How did social media move the needle this month? This quarter? Over the course of the year? These critical measurement questions are posed to digital marketers on a regular basis, and social media platform creators are working furiously to provide us with more and more tools to drive the holy grail of online content — audiences taking action.
Advertising
AdWeek: Instagram Updates Overlay For Action-Driving Ads
In today’s world of shrinking attention spans, what good is a gorgeous photo and engaging caption if your target audience cannot seamlessly take action? Instagram’s business unit understands this critical need among advertisers and recently expanded how brands can ask customers to take action directly from the platform. The update is automatic, so be sure to check that the URLs pulled into existing ads are in fact the websites where you want traffic to go.
Business Insider: Facebook and Snapchat Trading Blows
Competition forces everyone to raise their game. Even Facebook is not immune, and we enjoyed the breakdown of the ongoing battle between Facebook and Snapchat to win and maintain coveted advertising dollars.
The Next Big Thing
Entrepreneur: Twitter’s New Customer Feedback Tool
Twitter is, without a doubt, the social media hub for most customer service praise and rants. Twitter recently announced the initial testing phase of a new tool that will enable companies to better plan for, organize, respond to and gather meaningful data related to customer service inquiries. While most of us will have to wait awhile to test it ourselves, we like the tips this article provides for how to prepare a best-in-class response strategy suited for the platform. The tips actually transcend Twitter and should be incorporated into every comprehensive response strategy for customers.
AdWeek: Why Brands From Barbie To Uber Are So Hot On Chatbots
One-to-one personalized interactions are the holy grail of social and digital communications. However, this can be incredibly challenging to scale, especially in the fast-paced world of customer service. Will chatbots, which are automated messaging services, bridge the gap between meaningful, personalized interactions with large-scale response expectations? Read on to learn why this may be the next hot trend to watch in digital communication.
Employee Engagement and Sales
Mashable: Why Loud-Mouthed Employees Are Good For Your Business
Building a professional culture that provides space for employees to be vocal on social media is still extremely stressful for many employers. Whether social media is viewed as a workplace distraction or serious security risk, checks, balances and policies always need to be in place to protect the company. However, this article provides compelling, bottom line focused statistics for why a vocal and engaged employee based can actually improve the referral pipeline and possibly, revenue figures long term.
Brand Wins
AdWeek: April Fools’ Day 2016
Last Friday, April 1, was a fun (and also somewhat annoying) day to be surfing the web. Social media feeds were a barrage of April Fools’ Day attempts, most of which flopped. I, for one, have grown weary of food brands pretending to launch disgusting “new flavors.” But this article reminded me of the cleverness of so many marketers and creative agencies on days like April 1. Bottom line? Every year the bar is raised and brands need to be 150 percent committed to going all in to make waves on April 1.
