no matter you did it deliberately, or unintentionally. Some company seeks candidates who have cultural fit, based on your preference measured in your social media.

In China, Social Credit Score is based on for example, your purchase, your friends, and your posts in social media. If your social credit score is low, there could be punishment on your behavior.

It much work as disadvantage to those who don't interact with Social Media, because often times people having the same name may have created bad reputations, which ruin you, or in the worst case an hostile person advocates you are a bad person. The way you can combat with your negative reputation is either that you directly talk with counter party if it can be detectable and just a few, or you need to build your score much higher than the others create lower so that you can offset and make it positive.

If you need to get a tool to help you tactically, here is "BrandYourself" mainly for English user.

"SOCIAL MEDIA SCORE, JOB HUNTING, PERSONAL BRANDING, SOCIAL MEDIA RECRUITING, CREATE YOUR WEBPAGE, UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE EVEN MONTHLY"

Reference:
http://bigthink.com/stephen-johnson/a-look-at-chinas-orwellian-plan-to-give-every-citizen-a-social-credit-score
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2012/05/07/will-your-klout-score-get-you-hired-the-role-of-social-media-in-recruiting

Quarters, not Pennies

http://www.adweek.com/digital/brian-cristiano-bold-worldwide-guest-post-brutal-honesty-authenticity/

Let’s talk about companies’ social media personalities.  Is it better to be likable, politically correct and drama-free, or, is it better to take a stance and be unapologetically honest?  This opinion article states the latter, and I whole-heatedly agree.   The former, will likely keep your follower numbers up and your hater count down. But, how valuable are those followers? Do they have any sort of loyalty to your brand?  Companies who aren’t afraid to develop a true personality and take a stance can be confident their following truly identifies with their company; they are valuable.  At the end of the day it’s a simple comparison that can be used in both business and your personal life: would you rather have 4 quarters, or 100 pennies?

The author, Brian Cristiano, suggests that companies who are authentic, stand for something, embrace the haters, and aren’t afraid to be themselves, are more successfully building their consumer base than those whose strategy is to gain as many followers as possible.  The theory makes sense.  Before companies began taking advantage of social media as a means of marketing and advertising, it was just a way for humans to interact with each other.  From a consumer standpoint, it still is a method of communicating and interacting with other humans.

Companies who add what Cristiano calls some “magic filter” to their social media presence dehumanize themselves and become mediocre.  Consumers continue to view those companies’ presence as merely an advertisement.  Others, on the contrary, who aren’t afraid to stir the pot a bit, develop a personality that has been built from the people behind the posts.  I can’t say I know many people, or really, anyone, who goes on social media to check out the newest menu item Wendy’s has added.  But, to see Wendy’s throwing some shade at McDonald's? Yea, I’ll definitely give that post a like.  

See the article for more about Cristaino’s 4 guidelines to building “rabid fans”

http://www.adweek.com/digital/brian-cristiano-bold-worldwide-guest-post-brutal-honesty-authenticity/

Guess who turned 30 today? You will be so surprised!

​I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my favorite file format – the GIF turned 30 today! Yes, you read that right! GIF has been around us for 30 years and is a millennial – woohoo!

If you were born in the '80s, you are probably trying to recollect the first GIF you ever saw! For me, it was the dancing baby!

The GIF was traditionally released as an 8-bit color image format in 1987 as a result of a problem Developer Steve Wilhite and his team looked to solve - how to make a computer display an image while also saving memory. The solution? A Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

GIF inventor Steve Wilhite

In 2012, GIF was named word of the year and in 2013 Steve Wilhite received the lifetime achievement award at The Webby Award. While most people associate GIFs with annoying memes, GIF has contributed a lot more! Few examples include:

• Enhancing product illustrations
• Depicting visual Instructions
• Demonstrating UX for apps
• Displaying pictures as cinemagraphs
• Adding pop to social media pages 

They say, GIFs didn't just shape the internet — it grew up with it. Today, GIF has a personality of its own and has made communication simple. Like all digital media creations, GIF serves its consumers needs well and has thus thrived with the growth of the internet. 

