So you’ve jumped on the social media bandwagon. You’ve grabbed a Twitter handle; you’ve set up a Facebook page; you’ve told your friends and coworkers to follow, friend or like you; and you’ve been tweeting and posting the heck out of everything you can think of about your brand. But who cares? No, really, who’s listening to you? Is there anyone besides your loyal employees and sympathetically supportive spouse?
Whoever coined the phrase, “If you build it they will come,” didn’t know about the intricacies of getting brand attention on the Web.
We know that if you build it—whether “it” is a Facebook page or group, a Twitter account or your own website—people aren’t going to come flocking to you in droves like you’re Justin Bieber in a shopping mall. Your hair just isn’t that awesome.
OK, so maybe it is, but people just don’t know yet. Let’s start here: To gain attention, you need to know your audience and determine what you can provide that grabs attention and makes people want to share it with their friends. What makes your voice stand out among the competition?
Metrics matter Take these findings on why people follow a brand into account. Razorfish did a study in 2009 called the Digital Brand Experience Report, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers (50.5% female, 49.5% male) in four major age groups to understand how their adoption of Internet technology and services impacted the way that they engaged with brands. See the full study here (pdf).
The overwhelming majority of consumers who actively engage with a brand (e.g., friend a brand on Facebook or enter a contest) can evolve from passive reactors to advocates almost instantaneously. On average:
97% reported increased brand awareness.
98% show increased consideration.
97% will likely purchase a product from the brand.
96% may recommend the brand to their friends.
69% of [consumers] have provided feedback to a brand, either through its web site or a third-party service like GetSatisfaction.com.
Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, 44% say access to exclusive deals is the main reason (followed by entertaining content).
Lastly, brand experiences online (positive or negative) have affected 97% of people’s decisions to buy from that brand. What has their brand experience been with you?
Tweet an offer they can’t refuse What does all of this have to do with your Twitter account? We know that most people follow or friend a brand for exclusive deals or offers. So ask yourself these questions:
Can I provide exclusive deals or offers?
If I’m not selling things on my website, can I offer deals from my partners or from the community on my site?
Secondly, 23% – 32% will follow or friend you because they’re already a customer, so:
Are you promoting your social networks on your site?
Are you promoting them in your other marketing channels?
Not everyone is capable ofproviding interesting or entertaining content. If you’re not particularly interesting or entertaining yourself, hire someone who is to manage your account. The personality behind the person managing your social accounts is often quite transparent through his or her streams. Besides, you don’t want to sound robotic, even in digital friendships:
Don’t talk solely about yourself and your product or company news (unless you’re Apple—then maybe you can get away with it).
Provide content that will catch someone’s eye and make them want to read it or click on it.
Don’t be afraid to provide content and links to other sites in the web. Your audience will appreciate your sense of camaraderie.
These little things seem so simple that they could easily be neglected. Don’t neglect the social web, or it’ll neglect you back. Learn from the greats like Zappos, Whole Foods, Dunkin’ Donuts and others who have turned audiences into advocates, and advocates into evangelists.
Try out some stuff today. And if you have your own success story of using unique and innovative techniques to engage your audiences, please share with our readers in the comments!
Video: Industry Experts Share Tips for Targeting Women Online
Listen to key insights from The Women Connectonomics Study
Did you know that women will control $28 trillion in annual spending globally by 2014?
We did. That’s why Yahoo! researchers surveyed thousands of women to create The Women Connectonomics study. It’s a definitive look at the needs the Internet fulfills for women, why they turn to certain online channels and how receptive they are to advertising messages on various sites. Key study findings include:
The top needs for women revolve around personal growth and their interdependencies on others.
Women’s lifestyle sites like Yahoo! Shine and special interest sites fulfill the most needs for women.
Women are three times more receptive to marketing messages on lifestyle, specialty and review sites.
The study was released in late July at a Chicago event attended by industry leaders like top bloggers, CMOs, and key agency executives. Check out their expert tips for helping your brand connect with women online.
Big thinkers put the science into Science + Art + Scale
Even Yahoo! scientists need a sangria now and then.
“Science + Art + Scale” is how we describe what Yahoo!offers advertisers: the best technology to reach your target audience and measure your performance, compelling digital creative to engage that audience with the most compelling digital creative, on a scale all but unmatched in the business (600 million unique monthly users strong and growing). So it’s nice to be able to back that statement with real science.
