Tag Archives: Pinterest

Need Some Social Media Advice? Here Are Some “How To’s”

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If you’re nursing a Halloween candy hangover but can’t take a break because you’re in mid-term election overdrive, we’ve got some good news! This edition of Weekly Reads is chock-full of “how to” articles that practically do the work for you. And – if you’re gearing up to tackle a 2019 social media plan soon – we have a few articles that outline the best platform for finding your target audience.

Inc.: Social Media Mistakes All Small Business Owners Should Avoid

Many small businesses rely on social media to reach their customers. But, as quickly as a good idea can take off on social, a bad idea can flare up within minutes. This article focuses on six common mistakes small businesses make on social media and offers tips on how to avoid them. Read more after the jump…

Ding Dong, Google+ Is Gone

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Is this thing on? While Google+ isn’t going to be on much longer, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Facebook are all testing features that digital marketers might want to anticipate. All the new features seem to be driving toward increasing the engagement you get from followers. Only real-world testing (or maybe a Facebook poll) will tell whether your particular audience engages more when you use these new features.

Forbes: Google+ Never Really Stood a Chance (And That’s Okay)

Despite the giant resources the Google+ team had at their disposal, they just couldn’t make the social platform happen. Now Google+ is going the way of Orkut, Google Wave and Google Buzz (those all used to be things). As of August 2019, marketers can stop feeling obligated to post to the Google+ ghost town, even for the sake of SEO. Read more after the jump…

The Social Media Advertising Landscape Is Changing Drastically

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While Facebook and Google still own the lion’s share of digital and social media advertising, the landscape at the platform level is undergoing a seismic shift. The days of creating content that is intended to work on multiple platforms are long gone and the era of hyper platform-specific creative is here to stay. 

Facebook

Fast Company: Facebook promises to nix its tools for discriminatory ad targeting

If you advertise on Facebook you may have seen recent updates notifying you that certain targeting options being used in your ad campaigns may soon be going away. Facebook has already removed many targeting options that may allow individuals to be targeted “on topics that relate to potentially sensitive personal attributes, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion.” The rest of the targeting options will be removed in the next 90 days.  Read more after the jump…

Brands Flex Their Creative Muscle on Social Media During the Super Bowl

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The Eagles weren’t the only winners this week. Tide, MoonPies and Fanatics, among others, struck gold by creating thoughtful ad campaigns that took advantage of the big game. The #TidePodChallenge is a thing of the past thanks to Tide’s wonderful series of ads that stole the spotlight throughout the game. MoonPies crafted a funny, on-brand series of tweets that capitalized on the Super Bowl without having to invest big money. Fanatics rode the excitement of Philly’s first Super Bowl win to its second-best sales day ever. Though not everyone was successful on Sunday (looking at you, Patriots and Dodge), this week’s Weekly Reads highlight some of the brands who captured lightning in a bottle.

Super Bowl:

Adweek: Fanatics Targeted Fans on Facebook and Instagram to Score Massive Super Bowl Sales
Thanks to a targeted Instagram and Facebook ad campaign and the Eagles’ first Super Bowl win, Fanatics celebrated one of its biggest sales days ever. The company experienced a 60 percent increase in Super Bowl merchandise sales over last year. Read more after the jump…

Time to Get a 2018 Plan Underway

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Nowadays things move so fast that spending time reflecting on what’s working and where you can improve on a specific strategy can feel like a luxury. Planning for the New Year? Sure – it’s possible to throw together a plan in an hour, but it’s unlikely you’ll see outstanding results. Now is the perfect time to carve out a few hours to meet with your team to look back on 2017 and talk about what success looks like for your team and your brand in 2018. It might be a challenge to find the time, but it’s an exercise that’s certain to pay off in the long run.

Adweek: 5 Social Media Content Marketing Trends to Watch Heading Into 2018

We’re just weeks away from the New Year, so now is the perfect time to evaluate how your social media content strategy performed in 2017 while considering how you might modify for 2018. Are the right team members on board? How often are you using video? Are you leveraging user-generated content? Consider these and more trends in this helpful article. Read more after the jump…

Is It the End of Twitter as We Know It?

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Social platforms are working to get people to the content they want via visual search, more characters and links all while sidestepping trolls. Twitter in particular will need help avoiding trolls with their announcement this week. Can you believe we could tweet this entire intro?

Twitter

Social Media Today: Twitter’s testing an expanded 280 character limit with some users
Twitter is testing a move from their signature 140 character limit to a roomy 280 characters for each tweet. Beta testers now have room for all the adjectives that had to mercilessly delete before. But content creators beware. If this change rolls out to all users and your goal is engagement, you may still want to keep things brief. Even on Facebook where you’ve got all the characters you could ever want, shorter posts perform better. Read more after the jump…

You want video? We’ve got video.

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With the addition of our CenterTable Studios video production and motion graphics team you might accuse us of having video on the brain. It’s no coincidence that we’re beefing up our video capabilities while almost all the new features being rolled out this week in social media land are video-related. Projections from people who know say demand for video on digital and social platforms will continue to grow. In fact, a 2016 report says 43 percent of people surveyed wanted to see more video content from marketers.

Google

think with Google: What Brands Can Learn From Educational Content on YouTube
If you pitted grumpy cat vs. Mr. Rogers in a YouTube watch time battle, Mr. Rogers would take the prize. According to Google, education and learning videos earn 4X the watch time of animal videos. For brands, that means creating educational and entertaining content can help engage your customers. Another point of engagement, making an effort to put diverse faces on camera. Read more after the jump…

Lenses are the New Cool Kid on the Block

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Both Snapchat and Pinterest announced new “lenses” in the past week, aimed at improving user experience and engagement. First reactions – both concepts are very impressive. We also highlight the flip side of the coin with brands – how much is too much with creative campaigns, to the point that it turns off audiences? To be sure, we’re walking a fine line in marketing and communications.

Digital Advertising:

Wall Street Journal: The Danger of Assertive Advertising
A new study tells us that consumers are turned off when being told what to do. In fact, one aspect of the study resulted in consumers spending only half as much as a result of more assertive ads. Much like our audience-first approach at CenterTable, it’s a case in point that knowing your audience (how they behave, what they expect and what they want) is always the first strategic step in any marketing communications campaign. Read more after the jump…

Big or Small Some Digital Strategies Can Work For All

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Just because you’re not an Olympic weight lifter, doesn’t mean you can’t still pick up a five pound weight a few times and benefit from it. Similarly, brands who aren’t necessarily multinational behemoths can still learn lessons from those who are. That’s why it’s worth keeping an eye on what works and what doesn’t – RIP Yik Yak – in the digital space.

Case Studies

The Guardian: That Heineken ad: brewer tackles how to talk to your political opposite
A Heineken UK ad has been getting a lot of attention for the way it brought people of differing social and political opinions together over a beer. This is part of a broader trend that’s likely to stay for a while – brands connecting with customers over deeper topics. Your budget might not equal Heineken’s but you can still use the basic content strategy of making your audience feel something by telling compelling stories.

Read more after the jump…

From Beta to Bots, Teens to Tricks – What’s Happening in Social Media This Week

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It’s hard to believe, but we’re only weeks away from the end of the first quarter of 2017! Now that we’re well on our way into the “New Year”, how are your social media plans going? Have you tried something new? If so, how are you measuring for success? We might be early in the year, but if you’re hoping to track trends now is the time to capture metrics from January and February before the details slip away from you. And if you need help, your friends at CenterTable are at the ready! In the meantime, we’ve pulled together some highlights in social media news this week. Read more after the jump…