If you want a deep dive into GIFs, check out Historyofthefgif.com 

P.S - Facebook celebrated the birthday of this mighty format by announcing the global rollout of a feature which enables GIFs in Facebook comments. Yaas!

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/gif-turns-30-ancient-format-changed-internet/

Facebook and the Commodification of News

By Blaire Townshend

A recent article on Wired by Julia Greenberg outlines the symbiotic relationship that currently exists between Facebook and news content creators. In recent years, Facebook has become a major content outlet for news companies, and with good reason—as the article states, "600 million people see a news story on Facebook each week." However, Greenberg claims that Facebook is misleading news content creators regarding the benefits of targeting their vast online audience, and that it is using its current market dominance to acquire this rich content: "It's false hope, or at its worst, a threat."

Media companies feel compelled to put their content on Facebook because of the site's astounding membership numbers. But who does this best serve? It certainly benefits Facebook, as their users' are exposed to experiential, engaging content that Facebook does not have to create. Facebook is currently capitalizing on the potential of such news content, and has developed the following initiatives to do so:

• Instant Articles: decreases loading time on users' phones
• Live: allows users to interact with content subjects in real time
• 360 Degree Video: allows users to experience news content as if they were there
• API: allows users to communicate with a "newsbot" in Facebook Messenger

These programs greatly enhance user experience. Yet Greenberg argues that Facebook has used these programs to become a "crucial distribution platform" for news companies, and has thus made itself indispensable to these companies—and in turn made them dependent upon Facebook to reach their audiences. To me, this sounds familiar—Google has similarly used its dominance of the online search market to ensure that companies have to go through their system (and pay them) to get business. Essentially, Facebook has leveraged its power and insured that the relationship between itself (as distributor) and news companies (as content creators) is inherently unequal.

 This unequal distribution of power in turn ensures that Facebook has control over the content that is created—after all, they need not disseminate what they do not approve of, and can refuse to promote content that goes against their own ends. For example, Greenberg cites the creation of the above Facebook programs as being responsible for the decisions that news content creators are making—their content is conceived and structured to cater to these programs.

To me, this is a concerning development. Greenberg argues that the problem here is that news companies must use up valuable financial and human resources to develop suitable content. I, on the other hand, am more concerned with the ethical implications of the issue. Facebook's apparent power over the creation of news content is just one more element that biases news content creators away from what is "relevant" and "true" towards what is palatable to one company. Of course, a plethora of other business, political, and religious biases already plague the ideal of unadulterated news content. It is for this reason, however, that one more influencing factor is, in my opinion, distinctly unwelcome.


Greenberg, Julia. "Facebook Has Seized the Media, and That's Bad News for Everyone But Facebook." Wired. 13 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. 

Going Digital: The Met’s Efforts to Modernize its Image

By Blaire Townshend

March has already been a busy month for The Metropolitan Museum of Art—and we’re only two days in. Yesterday, the museum officially launched its freshly-minted new logo, a bold and modern design created by the London-based firm Wolff Olins that has met harsh criticism from the arts community and even been described as a “typographic bush crash” (Davidson 2.17.16). However, The Met has not only changed its logo—it has done a comprehensive overhaul of its digital image, in an effort to make itself “more visually consistent and navigable” (Rhodes 2.19.16). Undoubtedly this overhaul is intended to complement the launch of The Met’s newest venture, The Met Breuer—a new branch opening later this month.

In keeping with its new brand identity, The Met has revealed a “wholly redesigned, simplified website” that ties in to the new logo, presents a straightforward interface, and focuses on being mobile-friendly (Titlow 2.29.16). This move not only contributes to The Met’s new image, but also directly caters to the astounding 91% of visitors who bring mobile devices with them to the museum (Titlow). The website syncs to the mobile apps that the museum has already created to enhance users’ digital experience of their collection.