While truly every week is science week at Yahoo!, this week really was Science Week. At our Sunnyvale headquarters we brought together Yahoo! scientists, technologists and researchers—who Carol Bartz calls our “big brains”—from labs around the globe to share knowledge on every aspect of our technology and business. Here is just some of their research that matters to advertisers.
Computational Advertising—This is a whole new scientific sub-discipline at the intersection of information retrieval, machine learning, optimization and microeconomics. Its central challenge is to find the best ad to present to a user engaged in a given context, such as querying a search engine (“sponsored search”), reading a Web page (“content match”), watching a movie and IM-ing.
Prepare Your Campaigns for Back-to-School Shopping
Get on the bus and join us for this free webinar
Back-to-school is one of the biggest consumer spending events for retailers—second only to the winter holidays. According to a survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Federation, combined K-12 and college spending for back-to-school will reach $55.12 billion in 2010.
With a shaky economy and cautious consumers, it’s more important than ever for retailers to equip themselves with audience insights, knowledge about marketplace conditions, and campaign best practices. And we want to help you.
Please join us Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time for Yahoo!’s 2010 Back-to-School Webinar, a free web seminar that will cover the following topics:
Consumer behavioral insights related to online promotions and deals
Review of 2009 search trends
Best practices for back-to-school search and display campaigns
Yahoo! brought together advertisers, bloggers, agencies and big brands like Sara Lee and Harpo Studios for an engaging panel discussion of its Connectonomics Women study. Held at the beautiful Ivy Room in Chicago, the event was stimulating and chic—two qualities every woman enjoys.
Watch this video for expert marketing tips straight from the event:
And take a peek inside the event with these photos:
The guy behind the Old Spice guy knows his audience
Iain Tate, Global Interactive Executive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy, is the brightspark behind the campaign that transformed Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice from venerable shelf-filler into a buzzworthy icon.
That shouldn’t surprise anyone who heard Tait speak about advertising’s embrace of digital at the recent Yahoo! Provoke Summit.
He observed that those stuck with traditional thinking dislike the new reality in which “the best stuff wins,” but it’s now the public instead of “experts” determining what’s best. Furthermore, advertising professionals too often seek inspiration from looking at other ads. “That’s the last place you should be looking,” Tait says.
Success requires watching for what people actually do in real life with technology and with each other. And for those biding their time until things settle down? It’s never going to, Tait warns: “We just have to learn how to deal with it and thrive on it.”
“One day little digital children and little advertising children will play together,” Tait predicted back in 2007, when he presented Ten Reasons Why Digital Is Better Than Advertising. He’s helped make his own prediction a reality.
Gannett Co. and Yahoo! have formed a partnership that will bring Yahoo’s advertising power to Gannett’s 81 local publishing organizations and seven of its broadcast units.
Gannett’s local advertisers will gain a broader online audience—as much as 80 percent of each market’s available digital audience —and the ability to specifically target their messages with APT from Yahoo!. This means that local advertisers have the ability to reach their audiences based on geography, user demographics, user interests and more.
Yahoo! also plans to work with Gannett to bring select local content from Gannett publications to Yahoo! properties in the U.S., including the Yahoo! front page.
This new partnership builds on the success of the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium, which includes more than 800 newspapers and has already sold more than 40,000 local ad campaigns onto Yahoo!.
You can read the press release here and look forward to seeing the benefits of the Gannett and Yahoo! partnership starting this quarter!
Video: Experian’s Chris X. Moloney on getting the best from today’s ad options.
Cannes Lions may be over, but the intrepid Yahoo! team who covered the event continues to deliver. Here they speak with Chris Moloney, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Experian, who explains why Cannes Lions is valuable even for companies like his.
Moloney also shares his thoughts on the relationship between traditional and online advertising. He has well-defined and unexpected reasons for disagreeing with “this perception that the traditional media, the TV media, is dying–is being broken apart into many pieces.” Enjoy the video for more detail:
Video: Nick Parish of Contagious Communications on the evolution beyond traditional advertising
This video captures Nick Parish, North American Editor for Contagious Communications Ltd., talking with Yahoo!’s Shane Steele at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival about the industry’s tempered return to confidence and how the newest challenges are an integral part of growing into the future.
“We’re chiefly concerned with non-traditional idea transmission–non-traditional media, non-traditional campaigns,” says Parish. “And I think in that space the biggest challenge for marketers right now is how to measure engagement.”
Team Yahoo! prepares to leave Cannes for another year
The hardworking Yahoo! crew at Cannes Lions 2010 is packing up their bags until next year. So while they gather their sunscreen and souvenirs, let’s take a look back at the past few days of friends, fun and sunshine.
