Marketing Entrepreneurs: Here’s How to Reenergize Your Social Media Strategy.

Today, there is no question your high value markets are increasingly mobile. Companies are struggling to balance the demands of younger and older markets. In search of reaching millennials and younger audiences, traditional brands (Buick, Ford, GE, Neiman Marcus) are beginning to experiment on Vine and other hot apps (Tinder, etc). As a graduate marketing student in the Northwestern Medill IMC program, I have found two articles relevant to these challenges you will find interesting.

In a recent article in Fast Company, "How the Most Successful Brands Dominate Instagram, and You Can Too," Rachel Gillett analyzes how Instagram has become one of the most effective, yet most underutilized apps by marketers. Research shows that Instagram has the highest conversion rate from browser to shopper among social networking platforms. Gillett shows how the best brands are using Instagram with great success. The highlights? She recommends personalizing your brand by taking them behind the scenes and using a fans-first approach. Post rich videos and images to drive viral marketing and create buzz around new product launches or campaigns. Instagram is a great way to empower communities of fans to engage with your company and create their own content. Instagram makes it easy to shoot quick, low-budget content that makes your brand relevant and interesting. More importantly, Instagram posts are easily integrated across platforms, including Twitter and Facebook.

Nike consistently ranks the top brand on Instagram. Photo found on Floranet

Jeff Revoy, CEO of Viralheat offers a different perspective in his recent article for Fast Company, "Breaking up with Facebook? You Better Think Twice." Revoy analyzes why increasing your presence on new apps won’t replace Facebook marketing. Facebook has been the dominant social media platform for well over 5 years: every second, 684,478 things are shared on Facebook. With more than 1 billion active users, Facebook’s user base would make it the third most populous country in the world. Revoy reminds us why we shouldn’t cut ties just yet. For Facebook to grow, he points out, it must continue to develop innovative ways to measure audience engagement and provide content that users want. Apps like Instagram and Snapchat are underutilized, but do not face the same pressure to innovate as Facebook.

Based on my assessment of these two articles and on my marketing work at Medill Northwestern, here are three actions I recommend you consider when developing your social media strategy:

•  Build space into your content strategy for new and popular apps. Understand how they work, who is using them, and how to best represent your brand.  

• Change the way you’re using Facebook (or at least, your expectations of Facebook). Understand how the demographics are changing and how to use it for better co-creation.

• Blend the two. Facebook allows for a deeper, qualitative interaction with your customer. Co-creation stemming from this platform can lead to integrated content across other apps.

Limiting your aperture to Facebook and Twitter is a way to get frustrated with your engagement metrics quickly. Expand the scope of your marketing plan to include new apps, especially Instagram, to maintain and foster better engagement with your target markets. Facebook will continue to drive innovation in social media marketing; but don’t just sit around and wait for the next big thing.

Emily Heaslip is currently pursuing her masters in Integrated Marketing and Communications at Medill Northwestern University. She is focusing on innovative digital marketing, with an eye toward start-ups and entrepreneurship in the tech sector. While at school, she’s worked on projects studying Warby Parker, LYFE Kitchens, and Miller High Life. Questions or comments? Tweet to @IMCEmily

3 Easy Tips For CMOs To Improve Brand Marketing With Video

There’s tremendous upside for CMOs that can build a solid video presence into their branding, but without a background in video production, getting started can feel overwhelming. As both an experienced video producer and graduate student in Northwestern’s Integrated Marketing Communications Master’s program at the Medill School of Journalism, I can confidently tell you that the potential impressions and engagement you can get from a smart video campaign are too good to pass up, and that producing video can be a lot simpler than you think.

What can you gain from branded video content? In a blog post, Video Brewery CEO Andrew Follett compiled several shocking statistics about the efficacy of online video. Most notable is a survey of online shoppers where 90% said they found video useful when making a purchasing decision, and that on average, the presence of video in an email blast increased click through rates by 200%.

This simple video campaign was produced in an afternoon, but increased engagement by over 120% (courtesy of Sugo Media LLC)

With a little focus, your brand can benefit from a branded video campaign. Social media strategist Starr Hall suggests keeping each video brief and with a singular focus to help your message reach viewers. The most important suggestion Hall gives, though, is this: every piece of video content you produce should offer value to the viewer. Answer a question they might have about your product. Show them something new that might interest or surprise them. Entertain them!

This may seem like a tall order for a CMO to tackle without hiring an expensive contractor, however, I can tell you from my experience working as one of those expensive contractors that you can be successful on your own. Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Get to the point and be authentic - If you’re a small business, don’t try to produce a polished Super Bowl-caliber ad. Be real - viewers respond to authenticity. Also, tailor your messaging to the platform you publish on - there’s lots of video platforms available (YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Vine) with different strengths and weaknesses that marketers can use to share an authentic message. Do you want to be informative in 4 minute bursts? Host your videos on YouTube. If being rapid fire and goofy matches your brand, look to Vine or Instagram instead.

• Don’t be afraid to do it on the cheap - if you have a phone, it can film 1080p video. Load it up to YouTube, and you can edit the clips, add a soundtrack, and do a color grade entirely on the site before making your video live. GoPro cameras are another inexpensive option for high quality and low cost video - cameras can be purchased for as little as $200.

• Produce several videos at once - if you’re taking the time to produce a single video, you could probably use the resources to make several at the same time. The only thing better for a business than one video is four videos. You’ll be shocked at how much leverage you get out of an afternoon’s work.