The Met has previously made moves to utilize social media, as well, such as Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and SoundCloud, and has even looked to YouTube and Periscope to broadcast its events and increase exposure. It seems to do well on these platforms, boasting 1.1 million followers on Instagram and 7 million views on YouTube. It will be interesting to see how these social media platforms interact with the new website, and how—or if—The Met’s digital marketing managers integrate these elements into a cohesive brand identity.

According to Wolff Olins strategy director Amy Lee, “The Met’s incredible breadth and depth is its biggest asset, but also its biggest challenge” (Rhodes). The next month will certainly be a test of The Met’s ability to grapple with this disparity, as well as its effectiveness in navigating the complexities of a 21^st century digital market as a 19^th century institution. Will it succeed? Or, in the words of Jennifer Bostic, will it become the “Meh-tropolitan Museum of Art” (Bostic 2.23.16)? Only time will tell.

Bostic, Jennifer. "The Meh-tropolitan Museum of Art’s Rebranding." Hyperallergic. 23 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

Davidson, Justin. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s New Logo Is a Typographic Bus Crash." Vulture Devouring Culture. New York Media, 17 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

Rhodes, Margaret. "The Met Explains Its Controversial New Logo." Wired. 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

Titlow, John Paul. "How A 145-Year-Old Art Museum Stays Relevant In The Smartphone Age." Fast Company. 29 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

Peer Promoting: The Benefits of Social Media Engagement for the Entertainment Industry

By Blaire Townshend

Though I am a member of the oft-mentioned Millennial generation, I am new to the world of social media. Unlike many of my peers, I don’t find that hashtags, retweets, and Instagram posts come naturally to me. However, in a quest to make myself less antediluvian, I have been attempting to understand the complexities of these vast online communities and their implications both for my field of interest (arts and entertainment) and for society in general. What I have gathered quite quickly is that social media not only has the potential to revolutionize marketing tactics, but has already done so. In the interests of time I will speak to this revolution as it pertains to digital arts marketing, but as I am sure you are well aware, no market is unaffected.  

What is truly incredible about these mediums is their capacity to encourage consumer driven marketing. A perfect example of this is live tweeting; the phenomenon of responding to events in real time on Twitter using predetermined hashtags pertaining to the subject material at hand. While I was observing arts events and bemoaning declining audiences and lack of widespread support, my peers were busy beaming relevant discussion topics to a global audience of millions and thus bringing exposure to the art. And this without any urging from the producers of these events! In essence, they were marketing arts events for these producers. On their own time. For free. In marketing parlance, these tweeters exemplify the ideal of the net promoter; an enthusiastic supporter of a good or event who takes it upon themselves to recommend that good or event to their peers. This is an incredibly cost-effective marketing base for organizations to tap into.    

In fact, a Forbes article from 2014 speaks specifically to the effects that live tweeting has on platform engagement (Bercovici). It claims that “programs whose cast members live-tweet when the show is airing generate 64% more discussion” (Bercovici). I can certainly attest to the fact that this is still the case two years later—when Grease Live aired this past week, and stars such as Julianne Hough and Aaron Tveit took to Twitter and Instagram to share their experiences backstage, express their excitement, and just generally check in, my social media feeds exploded. People could not seem to get enough of the up-to-the-minute, intimate feel of these posts. They responded in kind, and as a result, Grease Live was the main topic of conversation on Twitter and Facebook for hours that night.

