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Twitter has published the latest version of its monthly event calendar, highlighting all the key dates in June to be aware of.
Twitter's event calendars can be a big help in guiding your content strategy - not only do they highlight all the major events you can tap into, but Twitter also includes specific tweet volume numbers for selected topics, giving you a better idea of just how much discussion each is likely to generate (note: if you want to get specific numbers for each event, you can check Twitter's event targeting listings)
So what are the key dates to be aware of next month?
As you can see, there's a broad range of events, with Father's Day being the big one, in a general sense (though the CMA Awards is likely to generate a lot more Twitter conversation). There's also a heap of sports tie-in opportunities, along with 'National Selfie Day' and 'Social Media Day', all worth considering for your promotions.
As noted, Twitter's calendars can be a big help in keeping you on top of the latest happenings, and if you're looking to tap into the rising tweet stream, these events can be a great way to increase brand awareness and make your brand part of the surrounding conversation.
You can download Twitter's June 2018 event calendar here.
Written by: Andrew Hutchinson
April 10, 2018
5 Online Marketing Trends Disney Says You Should Jump On
If you're going to learn how to do almost anything under the business umbrella, Disney is a great brand to learn from. That's why I was honored to be invited to the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. It's an annual get together of influencers around the country who partake in a variety of Disney experiences and learn a little, too.
Aboard the Disney Dream, Alex Ruiz, the digital marketing director at Disney Parks, shared some online trends Disney is paying a lot of attention to. (And if Disney is, so should you.)
Be in the moment.
The new (or newer) art of storytelling is showcased on platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and Amp by Google.
The most popular of the three examples is Instagram Stories. Ruiz estimates more than 300 million users are taking advantage of this feature to reach their audience. Recently, the social-media giant unveiled something called highlights, which allows a story in a certain category to be saved for future viewing, meaning it won't be removed after 24 hours like all other stories.
Why does this work? It's fun, bite-size content. That's what people want to consume online. With so much to choose from and the attention span of people getting shorter and shorter online, these in-the-moment shares hit the mark.
If you really want to be in the moment, do it live.
Ruiz says Facebook Live is watched three times longer than regular videos, is commented on 10 times more than regular videos, and the search popularity for "Facebook live stream" is up 330 percent. That's the power of going live.
The most-watched live video to date proves this-off-the-cuff, in-the-moment point: It's the Chewbacca Mom, who has brought in more than 171 million views and counting... and it all started in a parking lot.
Multiple yourself with a chatbot.
Ruiz says while chatbots aren't really new, and they are picking up steam.
Chatbots are great because they can be trained to be a digital form of yourself that's available 24/7. The secret to using chatbots effectively is to not use them to sell, but instead to use them to offer value.
Voice-activated technology.
By the end of 2017, more than 30 million home devices have been sold.
The best-selling product on Amazon this past holiday was the Amazon Echo Dot named Alexa. Alexa has more than 25,000 skills (a "skill" is Amazon's version of an app.) Ruiz suggests being proactive and creating a new skill now, while voice-activated technology is growing.
By 2020, Ruiz expects half of all searches will be voice activated. This should make you second-guess your current SEO strategy and start thinking about making your blog optimized for voice.
Don't be scared.
Like Walt Disney, be curious, stay informed, and experiment with new things. Surround yourself with experts to help you take a thought or idea to the next level. Online, things are always changing and evolving. That means you need to be willing to do the same with your strategy.
February 15, 2018
5 Incredibly Effective Digital Marketing Strategies That Most Marketers Are Too Afraid To Try
What are you doing to embrace and tackle marketing industry changes? Are you afraid to try new things? Or are you fearless?
One of the reasons I am so passionate about the marketing industry is the anticipation of changes, and ability to experiment with new marketing tactics and efforts.
Taking chances is often what separates top marketing professionals from novices. But how can you separate fads from educated risks? Take a look at the top strategies I’ve identified that most marketers might deem risky, may not be aware of, or not fully understand.
These are risks, yes, but they are risks that are worth taking.