With all the tools now available to marketers, and all the potential benefits a strong video component can have for brand marketing, you have no excuse to leave those impressions and engagements on the table. Grab a camera, and press record.

Joe Filipas is an advertising specialist and video producer in Minneapolis, and is currently earning an Integrated Marketing Communications Master’s degree from Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeFilipas, or connect with him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/josephmfilipas or on his website at www.joefilipas.com.

Why Vine could be the next big thing for brands

For CMOs, new social technologies present an opportunity to gain unique strategic advantages in their market. As a master’s student in the Northwestern Medill IMC program, we study new social media and have found Twitter’s short form video application, Vine, to have interesting marketing capabilities. In spite of the app’s January porn snafu, Vine became the #1 free app on the U.S. App Store within three months of its launch. With Twitter’s advertising capabilities gaining credibility and Vine developing momentum, Vine is positioned to become a valuable branding tool.

Across the web, mobile video and content marketing are on the rise, and AllTwitter’s Shea Bennett argues that these trends bode well for the future of Vine marketing. Bennett notes that mobile video is expected to represent 66% of global mobile traffic by 2017, up from 51% in 2012. For marketers, this growth category presents a great opportunity. In fact, 87% of advertisers already use video for content marketing.

Infographic Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/vine-marketing_b39141

VP of Marketing at Skyword, Patricia Travaline, makes the case for content marketing, noting that consumers today are exposed to around 3,000 brand impressions each day and their average attention span is 8 seconds. Travaline’s “Three S Model” for content marketing dictates that marketers need to create searchable, snackable, and shareable branded content if they want to actually impact consumers. In other words, successful content marketing must speak to relevant trends, make an impression quickly, and compel consumers to spread the content.

With mobile video and content marketing on the rise, six-second videos may be the ideal vehicle for attention grabbing, entertaining brand messaging. Some fearless brands have already made good use of the platform and are developing ‘best practices’ for future Vine marketers (see the "Tweaser" and the “#ComedyFest”). From my examination of these articles and my studies at Northwestern, there are three action items you should implement if you venture into Vine branding. They are:

1) Tell a relevant story - If your Vine doesn’t have an arc, then it’s simply a moving Instagram. If your arc doesn’t matter to your target consumer, then you’re wasting your efforts.

2) Engage in a conversation - Use a Vine hashtag. Allow users to upload their own Vines. Create branded Vines to respond to your followers.

3) Share and Track - Don’t expect all of your fans to find your post on Vine. It is still very new. Vine’s can be embedded onto any website, so share it elsewhere to increase viewership, and track across all platforms to determine what content sticks.

Melissa Channick is a recent Northwestern graduate and current master’s student in Northwestern’s Medill School studying Integrated Marketing Communications. She is passionate about discovering consumer insights and is looking forward to starting a career in digital marketing strategy upon graduation in August 2013. Follow her @Mchannick

CMOs - Stop Reading This. Watch The Video Instead.

In case you decided to ignore the warning in the title of this post, here is why video is taking over the digital marketing sphere. Consider the Dollar Shave Club, a business which ships razors to customers for a low monthly fee. In the 48 hours after posting a promotional video online shot for less than $5,000, they received over 12,000 orders. As a Northwestern Medill IMC student with a focus on film and video, I know first hand the power of video marketing. In the digital age of countless social media channels, no other medium besides video has the incredible potential for huge gains and audience interaction. You can read more about the Dollar Shave Club's efforts here via the New York Times.

While the Dollar Shave Club is an extreme example, the facts behind the video marketing trend are hard to ignore. All types of social media are visual, increasing the share-ability of video content. Even the recent rise of apps like Vine demonstrate the attraction towards video. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, video can drastically help a business' SEO efforts. Because Google owns YouTube, any videos tagged with a company name help to boost that search term on Google. Searchmetrics found that video appeared most frequently in Google search results, with 70% of all results including video.

With the knowledge that video is a marketing trend that cannot be ignored, it is also important to have a realistic strategy and expectations with the medium. The Dollar Shave Club's video is a text-book example of a 'viral video', where it spreads extremely quickly over social networks and person-to-person. However, the power of video marketing can go well beyond a one-off viral hit. Consider the efforts of Orabrush. This company released its first online marketing video with much viral success, but it was their follow up videos that really increased their ROI over time. After their initial video, they developed a strategy to produce follow up content to build a relationship with their audience and more directly link the product they were selling to their video efforts. Read more about their video strategy here in the New York Times.

The key to all of these video strategies is the incorporation of the 'What's In It For Me' principle. With each video produced for both Dollar Shave Club and Orabrush, they addressed what their potential audience wanted to watch. No one wants to watch another commercial for a monthly shave club, but they do want to be entertained and enjoy hearing about something that makes their lives easier. Based on my analysis of these video marketing strategies, here are some steps you can take right now to examine how you might begin to incorporate video into your marketing mix:

• Evaluate your own marketing needs and whether you can incorporate video into your marketing strategy and plan.
• Examine at what potential video content already exists for your product or service. Are consumers already generating content about you?
• Engage with your consumers through video. If you’re ready to take your company to the next level of the digital marketing mix, get in touch with me!

Matt Ludwig is a Northwestern University student studying Radio/Television/Film and Integrated Marketing & Communications through Medill. His expertise in video production and IMC strategy allow him to bridge the gap between creative and goal-driven ideas. Follow him at @sound_pilot on Twitter.