The beauty of these scenarios is that the marketing personnel of these productions can do relatively little and reap fantastic rewards. Encourage your stars to engage in light commentary, promote a few backstage Instagram posts, and your fans will do the rest of the work for you. Obviously, this is an oversimplification of the marketing process. However, the fact remains that the resulting online conversations generate the very organic word of mouth that marketers lust after. And it is important to note that word of mouth is overwhelmingly what this generation responds to. The statistics say it: the Broadway League demographics report found that word of mouth and personal recommendations were the most popular methods for gathering information and making choices about arts events (Demographics). The experts say it: Chris Anderson reminds us that “fundamentally social media is a peer-to-peer medium”—in other words, the online generation values and trusts the recommendations of their peers (Anderson 242).

When marketers understand this and take advantage of this, they encourage the use of social media as a platform for “peer-production”, where “users happily do for free what companies would otherwise have to pay employees to do”—recommend these events to each other (Anderson 219). Anderson flippantly describes this as a transition from “outsourcing” to “crowdsourcing”, but I feel that his description is wonderfully apropos (Anderson 219). In a market such as the arts, where paying for wages and advertising campaigns is at a premium, who in their right mind would refuse the assistance of that crowd? I may be slow on the uptake, but even I can see that encouraging such collaboration is #ontrend.

Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

Bercovici, Jeff. “Twitter Quantifies Impact of Live-Tweeting on TV Engagement.” Forbes Tech. Forbes. 18 Sept 2014. Web. 4 Feb 2016.

“The Demographics of the Broadway Audience 2013-2014.” The Broadway League. The Broadway League. 2014. Web. 6 Dec 2015.

Pinterest Acquires Hunt and Pext

As Pinterest is moving towards the e-commerce space, it has acquired Hunt and Pext to build out streamlined selling capabilities. The Hunt features a similar format to Pinterest, but lets consumers track down items they covet. On the Hunt, users can post a picture of an item they are looking for, and other users offer shopping suggestions in form of comments. Pext, on the other hand, allows users to turn text messages into memes by connecting them with relevant images as they communicate via text. Given that Pinterest is an image platform, Pext will serve as an interesting communication tool for Pinterest to take its user engagement to the next level. Pinterest is also testing its "buy button" that enables users to quickly purchase items they discover on Pinterest. The acquisition of Hunt and Pext is undoubtedly the next step to more monetization.

Linkedin updates its mobile app

This week Linkedin updated its app for iOS and Android with a fresher look. The new app has kind of a Facebook-like appearance.

The new app features a central news feed where users will be able to see the updated from their network. As Facebook, the app will show more relevant information as it will learn with time, what information is more relevant for the user.
I believe this is a good move by Linkedin, it will enhance even more the social side of the company, and make their users engage even more. In some point users will interact in a less transactional way within Linkedin.
Among other features, the messaging app has been revamped, and will work much faster.

IBM's new Watson Trend App

IBM's new Watson Trend App can now predict the most desired holiday gifts based on consumer preferences. The app distills tens and millions of online conversations across 10,000 sites, blogs, forums, comments, ratings, and reviews to provide a static ranking popular products and reveal how consumers feel about the products. The app helps consumers pinpoint and understand why certain products are so popular. It also employs predictive analytics useful for marketers. This powerful tool combines API capabilities, including Sentiment Analysis, Keyword Extraction, Concept Tagging, and Taxonomy Classification.

Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNW9xhQvKI8#t=14

The End of the News Website

NowThis is a young media and news company that exclusively publishes its content on social media platforms. After being a news startup like many others, in february 2015 they decided to take their website with content offline and focus on tailored videos through external channels. This DIGIDAY article about how NowThis tries to crack mobile video made me generally think about the future of media businesses, websites and their mobile publishing channels.

"NowThis, founded by former Huffington Post execs Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau and backed by $5 million in venture capital, plays to the sensibilities of an always-on, always-social, always-sharing audience." That's why they optimize their video content, with a goal of 15-20 daily videos published, for mobile platforms and screens. With a team of more than 30 editors and content creators in their New York office they are constantly producing news for a young generation of media consumers.

