social media trends Archives

Ad Week Wrap Up Report – The Digital Influence

October 9, 2012

By flightpath

Truth is conversations is a by-product of the digital/social age. The two way thing is of course key, but so is the long form nature of YouTube and the flow/frequency of blogging especially the likes of Twitter and Tumblr. What was also cool was the realization that every agency I heard or ran into talked digital.

Advertising Week just concluded and it was cool, if not “epic.” My favorite panel featured the creative leadership from great agencies including Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, Leo Burnett, Anomaly, Mekanism. I believe reason the week (and panel) was great comes down to the idea of “conversations”… a term used by the CCO of Leo Burnett to describe meaningful consumer engagement VS doing ads of any particular kind in any medium.

Truth is conversations is a by-product of the digital/social age. The two way thing is of course key, but so is the long form nature of YouTube and the flow/frequency of blogging especially the likes of Twitter and Tumblr. What was also cool was the realization that every agency I heard or ran into talked digital. But then again, every agency is a digital shop or at the least, an “immerging hybrid”- by virtue that digital is the defining cultural gatekeeper- so if you don’t get digital, it’s hard to imagine (like impossible) that you are connecting with any teen let alone adult based on lifestyle or media consumption behavior.

This made me think of the several things we think about and practice that make digital agencies unique to now and the future:

It’s Never Over- campaign content is a constantly evolving reality…a site, ad networks, 3^rd party, social ads are “A/B” tested and tweaked throughout its life based on empirical reads, emotional wear out or because we can/should.
Speed to Market- the ability to commercialize creativity/points of difference “ideas” in hyper time is now a competitive hammer that marketers swing freely and hard.
It’s ONE World- digital is totally integrated and linked (it is a web after all!) unlike TV, radio, print, retail where getting it synced up is tough for turf reasons and/or logistical ones.
Technology Lives for Change- where as media like 30 sec TV units have been the standard for decades, digital platforms (and ad units change all the time) like “Parallax” reinvents how engagement plays out- vertical fluidity VS horizontal randomness.

As I said, I loved Advertising Week- it made last week rock. It got a lot of people thinking and rocking.

Pinterest – 5 Tips to Get Your Brand’s Pins Repinned

April 20, 2012

By flightpath

80% of pins on Pinterest are repinned, while only 5% of tweets on Twitter are retweeted. The challenge is to fill pinboards with content that will get repinned. Here are our top 5 tips to get your brand’s image repinned:

Pinterest continues to grow and grow. Many brands are jumping on Pinterest looking to build brand awareness and drive traffic back to their sites. Pinterest can be a easy platform to gain spread brand messaging and product images quickly, as opposed to other social media platforms. 80% of pins on Pinterest are repinned, while only 5% of tweets on Twitter are retweeted. The challenge is to fill pinboards with content that will get repinned. Here are our top 5 tips to get your brand’s image repinned:

Don’t Upload, Pin: When you upload content to a pinboard, you are missing out. If your goal is to get people from Pinterest to your site, they cannot do that without a link. Always pin images from your site instead of uploading. If you want to pin photos that are not on your site, start a blog to hold your photo content and pin from there. This way not only will your site’s URL be featured at the top of the pin which helps with awareness, but users can click through to your site.

Be Bold & Brief: Whether you are creating images for your pinboards or scouring the internet for cool, repinnable images, chose high contrast images. If your image includes text, make sure it is brief and bold.

Pin Faster: By highlighting the text and image you wish to pin and clicking the Pin It bookmarket, the text will automatically be incoporated into the comments of your pin. For pinners pressed for time, this is a valuable tool to use.

Use hashtags: A tip for social media marketing that seems to work everywhere. Hashtags work on Pinterest just like they do on Twitter, adding hashtags to the comments on your pin makes them easier to find in search. Contests are also being conducted on Pinterest using hashtags.

Price it: If you represent an online retailer, always be sure to put a dollar sign in front of your price. This way, your pin will be pulled into the Pinterest gift section, which has a button in the navigation bar on the Pinterest homepage. The price will also appear in a banner across the left hand corner of your image.

Social Media: Best Trends With Benefits

September 28, 2011

By flightpath

In our optimized, analyzed and digitized marketplace of today, it’s great to see that a common link in many social media trends are driven by emotional/relationship currency. The human factor is again the “it” – not “bit” – player, because people simply click and convert on when they covet something. Said differently, coveting is about […]

In our optimized, analyzed and digitized marketplace of today, it’s great to see that a common link in many social media trends are driven by emotional/relationship currency. The human factor is again the “it” – not “bit” – player, because people simply click and convert on when they covet something. Said differently, coveting is about connecting, bonding, relating, protecting, believing and acting out of a feeling. It’s emotionally assertive and aggressive, not passive.

Here’s a quick scan of three trends in today’s social landscape:

1. Measurement Matters – Stop spending a lot on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter just to get the likes and followers. When you haven’t proved a campaign’s effectiveness on a business impact level – think ROI – it makes little sense. Today, more than ever, we need to make sure that what we are recommending is defensible/trackable and then act and spend like processed crazy people!

2. Gang Tackling Love – Social media and people in general pile on big time for the things they hate, but of late, we have seen a lot of piling on relating to happiness, sharing and joy. Brands have been much of the energy behind fueling this Summer/Fall of Love (see Coca-Cola’s stunning Facebook campaign centered around “Happiness”).

3. Hope Springs Nocturnal – Social media never sleeps! It is the first true 24/7/365 platform. Could anything be more true? From Facebook romance to Tweets from the red carpet to checking in or checking it out on Foursquare, nightlife and social life lives for the young – and not so young – like never before!

ShopSocial 2010

November 29, 2010

By flightpath

It’s that time of year. Time to get out there and start shop, shop, shopping for those holiday gifts. Some of us love it. Some of us hate it. And some of us never stop. Here at Flightpath, we’ve become a little enamored with the latter, those distinctly devoted shoppers gifted with the skills of […]

It’s that time of year. Time to get out there and start shop, shop, shopping for those holiday gifts. Some of us love it. Some of us hate it. And some of us never stop. Here at Flightpath, we’ve become a little enamored with the latter, those distinctly devoted shoppers gifted with the skills of finding a good deal anywhere. We’re especially curious about their online shopping prowess and their need (duty?) to share deals, purchases, and other “shopinions” out in the digital open.

The Shoppers

These types of individuals, dubbed social shoppers, make the shopping world go round. They’re digital natives that are part of generation share, and they never shop alone. So this holiday season, we’ve decided to channel our research efforts into learning all about these shoppers—from their point of view. We gathered a handful of social shoppers and put them under our lens to hear what they had to say about their digital-social shopping habits, behaviors, and motivations. We’ve got so much to learn.

The Channel

Visit our ShopSocial 2010 channel on YouTube to check out the one-on-one interviews with our shoppers. See them dish the dirt on the favorite shopping campaigns, mechanisms for sharing, and even how great it feels to get a good deal. Bookmark the channel and stay tuned for more videos from additional interviews and other user-generated submissions. Comment on, like, share, and embed your favorites!

The Contest

Love social shopping, too? Chances are you’re not shy, then, so how about sharing that love with us? Share your own tell-all social shopping video describing how you navigate the social web to find, share, shout out, and support—all in the name of shopping. The contest runs from December 1 – 31, 2010, and you can share your YouTube link at our microsite, www.ShopSocial2010.com. We’ll add your videos to the ShopSocial 2010 playlist, and four lucky shoppers, whose videos receive the most views by midnight December 31, 2010 will win a gift card.

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