1. Switch from outbound to content marketing
In the past, it was enough to highlight your product or service and the hundreds of fantastic features and capabilities. These days, you have to add value to your brand and product/service with content that teaches and establishes you as a thought leader and an expert. Why should your customers believe in what you’re selling?
It might scare you to switch to an inbound format that teaches and nurtures your prospects. How will they know what you offer, you ask? How will we sell and generate leads without pushing our product? Content marketing can be scary to adopt because it relies on your expertise and puts the ball in your prospects court.
In contrast, content marketing is shown to drive more traffic and leads than outbound marketing. According to Demandmetric content marketing generates as many as three times more leads than outbound marketing.
2. Interactive content
As content marketing rises in popularity, pushing through the clutter is becoming more and more difficult for all of us. But even though we know we must differentiate ourselves from the pack, we can be hesitant to make our basic content more interactive and exciting.
Interactive content can draw more attention to your messaging while increasing your engagement on powerful social media sites. Quizzes, ROI calculators and interactive infographics can help you convey your brand’s story in a more dynamic fashion.
As a bonus, eye-catching, interactive, fun content can draw the attention or industry publications in addition to attracting prospects. As a result, you can extend your reach and continue driving traffic and high quality links to your site and blog.
3. Embrace up-and-coming social media channels
While there remains a place for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, new social media channels will allow you to reach consumers in new and exciting ways. Additionally, new channels allow you to explore more creative methods of telling your stories and conveying who you are.
Snapchat, Instant Articles on Facebook, and Instagram Stories provide companies and even professionals a channel to experiment and target specific groups and audiences. As a bonus, new and exciting social media channels are often a great place to promote the interactive contentdiscussed above.
4. Developing content for real people, not algorithms
As a marketer, you may have gotten in the habit of developing and creating content that will highlight your company, blog, business or ideas at the top of the search engines.
These days you’ve got to step out of your box and think about your content in the context of your reader’s desires, fears, worries and needs.
Creating content that is displayed in front of thousands of sets of eyes is no longer enough to set you apart. Instead, readers expect real ideas that are well written and display complex and interesting ideas and thoughts.
While SEO is still very important, don’t be afraid to put your audience and their needs and wants first and consider your page rank secondarily.
Instead of using keywords to draw more traffic from search engines and their algorithms, use keywords to highlight your points and draw readers in by providing information that is valuable to your audience.
5. Reuse and repurpose your top content
Even your loyal readers may not see your content initially. It could take several touches and multiple channels to get through to them. Try reposting your top blog posts with refreshed titles or new visuals.
Utilize that content in a digest newsletter format to drive traffic to content that your audience’s peers have enjoyed (it can be tough to resist content that we know our peers and colleagues have enjoyed).
Want more traffic? Automate that refreshed and repurposed content for periods when it’s relevant or for different days or times to attract new readers who may not have engaged the first time around.
According to Curata, only 29% of marketers are reusing/repurposing content, which means many marketers are only putting their messaging in front of their audiences one time: they’re missing out on valuable clicks, impressions and engagement.
Conclusion
We’re often afraid of the uncertain. We get stuck doing the same marketing activities over and over again in an effort to remain comfortable. We know our metrics for what we’ve been doing. We have goals for those efforts. We know what to expect.
Getting over our fears is as simple as widening our expectations and being ok with not knowing exactly what to expect from our marketing efforts. Try something new. By taking small steps and measuring your efforts very closely, you might find that your strategies are not enough.
You might try something that doesn’t work or isn’t right for your audience. But more importantly, you might find something that is a clear win and helps you change the course of your marketing efforts, your business and messaging.
Written by: ,
Marius Masalar - Unsplash
December 19, 2017
Voice AI: The Next Frontier of Brand Marketing
67 million voice-assisted devices will be in use in the U.S. by 2019
Soon enough, your breakfast bar could be your search bar. Your lamp could be how you shop for lightbulbs. Your Chevy or Ford might be your vehicle for finding a YouTube video, like the classic SNL skit of Chevy Chase’s send-up of President Gerald Ford, to make a long drive less tedious. And you won’t have to lift a finger—all you’ll need to do is turn toward one of those inanimate objects and say something. Welcome to a future where your voice is the main signal for the elaborate data grid known as your life.