In my opinion, this is further intensifying the battle about the future of the news industry. Traditional players are not only challenged by how to monetize their content in a digital world. The concept of a website with paywall, also known as "walled garden", is still an experiment to many while startups like NowThis are already moving beyond this and claim that a website is out of date.
There are numerous young companies like Circa, Quartz, or Insider that are innovating distribution and content creation.  Insider for example is a Business Insider spinn-off from the German media conglomerate Springer, starting exclusively with a Facebook page. Bild Online, the web spinn-off of Germany's most popular daily newspaper produces their own daily news in a smartphone screen format. What you can observe there is that not only the distribution of content is changing, but the entire storytelling. Original content from print or web media is not just cut down to make it fit into another platform like Instagram or Snapchat. NowThis and its ambitious peers are creating original content individually for all relevant mobile platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Kik. That's how they are able to respect the particular cultures, tones, and follow the best practice success codes of every platform.

Mobile is a great opportunity for innovative news companies but it is also an additional stress factor that challenges traditional players.

Target Ramps Up Social Media Marketing

Target increased its social media marketing budget by 30% from last year, and is planning to communicate with holiday shoppers through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media apps. In particular, Target is trying out geo-filters overlays in Snapchat that can only be accessed in certain locations. Target is also using Instagram takeover ads with Marquee feature, and is taking advantage of Facebook's carousel ads as well as Facebook's Canvas to display fast-loading, Facebook-hosted ads for its craft activity Wonderpacks. This social media strategy is also acknowledging the increasing prominence of mobile shopping. "Holiday this year represents Target's most ambitious social spend for a single campaign," said Colleen McDuffe, senior director of social media at Target. "For the first time, Target will be leverage Snapchat to engage our guests during the holidays. More and more, we know shoppers are looking to Facebook for purchase inspiration, especially on their mobile devices.

Social media during Paris attacks

Social media is not reliable on breaking news stories but it is extremely useful and can add a lot of value. Specially, the Facebook Safety Check. Which was created for natural disasters. But, this November it was used during the Paris attacks. Facebook Safety Check had an important role. It sent the question of “are you ok?” to users in the Paris metropolitan area, and they only had to press a button. Even though it was not used during other previous attacks, Facebook already announced that they will have the feature even in cities were Facebook is not highly used. Let’s pray for not having to use it again.

During the Paris attacks, “Within the first 24 hours of the crisis, 4.1 million people made use of the feature reaching over 360 million of their friends and family.”

Also, some hashtags were useful. Parisians used #porteouverte to let tourists and people around the area know that their homes were open for shelter during the attacks. There were open messages with addresses and also people offered their homes if anyone messaged directly.

“The hashtag was re-posed 480,000 times making it the second-most used keyword on Twitter”

As usual, there was also misinformation that people published to gain followers and retweets. In the future, as a social media user filter information and research for the useful sources that you have available through the different platforms.

Sources:

http://kevin.lexblog.com/2015/11/15/paris-attacks-demonstrate-the-importance-of-social-media/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/paris-attacks-is-social-media-becoming-more-reliable-in-a-crisis-1.3320891

Brands & Publishers’ Snapchat Initiatives

With its branded geofilters and video advertisements, Snapchat has emerged as one of the hottest marketing channels for brands. Retailers are customizing their campaigns for this medium to capture more Millenial audiences, which compose of 71% of total Snapchat users. Below are several tactics that have been proven to be useful to brands.

As Snapchat’s name suggested, it is much more effective to feature short and snappy contents, since the app’s millennial audience could be quick to hit skip. According to stats from sponsors, since 70% of audiences stop watching Snapchat videos after 3 seconds, brands should get their message out in two seconds, or else most won’t see it. In addition, brands choose to feature ads that are native and organic to the platform, which normally leads to higher completion rates. Brands that featured creative and customized Snapchat campaigns have witnessed substantial rate of favorability lift, such as the Snapchat Live Story for the MTV video music award, which saw a 28 percent completion rate, leading to a 50% increase of impressions and click-through of webpages related to MTV. According to the representatives from Viacom, since “Snapchat is where ads are pure, 100 percent in view of the screen, not hidden anywhere”, brands should narrate more creative and unique story-based contents.

Snapchat’s Discover channel, an original media feature that was unveiled this January, also opened multiple possibilities. Compared with other channels, Discover ads are less expensive in that Snapchat has agreed to let the publishers strike their own advertising deals with brands making the Discover ads cost approximately $0.15 per view. In addition, rather than leveraging algorithms to target audiences, Snapchat counts on editors and artists to determine what is important.

Brands often feature fresh contents on Discover so as to cross-promote. Sony Pictures has also purchased its own Discover channel to promote the newly released Bond installment “Spectre”, which will be labeled as “Sponsored” on the Discover tab. and will be loaded with cast interviews made specially for Snapchat, behind-the-scenes videos from the movie’s exotic shooting locals, as well as even sendable filters. Universal Studio has also purchased a sponsored snap story for its low-budget horror movie “Oujia” last year, which was simply composed of a trailer for it displayed on user’s Recent Updates list but wasn’t interactive or shareable like the channel for “Spectre” is. 

In addition, Snapchat has developed its first call-to-action style ad last week. The ad for the Activision game, “Call of Duty: Black Ops 3” ran on the Daily Mail’s channel in the Discover section. It requires users to swipe up to view a full trailer, a mechanism that served to create a lean-in experience— a video view that requires an action. Similar to the results from interactive Snapchat Ads, showing that whenever the users actually click on the ads they are more likely to complete it, the two-minute call-to-action type ad has generated almost 30% completion rate, radically higher than that of Autoplay videos on Facebook, which amounts to a mere 10%.

Snapchat has also announced last week of its confirmed 6 billion daily view count, just days after Facebook reached 8 billion video views per day. Even though most videos are personal messages that friends send to each other and therefore not tied to advertising, Snapchat’s video-oriented approach has allowed it to usurp the crown as the focal point of youthful Internet usage largely due to the storyline nature of its contents. Retailers have been utilizing the Live Story framework to post video montages from special events like fashion runway shows or sports stadium. Sprite also ran a campaign last month, which started with 15 different Snapchat codes printed on cans that lead users to videos of fifteen celebrities sharing Sprite-related stories. Sprite is said to ship additional cans slapped with Snapchat logos that lead consumers to other users’ accounts on the messaging app. Sprite has also set up a pop-up retail location in New York this summer to offer people nearby special filters to put on their Snapchat photos.

With more hypes generated through custom filter overlays and additional sticks, Snapchat is said to attract more teenagers and twenty-somethings that are often disillusioned by traditional advertising. Through producing original and customized contents, as well as by generating interactions among fans via brand stories, retailers could talk directly to younger customers to promote the brand and the products.

Related Websites:

•       http://digiday.com/platforms/snapchats-new-ad-invites-people-click-view-brands/
•       http://digiday.com/platforms/snapchat-went-20-million-photos-day-6-billion-video-views/
•       http://digiday.com/platforms/mtv-drew-12-million-views-snapchat-vmas/

Pinterest’s New Tool Lets You Do Searches Using Pictures

Pinterest recently introduced a new search method using images, users will now be able to do wordless searches.
It is an interesting move, taking into account the visual nature of Pinterest, making perfect sense to enhance the experience of the user and allow visual searches.
This could finally open more doors for Pinterest in terms of advertising, and make money out of its pins.

Read more at: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/pinterests-new-tool-lets-you-do-searches-using-pictures/

Facebook Ramps Up Search

Facebook continues to go after Google's dominance in search with its latest announcement: the social media giant is allowing all contents available in over two trillion posts to be searchable by anyone anywhere. These posts include those that have been made under the "public" setting. Until now, the site's keyword search tab showed results for profile pages, groups, and events. Now, entire conversations could be made searchable. The latest move is meant to take on Twitter during major live events, as explained by the VP of Search.