Two decades ago when Amazon and Google were founded, only a seer could have predicted that those companies would eventually start turning the physical world into a vast, voice-activated interface. Artificial intelligence-powered voice is what perhaps makes Amazon and Google the real duopoly to watch (sorry, Facebook), as their smart speakers—2-year-old Amazon Echo and 8-month-old Google Home—are gaining traction. Forty-five million voice-assisted devices are now in use in the U.S., according to eMarketer, and that number will rise to 67 million by 2019. Amazon Echo, which utilizes the ecommerce giant’s voice artificial intelligence called Alexa, owns roughly 70 percent of the smart speaker market, per eMarketer.
“Our vision is that customers will be able to access Alexa whenever and wherever they want,” says Steve Rabuchin, vp of Amazon Alexa. “That means customers may be able to talk to their cars, refrigerators, thermostats, lamps and all kinds of devices in and outside their homes.”
While brand marketers are coming to grips with a consumer landscape where touch points mutate into listening points, search marketing pros are laying important groundwork by focusing on what can be done with Amazon Echo and Google Home (the latter of which employs a voice AI system called Assistant). With voice replacing fingertips, search is ground zero right now when it comes to brands.
But how will paid search figure into it all?
Gummi Hafsteinsson, Google Assistant product lead, says that, for now, the goal is to create a personalized user experience that “can answer questions, manage tasks, help get things done and also have some fun with music and more. We’re starting with creating this experience and haven’t shared details on advertising within the Assistant up to this point.”
While Hafsteinsson declined further comment about ads, agencies are now preparing for them. “In the near term, [organic search] is going to be the way to get your brands represented for Google Home,” says 360i president Jared Belsky, who points to comScore data that forecasts 50 percent of all search will be via voice tech by 2020. “Then ultimately, the ads auction will follow. You’ll be bidding to get your brand at the top of searches. I believe that’s the way it will go. Think about it—it has to.”
Jeremy Lockhorn, vp of emerging media at SapientRazorfish, remarks, “The specificity of voice search combined with what any of the platforms are already able to surmise about your specific context [such as current location] should ultimately result in more personalized results—and for advertisers, more narrowly targeted.”
Brands—which are accustomed to being relatively satisfied when showing up in the top five query results on desktops and phones—should brace for a new search reality, Belsky warns, where they may have to worry about being in either the first or second voice slot or else risk not being heard at all. “There’s going to be a battle for shelf space, and each slot should theoretically be more expensive,” he says. “It’s the same amount of interest funneling into a smaller landscape.”
Scott Linzer, vp of owned media at iCrossing, adds that consumers may not “find it an inviting or valuable-enough experience to listen to two, three or more search results.”
Marketer interest in voice search is downright palpable in some circles. Fresh off a tour of client visits in Miami, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, 360i’s Belsky reports that “every CMO, every vp of marketing and, especially, every ecommerce client is asking about this subject first and foremost. And they have three questions. ‘What should I do to prepare for when voice is the driver of ecommerce?’ The second one is, ‘What content do I have to think about to increase my chances to be the preferred answer with these devices?’ And, ‘Will all my search budget one day migrate onto these devices?’ There’s not obvious answers to any of these questions. Being early to all of this means you get the spoils.”
National Public Radio may not seem like an obvious media brand when it comes to being an early AI adopter, but the 47-year-old news organization has moved quickly in the space. Its news, music and storytelling app, NPR One, is evidently infused with machine learning, offering listeners curated options based on their shown preferences. And the organization extended the reach of NPR One’s content by inking a deal with Amazon Alexa in February. Since then, the phrase, “Alexa, play NPR News Now,” has been regularly heard in 400,000 homes that use the service. Additionally, NPR One has functionalities that its corporate sponsors have appreciated for some time; in particular, letting brands get extended audio mobile messaging when consumers want to hear more.
“They can press a button on the phone to hear more about what [carmaker] Kia is doing around innovation,” says Meg Goldthwaite, NPR’s marketing chief. Is voice-enabled digital advertising—where the listener asks for more Kia content and perhaps even fills out a test-drive form—right around the bend for NPR? “It’s absolutely possible,” she says.
Goldthwaite is probably onto something. Last year, IBM launched Watson Ads, which lets viewers “talk” with a brand’s ad and request additional info. Toyota, Campbell Soup and Unilever have tested the units, often averaging between one and two minutes of engagement, per Big Blue. “We have already begun to see that consumers are spending more time with these cognitive ads than with other digital ads,” says Carrie Seifer, CRO for the IBM Watson content and IoT platform.
Imagine being able to talk to video ads via Amazon Echo Show, a smart screen that comes juiced with Alexa voice functionalities. Costing $230, the device shipped in late June and provides a glimpse into next-gen households of the 2020s with talking screens, holograms, appliances and vehicles that Amazon exec Rabuchin alluded to.
“Voice is a productivity tool,” remarks Linda Boff, CMO of GE. Her company provides an intriguing business-to-business example of how AI-based utilities will soon help enormously expensive products like locomotives, jet engines and turbines sell themselves. For instance, GE has developed a prototype that lets an otherwise insentient locomotive send a voice message to a repair technician describing what needs to be fixed. It’s part of GE’s Digital Twin program, which creates 3-D representations of industrial assets and can process information gathered from individual machines globally to better inform decisions. It’s essentially machine-based crowdsourcing for when trains need to fill up on digital feedback instead of diesel fuel.
“The twin can call you and tell you, ‘I have an issue with my rotor,’” explains Colin Parris, vp, GE Software Research, who reveals that his brand’s voice AI features will roll out widely in 2018. “It can provide basic information that a service rep would want. Like, ‘What was the last journey you took? How many miles did you travel?’”
Staples also plans to flip the switch on its b-to-b voice AI initiative early next year. In partnership with IBM Watson, the retailer’s Easy Button—a fixture in its TV spots—will add an intelligent, voice-activated ordering service, which already has been tested in recent months by office managers with enterprise clients.
The business supplies chain is practically providing a step-by-step tutorial on how to build such an Echo-like device. Teaming with conversational design and software company Layer, Staples first built an AI-anchored chat app and carefully analyzed the conversations.
“It helped us narrow down our use cases and create more robust experiences around the core challenges we were trying to solve,” says Ian Goodwin, head of Staples’ applied innovation team. “Once we got a really good idea of what our customers were asking on chat channels, then we built the voice experience with the Easy Button. It was really a gradual ramp-up rather than just going out and doing it.”
Indeed, voice AI probably shouldn’t be rushed to market. One company that understands that is Trunk Club, a Nordstrom-owned men’s clothier that recently rejected an offer from Amazon to be a fashion partner for Echo. Justin Hughes, Trunk Club’s vp of product development, isn’t AI-averse—he’s hoping to use voice activation in the next 18 months to spur his company’s subscriptions-based sales. But the timing with Amazon wasn’t right for his brand.
“If you are going to purchase between $300 and $1,000 of clothes, we don’t want it to be a weird experience—we want it to be something you return to often,” Hughes says. “There is so much imperfection in voice AI right now; it can be clunky.”
The vp also pointed to an elephant in the room—data ownership—when it comes to retailers partnering with Amazon or Google. “We just don’t want to give them all of our talk tracks,” Hughes says.
What’s more, hackers in the future might find a way to siphon off data collected from various “listening points” in homes and offices. Just last spring, Burger King caught considerable heat from privacy advocates after its television spot—which, in spite of the brouhaha, won a Cannes Grand Prix—hacked Google Home devices around the country.
The last thing voice-focused marketers want is Uncle Sam on the case. “As in-home, voice-controlled AI technology becomes even more prevalent and evolves in terms of substance—more capable of offering real answers to real questions—marketers will need to be increasingly careful to properly follow FTC disclosure and advertising guidelines,” notes advertising lawyer Ronald Camhi.