"When you search, you'll now see the most recent, relevant public posts along with posts from your friends.

Search results are organized to help you cut through the noise and quickly understand what the world is saying about a topic in the moment. You also can pull-to-refresh and see the latest public posts.

Your search results are personalized and unique to you and, as always, you can only see things that have been shared with you. Likewise, you control who can see your posts on Facebook and it's easy to change the audience of your past posts any time."

However, it is not difficult to imagine that Facebook actually goes after bigger search giant with its ability to harness data from 1.5 billion users. Marketers will be certainly interested in unearthing treasure trove of data from the most used social media platform. However, Facebook will continue to face criticism over its privacy policy. Users might be unknowingly exposing their old posts simply because they were listed under "public" previously. 

Will all-in-one marketing suite become a trend?

Recently, visual marketing service Chute has launched a new suite platform, providing brands related content posted by users on social networks, such as Instagram, Facebook and so on. This is really a useful way for brands to have “access to real-time insights about not only content, but who’s posting, trends, topics, and more.” A image recognition technology (“IRIS”) is also integrated to find specific company logo through social media.

I think what Chute is doing may become a trend for marketing analysis in terms of user leverage, under the background that more and more consumers engage in posting things on social media. Using big data knowledge, this kind of integrated suite provide more reference with less effort.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/27/chutes-new-all-in-one-visual-marketing-suite-lets-brands-search-analyze-publish-social-content/

“Shopping” as social media integrated experience

Facebook announced its new shopping program, Shopping and Services, a few weeks ago. Today, Pinterest announced that it’s expanding the reach of its “Buyable Pins” from supporting Shopify and Demandware only to several more e-commerce platforms, including Bigcommerce, Magento, and IBM Commerce.

Furthermore, many big-name brands are also now coming on board, including Wayfair and Bloomingdale’s, and Thousands of new Shopify stores are being added, too.

Expanding from marketing tools to marketplaces, seems to be al least a promising area for social media platforms. According to Pinterest 93 percent of Pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases and 87 percent have bought something because of Pinterest.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/05/pinterest-expands-buyable-pins-to-more-e-commerce-platforms-reaching-thousands-of-merchants/#.sjsih3:psHU

Rise of ad-blockers shows advertising does not understand mobile, say experts

“Apple's shiny new mobile system iOS 9 allows anyone using an iPhone to cut out ads, taking a bite out of the $31.9bn mobile ad market, not long ago touted as the savior of the publishing industry.” Not only did Apple change the color of their new product, it also changed their attitudes toward advertisements. Indeed, people are annoyed by ads, even including advertisers. According to a survey, 75% of online video ad viewers complained about seeing the same ads over and over, 62% were upset that there were so many ads, and nearly half thought the ads went on too long.

In my opinion, the purpose of the ads cutting system is to block frauds and enhance the mobile security for phone users. Nevertheless, a trade off for the reduced fraud-ads and virus-ridden badvertisement is the detrimental effects to publishers, especially small ones. While people may suffer less from the reduction of annoying ads that interrupt the streaming of the radio or videos, restricted advertising power will hurt the financing process of the ecosystem. As we have seen the effect power of the blocking system of iOS 9, $31.9bn has been eradicated from the media ad market. Among the blocked ads, I am certain there are quite a few are in fact legitimate and provide real great deals to people. By simply blocking ads without conducting quality examination and identity verification, ad-blockers will inhibit the growth of media market, suffocating many new media start-ups and small businesses. Then the problem will turn into a finance issue, rather than a negative advertisement effect. Therefore, I agree with Constantine Kamaras, chairman of the board of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), “The best path is a digital entente between users and companies that is based on quality standards and codes of conduct, but also on an understanding that all these services can only be financed, today at least, by advertising.”

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/03/ad-blockers-advertising-mobile-apple