And since voice AI could greatly impact search-driven commerce, it’d probably be wise for Amazon and Google to encourage industry best practices. Then again, they might want to actually form a larger circle that also includes Facebook, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft. Facebook last week purchased AI startup Ozlo and is rumored to be developing speaker technology of its own. Apple has star power in Siri, and Samsung in late July debuted voice capabilities for its assistant, Bixby. Also, Microsoft will continue to market its AI assistant, Cortana, in hopes of getting a significant piece of voice real estate.
Says Abhisht Arora, general manager of search and AI marketing at Microsoft, “Our focus is to go beyond voice search to create an assistant that has your back.”
A Rube Goldberg apparatus for the marketing history books
What do you get when you jerry-rig six Google Homes, six Alexa Dots, six laptops, six soundproof boxes and four extension cords? You get an apparatus that’d make Back to the Future’s Doc Brown proud.
Along with a bottle of Puerto Rican rum for the technicians, those are all of the ingredients that were poured into 360i’s VSM, or Voice Search Monitor, which is the brainchild of Mike Dobbs, the agency’s longtime vp of SEO. This makeshift system is designed to give clients like Norwegian Cruise Line an edge as smart speakers increasingly influence consumers’ purchase decisions.
VSM asks Google Home and Alexa Dot (Echo’s little sister device) thousands of questions around the clock, and whether the queries are answered automatically gets recorded on an Excel spreadsheet. An early round of testing found that for the travel category, Google answered 72 percent of questions while Amazon responded to 13 percent of the queries. In the second round of testing for finance, Google answered 68 percent of questions while Amazon answered roughly 14 percent.
Dobbs thinks unanswered questions present brands with an opportunity to become the search result with targeted, voice-minded digital content. “That’s one interesting thing that we believe is going to be white space that marketers need to explore,” he says. “They can raise their hands to take conversations on when major systems don’t have the data sources or depths to [provide an answer].”
Right now, his team is focused on speakers. But how long before they have to pivot and figure out how voice-powered refrigerators and other appliances impact clients’ needs?
“I don’t think it’s 2025—I honestly think it will be in the next two to five years,” Dobbs predicts. “Those technologies are not as elegant at they need to be right now. But, yeah, in five years—we’ll be there.”
Written by: Christopher Heine - ADWEEK
View Article Here Photo by: Piotr Cichosz | Unsplash
August 2, 2016
Facebook Launches 360 Photos!
Facebook introduced photo sharing on its social media platform more than a decade ago, and now hundreds of millions of photos are shared each day with friends all over the world. Now, with the launch of “360 photos,” your friends can experience the moments you share as if they were with you.
Facebook recently launched “360 photos,” a new supported format for uploading smartphone panoramas and images taken with certain 360-degree cameras and photo apps. Facebook users will now be able to view photos from every angle including above, below, behind and next to you.
The best part is that you don’t necessarily need a 360-degree camera to share these more immersive views of your world. Flat photos uploaded will now automatically be converted into interactive images made for fullscreen viewing by tilting your smartphone while using the Facebook apps for iOS and Android.
You can easily identify the immersive 360 photos by looking for a compass icon on the right-hand side of photos. To explore a 360 photo on the web by clicking and dragging, or on mobile by tapping and dragging the photo or moving your phone. Additionally, 360 photos can also be viewed using an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR headset. While using a supported Samsung device, click View in VR in the top left corner of the video, place the phone in the Gear VR, and experience the photo in an immersive VR environment.
The days are still early for VR and 360-degree content. However, Facebook is currently influencing this push of new technology into the mainstream as well as positioning themselves as the go-to destination for immersive content. By creating this, Zuckerberg stands a lot to gain. Encouraging the use of this new technology will most likely have users spending more time on Facebook tilting photos, in turn creating more advertisement money.
Google is constantly testing new interfaces, currently it’s the new “people also search for” Google carousel search feature in Mobile.
Google officially launched the local Carousel feature back in June 2013 as an expansion to their already existing Knowledge Graph, and now they are testing a cleaner, more boxed-in look on the mobile search interface. Like many of the other Google carousel features in mobile, this new look scrolls left and right as opposed to the previous “people also search for” box.
Below is an animated GIF based on some of the screen shots shared by @MattNavarra:
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